A few weeks ago, on my "me" weekend, I cooked a bunch of quinoa and stuck it in the freezer for just such an occasion when I wanted something different and didn't want to wait for the quinoa to cook. This was the perfect opportunity to use it. Surprisingly, I didn't need to buy anything. I had everything on-hand for once. Shocking, I know.
This was super easy to make. Basically, just dump all the ingredients in a bowl, mix them up, put in a casserole dish and bake until it's heated through and the cheese is melted. I had to cook chicken breast ahead of time to make this, but I was planning on cooking a package of it anyway. I just used a couple breasts for this, and then packed the rest away for lunches during the week. You could definitely use a store-bought rotisserie chicken if you want it even faster.
It tasted great, although quinoa and BBQ sauce together seemed a bit strange at first. It was more of a texture thing, though.
I will say that this is NOT light on calories or carbs, BUT it's got a lot of protein. And it's not pasta, which is something I'm supposed to stay away from. Plus, it's much more interesting than boring old pasta. I put the recipe into My Fitness Pal and it came out to more than 600 calories per serving. But that assumes 6 servings. A weight loss surgery patient is going to get at least double that. I changed it to twelve servings and it comes out to 337 calories, 15g fat, 31g carbs (!), 12g sugar (from the BBQ sauce) and 21g protein (!!). I'm guessing you could probably squeak out another couple servings if you wanted to, which would lower the calories more. Or you could maybe cut back on the quinoa or cheese a bit.
I forgot to take the picture before we dug into it. As you can see, I used quite a bit of cheese.
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