What We Ate & Loved – Mediterranean Diet Meals Wk 6

Finding recipe inspiration or meal ideas can be the hardest part of trying to maintain a healthier lifestyle. Our weekly What We Ate & Loved Series is designed to help! Every week we share our family’s Mediterranean diet meals, including recipe links to dishes we ate and loved.

Check out our previous weekly Mediterranean Diet Meals and Menus here –

• 1st Week
• 2nd Week
• 3rd Week
• 4th Week
• 5th Week

How We Meal Plan

We go more in depth on how we go about planning meals in this post – Meal Planning Guide but just to quickly summarize – 

• Breakfast is usually pretty standard in our house so I don’t include it on our meal plan list
• My kids either bring a bagged lunch or buy hot lunch at school so I only meal plan for my lunch (and my husband if he is working from home that day)
• I include notes on some days to indicate if the meal is something we have to make quickly, on the go, etc. This really helps when it comes to planning meals and buying food to know our schedule in advance. 
• On Saturdays we typically eat leftovers and eat out for lunch or dinner. I indicate that on the meal plan each week but just in case you were wondering 

Lunch – was at my sister’s house for brunch, so we had cheese, crackers, salami, fruit and flatbread pizza

Dinner – Rigatoni with Brussels Sprouts with Kale Pesto from Camille Styles (so so so good!!!!) We took a shortcut and used already shaved Brussels sprouts and the vegan kale pesto, both from Trader Joe’s. We also had Greek Salad

Lunch – Canned Tuna with arugula, chopped red onion and drizzled with Olive Oil, dried basil, dried oregano, pepper. Hardboiled Egg on Side with leftover vegan kale pesto from previous night

Dinner – Ordered in Sushi (California roll with lemon slices on top, salmon sashimi and steamed edamame). The kids had steamed white rice, edamame and teriyaki chicken

Lunch – Leftover Rigatoni with Pesto from Sunday’s dinner with blueberries on side

Dinner – Stir Fry made with Frozen Cauliflower Rice, a bag of stir fry veggies from Trader Joe’s, tofu and topped with a spicy tahini sauce (honey, coconut aminos, ground ginger, garlic powder, chili sesame oil from trader joes, tahini, and rice wine vinegar). The kids had the same but minus the tofu and just soy sauce instead of the spicy tahini sauce.

Lunch – Green Goddess Cabbage Salad from Baked By Melissa with Cottage Cheese & Blueberries on side (the green goddess dressing is amazing!)

Dinner – Pan Seared Salmon topped with artichoke hearts (from a jar), minced garlic, green olives and capers. Served with Roasted Asparagus and Greek Salad. Kids had the same except the salmon was plain and they had leftover pasta instead of Greek Salad.

Lunch – Hearty Black Bean Soup (from The Mediterranean diet Made Easy cookbook)

Dinner – The Best Grilled Chicken Burger (we didn’t have any burger buns so we just served them on a plate and ate them with a fork), leftover Hearty Black Bean Soup

Lunch – leftovers ( a little bit of soup from last night’s dinner, green goddess salad from Wednesday lunch, and a few random pieces of deli turkey with a slice of cheese)

Dinner – we had friends over for dinner so we had grilled burgers and Caesar salad.

As an appetizer we had this Cheesy Spinach, Artichoke and Bacon Horseradish Dip from The Healthy Epicurean. We also had this Tiramisu Dip from Rachel Cooks and served it on a big platter with fresh strawberries, raspberries, and graham crackers. Both are really good!

Lunch – this was a busy sports day (softball try outs for my daughter went on forever!) so we had leftover strawberries with Greek Yogurt and almonds on top (6 Greek Yogurt Bowl Ideas), Homemade Hummus with crackers and veggies, and a leftover burger from the previous night’s dinner

Dinner – the kids had pizza while we were at a neighbor’s birthday party where we had black beans, rice and fajita style chicken with peppers & onions.

I always love seeing recommendations on products from friends, so I figured it would be fun to share a few things we’ve been loving lately. Sometimes this includes recipes we’ve been loving and other times it’s just random things.

Hanalei Lip Treatment

I get really, really dry lips in the winter and also have extremely sensitive skin so a lot of lip products bother me. I first tried this product in 2019 and have not stopped using it since. It’s made in Hawaii and from a female owned business, which we love.

Vegan Kale, Cashew and Basil Pesto

I used to buy this every single week from Trader Joe’s but then they were out once and I completely forgot about it. I picked it up again recently and used it three separate times this past week and it reminded me how much I love this pesto! It’s so flavorful and convenient. We use it on pasta, chicken, salmon, or even with eggs (hardboiled or tossed into scrambled). Highly recommend.

Tazo Tea

We are almost done with Dry(ish) January and it has reawakened our love of tea in the evenings. These are a few of the flavors we have been loving lately. They have a lot of flavors on their website but we buy most of ours from Trader (they have the best selection in my opinion) or just at Safeway.

You can check out more ideas about what we’ve love to enjoy during dry January here – What We Drink When We Aren’t Drinking.