Oven Baked Chicken Tacos

So after I made the roasted lemon chicken (go back a few entries), I had a lot of chicken left over. Saturday night, I decided I was going to make some delicious chicken tacos. Now, in my household, tacos are what some people call "tacquitos". Rolled up corn tortillas that are either baked or fried (usually fried). Mexicans call them flautas, but whatever. Whatever it is that you call your tacos, these rolled up and baked vessels of deliciousness were very good.

Undressed taco deliciousness.

Oven Baked Cheesy Chicken Tacos

Pre-heat your oven to like.. I dunno, 400 degrees. That's what I went with because I was experimenting (I've never baked my tacos before, sooo). 

Now, tear up one of your chicken breasts into strips and bite size pieces and set aside in a bowl. 

In a saute pan, with a little bit of oil, sautee some chopped onion, diced green pepper, garlic, and salt. Sautee until softened. Add in some petite diced tomatoes (or fresh tomatoes if you wanna roll that way), fresh chopped parsley, fresh chopped cilantro, little more salt, pepper, ground coriander, ground oregano, a few sprinkles of some chicken bouillon powder, some ground cumin, and a few splashes of chicken stock or broth. 

Add in your chicken and mix well, adding more chicken broth to get all the flavors incorporated as you see fit. You don't want the chicken sitting in a lot of liquid - just enough to keep it moist and spread out the flavors. 

Assembly:

Get yourself some corn tortillas and a couple of baking pans or cookie sheets, or whatever makes you happiest. 

Now corn tortillas are a bitch to roll if you ask me. Maybe its because we keep them in the fridge, I don't know. So what we do, is we take a couple of paper towels, place one on the bottom of your microwave, place about 3 corn tortillas on top nicely spread out, and place another wet/damp paper towel on top of the tortillas. Shut the microwave and heat the tortillas up for a little longer than 1 minute. It'll make the tortillas nice and soft and pliable for filling and rolling. Your welcome. 

Anyway! Spray your pans/sheets/whatever with some cooking spray and pull out a warmed tortilla. Add a nice spoonful of your chicken mixture into the tortilla, sprinkle with some shredded cheddar cheese, and roll it up. Place it on your cookie sheet, seam-side down and keep going until you run out of chicken filling. 

Bake them in the oven for however long you need to until the tortillas have browned a little bit and are noticeably tougher/crunchy on the outside. (The picture above shows you what they looked like out of the oven.)

Sauce:

Now my mother and I like to top our tacos with shredded cabbage, some salsa or hot sauce or your own homemade tomato-based sauce (my mom makes a ketchup-based, sweet salsa that I adore), and grated Parmesan cheese. Exhibit B:

Trust me, you want these in your mouth.

You can go ahead and do whatever it is you want with your tacos, but I promise you if you don't mind fresh shredded cabbage, this is an excellent way to serve them. 

And there you have it! Delicious, relatively healthy chicken tacos. You won't be disappointed. 

A Little Self-Control Goes a Long Way

I won't say that I'm completely back on track because I tend to sabotage myself the second I try to convince myself that I am. But I've been doing pretty good food-wise this week. Today I did alright, and most of the week I've been using fresh ingredients and making big batches of deliciously healthy foods.

This was my dinner tonight:

Lemon-thyme roasted chicken and honey thyme roasted carrots that I linked to in my meal planning post, and herbed couscous because I felt that I needed something more than just the meat and veggies. Everything was delicious, healthy, and super filling.

I ended up with 4 very large chicken breasts, which is way more meat than I thought I would end up having. All that means is that I get to rearrange some of my meal planning for the week and push a few recipes back a day or two. Tomorrow I'll eat this again for dinner, and then on Saturday I'll have some for lunch and then make chicken tacos for dinner. If I remember, I'll post some pictures of the tacos or whatever it is that I make with the remaining chicken.

I haven't made it to the gym yet... one thing at a time, right?

The Trials of Menu Planning

So I've never been one to plan my weekly meals in advance. I go to the store, I buy random things, I put them in my fridge and pantry. When dinner time rolls around, I look at what I have, I sit and think for an hour or two or look up a recipe, and then I make dinner on the fly.

This system has worked for me mostly, but lately I've been getting annoyed with trying to figure out what to make without proper planning. I've started to look online at Pinterest and a few other blogs and websites that talk about meal planning and having set meals for specific days. I don't know that I have it in me to plan a month's worth of meals just yet, and I have a hard time knowing what I want to eat today, let alone tomorrow or a week from now - so this is a game of trial and error.

Today I planned meals for the next week, with 2 "flex meals" that I'll swap out in case I decide to not eat one of the planned meals. I went to the store and I bought all the things needed to make said meals, without too much extra stuff. If it weren't for the fact that I was running low on a lot of my spices, cooking wines, and other miscellaneous items that caused me to go over-budget, I do believe I saved quite a bit of money tonight with this approach.

We didn't get back home till about 8pm, so it was too late to cook tonight. We bought some fresh honey BBQ wings at the store and a package of some frozen macaroni and cheese and we're going to eat like fat kids tonight.

Here's what I've got planned for the week:

Tuesday:
Pork Tenderloin with Pan Sauce
with
Seared Ginger Carrots

Wednesday:
Leftovers

Thursday:
Lemon Thyme Roasted Chicken Breasts
with
Honey Thyme Roasted Carrots

Friday:
Leftovers

Saturday:
I've given myself two options for tonight. I'm either doing a shrimp stir-fry, or blackened fish tacos. Both of which don't really have a recipe. The stir-fry I will throw together and make up as I go. The fish tacos is a mixture of like two or three different recipes I've come across. If I make them, then perhaps I'll post a recipe and some pictures. We'll see.

Sunday:
Pesto Ranch Crockpot Chicken Thighs
with
Mashed potatoes

Have you done meal planning before? How do you manage it? Does it work for you?

Let me know!

Delicious Frozen Rump Roast

I haven't posted in a while, and I'm only a little bit sorry about that. I'm working on a few projects right now, and am trying to figure out how exactly to integrate both into one venue. More on that at a later time.

Fall is here! I love Fall more than any other season and people will frequently argue with me about it. I don't care about bathing suits, or sundresses, and I get cranky when the temperature rises above 75 degrees. Give me a nice chill in the air, 70 degree weather, a hoodie, some sneakers, and a hearty meal and I'm happy.

I had a 3 pound rump/round roast in the freezer and I didn't want to wait the 8 hours to cook it in the crock pot and I didn't want to wait for it to defrost either. I decided to go ahead and try to cook it, still frozen, in the oven and see how it would do. The results were fantastic! It was moist, tender, fully cooked through (and evenly cooked I might add), and flavorful.

Frozen Rump Roast

2-3 pound roast, frozen
Brown gravy packet
Italian seasoning packet
Hidden Valley Ranch packet
Minced garlic
Potatoes, cut up into medium-sized pieces
Carrots, cut up into about 2" long sticks
Onion, sliced thin
About 1/2 to 1 cup of water.

Directions:

Remove your roast from the packaging and place it into your baking dish. I used a oval shaped ceramic dutch oven with a lid. Add your water and try to get the outside of the roast a little wet to adhere your ingredients.

In a small bowl, mix the three seasoning packets together and sprinkle it evenly over your roast. Try to massage it into the meat a little bit to get a good coating.

Wash and cut up your veggies listed above and add them around the roast into the pot. Don't forget the garlic!

Set your oven to 300 degrees, and cover up your pot. The lid on mine is a bit uneven, so I put some foil over it before adding the lid and filling in some of the gaps with the foil. You want it to stay nice and hot and moist in that pot so that the meat cooks slowly and doesn't dry out.

You can check it after an hour or two for the proper temperature for the doneness that you want. My mom is a bit picky when it comes to red meat and won't eat it if it's still pink, so I cooked mine for a lot longer to make sure it was cooked through.

When it's where you want it, pull it out and pull the roast out to let it rest on a cutting board for about 10-15 minutes. You'll notice that in the pot you've got a delicious mixture of cooked veggies and a very tasty broth that you can thicken up if you wish to make a gravy.

Slice up your meat, serve with veggies, and enjoy! We had leftover the next night and made some rice to go with the meat, veggies, and broth. Tonight, we're going to use the remaining meat to make some delicious Reuben sandwiches.

Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures before or after everything was cooked, but you'll have to trust me when I tell you that it looked and tasted amazing.

Don't hesitate to pull a frozen roast out and make some magic happen in the same night. It's definitely worth it!

Italian Sausage, Cabbage & Angel Hair Pasta

When I was on the 4HB diet a couple years ago, one of my quick and tasty go-to meals was sauteed kielbasa sausage, onions, garlic, brussel sprouts, and brown mustard. It was simple, delicious, and filling. I've been meaning to make the same dish again, but always forget to buy kielbasa when I'm at the store. 

Lucky for me, my boyfriend's mother had a decent amount of sausage leftover from a package that she used to make some crab sauce and gave it to me. I gladly took it off her hands and planned to make it for dinner tonight. I didn't have any brussel sprouts on hand, and I'm pretty sure we just ran out of brown mustard (we need to go shopping this weekend), so I decided to improvise. Brussel sprouts are like little baby cabbages, right? So regular cabbage should be a fine substitute. Onward!

What I didn't realize until I started to cut into the sausage links, was that it was spicy Italian sausage. Now look - I like spice and I like spicy things.... to a point. I need to be able to still taste my food and enjoy it without the chemical burn in my mouth ruining the whole experience. I decided to take my chances and hoped that the crimson-fleshed links wouldn't turn out being too hot to my liking. 

Well it was too hot. I'm pretty sure I have third-degree burns in my mouth right now. 

Anyway, if you like spice and you're a brave soul, then use the spicy Italian sausage. I will be using the sweet Italian sausage next time I make this meal. 

Italian Sausage, Cabbage & Angel Hair Pasta

Italian sausage, sliced (Sweet, Mild, or Hot - whichever you prefer, I had 8 links on hand)

Frozen chopped onion, about 1 cup

Minced garlic, about 2 tablespoons

Cabbage, about half a medium head

Salt

Pepper

A few sprinkles of parsley

A splash of vinegar (just trust me on this, it helps to bring out the natural sweetness of the cabbage)

A few sprinkles of powdered chicken bouillon (you can use chicken broth if you're so inclined)

Angel hair pasta (I used maybe half a pound)

Optional:

Parmesan cheese (but seriously... is cheese really ever optional?)

Slice up the sausage into bite-sized pieces and cook them over medium heat in a non-stick pan until lightly browned. While they cook, chop up your cabbage into thin slices until you have a nice heaping pile of it. When the sausage is browned, add in your garlic, onions, cabbage, salt, pepper, and parsley. Cover the pan and reduce the heat just a little bit and let the veggies sweat it out. Take a peek every now and then and give it a good stir if the cabbage doesn't fuss too much about it. 

Once the veggies are all wilted down and you can stir without it being awkward, add in a splash of vinegar and some bouillon and start cooking your pasta. Keep the sausage and cabbage concoction on a slow simmer so that they get almost caramelized and delicious. Turn off the heat when it looks to your liking. 

When the pasta is done, throw it in a bowl and add some of the cabbage mixture to it to coat. Serve up some pasta in bowls or plates or whatever makes you happiest and add an extra little scoop of sausage and cabbage on top. Sprinkle with some Parmesan cheese and enjoy!

Sausagey, cabbagey goodness!

My mother and I both loved this dish, but we were both making crazy faces and required tissues to get through it. Perhaps your senses are more resilient than ours. 

Today I Made: Pesto Shrimp & Pasta

I don't have a fancy camera, but I promise you it looked (and tasted) good.

So today I had a craving for pasta. I haven't eaten very much pasta in the last 6 months or so - mostly because I just seem to have lost the nagging desire for it (this is a good thing, I promise you). I don't get cravings for pasta too frequently, so I decided to pay it some mind tonight instead of shoving it under a rug. 

I had some shrimp on hand, a bag of frozen broccoli florets, and some fresh mushrooms, so I went to work. The result was a satisfying and delicious meal that didn't take a whole lot of time or effort. I'm going to warn you now that I'm sort of a "make it up as I go" cook so I don't measure anything unless I'm baking or trying something that I'm completely unfamiliar with. So in my recipe write-ups you should expect a lot of ingredients with a lot of fairly inaccurate guesstimates of amounts of ingredients used. But if you're comfortable with eye-balling things yourself, then you should have no problem making my "recipes" taste as good as I intended them to. Let your hungry little heart guide you.

With that in mind:

Pesto Shrimp & Pasta

1 pound peeled, deveined shrimp (I used the pre-cooked shrimp)

Olive oil

Frozen chopped onions, about 1/4 to 1/2 cup 

Minced garlic

Fresh mushrooms, sliced

Frozen baby broccoli florets (I used a bag of the Pictsweet)

Angel hair pasta (I would have used whole wheat, but I was out)

Your favorite jar of pesto (I used maybe 2/3 of a bottle)

Salt

Pepper

Parsley (I used dried)

Parmesan cheese (optional)

Put some water in a pot to boil for the broccoli and pasta. Add some salt - it's the only chance you got to flavor the pasta while it cooks! You don't need oil in the water, I read somewhere that it doesn't actually do a thing for you, just stir the pasta after you add it to avoid sticking. 

Anyway! Water on the stove to boil. 

While the water is doing it's thing, you want to make sure your shrimp are clean and devoid of any tail/shell pieces. I peeled off all the ends and gave them a good rinse. Set those aside for right now. Add a splash of olive oil into a non-stick pan so you can sautee your ingredients. Add the frozen chopped onion (I hate cutting onion and will avoid it at all costs - I'm not sorry) and a few generous squeezes of minced garlic (I am also guilty of using bottled minced garlic when I'm lazy... again I'm not sorry). Add some salt and cook that over medium heat until the onion turns translucent. Slice up your mushrooms into quarter-sized pieces and toss them into the pan with the onions and garlic. Add some ground black peppers and dried parsley to the party.  

The mushrooms will initially suck up all the moisture in the pan, but don't panic! Give it a minute and they'll ease up and stop being selfish. Don't add any additional moisture, you really won't need it!

Cook all the ingredients until they're acceptably soft (always taste your food!) and toss in the shrimp and a generous amount of pesto. At this point, your water should be boiling. Add the bag of frozen broccoli florets and cover to return to a boil. Cook the broccoli just for a couple minutes, remove from the water with a wire skimmer and toss that into the pesto concoction. Give it a good stir, cover and let that simmer while you cook the pasta. 

Add the angel hair pasta to the pot of boiling water, and cook for about 2 minutes or al-dente. Remove from the water and add into the shrimp pesto pan (try not to get pasta all over the stove like I did tonight. Proper tools are key.)

Stir and mix it all up until the pasta is coated. Add more pesto if you need it, simmer it for another couple minutes to marry all the flavors and enjoy!

Top with some Parmesan cheese if you're into that sort of thing and eat the hell out of it. 

My mom inhaled her bowl of pasta and nearly choked... that's how I know she liked it. She's a far fussier eater than I am, so that's a good sign.