Recipe – Mediterranean Chicken Salad with asparagus – meal prep

Recipe – Mediterranean Chicken Salad with asparagus – meal prep

Mediterranean spiced chicken on a healthy salad mix with roasted asparagus and hummus, as a dressing. Gyro in a bowl, if you will. I love these spices and I’m glad that, even though cumin and nutmeg are seeds, I was able to incorporate them back into my diet without flaring. That said, I tried this recipe last week and didn’t have any cumin or nutmeg in the house, so I did the recipe without and it was still tasty. As I’ve mentioned, watching the TV show Chopped, really helped me be more adventurous in the kitchen, I highly recommend it.

Meal prep is challenging for healthy people who get plenty of sleep. It’s a sacrifice of time and energy. Wouldn’t you rather be at the beach? Of course you would but then what will you eat all day at work? And, how much will you pay for what you eat? Physically as well as financially? It’s hard to give up stuff to make this happen and honestly if it doesn’t make a difference for you, the effort won’t be the same but if it does, it just helps to remind yourself of that, so you commit to it more.

When it comes to recipes I like to wing it, to have a general idea of what I’m doing and how spiced I want it to be and then I throw it all together. If you don’t already cook like this, I highly recommend conditioning yourself to it. Recipes are great for a guide but when you have brain fog all the time, you can look at your recipe and read “1 tsp Oregano,” ten times, and still have to look again. This makes everything take sooooo much longer. Learn to trust yourself, and your taste, in the kitchen and it will free up your brain to focus on how good everything looks and smells and how great the end result will be.

Mediterranean Chicken salad with grilled asparagus and hummus

Part 1 – The protein

Dark meat chicken – legs and thighs – tend to stay more moist for meal prepping, and they’re less expensive than breasts, but you can use whatever meat you want, even ground meat. I buy the Costco organic and use 2 of the pillow packs, about 4 pounds. This makes 10 salads, about 4-5 ounces of chicken per salad depending on how much shrinkage you get. If you only need 5 salads, adjust accordingly.

I usually keep the pieces whole until they’re cooked and then chop them but I brain fogged out and chopped half of the chicken before I remembered, so I cooked it that way 😉 – half chopped and half not. Feel free to stick with one way or another, if you have a brain fog mistake – just try to make it work anyway :). Put the pieces in a plastic bag, or covered bowl.

Chicken marinade:

½ onion – you can use red, I prefer Vidalia

¾ cup fresh chopped parsley

8 cloves garlic – adjust to taste, I can’t get enough garlic

1 ½ tsp pink salt – add more if you want to

1 tsp pepper

2 TB cumin

1 TB oregano

½ tsp nutmeg

juice of one lemon

Mix all of the ingredients together in a bowl and add it to the bag of chicken. Squish it all around and put in the fridge while you keep going, at least an hour.

Note: I make fruit salad for breakfast and then a lunch. I marinade my meat and then do breakfast prep (about an hour). Then I cook the meat while I make the salad mix and veggie.

Grill the chicken – I love being able to have grilled meat without leaving the house or heating up the kitchen, feels like some sort of wonderful black magic. I just dump it all onto the Nuwave grill. I went a little longer on this one because it was really all smushed in there and I wanted to make sure it all cooked through, so about 9 minutes per side. And, because I have an extra grill rack, I just flipped it all at once, easy peasy.

Finish chopping the chicken and put it in a covered bowl to wait for salad assembly.

Part 2 – The salad

Salad mix – as I mentioned, I’m making 10 salads, so if you’re making less, use less:

3 heads Romaine – chopped

2 red chard leaves with stems – chopped

handful of parsley – chopped

¼ head red cabbage – sliced thin

4 carrots – I like the multi-colored – sliced thin or shredded

2 cucumbers – cubed, with the skin

Add everything to a big plastic bowl and then toss it.

Part 3 – extra veggies

Grilled asparagus:

2.5 lbs asparagus – chopped into 1” pieces. I get the Costco pack. You lose a lot when you snap them. If you make too much, you can always keep it as a side dish for a dinner or just eat it, I love asparagus.

4 cloves garlic – minced

2 TB butter

Add the asparagus to a glass baking dish. Slice up the butter and place it around the top, drop the garlic on top of the butter and spread the rest around. I cook this in my Nuwave for 7 minutes if the pieces are thin and 8 if they’re thick. If you don’t have a Nuwave, you can broil them in the oven.

Once the asparagus comes out, let it cool down. If you leave it in the hot dish it can continue cooking while you get the rest together and then you’ll have smushy asparagus, blech.

Final step: Assemble the salad:

Good handful of salad mix + 4-6 ounces of chopped chicken + ¼ cup of asparagus = done! Delicious, healthy lunch for the week.

Note: if you’re concerned about keeping cooked chicken from Sunday to Friday, put the portions for Wednesday, Thursday and Friday into freezable containers and just thaw them the night before.

Salad dressing – I use Costco’s hummus for salad dressing, it adds plenty of moisture for the dry mouth issue. Ingredients: Organic Chickpeas, water, organic sesame tahini, organic sunflower oil, organic lemon juice, organic garlic, sea salt, organic cumin. 

I know there are some things in there that can be a problem for autoimmune paleo (chick peas, sesame oil, sunflower oil and cumin). I have been able to reintroduce them without flaring. If you’re not, you can use another dressing that works better for you.

 

PRODUCTS:

Note: if you cannot see the products below with the Amazon link and logo, you may need to disable your ad blocker. You do not pay any more utilizing this link below to purchase this, or any item, than you would going to Amazon direct, but your purchase will support this site.

Nuwave oven – can’t say enough good things about this oven. I have two and would be lost without them.