Chicken with Spinach and Garlic Almonds

When it comes to making a quick, healthy, and cheap dinner, you can’t beat a stir fry. This Chicken Spinach and Garlic Almond dinner took less than 30 minutes to make – which is faster, more nutritious, and to us tastes better than Hamburger Helper. 

The even better part of this meal is I was able to stretch the two lone chicken breasts in my freezer to feed four people. Oh yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeah!

How?

Easy! I diced the chicken instead of serving big hunk of meat. Dicing the meat stretches the meal and spreads the flavor thought out the dish. I added more chopped vegetables to my meal too. Vegtables are a great meat stretcher that ensures you get enough vegetables (and fiber!) in your diet.

To make sure my meal had enough protein for four, I chopped and added Sante Garlic Almonds to the dish because nuts are an excellent source of protein. The garlic and spices in the Sante nuts add an extra hint of garlic, cayenne and black pepper  to my meal without extra work. I like that because opening extra spice jars is hard, people  J

Chicken with Spinach and Garlic Almonds Recipe

Ingredients

A drizzle of olive oil or any light tasting oil

2 diced chicken breasts

2 cups of chopped Sante Garlic Almonds

1 bag of fresh spinach (defrosted frozen spinach also works in a pinch)

1 chopped onion

2 chopped red/yellow/orange bell peppers (green pepper also works if you didn’t hit a sale like I did)

1 tablespoon oregano (or more or less to taste)

1 teaspoon basil (or more or less to taste)

Salt (Kosher salt adds an extra punch if you have it. As always, you what you have first.)

Whole wheat spaghetti

Make it: 

1. Drizzle olive oil to a cover the bottom of a pan.
2. Add the chicken, onion, bell peppers, and spinach to the pan. Saute over medium heat.
3. Add the garlic almonds, oregano, basil to the mix. Saute until the chicken is fully cooked and the spinach wilts.
4. Add a few shakes of salt to marry the flavors. The goal is to bring the flavor the ingredients to forefront, not to have a dish that tastes primarily of salt.
5. Serve over whole wheat spaghetti.

If you want to try Sante nuts, they are offering Lazy Budget Chef readers a 25% discount on their candied pecans, candied walnuts, garlic almonds, and roasted salted pecans from now until December 16, 2011. Place your order at Sante and use the coupon code: 2011-Blog-082.

Disclaimer: Sante Specialty Foods provided samples to facilitate this review and for me to use in developing this recipe. This did not influence my opinion or review. All opinions are 100% my own. I do not make any money if you buy Sante nuts with the coupon code. I'm passing it along because they're good nuts!

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