Thursday, October 9, 2014

Prepping For My Week [baked sausage stuffed apples]

So I'm still easing back into 100% on track eating and a huge part of staying on track is prepping my meals for the week (or at least for a few days).

Last week I made crockpot pulled chicken - a stable in our house! There are many variations on this, but I knew we were having southwest themed meals, so I went ahead with that flavor-profile. I seasoned chicken breasts with salt, pepper and crushed red pepper flakes and placed them in the crockpot with chicken broth and a can of Spicy V8 juice. I made sure the liquids covered the chicken and cooked on low while I was gone at work all day. When you get home, you simply shred the chicken and you're ready to go!

We made traditional tacos, taco salads and towards the end of the week I made Chipotle Pumpkin Chicken soup from a Budget Bytes recipe (thank you Pinterest). I love to follow recipes to get a list of ingredients, but I never follow measurements. If it calls for corn, I will just use a whole can... you get my drift, right? We were storing the chicken in the crockpot all week, avoiding doing dishes, so when it was time to make the soup, I just added the ingredients to the crockpot and heated it on low all day!

(forgive my horrible photography skills)

The soup was SUPER healthy and flavorful in my opinion , coming in at about 230 calories (depending on servings size). I garnished my soup with fresh chopped cilantro and a spoon of low-fat plain Greek yogurt. The Greek yogurt added a nice touch of creaminess, since I had a lot of chicken broth that thinned out the pumpkin. Since we had a big tailgating weekend, and ate out a lot, I still have a few servings of soup left for this week. #winning

My main meal for this week is Baked Sausage Stuffed Apples. They are a fall favorite of mine and I started making them a couple of years ago. I don't have one particular inspiration to link to, but here is my recipe:


You can serve this with a variety of sides or a salad. I happen to have a butternut squash from the farmer's market that I need to use up, so I am going to have roasted butternut squash on the side. I think the flavors will work really well together. Also, as I get lazier throughout the week, I may just chop up the apples and squash and spoon the sausage mixture over that. I may even add an over-easy egg. Nothing like a quick hash to comfort me after a long day!

We have a ton of leftovers and random food in our fridge from this weekend. My mission tonight is to sort through it and make sure we aren't wasting anything. I kind of get a thrill out of using up our food in creative ways... Is that just me?

What are you cooking this week?

No comments:

Post a Comment

I love to hear from you, but let's keep it positive please!