4 in 1 Chicken Recipes : How to be creative and extend your budget in cooking healthy

For a beginner in dieting/healthy cooking like me, I find it fun to think of creative ways on how I will prepare my meals especially my baon to work everyday. It’s also part of the challenge on which I have to think of ways on how I can save up and extend my budget for food.

Apart from canned tuna and white fish fillet, chicken breast is one staple meat for my healthy adventures. But this time, I chose to be healthier and purchased fresh chicken breast rather than the frozen one. If you can remember my baked stuffed potato, the chicken I used failed me because I cooked it without properly thawing then turning out to be chewy and wasn’t my desired tenderness at all. So anyway, I learned my lesson well and bought the fresh chicken breast which I just kept on the chiller and cooked it as soon as I can as the package says it should be cooked within three days from the production date.

Spiced Up Chicken & Asparagus Pasta

This recipe is inspired from Yellow Cab’s Charlie Chan Pasta which I really love. The oriental taste that this pasta has is a mix of sweet and salty oyster sauce with a spicy kick. Very much describes my preferred taste for almost all my cooking. It is quick and easy, the ingredients are not hard to find, and would be loved by your loved ones. Rest assured that this recipe is a killer.

 

Spiced Up Chicken & Asparagus Pasta

Improvise Your Packed Lunch

Last Sunday, I happy to say that I’m proud of myself ! I let myself be creative to come up with a healthy dish out of some house staples and left overs. The night before the start of the work week, I have been busy with other stuff and chores so I did not have all the time for cooking and preparing what to eat. However,  just a little scrounge up in our fridge and here’s what I found:

Left over shrimp (cooked and salted)

Left over half of carrot

Cucumber

Lettuce

Instantly, I have a salad! Just chopped it off then voila! Lunch is ready. For me, this food was heavy enough because of the shrimps.

Yang-yang Crispy Beef

Sunday is a family day for us back home. As a kid, we grew up that every Sunday the family will go to church early in the morning, when we then had to wear our best clothes and attend Sunday mass.  The best part of the day for us kids is when after the mass, our parents will take us to Jollibee (I would love to call it as the Filipino national fast-food chain) to eat out and play on the play stations the ones with the pool of small plastic balls.

Moving forward to now here as a grown up in Abu Dhabi, Friday is the new Sunday. Work week here starts on Sunday until Thursday, and Friday is our official weekly holiday. Thus, together with my aunt’s family, we go to church on Friday mornings whenever we get the chance, and then head out for family lunch.

On the corner of the street near the church, there is a restaurant called Mongolian which serves Chinese delicacies. Our favorite dish here is the Crispy Beef; thinly sliced beef strips deep fried into crispiness on every bite. It is coated with sweet chili flavor and we love to dip it to their house spicy vinegar.

My version of the yang-yang crispy beef

Review: PF Chang’s China Bistro

Chinese Lunch out treat from my aunt! Weeeee! Chinese is my all-time fave dish aside from pasta dishes, so I have been eyeing out this newly opened china bistro near my workplace. I’m really loving this Central Souq built next to our office location as it holds everything that I wanted. :))

Specialty Sauce. The white sauce is suuuppeeerrr hot!!

Anyway, PF Chang’s is newly opened now here in Abu Dhabi, maybe just a month ago. They already have a branch in Dubai – so I’ve heard – and good thing that it’s now 5 minutes away from my home and office. However, it’s a fine dining so it’s reserved for my special occasions. For today, I asked (with all my sweetness prowess) my aunt to treat me out for lunch because it was her day off and I could use a lunch out away from the office.

Corn Soup

Ingredients

2 tbsp canola oil

2 cloves garlic

1 medium onion

1/8 kg medium shrimps, peeled, cut into halves

Steamed White Fish Fillet with Broccoli

A 10-minute healthy dinner, serves 2-3.

Stuffed Baked Potato

Usually, because I’m working during the day, I choose easy recipes for my cooking. But I can say that this one is loaded with more effort and made with love. The day before, my boyfriend didn’t have the time to pack food for lunch so I promised him that the next day I will prepare for him a delicious one. He knows me for my love for pasta so he was assuming that  I will cook  that like I always do. However, since this lunch is for him, I thought about what he would like and not opted for what I would love. It’s an easy one for me though, I just know his love for potatoes even thought he doesn’t realize it. With that in my mind, I recalled the baked potatoes I tasted from diners and incorporated it with some recipes that I googled. Yet, what I thought would be simple turned out to be a long cooking session for me.

Sauteed Vegetables with Shrimps

A simple and quick recipe for lunch. Serves 5-8.