Simple Weekday Quesadillas

Something I’ve learned over the past few months is that my weeknights at home are few and far between. Even though I finish work between 4:30 and 5 p.m. every day, by the time I factor in my commute, walking my pup and scheduling exercise, there is little time left over for cooking dinner. Enter the need for quick, simple and healthy weeknight dinners. This week, I tweaked a chicken recipe from Ricardo Cuisine for quesadillas and was quite pleased with the final product. Besides, there’s nothing better than Mexican, am I right?

What you’ll Need:

• Tortillas of your choosing (I picked small, whole grain)
• Shredded chicken breast (1 breast made 3 quesadillas)
• Shredded cheese of your choosing (I used Tex-Mex)
• Diced veggies of your choosing (I had green pepper and tomatoes kicking around)
• Oil or cooking spray

The nice thing about quesadillas is that they are so simple. Often in my household, we’ll cook up a bunch of chicken breasts at the start of the week so that we have it ready to add in to salads or use it in other recipes. This step saved me from having to cook the chicken, which would have added time to the whole process.

I sprayed my medium saucepan with cooking spray and set the heat to medium. I laid my first tortilla in the pan and layered shredded chicken, cheese and veggies. I placed the second tortilla on top. I let the quesadilla cook for about 3-4 minutes on each side.

The best thing about quesadillas (in my opinion) is the side sauces that go with them. Disclaimer: I am a sauce person. Everything is made better with a good sauce to dip. I didn’t have any avocados at home, so I skipped on the guac this time around, but I did have fresh salsa and sour cream. The whole process, from start to finish took about 25 minutes (10 minutes of prep and 15 minutes of cook time). This gave me two quesadillas for our dinner and one for tomorrow’s lunch…you’re welcome, future me.