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Easy, Marinated Chicken Breasts
Boneless, skinless chicken breasts are easy to prepare, but equally easy to overcook. Here's a surefire way to insure that they remain juicy and moist. Marinate them in a lemony/olive oil marinade for several hours and then grill them over a hot fire or cook them in an air fryer. The lemon juice tenderizes the chicken and assures that it remains moist. I suggest preparing more than you think you'll need for one meal, because these thinly sliced breasts are great sliced on sal


Air Fryer Old Bay Spatchcocked Chicken
Here's the easiest way to enjoy roast chicken : cut out the backbone (aka spatchcock it). The flattened chicken cooks in much less time and both light and dark meat come out equally moist and juicy. Gary, the very nice butcher at my local supermarket, spatchcocks my chickens for me, but you can easily do it yourself. To spatchcock a chicken, turn it over and cut out the backbone on both sides with poultry shears. Remove the backbone, flip the chicken over and crack the breas


One-Pan Orzo with Spinach & Feta
Eating healthfully doesn't have to be tasteless or predictable (aka the ubiquitous boneless, skinless chicken breast...zzz! ). You can jazz up any low-fat meat or fish with a flavorful side like this offering from Melissa Clark of the NYT Cooking section. It's a riff on Spanakorizo, a classic Greek spinach-rice dish. Made with orzo pasta instead of rice, this meatless recipe is loaded with chopped baby spinach (so much that at first you'll think it's too much, but it’s not)


Sheet Pan Chicken with Black Beans and Squash
Add dollops of nonfat Greek yogurt and serve with lime wedges This sheet pan dinner takes little effort but delivers big flavor. Chicken, squash, black beans and red onion are well seasoned with chili powder and cumin. The black beans and butternut squash add a savory creaminess, and the optional toppings add tang. The recipe, adapted from the NYT Cooking section, suggests using Diamond Crystal kosher salt, a favorite of many chefs and home cooks for its light, pyramid-shaped


Tuna and White Bean Salad
Here's a great example of a healthy, high-protein meal you can make when you absolutely, positively do not want to cook but you need to eat. It's bare-bones, assembled with readily available pantry-ingredients. Water-packed light tuna is combined with cannellini beans and tossed with sliced red onion and a light vinaigrette. This is a classic Italian salad from famed Italian cook Marcella Hazan, who introduced Americans to traditional Italian cooking with her seminal cookbook


Taco Soup
Add your favorite toppings: cilantro, pickled jalapeños, avocado, Greek yogurt, cheddar cheese, tortilla chips There is so much to love about this soup. It tastes very much like a traditional beef taco but without the shell. It’s spicy, but not too much so. It’s high in protein, which makes it filling, and it’s low in fat, calories and has only 1 WW Point. The recipe, adapted from the NYT Cooking section, calls for 1/4 cup of olive oil, but I cut that down to 1 Tbsp., plenty


Air Fryer Turkey Meatballs
An Air fryer is a countertop convection oven that cooks food by circulating hot air rapidly throughout its interior. Food cooks more quickly, and becomes crispy and golden brown without using a lot of oil. With an air fryer you can make crispy french fries with just a light spray of olive oil. Fried chicken? Same thing. Meatballs are another food that is traditionally fried in oil. I like to make turkey meatballs because they're leaner than typical Italian meatball meat (a co


Tuscan Vegetable Chicken Stew
Despite their healthfulness, I do not like eating main-course salads during the winter, especially not here in the frigid state of Kansas. Soups and stews are more to my liking. This recipe for Tuscan Vegetable Chicken Stew, which I adapted from The Recipe Critic, provides close to a day's worth of hearty vegetables. I suggest cutting the vegetables into slightly larger chunks so they maintain their shape during cooking. It also provides protein from chicken and white beans,


Cottage Cheese Egg Bites
If spinach isn't your thing, here's another recipe for egg bites, again from the NYT Cooking section, that features different optional vegetables and mix-ins. The NYT recipe calls for 1 1/2 cups of grated cheese; I cut it back to 1 cup to lower the fat, calories and WW Points. You can add bacon or sausage, which will minimally increase the calorie & WW Point count. Whatever your choices, these make great high-protein breakfasts or afternoon snacks. They keep in the fridge for
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