Guest Post: greek salad recipe

We're wrapping up the week of guest posts with one of my oldest friends, Aubrey. And she's got a great recipe for one of my favorite foods: greek salad. So I hope you enjoy her post as much as I do. 
HI! I'm Aubrey and you can find me over at The Found Life. I love the Lord, I am married to the best man I've ever known and we have two fur kids - a dog, Hubble, and a cat, Phoebe who make our days more interesting! I am pluviophile, and a lover of weird words like that. I am a wedding and lifestyle photographer in Northern Nevada. I've known Lauren for years and years! We met when we were in middle school when we were both living in Germany! I can remember plenty of sleep overs and days of laughter and fun with this sweet girl! She is kind, so nurturing, and encouraging! She is beautiful inside and out and has such a fun laugh! Thankfully over the years we have kept in touch, and I am so thankful for our friendship, and the fact that we can call each other and just cry and pray together! I recently just got back into blogging (on the personal side), so I want to give a huge thanks to Lauren for letting me take over her blog today!


I love to eat (who doesn't!?) but I am a very picky eater, the flavor and texture has to be just right and sadly for me, a lot of what is healthy has either a weird texture or flavor to me. So because I am so picky, when I find a healthy recipe that I love I get super excited! So I wanted to share a recipe for Greek Salad with y'all that I absolutely love!! I am not a chef by any means, but I enjoy cooking (I'll let you clean up any day though!!) and making things my own so I don't follow the recipe too strictly and you can feel free to modify it to fit your own taste.

Greek Salad with Herbed Pita

serves 4

Ingredients:

• Lemon juice, from 1 lemon
• Garlic, 1 clove, minced
• Freshly ground pepper
• Olive oil, 1/4 cup, plus 2 tablespoons
• Pita bread, 4 rounds
• Italian seasoning, 1/2 teaspoon
• Your favorite salad mixture
• Cucumber, 1 half-whole
• Grape tomatoes, as many as you want
• Olives, black
• Feta cheese
• Green onions, 8, thinly sliced, optional
• Green bell pepper, 1/3, optional
• Red onion, as much as you want, optional

1. Make the vinaigrette:

In a large bowl, whisk together the lemon juice, garlic, and a generous amount of pepper. Gradually whisk in the 1/4 cup of oil until smooth.

*I'm not sure if there is a reason for not mixing all the ingredients together or not, so I just throw them all in the bowl and whisk them together, none of that gradually mixing stuff... :)

2. Warm the pita:

Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C). Cut each pita into 4 wedges. Arrange on a baking sheet and brush both sides with the 2 tablespoons oil. Sprinkle with the italian seasoning and place in the oven to warm for about 10 minutes.

*I enjoy the pita just a little bit crunchier so I tend to leave it in for a few extra minutes, or if you are running short on time, you can up the temp to 325°F (165°C).

3. Assemble the salad:

Meanwhile, add the lettuce, cucumber, tomatoes, green onions, green bell pepper to the vinaigrette and toss to coat evenly. Arrange on plates and top with the olives, and feta. Place the warm pita wedges alongside the salads and serve.

*I always cut the wrong amount of the vegetables to add in, so I usually cut them all right before I add them in and like I said up above, feel free to add as many as you want of everything. Cut everything how you like to cut them. I like the cucumbers cut smaller and I usually cut them into 4 pieces and for the tomatoes I prefer cutting them into multiple slices because the pop of the grape tomato when you bite into it (even when cut in half)  is too much for this picky eater.

Guest Post: Meal Prep

Morning friends, Today one of my best friends is taking over my space. I will definitely be trying out some of her tips and tricks. Thanks for being here today T.

{picking my own green beans... apparently they do grow vegetables in Arizona!}

Hello! I'm Tera and today I will be talking to you all about meal prep and planning. A big thanks to Lauren for letting me take over her blog for today. When she asked me a while ago if I wanted to guest post I was super excited but felt I didn't have anything to write about. I got to thinking and realized I love reading blog posts about meal planning and prep and I've learned a lot about it in the past year, so why not write about that?

{grocery list for the week}

A little over a year ago I moved from just outside of DC where I was a half mile from a grocery store, a mile from my office and a 5 minute drive from almost everything else I needed on a daily basis to a small town in Arizona with just a Walgreens and a Dairy Queen. In addition to that I also commute 60 miles one way to and from work. Somehow in that hour commute I don't even pass a grocery store. If I forget something for dinner one night (unless it is a lime - the gas station I pass carries those) I'm pretty much out of luck without adding an hour or so on to my drive home. I love eating healthy and being active but having so much less time was making that difficult. Between that and having less time in the mornings and evening to make meals I pretty quickly came to the realization that planning out my meals for the week and grocery shopping really efficiently on Sundays is what needed to happen.

Now I have a good routine that helps me pack my breakfasts and lunches to eat at work and get dinner on the table every night at a reasonable time. The routine is pretty basic but it seems to work for us. I read blogs and browse Pinterest regularly for meal ideas and always try to use fresh ingredients and keep processed foods to a minimum. Having staple meals and a few new ones each week handy is helpful when planning out our week. It all starts with my CSA farm box (a weekly box of fruits and veggies I get from a local farm). By Wednesday at midnight I need to have my order placed. The produce isn't necessarily the same every week so I order what looks good to me and use that as the basis for our weekly meal plan. Based on what I know I have coming in the farm box I start to put together a meal plan for the week and a grocery list on my iPhone usually on Thursday but definitely by Sunday when I go to the grocery store.

Some typical meals we have are chicken and bean bake, tacos, spaghetti squash or a crockpot meal. We also throw in a night or two of going out and usually I try one new dish a week. Once I have the list in place I look through the recipes to see what I can prep on Sunday once I get home from the grocery store. I always make hard boiled eggs for snacks at work, homemade almond milk for my oatmeal and try and prep other items for lunches and dinners ahead of time. For example, with the chicken and bean bake I can get everything chopped and seasoned and put it in the refrigerator in a baking dish covered with plastic wrap so I just need to throw it in the oven when I get home from work. I can usually also prepare a crockpot meal in the crockpot dish and put that in the refrigerator. Spaghetti squash and other veggies (like sweet potatoes or beets!) can also be baked in advance since those take 45 minutes to an hour to bake. Some other things I have made ahead are: brown rice or quinoa, baking muffins for the hubby's breakfast, putting together fruits and veggies in individual baggies for smoothies, chopping up veggies or making salads and homemade dressing for the week, making homemade nut butter or whole wheat pizza dough, baking chicken or making soup.

{making salads for lunch for the week}

{super easy homemade salad dressing}

Making your own dressing is so quick, is usually healthier than bottled dressings AND tastes fresh and delicious. The basic recipe is just an acid and a fat of some sort. In this case equal parts lemon juice & olive oil. I just put the ingredients in a tupperware or mason jar and shake before using. I added dijon mustard and dill to kick it up a notch this time. You can also use balsamic vinegar instead of lemon juice and easily make healthy creamy dressings like ranch using greek yogurt. Try this recipe for a simple honey mustard!

March for Babies-we walked!

Every day, thousands of babies are born too soon or very sick. We walked with March for Babies and raised awareness of premature birth and funds for research to find the answers and develop preventions. It was amazing to see the emails come in that people were contributing, especially since I only had 3 days notice of the walk, so thank you to everyone that donated.

card

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Pear Salad

I've never been one to like pears and it's probably because I honestly don't think there was ever any in our house growing up. I tried one for the first time a summer or two ago while walking around Eastern Market in DC and liked it ok but had no real urge to buy any for myself. That all changed during girls night last week.

via

Nicole made a delicious pear salad and I was sad I had to share it with everyone. I wanted to stab the other girls with my fork so they wouldn't eat it. Don't worry, I didn't do that because my parents taught me table manners. Actually they made us pretend that we were eating dinner with The Queen (usually) so that we were on our best table manner behavior. {Like the Queen would ever come to dinner at our house, and if she did she would be so disgusted that I SOMETIMES like to rest my forearms on the table...pshaw} Anyhow, Nicole made this salad and I wanted to share since apparently pears are in season (who knew?!), a fact that I would know if I was privileged enough to grow up eating pears.

Pear Salad with Walnuts:

1 bag spring mix salad
2 pears,  thinly sliced
1/4 cup walnuts
1/2 cup crumbled blue cheese
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
3 tablespoons olive oil

These are just rough estimates for a full bag of salad, so feel free to play around with how much of everything you add if you're making an individual salad. Enjoy!

Food for thought

Yesterday I met with a nutritionist, it was really helpful and informative. At first I'm pretty sure the nutritionist was a bit shocked that someone of my weight was coming in to talk about healthy eating, she usually deals with people that are overweight or have diabetes. I went in to talk to her because at this point in my life my metabolism is slowing down and so far I've been lucky enough to not have to think about what I eat.

my plate

I dont' think I'll always be so lucky so it's better to get into the habit of healthy eating before it's too late. Basically I learned portion sizes matter, I should be eating wheat pasta and bread instead of white, I need to be drinking milk, and there are healthier ways to snack. I also learned that I should be eating much more fruit and vegetables, olive oil is best to cook in, and margarine with canola oil is the best choice. My diet isn't the only thing I should be improving upon either. Exercise is important, whether it's walking 3 times a week or finding a sport to play (tennis!) on the weekends. The key is to get my heart rate up for 20 minutes or more, and to realize I don't have to go to the gym at 4:30 in the morning and get on the machines or take crazy classes. I need to find a good balance for myself with eating right and getting out and exercising. Hopefully I can do that and still enjoy meal time.

Boobies

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. My friend was just diagnosed with breast cancer so it is especially important to me this year. Cancer has touched my life before with my grandparents, however it's a little scarier when it's someone my own age. Please take the time to do your monthly breast exams, and get checked out if you find anything out of the ordinary. Also, I'd appreciate if you could lift my friend, A, up in your prayers. This is a hard time and I can't even begin to imagine how she's dealing with this. 

Water

via

I'm sort of on a health kick. I haven't even really started it yet, but I'm meaning to. My problem is that I don't know anything about healthy eating, calories, nutrition, or any of the stuff I should know in order to make healthy meals. What I do know so far, is that I should be drinking more water, like seven more glasses of water a day. Apparantly you should be drinking 8 glasses of water a day which sounds like A LOT. My problem (besides my obvious cherry coke addiction) is that water tastes so plain. In order to spruce it up a little I've started to add cucumbers and a hint of lemon. Prepping the water in a re-usable water bottle the night before makes it easy to just grab and go in the morning. I also use the brita water bottle so I can refill at work and not worry about the quality because it filters the water. Any suggestions to spruce up water without adding sugary packets?