healthy mediterranean diet meal plan #2
warm lentils, roasted beets & carrots
Today’s menu is so packed with healthy nutrient-dense ingredients, it’s hard to know where to begin. But truth be told, I have no trouble deciding.
Right after breakfast, I’m going to do a little meal prep by cranking up the oven and roasting the beets and carrots well ahead of time for the lunch recipe that I call winter on a plate.
Beets, carrots and deeply flavored warm lentils dressed in a rich orange maple dressing and dotted with creamy goat cheese and fresh herbs with some roasted hazelnuts scattered about. You can probably hear me murmuring “mmm” between bites.
Someone will no doubt notice that those are chestnuts, not hazelnuts, in the photo and they would be right. But in the course of recipe tasting and testing, the crunch of a toasted hazelnut won out over the creamy texture of chestnuts (apologies to the francophiles among us who just love chestnuts).
But let’s get back to today’s breakfast because it’s the perfect example of what it means to start the day on a healthy note with a little Mediterranean diet balance of protein, healthy fats and carbs.
This year, I’m leaning hard into a new breakfast favorite, “toasts”, where I top a fiber-rich whole grain slice with just about anything tasty and healthy like today’s avocado, poached egg and cherry tomatoes. And if you haven’t mastered poached eggs yet (hint: those eggs really have to be FRESH to hold together), a soft boiled or hard boiled egg are good stand-ins. Or the Spanish celebration of morning, eggs fried in a bit of olive oil for crunchy edge bites.
Today’s snacks celebrate winter seasonal fruits, so make sure to take a few minutes to really savor the juicy sweet crunch of a winter pear paired with a handful of that nutrient-dense superfood, walnuts. And of course, winter is ALL about oranges. Especially here in the Valencia region where little globes of vitamin C are everywhere I look.
To make sure you can ease into the rest of the day, there’s no cooking required until just (literally) 15 minutes before dinner. A super simple side dish of 5-minute couscous, a drained, rinsed, and skinned jar of chickpeas warmed up and tossed with the couscous, 5-minute marinade on the shrimp and grilled asparagus for another 5.
No recipes needed here, but you’ll find some in the menu PDF besides the one I promised you (mostly because I just can’t help myself). When I can, I’ll reach into the archive and include them so that you don’t have to go hunting around. You’ll also find a few tips for ways to stretch this menu into a meal plan that will cover you for a few days.
Please, please pay extra attention to my recipe suggestion for the beet “hummus”. It’s a real winter snack winner. You’re already going to be donning gloves to handle the beets (unless you like pink hands for days), why not make a bunch while you’re “suited” up to enjoy over the next few days?
So pull up a chair, grab a cup or a glass and join me in my Mediterranean kitchen while we work our way from one flavor-packed meal to another.
