Chicken and Blue Cheese Stuffed Baked Potatoes

With the extra time on my hands I can go back to adding to my TTHA (Tara Tested Husband Approved) page. This time I picked a recipe out of the July/August issue of Clean Eating magazine. I love this magazine as I’m sure many people out there love it. I’ve decided to go ahead and get a home subscription instead of scouring the magazine rack at my local Borders waiting (sometimes not so patiently) for the next issue to come out.

I changed the recipe just slightly. I added red pepper for color (and because it’s what I had in the fridge after realizing I forgot to buy an onion while at the store). I skipped the salt that it asked for. I’m a big proponent of the “add your own salt” way of thinking. This way nothing comes out tasting like you just bit down on a salt lick. Finally I added more chicken than what the recipe called for since I have a husband that likes his meat and this whole switch to clean eating is about making things I’m pretty sure he’ll like but also giving it to him in portions where he feels like he’s actually eating something substantial. With that being said, the calorie count is a little higher (about 150 calories per potato higher) but in the end that little extra goodness made this is a TTHA recipe that was a hit.

The ingredients:

Yep that’s pretty much all there is to this recipe. I forgot get that red pepper in the picture only because I hadn’t realized yet that I needed that darn onion and the red pepper hadn’t popped into my head as a good substitute. The spinach of course you can buy pre-washed / pre-packaged but it’s cheaper if you buy it in the bunch form. Blue cheese and cream cheese can always be bought in the light form.

• Chicken breast (I used 1/4 breast for each potato half).
• 2 Russet Baking potatoes (If you have more mouths to feed = more potatoes).
• Spinach (You can never have enough spinach so desired amount is up to you. I used the entire bunch).
• Red pepper
• 1/4 c blue cheese
• 2 tbsp of cream cheese.
• Lemon (1 tsp lemon juice)
• Pepper to taste (we use a lot of pepper in this household)

The longest part of putting together this recipe was baking the potatoes. It took almost 90 minutes to cook these bad boys. Poke them with a fork, wrap them in foil and bake at 400 degrees until tender. You’ll need to let them cool down before doing anything else with them so take this opportunity to go break a sweat to a yoga video or get on that treadmill for a bit!

Once they are cooled you can move onto the rest of the process.

Prep your red pepper and spinach and blue cheese / cream cheese.

Remember if you use fresh spinach then you’ll need to thoroughly clean each leaf. It can be time consuming so if you want it to be more easy, just buy the bagged spinach. Cube your chicken and cook with 1 Tbsp of olive oil. If you want to skip the calories, then use a non-stick spray but hey who doesn’t love olive oil. Once the chicken is cooked, add the red pepper and spinach.

Cut your potatoes in half and scoop out the center so that you have about 1/4 inch shell. Mash the potatoes in separate bowl. Add the chicken / red pepper / spinach to mix then both the blue cheese and cream cheese and lemon juice and mix well. Spoon that delicious mixture evenly into the 4 potato shells and place into baking dish (you should spray the baking dish with non-stick if you have it).

Bake at 400 degrees for an additional 10 – 15 minutes (thoroughly heated). Right before serving add a few crumbles of blue cheese on top cause seriously, can you ever have enough blue cheese????

Enjoy!

Serving size: 2 filled halves

Calories: approx 396

Fat: 4 g

Sat Fat: 2 g

Carbs: 40 g

Sugar: 2 g

Protein: 40 g

Sodium: 219 mg

Cholesterol: 25 mg