Greek Chicken Meal Prep
With our wedding just 50 days away, it's time to get serious about our dieting. I am not obsessive about my calories throughout the day, nor do I keep a meal diary. The main idea of losing weight and eating healthy is making it easy on yourself and having your healthy foods available when you're hungry so you don't become too impatient to cook a healthy meal and end up with ketchup and grease on your lips, wondering how you got in the McDonald's parking lot in the first place. (Maybe that was just me?)
The one thing that I don't like is leftovers. I like variety. The idea of eating the same thing each day sounds like a prison sentence to me...I'm a foodie, what would you expect? So in order to keep myself accountable to sticking to the diet, I needed lots of variety of similar meals.
The first one I came up with was a greek chicken dish with a Mediterranean salad, brussel sprouts and tzatziki sauce. Doesn't sound too bad for a diet, does it?
The one thing to keep in mind as you do this and experiment with your own ideas is to keep it simple. The simpler the ingredients, the lower the calories.
I added lots of dill, some lemon juice, olive oil, water, pepper and dried thyme to the mixture and let the chicken cook over medium heat so that it would cook slowly and absorb moisture.
Next, we want to cook our brussel sprouts while our chicken warms up. Heat the oven to 400 degrees and grab an 8x8 inch pan for your sprouts. Spray it down with olive oil spray or avocado oil spray. Begin to cut your brussels into halves, cutting off the tails as you chop.
For seasoning, crack fresh pepper over the top, dusting all of the brussel sprouts in the pan. Follow by spraying the brussel sprouts with the oil you used in the pan until they are all covered in the oil. I also like to add 1/4 cup of water to help them with moisture so they accomplish that soft-to-crunchy ratio. So that the flavors mixed well, I added dill, 2 tsp of lemon juice and 2 tsp of chopped garlic.
Let your brussel sprouts cook for about 30-45 minutes or until nice and golden like in the picture below. I check on them every 10-15 minutes to toss them and add additional oil so they don't become dry.
Looking good so far.
Once your chicken is cooked, remove the large chunks of dill and discard. Using tongs, grab the chicken out of the skillet and place it on a cutting board. I like my chicken cut into strips, so I cut my chicken diagonally. Once my brussel sprouts were done, I allowed them to cool, and then put them into my containers.
For the salad, I bought a salad kit from Taylor Farms to make things easier on myself.
Tip: don't put the dressing on the salad or it will wilt.
Click here for my tzatziki sauce recipe:
I hope you enjoy! If you like this recipe or have any recipes you want to share, please let me know in the comments!
