Cajun Chicken & Rice Stuffed Peppers

Why is it that cooking healthy dinners is so much easier when you're unemployed? I think the answer to the question is obvious. In any event, I'm enjoying my unemployment while I can. One of the first things I did after being laid off was I scoured the internet for some new healthy recipes. One of my go-to websites for such recipes is myrecipes.com. I like to search for Cooking Light recipes.

Well, when I found this recipe I knew I wanted to give it a try when the hubs would be on night work. "Why?" you ask? Well that's because he's Picky Peter and doesn't like peppers. I, for one, love stuffed peppers but just haven't found a recipe I liked that was easy enough. This recipe turned out to be just the ticket.

I made a few modifications based on ingredients I typically have on hand and I couldn't have asked for a more delicious dinner tonight. I highly recommend this dish. I'll definitely be making it again, and again and suggest you try it soon!

CAJUN CHICKEN & RICE STUFFED PEPPERS
Source: adapted from Cooking Light

2 portion sized chicken breasts, or 1 large chicken breast, diced
2 green peppers, sliced in half lengthwise, seeds and membranes discarded
1 1/4 tsp cajun seasoning
2 tsp EVOO, divided
1/2 medium onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 1/4 cups fat free reduced sodium chicken broth
1/2 cup minute rice
2 pinches of salt

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1. Place pepper halves in a shallow dish. Cover with saran wrap and microwave 4-5 minutes. Remove from microwave and drain off liquid.

2. Heat 1 tsp oil in skillet. Add chicken and season with cajun seasoning. Cook, stirring occasionally, until cooked through, about 4 minutes. Remove chicken to a clean bowl and set aside.

3. Heat remaining 1 tsp oil in skillet. Add onion and garlic. Saute 1 minute.

4. Add chicken broth, rice and salt. Bring to a boil, cover and reduce heat. Simmer 15 minutes. (This is a good time to get your dishes done)

5. Return chicken to skillet and continue cooking until rice is done and broth is absorbed, about another 3 minutes.

6. Divide chicken and rice filling and stuff pepper halves equally.

Broccoli, Cheese & Rice Casserole

Sigh. I'm trying to eat more vegetables. I've never found vegetables to be exciting. I scoured myrecipes.com to find some appealing recipes and came across this one. It had decent reviews. In the end, I didn't love it, but it was good. I made it tonight as a meal but think it would be more acceptable as a side dish, possibly for a fall dinner party or something. But I don't have dinner parties so I dont think I'll be breaking this recipe out again in the near future. Also, at first, the onion seemed to be a little overwhelming, but I quickly forgot about that. The creaminess lended by the cream of mushroom soup and the cheese was comforting. I think this would be a great recipe to get kids to eat more veggies. But I don't have kids, so I'm just going to keep this recipe in the bottom of my recipe drawer.

BROCCOLI, CHEESE & RICE CASSEROLE

Source: Cooking Light, November 1999

(come to think of it - I bet this recipe would've been a real winner in 1999)

1 cup uncooked instant white rice

1/2 cup chopped onion (I'd consider reducing this to 1/4 cup and chopping smaller than I did)

1/4 cup fat-free milk (I used 1/3 cup of milk based on reviews, and also used 1% milk)

4 ounces light processed cheese, cubed (I used 1/2 regular velveeta and 1/2 low-fat sharp cheddar)

2 (10 oz.) packages of chopped broccoli

1 (10 3/4 oz.) can of reduced sodium condensed cream of mushroom soup

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1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. Spray a 2 quart casserole dish with cooking spray.

3. Mix all ingredients and spoon into casserole dish.

4. Bake for 45 minutes.

Arroz Con Pollo

One of our FAVORITE meals is arroz con pollo. It's a dish I've been making since before I had my own kitchen. And I don't know why, but it's been a long time since I last made it. It's an indulgent dish, that's for sure. I mean, it's not exactly healthy to eat a big whoopass bowl of white rice for dinner, is it? Yeah, I didn't think so. Anyway, I guess it's a good thing I haven't made it in a while. But when I do make it, I have to make a big freaking pot of it, and sometimes there's not even enough for me to bring for lunch the next today. Like tonight - my mom stopped by and she took some home with her. Hubs had 2 bowls, I had one. All that's really left is the crispy rice from the bottom of the pot. Oh well. Trying to watch my weight I guess it's for the best.

Anyway, to make this dish, it's mostly done by tasting. My friend Marisol who I used to work with but has since moved to Florida (sniff) taught me how to make it, but when she taught me, it didn't include the chicken, and was really just Spanish Rice. Well, hubs and I decided we needed some more substance in the dish and one day I decided to add chicken to it, hence the name, arroz con pollo. And Lord knows there are probably a million and one different varieties of arroz con pollo, but this is the way we like it.

ARROZ CON POLLO

Source: me with Marisol's help

2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, diced

oil

2 packets Goya Sazon

3 1/2 cups water

about 1/2 cup Goya Sofrito, or more to taste (1/4 - 1/2 of the jar)

1 Tbsp kosher salt (or to taste)

1/4 tsp ground black pepper

2 tsp garlic powder (or more to taste)

3 cups long grain rice

diced jalepeno to taste - for spicy, I add about 2 heaping spoonfuls (we used Cento jarred diced green jalepenos)

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1. Heat oil in large nonstick pot. Add diced chicken and cook over medium heat until cooked through.

2. Open 1 packet of Sazon and sprinkle half of the packet over the chicken. Stir to coat.

3. Add water, the rest of the 2 packets of sazon, the sofrito, salt, pepper and garlic powder and stir. This is when you start tasting. You're aming for a salty, garlicky seasoned taste. I added 1 Tbsp of kosher flake salt and felt it needed some more. If you undersalt, you can always add salt to your individual serving when it's done. This works for us because hubs doesn't like too much salt on his food.

4. Once you have a nicely seasoned pot of water, add in your rice and jalepenos and stir. I like to also add in an extra few teaspoons of oil to keep the rice from sticking together. Keep stirring over medium-low heat until about 1/2 of the water is absorbed.

5. Cover and set the heat to low.

6. Stir every 5 minutes and re-cover - but here's the tricky part - after all of the water is absorbed, the rice in the bottom of the pot will begin to get crispy. You want to avoid stirring the crispy rice into the rest of the rice. Unless, of course, you like crispy rice. So when you stir, do so gently when reaching to the bottom of the pot.

7. After about 20-30 minutes, your rice should be steamed perfectly - once you get to 20 minutes, just start tasting it to check for doneness.

Hopefully someone will be interested and daring enough after reading all of my crazy directions to give this a try and end up loving the dish like we do :)

Eating clean?

This is sort of a new concept for me. I sort of get it. I might just be overthinking it. Either way, my friend, Jess, was looking for a clean way to prepare tilapia and came across this blog and recipe. Jess raved about it, and of course I was leery, because avocado is something that I'm just learning to experience, all thanks to Jess for that one. But I decided to give it a try - I figured beans and rice and sour cream make everything better.

So I did my research on how to pick an avocado, and I think I did a pretty good job. And for a first timer, I had no trouble at all extracting the avocado from the pit and the skin. And considering that the dish ended up being fresh and fabulous, I can say that my first experience with using avocado was a hit.

I made enough for 3 meals and now have enough for 2 lunches after I had it for dinner tonight. And let me tell you - this was amazingly easy and FAST to cook up.





Ingredients (estimated):
4-6 Tbsp fat-free sour cream
4-6 Tbsp salsa
1 cup black beans
3/4 - 1 cup rice (I used brown rice)
3 tilapia fillets
1/2 avocado, diced
1 small tomato, diced
salt and pepper





1. Season your fish with salt and pepper. Coat a large pan lightly with a spray of EVOO (courtesy of Misto) or whatever you have on hand (the original recipe posted uses coconut oil). Lightly brown the fish on both sides until cooked through, them with a spatula, break up the fish into bits.

2. While your fish is cooking, mix up the sour cream and salsa in a medium sized mixing bowl.

3. When fish is done, toss all ingredients into the mixing bowl with the sour cream and salsa and stir gently to mix. Season with salt and pepper to taste.