Tilapia Milanese

I made a bad decision last night. Daniel and I went to the store hungry. And you know what happens when people go to the store hungry? They buy things they shouldn’t. Like a bag of chips. And then they proceed to eat almost the entire bag of chips. Whoopsies.

Meal Food Calories
Breakfast Corn Flakes 100
Almond Milk 30
Lunch Fruit Smoothie 180
Spinach and Fruit Salad 207
Snack Fiber One Chocolate Peanut Butter Brownie 90
Chedder & Sour Cream chips 300
Dinner Another Spinach and Fruit Salad 200
Tilapia Milanese 626
Drink Lambrusco 98
Total 1831

We found a tilapia recipe that sounded good. It’s similar to the Almond Crusted Tilapia procedure-wise, but we needed to go to the store for a few ingredients we didn’t have on hand. That’s when we fell into the trap. We were running out of bread. And this recipe calls for SIX slices of bread! So, unfortunately at the store I go to, the bread aisle is also the chip aisle. And boy was I hungry. We agreed on the cheddar and sour cream which is my favorite! But once we were home we started eating the chips immediately while watching Despicable Me before we started cooking. We got so distracted by chip eating and movie watching that we ate at least half the bag. I roughly estimated how many chips I ate. It was definitely a couple servings (16 chips per serving). But each chip is a different size, so how do you know what’s accurate?!  Oh and if you haven’t watched Despicable Me, you should! It’s so cute! I haven’t even seen the trailer for the new one but if there’s minions in it I will definitely be seeing it.

Ok, so Tilapia Milanese. This recipe calls for 6 oz filets and ours were only 4 oz so I adjusted the calories per serving accordingly. We also ended up using just 3 slices of bread. You pulse the bread in a food processor to make crumbs and I just have a small food processor so only 3 slices fit. It turned out to be plenty to cover our four 4 oz filets so we didn’t need to go down that bread/chip aisle after all! Dang it. We adjusted a few more ingredients so I’m giving you the list of what we actually used but you can click the link for the original ingredients.

Ingredients:

4 4-ounce tilapia fillets
1 1/2 cups skim milk
1 cup all-purpose flour
Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper
2 large eggs
3 slices whole wheat bread (preferrably Sara Lee 45 Cal bread), torn into pieces
1/3 cup fresh parsley leaves
Finely grated zest of 1/2 lemon, plus lemon wedges for serving
4 to 5 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
6 cups baby arugula Arugula is nasty! You can read about my personal experience here and here.

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F. Soak the filets in a bowl with the skim milk and 2 cups ice for 15 minutes. Meanwhile, mix the flour with 1/4 teaspoon each salt and pepper in a shallow dish (I don’t like adding a lot of salt to my recipes so I always reduce it, unless it’s bread! No salt in bread = yucky). Lightly beat the eggs in another dish. Pulse the bread, parsley, and lemon zest a in a food processor until crumbs form, then transfer to a third dish.

Line a baking sheet with foil, set aside. Heat 3 tablespoons of olive oil and and 1 tablespoon of butter in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Remove two fillets from the milk and dredge in the flour, shaking off the excess. Dip in the eggs, then coat with the breadcrumbs, gently pressing to coat both sides. Transfer to skillet and cook until golden, about 3 minutes per side. Then transfer them on to the baking sheet. Repeat with the last two filets, adding the rest of the olive oil and butter.  Once all filets are on the the baking sheet place them in the oven to bake until cooked through, about 8 minutes.

Serve the fish with a lemon wedge.

tilapia milanese

Pretty simple! I loved the lemon zest in the bread crumbs. You could taste it after being cooked but I like a little more lemon so I added a few squeezes of juice to the top of mine. Then we made our second Spinach & Fruit salad for the day to go along with the fish.

As for working out yesterday, I went on a 3.5 mile run with Daniel. I wanted to go another mile but Daniel was really hungry by that point so we called it a day. When I got home I did a lot of stretching and 20 push-ups! My arms were so tired after that. I need to start doing push-ups more often so I get stronger. I was wanting to incorporate more strength training into my workouts but I’ve been too lazy lately. I need to get back to doing the Five Day Workout Plan. Maybe when school starts and I have access to all the weights at the gym I’ll start it up again.

Here’s the links for each day: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5

Anybody try a new fish recipe or incorporate something new into your workouts?

Lazy cooking

So I was pretty lazy yesterday when it came to my meals.

Here’s the break down:

Breakfast:
Cornflakes 100 cal
Almond milk 30 cal

Lunch:
Lean Cuisine Spinach Artichoke Dip with pita bread 200 cal

Snacks:
Fruit Smoothie 152 cal
Watermelon 50 cal

Dinner:
Smart Ones Pizza Minis 270
Velveeta Shells & Cheese 360

Total = 1162 cal

One thing you’ll learn about me is that I LOVE smoothies. It’s how I prefer to consume my fruit because I can get multiple servings into one.

Check out my usual fruit smoothie

smoothie far

I didn’t have blueberries or blackberries this time so it’s not the prettiest color but the taste is amazing.

Here’s what’s in it:

  • 1 banana
  • 5 fresh strawberries
  • A handful of fresh spinach
  • 1 cup almond milk
  • 1 small container of greek yogurt
  • A handful of frozen fruit

smoothie

Delicious!

smoothie close

I love adding greek yogurt to smoothies for the protein.  It’s so good after a great workout.  Yesterday I ended up running a little over 3 miles as my workout.  Running is my go-to for working out but I’ve never been that great at it. In fact, running sucks, but cardio has so many benefits.  Daniel said he’d teach me how to swim better so may I’ll start doing that for cardio.  I can never get the breathing down, I always feel like I’m gasping for air. Any awesome swimmers out there? Feel my envy.

Well for dinner I was left to fend for myself while Daniel was out so I made a quick meal out of Velveeta. I tossed in some chopped tomatoes and didn’t add all the cheese in an effort to make it healthier.

noodles

Sweet and simple. And pretty tasty too!

I hope you all had a happy Independence Day!