Baked Lemon Garlic Tilapia with Spinach and Tomato Rice

     In my pursuit to find simple, fairly cheap, and healthy week day dinners, I have found that my two favorite proteins are chicken and tilapia.  Both are easy to find in any grocery store and both are easy to cook.  Fish is not as versatile as chicken but with simple ingredients it is a great week night dinner option.  Here's an easy recipe I came up with a while ago to incorporate tilapia in our weekly recipe rotation.  We have this dinner once a week!

     I also included a spinach and tomato brown rice side dish.  This recipe came from a cleanse we did and I only had certain ("clean") ingredients to work with.  Surprisingly, this recipe was amazing and became a regular, eve outside the dreaded cleanse.  :)

Lemon Garlic Tilapia

Ingredients:

Tilapia fillets, about 4 oz each (I buy the individually wrapped frozen fillets and thaw during the day)

Unsalted sweet cream stick butter, 1/2 tablespoon per fillet

Minced garlic, one teaspoon per fillet (You can use garlic powder but the fresh is much better)

Lemon juice, to taste (I use the bottled lemon juice, I would say you need the juice of one whole lemon)

Salt and pepper, to taste

Directions:

     Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Lay your tilapia fillets out on a greased cookie sheet.  Sprinkle your salt and pepper first.  Squeeze lemon juice to cover the top of your fillets.  Spread the garlic over the top of each fillet.  I use my finger to make sure the garlic covers all of the fish and not just in one spot.  Place your butter pad in the center of each fillet.  Bake for about 20 minutes.  The fish is done when it flakes.  To check, I take a fork and scrape.

Before the oven...

Spinach and Tomato Brown Rice

Ingredients:

1 cup baby spinach, chopped

1 cup or one whole large tomato, diced (I prefer beefsteak tomatoes...Cherry or grape tomatoes are really good too)

2 cups cooked whole grain brown rice (Cook according to package...I always use low sodium, fat free chicken broth as my cooking liquid but you could use water)

1 tablespoon dried oregano

Salt and pepper, to taste

Directions:

     While your rice is still warm from cooking, mix everything together!  That's it :)  I usually add some hot sauce, but that's up to you!