Go Green Vegetarian Bake

In last week’s post, Less Meat!,  I told you that I wanted to try going meatless a few days a week. Today was a meatless day. My breakfast and lunch were not creative, but I made up a vegetable bake for dinner. Maybe I should call it an “everything but the kitchen sink” bake. I had a lot of vegetables that needed to be used before they spoiled, so I grabbed everything green in my refrigerator.

I loosely based the recipe on one I found on Pinterest for spinach artichoke chicken and my own chicken, mushroom, and broccoli casserole. They have become favorites around my house. It has made multiple appearances, so I keep artichoke hearts on hand. I added those to the green veggies above.

So, what do I have in this mixture? It included:

1/4 cup chopped onion

2 minced garlic cloves

1/2 chopped green pepper

1/2 chopped jalapeno

1 cup kale

1 can artichoke hearts

1/2 head of broccoli

1 tablespoon chopped cilantro

Next, I added three heaping tablespoons of greek yogurt and 1 cup of mozzarella cheese. I mixed it until everything was coated with yogurt and cheese.

Next, I made a crumb topping:

1/2 cup of italian bread crumbs

3 tablespoons parmesan cheese

1 teaspoon cumin

a handful of chopped almonds

I sprinkled the topping on the bake and baked it at 350 degrees for about 40 minutes.

I thought the dish turned out pretty well. The jalapenos, garlic, cumin, and cilantro gave it a lot of nice flavors and it wasn’t too spicy. I think next time I will try to add a little yogurt to the topping to make it a little pasty before baking it. It just didn’t get that shell like consistency and brown the way I had imagined before putting it into the oven. The only thing in it that could be considered unhealthy was the cheese, but it wasn’t that much cheese per serving. Also, the only thing that would prevent this from being paleo would be the bread crumbs, which could easily be replaced with a coconut flour mixture or a flax seed and almond mixture as the topping. I want to keep working on this one to perfect it, but I think it will eventually be a keeper. And there were leftovers for my other veggie only days this week!

 

Chicken and Broccoli Casserole

I did not have an official challenge tonight. But, as the end of the week nears, I usually have a few things in my refrigerator that I need to finish. This week, I took some of those leftover items and turned it into a simple, low carb, and relatively healthy casserole.

First, I sauteed one pound of chicken breast, a minced clove of garlic, half an onion, and 6 or 7 white mushrooms in olive oil. I added black pepper, cumin, and coriander (about a half teaspoon of each).

While the chicken was cooking, I chopped one bunch of broccoli. Broccoli has never been a favorite vegetable of mine, but if you chop it finely enough, you can barely taste it.

I stirred the ingredients together with one cup of cheddar cheese.

I looked for other options as the casserole topping, but most of them were things that either didn’t sound that healthy or that I didn’t have at home. So, I used another cup of cheddar cheese to top the casserole.

I baked it at 350 for 30 minutes. I was pleased with the dish!