Easy Prep Recipe: Spinach Salad with Sweet Potato, Chicken & Goat Cheese

Ever shy away from prepping ALL of your food for the week because you want something FRESH -- instead of endless containers of "left overs?"

While I don't personally relate to that.. gimme ALL the PREPPED food & left overs.. I DO love adding in some fresh salads to our weekly menus!!

What's sneaky about this recipe though is that some of it IS prepped ahead & the rest can be thrown together in a snap.

You're going to LOVE this!!

Spinach Salad

with Sweet Potato, Grilled Chicken & Goat Cheese

You can keep this super simple OR dress it up.

You can always make tweaks to YOUR taste & depending on the foods you have on hand!

This recipe was actually inspired by a couple of salads I ordered on our most recent trip to New Orleans last month. We has LOADS of yummy treats while we were there, so once a day I tried to squeeze in a load of greens to keep my tummy happy.

I made a couple of adjustments to make it simpler to throw together and healthier - stuff like less dressing, a lighter dressing & fewer "extra" toppings. You could certainly make this more rich though by dressing it up for a special occasion.

Okay here it is!

& I'm T E L L I N G you.. it's just too easy!

Ingredients:

Spinach

Sweet Potatoes

Chicken

Goat Cheese

Lite Raspberry Vinaigrette

(or a vinaigrette of your choice)

Coconut Oil Spray

Dried Spices of your choice + Salt & Pepper

Prep/Assembly:

Start by grilling your chicken.

This is where part of our prep ahead came into play. We grilled enough chicken for the two of us plus our 11 month old daughter to eat for dinners all week! All we had to do each day was dice our servings, heat & top our salads!

We seasoned with himalayan salt, pepper, garlic & dried rosemary. Then grilled to perfection.

I think some other DELICIOUS protein alternatives would be grilled shrimp or salmon, depending on what you have or have the taste for! We'll be trying these soon for SURE.

While the chicken was grilling, I prepped a week's worth of sweet potatoes. I washed each potato very well & the cubed them into small, bite-sized pieces. I decided to leave the skin on for added texture, but you could certainly peel them (I only peel them for my daughter, Raegan). I sprayed our potatoes lightly with coconut oil & seasoned them with himalayan salt, pepper & dried garlic.

BEWARE: roasted sweet potato bites are like CANDY & you WILL want to snack on them while they're cooling.

When it came to the day OF & it was dinner time, assembly was easy peasy.

Make yourself a pretty little bed of spinach.

Layer a warm serving of grilled chicken & diced sweet potatoes.

Crumble goat cheese ALL over.

Drizzle with vinaigrette!

I personally LOVE this Skinny Girl Raspberry Vinaigrette

Some other tasty topping ideas?!

Toss on some chopped, toasted pecans or walnuts!

You could even sprinkle a few dried cranberries over the top.

OR a fresh alternative.. dice up some strawberries!

Not a huge fan of sweet potatoes?

Go for butternut squash.. also DELICIOUS!

Lastly, switch up your dressings & try another vinaigrette.

Anyone else hungry yet??

Alrighty, friends. That's all!

I TOLD you it was too easy.

If you try something different, be sure to share it with me.

I'm always on the hunt for anything quick, healthy & easy to prep a little ahead!

I hope you enjoy this prep ahead but fresh SALAD!

PS: For any of my followers who are on the "fixate" meal plan, this recipe as I have shared it before substitution suggestions is: 1 red, 1 yellow, 1 green, 1 blue & 1 orange if you measure out each ingredient before plating!

White Chicken Chili

Fall means cool evenings, SEC football, warm blankets, woodwick candles, thick socks, oversized sweaters & .....HOT soups.

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Not only are soups seasonally appropriate during autumn and winter, but they are also SUPER easy to make & are great lunch/dinner options throughout the week!

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I got this white chicken chili "recipe" from my momma. I use the word recipe pretty loosely because we don't measure & often just use what we have at home!

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This particular pot of soup was made something like this:

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Boil 2 chicken breasts in a half {ish} full, large pot of water. Once chicken is cooked, remove from water to shred. Use a hand-held strainer to remove fat, etc on the water's surface. Dissolve TWO chicken bouillon cubes - this chicken broth will now be your soup's base!

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To chicken broth, add  ::

2 (drained) cans of great northern beans + 1 can of rotel tomatoes and green chilis + 1 tbsp of minced garlic + chopped onion + frozen corn + minced jalapeño + shredded chicken + {optional} taco seasoning

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Let this pot simmer until all the flavors are combined. Depending on what you have on hand, serve solo //OR// with tortilla chips, quinoa or brown rice!

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Happy Fall, Y'all!

21 Day Fixed Approved: Chocolate, Peanut Butter OATS

Today's recipe is a special one, folks. This tasty treat is straight out of Autumn Calabrese's new cookbook called Fixate; for those of you who don't know who Autumn is, she's the creator of the 21 Day Fix that gave me these results in 3 weeks. Yeah, she's one of my heroes. Ha!

ANYWAYS, this recipe is an awesome breakfast option for the days I save my shake for a quick lunch or on the weekends when Nate and I want to eat a yummy, guilt free breakfast together! 

So let's start with the main ingredient: Steel Cut Oats.

For those of you who aren't familiar with anything other than instant, old fashioned or rolled oats:

"Whole grain oats provide a healthy start to your day. Steel-cut oats, also known as Irish oats, are a type of whole grain oat cut from the center portion, or kernel of the oat, called the groat. Although steel-cut oats undergo less processing than rolled oats or instant oatmeal, all whole-grain oats have essentially the same nutritional value, as long as the finished product contains no added sugars. Steel-cut oats do take longer to cook than rolled or instant oats and have a chewier consistency."

Personally, I prefer steel cut oats because I'm a texture gal! Take the extra time to try them, I bet you'll like them! Go ahead and make these bad boys start to finish before you move onto the other ingredients.

Next, you're going to need some shakeology. This is going to give your oats a CREAMY sauce to bathe in & that desert-like chocolatey taste! PS, the shakeology is also adding a protein element to this meal.

If you aren't sure what Shakeology is, check out my blog post about it here; it's a nutrient dense shake that costs about $4 a day to drink and replaces a meal, vitamins and supplements. It's a game changer in healthy eating and the pursuit of fitness goal, I highly recommend you try it risk free for 30 days.

Now you need to stir in some all-natural peanut butter! My household is 100% crunchy, but you could of course go the creamy route.

SO this is where my rendition of this recipe gets comical. My hubby and I moved on Friday.. who cares, you just want the recipe.. WELL, most of my food items were either packed, discarded or misplaced. A few lucky ingredients made it over here to my two burner, no oven kitchen. SO, when the cook book says himalayan sea salt, caramel extract and cinnamon- I say no biggie!

All I had here was vanilla extract, so I used that and went without the cinnamon and sea salt. You know what? This stuff still turned out to be AMAZING! I can only imagine how much richer the other ingredients would make it.

Okay, so here's the recipe!

4 Cups Water

1 Cup Steel Cut Oats

1.5 Scoops of Chocolate Shakeology

4 TBSP All Natural Peanut Butter

Dash of Cinnamon (omitted above)

Dash of Pink Himalayan Sea Salt (omitted above)

1/2 TSP Caramel Extract (substituted pure vanilla!)

Optional: Mixed Berries for Topping (or in my case- I had like 2 strawberries left in my mini fridge) 

Top this treat with some mixed berries & you're SET!

Bon Appetit, My Friends!

xo, Lindsey