Meg Goes Nom Nom

Couple new recipes and some running updates for you today.

Chili Tortilla Bake

Recipe from Taste of Home

First up, is this casserole that I assembled Sunday evening, refrigerated, and popped in the oven Monday night after work. Monday was an insane day too, so I was incredibly happy I had done so.

First I prepared my mise en place.

Browned some beef (a lean ground sirloin), and then added all these ingredients:

Then it was layering time!:

Easy and yummy! I recommend this recipe; I really liked it. One serving is one-sixth of the recipe, which weights in at 413 calories.

Chili Tortilla Bake Rating: 8/10

Mustard Baked Chicken with Pretzel Crust

Recipe from Food & Wine

Tuesday evening I came home and went for a pre-dinner run. If you’ve been following the blog you may have heard that I have been following the Couch to 5k Running Plan, and am currently in Week 5 of the plan. Today was Day 2 of Week 5:

Brisk five-minute warmup walk, then:

• Jog 3/4 mile (or 8 minutes)
• Walk 1/2 mile (or 5 minutes)
• Jog 3/4 mile (or 8 minutes)

This was so tough! I ALMOST did it.. In fact, I’m going to go ahead and say I DID do it. I only added sixty seconds of walking in the middle of the second 8-minute run; however, I tacked an extra minute of running at the end to compensate. I came home and promptly collapsed on the floor. Holy crap. This was difficult. Really proud of myself for making it through though! Coming up: Day 3 of Week 5 is supposed to be a 20 minute run, with no walking. I am slightly scared! I really didn’t think I could do today’s run though, but once I got out there and just TRIED, I learned I could do it. It’s all mental, I swear. (…don’t look at my butt)

After recovering from my run, I made a somewhat light dinner, as I wasn’t terribly hungry after a big yummy lunch today. Dinner involved lots of mustard (…Something I used to hate! Funny how your tastes change as you get older.) I took some liberties with the original recipe, and tossed together a combination of Dijon, Spicy Brown and Honey Mustards with canola oil and red wine vinegar to create a sauce, of which half was used for coating the chicken prior to dredging in pretzels, and half was set aside for use as a dipping sauce.

Crush those sourdough pretzel b’s.

…Weeeee!

After baking for 25 minutes at 400 F, here is the final product. A nice brown dinner. On the side I served Steamfresh Multi-grain Rice blend; pretty bland-ola, but nothing a dab o’ butter and a few shakes o’ salt couldn’t fix. I was planning on serving a salad with dinner but just wasn’t all that hungry.

Yummy chicken. I’d again rate this recipe as an 8 out of 10.

 Currently listening to: Blackout – Muse.

Sometimes I just like to dim the lights, pour a glass of wine, close my eyes, and listen to this song. Really. Magical. Matthew Bellamy sets my heart aflutter in the video too – please check it out if you can. Luv, MegGoesNomNom.