Southwestern Chicken Roll-ups

Many of you have full-time jobs -- or full time student engagements -- and can likely empathize with the difficulty of assembling weeknight dinners in either a timely or budget friendly fashion. This is one of the reasons that I am in love with: a) chicken, b) low-ingredient recipes, and c) low-time recipes. The recipe featured today falls into categories a and b: Southwestern chicken roll-ups. 

Butternut Squash Fries

I just am not a big fan of vegetables. However, salty vegetables dipped in things -- yum! Hungry Girl's butternut squash fries are perfect. These involve few ingredients but still take some time, largely because cutting up a butternut squash can be pretty painful.

Brown Sugar Meringues

Ready for a failure? I thought that Hungry Girl's brown sugar meringues would be delicious, low calorie (25 calories a cookie??), and relatively simple to make. Alas, my dreams of yummy low-cal cookies were not to be realized. I guess I just am not yet on the right level to make meringues. After beating the "dough" for an inordinate amount of time, I finally got it to peak. However, I had to cook them way longer than 30 minutes, and even then, they were smooshy, not crisp. They tasted fine on day one, but the day after was a disaster. So, I figure I must have not beaten them well enough. I will probably not make these again, but I might someday try the "lighter lemon bars", also listed on that page. When I'm feeling brave again, that is!

Ease: 5
Taste: 3
Comfort: 4

Turkey with Spinach-Feta Stuffing

One of my major weaknesses is meat stuffed with cheese of some kind. Another major weakness is shallots -- mmmm! So, this turkey breast recipe is irresistible to me.

BBQ Blitz

We had some of our good friends over to dinner a little while back. Generally, when we have company for dinner, we try to pull together a number of dishes around a theme, rather than just feature one or two dishes at random--which is the usual tactic when feeding only ourselves. At first, we struggled on deciding a theme for the dinner. However, after a great deal of--unnecessary--consideration, we realized that: a) their dog's name is "Brisket", and b) they served BBQ at their wedding. Thus, the perfect theme occurred to us: BBQ! The boy handled the meat (which, unfortunately, I have no pictures of), and I took care of two side dishes.

Black and Blue Quesadillas

I love quesadillas. They are so easy, cheesy, and delicious. But unfortunately, quesadillas are also usually not as healthy as they might be. Fortunately, Cooking Light has a few phenomenal quesadilla recipes. One, for black and blue quesadillas, was surprisingly delicious for a recipe employing lunch meat (hrrm). Very quick, and very few ingredients required. Even though I did use pre-packed lunch meat instead of fancy deli counter meat, they were still tasty. As a very slight twist, I cooked the roast beef lunch meat with onions and balsamic vinegar before assembling the quesadillas in order to ensure that everything was heated prior to assembly, as well as to help boost the flavor. If you're in the market for balsamic glaze, I recommend a citrus balsamic glaze--Earth & Vine has a ridiculously delicious Blood Orange Balsamic that I am in love with. Pro-tip for the Blood Orange Balsamic: Best salad dressing ever!

Microwave Caramel Popcorn

I love caramel popcorn -- even though it hardly can be classified as a diet food. Here's a simple, quick recipe for delicious caramel popcorn. Beware, though, long cooking times or different proportions of ingredients can result in hard or overly chewy caramel. Recipe largely inspired by, and only slightly adapted from, the following recipe for caramel popcorn.