One-Pot Mediterranean Pasta

This dinner is the ultimate meal for a busy night. With a few pantry staples and less than 30 minutes, you’ll have dinner on the table in no time! And my favorite part? There’s almost no chopping – it’s all just dump-and-go.

This one-pot pasta cooks the spaghetti right in the sauce, so it’s faster and results in fewer dishes. Add in a salad and some bread to complete the meal.

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Classic Spanakopita

Spanakopita is a classic greek dish. A hearty layer that mixes spinach, feta, and egg is sandwiched between two flaky layers of phyllo. It’s something I’ve loved for years – and made different versions of – but I hesitated to dive into a more traditional recipe.

This is a dish that takes a little time and patience – but it’s definitely worth the effort.

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10 Meatless Meals Kids Love

There’s a good chance that if you’re observing Lent and have kids, Friday dinners are a rotation of pizza, macaroni and cheese, and fish sticks. At the end of a long week, it’s hard to come up with something everyone will eat – so I’ve rounded up ten meatless meals my kids are always happy to see on the table.

These meals are real kid-pleasers! And they’re parent-pleasers too.

From one-pan or pot meals, to easy make-ahead casseroles, you’ll find something here your family will love that you won’t dread making on a Friday night.

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Vegan BBQ Chickpea Salad

Today is Good Friday, the last Friday of Lent – which means it’s time to wrap up this year’s Lenten Friday series. I hope you’ve enjoyed the vegan meal ideas I’ve shared over the last six weeks! I’m closing out this year’s posts with a great recipe for the meal I struggle with most on Lenten Fridays – lunch.

For me, breakfast is always easy. Dinner is always well planned. Lunch, though? Lunch is always just grabbing whatever – and not usually plant based in this house so vegan lunches have been lackluster at best.

Salad with bbq chickpeas, corn, cucumber, pickles, red onion, carrots, and tahini ranch dressing.

This salad, though, was the best lunch I had during Lent this year hands-down. It doesn’t take long to make, but the elements are also perfectly meal-prep friendly if you want to make it ahead. The warm, bbq chickpeas paired with all my favorite barbecue-inspired flavors (including dill pickles!) was such a satisfying mid-day meal.

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Vegan Teriyaki Eggplant & Pineapple Skewers

It feels like summer here today so it felt appropriate to share the most summer-worthy recipe of this year’s Lenten series!

When most people think of grilling, they think meat – steaks, burgers, etc. – but fruit and veggies are also also fabulous grilled.

This beautiful grilled skewers are simple, packed with flavor – and plant based. Chunks of eggplant and pineapple and grilled and glazed with a quick homemade teriyaki sauce. This is the perfect vegan option for your next cookout!

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Vegan Cauliflower Gyros in the Air Fryer

My most productive time of the day is the morning. The more I can get done before lunch, the better – and that extends to dinner prep too. This meal was a hit here not only because it was delicious, but also because a vast majority of the prep could be done ahead of time.

Cooked, marinated cauliflower in a pita with cucumber, tomato, and black olives.

I set the cauliflower up to marinate early, and by the time dinner rolled around all I had to do was toss it in the air fryer and assemble the sandwiches. It was packed with flavor and super hearty – a perfect Lenten Friday dinner.

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Vegan Hummus and Herb Pizza

For me, pizza is synonymous with Lent so even though this year’s Lenten series is vegan, I had to include a pie that fit the bill.

Instead of cheese, this pie has a layer of creamy hummus. Instead of meat or extra cheese, it’s topped off with sliced grape tomatoes, herbs, and toasted pecans.

The result is a beautiful pie – perfect crispy crust, creamy layer, and lots of toppings!

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Individual Vegan Pot Pies

Since so much of the country is dealing with snow, it seemed appropriate to kick off this year’s Lent series with some cold-weather comfort food. These pot pies are warm and hearty – even meat lovers won’t miss the meat here!

With hearty veggies, a creamy sauce, and a flaky crust, this falls into you’d-never-guess-it’s-vegan territory. But it is, and it’s good.

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15 Vegan Dinner Ideas

Today is Ash Wednesday, and the official kick off for my annual Lenten dinner series. It is my 10th year sharing meatless meals on Lenten Fridays and, my, have we come a long way.

When I started this series a decade ago, we were not good at eating meatless. Friday dinners consisted mainly of spaghetti with jarred sauce or pizza. I decided that I needed to get out of that rut, and turned it into a yearly blog project. These days, meatless meals are no problem – they’re regularly in rotation even when it’s not Lent.

Meatless Fridays are supposed to be a sacrifice, and I realized as I was planning this year’s series that in many ways, they wouldn’t be for us. I decided to take things one step further this year and make all of our Friday recipes vegan. While the extra restriction is surely not necessary for Lent, I wanted to be sure our Friday meals were something that required planning – like they were when I started this series.

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Sheet Pan Gnocchi & Vegetables

Today marks three weeks of social distancing for us. We are trying to stay home as much as possible in this weird, temporary normal, which means my 2-3 grocery trips per week have been severely cut back – we made it 18 days before our first grocery run and we’re hoping to make it another 2-3 weeks before going back.

If you’re trying to space grocery trips, this is an ideal meal for week two. The vegetables used here hold up pretty well to a week in the fridge – and even if they start getting a little soft, you’ll never be able to tell after roasting them!

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