Yes, I’m a bit behind on my themed-meal posts, but that’s ok, right? For the seventh week of the year (ending on Friday, Feb. 14) we opted for heart healthy. Get it? Hearts and Valentine’s Day. They go hand-in-hand.

Our heart-healthy week started off with my favorite vegetarian faro Greek salad with tempeh, which is great warm or cold. I’m looking forward to making many more big batches of this once it gets nicer out, to enjoy on the patio with friends. If I close my eyes long enough to block out the sounds of the rain pounding on the roof right now, I can almost picture it!

Faro Greek salad with tempeh

Lean meats, like chicken, are also heart-healthy. We opted for two chicken recipes this week: simple grilled chicken (with quinoa and asparagus) and our favorite hominy chili (remember this from cilantro week?).

Grilled chicken, quinoa, asparagus

Another heart-healthy ingredient we added to the meal plan? Salmon. And spinach. Together they make a delicious dinner, as pictured below. In an effort to make this salad special, I sought out a new dressing recipe to try. And… I found one! The best part about this dressing recipe? It’s a dead ringer for the house salad dressing from Voila!, one of my favorite Seattle restaurants.

Salmon with spinach

Here is the dressing recipe, so you can make it for yourself: (reprinted from FitSugar)

We finished the week with a not-so-heart-healthy food: pizza. We used the fresh Trader Joe’s whole wheat dough and made two individual heart-shaped pizzas, complete with heart-shaped pepperonis! A most romantic Valentine’s Day, indeed.

His and hers homemade pizzas

Romantic Valentine’s Day pizza

Next up? Week 8 and Russian foods in honor of the Olympics that were happening that week.

Well, our second favorite team won the Super Bowl (the first day of week 6: winner, winner chicken dinner) so we celebrated with chicken for dinner all week.

What’d we have? Let me tell you…

Salad with canned chicken (a nice detox from the unhealthy fare of the Super Bowl):

Chicken marsala:

I love, love, love this recipe from Smitten Kitchen. It’s my go-to for chicken marsala and it’s been far too long since we’ve had it. We had it with orzo and asparagus and will be putting this one back in the rotation.

Penne with a sweet chicken sausage tomato sauce and a bottle of the Davenport Cellars Malbec:

And we made a new concoction, similar to this quinoa salad with chicken, avocado and oranges we had during orange week, and we will absolutely make this one again. However, Brandon had it for leftovers and said it wasn’t as good as the first time because of the spinach.

What is this delicious meal? 

We rubbed some chicken tenderloins with jerk seasoning and then grilled them. While the chicken was cooking, we cooked two servings of quinoa.

The magic of the meal is really in the presentation. We used my most favorite plate bowls and plopped down a handful of spinach. We placed the hot quinoa directly on top, allowing the spinach to wilt a bit. We added some crispy shallots, avocado and some fresh-squeezed orange and lime juice, with salt and pepper to top it off. Delicious.

Cilantro shrimp and quinoa

As I mentioned, last week was amazingly busy. So busy in fact, that I had to pick an ingredient out of thin air and meal plan and grocery shop on the fly. I made it through just fine and decided on cilantro for last week’s theme, and some of our favorite recipes.

We started with a turkey taco salad. It’s one of our favorites and it included: pinto beans, olives, tomatoes, avocado,cheese and of course, cilantro. We combine salsa and fat-free sour cream to dress the salad and love it. If you haven’t tried mixing these two together, try it!

I also turned to Pinterest (of course) for some other recipes. I took a few ideas and landed on a hybrid dish. I made a batch of quinoa, with water, salt, pepper and 1 tsp of olive oil, and sauteed some shrimp, both just as I normally do. As a finishing touch (and to incorporate cilantro into the dish) I added lime juice, some lime zest, and lots of cilantro to both the shrimp and the quinoa. We enjoyed my favorite kale salad with the lime-cilantro goodies.

We also enjoyed a favorite of ours: a variation on Cooking Light’s hominy chili. I’m a bit of a spice wuss and this chili has just enough spice for me. We added cheese, sour cream and of course cilantro! And, a special treat for you: our chicken and hominy chili recipe.

Delicious… Hominy chicken chili

Hominy chili with beans (from Cooking Light) 

• 2 teaspoons vegetable oil
• 2 teaspoons bottled minced garlic
• 4 teaspoons chili powder
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• 2 (15.5-ounce) cans hominy, drained
• 1 (15-ounce) can red beans, drained
• 2 (12.5-ounce) cans of cooked white breast chicken
• 1 (14.5-ounce) can no-salt-added diced tomatoes, undrained
• 1 (14.5-ounce) can no-salt-added stewed tomatoes, undrained and chopped
• A few dallops of fat-free sour cream
• A few pinches Mexican cheese
• Half a bunch of fresh cilantro, chopped

1. Heat oil in a large saucepan over medium heat.
2. Add garlic; sauté until fragrant.
3. Stir in chili powder, cumin, beans, chicken and tomatoes; bring to a boil.
4. Reduce heat; simmer, uncovered, 15 minutes.
5. Serve and top each serving with sour cream, cheese and cilantro.
6. And enjoy!

Roasted veggies, before

Theme eating continued this past week with orange-colored foods.

We started out with a super-sized pack of butternut squash from Costco and we made our famous sausage, gnocchi, kale, squash dish and really enjoyed it. This is one of our favorite meals and it’s so great for those cold days when all you want to do is curl up on the couch with your DVR and cats. (I’m glad to know its not just me…)

Not so pretty on the eyes: Squash and tofu sausage

I used a lot of the squash for the gnocchi dish, but I still had plenty left to combine with Brussels sprouts and mushrooms and some of the Trader Joe’s veggie sausage from last week. This is one of the first few times that I’ve tried to roast veggies and have been successful. I’m a good cook, but there are some things even I still need practice with.

Chicken, quinoa, avocado and oranges

One of the things I am really good at? Cooking quinoa. And we found a recipe (thank you, Sunset and Pinterest) for a quinoa salad with chicken, avocado and oranges. This thing looked good AND it tasted fantastic. This recipe is so good that we’re going to put it into our regular rotation and it’s your lucky day because I’m sharing our version of the recipe below.

Shrimp pasta

Finally, we ended our week with a double dose of orange: shrimp pasta, another Pinterest find that turned out pretty good. I wasn’t a fan of how much sauce this dish had but it tasted good. Brandon had the leftovers (while I was jet-setting off to New Orleans) and said they weren’t as good the second time around. We’ll probably not make this again, but boy was it orange!

This past weekend was a blur and it’s been go, go, go ever since. I’ll try to have a N’Awlins recap soon, but in the meantime, bookmark this page and pin this recipe, it’s amazing! Oh, and we’re enjoying CILANTRO week right now. It’s tasty!

Quinoa salad with chicken, avocado and oranges (Derived from Sunset)

Ingredients

• 1 1/4 cups quinoa
• 1 teaspoon chili powder
• 3 teaspoons minced garlic, divided
• Zest of 1 lime
• 2 teaspoons plus 3 tbsp. olive oil
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt, divided
• 1 teaspoon black pepper, divided
• 1 container canned chicken (we use the larger cans from Costco)
• 1/4 cup lime juice
• 1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro
• 4 large oranges, peeled and segmented
• 2 ripe avocados, peeled and cubed

Preparation

1. Cook quinoa according to package directions and fluff with a fork. Transfer to a large bowl and let cool.
2. Stir together chili powder, 2 tsp. garlic, the lime zest, 2 tsp. oil, and 1/2 tsp. each salt and pepper. Add chicken and toss to coat and saute over medium heat. Since the chicken is already cooked, you just need to heat up to flavor the chicken. This should take less than five minutes
3. Add remaining ingredients to quinoa and chicken; toss to coat.