Chicken and pistachio brown rice salad

At the moment, I often find that I get to the end of the day and realise I haven't made it to the supermarket to buy food for dinner. Once upon a time this wasn't a problem, I would run down there last minute and pick up what I needed. These days, I usually have a sleeping or hungry baby on my hands so I find that I am raiding the cupboards instead and making something up on the spot. This isn't a bad thing, I have lots of good nutritious stuff in the cupboard such as brown rice, raw nuts, dried fruit, beans, lentils, quinoa etc etc. All I need is something from the fridge to bring it all together...

I rarely buy organic chicken breasts anymore due to the cost and instead buy a whole organic chicken and roast it. We then use the rest of the meat the following night and boil the bones for stock. Not only is this much more cost effective, it means we eat the darker chicken meat which contains higher levels of iron and we have a nutritious homemade stock for making soups. This is a great recipe for left over roast chicken. Its low in saturated fat, includes healthy unsaturated fats and is high in protein, fibre, B vitamins, iron and zinc.

What you will need for two people:

• Left over roast chicken (about 1/4 to 1/2 a chicken)
• 3 cups of cooled cooked brown rice
• 10 prunes
• 1 zucchini
• 1/2 cup of raw unsalted pistachio nuts, crushed
• 2 tbsp of chopped parsley

For the dressing

• 6 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• 1 tbsp of lime juice
• 2 tbsp of red wine vinegar

Chop up the roast chicken, prunes and zucchini into small cubes, combine with the rice and then toss with the chopped parsley and crushed pistachio nuts. Mix together the oil, juice and vinegar and stir it through the salad just before serving.