Pineapple Chicken Mexican Bake For One with a secret…

Posted in easy meals by Chocolate Covered Race Medals

Just popping in quickly to share with you all my first single-girl ready recipe of the week!

A Secret

Here’s my secret for the odd sizes of this meal. I stopped by Whole Foods over my lunch break today and hit up the hot and salad bars. I am VERY familiar with Whole Food bars with how often I visit for meals. . . but today was a little different.

I struggled in the produce section trying to find reasonably sized and priced veggies, meat, and random produce for meals this week. I HATE wasting food and money and know that I won’t eat enough of one thing before it goes bad myself unless I eat the same meal all week. No fun.

As I was walking through the store I got a brilliant idea. Hit up the bars and get individual portion of different produce in the sizes I need. In the produce bar I got:

The chicken and pineapple salsa I picked up

8 oz of chicken prepared
One large spoonful of grapes
Two tablespoons of dried cranberries
One small container of greens
2 tablespoons of corn kernels

all in two containers keeping the produce section. I did put the meat separately in it’s own little plastic container from the produce, just for cross contamination purposes.

Easy, cheap and a way to reduce waste! And without further adu, here is the recipe from the first bit of my secret Whole Foods trip!

Pineapple Chicken Mexican Bake

Ingredients

1/2 large sweet potato
2 tablespoons of corn
1/2 a red jalepeno
4 oz of chicken, pre cooked
Pineapple salsa to taste
1 oz colby jack cheese
Pinch of cinnamon

Directions

Prepare the sweet potatoes (I chopped them into cubes and steamed them with a little cinnamon for 20 minutes)
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees
Layer the pineapple salsa to create a wet base
Layer half of the sweet potatoes, corn, and jalepeno
Add a layer of chicken
Layer the second half of the sweet potatoes, corn and jalepeno with some more salsa to taste
Top with cheese and cover with foil for baking
Bake for 25-30 minutes or until cheese is melted and enjoy!

You know I did 🙂

I had my bake with a very small side of greens and my FAVORITE Whole Foods tortilla chips. The perfect ending to a Monday!

Seems like cooking for one doesn’t have to be that difficult or wasteful 🙂

If anyone can tell me how I can add a pin it button to my recipes, I’d love you forever! Leave it in the comments or email me 🙂 Chocolatemedals@gmail.com

23Jan2014

I’ve Made Some Changes and Mexican Bake Night

Posted in easy meals, personal reflections, running by Chocolate Covered Race Medals

First things first

You all may have noticed a few minor changes around the ol’ Chocolate Medals lately, or really since the New Year. As 2013 was wrapping up, I started noticing (feeling?) like my blog was becoming a place I “had to go” three times a day, at least during the week. I felt like I was a disappointment if I didn’t, and wrote even when I didn’t have much to say.

I love Chocolate Medals, it’s my little internet home and where I’ve connected with SO many amazing and inspiring people. When I started to feel like the quality of the blog was being affected, I knew that I needed to make some changes. Since then, I have posted twice, and sometimes even once a day. With intention. While I recognize that I’m not writing anything Earth shattering over here, I do feel like while I am writing less, I am writing MORE. Better. And that’s what matters to me.

The community that I have connected with via the blog (family and friends at home, as well as all the new people I’ve met all over the world that have become fast friends) are the most important thing to me. I want to give you guys something worth coming back to :). So I hope you all don’t mind the fewer posts, and keep coming back. And while we’re at it, PLEASE email me (chocolatemedals@gmail.com) with anything you may want me to address here! I’d love your ideas and opinions.

This was actually sparked today when I realized that my gmail had been “spaming” my wordpress emails. . . so I was missing comments. I was going through all the ones I missed over the past week or so and was overwhelmed with how much I love you guys 🙂

Moving on . . .

Tonight was a SPECTACULAR dinner that USED to be a regular in the Jara household. MEXICAN BAKES! These are GREAT garbage meals (look at my EASY MEALS tab to find more of these meals) for whatever produce is left in the fridge . . . and a great new way to do Mexican.

Mexican Bake

Ingredients

1 can of refried beans
2 roma tomatos
1 small onion
1/2 yellow pepper
1/2 green pepper
2 pieces of bacon
1 sweet potato
Chips/tortillas for garnish
Cheese for topping (I used cheddar and colby)
Side greens of choice

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 and boil water
Cut your sweet potato into bite size pieces and steam for 20 minutes
Prepare your bacon (we grilled it)
Begin layering your bake (you could easily use a ramekin but we used french onion bowls)
Start with refried beans as your base
Add the veggies and bacon however you like
Top with cheese
Bake for 30 minutes
ENJOY!

Building the beautyWe eat too much pizza: I posted the pictures of prepped veggies on instagram and my twin automatically through pizza night. Upps 🙂 #lifeisallaboutbalance

Finished product 🙂 Beautiful

Have a great night guys! Almost the weekend 🙂

Question of the Night: Your opinion. Is less sometimes more in the blog world, or do you like constant posting?

9Jan2014

Still Greenin’ It

Posted in easy meals, running, workouts for the day by Chocolate Covered Race Medals

We’re finally making progress, but we are STILL working on using up all the greens we had in the house this week. I guess that’s what two DOUBLE loads of greens will do for ya.

Tonights greens included:

romaine
arugula
jalepenos
celery
salsa
salt and pepper
dill
olive oil

I am LOVING the freshness that using simple olive oil and spices adds to salads lately. I don’t know the last time I used a real salad dressing, and I am A-OK with that.

Our main dish was the star of the evening though.

Tuna Steak and Steamed Carrots

I marinated the tuna with simple dill and low sodium soy sauce. Tuna and soy may have been made for each other. . . I’m just saying.

For the carrots, I prepped them with salt, pepper, dill and some parmesan before steaming them for about 25 minutes.

Everything was SO fresh and just TASTED healthy tonight. You gotta love that.

All together now.

Quick Workout Sesh

Because I had a few minutes. . . and because I’m just cray cray . . . I ran to the gym after work and got in a quick ab work out. Let’s be honest for a second. My stomach was feeling LESS than flat after the holidays, hence the focus lately on weights/abs.

Oh, and if you follow me on twitter you know I’ve also been drinking water with lemon and mint in it everyday at work (hot and cold. . . warm it almost tastes like tea) and it has done WONDERS for any digestive issues I may or may not have been dealing with lately. Again, just saying. Wonderful.

Quick Ab Workout: