21 Day Fix Chicken Enchilada Casserole

Another great recipe added to our rotation!  We loved the enchiladas a couple of weeks ago, but as I mentioned, we don't always want a "yellow" for our dinner.  We were big fans of the green chile enchilada sauce, so wanted another recipe to incorporate that flavor.  This one's easy too, so a great one to add into your weekly meal rotation when you have another more difficult recipe!

6 chicken breasts, boiled and shredded
1 spaghetti squash
1 large can green chile enchilada sauce
1 T onion powder
1/2 cup greek yogurt

Optional toppings:
greek yogurt
shredded cheddar
diced tomato
diced onion
cilantro


We always bake our spaghetti squash whole.  Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Bake whole for about an hour, or until squash softens.  Slice in half.  After the squash cools, scrape out insides, discarding seeds.

Mix all ingredients, and place in 9 by 13 baking dish.  Bake uncovered at 350 for about 30 minutes. We topped with greek yogurt, diced tomato, and diced onion.  Shredded cheddar and cilantro would be great toppings as well!

21 Day Fix Challengers, the 9 by 13 dish made 8 servings.  We counted 1 serving as 1 red, 1 green.  I added a side salad tonight as well.

Meal Planning

I typically plan our weekly meals on Wednesday and Thursday of each week.  I try to base some of our meals on items that are on sale each week to keep costs down.  We've found our grocery budget drops pretty significantly when we plan and stick to our menu.  Not only do we look for sale items, we try to incorporate one crock pot recipe, and mix recipes based on complexity.  No one wants to spend the entire weekend in the kitchen (believe me, there are recipes we've planned that left us that way - not again!!).  Once you've planned and executed a few weeks, you'll get the swing of it and find what works for you.

I'll be posting Weekly Meal Plans in the coming months, though may only post a few until after April 15th.  All meal plans are based on the 21 Day Fix/Hammer and Chisel Meal Plan.  The plan I'll post is for someone in the lowest calorie/container count.  My husband increases his container counts as needed with a serving of oatmeal and fruit, extra protein at dinner, a whey protein shake, etc.  If you have any questions, email me here!

Here's the first weekly meal plan, and sorry for the size of the picture!  Still new at figuring out some of the tricks to posting!  Believe me, the larger size here is a much better option than what I originally attempted to post - would have required a magnifying glass to read ;)

Family Approved 21 Day Fix Lasagna

Who doesn't love a good lasagna recipe?  We haven't made lasagna in a while because we really like to use ezekiel bread or sweet potatoes for our "yellows" (carbs) versus noodles.  We decided to try thinly sliced zucchini in place of noodles, and we all loved it!  When I put a serving on the girls plates, I made sure to cut the serving into small pieces; made the zucchini a little less noticeable.

Family Approved 21 Day Fix Lasagna

4 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 yellow onion, diced
1 red bell pepper, diced
1 cup mushrooms, diced
28 oz crushed tomatoes
15 oz tomato sauce
2 T tomato paste
1 cup fresh basil leaves
1.5 lb ground beef
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
1 tsp oregano
3 large zucchini, thinly sliced
1 cup Ricotta cheese
1 egg
1 cup mozzarella
1/4 cup parmesan

Preheat oven to 425.

In a medium pot, saute garlic in a little olive oil.  Then add diced onion, red pepper, and mushrooms, cooking about 5 minutes.  Add crushed tomatoes, tomato sauce, tomato paste, and basil leaves. Bring to a boil, then simmer about 30 minutes.  Meanwhile, brown ground beef, seasoning with salt, pepper, and oregano.  Drain beef and add to sauce.

Place Ricotta cheese and egg in food processor and pulse until smooth.

Spread thin layer of meat sauce on bottom of 9 by 13 baking dish.  Place a single layer of thinly sliced zucchini over sauce.  Note, I've seen recipes where you slice the zucchini lengthwise, however, we did not.  Spread Ricotta mixture over zucchini, then layer with meat sauce, then sprinkle mozzarella, then parmesan.   Repeat layers. Cover with foil, bake about 30 minutes.  

21 Day Fix Challengers - We cut the above into 8 servings and counted as 1.25 green, 1 red, 1 blue.

21 Day Fix Meatloaf

I've been through stages where I am not a big meat eater, so finding a meatloaf recipe I like was a little surprising!  We have found many amazing recipes on one of our favorite sites, paleomg.com, and her Bacon Chorizo Chipotle Smothered Meatloaf is one of our favorites (sometimes I prefer without the bacon)!  We wanted a recipe that would fit more closely into our current meal plan, so just modified the recipe.  If you are looking for a treat though, definitely check out her recipe - it's incredible!!

1.5 lb lean ground beef
2 carrots, thinly sliced
1/3 yellow onion, diced
10 oz frozen chopped spinach, cooked and drained well
1 cup diced mushrooms
2 cloves minced garlic
1 cup almond flour
1 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp black pepper
tomato sauce

Preheat oven to 350.  Mix all ingredients in large bowl and mix.  Place in 9 by 13 baking dish.  Bake about 1 hour, until center is completely cooked.  Top with tomato sauce and bake another 5 - 10 minutes.

21 Day Fix Challengers - We counted the above, which was about 1/8th of the baking dish, as 1 red, 1/4 green, and 1/4 yellow.  I served with zucchini, mushroom, and tomato sauteed with about 1 tsp coconut oil, oregano, basil, garlic, salt and pepper.

Weekend Wrap - More 21 Day Fix Approved Recipes!

Fun weekend for us!  I did work on Saturday, of course, but we still managed to squeeze lots of fun into the weekend!

Saturday started off with our workouts.  I mentioned last week that I wouldn't put off my workouts until Saturday evenings through tax season, and I stuck to my decision this weekend.  I was really happy to get the workout over and out of the way!  One thing I've realized, most people aren't waking up to their alarms super excited and happy to be woken up each day.  Most of us would love to sleep in and stay snuggled in our beds.  But, knowing that with hard work come results, I've been able to keep pushing myself out of bed each morning!  I really am so happy with how I'm feeling with this program, and I really think I can keep working out according to the program through the end of tax season - I have to come back to this post on about April 5th or so to remind myself!!

Onto the recipes from the weekend!  Saturday night we made enchiladas - 21 day fix approved enchiladas!!  As usual, we found a few recipes we liked and modified to fit our plan.  Here's how the enchiladas went down:

5 chicken breasts, boiled and shredded
1 bunch of fresh spinach, chopped
1/2 small yellow onion, diced
1 cup chopped mushrooms
1 - 2 tsp olive oil
1 large can green chile enchilada sauce
1 large can red enchilada sauce
12 wheat tortillas
shredded cheddar cheese
greek yogurt, as topping

Boil chicken until cooked thoroughly.  Shred chicken once cool.  Meanwhile, saute onions in olive oil until translucent, then add spinach and mushrooms and cook until spinach wilts.  Mix shredded chicken with spinach mixture.  We made 2 versions, one with green enchilada sauce and one with red enchilada sauce.  We split the chicken/spinach mixture in half, and added about 3/4 cup of green sauce to one, and about 3/4 cup red sauce to the other.

Preheat oven to 350.  Spread green enchilada sauce in the bottom of one glass 9 by 13 baking dish, and spread red enchilada sauce over the bottom of another glass 9 by 13 baking dish.  Measure 1 red container (3/4 cup) of chicken mixture and place in the center of wheat tortilla, roll, and place in baking dish.  Continue until you have placed 6 filled tortillas in each baking dish.  Pour remaining sauce over the top of enchiladas.  We measured about 1/2 a blue container of shredded cheese to top each enchilada.  Feel free to add cheese as you see fit!  Bake approximately 15 minutes.

We counted the below as 1.25 red (chicken and greek yogurt), 1.5 yellow (tortilla and black beans), 1.5 green (salad and spinach/onion/mushroom in enchiladas) .5 blue (cheese).  This meal is completely worth saving your yellows!!!

Sunday was Valentine's Day, so we had to indulge in a little dessert!  We bought dark chocolate chips and made chocolate covered pineapple and bananas.  We also love strawberries and grapes, but I think we all would choose pineapple as our favorite.  Unfortunately this wasn't the only dessert I had all weekend because peanut M&Ms showed up in our house!  I cannot resist peanut M&Ms, so I've had my fair share over the past 24 hours!  Good for me I've been mostly on track lately, so definitely still feel like we've followed our meal plan 80% of the time.

We have a few other great recipes coming this week, so be on the lookout for lasagna and meatloaf!!

Weekend Wrap - Sweet Potato Skins

Busy weekend here!  Between my first weekend working and lots of fun birthday parties for the girls, we had lots going on this weekend!  Saturday morning I was ready to get to the office and get my day started versus workout.  I told DJ I had to workout as soon as I got home, so making the verbal commitment helped; however, going forward I have got to get my workout in before I head into the office on the weekends.  I really did not want to workout when I got home.  I was tired, hungry, had a headache - a million reasons why I should've just skipped!!  I'm glad I pushed through and got the workout knocked out, but this coming weekend I'm working out first thing Saturday morning!

Luckily this weekend we had quite a bit of food frozen from the past several weeks.  We pulled out shredded chicken for chicken salad on Sunday, chili for dinner one night, and frozen meatballs and marinara sauce for another meal.  DJ also grilled a variety of chicken drummies, which we enjoyed for the Super Bowl and we froze enough for lunch several days next week.  It's great during tax season to have a few things already prepared, so we'll continue to cook extra when we cook new meals and throw half in the freezer.

We did try a new recipe this weekend - sweet potato skins!  We did regular potatoes for the girls, and the sweet potatoes for us.  Saved our yellow and blue for the day so they fit exactly into our meal plan!  Here's the recipe we used:

Sweet potato
Salt
Pepper
Shredded cheddar cheese
Green onion
Bacon
Plain greek yogurt

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Bake sweet potato until soft, about one hour, slice in half and let cool.  Once cooled, score with a knife, leaving about 1/4 inch of the potato along edge.  Scoop out insides and sit to the side, .  Drizzle inside of potato with olive oil.  Place sweet potato back into oven and bake about 10 minutes.  While sweet potato skin is baking, mash insides from potato and add salt and pepper to taste.  Once skin is baked, remove from oven and fill with mashed potato.  Top with shredded cheese, bake about 10 minutes.  Remove from oven, top with diced green onion and chopped bacon.  Add greek yogurt.  We were really pleased with how these turned out, and will definitely make these again!

Day 30 Results!!

Day 30 RESULTS!!!

DJ:
Chest - stayed the same
L Arm - same
R Arm - same
Waist - lost 3/4 inch
Hips - lost 3 1/2 inches (HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE??? I measured, remeasured, and remeasured, mostly because I was ticked that he could lose that much in his hips in 30 days - ha!!!)
L thigh - up 1/2 inch - which he wants, unlike me and my thighs wink emoticon
R thigh - up 1 inch

Me:
Chest - down 1/4 inch
L Arm - 1/4 inch smaller - ?? Not what I'm wanting here, but DJ says it's b/c it's going to get leaner first
R Arm - same
Waist - lost 1 inch
Hips - lost 2 inches!!!! Huge victory for me!
L thigh - lost 1/2 inch
R thigh - lost 1/4 inch

We are thrilled with our results, y'all!!!  The 30 days has FLOWN by, and I am so excited to keep going!  I really cannot wait to see how our results are in another 30 days!!  If anyone is interested in joining us, email me here!!  I'm telling you, if we can do this, YOU CAN DO THIS!!!