You know when you buy way too many veggies for the week?

You don’t? Oh, maybe it’s just me. I get all ambitious and think I’m going to be making glorious meals for breakfast, lunch, AND dinner. Nutritionally balanced, culinary delights.

And then some nights we end up driving through McDonalds because I got home late and Jacob has baseball practice and Benjamin has turned into the Benjamonster because he’s super hungry and his tummy controls everything … and the veggies sit in the refrigerator.

So, I thought it would be brilliant to season the parchment paper so the bottom of my chicken didn’t miss out on any seasoning. It sounded good, but in reality, I don’t know if it made much difference. 🙂

I mixed some panko bread crumbs, dried basil, garlic powder, season salt, and black pepper. I added an egg and then patted the mixture onto thin-cut chicken breasts. The thin-cut breasts are a bit more expensive, but if you’re paranoid about meat like I am, it actually saves me money. When I buy regular chicken breasts, I never think they’re done, so I cook them until they’re inedible. See? Saving money! Oh, so I baked the chicken breasts at 400 for way longer than I needed to (half an hour? longer?) but because of the panko crumb topping, they didn’t dry out. Woo hoo!

I had garlic, carrots, kale, and more just begging to be used.

I started with some water in a pot. Easy, right? There was really no reason to add this photo. You know how to add water to a pot. It’s just that I think photos with water look cool.

I chopped up some red pepper, garlic, and onion and started sauteeing it in a drizzle of olive oil.

I had some super huge green onions… Sometimes I wander through the produce section at Meijer and try to find new veggies. This wasn’t one of those times, though. They were just completely out of regular green onions (bizarre, right?).

Once the red pepper, onion, and garlic mixture was a softened up, I added the entire bag of kale, covered it, and let it start to wilt.

I dumped the bag of carrots into the pot with water. I diced the super huge green onions and put them on top. And, because I was pretty sure my kids and husband wouldn’t touch the carrots (they only eat them when they’re cooked in butter and brown sugar), I added some sesame oil for a bit of flavor. Yum!

Washed and trimmed some asparagus.

Cooked the asparagus with some more red pepper. (Are you starting to understand how loaded my refrigerator was?)

And here’s what dinner looked like. Not to shabby, huh? My 7-year-old ate probably 3 helpings of the chicken and grimaced as he ate a teeny tiny bite of kale, a teeny tiny bite of asparagus, and then said he was full. I’m not sure if my 3-year-old ate anything. My husband ate the chicken and asparagus/red pepper mixture… and that was it.

So, I had a lot leftover. I put some of the leftover kale mixture in the bottom of an 8×8 casserole dish.

I added some whole grain noodles with tomato sauce (alright… I used pizza sauce… don’t judge!).

I diced some of the leftover chicken and added it on top.

And then… Oh, well, um, I added some shredded cheese. A lot of shredded cheese. You should be a better person and skip this step. 🙂

The next night I baked it at 350 for about half an hour, and it was splendid. (The kids ate around the kale, of course…)

And the remaining kale? Yes, there was a lot of it!!! I divided into single-serving bowls, added an egg cooked in olive oil, and had my lunches prepped for the week!

Dinner: Not-So-Boring Chicken and Veggies

We had a very busy weekend in Chicago. Taking a 3- and 7-year-old along is a lot of work! So, my plans to have everything prepped for the week and have all sorts of glorious, healthy food (as well as a clean house with clean laundry) and start exercising kind of fell through. I think the first mistake was starting Saturday morning at 3:30 a.m.

I did manage to make dinner tonight, though, and I have a refrigerator full of healthy food.

So, tonight we had chicken and veggies. It sounds boring, doesn’t it? I had a bunch of veggies I needed to use up from last week’s grocery trip.

First, I sliced some grape tomatoes in half and stuck them in a light sesame ginger salad dressing to sit for an hour or so. I meant to put them in a light balsamic vinaigrette, but it turns out I don’t have any. So, the ginger dressing. In case you’re running to the kitchen to try this, you should know it tasted pretty gross. I think it would have been delightful with the balsamic.

Okay, moving on.

Next, I put a small amount of olive oil in a pan and a couple of thinly sliced garlic cloves. I let them cook together for a few minutes and then stuck in about a pound of chicken breast. I added salt and pepper and let it turn toasty brown before flipping it over. Once both sides were browned, I covered it and let it cook for a long time. Probably too long. I’m paranoid about meat like that. And then after it cooked while covered for a long time, I added a chicken bouillon cube and some water, and cooked it longer.

I dumped the sliced tomatoes on a baking sheet (with sides) and stuck it in the oven at 400. They were probably in there for 40 minutes, and the last few were with the broiler turned on.

I sliced some more garlic, diced some onion, and sliced some red pepper and put them into a non-stick pot.

Once they’d softened, I added a big bag of spinach. I love spinach. It is so good for you and to tasty and versatile! I added a splash of water and let that spinach steam and wilt.

I added a little bit of salt and pepper, and it was done.

I don’t have a photo of it on the stove, but I also steamed some broccoli. Just plain old broccoli.

And… I made a box of garlic and parmesan pearl couscous. It was delicious!

The meal:

The chicken was tasty, even if it might have been a little overcooked. The tomatoes, as I said earlier, were pretty disgusting. The couscous – yummo. The broccoli might have been better if it had been a little fresher, but it was fine. The spinach was quite tasty, if I do say so myself.

My husband and kids ate the chicken, ate a little bit of broccoli, and made faces at the tomatoes. My boys scarfed down the couscous and tolerated the spinach. Well, my 3-year-old only ate it if I wrapped a leaf of it around a small piece of chicken and added a few balls of couscous and called it a dog treat because he sometimes will only answer to “Fido” and gets very upset if you call him a person instead of a dog… Oh, am I rambling?

Anyway…. we had leftover chicken and spinach. (I threw the tomatoes and broccoli out.) I’ve found that we eat way less meat if I slice it rather than give each person big pieces of chicken breast. So, I divided the leftovers into four bowls (yay, holiday week – 4 work days!) and added a little bit of whole grain chicken-flavored rice (about 50 calories per bowl for the rice).

(The spinach is under the chicken and the rice.)

Up next? Tomorrow night we’re having beef and broccoli/carrot stir fry, an easy and tasty dish!

P.S. We ate in our hotel’s restaurant in Chicago (The Renaissance Downtown) and their menu had several “Wellness” selections marked on it. Pretty cool, huh? And you’ll be EXTRA proud of me for choosing one of those items for my meal! (Fingers crossed behind my back: I did NOT order spiced chocolate cake from room service later… But if I had, I would rationalize by saying we only ate one real meal that day and my husband ate half of it!)

P.P.S. I started a Facebook page for this blog/contest tonight! I don’t have much on there, but I’m hoping to use it regularly.

Cleaning Out the Refrigerator… Veggiepalooza

I was a bit ambitious with my grocery shopping over the weekend. I thought I’d be doing a lot more cooking. And then life happens. So… tonight, I tried to use up a bunch of them. It started with chopping and slicing a bunch of veggies: carrots, cucumber, celery, green onion, white onion, etc.

Then I took two red peppers and roasted them in the oven at 400 for about 25 minutes. Yum. Delicious!

I diced some of the cucumbers finely for our dinner tonight. I took the extra, added a little diced onion, a couple tablespoons of red wine vinegar, a generous sprinkling of black pepper, and a teeny tiny dash of sugar. Yum.

For dinner, we had Chef Salad Night. The kids absolutely love it. It’s a pretty standard Wednesday night dinner (night before weigh in!). I put each topping choice in small bowls and then have a big bowl of lettuce in the middle.

The kids love choosing their own toppings. My little one is funny and prefers light vinaigrettes. Tonight he had a tiny dipping bowl of light raspberry walnut and another of light sesame ginger. Funny guy.

After dinner, I peeled my sweet potatoes:

I then sliced them, put them on baking sheets, spritzed with olive oil, and added black pepper and kosher salt. Bake at 350 for a loooonnnggggg time. It’s best to flip them over halfway through (otherwise the bottom side is sticky).

With the leftover Chef Salad ingredients, I made small salads for lunches tomorrow:

Then with the remaining ingredients, I made a veggie soup.

Sauteed onion, carrot, celery, tomato, roasted red pepper, and potato:

I let them veggies soften a bit and then added beef broth, a package of frozen spinach, a can of great northern beans, garlic powder, season salt, and pepper.

The above photo is from close to the beginning of the cooking process. After the potatoes were fully cooked, it looked UGLY. It’s supposed to be for tomorrow night’s dinner. I think it will taste okay, but it seems like it needs meat. Maybe this is because of the beef broth? Maybe it wouldn’t be as noticeable with chicken broth? I don’t know…