Virgin Active Wellness Wednesday: Healthy Entertaining

I'm having a couple of girls over for dinner tonight and I will be cooking something tasty. We are all relatively healthy and we prefer to eat meals that are made up of veggies and lean protein rather than starch and cream as much as possible, so I'm going to be cooking my new favourite meal to prepare: Grilled Lemon & Thyme Chicken Breasts with Raw Courgette Salad. This meal is light and super easy and everyone likes it. I've cooked it twice now so I'm positive that it's a hit.

Unfortunately, I haven't actually taken any pictures of it, so I had to find a picture of chicken breasts on the internet which is not actually as easy as it sounds. Not all chickens have a photographic set of breasts. For the sake of aesthetics I like to include at least one image in a post, so I stole the above one from this site. Sorry about that. I promise I will take some pictures tonight and come back and edit this post.

ANYWAY, back to my delicious recipe. To feed four people, you will need the following:

4-6 organic chicken breasts
4 lemons
2 cloves of garlic
good quality olive oil
a punnet of courgettes
a punnet of mushrooms
loads of fresh tyme
salt & pepper

What to do:

Pre-heat the oven to 200 degrees.

Strip the little leaves off the thyme and bruise it by bashing it up with a rolling pin or something. Zest your lemons and add it to the abused thyme leaves. Juice your lemons and add the juice. Crush your garlic and add to the mix. Whisk in lots of olive oil and add salt and pepper.

Line a pyrex dish with foil and drizzle with olive oil. Lay your chicken breasts down and pour half the mixture over the chicken. Fold the foil at the edges so that the steam stays inside the foil pocket. Place in the oven.

Using a vegetable peeler, thinly slice your courgettes into pretty green and white ribbons. Slice your mushrooms very thinly and add them to the courgettes. Pour the rest of your dressing over the salad and mix well.

Cook the chicken for about 35-40 minutes and serve hot, on top of a bed of the courgette salad. So tasty!

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