Chicken Pesto Grilled Cheese on a Tortilla

A while back one of the local news programs featured grilled cheese sandwiches during the food portion of their show. One of the sandwiches contained Pesto. This caught my attention because I've been looking for ideas to use the Celery & Almond Pesto that I made. So this is what I came up with.

Grilled Tortilla - Calories-287kcal Carbs-19g Fat-14g Protein-26g Sodium-364mg Sugar-2g

Broccoli - Calories-23kcal Carbs-5g Fat-0g Protein-2g Sodium-18mg Sugar-0g

I mixed a chopped up 3 oz. skinless chicken tender with a serving of my Pesto (linked above) and 1/4 cup Kroger shredded Mexican blend cheese. I heated up my little copper/ceramic fry pan and lightly sprayed it with canola oil. I placed a 6 in white corn tortilla in it and topped it with my mixture. Heat till the tortilla starts to brown and is soft enough to fold in half. It's rather stuffed so you have to do this carefully. I lightly browned both sides of the tortilla before plating. Top with a tablespoon of salsa. I use Newman's Own because it is low sodium. This will have to make a repeat performance, it was delicious.

Comfort Food Revisted

Meatloaf and scalloped potatoes are one of those meals from my childhood. Still good, just reworked.

Calories-196kcal Carbs-25g Fat-2g Protein-19g Sodium-210mg Sugar-7g

Now it's Turkey Meatloaf and Scalloped Zucchini & Potatoes. I could have peeled the zucchini which would have made it look more like the traditional scalloped potatoes, but why waste the zucchini peel? I don't really have a meatloaf recipe but I did measure my ingredients to be able to get a nutrition count. Pretty much the standard list; ground turkey, onion, bell pepper, celery leaves, whole wheat bread crumbs, low sodium ketchup, mustard, low sodium Worcestershire sauce, Mrs Dash original, Sriracha Cha, flax (instead of egg), and no salt added diced tomato (canned). I cooked it in the crock pot lined with parchment paper. An hour before it was to be served I brushed the top with ketchup mixed with Worcestershire sauce. When it was time to serve it I picked it up out of the pot with the edges of the parchment paper and set it on the cutting board. The turkey meat was lean and there was very little moisture in the bottom of the pot. I need to experiment a little more with seasoning to give it more flavor, but it was good. 

Pesto & Pork

Supper tonight was delicious! Bacon-wrapped pork filet with almond-celery pesto. Baked seasoned radishes and cooked broccoli.
Calories-365kcal Carbs-14g Fat-21g Protein-31g Sodium-497mg Sugar-2g

Our store in Cheney carries these...

...which cook up nicely right out of the freezer in my NuWave oven. I also cooked two small whole potatoes for my husband and four radishes for myself at the same time. These were tossed in a light olive oil and seasoning mix. I topped my pork filet with a pesto that I made a few days ago. I had never eaten pesto, let alone made it before this. I had seen pesto mentioned in a lot of recipes and meals and had some celery greens that I needed to use when I came across a pesto recipe to do this. Most pesto recipes that I saw had a lot of oil in them, this one calls for no oil, I like that too. Not having pine nuts I had to find a substitute for those and found almonds recommended. Here's what I came up with...

Almond-Celery Pesto

1/8 tsp granulated garlic
1/2 c almonds
1/2 c celery leaves diced
1/8 c parsley diced
1/8 c grated Parmesan cheese
1/2 c lemon juice
1/3 c orange pulp

I chopped up the almonds and toasted them in a fry pan with the garlic. Combined the garlic, nuts, celery and parsley in a food processor and mixed on high till a consistent paste. Add cheese lemon and orange and mixed till well blended. I used this on my spaghetti first.