Chicken Broccoli Quinoa Casserole

Posted on February 13, 2015 by Georgina

Chicken Broccoli Quinoa Casserole

HEYOOOO!

It’s Friday again! I love posting on Friday. They are such a happy day and everyone is in a great mood!

Sooooo this recipe is a total copy cat of my major girl crush, Lindsay over at Pinch of Yum. If you are on Pinterest at all, I 100% guarantee you have one of her posts pinned to your recipe board. She is a source of never ending amazing, well, everything! Food, Recipes, pictures, helpful blogging tips and tricks, laughs, inspiration….ok, like I said, girl crush.

I get so many recipe inspirations from her! Her and her hubby, Bjork, started Pinch of Yum a few years ago as a side fun thing and it morphed into their full time job and all their dreams come true! They are like a blogging, social media, power couple- and I want them to adopt me. ~~kidding.~~

So I saw this recipe in my inbox one day and it struck a chord. Jake is always saying how now that I focus on healthier food for us, he misses the cheesy casseroles and pasta and this and that. Well this looked like the perfect solution, keeps me happy with veggies and quinoa and only a little cheese and keeps him happy because it tastes amazeballs and he’ll think it’s loaded with cheese.

WIN.WIN.

It was really good! I had a little trouble getting all the water to absorb into the quinoa, but I just left it in the oven for a little longer until it looked the consistency I wanted. Of course I can never follow a recipe word for word so I made this my “own” in a few ways…. made this gluten free and used almond milk since my stomach can’t really do dairy milk. Also spiced it up a little by using red pepper flakes. I loved the way mine tasted but here’s the original Lindsay version.

But here is my version. Deeeelicious. You have to try it for yourself.

INGREDIENTS
2 cups reduced sodium chicken broth
1 cup milk (I used unsweetened almond)
1 teaspoon chicken or vegetable bouillon powder
½ cup flour (I used GF all purpose)
2 cups water, divided
1 cup uncooked quinoa, rinsed
¼ cup already cooked and then crumbled bacon (optional but not really 🙂 )
1 pound boneless skinless chicken breasts
2 teaspoons seasoning (I love Penzeys Mural of Flavor but any basic blend you like will work)
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
¼ cup shredded Gruyere cheese (although you can use whatever you would like)
3 cups fresh broccoli florets

INSTRUCTIONS
Sauce: Preheat the oven to 400 degrees and generously grease a 9×13 baking dish (not kiddint- be generous, it really sticks to the sides). Bring the chicken broth and ½ cup milk to a low boil in a saucepan. Whisk the other ½ cup milk with the bouillon seasoning and flour; add the mixture to the boiling liquid and whisk until a smooth creamy sauce forms.
Put it all together: In a large bowl, mix the sauce from step one, one cup of water, the quinoa, and bacon and stir to combine. Pour the mixture into the prepared baking dish. Slice the chicken breasts into thin strips and lay the chicken breasts strips over the top of the quinoa mixture. Sprinkle with your seasoning of choice. Bake uncovered for 30 minutes.
Broccoli: While the casserole is in the oven, place the broccoli in boiling water for 1 minute until it turns bright green and then run under cold water. Set aside.
Bake: Remove the casserole from the oven, check the mixture by stirring it around in the pan, and if needed, bake for an additional 10-15 minutes to get the right consistency. When the quinoa and chicken are cooked and the sauce is thickened, add the broccoli and a little bit of water (like 1/2 cup) until the consistency is creamy and smooth and you can stir it up easily in the pan. Top with the cheese and bake for 5 minutes, or just long enough to melt the cheese. You can hit it with the broiler to get a pretty golden color if you want too. TADA

And then eat it up! Sooooo tasty. And pretty relatively guilt free!

So you have two take aways from today:

1) Make this recipe and come back and tell me how you liked it.

2) Go check out Lindsay and Bjorks site Pinch of Yum, if you haven’t already that is 🙂

OH and one last thing:

HAPPY VALENTINES DAY! ❤ ❤ ❤ I hope you all have a fabulous weekend. As always thanks for stopping by!

xoxo

*This post contains no sponsored or affiliate links.

Lemon Thyme Baked Chicken

Posted on July 6, 2014 by Georgina

Lemon Thyme Baked Chicken

I am a sucker for anything with lemon, or garlic and love chicken so naturally I want to put them all together! This is a reallllly simple and delicious meal. It’s easy and quick enough for a weeknight but also tasty and ‘fancy’ enough for a weekend or dinner party with friends.

You could use whatever pieces of chicken you wanted. For this recipe I had skinless chicken breast pieces on hand, so I used that.

*Warning if you use pyrex or glass, it takes a little scrubbing to get the baked bits off the side when you’re done, but you can either use foil or get a good arm workout in for the day. 🙂

Ingredients:

1-2 tbsp olive oil
5-6 cloves of garlic, minced
1/3 cup of chicken broth
Zest from 1 lemon
Juice from 1 lemon
1/2 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp fresh thyme leaves
2 lbs skinless chicken breasts or however much chicken you want to make
Sea salt and freshly cracked pepper, to taste
Two sprigs of fresh thyme
2 lemons cut into wedges

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Coat a baking dish with cooking spray.

Heat the olive oil in a skillet over medium heat; add the minced garlic and cook, stirring constantly, for 1 minute, making sure not to burn the garlic. Add the chicken broth, lemon zest, lemon juice, oregano, and thyme leaves to the pan. Pour the mixture into the baking dish. Season both sides of the chicken breasts with sea salt and freshly cracked pepper, to taste. Place the chicken in the baking dish along with the lemon wedges and the two sprigs of thyme.

Place into the oven and bake, basting occasionally, for 30-40 minutes or until the chicken is cooked through. Remove from the oven and let the meat rest for 5 minutes before slicing. Drizzle the pan sauce on top of the slices of chicken and serve. Enjoy!

A before shot

After baking- and so pretty!

Such great fresh flavors with this. Fresh and tasty and easy. I can see myself sitting out on my non existent porch by our non existent fire circle eating this with a glass of cold Chardonnay. Ahhhhhh, see ya! I’m going to go day dream about that now.

Thanks for stopping by! Hope you enjoy!

xoxo

Crunchy Asian Chicken Salad

Posted on June 16, 2013 by Georgina

Crunchy Asian Chicken Salad

INGREDIENTS

1 package (3 ounces) ramen noodle soup mix(any flavor you want)

1 bag (16 ounces) coleslaw mix
2 cups cut-up cooked chicken 1/2 cup chopped dry-roasted peanuts 1/2-1 cup of chopped Cilantro

2 tablespoons sesame seed oil

1 Tbs sugar

1/4 cup white vinegar

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

1/2 teaspoon pepper

Juice of 1 lime

DIRECTIONS

Open coleslaw mix into a large bowl. Break block of noodles into bite-size pieces over salad.
Chop your cooked chicken, cilantro, and peanuts and add to the coleslaw mixture.
In a smaller bowl combine the sesame oil, vinegar, sugar,veggie oil, pepper, and lime juice and stir until well mixed and sugar is dissolved.
Pour over the coleslaw and noodle mixture; toss until coated and enjoy! 🙂

This was deeeelicious! I added Siracha sauce to mine because seriously I cannot get enough of that stuff!! Also if you don’t like sesame you may want to scale back a little bit, the flavor was quite strong but I enjoy it so I didn’t mind. I think this recipe also has great capability for versatility- please experiment and let me know what you create!!!!

Hope you all have an amazing week. I have had a lot of comments and new followers on my blog lately and I just want to say, I seriously appreciate each and everyone of you who spend the time to check out my blog- I appreciate and you guys make me feel so special!

xoxo