For the next three weeks I’m house-sitting at my parents’, 1.5 hours away from the school. Not only are classes at CCNM long and tiresome, my commute time has also increased. I also have the added stress of having a small dog waiting for me when I get home. This makes finding the time to prepare something healthy to eat at night a challenge.
Fortunately healthy food doesn’t have to be difficult or time-consuming to make and it can still taste amazing! Here is one extremely successful meal that I made that didn’t require a lot of prep time or time spent in the kitchen. In fact, while it was cooking I was able to take Coco for a walk, enjoying the late afternoon sun on one of my favourite trails.
As for nutrition, protein is one of the most important nutrients in our diet but most people don’t get enough fruits and vegetables. Our nutrition professor in second year told us that the world’s healthiest diet would be a vegan diet to which you add one chicken breast a day. This meal has you covered!
You need:
chicken breast
marinade: I used rosemary, basil, onion, sea salt, paprika, garlic and extra virgin olive oil.
sweet potato
baby spinach
balsamic vinegar
Directions:
Apply marinade to frozen chicken breast in the morning and leave it in the fridge marinating and defrosting for the entire day.
When you get home, preheat the oven to 350 degrees farenheit and begin to cut the sweet potato width-wise, into thin coin-shapes.
Arrange the sweet potato coins flat on a baking pan. Try not to overlap them. Drizzle them with olive oil, paprika, sea salt and black pepper. Add the chicken breast to the same pan.
Insert the pan in the oven for 35 minutes.
During this time I went for a walk with Coco to one of our favourite nature trails in the neighbourhood, where we were able to enjoy the late-summer sun and a relaxing walk through beautiful green foliage. We both got a chance to exercise and de-stress while dinner pretty much took care of itself.
When we got home, the chicken and sweet potatoes were ready.
Spoon them onto your plate and add baby spinach leaves. Drizzle them with olive oil and balsamic vinegar (I like the fig flavoured kind from President’s Choice) and you’re good to go!
Enjoy!
This is totally paleo too! Just like the pie! Love it! And omg your new life sounds just like my new life: 1.5 hour commute one way, crazy long days (still) and a dependent to look after, heheh.
3 freaking hours gone on travel is nuts though right. At least it’s reading time.
I know, the weeks I was by myself were tough, but I managed thanks to the slow cooker and the oven (loooove the oven, and the stoneware cooking tray)!!