I love pita bread. You can do so many things with it. I love cutting it into triangles, brushing it with olive oil and a little sea salt and baking it for use with hummus or other dips. It also makes such a great little pocket for all kinds of sandwiches. Another thing we like to use it for is salads, you know, instead of putting the salad in a bowl, use a pita pocket!

I had forgotten about these little beauties for awhile, until I came across them in my recipe binder the other day. I have this huge 3 inch office binder filled up with all my recipes. Because I am slightly OCD (slightly) and ran out of room in my kitchen for all the cookbooks I had collected, I decided about two years ago to do a recipe overhaul and put everything together in one easy to store binder. I copied down in Word documents every recipe that I had in a book, had made up or found on another food site. Once again, because of my slight OCD, I organized them in alphabetical order for everything from appetizers to vegetables and everything in between. Even my dessert section is categorized by what kind of dessert it is.

I am sure this seems over the top and unnecessary, but it is so helpful when planning meals for the week or when you only want to find an appetizer and you just have to flip to that section.  Everything is printed on 3 hole punch paper, so all I have to do is add the new recipes to the right section. I think I have about 600 recipes and I add a few new things every week. It is also filled with tons of scrap paper with my scribblings of new recipes I write down as I throw things together.

Anyway, I found this recipe again last week and we had these for dinner last night. It is a perfect picnic meal (you can make them up and wrap them in foil to transport), great for lunch or dinner, and a perfect light meal for these dog days of summer we are in right now.

Feel free to experiment using any type of salad in these. This Southwest Salad would be perfect for these pitas too. The next one I am going to try will be a spinach salad.

I also made my own croutons for this dish. I had a half a package of fresh dinner rolls left over from these Chicken Sliders I made a few days before, and I wanted to use them up before they went bad. Just cut the rolls (or any other bread you have around) in half so they aren’t so thick. Brush a little olive oil over the tops of them and season with your favorite seasoning. This time I used Cavender’s Greek Seasoning, to go with the flavor of the salad. Bake them for about 10 minutes at 400 degrees, or until the tops get browned and they are crispy. Then just cut them up into small pieces and set them aside until you are ready to use them. They can be stored for a few days in a zip-lock bag.

Chicken Caesar Pitas

• 1 pound boneless skinless chicken breasts
• 1 tablespoon of butter, 1 tablespoon of oil
• Cavendars Seasoning, to taste
• salt and pepper, to taste
• dried rosemary, to taste
• 1/2 pound of bacon, cooked and chopped
• romaine lettuce, for these I cut the lettuce into thin strips so it fits nicely inside the pita
• Roma tomatoes, diced
• fresh grated Parmesan cheese
• Caesar salad dressing
• 1 – 12 ounce package pocket pita bread (halved)
• Croutons (optional)

Season your chicken breasts with Cavender’s seasoning, salt, pepper and rosemary on both sides. You can grill your chicken if you want, but I decided I wanted to be in the A/C. If your like me and don’t want to go outside and pass out from the heat, then cook it in a skillet. Over medium heat, combine olive oil and butter in a skillet and let melt. Add in your seasoned chicken breasts and cook for about 3-4 per side, or until cooked through.

The remove from heat and let rest for about 2 minutes. I like to have small pieces of chicken about the same size as the croutons, tomatoes and bacon I chopped up. I cut each breast into about 4 strips, then cut those into small squares.

While the chicken is cooking I usually make sure everything else is all chopped up and ready to go. I like to leave everything on a cutting board or put it in little dishes. Then everyone can make up their own pita.

Cut each pita in half and then carefully open it up along the line inside.

I usually start with a little dressing in the bottom, this way you don’t get to the end and have no dressing left in there. I just layer all the ingredients until you can’t stuff anything else in there and then add a drizzle of dressing to the top.

I served these with some amazing sweet potato fries and it was a perfect compliment. I have tried to make homemade sweet potato fries a couple of times and they just never turn out the way I want them to. I found that these Alexia brand are delicious and cook perfect every time whether you bake or deep fry them. We like to make a dip of sour cream and horseradish for our sweet potato fries. Just use about a 3:1 ratio of sour cream and horseradish. It is a perfect blend of flavors for these fries.