Sauteed chicken breast with mashed cauliflower!

This is definitely one of our favorite weeknight dinners! I usually take two chicken breasts, and marinate them in bottled italian dressing (Wishbone) or oil and vinegar and garlic if I'm out of dressing. I keep them marinated at least over night and it just results in the juiciest chicken you can imagine. I saute the breasts in a small mixture of olive oil and butter, but add water or wine when it starts to get dry. Saves a lot of calories and if anything, makes the chicken juicier in the end.

The mashed cauliflower (for two people):

1 head of cauliflower, steamed until soft (I feel like boiling kills too many nutrients--maybe it's just an old wives' tail)

Salt

Pepper

2 cloves garlic

Olive Oil

I take the above, throw it in my food processor until it looks like a giant pile of mashed potatoes...and plate it up!! So delicious, healthy, and I personally think better than clumpy gummy carby old potatoes!

Lunch the first.

I'm generally the kind of person who enjoys spending Sunday afternoon/night cooking a batch of something to portion out and bring to work as tiny little lunches for Monday through Friday. Sometimes though, I think I have too much leftover food from the weekend and will throw together something totally random for Monday. Such is this Monday. We have a salad of leftover veggies and lettuce and a lone avocado I found:

You'll notice the two stalks of hearts of palm--courtesy of a glass jar from Trader Joes. Some capers, tomatoes, avocado, spinach, oil, vinegar, salt, pepper, and............

Leftover tender delicious chicken from a chicken I roasted. We've been having leftovers for days from this guy--also from Trader Joe's. You'll notice the Trader Joe's obsession eventually, and I'm not on their payroll or anything (but wish I was--sigh). Anyway, this is lunch for Monday. I think it looks exciting.

I wish I had taken a picture of the chicken I roasted as it came out of the oven--browned and pretty with its skin and the such. Instead, I have a before picture of it looking pinkish and peppery and probably nervous. I have an after shot of it right before we started eating, but after I attacked it with a knife:

That's my before. It's so easy, everyone (who eats chicken anyway) should be roasting one of these at least once a month. I took it out of its plastic, rinsed it off, removed the giblet package, put it in this dish, covered in a little olive oil, salt, pepper, italian herb mix, lemon, and that's it. Leftovers for days.

And now for the poor guy after I took a knife to him:

This is after probably 1 and a half hours on 400 degrees. I will get better at making these recipes exact for everyone too, I promise.

Finally, the first nights dinner. We had a leg each from the chicken, plus zucchini, roasted. I chopped the zucchini into fourths, covered in the usual--olive oil, salt, pepper, and baked for an hour. Also cooked up some quinoa that I brought to a boil and covered and let sit for 15ish minutes. I usually do a quick saute of onions and garlic and add that to the quinoa at the end for extra flavor. Compared to rice and potatoes, I think quinoa tastes so much better, and is just so much better for you. I'll do a whole post soon on why it's so amazing: