Mediterranean Chicken

If I can create my own pasta dish or pizza it will include most of the ingredients of this recipe. The other night I made a quick pasta salad as a side dish to something we were having, it had pasta, tomatoes, cucumbers, red onions and black olives tossed with feta and some Italian dressing. While my husband was eating it he said "this would really be good with some artichoke hearts or some hearts of palm in it", I almost choked! You see, that sounds amazing to me, but I couldn't believe he was saying that! When I first met my Jeremy he was happy to eat a burger and fries or a steak and mashed potatoes everyday. He has probably added about 100 foods to his dining repertoire since we met 12 years ago. And if you ever told me he would ask for artichoke hearts or heart of palm I would have said you were crazy!

After that request I had to get busy, I came up with last week and it was so yummy, so healthy and it was eaten all gone by everyone in my house!

Ingredients:
1 pound of thin sliced chicken breast
1 small red onion, sliced
1 red bell pepper, sliced
20 grape tomatoes, halved
1 can large black olives, pitted, whole
1 can quartered artichoke hearts, drained
2 T fresh parsley
2 cloves of fresh garlic, minced
1 T olive oil
1/4 cup feta cheese
2 T butter, cut in 8 cubes
Salt and Fresh cracked pepper
Several shakes of Garlic & Onion seasoning

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Spray baking dish with non-stick spray. Clean chicken and lay evenly at the bottom of your baking dish and season with salt, pepper, garlic and onion seasoning. You could use any type of dry Greek seasoning that you may have. Just shake it on, don't be scared!

Place baking dish in the oven for about 20 minutes. While that is baking, mix your vegetables together in a mixing bowl, tomatoes, onion, bell pepper, olives, garlic, artichoke hearts and fresh parsley. Gently toss them with the olive oil and more salt and pepper to taste, don't over do it here with the salt and pepper since you already seasoned your chicken. Set your veggies aside until your chicken is cooked. Then pull the chicken out of the oven.

Add your veggies on top and then put back in the oven for about 15 minutes.

If you want to serve this on top of pasta, now is the time to cook your pasta to al dente! I served it to my family over penne pasta. Once the chicken and vegetables are done you can remove from the oven and dish out onto the cooked pasta. At this point you add your butter randomly on top and very gently stir, the tomatoes are delicate at this point and if you want them to hold their shape you can't jostle them too much. Top with the feta and serve right away!

Weight Watcher Friends: This is so yummy! You will love this one! I did not eat mine over pasta I took my serving 1 chicken breast and 1.5 cups of the vegetables and put it on my plate before I added the butter and I put my own feta on mine 1 T. This way I kept it to 6 points for the meal. It was delicious!