Easy Dinner: Pesto Chicken with Veggies Recipe

 
I'm all about healthy and delicious dinners, especially ones that don't take a long time to make. I love this pesto chicken recipe and make it frequently. I also just discovered this delicious veggie dish which I will be adding to my regular rotation of meals. The pesto chicken is adapted from Gina's Skinny Recipes and the veggie dish is adapted from Simple Vegan Blog. I love both of them for creating these amazing recipes! I added a warm roll because who doesn't love rolls?! The whole wheat frozen rolls are super great because you pop them in the oven for 8 minutes and they are warm and taste heavenly! You can work on both these recipes at the same time to condense the total prep time!

Chicken
Total time: 20 mins
Prep time: 8 mins
Serving: 6 pieces

Ingredients:
3 chicken breasts
6 oz of pesto
1 tablespoon of basil
2 large tomatoes
1 cup of shredded mozzarella cheese (buying the bag of shredded mozzarella makes things a lot easier!)

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. Slice each chicken breasts to make 2 thinner pieces of chicken by cutting it across (not down the middle).
3. Spread pesto evenly on each piece of chicken. Drizzle the basil on top of the pesto.
4. Bake for 20-25 minutes depending on the thickness of your chicken breasts (I like to cut through a piece of the thickest piece after 20 minutes just to make sure it's fully cooked!)
5. After the chicken is about done cooking, add 2 thick slices of tomato on each piece of chicken and top with mozzarella.
6. Bake for another minute and then serve!

Veggies
Total time: 40 mins
Prep time: 20 mins
Serving: 6

Ingredients:
2 green peppers
1 zucchini
1/2 bag of baby carrots
1 white onion
1 sweet potato
1 tbsp thyme
1 tbsp all-spice
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp garlic powder
2 tbsp olive oil

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. Boil the sweet potato in a pot of water as you prep the other veggies.
3. Chop the green peppers, zucchini, carrots, and onion. Add to a bowl and mix together the spices and the olive oil.
4. The sweet potato won't be completely cooked but it'll be soft enough to cut through. Chop the sweet potatoe and add to the mix of veggies.
5. Place the veggies in a cooking dish and bake for 20 minutes.

Thanks for reading!

How to Eat Healthy When You're Busy

Hia! Sorry for not posting in a little while, things have been pretty crazy. Since I've been so busy, I thought it would be fitting to do a post about how to eat healthy when you're busy (aka most days for me and I'm sure for you too!). It's super easy to be healthy when you have lots of time to prep healthy meals but when I'm busy, all my healthy habits go out the window. I've started to find my rhythm and I wanted to share some of my tips with you! For me, eating healthy has to be the easy and simplest option, otherwise I'll go for the super easy take-out or vending machine snack.

1. Water - I always carry around a bottle of water (I especially love these because I am more likely to drink it if there is minimal effort on my part aka I don't need to even unscrew the cap because there is a straw, plus they don't leak which is super nice!!). Drinking water keeps me hydrated when I'm drinking a lot of coffee and tea (caffeine dehydryates you!) and helps me have better work outs. Drinking water also makes sure I'm not overeating because a lot of times when you think you're hungry, you're actually thirsty/dehydrated! *Ideally* you should drink 2 liters a day.

2. Salads - Salads are SO easy to make. They are perfect for if I need to make dinner very quickly. I'll buy salad ingredients (mixed greens, cucumbers, tomatoes, shredded carrot) on the weekend and they last all week for daily salads. I like to mix it up with protein so 1 day of the week I'll make lots of chicken or salmon and then cut it up and put it in a container in the fridge. When I'm making the salad the morning of, I'll just mix the fixings (mixed greens, cucumbers, tomatoes, shredded carrots, protein, dried cranberries, sunflower seeds, fruit) into 1 tupperware. It's seriously that easy! I like to put vinaigrette in a separate container just so my salad doesn't get soggy. It only takes a few minutes in the morning, it's super healthy, and because of the protein I'm actually full afterwards! I also like to have bread with my salad (hello fellow carb lovers!), so I'll either get sandwich bread or baguette and toast it when I'm about to eat dinner. This is definitely minimal effort (only a few minutes for a super healthy dinner vs 30 minutes to 1 hour of cooking a hot meal). Plus, if I have the salad already made it's much easier to eat the salad than to decide on and go get take out.

3. Smoothies - Smoothies are a game-changer for me. They're a perfect snack either in the afternoon or after dinner. They also only take a few minutes to make and are packed with fruits, yogurt, chia seeds, and oatmeal, so you'll stay full for longer than just if you just ate some fruit! I'm only slightly obsessed with smoothies. Again super minimal effort for a fancy, delicious, and extra healthy snack!

4. Healthy snacks & cutting your fruit - In addition to my smoothies I need to snack throughout the day. In the morning,  granola bars and mixed nuts are my go-to. For lunch I'll have a sandwich and then have a cut-up apple or strawberries as my post-lunch "dessert". Again with the minimal effort idea, I'm super weird and if you put an apple in front of me, I probably won't eat it. BUT, if you cut up an apple and put it in front of me it will be gone in 5 seconds. I'm weird like that but maybe cutting up fruit might work for you too!

Do you have any healthy go-to's for when you're busy? Comment below :)

Thanks for reading!  

Scarves and Sweets

PS The Contigo water bottles are 10% off today at Target with code "FURNITURE".