mediterranean

Greek Salad with Avocado

This healthy Greek salad with added avocado and an easy-to-make Greek salad dressing is just the right recipe for simple no-cooking eats all summer long.

Sometimes the classics are just what the doctor ordered. Especially when it’s Dr. SummerHasArrived who’s making the house calls.

Now that we’re moving into the dog days of summer after the 4th of July binge, it’s time for us all to clean up our act and binge on clean eating instead of all of the crapola.

Standard-staple recipes in and out of the kitchen are what I’m craving now. You know, the simple stuff. Recipes that let summer’s best ingredients shine.

This Greek salad with avocado is exactly what the doctor ordered. It’s fresh, crunchy, tangy and above all, delicious. It has the basic flavors of a traditional Greek salad but with that extra somethin’ somethin’ to make your Mediterranean heart happy and healthy.

continue to the recipe… about Greek Salad with Avocado

Greek Salad with Chicken

Crisp, crunchy, and fresh with tangy Mediterranean flavor, this Greek salad topped with chicken can be meal prepped ahead for weekday lunches or a light and healthy dinner too.

Lunch. It’s the meal that we all have the best of intentions in planning ahead for, and too often, don’t. Our lack of prep leads to over indulging on more expensive than we budgeted for co-worker lunches, or poor choices at the fast food drive-thru (ummm, suuuuure, I’ll take fries with that.) Or worse, we skip the mid-day meal all together leading to a snack attack of epic proportions as we walk through the after work door.

One thing that’s gotten me through the what-to-eat-for-lunch dilemma is prepping a few fave ingredients for a filling and healthy lunch salad (that works for dinner, too) I know will hold in the fridge the whole week through.

This recipe is a riff on the classic Greek salad and is topped with grilled chicken. The typical Greek and Mediterranean flavors of kalamata olives, tangy feta cheese with crunchy cucumbers are ingredients I crave on a daily basis, with two easy to meal-prep recipes I’ve added in.continue to the recipe… about Greek Salad with Chicken

Mediterranean Grilled Pork Chops with Tomato Salad

A fresh and flavorful Mediterranean tomato salad serves as a salsa when it tops juicy grilled pork chops for a 30-minute, quick and easy dinner or BBQ meal.

It’s finally summer, so who wants to spend all day cooking? Not it. Who’s ready for fast and easy? #raisinghand

One of my favorite secrets to easy, flavorful cooking is to take a basic cooking method and dress it up with a fresh and easy recipe topper. Have you tried my Mediterranean grilled balsamic chicken with olive tapenade? Or marinated flank steak with Asian chimichurri sauce? They’re prime examples of easy to create flavor, just like this fast pork chop recipe you’ll soon be making all summer long.

Does this recipe look somewhat familiar? I hope so! Last week I shared my husband’s mastered and always juicy grilled pork chops plus this recipe for a super simple Mediterranean tomato salad. Today I’m sharing how to make two small tweaks and marry the two.

Together they create one healthy and delicious summer dinner that can be prepped ahead or made on the fly, for a dinner that’s ready in 30 minutes.

This summer is shaping up to be the best flavored yet. Let’s go!

continue to the recipe… about Mediterranean Grilled Pork Chops with Tomato Salad

Mediterranean Tomato Salad

This easy, healthy tomato salad is studded with fresh Mediterranean flavors to eat a simple side salad or a topping for chicken, fish, steak or pork. It goes with everything—it’s like the salad version of The Bachelorette.

Through every stage of my calling as a home cook, my love of tomatoes is one thing that’s never wavered. The other could very possibly be my love of anything and everything with a pucker.

Yep. Pickles, capers, olives, and kisses included.

While this Mediterranean-flavored tomato salad is optimal at the height of summer’s tomato season, it’s lightly brined, bright with lemon goodness makes grocery store tomatoes totally acceptable any time of year.

Summer’s simple salads are calling our names. So what are you waiting for?continue to the recipe… about Mediterranean Tomato Salad

Greek Cobb Salad

This Cobb salad with a twist loads all of my favorite Mediterranean salad ingredients plus the best Greek marinated chicken ever into one savage salad to make a complete, healthy meal in one big bowl.

This Greek Cobb salad is like the Woodstock of salads, bringing so much to one place to deliver peace, love, and joy with a trancelike glow that makes an incredible memory for anyone who experiences it. And just like Woodstock, you too will have wished you’d been there to eat it even if you didn’t.

I heard back from so many of you on my email list where I shared this healthier turkey sausage pasta dinner, when you answered my question, do you want more healthy recipes? The answer was a resounding, YES! like this reply from reader Ann, who wrote:

“Hi I would love any help cooking delicious meals “heart healthy”. I must live a low sodium diet/low fat/etc.., but I miss all the yummy comfort foods I loved. Any help would be appreciated!!”

I admit, this mediterranean Greek Cobb salad may not be everyone’s idea of typical “comfort food”—aka fried, buttered, and gooey-leyed cheesed—but to me, anything that shines with my favorite mediterranean flavors is a comfort to my taste buds—and a whole lot healthier too.continue to the recipe… about Greek Cobb Salad

Greek Salad Dressing

This easy Greek salad dressing with olive oil, red wine vinegar, garlic, and dried herbs is one of my favorites to dress any salad and tastes so much better than store-bought.

Home cooks are too often conditioned to grabbing a bottle of store-bought dressing off the supermarket shelf. Where in reality, making a homemade salad dressing truly couldn’t be easier, takes hardly any skill, and is more economical too.

This traditional Greek salad dressing is a multi-functioning super hero. It’s amazingly good on simple greens and sliced onions for an everyday dinner salad. Or soaked into crisped veggies and tossed with feta in a Greek pasta salad. And it works wonders as a marinade for garbanzo beans, chicken, pork, or to drizzle on grilled vegetables or shrimp.

Honestly my husband’s favorite is simply drizzling it on slices of crisp cucumbers, and I’m partial to marinating blocks of feta in it. Yum.

This is the easy salad dressing that’s about to become a secret weapon to always keep on hand.continue to the recipe… about Greek Salad Dressing

50 Favorite Mediterranean Diet Recipes

The Mediterranean Diet has been named 2019’s diet of the year, and this list of 50 breakfast, lunch, and dinner recipes makes it easy to add more of the Med-inspired lifestyle to your weekly meal plan.

The Best Diet of 2019

Just as we were setting our sights on eating better with the New Year, US News and World Report came out with their standings of the best diets to follow for 2019, and for the first time, the Mediterranean Diet took top honors. CNN reports the diets were ranked on: “how easy it is to follow, its nutritional completeness, its ability to produce short-term and long-term weight loss, its safety and its potential for preventing and managing diabetes and heart disease.”

Unlike many of the trendy, silver bullet diets that are at the bottom of this year’s list and you see everyone jumping through hoops to try (and ultimately bail out on), the Mediterranean diet is a centuries-old lifestyle for long-term health and wellness instead of a quick weight loss fad that never seems to really last.continue to the recipe… about 50 Favorite Mediterranean Diet Recipes

Greek Chicken Gyro Salad

Greek food and especially gyros are one of my favorite kind of meals, but since I’m not much of a fan of lamb, it’s my marinated Greek chicken and chickpeas that adds the protein to this easy Greek gyro style salad with a yogurt tzatziki sauce perfect for a meal prep lunch or dinner.

This Greek gyro chicken salad is one of those types of salads that makes a statement, declaring that Mediterranean dishes are just as good in a bowl as they are stuffed in a pita or grilled on a skewer.

This Greek salad is far from contrived, or uppity, or way too out there. It’s just a good, basic salad that covers all the major food groups. I love that this salad can be prepped ahead for take-to-work or school lunches—proven by my Ali Smudge who is obsessed with it.

On busy weeknights, it makes for a super fast dinner. It’s ready to roll for everyone at to eat together, or parceled out as your peeps filter in for meal time.

Because doesn’t it seem that’s more the case than ever these days?continue to the recipe… about Greek Chicken Gyro Salad

Mediterranean Grilled Balsamic Chicken with Olive Tapenade

A simple marinade with two kinds of balsamic vinegar, fresh herbs, and grainy mustard gives this grilled balsamic chicken topped with an easy olive and sun dried tomato tapenade a classic Mediterranean flavor zing.

This recipe is brought to you by Kroger

It’s no secret that I have a love affair with Mediterranean flavored food, and there’s no better season than summer to really get into exploring all the flavors as a cook and relishing every bite as an eager eater.

From Italian-style Burrata and Heirloom Tomato Caprese Salads to classic Greek Pork Souvlaki and The Best Lebanese Fattoush Salad, summer is the season to take advantage of Mediterranean vegetables in their prime, fresh herbs at their peak, and outdoor grilling techniques that naturally become the dinnertime norm.

This grilled balsamic chicken served with a super-simple-to-make olive and sun dried tomato tapenade is one of my favorite, and easiest gateways to making healthy Mediterranean eating a weekly ritual.

continue to the recipe… about Mediterranean Grilled Balsamic Chicken with Olive Tapenade

Tuscan Tuna and White Bean Salad

Quick and easy to make for lunch or even a light dinner, this healthy Tuscan salad puts high protein front and center with chunks of albacore tuna and white beans tossed with arugula and more Mediterranean flavors.

It’s not every day that a salad wakes me from a dead sleep. But this morning, this one did. Not because I was hungry—because I wasn’t—but because I sleepily woke to the words, sentences, and phrases for this blog post forming in my head.

Why I didn’t write it all down at that moment instead of rolling over and going back to sleep is a choice I’m regretting now.

But this salad? There’s absolutely nothing to regret about this salad, nothing at all.

How to Make a Healthy, No-Mayo Tuna Salad

This easy, all-in-one-meal, tuna salad is made with simple ingredients and pantry staples to create a lunch that’s totally fresh and filling.continue to the recipe… about Tuscan Tuna and White Bean Salad

Mediterranean Chicken Quinoa Bowl with Broccoli and Tomato

Chicken quinoa bowls have staked their healthy claim on quick and easy meal-prep dinners that are flexible enough to mix and match ingredients for take-to-work lunches that never get boring, too.

This quinoa bowl combines what seems to be my ever-lasting, default flavor combo, inspired by Mediterranean flavors ala Donny and Marie: it’s a little bit Italian, and a little bit Greek goddessness. And it all taste good to me.

Over the years I’ve found myself adopting more and more recipes inspired by the Mediterranean diet to my weekly eating plan. I eat more anitoxidant-rich vegetables and fruits (avocado all day!), healthy legumes and whole grains, and loads of fresh herbs. I don’t eat a whole lot of red meat, but chicken, turkey, and EFA-loaded fish like salmon are my friends and olive oil tinged with lemon is one of my favorite flavorings.

And wine. Yes, wine is heart-healthy too.

I’ve known about the heart-healthy benefits of the Mediterranean style of eating ever since my days designing health and wellness magazines, way back when you had to shop for quinoa in specialty health food stores and when my editors made sure I didn’t sound alike a complete goof when I said “kwin-O-aaa” instead of “KEEEN-wa.” Bless their hearts, they were always looking out for me.continue to the recipe… about Mediterranean Chicken Quinoa Bowl with Broccoli and Tomato

Crunchy Green Salad with Dilly Chickpeas and Avocado

There are all kinds of salads. Dinner salads. Main-meal chef salads. Caeser salads. Caprese salads. Fruit salads. Seafood cobb salads. A list of salads you may never have enough days to make. Holy crap, does the salad train ever end??

I for one hope not. Because I am a salad QUEEN!

Thanks tp growing up with my mom’s nightly dinnertime routine, dinner simply can’t start without a crunchy green salad to get it all started with. Mom, you raised these tastebuds right!!!

And for lunch? If you ask me my druthers between a salad, a sandwich, or a burger? I’ll take the salad every.single.time.

Why? Because they’re easy to pull together, super fresh and super delicious, and when you make ’em right like this baby here, they just taste so good. And, they’re perfectly primed to make you summer time swimsuit ready in no time.

And this salad is exactly one of those salads I have for lunch more often than not. It’s one of those that doesn’t take much planning and you can really just pull together depending on what’s in the fridge. In fact, that’s how this salad was born.

If you’ve heard anything about the Mediterranean Diet, you’d know that vegetables and good fats are at its core, with leafy greens, tomatoes, and cucumbers all playing a part and avocados taking center stage.

And I ask, when did avocaodos EVER not take center stage?

The Mediterranean diet, Weight Watchers, and so many more nutrition programs promote the obvious health benefits of proteins that come from fresh fish and protein-packed-veggie-sourced proteins like chickpeas, a staple ingredient in my lunch time salad routine.

That’s why this salad has been—and still is—a staple in my lunch time routine.

And one of the reasons I love it so is there’s no dressing involved, just lemon-flavored olive oil (or olive oil with a squeeze of lemon) and an herby quick marination of the chickpeas with dried dill, garlic, the olive oil (and lemon) for some serious flavor.

If you make this recipe, please let me know! Bookmark this recipe and leave a comment below, or take a photo and tag me on Instagram with #foodiecrusheats.

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Crunchy Green Salad with Dilly Chickpeas and Avocado

I use a lemon-infused olive oil for the dressing on this salad, or instead, you can use extra-virgin olive oil with the juice of 1/2 lemon.

Servings 1 salad

Ingredients

1 cup canned chickpeas drained and rinsed
2 tablespoons lemon-flavored olive oil or regular olive oil with the zest and juice of 1/2 lemon
1 tablespoon dried dill
1/2 clove garlic pressed
1/8 teaspoon kosher salt
1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
3 cups chopped lettuce like red leaf or romaine
1/2 cucumber peeled and sliced
Handful of cherry tomatoes sliced
1/2 avocado cut into chunks
Sliced shallot or red onion
Feta cheese
Fresh basil leaves

Instructions

In a small bowl, mix the chickpeas with the olive oil, dried dill, garlic, and kosher salt and pepper, adjust the seasonings to taste, and set aside.
In a serving bowl, layer the lettuce, chickpeas, tomato, cucumber, avocado, shallot, and feta cheese. Drizzle with more lemon flavored olive oil and season with more salt and pepper and a few torn fresh basil leave and enjoy.

More Salads That Make a Meal

Citrus Shrimp and Avocado Salad (the best for using up leftovers from this shrimp recipe)
Chicken Caesar Salad Recipe
Autumn Cobb Salad
Southwest BBQ Chicken Salad Recipe
Chopped Mexican Kale Salad Recipe
Avocado and Greek Yogurt Chicken Salad (perfect for using up this meal-prepped chicken)
Roasted Beet, Avocado and Goat Cheese Spinach Salad with Chicken
Outrageous Herbacious Mediterranean Chickpea Salad
30 Days of Healthier Salads That Make a Meal

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Slow-Cooker Mediterranean Egg Casserole

This hearty, filling slow cooker egg casserole recipe with Mediterranean flavors, goat cheese, and prosciutto is simple to put together and can be assembled the night before so it’ll cook while you sleep!

This post is in partnership with KraftRecipes.com. As always, thank you for reading and supporting companies I partner with, which allows me to create more unique content and recipes for you. All opinions are always my own.

We can all breathe a collective sigh of relief because the finish line is close. The end of 2016 is drawing near and holiday reverie is slowly slipping from our candy cane-grubbed-grasp.

There’s just one downside to the holidays. Okay, make that two.

The first one is that the holidays eventually come to an end. I’m a Christmas girl so holiday time for me is honestly the most wonderful time of the year.

The second—and the one we need to watch out for the most—is the supreme pressure we put on ourselves to make the holiday perfect. We overcommit, over-extend and over-do. This year I say we cut ourselves a little slack and take an easier way out—especially when it comes to cooking. How? By taking a few shortcuts to create a homemade holiday from the heart.continue to the recipe… about Slow-Cooker Mediterranean Egg Casserole

Chopped Grilled Vegetable Bowl with Farro and #FreshCoastRetreat

This vegetarian Mediterranean bowl is filled with grilled vegetables and farro, then topped with a garlic yogurt sauce, kalamata olives, feta and hummus.

Recipe inspiration comes in many forms. This recipe’s inspiration came from a mish mosh of veggies in my crisper and a trip to Michigan with a mish mosh of food bloggers.

Similarities in my kitchen and in my life never seem to end.

Thanks to my friends Liz of The Lemon Bowl, Dara of Cookin’ Canuck and Phi of Sweet Phi, the hosts of the #FreshCoastRetreat, 16 food bloggers reaped the benefits of connecting with one another, and the inspiration for this healthy, vegetarian, one-bowl meal was picqued.

But before I share more about the retreat, let’s talk about the recipe for this one-bowl meal.continue to the recipe… about Chopped Grilled Vegetable Bowl with Farro and #FreshCoastRetreat

Mediterranean Quinoa Salad

This healthy vegetarian quinoa salad makes for a simple lunch or dinner, thanks to staples like roasted red bell peppers, kalamata olives and feta from your fridge and pantry.

I get that feeling. I look at my watch. Scratch that, I look at the clock on my iPhone—after annoyingly plugging in my 4 number password twice because I have bubblethumbs—and realize, CRAP! It’s lunch!

Now what?

If I’m not going out to lunch with my husband (we’re pretty good at day-dating) you’ll find me in the kitchen adding odds and ends from the pantry and fridge for a cobbled together salad of leftovers, canned beans and anything with a pucker.

Where this salad may have started off without much of a thought in serving up me, myself and I for a one-on-one lunch, it proved its worth in spades when I pulled it out of my recipe hat and made it for a lunch to serve 16 food bloggers.

It’s a good one for that.

continue to the recipe… about Mediterranean Quinoa Salad

Mediterranean Mini Frittatas

Eggs just might be one of those miracle ingredients. You know, the kind that can easily morph into breakfast or brunch then slide onto lunch and slither into brinner. Yep, breakfast + dinner = BRINNER! Bring on the mini fritattas.

If breakfast + dinner = brinner maybe this recipe should be classified as a Brapp.

Breakfast + appetizer = BRAPP? Or a brappetizer? Or perhaps you prefer breaketizer?

Symantics my friends, merely symantics.

The real deal is that these Mediterranean Mini Fritattas will solve any party need. Party for all? These are your deal. Party for one? Sit down—or stretch out—and enjoy an entire muffin tin full.

Bite size and poppable, these babies are seriously addictive. But that isn’t the only reason I’m a fan.

continue to the recipe… about Mediterranean Mini Frittatas

Mediterranean Strata and Friday Faves

Breakfast or dinner, this Mediterranean Strata goes both ways. It’s open minded that way.

When nights turn into days and the list of weekend to-dos include brunch or make ahead lunch or just planning ahead for a different take on dinner for Monday night, I go for egg soaked bread, cheese and some extra additions that create a heavenly meld with aforementioned egg, bread and cheese.

Which pretty much leaves the playing field wide open.

Some people that know me probably think I live on this stuff. Stratas are my standard bring along when I’m asked to bring a breakfast for a baby shower brunch or when I’m on breakfast duty during our yearly girl’s get away weekend. I’m fine by that.

I’ll leave the jello shots to my college roomies who end up with the more technical part of the bargain.

continue to the recipe… about Mediterranean Strata and Friday Faves

mediterranean

Greek Salad with Avocado

Greek Salad with Chicken

Mediterranean Grilled Pork Chops with Tomato Salad

Mediterranean Tomato Salad

Greek Cobb Salad

Greek Salad Dressing

50 Favorite Mediterranean Diet Recipes

The Best Diet of 2019

Greek Chicken Gyro Salad

Mediterranean Grilled Balsamic Chicken with Olive Tapenade

Tuscan Tuna and White Bean Salad

How to Make a Healthy, No-Mayo Tuna Salad

Mediterranean Chicken Quinoa Bowl with Broccoli and Tomato

Crunchy Green Salad with Dilly Chickpeas and Avocado

Crunchy Green Salad with Dilly Chickpeas and Avocado

Ingredients

Instructions

More Salads That Make a Meal

Slow-Cooker Mediterranean Egg Casserole

Chopped Grilled Vegetable Bowl with Farro and #FreshCoastRetreat

Mediterranean Quinoa Salad

Mediterranean Mini Frittatas

Mediterranean Strata and Friday Faves

How to Make the Best Potato Salad

How to Make Classic Macaroni Salad

The Best Greek Chicken Marinade

Fresh and Easy Vietnamese Noodle Salad

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5 Quick and Healthy No-Sweat Simple Meals