As much as I love to cook, I don’t always feel like making elaborate meals that require a lot of prep work. Today being one of those days, I busted out one of my go-to lazy day recipes.  

Chicken cutlets + Shake ‘n’ Bake + peeled and cut sweet potatoes + pre-washed and shredded salad = easiest meal ever.

Now, I did exert myself a little bit by slicing up an avocado for the salad, but don’t panic – this is a purely optional step; if you’re feeling extra lazy, just go with lettuce and dressing.

For the potatoes, I used a recipe from the Biggest Loser family cookbook. It’s pretty simple; you just drizzle the potatoes with two teaspoons of olive oil and sprinkle them with lots of paprika and a bit of garlic powder, salt and pepper. Then you bake them at 350 degrees for about an hour or longer depending on how big the pieces are (in the original recipe, you’re supposed to grill them but I hate my George Foreman with a passion; such a pain to wash!).  

Then you move on to the chicken cutlets. Just coat them and bake them for thirty minutes – done! Shake ‘n’ Bake is the ultimate staple for lazy chefs everywhere. It makes the chicken nice and crispy on the outside but tender and juicy on the inside. As the slogan goes, why fry? Shake ‘n’ bake! Tonight, I used the classic herb and parmesan flavour. Yum!

Finally, the salad. I’m not the type of person who raves about salad; to me, salad is filler, something to throw on your plate to make it more colourful/convince yourself that you’ve eaten a healthy, balanced meal. But I do love avocados and for that reason, this salad is awesome.  I also added a small amount of Renee’s honey dijon salad dressing to give it some flavour.

Voila. A colourful, delicious meal that requires minimal prep work.

Speaking of easy meals, we made more spaghetti squash last night. This time, all we did was bake the squash for an hour, then top it with tomato sauce and parmesan cheese. Yet another simple, healthy and satisfying meal.

While I’ve been lazy in the kitchen these past two days, I have been killing it at the gym. Last night, I went to RPM and this morning did another Body Pump class. I’ve noticed that since I’ve been mixing up my Body Pump sessions (going on different days at different times) I’ve been learning a lot of new techniques. I find that different instructors tend to focus on different things, so I come away with something new after each class.

Like today, for example, the instructor stressed  that when doing tricep presses with the bar, you’re supposed to really squeeze your elbows in tight when you bring the bar down. I’d never really focused on that before and it definitely made a difference. Just goes to show, there’s always room for improvement in your workouts!