Chicken Parmigiana Casserole

 

Photo credit to www.thrivinghomeblog.com - I was too hungry to wait and take a picture! 

Tonight's dinner is a result of an absolute Pintrest win. I enjoy cooking and try to make something new each week- it keeps meal planning interesting and who knows, I may actual stumble upon a meal that Miss Muffet will actually eat! 

When I was trawling for meal ideas, I had set the following criteria - had to be a chicken dish ( big chicken fan here!) And it had to be able to be freezer friendly as I wanted to cook a double batch and freeze one portion. We tend to eat a lot of Asian and Mexican food so I also wanted to explore a few Italian recipes as well. And low and behold.. Up popped Chicken Parmigiana Casserole from www.thrivinghomeblog.com. I adapted the recipe slightly: 

Ingredients

3 skinless boneless chicken breasts 

1 cup grated cheese 

1 cup Panko bread crumbs 

Oregano

Basil

Pepper

Tin of Watties tomato and herb pasta sauce *

Method 

Cook chicken and then shred.

Coat casserole dish with spray oil

Combine pasta sauce and chicken and then add to dish.

Sprinkle grated cheese over the top

Combine Panko, herbs, pepper and a dash of oil, then sprinkle over the top. 

Cook for 20 mins at 180 degrees 

Serve over pasta or rice or even as is! 

This meal was super easy to make and was absolutely delicious. A lot less fiddly than making actual parmigiana! Next time I would make my own tomato based sauce as I prefer it and it is less sweet. 

Best Ever Burgers?

One of the things I did when preparing for the arrival of Buttons was to stock my freezer with as many meals as I could in preparation for days of cluster feeding, exhaustion and general can't be botheredness. And jeez, I am so glad I did! There is nothing better than taking a meal out of the freezer in the morning and then heating it at dinner time and adding a salad or stir fry vege. 

One of the meals I made and froze was a recipe I found on Pintrest - The Best Burgers . I actually made these for dinner a few weeks back and just doubled up so that I was killing two birds with one stone- dinner and some for the freezer! 

Action Dad and I are HUGE burger fans and we can usually get Miss Muffet to eat them as well, as long as we deconstruct them. So when I went recipe hunting on Pintrest and found The Best Burgers, I figured I had better give them a go! 

 

These are YUM! The pattie are half beef mince and half pork mince and they are super moist and flavoursome. I managed to make 12 patties out of the recipe so we actually ended up with four meals- bonus! 

I would definitely recommend making these- so much tastier and cheaper than bought burgers.  Delicious, thank you Recipe Rebel! 

 

Roasted Kumara Salad with Grilled Chicken and Chipotle Aioli

Action Dad likes to limit the amount of gluten he eats as he feels much better for doing so. I do the lions share of the cooking in our household and can find it hard to cater for this as the weather gets colder and I turn to my stock standard favourites- pastas, risottos etc 

Enter Pintrest and after searching 'winter salads', I came across a tempting pin. I made a few changes and as  I do all of our meal planning on a Sunday night, dutifully added the ingredients to my shopping list and threw the salad together for dinner last night. And boy was it a winner! Action Dad devoured it and said it is his new favourite dish - winner, winner chicken dinner ( hahaha)

I 

will be adding this to our dinner rotations and will check out

www.foodfaithfitness.com for some more meal ideas

Roasted Kumara Salad with Grilled Chicken and Chipotle Aioli- serves 2 

2 kumara peeled and diced

1 tsp oil

2 tsp brown sugar

1/2 T curry powder

Salt

1/4 cup cashew nuts

2 skinless chicken breasts

Baby spinach leaves- roughly 2 cups

1/4 cup coriander, roughly chopped

2 tsp mint, chopped

1 red chilli minced 

1 carrot, peeled and cut into batons 

1/2 cup mango ( I used tinned) 

Edmonds Chipotle Aioli to taste

Preheat oven to 200 degrees.

Mix kumara, oil, sugar and curry powder in a bowl and then transfer to a roasting pan. Salt to taste and cook in oven for 20 mins, turning half way through. Add cashew nuts to pan for a final 10 mins. Kumara should be tender. Remove pan and leave to cool until warm. 

Grill chicken breasts in a hot pan for at least 7-8 mins each side until cooked through. Remove from pan and leave to rest for 10 mins. 

In salad bowl add spinach, coriander, mint, chilli, carrot. Mix in cashews and kumara and divide between  two dinner plates. 

Slice chicken breasts and place on top of salad. Dress with chipotle aioli to taste.