Cilantro-Lime Grilled Chicken with Strawberry-Jalapeño Salsa

I made this recipe this week and even though it's not a Traveling Tuesday recipe I really had to share it! First of all, it was really easy. Which is nice with a toddler running around. And of course, it smelled and tasted fantastic! It was equally approved by Matt and Nicholas alike. :) And I could see this being cooked ahead and used throughout the week for lunch. Let's get started!!!

CILANTRO-LIME GRILLED CHICKEN WITH STRAWBERRY-JALAPENO SALSA
Serves 4

Ingredients:

For the Chicken Marinade
 
2 limes, zested and juiced
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon honey
½ cup fresh cilantro leaves, finely chopped
4 thinly sliced boneless skinless chicken breasts (or regular chicken breasts..just pound them thinner)
Kosher Salt
Coarse Black Pepper

For the Strawberry-Jalapeño Salsa

2 cups diced strawberries
1 jalapeño, seeded and finely chopped
¼ cup plus 1 tablespoon minced red onion
1½ tablespoons finely chopped cilantro
½ lime, juiced
Kosher Salt 

The first thing I did was get everything together to marinate the chicken. I received this particular Microplane/zester as a gift for Christmas (I have two in fact!) and I LOVE LOVE LOVE both of them. They make prep time easier for the ingredients that I use most--zest and garlic. I encourage every cook to have one. Or two. Or three. In any case, zest was gathered. Limes were juiced. And the rest of the marinade came together super fast.


I put everything into a 13x9 glass dish because it was easier to just throw some plastic wrap on it and stick it in the refrigerator once I was done. I whisked together the zest, lime juice, cilantro, and olive oil in the dish. Then I got to work on my chicken! I had to pound the chicken out, since I bought just regular chicken breasts and not the thin cut ones. Each chicken breast took turns in the Ziplock bag and I used my heavy wooden rolling pin to pound them out. I didn't take pictures of this. I apologize. It was chicken-y looking!! And I think we all know what that looks like.

I salted my chicken on both sides once I was done.






I did, however, take pictures of the marinating chicken! In fact, I almost forgot to! Hence the plastic wrap seen in the upper right hand side of the picture. These chicken breasts were so large once I was done flattening them that Matt and I split one in half and Nicholas got half of my half. Pretty gigantic! Haha! But great for leftovers!!!

Anyway, I marinated the chicken for about four to five hours. The recipe says about two at the very least! I say the more time spent marinating the better!!








Once I was done with my afternoon run, I threw the strawberry-jalapeño salsa together. (Fun fact: apparently this phrase "strawberry-jalapeño" is spelled incorrectly and one of the choices, for it to be correct, was strawberry-jalopy. I don't know about you, but that kind of a funny picture in my head!!) This salsa is very easy and super pretty!!











All you have to do is combine the strawberries, jalapeño, cilantro, red onion, lime juice and salt. Easy peasy. Once you have everything mixed together, put some plastic wrap on the bowl and put it into the refrigerator for all the ingredients to get yummy together.

Now we were ready for grilling. I am not very good at grilling, but I think they came out pretty awesome for the most part.

I served the chicken with salad and cous-cous. And of course the salsa. It was delicious. Very flavorful. You could definitely taste the lime in the chicken.

This was not a Cooking Light recipe (surprised?), but I found a similar recipe here and the calorie count was 149 per serving. I also found a similar recipe on the Cooking Light website for Chicken Cutlets with a Strawberry-Avocado salsa and it was 211...and that's with Avocado! So I figured that this dish is most certainly under 250 calories per serving. Probably around the 200 mark--which is great! I love that it was so tasty for leftovers as well. It re-heated well and the salsa...well I could eat that just by itself!!




I found the original recipe here, which was of course on Pinterest. I think there are many versions out there though, which is great because you could honestly make it your own! I think this is a great recipe for the end of summer and to take advantage of the (still) warm days before it gets too chilly. Although the cold hasn't stopped us from grilling. But then again, now we live in Alaska. So. We will see. Ha! Anyway, I hope you have enjoyed this post and I hope you try this recipe out! Let me know if you do!!

Talk soon!!

Howdy from Alaska!

That title sounds funny. :) In any case, we made it to Alaska...in case you were wondering! :) We've been here now for a little over a month and boy was it a crazy one. When I last blogged, I was getting nervous about our drive from Colorado Springs to Anchorage and I can now thankfully say that it went really well!! It was really hard leaving Colorado to be honest. I think it's because so many wonderful things have happened since moving there three years ago and it was just a really great place to be at. It still makes me sad when I think about it--so I try not to.

A little bit about our drive! We started out on the 4th of July and drove from Colorado Springs to Ogden, UT. I'm going to be a little honest with you. It was kind of boring. I will say that at first it was really interesting terrain, but after awhile...kind of boring. I apologize!! In Ogden we stayed at the Hilton Garden Inn which was placed in their downtown area that has been revitalized and was actually a really cute area. If we had had time to look around, it would be been fun to do so. Our hotel was about two blocks down from a gigantic Mormon Temple (seen in the picture there). It was pretty impressive. We took Nicholas swimming in the hotel pool and he loved every minute of it. We also had to sneak our animals in, which was super exciting! That's one thing that we learned well on this trip, as MANY of the hotels that we were staying in were not pet friendly. This was because there were many towns/cities that we had to stay in that quite frankly had one hotel. And I wasn't going to spend the night with the animals in the truck.

An example of Yakima wine country

The next day we drove from Ogden to Yakima, Washington. Again...sorry. Kind of a boring drive. We went through Idaho, Oregon, and into Washington that day. I will say that Oregon had some gorgeous parts and I was super impressed that around the Yakima area there are wineries...everywhere!!!! It looked really crazy because it was desert-y looking and then GREEN vineyards dotted across the landscape. Again, if we had had more time I would have LOVED to have gone on a little wine tasting trip. :)


From Yakima we drove into Seattle which was probably the best drive out of the whole trip because it's only a two and a half hour drive. We stayed at the Homewood Suites there outside of Seattle. We had a lot of fun there. It was a good break from all of the driving. We swam in their pool and explored the city. We went on the Seattle Ducks Tour, which is a tour of the city by land and water! I definitely encourage anyone visiting Seattle to do this. The tour guides are really goofy and they make it really enjoyable. I won't lie, I was pretty nervous when we went into the water haha! But ultimately, we survived (obviously). :) We even were able to see water planes landing and taking off. Nicholas enjoyed seeing the water and I enjoyed holding onto him for dear life to make sure he didn't try to go swimming. We also explored the Market area (very crowded), we did not visit the first Starbucks (the line was really long), but we did go to eat at Kells Irish Restaurant and Pub, which was featured on Ghost Adventures! We did not see a ghost, but we were served by the owner (she was on the episode!) and she gave Nicholas some yummy Irish stew and an Irish Soccer Doll to play with. Our reasoning behind being in Seattle in the first place was that we were dropping my car off to be shipped up to Alaska. So we ended up staying an extra day in Seattle due to the fact that once we were done with our appointment of dropping the car off it was about 11:30/noon-ish and I really didn't feel like driving the next leg of our trip and getting in past midnight. I'm so glad we did this because we were able to just relax.

From Seattle we drove up into Canada which was really pretty! I have only been to Canada when visiting family in New York and we would go to Niagara Falls, so being able to see the other side of Canada (as well as driving all the way up through Canada) was interesting! We started noticing the sunlight disappearing at night when we arrived at Whitehorse in the Yukon Territory and of course dealt with it when we first arrived in Alaska and stayed in Tok (pronounced toke). It's really strange to me that it stays so light for such a long time!! It was baffling that I would look out the window at 9:30 at night and it would look like it was only 3:00 or 4:00 in the afternoon. It definitely took some getting used to especially when the sun would start coming up at 3:00 in the morning. Luckily, now, it's actually getting darker at night and staying darker later. Of course, in a few months it'll be me complaining about how it's so dark all the time...but we will get there when we get there.

We arrived in Anchorage on the 13th of July, as Matt had to report in on the 15th. We went and looked at JBER and creeped by our house to see where we would be living (I say creeped because it was still occupied at that time). On the 14th we went gym hunting. I had already done a lot of research on the gyms up here and one of the major things I wanted was childcare. I really like the idea of being able to drop Nicholas off so he can burn off steam AND he's in the same building as I am. Another thing I wanted was consistency with group fitness classes and I wanted the gym to have something that I was used to (i.e. a class like Body Pump or a class like RPM, which is spinning). The first gym that we went to look at I had seen online and was really excited to see it in person. It's part of a small chain in Anchorage, which I don't mind at all. Unfortunately, it was a little different in person. I didn't get a good feeling and usually my feelings about stuff are pretty spot on. I like to feel like I belong somewhere, as I'm sure everyone does. If I don't get that "at home" feeling, I start to feel uncomfortable. Needless to say, we went back to the hotel and I was super bummed. I knew I could never find a gym like Villa Sport; I had already gotten that thought in my head. I just wanted a gym that I felt comfortable going to. I hopped onto the computer and did some more research. I knew I had seen a gym with Body Pump up here, but it turns out the map was older. However, this led me to discover a gym that I had not initially seen in my searches before. Again, it was a chain up here in Alaska and there ended up being a location down the street from our hotel. We went and checked it out...and signed up that day. :) It's called The Alaska Club and they have several locations around Anchorage. The location that we signed up at was convenient for me because it was literally down the street. They also have a class that is pretty much Body Pump, called Group Power, and a class that is like RPM, which is called R30. I later found out that LesMills (the company that does Body Pump and RPM, along with many other amazing classes) and the company that does Group Power and R30 (and others) were joined at one time. Which makes sense because the choreography is pretty much the same. Or as the one instructor said to me when I told her it was my first time, but I have been doing Body Pump for four years..."It's Coke and Pepsi.." :) While I love my LesMills classes, this is a great alternative when you can't do LesMills. I love group fitness classes. I love the camaraderie that comes with it and I love how they push you to be better. I started going to the location that we signed up on the 15th and had a great time. Unfortunately, I didn't really like the schedule. The summer here means low attendance which means a different schedule. I was finding that the classes were inconsistent (Group Power one day, boot camp another day...). I wanted to have three days of strength training and two days of cardio. So I looked at the other locations and found one closer to post (which made more sense anyways) and the schedule was exactly how I wanted. I started going there about a week and a half after we signed up and have loved it ever since. I know each location is different and each has their quirks, but I will say that I felt more at ease at the new location. The instructors are more friendly, as is the staff, and the best part is that the childcare is great. The location I go to now has a more secure sign in and I feel safer leaving Nicholas there. I still miss my Villa Kids though...I think about that every time I drop him off. *sigh* Oh well. In any case, that was our gym excitement.

We got our keys on July 30th and received our household goods a week later. We are finally starting to get settled. It's been difficult with a Nicholas running around. :) We don't have a basement here, so the basement boxes were put out into the garage. Which is all fine and dandy, except with one of us having to watch Nicholas and the other trying to go through boxes it gets a little crazy. This next weekend we are going to be bringing the boxes in finally and storing them in the provided storage closets we have built into the house. We will be storing some things with the Army as well. We can't touch it until we move, so we are making sure it's stuff we 100% don't need. All in all though we have settled in, for the most part, quite well! Matt's job is slower paced which is nice. He is able to come home for lunch and come home at a normal time. We get to do an afternoon run together too! I really enjoy that. :) This weekend we are looking forward to the new Ghost Adventures season (Season 11). I decided I wanted to do something fun for dinner on Saturday for it. I wanted to do this last season premiere, but....Grad School. Yep. Anyway. It's kind of silly, but I have planned a few appetizers based on each guy's first name. So far I'm making (Baked) Zucchini Sticks with Marinara Sauce (for Zak Bagans), (Skinny) Artichoke Dip (for Aaron Goodwin), and (Skinny) Jalapeno Poppers (for Jay Wasley). I know you probably don't know those names, but there you go! :) It should be fun and the recipes are healthy...so we won't feel bad indulging a little bit. I still need to come up with one more for Billy Tolley, but I'm sure I'll figure it out. I hope to blog about it for next week and include pictures as well!

Well I've already typed WAY too much...so I will end here. I have a lot of recipes saved up, even ones that aren't a part of Traveling Tuesdays, as well as an idea for Mondays--so be on the look-out for that! Thanks for reading and we will chat soon!!