Last weekend, my daughters were in a dance competition in Halifax, four hours away from home. It was time to turn into DANCE MOM for the weekend. That meant hours of prepping costumes, sewing and packing dance bags before we even started on the road trip.

Being a Dance Mom isn’t all drama… there’s a lot of work to it. By the time we got on the road, I realized I hadn’t packed a lunch for us so I knew we’d be stopping to eat somewhere along the way.

A few hours into our trip we were getting hungry so we stopped at Wendy’s for lunch. I wanted the girls to have a good lunch to fuel their little bodies for the weekend of activity ahead. So we had a girlfriend’s lunch and enjoyed two of Wendy’s new salads.

(Only one of my daughters would pose for a pic, the other diva wasn’t in the mood)

First off, these aren’t the boring salads that I make at home, these salads were bold in flavor and vibrant in colour. I wasn’t sure how the “boldness” would go over with my picky eaters. These salads were intense but were a hit with all three of us!

I chose the Asian Cashew Chicken Salad with fire roasted edamame, fresh red peppers and cucumbers, a lettuce blend of 11 different kinds of greens and a light Asian Chili Vinaigrette dressing. The chicken on my salad was 100% premium all white chicken breast meat that is grilled fresh. My girls split the Barbecue Ranch Chicken Salad with fire roasted corn, freshly diced tomatoes, shredded sharp cheddar cheese, applewood smoked bacon, and a honey BBQ sauce. They especially loved the BBQ Ranch dressing, made with real buttermilk, parmesan cheese, ancho chili peppers, honey and brown sugar.

Salads are nothing new to Wendy’s. Wendy’s was the first restaurant to bring the salad bar to quick service customers more than 30 years ago.

Wendy’s is tapping into popular culinary trends to add exciting flavor layering to their salads and freshening up a salad is never out of style. Speaking of fresh, all Wendy’s salads are prepared fresh in the restaurants every day, and each is topped with warm chicken or chili when the customer orders it, which works well for me since I’m not a fan of cold food. I know, I’m weird.

As a bonus, the 3 new salads are 50% lower in fat grams, 29% lower in sodium, and 61% lower in saturated fat and are available in two sizes – half and full portions. So I didn’t feel too guilty about getting a Frosty treat on the way out.

Why don’t you try one of Wendy’s new salads and take a girlfriend with you and catch up over lunch. As a busy (and somewhat crazy) Dance Mom, I didn’t have time to catch up with one of my girlfriends last weekend but I’ll be back to try the Taco Supremo Salad since I didn’t get a chance to sample that one yet. And this time I’ll bring a grown up girlfriend so maybe the conversation won’t revolve around dance moves, costumes and how much eye makeup an 8 year old can get away with on stage.

In the meantime, I’ll practice talking grown up talk by watching ‘Girlfriends at Wendy’s Eating Salads and Talking about Stuff’ on Wendy’s Youtube channel. Here’s one episode where the girlfriends discuss yoga pants (Dance Moms love yoga pants too!):

 

Disclosure: Although this post has been generously sponsored by Wendy’s, the opinions and language are all my own, and in no way do they reflect Wendy’s.