Cheese - Jalapenos & Chicken Rollups

If you like some of light, diety cheeses that are out right now, you're gonna eat this up.  And if you're a cheese purist, you'll probably be appalled.

We keep some of the Laughing Cow cheeses in the house to enjoy with crackers or spread on turkey sandwiches.  We had a ton of leftover jalapenos from a prior meal so I decided to give one of the new cream cheese spreads a whirl.

I cut the jalapenos in half long-ways and roasted them in the oven for 10 minutes at 350º.  I bought the Laughing Cow garden vegetable cream cheese wedges.  Spread half a wedge on each roasted jalapeno, topped with some panko, and spritzed with extra virgin olive oil. I roasted them for another 10 minutes and then turned them up to broil until they looked nice and crispy.

I served them with bacon-wrapped fillets, shrimp, & steamed broccoli. A fine meal, if I do say so myself.

They were good!  Like, really good.  Telling you guys about them is making me want one right now.  Just a warning, they were very hot in a spicy way.  If you're not into that level of heat, I'd give the jalapenos an ice bath for a bit before roasting them the first time.

The next cheese-tastic meal started in a similar way - leftover ingredients that needed a plan.

The Hubs had purchased some chicken for a cookout he was going to.  Well, I guess the fellas didn't need his stuff so he requested I cook it up.

I've cooked with chicken tenderloins before but these were super skinny.  So had a hard time figuring out what to do with these suckers.  I mean, they're chicken so you just cook it like chicken.  But I wanted to something more fun.  I had some Weight Watchers Swiss cheese wedges (they were out of Laughing Cow) so I thought I'd just roll up the chicken around them.  It was surprisingly good!  The chicken was so thin that I only used 1/3 a wedge per tenderloin.  Sprinkled them with kosher salt & garlic powder.  I like that crispy "skin" (even with skinless) so I tossed them on my cast iron on a medium-high heat.  Finished in the oven.  Easy breezy...

Cheesy!

They looked sorta like shrimp, right?

Ok.  So I know these aren't particularly innovative.  Chicken, jalapenos, and cheese all go hand in hand.  But I really liked how much lighter these bites were.  All of the cheesy goodness without any cheese guilt.  Yum!