15 Salads to Eat This Summer

Need some new salad recipes to add to your meal plan?! Well I've found some pretty different salads that look yummy but are definitely different!! Take a look at the 15 salads below! What one will you try?!?!

Arugula Salad with Chicken and Black Beans

Sometimes, the simplest salads are the best. Like this hearty 21 Day Fix recipe that has only 5 ingredients and can be made in minutes. Chicken and black beans add protein and fiber, and avocado adds healthy fats to make it a satisfying meal for lunch or dinner. Get the recipe.

Grilled Peach Panzanella

Panzanella is an Italian salad made with crisp, day-old bread that soaks up the juices of tomatoes and dressing. Our version gets luscious sweetness from grilled peaches, which are beautifully ripe right now. Get the recipe.

Spinach Salad with Quinoa, Chickpeas, and Paprika Dressing

This colorful salad is a show-stopper. Make it for your next potluck or picnic, or amaze your family for dinner any night of the week. Quinoa and chickpeas give it a hearty serving of protein, but the stars of the recipe are the piquant paprika dressing and the full cup of torn mint leaves. Once you taste this salad, you’ll want to add mint to all of your salads. Get the recipe.

Spinach and White Bean Salad with Orange and Grapefruit 

Brightly flavored citrus and creamy white beans make a perfect salad for any season. This recipe is light and refreshing for summer, and the orange and grapefruit slices are a real pick-me-up. It makes a great lunch to pack for work. Get the recipe.

Cucumber, Watermelon, and Mango Salad with Mint

Cucumber, watermelon, and mango make this summer salad refreshing and colorful, and chicken adds hearty protein to make it a satisfying meal. Top with as much fresh mint as you like! It’s a great make-ahead salad for a picnic or to pack for lunch. Get the recipe.

Summer Chickpea Salad

This salad of crunchy radishes, juicy cherry tomatoes, mild green onions, avocado, chickpeas, and feta is delicious with or without lettuce. For a different spin, I combined my leftover bean mixture with a can of tuna…and it was a revelation. Get the recipe.

Greek Cucumber Salad

Cucumber and onion go perfectly with salty feta and kalamata olives. Chopped fresh dill is a flavorful finishing touch. Get the recipe.

Orange-Jicama Salad

Jicama makes this salad crunchy and really filling! Soaking the matchstick-sized pieces of jicama in a lime juice and red wine vinegar dressing infuses it with lots of extra flavor. Orange wedges make it bright and refreshing. Get the recipe.

Tuna and White Bean Salad

This delicious tuna and white bean salad with tomatoes and artichoke hearts makes a hearty lunch or dinner thanks to 24 g of protein and 8 g of fiber. Get the recipe.

Watermelon, Feta, and Kalamata Olive Salad

Here is a new take on the popular watermelon and feta salad. Our recipe adds salty kalamata olives and fresh herbs for a surprisingly delicious Mediterranean twist. Get the recipe.

Kale Salad with Turkey Bacon, Egg, and Avocado

Our Social Media Manager came up with what she calls a “breakfast salad.” She topped kale with all of the fixings of a BLAT, and then we went crazy and added a soft-boiled egg and sunflower seeds. The result has become one of my favorites. I love the added crunchiness of the sunflower seeds and turkey bacon with the tenderness of the soft-boiled egg and tomatoes.  Get the recipe.

Fig Salad with Honey-Lemon Dressing

Figs are one of those special summertime treats that should be enjoyed all season long. They add dimension and sweetness to this easy salad. Pile this on top of your favorite lean protein and dig in.   Get the recipe.

Kale Salad with Chicken

This crunchy kale salad with chicken, tomatoes, and sunflower seeds takes just a few minutes to make, so even people with busy schedules can find time to eat this healthy meal. It keeps well in the fridge for several days, so it’s also great for meal prep!  Get the recipe.

Arugula Salad with Peaches and Mozzarella

This recipe is one of my favorite ways to eat the sweet, juicy peaches that are filling the farmers markets right now. Slice them and toss with some peppery arugula, fresh mozzarella, and a drizzling of good balsamic vinegar. Not all balsamic vinegar is created equal, aged balsamic has a sweeter, more complex flavor that makes this salad sing. Get the recipe.

Spinach Salad with Strawberries and Walnuts

Fresh baby spinach is topped with protein-packed chicken, sweet strawberries, and crunchy walnuts. If you have cooked chicken on hand, and a bag of pre-washed spinach, this could be dinner in under 5 minutes. Get the recipe.

From: Beachbody Blog

A Simple Lunch

It's LUNCH time!!
(Okay, so it may be a little late BUT the kiddos just woke up from a very long nap!)

I'm having left overs!!


Last night we had some pretty yummy steak and there was some left over. So I warmed up the left over rice, sautéed some onion and spinach along with some left over green beans and the steak. Put it all together in a bowl and BAM lunch is done AND it's tasty without wasting food!

For those of you on the 21 Day Fix- I used 1 yellow, 1 red and 1 green along with 1 tsp of coconut oil!

It's always easy and simple over here!!

Memorial Day Weekend!

HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND!!!

This weekend is all about remembering all of our fallen solders and is generally accompanied by good food, celebrations and a 3 day weekend. When I was younger, my family would always do huge cookouts and spent time together. Many of my family members served so it was a special weekend for them. Now that we are so far from family, we generally try to get together with some friends or just stay home and do a mini cookout of our own.

As always cookouts and family gatherings brings yummy food that totally doesn't help our diets out! From the mayonnaise pasta and potato salads, the sweet and sour meatballs, baked beans, cheeseburgers. hot dogs and pounds of cookies, pies and chocolate, I get that its so hard to eat well, never mind sticking to your portions! I mean who can resist snacking here and there when the food SMELLS soooooo good!?

This year we decided to make it a little healthier but still just as yummy. Of course it made it easier that we #1 live so far from family so huge cookouts are not available and #2 it has been an extremely RAINY weekend which isn't really suitable for outdoor cookouts anyways. Anyways, one of the things we decided on was Steak Kabobs!!! I love grilled steak and veggies so this is right up my ally.

Picture of our first attempt at Steak Kabobs! It was the
perfect meal and even better as left over the next day!

To start we needed a marinade for the meat! I stumbled upon this recipe on Food.com and it was pretty awesome! You can tweak it to your tastes but make sure you marinade the meat in it for at least 6 hours, overnight is the best :)

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***Beef Kabob Marinade***

Ingredients
Yield 3 1/2 cups

1 1⁄2 cups oil
3⁄4 cup soy sauce (can use low-sodium)
1⁄4 cup Worcestershire sauce
1⁄2 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley or 2 teaspoons dry parsley flakes
1 teaspoon fresh ground black pepper
1⁄2 cup wine vinegar (I used white)
1 -2 tablespoon fresh minced garlic (or to taste, I used 1T)
1⁄3 cup teriyaki sauce
1⁄2 cup honey (do NOT use any substitutions use only honey)
2 small green onions, chopped (optional)


Directions

Put all ingredients except the green onions into a bowl and whisk vigorously for about 30-40 seconds (you can also use a blender!)

Mix in in green onions.

This recipe makes 3-1/2 cups of marinade, but may be stored in the refrigerator tightly covered in a glass container for up to 3 weeks.

*NOTE* marinate the beef, pork or lamb for 8 hours or up to 24 hours chicken up to 8 hours.
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Once we were ready to assemble the kabobs, I just cut up the veggies. We used peppers (all colors), an onion, and whole baby Portobello mushrooms. We chopped them into bigger squares and the mushrooms in half.

Line up of the kabob went something like this:

steak-pepper-onion-mushroom-steak-pepper-onion-mushroom-pepper-steak-onion, pepper, mushroom-steak

START WITH STEAK- END WITH STEAK as my hubby would say :) Can't you tell we are meat eaters here!?!

We ended up bringing these kabobs to our friends house on Saturday and they were a hit!! Juicy and tender and grilled to perfection! It was the perfect way to control portions and get in your vegetables!

PLUS we had left overs so tomorrow night I'll take the meat and veggies off the skewers, heat it up and serve it over brown rice. Simple and easy meal made from our Memorial Day feast :)

Kabobs are awesome, just sayin' :) HAPPY GRILLIN'!!!!!

Meal Planning Tip #1

One of the best things I've ever learned from meal planning is to buy in bulk and individually package single servings. 

I can't even tell you how often Id go into the pantry and grab a few nuts here or there and before long the entire bag would be GONE! I thought a little snacking wouldn't be a big deal but it is. It adds up- all those little one or two pieces can snowball into huge oversized portions and uncontrollable cravings.

I found a way to eliminate that. 

I buy in bulk. It's so much cheaper than buying packages. You can control how much you want and you don't pay the high prices for the company to package it. 

As soon as you get home package individual servings for each day. I know that I can have 10 almonds or 15 pecan halves so that is what I put into the baggies. (To save money I use little containers OR I reuse the plastic baggies if the contents are dry!)

By doing this I can just quickly grab out a bag and eat it. No thinking or counting out how many. When you are hungry the last thing you want to do is wait any longer than you have to. Right?!? Portion out ahead of time and that will be gone! 

This also helps another issue many people, myself included, struggle with. Cravings and the will to stop eating once you have started. For me I would pick at something every time I opened the pantry door. If a package was open it was fair game. By having individual packages it helped my mind to not have a big bag of open nuts or whatever. It created a mindset where I knew once the bag was empty my eating that food was over for the day. The individual bags totally relieved me of overeating. 

Having the correct portion sizes also helps to speed up the cooking and preparing process. Just grab what you need, throw it in a bowl and you are good to go. No fussing with measuring cups or counting. Just put it together and EAT!!

I hope this little meal planning tip has helped you! If you have a different system feel free to share it below!! 

Day Two-- MAX 30!

Up and at it again today!! 

Tabata Power ✔️
Breakfast ✔️

I made a recipe from the Max 30 book and it was yummy! Plus I snuck in a veggie when I normally don't eat them for breakfast! This will be on my weekly meal plan for sure! 

Spinach and Onion Scramble
1 whole egg
4 egg whites
1/2 cup spinach
1/2 cup chopped onions
Pepper
Salt
1 tsp. Olive oil

-Heat oil in a skillet on medium heat.
-In a bowl scramble the eggs; add a pitch of salt and pepper to taste. Set aside.
-Add onions and spinach to hot skillet and cook until onions are soft and spinach is wilted.
-Add eggs and cook until done.

Enjoy!