These are a few of my favorite things

No time for blogging, no time for working out, no time to do basic things like fold my laundry. 

So instead I’m going to share with you quickly some of my favorite things to cook! And some of them are serious timesavers.

 

 

Prosciutto stuffed chicken

 

 

 

Cheesy Veggie Casserole

 

Mama’s Meatloaf

 

 

 

Pasta with Spinach and Diced Tomatoes

 

 

French Ham, Cheese, and Egg Fondue Casserole

Happy cooking!! Try something new for someone you love this weekend

Avocado Chicken Salad

I found this recipe on pinterest and thought I would give it a try. I was really really yummy and something that I can see holding up in the refrigerator for a couple of days.  I’m constantly looking for healthy low carb recipes that we can have for dinner, but also have as leftovers for lunch.  I would be happy to eat the same thing for lunch every day but Ben requires variety.

The nice thing about a dish like this is that you can eat it on bread, in a salad, alone in a bowl, over chips….and that’s just what I can come up with off the top of my head.

 

Can you please ignore the fact that I spelled avocado wrong on my recipe….kthanks.

 Avocado Chicken Salad

1 large avocado
3 boneless skinless chicken breasts
½ cup red onion
2 tbsp chopped cilantro
Juice of 1 lime
Salt and pepper

Season chicken with salt and pepper. Grill chicken. Cut into small pieces and cool.  When I made this last night I cut the chicken into small pieces, put them on a plate, and stuck it in the freezer to get it to cool down enough so that we could have a cold chicken salad for dinner.

In a separate bowl mash up avocado.

In another bowl combine chopped onion, lime juice, salt and pepper, and cilantro. Mix together.

 

Add cold/room temp chicken to onion mixture.  Stir until combined. Mix in avocado. 

 

 

I ended up adding a little more salt and pepper to the mixture, which I think was needed.  I'm sure you could also add in some tomato, but i'm not sure leftovers with the tomato would last nearly as long as without.

Enjoy!

Lettuce wrapped Taco’s

 

Last night’s dinner was another home run!  I thought Ben was going to freak at this low carb change, but he really embraced it….clearly.

 

Seriously, that’s a lot of meat on a piece of lettuce!

All we did was make taco’s with our favorite fixin’s and instead of putting it in a tortilla wrap or hard taco shell we wrapped them up in a piece of boston lettuce.

Lettuce wrapped Taco’s

1lb ground beef

1 package taco seasoning
2 tbsp minced garlic
½ tsp cayenne powder
Boston lettuce

Our favorite toppings

Greek yogurt (instead of sour cream)

Shredded cheese
Onion
Tomato (not very low carb friendly though)

It’s a taco guys, just load it on. Do I really need to tell you how to make this?

I will give you one suggestion and that is to slowly good all the meat, drain the fat, and then add the taco seasonings and water. I use a base seasoning and then add to it!

 

Enjoy! Ben did:)

 

Mini Eggplant Pizza’s

In our quest to expand our low carbohydrate menu and to use up food we have coming out of our garden I did a bit of online searching and came up with my version of eggplant pizzas.

It was so easy, and I used only stuff I had in the house to make this delicious appetizer.  My sister wouldn’t touch them and Ben ate 5 before I could ask if he liked them.

He clearly did.

I don’t really have a recipe for this but I’ll give you a step by step and you can modify to your own liking.  If I was to plan on making this dish I would have had a different kind of cheese on hand, and probably actual tomato sauce…but this worked!

 

Mini Eggplant Pizza’s

Eggplant
Tomato paste
Sharp Cheddar Cheese (maybe use mozz. next time?)
Garlic powder
Cheese
EVOO spray

 

Step one, slice the eggplant thin. You want the pieces to be thick enough that you can hold them once cooked without them being too flimsy.

Place into 350 degree oven for 7 minutes and then flip and cook for another 7 minutes.

I did this in order to try and crisp up the eggplant. It didn’t really work.

Take eggplant out of the oven and cover with tomato paste, garlic powder, and shredded cheese.  As noted above I used shredded sharp cheddar because that’s what we had in the house.  If I had planned on making this I would have most likely gotten mozzarella cheese, or a pizza cheese mix.

 

 

Throw back in the oven for 15ish minutes.  I would just watch them. Honestly I forgot about mine and don’t know how long they were in there, but because the eggplant doesn’t really get too crispy you couldn’t tell at all that they had been forgotten about.  I mean don’t judge, I was cooking this and got sidetracked.

 

And so did Mabel…she was all about what was cooking in the kitchen last night!

 

Anyways, back to the eggplant.  They turned out wonderfully and I’ll certainly make them again….maybe next time with actual pizza sauce, the right cheese, and pepperoni if I have it.  but honestly even with makeshift ingredients they were fantastic!

 

 

Enjoy!