Meg's Meal Planning

Quinoa

Lemon herb Mediterranean quinoa salad

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Lemon herb quinoa salad combines all the tastes of a fine Mediterranean dish – cucumbers, tomatoes, lemon, and avocados. Served over kale for a delicious and simple dinner. 

Herb mediterranean salad

Mediterranean flavors are my jam lately. What’s not to love!? It’s all simple ingredients that are just good for you! Although if I had my way, I would add a ton of olives! But I know everyone isn’t a fan of them (especially in my house), so I didn’t include them in this recipe. But if you’re a fellow olive lover, feel free to add kalamata or black olives!

This lemon herb quinoa salad is chock full of yummy tomatoes, cucumbers, and avocado. To make sure you stay satisfied and full, it also has quinoa for some protein. All on top of kale! Remember, don’t skip the step where you massage the kale leaves. It sounds strange but really makes a difference.

Lemon mediterranean salad

Lemon herb Mediterranean quinoa salad
 
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Lemon herb quinoa salad combines all the tastes of a Mediterranean dish - cucumbers, tomatoes, lemon, and avocados. Served over kale for a delicious and simple dinner.
Author:
Serves: 1-2
Ingredients
  • ½ cup uncooked quinoa
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • Juice of 1 lemon (1/4 cup fresh squeezed lemon juice)
  • 2 tablespoons water
  • 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
  • 2 tablespoons fresh chopped parsley
  • 2 cloves of garlic, minced
  • Salt and pepper
  • 4 cups of kale, washed and chopped
  • Extra virgin olive oil (for kale)
  • 1 mini cucumber, quartered
  • 1 cup grape tomatoes cut in half
  • ¼ cup red onion, sliced
  • 1 avocado, sliced
Instructions
  1. Prepare quinoa according to package directions.
  2. Meanwhile, make the salad dressing. Whisk together in a small bowl olive oil, lemon juice, water, red wine vinegar, parsley, garlic, salt and pepper. Set aside.
  3. Add kale leaves to a large bowl, drizzle extra virgin olive oil and salt to taste. Massage kale with hands for 1 minute.
  4. Add cucumber, tomatoes, red onion, and avocado to kale. Add in quinoa.
  5. Drizzle lemon herb dressing on top.

 

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Lemon herb mediterranean quinoa salad

Week of August 20th

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Week of Aug 20th

Summertime and the livin’s easy! Right?! Now that summer is winding down, my diet is starting to catch up. When it’s warm outside, I don’t mind sitting on the deck with 1 or 2 glasses of wine, (Rose all day!) or taking an impromptu trip to Tree House Brewing Co. when they are pouring drafts, or getting ice cream for dessert a few nights out of the week. So this week is all about healthy eating – cauliflower rice, quinoa, chicken, shrimp.

Monday – Vegetarian Quinoa Bowl with Roasted Kale, Chickpeas and a Lemon Tahini Dressing

Quinoa for blog

Tuesday – Garlic butter chicken with parmesan cauliflower rice.

keto chicken recipe

Photo by eatwell101

Wednesday – Shrimp tacos with mango salsa

Mango shrimp tacos

Thursday – Enchilada chicken meatballs served over quinoa.

gluten free enchilada chicken meatballs

Photo by Isabel Eats

Friday – Creamy kale and turkey sausage pasta with sun dried tomatoes.

creamy kale and sun dried tomatoes

Vegetarian Quinoa Bowl with Roasted Kale, Chickpeas and a Lemon Tahini Dressing

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This power quinoa bowl is bursting with flavors that your taste buds will love! Roasted kale and chickpeas are mixed with a garlicy lemon tahini dressing and topped with avocado and green onions. 

quinoa with roasted kale

Thursdays have slowly become my favorite day of the week! Crazy right?? But I’m fortunate enough to have Thursdays off from work and they have become my recipe testing, cooking, and food photography day. For countless Thursdays I have created quinoa power bowls for lunch/dinner from whatever I have left in my fridge. This vegetarian quinoa bowl with roasted kale, chickpeas, avocado, and a lemon tahini dressing is definitely in the top five!

Roasted kale chips are probably my all time favorite thing to snack on. My sister and I will clean out my garden and sit around devouring them all day. I’m not even kidding; sometimes we don’t even make it to the couch, we just stand over the tray on top of the stove grabbing handfuls!

quinoa for blog

For this recipe I used homemade roasted kale, but store bought chickpeas. You can use store bought of both or roast both yourself! But the recipe will take longer if you roast chickpeas at home.

Vegetarian Quinoa Bowl with Roasted Kale, Chickpeas and a Lemon Tahini Dressing
 
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This power quinoa bowl is bursting with flavors that your taste buds will love! Roasted kale and chickpeas are mixed with a garlicy lemon tahini dressing and topped with avocado and green onions
Author:
Serves: 1
Ingredients
  • ½ cup uncooked quinoa
  • 3 large kale leaves
  • Olive oil
  • Salt
  • ¼ cup roasted chickpeas
  • ½ avocado, cut into bite size pieces
  • 2 tbsp tahini
  • 2 tbsp water
  • 2 tbsp lemon juice
  • 1½ tbsp olive oil
  • Pepper
  • Pinch of roasted garlic seasoning
  • 1 green onion stalk, diced
Instructions
  1. Cook quinoa according to package directions, set aside to cool.
  2. Meanwhile, preheat oven to 350 degrees. Wash and rip kale leaves into bit size pieces.
  3. Layer on baking sheet, drizzle with olive oil, and salt. Bake about 10 minutes or until browning, tossing halfway through.
  4. Once quinoa has cooled, transfer to a medium size mixing bowl, add in the kale, chickpeas, and avocado.
  5. In small mixing bowl stir together the tahini, water, lemon juice, olive oil, salt, pepper, and roasted garlic seasoning.
  6. Pour dressing over the quinoa mixture and stir together. Top with green onion.

 

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Vegetarian quinoa bowl with roasted chickpeas

Vegetarian Quinoa Bowls with Cilantro Lime Dressing

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This cilantro lime dressing is tangy and just a little sweet. You’ll want to use it on top of everything, like this easy and healthy vegetarian quinoa bowl. 

Quinoa bowl

Finally the weather is getting nice and the only thing my son wants to do when we get home at the end of the day is “PLAY OUTSIDE” as he nicely tells me in his sweet two-year-old voice. I love it; we easily stay out until 6 or 6:30 pm, but just like a typical two year old, he has no patience to let me cook dinner. Insert easy vegetarian quinoa bowl to the rescue!

My favorite part about these quinoa bowls is many of the items can be prepped in advance or cooked a day or two before with another dinner. Having a baked sweet potato another night? Cook an extra one to use in this recipe.

cilantro lime dressing

The cook time for this recipe assumes you already have the sweet potato cooked. If you don’t, remember to allow for an extra 45 minutes for that to bake in the oven or you can cook it in the microwave.

Easy Vegetarian Quinoa Bowls with Cilantro Lime Dressing
 
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Author:
Recipe type: Quinoa Bowl
Cuisine: American
Serves: 2
Ingredients
  • 1 cup uncooked quinoa
  • ½ cup red onion, chopped
  • 1 cup red bell pepper, chopped
  • 1 cup baked sweet potato, cubed
  • 1 cup avocado, diced
  • For the cilantro lime dressing:
  • ½ cup vanilla greek yogurt
  • 6 tbsp mayo
  • 6 tbsp lime juice
  • 3 garlic gloves, minced
  • 1 cup cilantro, chopped
  • Salt and pepper to taste
Instructions
  1. Cook the quinoa according to package directions.
  2. In a large bowl combine the red onion, red bell pepper, sweet potato, and avocado.
  3. In a small bowl combine the greek yogurt, mayo, lime juice, garlic, and cilantro. Season with salt and pepper. Set aside.
  4. Once the quinoa has finished cooking, add it to the large bowl. Then add the cilantro lime dressing. Toss together.

 

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Vegetarian quinoa bowl with cilantro lime dressing