Tuesday is Doomsday. Tuesday is the day I am forced, against my will, to provide dinner for my family. FORCED. That would be all fine and good, except for one very important fact--COOKING. IS. NOT. MY. THING.
And I don't enjoy it either. Not one bit. And, as my sweet cousin blabbers to everyone, I could probably burn a salad. Sometimes I look at a cooking magazine or blog, get all excited about new recipes and how I'm going to make something SO AMAZING that my family will say "Kristen has a secret twin that we never knew about and she KNOWS HOW TO COOK!" But alas, I usually don't actually MAKE these wonderful recipes, I simply dream about making them, and live vicariously through the author. Real life time starts kicking in when I figure that I have about one hour from the time I get home from work to the time that my family runs to the kitchen yelling, "FEED US FEED US FEED US WE'RE HUUUUNNNNGGGRRRRYYYY". (They really do this). And in that one hour, I either throw something super fast together, or try to get out of it all together, claiming "Why don't we just go out to eat and relax a little?". This trick is really good when Dad is out of town, by the way.
Anyways, I stumbled across a variation of this recipe, thought it looked interesting, decided to change it up a little and make it my own (who am I kidding, I just wanted to name it), and try it.
And.... it was AMAZING. Good. Simple. And I honestly mean simple. Like, throw-it-together-after-you-get-off-work simple. And my family even liked it, which is impressive considering the things they have lied about liking (and they think I can't tell when they fake liking something). SO... we have a winner.
MY OH MY SPINACH CHICKEN
(This is a stolen picture off Google because my camera battery was dead, but it actually comes REALLY close to looking like what mine ended up like)
Ingredients:
3 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1/2 bag frozen spinach, thawed and drained (if I had to do it over, I would probably use fresh spinach)
1 cup part skim low moisture mozzerella cheese
1/2 cup lowfat cottage cheese, drained
1/2 cup Italian bread crumbs (optional)
1 cup tomato sauce or spaghetti sauce (seasoned however you like)
1 egg white
Preheat oven to 375. Put chicken breast in plastic wrap and lightly (or hardly heh heh) beat with the flat side of mallet, just to stretch it out a lil'. Slice each breast in half, as in, to make it thinner. How do I explain that? Just slice it in half so that its just a thin piece of chicken, long and large enough to roll up, though. Set aside.
Mix together half the mozzerella, cottage cheese, spinach, and egg white. Spoon onto each half chicken breast and roll it up, placing the seam side down in a greased 9x13. At this point I melted a couple tablespoons of butter and slathered it on top of each chicken roll... everything's better with butter. Scoop teaspoons of bread crumbs on top of each chicken roll, salt and pepper if ya want.
Bake, COVERED, for 30 minutes. Remove pan, spoon spaghetti sauce on top of each chicken roll, as much as you want. Sprinkle the rest of the mozzerella on top. Bake, UNCOVERED, for 25-30 more minutes, until cheese is beginning to get brown and chicken is no longer pink. Let it cool 10 min before eating.
You can serve it over spaghetti noodles (I made extra sauce and kept it on the side if anyone wanted more), rice, or by itself. (or whatever else you come up with).
WOOOWWWWWEEEEE! It was delicious. I'm getting a feeling that Tuesday nights are about to become quite repetitive...
