#halftheplate

I have a ton of food photos. Maybe some of these will give you some meal inspo! Warning: there are a lot of salads.

Have you heard of the #halftheplate challenge? It’s easy peasy if you love veggies. The idea is to make half of your plate (at whatever meal) comprised of fruit and vegetables. The one hard one is breakfast, but spring and summer should make it easier if you are into juice and/or smoothies. They’re basically all fruit anyway, so you’ll hardly notice some greens thrown in…and then boom, you get a massive flood of nutrients to your bod. Win win!

Here, I managed to stick to half of my pizza and pile the other 50% of the plate with a simple salad.

And I really and truly mean simple. All it had was leaf lettuce and balsamic vinaigrette and the kids loved it. We all did.

I made banana bread with my G-ma’s loaf pan 🙂

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It made me super happy, although funny enough, she basically cooked NEVER so I’m probably the first to use it in over 50 years. Ha! For a woman who grew up on a farm, I find it amusing that the second she had to shop feeding a family she quit cooking altogether.

I served it with cuties, so it probably wasn’t quiiiiite #halftheplate but with the bananas making up most of the quickbread recipe it was close enough.

The kids asked for chili and lucky me, I ACTUALLY had all the stuff to make it! It was simple enough with the instant pot, so within the hour they were eating a vegan chili with Lightlife ground “meat”, black beans, and quinoa. Since it was entirely plant based, I don’t really think it matters that the only veggies in it were garlic, onions, and tomatoes.

Remember how I made all those roasted veggies last weekend? This harvest bowl was the perfect way to use them.

Leaf lettuce
Balsamic vinaigrette
Roasted butternut, rutabaga, carrots, and sweet potatoes
Roasted broccoli and cauliflower
Candied walnuts
Avocado

DREAMYYYYY.

Oh, hey, more leftovers from I-don’t-remember-when. The cabbage had a miso soy sauce, which I served with quinoa and then topped in roasted almonds. Pretty sure I blogged about this original meal at one point, but I don’t know when…it’s been quite a cabbage filled Winter. 😉

I got this shortie yeti mug for Christmas from a friend and it is perfect because unlike our regular mugs, it fits under the espresso machine so I can make the coffee right into the mug I drink it out of. And it stays warm.

I had fresh basil, soooo Thai salad!

Kale
Thai sesame dressing
Fresh basil
Roasted sweet potatoes
Avocado
Peanuts

Well over #halftheplate with this one.

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Most of the time I give the kids awesome well balanced (read: planned out) lunches, but sometimes I blink and it’s 11:30 and I have to go pick everyone up and so I throw together THE MOST random meals.

There weren’t enough potatoes, so that’s why I turned to the rice and tofu. And then I added nooch and tamari because, as it turns out, my kids’ taste buds are the same as mine circa 2010.

Some might call this a squash problem.

I found an easy solution though…

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Stuffed spaghetti squash bowls!

Kyle likes these meals a bunch too, which is AWESOME because that means each half has a happy mouth to make it’s home!

I used a TON of sun dried tomatoes. Both in the squash bowl as well as sautéed with the shrimp.

I scooped as much of the seasoned oil into them as well.

And then added some pecorino romano on top too.

Way more than #halftheplate with this guy.

I brought a huge container of my beloved brown rice salad home from WF last time I visited my parents. It provided three days’ worth of lunches because I added more kale and avo to it on the last day.

Even stretched as a salad topper, this multi-grain blend is outstanding.

More of the same kale, sweet potato, almond, avo blend with Nugget’s fantastic Thai sesame dressing.

I followed that lunch with a bunch of these coconut cashews because I wasn’t quite full enough. They are insanely addictive and next thing I knew the jar was half empty rather than half full. Dangerous. Very dangerous. I got them at TJs, FYI. The plastic bags are a major deterrent nowadays, but sometimes travel situations mean you have to lower your standards ever so slightly. I can (and do) make myself crazy with my all-or-none mentality, but I’m trying super hard to cut myself some slack for times that I’m packing for our family on the road and don’t have access to bulk bins and/or my own glass containers.

This Waldorf salad was a favorite. It’s a take on this recipe, which I’ve made a couple of times before. I made a few swaps though, namely adding chicken so it would hold us all over.

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I also nixed the apples and dried cranberries and used grapes instead (because we had grapes already and traditional Waldorf salads are with grapes).

Waldorf Salad

Ingredients:

• 1 large head green/red leaf lettuce
• 1 cup walnuts, toasted
• 1 cup chopped celery
• 1 cup halved red grapes
• 2 chicken breasts, diced

Dressing:

• 1/3 cup mayonnaise
• 2-3 tbsp water (depending on how thin you want the dressing)
• 1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
• 2 tsp dijon mustard
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp pepper

Directions:

Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Bake the chicken in a greased dish covered in foil for ~30 minutes or until done.

Meanwhile chop the greens, celery and grapes and make the dressing.

Once the chicken is done, increase the oven to 400.

Place the raw walnuts on a baking sheet and toast them for 8-10 minutes. Keep an eye on them!

Dice the chicken and toss everything together with the dressing.

It’s a really simple recipe, but you’d never know from how good it tastes.

Omitting the chicken and using vegan mayo makes it veg friendly too, although you may want to add a French roll or cornbread on the side. But #halftheplate is easily veggies no matter how you serve it, thanks to the greens, celery and grapes.