What We Ate and Loved this Week

A new blog series featuring what we made for meals this week, along with other things we loved. Designed to be a source of recipe or ingredient inspiration. Along with new products, apps, websites, etc that we’ve stumbled upon and want to share.

How We Meal Plan

Sometimes the hardest part about creating a “loose” meal plan is figuring out what to actually make. We try a lot of recipes every week and some are hits while others not so much. We love finding new dishes the family enjoys that fit into our Mediterranean diet lifestyle.

Before we share what we ate this week, we wanted to touch base on how we “meal plan”. Every person will have different ideas in regards to what that means. This is how we view the term and how that works for our family.

• Meal Plan
  • I typically go to the grocery store once a week. The night before, I sit down and loosely plan out what we’ll be having for lunches and dinners during the next week. As I record our meal plan for the week, I create my shopping list at the same time.
  • I use the phrase meal planning loosely because our plan for the week often changes, meals get moved around, sometimes you just gotta order pizza and cross a meal off the list that you don’t feel like making.
  • You can check out more detailed info on our Meal Planning Guide and process

What I don’t Typically Meal Plan

Breakfast is typically pretty routine in our house, so I don’t include it on our meal plan. We always have things like smoothies, eggs, yogurt, cereal, etc. If you are looking to add a lot of value to your daily smoothie, check out this Almond Butter & Blueberry Smoothie.

I don’t meal plan for the kids’ lunches during the school week because they either pack a lunch or buy hot lunch at school. I stock up on fruit, yogurt, sandwich fixings, nuts, etc for lunch packing.

We typically go out to eat or order in on Saturdays. That’s why there isn’t anything listed for that day.

What We Ate this Week – Mediterranean Diet Style

These are the recipes we ended up enjoying this week, based on our weekly meal plan. I put some additional notes onto the ones that were really good!

Sunday –

Lunch – tacos from a local restaurant

Dinner –

• Braised Beef Neck Bones by The Hungry Hutch (we purchased 1/4 of a cow last year and it included neck bones. I had never had/cooked with them before but this recipe was amazing!)
• Sesame and Garlic Edamame
• Steamed White Rice

Monday –

Lunch – Nicoise Salad (from The Mediterranean Diet Made Easy cookbook, affiliate link used so if you purchase from the link I may receive a small commission)

Dinner –

• Turkey, White Bean and Spinach Soup with Greek Salad
• The kids had this Tomato Soup and Grilled Cheese Sandwiches

Tuesday –

Lunch – leftover Nicoise Salad and soup from previous night’s dinner

Dinner –

• Mushrooms and Black Bean Fajitas (similar to this Veggie Sheet Pan Fajita Recipe)
• Caesar salad with this Primal Kitchen Caesar Salad Dressing (a fave!)

Wednesday –

Lunch – leftover fajitas from previous night’s dinner

Dinner –

Wednesday nights always have to be an easy and quick dinner because the kids have gymnastics in the evening.

• Mushroom and Spinach Frittata and leftover Caesar Salad
• The kids has scrambled eggs, yogurt and an apple

Thursday –

Lunch – picked up the Green Goddess Cobb Salad from Panera while out and about

Dinner –

This is leftover night…I pull all the leftovers out of the fridge and everyone just kind of picks and choose what they want to eat. If by some miracle we don’t have any leftovers, then we rely on pantry staples like spaghetti and meatballs.

Friday –

Lunch – Smoked Salmon with Cucumbers and Tomatoes, drizzled with soy sauce, sesame oil and sprinkled with sesame seeds

Dinner –

This Roasted Delicata Squash recipe and Mediterranean Pasta Salad with Quick Green Goddess Dressing

What We Loved this Week

It finally got cooler here in Northern California, so I got really excited about soups! Working on a post about some of our favorite soups and these are ones we loved last season –

• Easy Butternut Squash Soup
• 4 Hearty and Healthy Soup Recipes
• Latin Black Bean Soup

Our weekly visit to the store got us excited for winter squash season too! Trader Joe’s had a cute display of butternut, spaghetti, acorn and delicata squash. Can’t wait to start sharing some squash recipes soon.