Pesto Chicken and Veggies

I always struggle to prepare vegetables. I don’t know what to do with them besides put them on a tray with dip. During my daily stroll through the popular recipes on Tasty, I stumbled on a video about prepping meals ahead that yielded a dish I could easily make for dinner.

The recipe
Weekday Meal-prep Pesto Chicken and Veggies from tasty.co.

Ingredient changes
Other than making half the recipe, the only change I made was swapping out the poisonous, awful tomato for delightful, yummy red and yellow bell peppers.

Ease (or not) of prep
The worst part of prepping this dish was chopping everything. Chopping chicken, chopping ends off beans, chopping peppers. I think I just hate cutting boards.

I also added a step to my prep. Someone in the comments of the recipe mentioned that you should blanch your beans before throwing them in the pan so I looked up a video for instructions and did that.

From chopping ingredients to sitting down to eat, it probably took about 45 minutes. It’s no chicken-dumped-in-the-slow-cooker but it’s no 3-hour-lasagne-rolls either.

The Boyfriend Test: Pass
Jeff really liked it (who’s surprised?). He loves beans so there was no way he wouldn’t devour this. As is occasionally the case, he got my last few bites as well.

A white plate with a stylistic tree decal trim sits on a wooden table. It is piled with cooked sliced chicken, green beans, and red/yellow peppers. Picky Eater Test: Soft pass
Generally speaking, I liked this dish. Chicken good, peppers good, beans good, however; I find pesto sauce can be hit and miss for me and I didn’t like it here. I don’t have a specific criticism of it, i just found it kinda meh. The next time I make this dish (which I imagine I’ll do more often when beans are in season and I can get fresh local ones), I’ll try a different sauce. Maybe a teriyaki or marinara. This is the sort of dish I’ve been wanting to make so I’m going to work on perfecting it.

Parmesan Roasted Cauliflower

I have wanted to try roasted cauliflower for a long time. I like raw cauliflower (with dip, obviously) so it seems like a natural step to add cheese.

The recipe
Parmesan Roasted Cauliflower from tasty.co.

I made it as a side for chicken, which I fried with salt and pepper. I have no recipe for that, I just made it the way we like it.

Ingredient changes
The only thing I did differently was half the recipe. I’m always suspicious of huge quantities of a thing I might not like (if I do like it though, watch out, because I’m about to fill the freezer with it).

Ease (or not) of prep
Dump ingredients in a bag, shake ’em up, bake it. Probably took about 20 minutes to chop cauliflower, mix everything, and get it in the oven so thumbs up from me.

A white plate with a tree-like decal border sits on a wooden table. On it is a pile of chopped and fried chicken and a pile of roasted cauliflower. The Boyfriend Test: PASS
Jeff freaking loved this. He ate so fast I had to ask if he actually chewed it.

Picky Eater Test: Fail
I, on the other hand, did not enjoy it. I didn’t like the breading and I found each bite mushy. I thought the breading would crisp up more but it was just soggy vegetable with Italian seasoning. Jeff was more than happy to finish mine.

Jeff’s mom suggested I try again with a new recipe so I’m going to try something a friend of mine suggested. I’m going to put a bit of distance between attempts though; if my second try comes out mushy as well, I might be done with cauliflower forever.

Chicken-Stuffed Peppers

I am the kind of person that does not enjoy plain, raw vegetables. Jeff is the kind of guy that can just go to town on a vegetable plate and completely ignore the dip; it’s infuriating. I want to eat more vegetables but smothering them with dip seems counter productive. Thus, I went looking for a stuffed pepper recipe. I was keen to find one with chicken rather than beef because I try to not go too nuts with the red meat.

The recipe
Dila’s Chicken-Stuffed Peppers from allrecipes.com.

Ingredient changes
I was making these as a side rather than a main dish so I halved the recipe and made only two. Also, as I was chopping the cilantro, I felt like the whole bunch was a lot so I used only half.

Ease (or not) of prep
This recipe was pretty straightforward – cook chicken, chop stuff, grate cheese. I’d say it took about 25 minutes to put together, so I suppose I can’t really complain (oh no, what do I do now?).

The Boyfriend Test: Pass
Jeff said he really liked his. He scooped all the filling out and then ate the pepper like an apple, which amused me as I, a huge prude apparently, carefully used my fork and knife to cut slices out of mine.

Close-up shot of a stuffed pepper sitting on a white plate. The pepper is red and filled with chicken, cilantro, and mozzarella cheese, topped with a dollop of sour cream. Picky Eater Test: Soft fail
I plan to make these again with a couple big differences so, while I enjoyed the stuffed pepper idea, I did not like this recipe at all. My main issue was the cilantro. I was right to cut half of it out because it still overpowered the flavour. I don’t use a lot of fresh herbs when cooking so the smell of cilantro really surprised me as I chopped it. I found it smelled like soap, almost chemical, and I was immediately turned off. I figured it would change a bit in the dish but I was wrong. I ate as much as I could while trying to pick around the cilantro but I gave about half of mine to Jeff. I was really disappointed; I so wanted to enjoy this. Next time I make it, I will use spinach instead. That may also solve the second problem I had, which was that the recipe did not yield enough filling. I’m guessing this has something to do with using half the cilantro but I’m surprised it made that much of a difference.

I’m going to look around at other stuffed pepper recipes and see what looks good. I can easily replace beef with chicken so I’ll likely try that before I get too experimental with my cooking. I’m not that fancy just yet.