Stuffed Chicken & Hasselback Sweet Potatoes

I'm recently addicted to Pinterest (see my boards here). No more saving links to my favorites and forgetting all about them! Plus, for a visually-driven and organized person such as myself, seeing everything pictured uniformly and in a row is like nirvana.

I have a board devoted primarily to recipes. When I was trying to think of something yummy for dinner a few weeks back, I looked no further than my board for help!

I tried two recipes--the chicken filled with a cream cheese, bacon and parsley mix and the Hasselback Potatoes.

I did make alterations to the chicken recipe. First, I substituted Neufectel for regular cream cheese (half of the fat and much lower in calories...but they taste exactly the same!). Second, I used turkey bacon instead of pork. Finally, I left the onions out (not Cowboy's favorite) and did not wrap these in puff pastry dough. I saved a lot of calories and ended up making this a pretty healthy dish. SO yummy! (See the original recipe here.)

Second, I love sweet potatoes, so when I saw this recipe, I immediately wanted to try it! Essentially, you just slice the potato into thin pieces--but not all the way to the bottom so that everything stays connected! I sliced some fresh garlic and pushed it between the potato wedges, drizzled with olive oil and topped with a sprinkle of salt. It did take a long time to bake (about as long as if you were making a regular baked potato), so make sure to start that early!
This was Cowboy's send-off and "good luck" meal before he left town to take the USMLE Step One. We'll find out soon what his test scores were and whether or not this meal made him any smarter! ;)