college dinners.

If you're a college student and you're anything like me, you know that dinner at school is almost never as good as dinner at home. I love to cook, and I adore pinterest, but sometimes those recipes are unrealistic for a college student. We're busy, don't have all of those fancy spices and ingredients on hand like at home, and don't always have the equipment. 

For the last 3 years, I have been stuck. I always make the same dinners for myself when I'm at school: pasta, frozen pizza, macaroni and cheese, and sandwiches. I am {normally} a healthy eater, dangit! But unfortunately, eating healthy and changing things up is not easy in college.

That's why I am sharing my new dinner ideas on my little blog! I have been making an {what I think is a pretty dang good} effort to eat more healthy, tasty, unique, dinners. It's a challenge to come up with ideas that are easy for us college kids, and hopefully my ideas will get you out of the vicious cycle of pasta, pizza, macaroni and cheese, and sandwiches. {Oh, and frozen yogurt! But we're not complaining about that one, are we?} ;)

Tonight, I made baked chicken. {If you're good at coming up with creative recipe names, let me know} For now, we'll call this "Baked pesto and mariana chicken" All of the ingredients are versatile, practical, and fairly reasonably-priced.

I buy the individually frozen chicken breast tenderloins from Trader Joe's. This chicken is amazing. It's so easy and always bakes perfectly in the oven! {3 cheers for T.J.'s!} 

Simply preheat the oven to 350 degrees, line a baking pan or sheet with *foil, and place however many breasts you want in the pan. {No measurements here, just do whatever looks good...it works for me!} I couldn't decide if I was feelin' marinara sauce or pesto. So, I did one of each! I spooned a little bit of each sauce on the bottom of my foil-lined pan, placed the chicken on top, and spooned more sauce on top to cover the whole chicken breast. Cover with foil. If you skip this step, your sauce will dry out and won't be nearly as good! I baked my chicken for 25 minutes, and it was perfect! I didn't have any parmesan or mozzarella cheese, but either of those would be delicious with this chicken! Just sprinkle some on top for the last 5 minutes of baking.

I also sautéed one small zucchini. Just heat about 2 tablespoons of olive oil 1-2 cloves of minced garlic. One the garlic is slightly browned, add your zucchini {I sliced mine, then cut the slices in half} and add a little bit of pepper. 

My new favorite salad mix is the Champs Elysees mix from T.J.'s. Just toss some with your favorite salad dressing—I used T.J.'s Raspberry Vinaigrette.

It takes less than 10 {very practical} ingredients, around half an hour, and very little clean-up to make this delicious and healthy meal...enjoy!

*Foil makes for very easy clean-up. If you don't have foil, spray the pan with with non-stick spray.