Chicken & Goat Cheese Strudel (and the lost engagement ring) + Weekly Menu

Good (late) morning!

This dish is a memorable one. Yes, it was good…very good, in fact. But that’s probably not what I’ll remember most about it.

See, the night I made this dish, I lost something very near and dear to me. I lost my absolutely stunning engagement ring. After Mr. Prevention proposed to me with cubic zirconium and told me I could chose any ring I wanted…well, I chose right, that’s for sure. My ring is beautiful.

I take my ring off when I cook (it’s a channel setting and I don’t like to gunk it up), when I shower, and when I play ice hockey. After making this meal on Tuesday, I cleaned up and did what I always do after dinner…returned my rings to my ring finger. Except, only my wedding band was to be found. My engagement ring was MIA.

I went to bed, after tearing apart the kitchen, in what I would consider to be a pretty depressed state. I had “lost” my ring once before in the kitchen, but was able to retrace my steps and locate it in a bag of cilantro in the fridge. Tuesday, no such luck.

On Wednesday..and Thursday…I continued to search high and low for my ring. No ring. Friday rolled around and I was off work. I had spent another hour or so searching for my ring, to no avail.

I decided to make cookies. I made cookies to 1) get my mind off the lost ring and 2) to put off grading my students’ final exams. The cookies I made were thumbprint cookies (so good – recipe coming this week!) and when I was returning the jam to the fridge, there was my ring. It was in the door of the fridge in one of those compartment holder thingies.

I burst into tears. I was so, so happy. I still have no idea how it got there, but it was found…that’s all that matters.

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Chicken & Goat Cheese Strudel adapted from Clean Eating Magazine and Loves to Eat

2 tsp extra-virgin olive oil
1 yellow onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 lb ground chicken breast
2 tsp Italian seasoning
1/2 tsp salt
10 oz frozen chopped spinach, thawed and drained
4 oz goat cheese, crumbled
10 sheets phyllo dough, thawed
cooking spray

Directions:

Add olive oil to a non-stick pan and cook the onion over high heat 3-4 minutes or until translucent. Add chicken and cook, breaking up with a wooden spoon for 2 minutes. Add garlic, salt, and Italian seasoning and cook until chicken is no longer pink, about 4 minutes. Transfer to a large bowl.

Return the pan to the stove and add spinach, cooking for 2-3 minutes to cook off any remaining moisture. Stir spinach into the chicken mixture. Add crumbled goat cheese, stirring to combine.

Place a phyllo sheet onto a cookie sheet. Mist with cooking spray and top with another sheet. Mist with spray and top with a third sheet and so on so there are 5 sheets of phyllo dough. Spoon the chicken mixture onto the sheets, and top with 5 additional phyllo sheets, misting each sheet with cooking spray before adding the next.

Bake in a 350 degree oven for 20-25 minutes. Let cool for 3-5 minutes. Yield: 6 portions.

Nutrition Information (per serving): 221 calories; 6.5 g. fat; 59 mg. cholesterol; 461 mg. sodium; 16.7 g. carbohydrate; 1.5 g. fiber; 22.5 g. protein

Result: I love the simplicity of this dish. It came together quickly and has wonderful nutrition stats. For those seeking low-carb meals, this is a great one for you! I had to add a bit of flavor to the ingredient list – I could tell it would be lacking pizazz. Salt and olive oil helped this out a lot. I tried the chicken-cheese-spinach-onion mixture without salt and it just didn’t fly. I’m not a huge salt person, but chicken can be a bit lack-luster without some seasoning. The one draw-back to this dish is that it doesn’t reheat that well. Of course I ate it leftover, but the phyllo dough lost all of its crispiness. Overall, thumbs up and love the low-calorie, high-protein stats! Enjoy!

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Weekly Menu: December 11th-12th

• Sunday: Lentil, Kielbasa, and Garlic Stew (roll-over from last week)
• Monday: Grown Up Spaghettios

That’s it for a menu this week. Lily and I are heading to Chicago to hangout with friends and family since the quarter is over for me 🙂 I need a little R & R!

Not sure what’s on the agenda today other than a brief grocery shopping trip and a hockey game later. Oh, and grading…that I really shouldn’t put off any longer 😉

xo,