YUMMY YUMMY YUMMY!!! This week’s post is a healthy Grilled Mediterranean Plate featuring grilled chicken and an array of grilled vegetables. It’s sooo GOOOOOOOD.

And if you’re thinking, “Grill? My grill is covered with snow, I can’t grill!” Rest assured you can use a grill pan on your stove top or your oven’s broiler and this recipe will still be amazing!

I call this dish a “Mediterranean plate” because ingredients like, eggplant, zucchini, tomatoes, red/yellow peppers, feta cheese, are all commonly found in a Mediterranean diet. I LOVE this recipe because the flavors are simple, fresh, and utterly mouth watering. Seriously, drizzle olive oil over some fresh grilled veggies with a pinch of salt and pepper and I’m a happy Shock Munch! Fo shizzle my drizzle!!! OK…I’ll stop.

Kieran caught me nibbling on grilled eggplant as they came off the grill…and when I say “nibbling” I actually mean “inhaling”….and when I say “eggplant” I mean “ALL of the veggies”. Seriously…I have a problem.

I LOVE fresh grilled vegetables just like a cat loves catnip, or how Donald Trump loves making jokes about banging is own daughter, or how right-wingers, who take over National Wildlife Refuge’s in Oregon, love to preach anti government all the while pocketing 53K in federal loans (I’m looking at you, Bundy).

You get the idea…

So at the risk of sounding like a broken record, you guessed it, Kieran and I LOVED this recipe and devoured it!!

While eating, Kieran and I discussed our plans for 2016. I’m a goal orientated person, not to mention, a list making ADDICT, so I was excited to map out our goals for the new year.

Side note, I’ll never forget 2014, our New Year’s resolution was to make a video game about space. Our concept was cool (in my opinion) but we quickly learned we didn’t have the necessary skills to get the job done. We hung our heads in defeat and never finished our project. If there are any video game makers reading this….contact me…we should talk 🙂

Oddly, besides the space game, I don’t remember making concrete “goal lists” in the past years. “Lose weight” is normally something I say each year without a realistic plan to follow through with it. I’ve always enjoyed working out, but never paid attention to how many calories I was consuming each day. Real Talk – if I quit drinking I would lose 30-40 lbs easy. Realer Talk – drinking does not interfere with my responsibilities and I enjoy it, so I won’t be quitting anytime soon. So, I found myself at a cross roads, how do I lose 30 lbs but continue to enjoy beverages with empty calories? So far, calorie counting, even though it can be a bitch, has been working for me. I lost 11 lbs so far! I recently purchased a Fitbit too, so I can track calories in and out and reach my goal this year. If you want to talk more about counting calories, and what’s been working for me, email me! I’d love to talk and swap stories!

Other personal goals for 2016 are reading more books, and exploring Oregon’s great outdoors. I want to continue snowshoeing, hiking, camping, as well as learn how to ski. Luckily, the amount of outdoor activities near Portland will make your head swim, so it won’t be difficult to stay active all year!

For Shock Munch, I want to continue to improve my photography. I paid for online food photography courses last summer, and I’m half way through them. I need to get off my ass and watch ALL the courses I paid for….seriously.

I also want to focus on bringing you better content, better writing, recipes, and growing Shock Munch overall. I want to include more recipes from other regions around the world too. If you have a hankering for a certain food, and want to see recipes for it, talk to me! Let me know what types of recipes you’re interested in seeing!

Going back to the recipe….

Marinating the chicken takes the longest. My chicken marinated for an hour, but you can probably get away with a 1/2 hour if you’re crunched for time. Chopping veggies can be time consuming too, especially if you double this recipe to feed a larger crowd, but if you chop the vegetables WHILE the chicken is marinating, you’ll save time. Once the chicken has finished marinating and the vegetables are chopped, brushed with oil, and seasoned with salt and pepper, the recipe finishes up in approx 10 minutes.

I decided to serve jasmine rice with the recipe too. I cooked the rice and chopped the vegetables at the same time. When serving the chicken and vegetables, you can make a mediterranean rice bowl, instead of plating the ingredients if you prefer. In-fact, this recipe WAS going to be grilled mediterranean rice bowls, but my bowl’s were dirty, and I didn’t feel like hand washing them, so I opted on mediterranean “plates” instead. Whoops! 😀

Honestly though, you won’t care if you serve the ingredients in a bowl, or on a plate, on your face, it will taste great either way.

grilled mediterranean platter healthy vegetarian

This recipe doesn’t have a sauce to drizzle over the ingredients at the end, and I didn’t think it needed it. The simplistic, yet fresh taste of the vegetables had no trouble carrying the flavors of this dish. If your taste buds desire an extra oomph of flavor, try this…before you marinade the chicken, set aside 1/4 cup of the marinade. After you serve up the other ingredients, drizzle the reserved marinade over your entire dinner. The marinade features lemon juice, garlic, and olive oil which will pair nicely with the chicken and vegetables.

Oh, and another thing, skip the chicken, marinate up some tofu if you’re vegetarian or vegan! Delicious!

I know it’s cold and snow-y in the majority of the country, just remember summer is right around the corner. Dust the snow off your grill, fire that baby up, and enjoy yourself some sweet sweet yummy grilled vegetables!

Thanks for stopping by,

Christina

Healthy Grilled Mediterranean Plate

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Ingredients

For the marinade:

¼ cup lemon juice
¼ cup grapeseed oil (olive oil is more traditional in Mediterranean dishes, but I ran out)
3 garlic cloves, minced
2 tablespoons dried oregano
1 tablespoon yellow mustard
½ teaspoon coriander
¼ teaspoon turmeric
Dash of cinnamon (optional)

Ingredients:

2 chicken breasts, skinless, boneless
1 eggplant, sliced
1 red pepper, cut into large chunks
1 yellow pepper, cut into large chunks
½ of a red onion, cut into wedges or rings (however best you like grilled onion)
1 zucchini, sliced
½ pint of grape tomatoes, halved (you can use your favorite kind of tomato)
Salt and pepper to taste
Additional grapeseed (or olive oil)
Feta cheese
kalamata olives
Parsley for garnish
Serve with cooked white rice (or your favorite rice), optional

Instructions

Whisk together all the marinade ingredients into a large bowl. Add the chicken, turning to coat both sides of chicken. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for at least 1 hour.
When the chicken has about 15 minutes to go, preheat your grill. If you're using your oven's broiler or grill pan on the stove, you can wait to preheat until after you oil up your vegetables.
Brush grapeseed (or olive) oil generously over both sides of the cut up veggies. Generously salt and pepper both sides of the veggies as well.
Place the chicken on a plate, and discard the remaining marinade. Gently blot both sides of the chicken with a towel, then, generously season both sides with salt and pepper.
Grill the chicken and veggies until the chicken reaches an internal temperature of 165 degrees, and the veggies are cooked to your liking.
Either on a plate, or a bowl, serve up the chicken and veggies with some rice, feta cheese, kalamata olives, and parsley (all are optional). If you have lemon, squeeze some juice, over everything! Enjoy…

Notes

If you want to add additional flavor to your meal, save about ¼ of the marinade before adding the chicken. Set aside. Once you’ve platted the meal, drizzle a little of the saved marinade over the chicken and veggies!

I did not painstakingly salt and pepper each side of the halved grape tomatoes (ain’t nobody got time for that). Rather I put them in a bowl, drizzled in some olive oil, added a big pinch of salt and pepper, then tossed the ingredients until they were well combined.

The calorie breakdown was difficult for me because of the marinade. Since only a fraction of marinade stays on the chicken, I don’t know how to calculate that into my calories. Everything else was easy.

However, depending on how big your chicken and vegetables are, and how much feta cheese you use, how many olives you consume, and how much rice you serve, can change the amount of calories in the dish. I made this meal for lunch, and then Kieran and I ate the rest for dinner, so we got 2 meals (4 servings) out of this.

2 chicken breasts, skinless, boneless… 248
1 eggplant…132
1 red pepper….43
1 yellow pepper….50
1/2 of a red onion…23
1 zucchini…31
1/2 pint of grape tomatoes….61
Salt and pepper to taste… 0
Additional grapeseed (or olive oil) for brushing onto the veggies (I assume I used 1/4 cup of grapeseed)…. 481
Feta cheese (I used 1/4 cup)… 112
kalamata olives (I had 8)…..75
Parsley for garnish…..0
Serve with cooked white rice (or your favorite rice), optional (I served approx 1 cup)…..640

Total calories if you eat the entire thing… 1,898
If you eat 1/2… 948
If you eat 1/4…474

*Note, I am not a nutritionist, nor am I pretending to be. I found the calorie counts by reading the nutrition labels, searching Google, and using my Lose It! app on my phone.

Grilled Mediterranean Platter