Click here to Pin this Mediterranean Farro Salad with Arugula and Chickpeas recipe!

If I’m going to eat a salad a day successfully each week, I tend to pick my “salad of the week” and just go with it to keep things on the easy side. This particular Mediterranean Farro Salad with Arugula and Chickpeas was my salad of the week a couple of weeks ago and I’m ready for it to make a comeback this week. It’s so good.

I am in love with farro and it’s versatility. You can add it to soups like this Slow Cooker Chicken and Farro Chili or make an incredible grain salad like this Harvest Farro Salad. Either way it’s always a great addition because it’s such a hearty grain, filled with protein and fiber. It makes you feel good when you eat it.

My advice is to cook up a batch (it takes a bit of time, similar to brown rice) and store it in the fridge ready to go for salads like this one, or if you’re into meal prep, prep your salads (minus the oil and vinegar) in containers and they will be ready to go when you are (I love these containers for salads to help me with meal prep).

Arugula is in season right now, and if it’s warm enough where you are living right now, so are fresh herbs. My littlest son and I recently got our our container herb garden back in business and I am loving being able to step outside and snip a few leaves to add to whatever I’m cooking. One herb I absolutely adore but I don’t think  gets a lot of love is fresh oregano. Add it to anything Greek, or anything that includes roasted peppers and you will be blown away by the flavor. I added some fresh oregano leaves to the top of my Mediterranean Farro Salad and in seconds this salad was elevated with fresh flavor. Fresh herbs tend to do that.

So much fun with this kid. <3

There is a lot more seasonal inspiration where this came from. Look below the recipe to see what’s in season for May and what my #EatSeasonal friends cooked up for this month.

Mediterranean Farro Salad with Arugula and Chickpeas

Yield: 1 salad

Ingredients:

• 2 cups baby arugula
• 1/2 cup cooked farro
• 1 oz crumbled feta (about 1/4 cup)
• 1/3 cup garbanzo beans (chickpeas)
• 2 sweet cherry peppers
• a few splashes of balsamic vinegar
• 2 teaspoons olive oil
• fresh herbs, for garnish (I used fresh oregano leaves from my container garden)

 

Directions:

1. Arrange ingredients into a large bowl or plate and drizzle with balsamic and olive oil. Sprinkle with a little salt and pepper to taste.

Nutritional Information (calculated from My Fitness Pal):  460 calories / 18g fat / 11g fiber / 16g protein

Love whole grain salads like I do? Check out these 12 Healthy Whole Grain Salad Recipes including farro, quinoa, wheat berries and brown rice!

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Click here to pin this Shrimp and Avocado Pasta recipe!

If you haven’t noticed, I’m pretty obsessed with avocado. So much that I have a board on Pinterest solely dedicated to all things avocado. There are so many ways to enjoy avocado from the infamous avocado toast to using it as a substitute for mayonnaise in tuna salad or this chickpea salad. Of course, taco night would not be complete without avocado, but we already knew that.

My love affair with avocado continues and has evolved with this light and fresh, but hearty Shrimp and Avocado Pasta dish.

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No matter how hard I try, every summer I put on a few uncomfortable pounds. I tend to refer to them as the Summer 6. This year is no different than previous summers. The struggle is real people! I’m not really all too worried about it – I love ice cream and white wine in the hot summer months way too much and won’t give that up, however the excessive snacking on potato chips and other daily salty crunchies has got to go. Eating out more than a few nights a week has to stop too! The reality: summer break is over for us in just a couple of weeks (sad face) and a more structured routine is on the horizon. My discipline is much better with structure and routine so all will be well soon enough.

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Guys, summer is in full swing and I am currently and happily OBSESSED with watermelon. I am eating it almost every day and just straight up how I like it. Would you agree that there’s nothing more refreshing than cold chunks of watermelon on a hot summer day?

Watermelon and all it’s goodness are making me happy right now.

So is this salad.

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A couple of random, unrelated to food things today. I feel like lately, my eyes are a bit more open than usual. Do you ever experience that?  It’s like something clicks in your brain and the inner dialogue quiets down a bit and you just become more observant and a better listener. I don’t know.

Something I’ve noticed, it’s kind of a mom thing but it could be a people thing too. A friend of mine and I were talking at the gym the other day (gotta love those treadmill talks) and it’s like we both realized that we didn’t have it all together like we thought the other did. Duh, right? I’ve had similar conversations with other friends at the bus stop, in the grocery store, and at birthday parties. Go figure. But don’t you think – and this is not the first time you’ve heard it I’m sure – that with all the social media saturation that we are swimming in right now, it is becoming rarer and rarer to have true heart to heart conversations with friends and people you meet along the way? You have to make a real effort. There’s so much more surface material out there than connection sometimes. Maybe it’s just me. But I’ll say, it’s nice to have real conversations like that where you realize how “normal” you really are. I am thinking most moms can relate to this, we need conversations like this. I can appreciate even more when I meet or connect with someone in the real world, not just “online”. This is where my friend Sandy always inspires me with her way of bringing people together in her home, as a form of hospitality and connecting…and not just “entertaining”. Like I already said, it does take some effort but is always worth it. Food for thought.

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I’ve been intrigued by wheat berries for some time now and finally have gotten around to getting my hands on some. You all know how I feel about salads, so it was only natural for me to use them to bulk up a salad I was craving recently – a salad that had to include arugula, grapes, nuts and a little goat cheese.

Let me officially introduce you to my new favorite salad – Wheat Berry and Arugula Salad with Grapes and Nuts.

This month’s Recipe ReDux happens to be dedicated to all things nuts, and this salad is perfect for showcasing them and all their goodness. The Recipe ReDux is a recipe challenge group started by registered dietitians and is focused on keeping healthy recipes delicious (as they should be, right?). I have loved being a part of this monthly challenge and have discovered so many new health focused blogs because of it (see recipe roundup at the bottom of this post to check out more recipes and blogs).

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This Beet and Goat Cheese Salad with Walnuts recipe is sponsored by Fisher Nuts.

Is it safe to say spring has sprung everywhere yet? I always have a bit of spring guilt here in Florida. Technically our best “spring” weather is back in January and February and even March when the rest of the country is freezing.

By mid April we are starting to see the 90s…just the other day our heat index was (wait for it…) 101 degrees! What in the world. It’s a bit early for triple digit heat indexes but I won’t complain ever. #ILoveFlorida

With warmer spring weather comes cravings for warm weather food, am I right? Salads, salads and more salads. Some grilling too. This is my favorite food season of the year, though I think spring food and summer food are very closely tied.

This April Produce Guide caught my eye the other day and inspired this Spring Beet and Goat Cheese Salad with Walnuts – beets, arugula and citrus all scream spring, don’t they? Topping your salad with goat cheese, walnuts and a homemade Toasted Walnut Balsamic Vinaigrette is never a bad thing either, whatever month or season we are in.

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This Walnut and Blue Cheese Stuffed Mushrooms recipe is sponsored by Fisher Nuts.

Stuffed mushrooms are an appetizer that always grabs my attention at a party. If you are a mushroom lover, like me, you probably feel the same. The ideas for stuffing mushrooms are endless, so many combinations to play with, a couple of my personal favorites are these Mediterranean Stuffed Mushrooms and these Spinach and Toasted Pine Nut Stuffed Mushrooms. Well, you can officially add these Walnut and Blue Cheese Stuffed Mushrooms to my favorites list.

The ingredients for the stuffing are simple, which is always best. When I was in NY with Fisher Nuts and Chef Alex last month I was so inspired by the use of such simple and fresh ingredients in all the recipes we tasted. One of my favorite recipes I was able to try was Chef Alex’s Walnut Stuffed Cherry Halves. These little bites included walnuts, arugula, Parmesan and balsamic vinegar and were true perfection. Chef Alex mentioned that she likes to use arugula in recipes as she would an herb and that really stuck with me. I am a huge lover of arugula salads but was inspired to use arugula a little different this time when I included it in the Walnut and Blue Cheese Stuffed Mushroom recipe.

The mushrooms come together pretty easily and can be prepped ahead and cooked later. Just stuff them as you would, and place them carefully in a large tupperware container until you are ready to cook and serve. They cooked up fast, in just 10 minutes, so they are a great to serve to friends and family if you are entertaining over the holidays. They are also vegetarian which is always a nice option to have so that everyone can enjoy them.

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You know that Honey, Lime and Garlic Vinaigrette recipe I shared with you all yesterday? Well this is the salad that I’ve been enjoying it on all week. This Spinach and Arugula Citrus Salad came together literally as a mish-mosh of two salad combinations I have been craving – actually three – spinach and orange, fennel and orange, and fennel and arugula. Since I am totally indecisive and have major ADD these days I ended up throwing it all together to use up my ingredients before they withered away. Avocado was invited to the party at the last minute and boy am I glad.

I have been in a major salad (food/cooking/eating?) rut lately. I can’t blame it on the weather (Florida + Winter = a little bit awesome, but don’t worry paybacks are in fall!), but I can blame it on laziness and feeling a little uninspired from food/cooking/eating in general. I am making a huge effort to get out of this rut because honestly, I’m just plain sick of it. I miss cooking, feeling excited about cooking and eating a variety of foods (no offense to crock pot chicken and Greek salad but I am so over you).

I want to eat exciting food!

(after I took this pic I decided that this salad needed avocado…yes, it totally did)

This Spinach and Arugula Citrus Salad got me a little bit excited. I hope it does the same for you.

Have a great weekend!

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Nothing makes me happier than a well made salad. If you’ve been reading this blog for some time, then you probably already know this. Fresh greens paired up with some extras and drizzled in a little dressing, well, it doesn’t take all that much to make me excited about eating salad. Call me weird, I know.

On our little staycation last week we ate out one night at a pizza place and of course started the meal with one of their salads on the menu. I chose the house salad which included shaved fennel, arugula, radicchio, Parmesan and lemon. Wowzers, this salad nailed it for me. It was SO fresh and flavorful, yet so simple. I think it was a little too lemony for my husband and daughter (my son doesn’t partake in salad eating just yet), but I was happy to finish what they didn’t want to eat.

Arugula salads have always been one of my favorites. I adore the light peppery bite from such a delicate green. With the addition of thinly sliced fennel, radicchio and good Parmesan cheese, this salad recipe was about to become one of my go to recipes this summer, I just know it.

I knew when I got home I was going to have to recreate this simple little plate of greens for myself.

So I did.

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