Veggie Hot Pockets

I have really made an effort to cook more at home and eat out less.  I love finding new recipe ideas, but I am often frustrated because I am generally cooking for one person and most things have at least 4 servings.  Sometimes it is easy and works out to half a recipe or occasionally I make extra and freeze several servings.  I don't mind eating leftovers, in fact I enjoy them because they make meal prep super simple.  I was browsing around online last week looking at several healthy living blogs I like to read and get ideas from when I found an amazing website:  Reservations for two  Not only is it full of recipes for 2 they are generally pretty healthy.  

I was off work last Friday so I made it a point to go to the grocery store and stock up and prep for this upcoming week.  I cut up 2 containers of strawberries, chopped and washed a bunch of romaine lettuce, cooked a spaghetti squash, and sliced up a cucumber for snacking and salads.  I found a recipe on the reservations for 2 website that used buffalo chicken in a salad so I decided to put my own little spin on that. 

 

Buffalo Chicken Tenders:

(adapted from reservation for two)

This was super easy, but I thought it would be a good way to add protein to a salad.  

I just took a package of chicken tenderloins and cooked them in a pan with a little olive oil on medium heat for about 5 minutes on each side until they were cooked through.  After the chicken was cooked all I added was a 1/4c Frank's Red Hot.  I turned the burner down to low and let the sauce and chicken simmer together for a few more minutes until the sauce had thickened up.  

This chicken would be great on a salad with a little REAL blue cheese or ranch dressing (because the fat free versions taste like garbage), but considering I am about to be living in a hotel for a month then venturing back to North Carolina I didn't want to buy another bottle of salad dressing.  So I had a spin-off of a Greek salad with the chicken cut up on the side.  I ate the chicken cold because I am not a huge fan of chicken warmed in the microwave. 

 

I also wanted to make dinner Friday night and I found another recipe on Reservation for two that I only had to buy minimal ingredients for.  I used what I had and adapted some to my tastes.

 

Veggie Hot Pockets:

(adapted from reservation for two)

1/2 can cream of chicken soup

1 cup mixed veggies of choice (if using frozen thaw them before use)

1/4 cup shredded cheddar cheese

salt and pepper

4 crescent rolls (I splurged and used regular crescents because they were the only ones that came in a pack of 4 and only 10 more calories each than the reduced fat)

(**the original recipe calls for 1 tbsp of onion, but I didn't have i so I left it out)

 

Preheat oven to 375.  

Mix the cream of chicken soup, veggies, cheese, salt, and pepper together.  

Take 2 crescent rolls and mash them together so they form a big rectangle (FYI I should have smoothed them out/stretched it a little to make the rectangle bigger).  

Place 1/2 of the mixture in the middle of the crescents and fold over the ends making sure to seal off the sides to make something that looks like a hot pocket.  

Repeat with the remaining crescent rolls and veggie filling.  

Bake 15 minutes or until the rolls are golden brown.  

I enjoyed this yummy "healthified" hot pocket with 1 cup of spaghetti squash.

 

 

**A few points I would like to make on the veggie hot pockets:

The next time I make this I will use less cream of chicken soup because it seemed to over power the veggies in the hot pockets

I used a shredded Mexican variety cheese because that is what I had on hand and it was delicious

These were wonderful right out of the oven, but unfortunately for dinner the next night it didn't heat up amazingly well.  In the future I will go ahead and make the veggie mixture, but bake the hot pocket on the night I will eat it.