Category: Meat Fish & Poultry Dinners

MyPlate Bake #4: Greek Turkey Meatballs with Saucy Green Beans and Acorn Squash

The MyPlate Bake: Greek Turkey Meatballs
National Nutrition Month is coming to a close, but we still have time to bite into one more tasty variation on the MyPlate Bake! So far we’ve cranked up the oven for Maple Dijon Chicken with broccoli and potato wedges, Sriracha BBQ Tofu with spiralized zucchini medley and sweet potatoes, and SuperFood Salmon with crispy kale and tiny perfect roasted potatoes. Yeah… the flavorRD household has been eating well this month!

And that’s what this project is really all about: eating well. Life gets crazy and complicated, but it’s so important to make it a priority to take care of our well-being. If I’ve helped even one person to feed themselves good food with a minimum of stress and a maximum of flavor, I consider that a win.

For our last venture into effortlessly balanced one-pan meals, we’re going Greek! This wholesome meal is built on fresh veggies and lean protein, and made irresistible with savory Mediterranean-style flavors. If you’ve already been tuning in for this series, I’m sure you’ve got the hang of this method by now. But let’s take one last time to break down exactly how simple this is…

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MyPlate Bake #3: SuperFood Salmon with Crispy Kale

The MyPlate Bake: SuperFood Salmon
Already have enough recipes for healthy, easy, one-pan, perfectly balanced weeknight dinners? Yeah, I didn’t think so. So here comes variation #3 for my National Nutrition Month series of MyPlate Bakes… and this time, we’re packing some major superfoods! This one-pan-meal is filled to the brim with omega 3’s, leafy greens, antioxidants, fiber, protein, potassium, along with your recommended daily allowance of deliciousness!

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Special Series for National Nutrition Month! Introducing… The MyPlate Bake

The MyPlate Bake: healthy home-cooked dinner for 2. One pan. One hot oven. One hour, start to finish.
March is National Nutrition Month, and it’s prime time for talking up my favorite subject: healthy food, and how to enjoy it!

This year’s theme is “Bite into a Healthy Lifestyle,” and I’m celebrating by biting into an exciting new series of recipes inspired by USDA’s MyPlate. I’m a big fan of the simplicity of this food icon, designed to make it easy to build a healthier diet, one plate at a time. If you ask me, striving to make your plates look more like MyPlate (with half of the real estate covered by fruits and veggies) is one of the most straightforward ways to shift your eating habits to become healthier than ever.

For this recipe series, I’m calling my invention the MyPlate Bake. The concept is to follow the MyPlate formula of 1/2 veggies + 1/4 carbs + 1/4 protein, and roast it all together on a single sheet pan. This results in a healthy home-cooked dinner for two, made from scratch with whole food ingredients, in under an hour (prep and clean-up included). Believe it!

I’ll be updating the blog every week this month with a tasty new variation, so stay tuned! First up is an instant classic that I already know will be a go-to in my kitchen: the Maple Dijon Chicken MyPlate Bake.

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Savory Stuffed Acorn Squash

Fall is taking its sweet time making its way to San Diego. And the infinite scroll on my Pinterest feed just offers too many pages of impeccably styled autumnal foods for my own good. With the allure of cool days and pumpkin-everything, there’s only so much more I can take of ice water and chopped salads for dinner. If you’re in the same boat, I wish I had a better solution than this one: let’s pretend. This week, I suspended my disbelief long enough to fire up the oven and whip up this roasted seasonal squashy treat. So worth it!

The result was savory, satisfying, and absolutely LOADED with nutrition. And while it gives off the vibe of a fancier weekend dinner, this thing is a 40 minute meal! I can hardly think of an easier way to break into the new season and fulfill your hearty home-cooking dreams.

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Spicy Artichoke Pasta

You know those nights when you come home from work, you have no plans for dinner, you haven’t thawed anything from the freezer, and your veggie crisper has seen better days? This is one of my favorite back-pocket recipe when I’m in a Pantry Pinch. All shelf-stable ingredients, fast and easy, satisfying and delicious!

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Mom’s Chicken Cacciatore

After spending a weekend with the family, I felt like my return to apartment life could benefit from some real home cooking. Time for a Mom Recipe, you know? I don’t know if Spring has sprung where you are yet, but even here in southern California the nights are chilly enough to encourage stewy, braise-y dinners. So readers, today you’re lucky enough to learn about one of our most popular family recipes: my mom’s chicken cacciatore.

Cacciatore is Italian for ‘hunter,’ and as I understand it, the idea behind the dish is that hunters are able to pick up wild mushrooms while out in the forest. I don’t claim any real Italian authenticity, but the thing that sets this recipe apart is the sauce. Ohhh, the sauce… It’s tomato-based, but doesn’t really even taste like a tomato sauce. Some kind of magic alchemy goes on between the wine, broth and aromatics that yields something complex, herbaceous, and completely revelatory.

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Baja Fish Burritos

Let’s talk. Today’s phenomenon? Food tasting better when someone else cooks it for you. There are exceptions, of course, but as the star Food Captain of my household, there’s something special about enjoying a meal that was crafted with love by hands that were not my own. There are a lot of factors at play, but I contend that one of the biggest draws is the potential for cooking revelations. Basically, I’m a fan of my cooking, but I know all of my own tricks. I experiment with new things, but every move I make is informed by my tastes and experience. When we’re lucky enough to be at another cook’s mercy, we get to experience food through their skills, their preferences, their history.

This recipe comes from a friend who is a Really Good Cook, who made me the best fish burrito of my life thus far. If you know how many burritos I eat, you’ll know how serious this is (hint: this is pretty serious.)

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Fresh Vietnamese Noodle Bowls

Last summer was my first time eating bún – a refreshing Vietnamese salad of cold noodles, charred meat and crunchy veggies. It was during a week-long trip to San Diego that I took with Grant to make preparations for our cross-country move. 

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Steak and Potato Salad

Man Food… it’s taking over the internet this week! In anticipation of Superbowl Sunday, folks are pulling out all the cheesy, greasy, chicken-wingy stops. While I could never pass for a sports fan, and (real talk) probably can’t even bring myself to watch the game, I can’t pass up a chance to indulge in some good old-fashioned Americana… dietitian-style, naturally. While not exactly football finger food, this salad is my veggie-lover’s take on the meat-and-potatoes movement.

I’ve mentioned before that I don’t eat a ton of meat, and red meat in particular is an infrequent grocery purchase in the flavorRD household. Partly because we find it heavy, and partly due to the expense – especially for the grass-fed beef we prefer. But occasionally, a good dense source of protein and iron (more on that later) is exactly what we need.

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