-
Greek Lamb and Cabbage Bowls {Paleo, Keto, Gluten-Free, Whole30}
These Greek Lamb and Cabbage Bowls are a simple one-pot weeknight paleo meal, ready in about 15- 20 minutes and loaded with so much Greek-inspired flavor. If you aren’t into lamb, swap in grass-fed ground beef instead, it’s just as delicious.
Most of our favorite weeknight meals aren’t at all glamorous or photo-worthy, many aren’t pretty and often times they are just dishes that I have made up on a whim with what I have on hand and flavors I love, and can be ready quickly. Some become one time things, others become staples. This dish is exactly that.
Born from the flavors I love so much in Pastistio, one of my most favorite classic, Greek comfort foods, these Greek Lamb and Cabbage Bowls have a subtle amount of tomato kissed with cinnamon and a hint of nutmeg. Such an amazing pairing of flavors and truly my version of comfort food. The cabbage makes this a really nice one-pot meal with veggies included. I have also swapped in spinach or other greens for the cabbage in the past.
-
Slow Cooker Shredded Beef – Three Ways {Paleo, Gluten-free}
We have fully entered the season of busy. Easy weeknight meals are one of the things you guys ask for most, and this is also the struggle I see with many of my nutrition clients, simple, approchable meals for the busy work week. So, today I am sharing one of my favorite, simple slow cooker recipes, that comes with 3 different variations, so you won’t get bored. You could literally make this dish every single week as part of your meal planning and mix it up a million different ways.
My favorite thing about each of these recipes are the many varying ways to serve it up:
- lettuce wrapped
- on a salad
- over cauliflower rice (or traditional grains, like quinoa or millet)
- over zucchini noodles
- in any kind of veggie bowl
- filling for tacos, fajitas, burritos or enchiladas with your favorite tortillas
- sandwich
- filling an omelette
- nachos
- add to soups or stews
- stirred into a scramble or frittata
- add to fried rice or fried cauliflower rice
- over ramen noodles
- just spooned straight into your face!
-
Carne Asada Burrito Bowl {gluten-free and paleo-friendly}
With Cinco de Mayo later this week, it felt more than appropriate to share a Mexican-inspired dish to kick this week off right. As someone who loves Mexican food, with a preferred avoidance of corn, beans and most dairy, it can make hitting up a local authentic So Cal taqueria challenging, at best. Burritos are nearly out of the question.
At best I can always hack any Mexican menu and throw together a killer salad with fajita meat or carne asada, a bed of lettuce with the meat and just load up on guacamole or avocado and skip the cheese, sour cream, rice and beans. I generally avoid the tortillas and skip the chips (or pack my own) – but more and more I am finding this isn’t enough. Many restaurants use spice blends and marinades that contain gluten. Going out for Mexican is just not as fun as it should be.
-
Savory Veggie Breakfast Bowls with Herb Olive Oil Drizzle {Paleo-friendly}
So here we are, another recipe on Tasty Yummies where I leave a lot of the decision-making to you guys. I have to say these end of being my favorite recipes, in a lot of ways. It’s not due to a laziness on my part, more, it’s that this has always been my approach to cooking in my own kitchen and to teaching others in their own unique culinary journeys. I always want to give you the tools to make the right decisions for you, your unique desires and/or your dietary needs. My hope is that I can always help to empower you to feel confident in the kitchen, to try new things, to get adventurous and make decisions on the fly and who knows, maybe even jump outside of your comfort zone at times.
Our nutritional needs can vary just as wildly as our fingerprints. This is why I don’t believe in a one-size-fits-all approach to nutrition and eating, it simply can’t work. I don’t believe in slapping a label on my diet, following an arbitrary set of rules and ignoring my body’s intuitive response to food. That said, the fundamentals and foundations that we know to be true, can absolutely be applied across the board, with many little variations along the way. I think this is what I love about food so much, it can be tweaked, the details shifted to suit your needs, cravings, desires and even location – the sky truly is the limit.
-
Greek Lamb Gyro Bowls with Tzatziki
Being away from my family living in California, it has gotten a bit easier with time and there are less and less tears over random moments, holidays, but one of the things I miss most is Sunday dinner as one a big family.
I grew up eating delicious home cooked Greek food. My family, they know their way around the kitchen. Everyone has their specialties and their things. My mom is an incredible baker, while not Greek herself she has mastered Greek desserts and pastries, baklava, koulourakia cookies. My dad is the king of savory, the grill master, the Greek God of souvlaki, marinated grilled leg of lamb, roasted potatoes among many other specialties. Sadly while my dad makes THE best lamb you’ll ever eat, neither he nor anyone else in our family has ever mastered homemade gyro. Whenever my parents serve up gyro, which isn’t super often, it usually comes already prepared and frozen. Meh. It makes me sad that we aren’t making it ourselves. Also sadly, these pre-made gyro meats tend to be very processed and they almost always contains gluten, so naturally I won’t touch them. Short of going to a more traditional shop, cart or restaurant, where they cook the meat traditionally over a spinning spit or rotisserie – it’s impossible to get the real thing, I haven’t had it in many, many years.
Traditional Greek gyro, from what I have read, is made with whole cuts of pork, slowly cooked rotisserie style, and thinly shaved, while Americanized Greek gyro is the pressed, almost sausage-like, thinly sliced minced beef and/or lamb blend. Usually served in a pita, wrap style it is a meal that I never get to eat, yet I still find myself craving it.
I am home in New York right now, with my family, visiting and meeting my brand new nephew Keaton James, born just three weeks ago. As I was preparing for this trip home to Buffalo, I got giddy at the thought of all the homemade Greek food I would be eating. Greek food is my comfort, it’s what I crave at the holidays, when I am homesick or when I come down with a bug. Greek food from a restaurant is just never the same and somehow making a big feast of Greek food at home, just the two of us, while I do it occasionally, it just never tastes the same to me. This is the food best served with a large group of the people you love most. A big Greek feast needs to come with a side of very loud chatter, tons of laughs, stories from back in the day and it needs kids running around the very same living room that my dad ran around as a little kid.
-
Fennel Spinach Soup
While I am very aware that the holidays, for most of us, usually means a bit more sweets than usual, maybe a tad more alcohol and probably a few other less-than-healthy choices, I also kinda resent the idea that we should all relegate ourselves to spending the entire month of January detoxing, cleansing or Whole-whatevering.
Obviously you guys know me and my mission well enough to know that people making healthier choices and mindful lifestyle changes is always something I can get behind no matter the circumstances and in fact, I constantly encourage this. But, I don’t love this idea of post-holiday shame or guilt, that many feel we should suffer, especially after one of the best and most special times of the year. It just isn’t healthy. I also don’t love the idea often promoted every January, that 30 days of “cleansing” is going to change our lives or fix our wrongdoings and come February we can just jump back into the “old ways of eating”. Done and done.
Once again, it’s that balance I so often talk about. It’s the sustainable lifestyle choices and habit-forming, everyday changes that will endure long term and elicit real shifts in our health and overall well-being and vitality, for the long haul. Sure, more veggies and less junk is what we are all doing right now and I am certainly not condemning that, but I will feel no regret for my holiday choices. I make no apologies for the amazing, “nutritionally imperfect” homemade food I enjoyed with my family or those extra few pieces of the dark chocolate candy that my father and I made together (using my great-grandmother’s recipe) – which may have snuck into my suitcase. So what, I had a few cocktails? I also don’t feel even the slightest bit bad about the extra (of course, gluten-free) refined-carbs that seemed to follow me everywhere these past two weeks. None of these choices were really all that bad. I know, simply put, that it cannot and will not undo all the hard work I have done the rest of the year and consuming those things (or more) under the premise that I will “undo” it in the New Year, feels just plain silly to me.
-
Chilled Green Curry Kelp Noodle Bowl
I know for those of you just barely feeling spring trying to force it’s way in, you won’t want to hear about the extreme heat we’ve had in southern California recently. With temperatures in the 90′s, it seems we have skipped right over the spring and jumped right into summer. I have switched from comforting winter soups and stews and roasted veggies to salads and cooler meals.
Soup that isn’t served hot may seem strange, but there are times when it just works and this is definitely one of them. It’s super fast to throw together — no slaving over a stove! — you don’t have to wait around for hours to let it simmer and there is very little prep.
-
Forbidden Rice Spring Veggie Bowls with Tahini Lemon Dressing
To know me, is to know that I get weirdly obsessed with things. Currently I am obsessed with two things, first is my new spiralizer (yes you will see lots of recipes made with it very soon) and secondly, any and all meals that can be served in bowls! As you can imagine the cross-over on these two obsessions is quite high so one is perpetuating the other right now.
Today we are just talking about my love of any and all meals served in a bowl. I am not talking about your traditional soup or salads, though I still love both of those, I am talking more about creative, complete and hearty meals with everything you might possibly need or want, all served in one big bowl.
To me, there is something just so comforting and so appealing about a meal in a bowl. Whether it be a Sprouted Quinoa with a Kale Almond Pesto Bowl, a 30-Minute Sweet Potato and Kale Coconut Curry over rice, a Buddha Bowl with Garlic Turmeric Cashew Cream or just a big ‘ol salad with loads of gorgeous bits and bops from your pantry and fridge. Mostly I find these bowl meals to be an opportunity to cram as much seasonal goodness as I can into one dish and to arrange it in a beautiful color coordinated way that turns it into a work of art.
The other bonus of a bowl meal, is the organized and seemingly planned out way to eat up what you have on hand and to make it appear that it was done with great purpose. I have been known to do that a time or two around here.
