Stuffed Chicken and Ricotta Mashed Potatoes

The name of the game last night was to try to use up ingredients I have bought over the last two weeks.  Cheese is expensive so I wanted to try to use the boursin cheese and the ricotta cheese and try to make a meal with a reasonable amount of calories.  My goal for the day is 300 calories for breakfast, 100 calorie morning snack, 400 calorie lunch, maybe a 100 calorie afternoon snack if I get home early enough, and then 600-800 calories for dinner for me and a little bit bigger serving for my husband. 

So I had a couple chicken breasts in the freezer that I bought for the chicken parmesan, boursin cheese from the smashed cauliflower, spring mix from the Caesar salad, potatoes from the chicken and dumplings, and ricotta cheese from the ravioli. So I made a stuffed chicken with boursin cheese and spinach that I picked out of the spring mix with ricotta mashed potatoes.  Now I know what you are thinking, no way that is less than 800 calories, but oh my friend I am just that good.

2 small chicken breasts (6-7 oz)

2 tbs boursin cheese

¼ cup spinach, torn into bite sized pieces

¼ cup bread crumbs

1 tbs Olive oil

6 toothpicks

Preheat oven to 350 and get your toothpicks out. 

Pound the chicken breasts so they are as thin as you can get them before they tear, about ½”.  Crumble the boursin cheese and sprinkle it across the entire breast.  Place the torn spinach on the breast as well.   

Start at the small end of the breast and start rolling it up, rolling as tightly as you can and making sure the stuffing stays inside as you go.  Once you get to the end try to tuck in any straying ends to try to keep any stuffing from being exposed.  Use 3 toothpicks to keep it rolled up.  Coat the chicken with bread crumbs.  This is where you need to be careful, the calories in the bread crumbs and the olive oil add up quick, so don’t go crazy.  Heat the olive oil over medium heat and once it’s hot add the chicken, one at a time.  Turn the chicken multiple times just to brown the bread crumbs.  You want to try to get the bread crumbs browned all the way around with as little olive oil as you can.  Browning it in the skillet before you put it in the oven will keep the bread crumbs stuck to the chicken better but you want to minimize how much oil is soaked up.  Remove the chicken to a sheet with a cooling rack and bake for 25 minutes.  It’s better if you put the cooling rack on a sheet because something is going to drip out of your chicken and it’s much easier clean up if there is something underneath to catch it rather than having to clean the oven.

2 Servings, 480 calories, 21 g fat

Ricotta Mashed Potatoes

4 new potatoes (was about 11 oz for me)

3 oz ricotta cheese

¼ cup skim milk

Salt and pepper to taste

 Cut the potatoes into 1” pieces and boil in water until soft, I leave the skin on but that's a personal preference.  I wanted mine chunky today so I mashed with a fork.  Stir in milk and cheese and add salt and pepper to taste.  You can always add more milk if you like it a little less fluffy and if you can spare some extra calories feel free to add more cheese.

2 Servings, 180 calories, 4 g fat

Now try and tell me you aren’t impressed.  That is a pretty filling and flavorful meal for 660 calories, of course yours will vary depending upon the size of the chicken breasts and the potatoes you use so be aware of that.  What’s great about the stuffed chicken is once you get the hang of how much filling to put in it and how to roll it up well you can stuff it with anything you can think of.  I have tried to do a stuffed chicken without breading it before and it didn’t taste very good.  Just seasoning and baking the chicken didn’t work for me so I think you really have to bread and pan sear it.

This week groceries were $31 and made 12 servings at $2.57/meal, I'll take it.

Pasta Primavera

I like to try to make one vegetarian meal a week and this one is my go to.  It’s super simple and very filling.  I use mushrooms and then pretty much whatever vegetables I happen to have.  Today the only vegetable I had with color was carrots so the nearly monochromaticness of the dish didn’t look too pretty, but was still good. 

6 oz whole wheat penne pasta

1 tbs olive oil

½ cup red pepper, diced

1 clove garlic

2 cups cauliflower, chopped

2 large carrots, chopped

2 cups baby bella mushrooms, sliced

1/3 cup parmesan cheese

½ tsp basil

½ tsp oregano

½ tsp crushed red pepper

Salt and pepper to taste

In a large skillet with a lid, heat the olive oil over medium heat then cook the onion and garlic until tender, do not brown.  Add the mushrooms and cook until soft.  Add the vegetables and cover.  The water in the vegetables will cook out and steam them, but stir periodically to make sure they don’t stick.  I have a Teflon skillet so my vegetables don’t ever stick, but I am not sure what would happen in a non non-stick pan.  If they do start to stick you could add a little chicken stock or water to generate some steam and lubrication between the vegetables and the pan, but don’t add too much because you don’t want to boil your mushrooms. 

Cook until crisp tender then add the basil, oregano, crushed red pepper, salt and pepper.  Stir in the cooked pasta and parmesan cheese. Easy Schmeesy.

Serves 2, 500 calories, 14 g fat

This is also good to double and have for lunch.  Of course the highest contributor to the calories in this is the pasta (280 calories/serving), so if you want to have this with some bread or a salad and 500 calories is close to your meal limit you can always cut back on how much pasta you add.  Some other vegetable combinations that I might do are carrots, spinach, broccoli or red/orange bell pepper, asparagus, cauliflower and I usually add green peas no matter what I do but I forgot to buy some this week.  Feel free to experiment with this, you can’t screw it up.

Balsamic Glazed Meatloaf and Smashed Cauliflower

Last night turned out to be a Food Network inspired meal, even though I make both of these so frequently I feel like they are my own, but honestly I stole them.  There really are few recipes that after making a few times I don’t change at all, but Bobby Flay’s balsamic meatloaf needs no alterations from me.  Ok I take that back, he uses meats that I can’t eat so I have changed it to turkey and chicken, but other than that it’s the same.  This is one of our big meals that will be lunch for a few days, but you could cut this in half pretty easily for 4 servings.

1 zucchini, diced

1 red bell pepper, diced

1 yellow squash, diced

3 cloves garlic, minced

¾  tsp red pepper flakes

Salt and pepper to taste

1 tbs olive oil

2 eggs, beaten

1 tbs thyme

¼ cup flat leaf parsley, chopped

1 lb ground turkey

1 lb ground chicken

1 cup bread crumbs

½ cup parmesan

1 cup ketchup, divided

¼ cup plus 2 tbs balsamic vinegar

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

Heat olive oil in a large sauté pan over medium high heat.  Add the zucchini, squash, bell pepper, garlic, ½ tsp red pepper flakes,  and salt and pepper, to taste, and cook until almost soft, about 5 minutes.  Set aside to cool.

Whisk together the eggs and herbs in a large bowl.  Add the meat, bread crumbs, cheese, ½ cup ketchup, 2 tbs balsamic vinegar, and the cooled vegetables and mix until just combined. 

Mold the meatloaf on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.  Whisk together the remaining ketchup, balsamic vinegar and ¼ tsp red pepper flakes in a small bowl.  Brush the mixture over the entire loaf.  Bake the meatloaf for 1-1 ¼ hours.  Remove from the oven and let rest for 10 minutes before slicing.

Serves 8, 400 calories, 14 g fat 

I used 99/1 turkey and chicken breast that I ground myself to keep it lower in fat. 

With this I made a smashed cauliflower inspired by Rachael Ray.  This is a delicious way to trick your husband/kids into eating vegetables.  Really I guess that’s kind of the theme of this whole meal, cauliflower covered in cheese and meatloaf stuffed with vegetables, sneaky.

½ head cauliflower

3 tbs boursin garlic and herb cheese

Salt and pepper to taste

Steam the cauliflower until it is tender. Mash the cauliflower with a fork or a hand mixer and stir in the cheese, salt and pepper.

Serves 2, 100 calories, 10 g fat

Snickerdoodles

I wasn’t really planning on making a desert tonight since I decided to forego my cannoli plan, but after dinner J wanted something and if I have eggs then I usually don’t mind baking, so I did.  He had yet another interesting request today.  Sometimes he really shocks me in what foods come to his mind.  Chocolate is always on my brain so I suggested brownies but he vetoed that and suggested “those cinnamon cookies”.   Being a Yankee I don’t think he had ever had snickerdoodles until I made them for him and I’ve only made them for him a couple of times, so I thought it was odd that he thought of them.

¼ cup butter, softened

¼ cup shortening

¾ cup sugar

1 egg

2 tsp vanilla

1 1/3 cup and 1 tbs flour

1 tsp cream of tartar

½ tsp baking soda

1/8 tsp salt

¼ tsp cinnamon

2 tbs sugar

2 tsp cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.  Cream together the butter, shortening, ¾ cup sugar, egg and vanilla until fluffy and the butter and shortening are not clumpy.  Blend in the flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, salt, and ¼ tsp cinnamon.  Roll 1” balls of dough in the sugar and cinnamon mixture and place 2 inches apart on an ungreased baking sheet.

Bake 8-10 minutes or until set but not hard, the tops should look cracked from where they spread.  Remove immediately from the pan and allow to cool on a rack.

24 cookies, 95 calories, 4 g fat each

I was able to make this batter and was just starting to load my cookie sheet when the oven had finished preheating, so I have a real hard time understanding why people use mixes.  Making things from scratch always taste better and don’t always take more effort or time, so no excuses.

Artichoke and Sun-Dried Tomato Ravioli

Ok so I have a confession.  Our goal was to try to only go out to eat one night a week, and so far we’re not doing too well.  This week we were going to go out on Friday and then I was going to make ravioli on Saturday.  We ended up going out for dinner on Friday, actually not to Boondoggles pat on back, but then after dinner we thought, well we can either go home and watch the Olympics, or we can go to Bdogs and watch the Olympics, so guess what we did. 

Then on Saturday, Since J would be at work I was going to have all sorts of time to clean the house then prep everything for a big meal of homemade ravioli and was also thinking of attempting to make cannolis.  After breakfast he kind of put a wrench in my plan for the day and decided he didn’t have enough work to do to go in, which I really prefer it just changed my plans.  It was nice because he stayed home and helped me clean the house (Score) and then we were able to hang out all day, but of course he was feeling more like going out Saturday night than my homemade ravioli (I know, I think homemade ravioli sounds pretty amazing too), and I didn’t argue.  So as we were trying to decide where to go to dinner we came up with a few places that sounded good, but only two of them would we be able to watch the Olympics and one was 30 minutes away and the other 5, so to Bdogs we go again.  I swear, twice in one weekend, that's even a lot for us. 

But then on Sunday I actually do get to make my ravioli and for my first time they were pretty good if I do say so myself.  I looked at a couple other recipes to try to figure out filling proportions and ended up being pretty far off.  I ended up with more filling than pasta and made more servings than I thought I was.  I also don’t think my calorie estimate is going to be very accurate today because of all this so today calories don’t exist.

8 oz ricotta cheese

1 cup artichoke hearts, diced

½ cup sun-dried tomatoes, diced

1 egg, beaten

Salt and pepper to taste

6 sheets of pasta about 2 inches wide rolled to setting 2

1 egg white

Mix the cheese, artichoke hearts, sun-dried tomatoes, whole egg and salt and pepper in a medium bowl until well combined.  After rolling out the pasta lay it on the table and place spoonfuls of filling down it such that there is about 1 inch between each spoonful and they are about ½ inch from the edges.  Paint around the filling with a brush or paper towel dipped in the egg white.  Egg whites are a chef’s glue, this will get the two layers of pasta to stick together.  Take a second sheet of pasta and lay it on top.  Press down around the filling until it feels well sealed then cut in between each one to make the individual raviolis.  Set aside while you prepare the rest but don’t stack them on top of each other or they will stick together.  Once they are all done cook in a pot of boiling water until they float, about 2-4 minutes.  

This ended up making 3 servings and I still had about ¾ cup worth of filling left over, I didn’t do too well on proportions today.

Alone I think these tasted just fine and I don’t really think they needed a sauce, but I made a sage butter sauce anyway.

3 tbs butter, melted

1 tbs chopped fresh sage

That’s it just pour it over the ravioli.  I don’t know that the butter really added a lot, other than calories that I am ignoring today, but I do think the sage did, so you probably could just add a little sage to the filling and get the same effect, I think the sage complimented the filling pretty well.

I served this with a mixed green salad with dried apricots, pecans, and red wine vinegar/olive oil dressing and spaghetti squash (only because I had a craving not because it really went with the meal).

This week groceries were $55 and made 17 meals at $3.23, could be better but not too bad at all.