Caprese Chicken

The other day I made dinner for my friend Danielle at my house and it was an absolute favorite. I plan on making this for Riley when I get home from my trip because I know he would love it!

If you like Caprese salads, you’ll love this dinner! I roasted the tomatoes and used marinated chicken, so it was packed with flavor. If you’ve been reading my blog for a bit then you’ll know I’m a lazy cook. Whenever I can take shortcuts and still keep it healthy and tasty, I will! This is one of those dinners that doesn’t require much work, but will taste like you worked really hard.

Caprese Chicken

Time: 40 minutes (only about 5-10 minutes of prep work)

Serves: 2

2 Italian marinated chicken breasts. I used the individually packed, pre-marinated breasts by Perdue. You could probably make your own marinade, but I’m a slacker.
1/3 cup fresh basil, sliced
1/2 pint grape tomatoes (I had some fresh ones from the garden that I threw in with them)
6-8 small fresh mozzarella balls, cut in half
1/4 cup shredded Parmesan cheese
olive oil
2 cloves garlic, finely diced
salt & pepper

1) Pre-heat the oven to 350. Toss the tomatoes with the garlic, olive oil, salt and pepper on a baking sheet. Pop in the oven for about ten minutes.

2) Place marinated chicken breasts on a baking sheet. Put in the oven along with the tomatoes and cook for 20 minutes.

3) Once chicken is cooked through and tomatoes and roasted through, remove both from the oven.

4) In a baking dish (I used 8×8), place the chicken breasts and top with the tomatoes, mozzarella balls, Parmesan cheese, and basil.

Bake for another 10 minutes, or until the cheese is all melted.

Optional: serve with zucchini sauteed in garlic and olive oil.

This dinner was so easy to put together, but something about the roasted tomatoes and the fresh basil just made it even more flavorful!

Workout & Breakfast

Today I woke up around 6:00, which is sleeping in for me! My hotel doesn’t have a great gym, but they let us use the one at the hotel next door, so that’s where I went. They had a cardio room and a weight room with a multipurpose machine, dumbbells, medicine balls and benches. It was pretty much all you could ask for in a hotel gym!

I took way too long to get ready so I ended up only having 30 minutes to work out. I decided to do a 15 minute run on the treadmill, then headed to the weight room. I felt very disorganized during this workout and kept jumping from one thing to the next, but I got in 15 minutes of some circuit exercises.

Free breakfast at the hotel consisted of a toasted English muffin topped with peanut butter and banana slices. Perfect!