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Recipe: Sweet Paprika Chicken Tray-Bake

2nd February 2019 · Leave a Comment

Easy Mid-Week Meal – Gluten-free | Dairy-free | Nut-free | Tomato-free
Chicken Tray-Bake

This easy chicken tray-bake is a fabulous midweek meal to throw together quickly, pop in the oven and have a family-friendly meal ready to go less than half an hour later! Full of sweet flavour, it’s a crowd pleaser. A great source of fibre, carbs, protein and healthy fats, plus you can switch up the veg options for whatever is in season. AND 2-3 serves of your daily veg!

As we begin to settle into some kind of ‘routine’ (well, some days we do) in the UK, one of my biggest challenges is getting a meal ready whilst my two girls desperately want me to play tea parties/Elsa and Anna/hide and seek. In our last house, we had an open-plan kitchen-diner with a door straight into the lounge. This made it easy for the girls to play in and out of the kitchen and be near me whilst I prepped dinner. Don’t get me wrong, it was still a challenege, but I could find something to distract them long enough to get dinner ready.

In our current (short-term!) home, the kitchen is much smaller, and the lounge is along the hallway, so the girls evidently don’t feel close enough to me when I’m cooking and they’re playing! And there’s not enough room in the kitchen for them to play, without me tripping over them (trust me, they try…the kitchen usually ends up as some kind of temporary storage room for the toy pram, giant bunny, and what ever big toy they can find!).

I’ll get to the point. Sometimes (or often) we need a meal that is either
super fast to cook up, easy to throw together and chuck in the oven to do its thing, or both! This meal is the latter really. Especially if you cut the chicken breast horizontally to create two thinner pieces. Give it a go and see what you think!

Sweet Paprika Chicken Tray-Bake

Preparation: 10 minutes | Cooking Time:  35 minutes | Serves: 4

What you need:

  • 300g butternut squash/pumpkin, cut into thin wedges or slices, skin on
  • 3-4 chicken breasts (depending on size), sliced horizontally
  • 1 onion (brown or red), cut into wedges
  • 3-4 cups of green vegetables – I used brussel sprouts and asparagus
  • 1/2 lemon, cut in half
  • 1 tsp smoked paprika
  • 2 tbsp honey/fruit syrup/maple syrup/other syrup alternative
  • A few sprigs of thyme (or 1 tsp of dried thyme)
  • Olive oil
  • Sea salt and pepper

Mustard Mayo

  • 4 heaped tbsp mayonnaise
  • 2 tsp Dijon mustard (more if you like more of a kick)
  • 2 tsp honey/syrup (as above)
  • 1/4 lemon, squeezed

What you do:

  • Pre-heat the oven to 180oC fan/200oC/gas 6
  • Place the squash or pumpkin slices into a large roasting tin, drizzle with a little oil and rub in so they are coated, and place in the hot oven for 10 minutes whilst you prep everything else.
  • Prep the other ingredients whilst the squash is cooking – slicing the chicken, lemon and other vegetables.
  • After 10 minutes, remove the roasting tin from the oven and add the chicken, onion, and green vegetables. Squeeze the two lemon slices over the chicken and add the slices into the tray.
  • Drizzle some olive oil over the chicken and vegetables. Drizzle the honey/syrup and sprinkle the paprika over the chicken. Add the thyme and a good pinch of salt and pepper.
  • Return the roasting tin to the oven for 20-25 minutes, depending on the thickness of the chicken, until cooked through.
  • When ready, remove the roasting tin and let the chicken rest for 5 minutes before serving. During this time, combine the mustard mayo ingredients together in a bowl and serve with the chicken and veggies!

Enjoy!

Lucy x

Filed In: Healthy Eating, Recipes / Tagged: balanced eating, chicken, dairy-free, easy meal, family meal, fibre, gluten-free, mid-week meal, nut-free, protein, recipe, vegetables

Should you set New Year’s Resolutions?

9th January 2018 · Leave a Comment

Welcome to 2018! New Year, New Year’s Resolutions?

It has sort of hit me with a bang! I definitely knew it was coming. And yet I don’t quite feel prepared for a whole new year; I don’t think I even fully got going with 2017! Did I even achieve what I wanted to achieve? The answer for me is usually ‘no’, since I set myself such ridiculous goals. But for 2017 the answer is mostly, yes: it was a big year and I did a LOT with a new baby. But all those self-promises to get back to yoga after having my second child… well they resulted in me managing to get to one class just before Christmas. Gosh it felt good, I wish I had done it sooner! But one class it was, and now I have to come to terms with the fact that my ‘baby’ is about to turn 1 in a few short weeks’. Now, that I am NOT ready for!

Planning, planning, planning!

In the meantime, I am planning, planning, planning for the next few months here at The Real Nutritionist. I’m busy writing up some super-useful content for you to enjoy and learn from. This includes some key topics around nutrition over the coming months: dieting and detoxing; gut health; fatigue; and female health.

New Year’s Resolutions.

But first, I want to touch on the elephant in the room. New Year’s Resolutions. Have you made any? Or have you become completely jaded by the sheer notion of setting yourself some lofty goals that you’ll probably then forget come February, and feel guilty for the rest of the year. Seriously, who wants to add to their guilt burden?! I’ve got enough mum-guilt, thank you very much! (After all, I’m a perfectionist as well as a mum.)

But what if you were to set yourself some smaller health commitments or goals, or even new habits? Whichever description fits best for you.

New Year's Resolutions Little Steps

Don’t run before you can walk. Take baby steps instead.

Small stepping stones.

Rather than turn January into a month of hell, how about make it the first, small stepping stone to better health? Perhaps that might be increasing your water intake, increasing your day-to-day movement (go for a morning walk, or try a 10-minute work-out at home), or ensuring you have 3 alcohol-free days a week. And rather than have the next 12 months loom over you, focus on just getting through January, or maybe even just the next one or two weeks. Big goals equal big failure and big disappointment. If you do have a big goal, break it down in to bite-size chunks before you tackle it, and lay your focus on each of those instead.

Whatever it is, make it a little adjustment to your current lifestyle. Something that is small and achievable means you are much more likely to commit, succeed, feel awesome about it, and be ready to make another small change next month. Keep it small. Keep it REAL! Just because you’re not doing 100 burpees a day, or going for a 5am run, or ‘eating clean’ at every meal, doesn’t mean that your achievements are any less important or impressive. Because the chances are, those that take on huge new year’s resolutions will have given up on them before January is through!

My goals.

One of my big goals is to improve my yoga-game back to where it was pre-children. Now, I know that’s not achievable overnight, or even in a month. So, my goal for January, and my first stepping stone, is to get to yoga at least three times. Less than once a week because I know that at least one week this month I won’t get there! But mostly because I bought a 10-class pass, and if I don’t get at least three sessions in this month, I won’t get the 10 done in the three-month time frame!!

New Year's Resolutions Yoga

Yep, that’s not me right now! #yogagoals

What I won’t be doing? I won’t be completely cutting out chocolate or alcohol. (LOL! I. Am. Human.) Instead, I will aim to keep them both balanced – not with one another though (!), but keeping them in check and in moderation. I also won’t be hitting the gym every morning. I barely have time to get us all dressed before we leave the house; so, I do not need to make my mornings any more stressful.

Which leads me to my over-arching goal for 2018: to reduce stress where I can, and work on ways to manage it the rest of the time. I know that I can push myself too hard sometimes, or give myself goals that are too big and I am set to fail. A blessing and a curse. Know your weakness, and find ways to manage it this year!

And that is enough for January health goals. It’ll be February before we know it, anyway!

What are your health goals or commitments for 2018? And how are you going to achieve them? Have you made them into bite-size pieces? Comment below with your New Year’s goals!

And if you want some delicious, easy and QUICK lunch ideas for the new year (that happen to use health-boosting foods for women!) to help achieve those goals, then check out my “Nutrient-Boosted Lunches for Women – in 10 minutes or less”.

Happy New Year!

Lucy x

Filed In: General Health / Tagged: balanced eating, better health, ebook, health goals, healthy habits, new mum, new year, planning, resolutions

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The Real Nutritionist is about optimising your health and wellbeing. It's honest and holistic, yet balanced and realistic.

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