Broccoli and Brussels sprout slaw with olives

Broccoli and Brussels sprouts slaw with olives and almonds: a healthy, easy, make-ahead side dish for Thanksgiving or any festive dinner.

If you saw my homemade "canned" cranberry sauce recipe last week, you'll understand that we often celebrate a little something I call "Fakesgiving" around Casa de Ninj. This year, we had our Fakesgiving last weekend, just before The Big Day, as we'll be traveling to a relative's house to spend the actual holiday.

But I love our annual Thanksgiving dishes (and the legendary leftovers!) so much that I couldn't bear to miss them this year. So I had my own pre-Thanksgiving Thanksgiving: Fakesgiving.

(I'll note, it sounds better than a friend's alternative -- "Freaksgiving" -- which, scarily, I think just means dinner with her family.)

Each year, I try to add one new or modified dish to the line up to keep things fresh. Last year, it was apple and herb stuffing muffins. For this year's Fakesgiving, I forwent the traditional green beans almandine for something a little fresher and crunchier: broccoli and Brussels sprout slaw with olives and almonds.

Mediterranean pasta with no cook olive sauce

Mediterranean pasta with no-cook olive sauce: an easy weeknight meal featuring key ingredients from the Mediterranean diet to support health and longevity.

You've probably heard about the health benefits of the Mediterranean diet (namely living longer -- yay for living longer!) -- the diet that's rich in good-for-you foods like whole grains, seeds, legumes, veggies, fish, olives and olive oil. Couldn't we all use more of these healthy ingredients in our diets? You betcha. So, just for you, I've created a pasta dish, featuring California Black Ripe Olives, that pays homage to the healthy Mediterranean diet.

I have never met anyone who doesn't love black olives. And, if you're like me, you almost always have a can of them on hand in the pantry, right? Which makes them totally handy for creating quick, weeknight meals. Plus, black olives contain a variety of vitamins and fiber -- and, of course, you can wear them on your fingers.

For all of these reasons (not the least of which is the finger-wearing, if we're being honest), California Black Ripe Olives were the perfect choice to star in my new Mediterranean pasta dish. I paired the olives in a no-cook sauce with tangy capers, lots of fresh herbs from my garden, a squeeze of fresh lemon juice and some mashed anchovies (trust me -- they add an awesome yet subtle umami flavor that you will love!), then tossed them all with healthy whole-wheat pasta: it's an easy weeknight meal that's not only delicious, reminiscent of an olive tapenade, but also incorporates many key components of the Mediterranean diet.

No cook raw vegetable salad { plus a giveaway }

This no-cook raw vegetable salad is the perfect meal salad for hot summer nights or crowd-pleasing side at your next summer BBQ. 

You know The Ninj is all about healthy, real-food recipes that are easy to make, right? So what could be healthier and easier than a raw vegetable salad?

Pretty much nothing, peeps. No cooking. Just chopping. Good eating.

I've adapted this raw vegetable salad recipe from one by London chef Yotam Ottolenghi (he of the gorgeous Plenty cookbook fame), so you know it's bound to be super fresh and healthy, loaded with good-for-you veggies readily available at your local grocery or -- better yet -- farmers market.

Plus, it's packed with grated cauliflower. Yes, grated, which it turns out in awesome way to overcome Mr. Ninj's texture aversion to cauliflower (and dupe him initially into thinking it was grated cheese!).

Now, being The Meatasaurus, I chose to add some grilled chicken to this salad -- which probably makes the vegetarian Chef Ottolenghi cringe, but that's how I roll. It's completely optional if you prefer the meatless route or want to use this salad as a side rather than a main dish salad. Chicken or not, you're going to dig the light but tangy vinaigrette plus how super-fast it is to whip up this salad.

Pasta salad nicoise

Pasta salad nicoise: a modern take on the classic composed salad, portable and perfect for hot summer nights and busy weeknight meals.

Even though National Salad Month is behind us, I just can't stop eating salads!

I blame the hot weather we've been having. Jeez louise, it feels more like August than June out there on most days. Which doesn't really inspire me to fire up the oven.

Not to mention that salads are a such a fast way to pull together a healthy and easy weeknight dinner, especially when you add some healthy protein like the tuna in this pasta salad nicoise, a riff on the classic composed salad.

Are you a fan of salad nicoise? When I was a kid, every once in a while my mom would make a large, composed salad nicoise -- I loved how incredibly fancy it seemed, with all the ingredients in individual groupings instead of tossed together, which was my only notion of "salad" at the time.

But even now, as then, I'm not a composed salad kind of gal, so I've tossed my salad nicoise all together to let the flavors really mingle in the lemony vinaigrette and added some pasta in place of the more traditional potato because ... well, because it's pasta and I love it heaps more than potatoes.

One of my favorite time-saving tricks is blanching or flash-cooking veggies for pasta by adding them into the pasta pot for the last few moments of cook time. This works especially well for recipes that call for frozen veg like peas or edamame. Here, you can keep dinner prep moving quickly by adding the green beans to the pasta water and then draining and rinsing the pasta and the beans simultaneously.

Huzzah for shortcuts!

Pan-roasted cauliflower pasta

A better way to eat cauliflower: healthy and easy pan-roasted cauliflower pasta with spicy sausage, arugula and olives.

I think I may have mentioned a few hundred times that I'm a pasta addict. In fact, I always say that if you really wanted to punish me, you wouldn't have to send me to prison -- just make me give up carbs.

Yet I don't do your standard American spaghetti and meatballs. I like my pasta to be interesting. Like when it includes healthy, yummy ingredients like butternut squash, pumpkin, olives, beets, broccoli and even sardines.

And sometimes bacon. (Who am I kidding? Often bacon.)

No bacon in this cauliflower pasta but there is spicy Italian sausage, another one of my pasta add-in faves. The spiciness pairs really well with the pan-roasted flavor of the cauliflower and the peppery arugula.

Yep, you pan-roast the cauliflower in this stove-top meal. It comes out tender with just the right amount of cruciferous crunchiness left. And who couldn't benefit from a better way to eat lots of cauliflower than drowning it in cheese sauce or picking it off a crudite platter, am I right?

Baked ziti with tomatoes, broccoli and olives

Cheesy baked ziti, loaded with good-for-you veggies -- roasted tomatoes, tender-crisp broccoli and tangy green olives -- makes a hearty meatless meal!

I love pasta way too much.

If you've browsed my recipe index at all, you'll understand. Not that loving pasta is bad, but all those carbs aren't the best for my quickly-approaching-middle-age waistline.

I've been experimenting quite a bit with lower-carb, gluten-free pastas made from things like brown rice and quinoa, and I really do like them. In certain dishes. Like my beet pesto and greens pasta.

But there are some hearty pasta dishes for which I have to stick to the real McCoy.

This baked ziti, loaded with good-for-you veggies (and no meat!), is one such dish. While it's familiar name is "baked ziti", I actually recommend rigatoni for this dish.  Rigatoni is larger than ziti, which means a larger tube opening to hold the thick veggie sauce -- to which I'm afraid a more delicate brown rice pasta just wouldn't be able to stand up. Additionally, I think the thicker rigatoni lends a heartier element to the whole dish.

And speaking of that hearty veggie sauce...

Spanish tomato soup with smoked paprika potatoes

A unique Spanish tomato soup with olives, topped with smoked paprika roasted potatoes.

Are you familiar with smoked paprika? If you aren't, you need to be.

I'll admit, I'm not that sensitive to the nuances of different styles of spices. If a recipe calls for some weird-ass version of a basic spice, I usually just use the basic spice, rather than going to four different stores or having to mail-order it.

Remember my number one favorite-recipe criterion: must be easy to prepare. Mail-order spices don't make the cut.

Smoked paprika, however, is the exception.

I'm not sure what recipe originally turned me on to smoked paprika but, once I tried it, I was hooked. Yes, it's paprika, but it also has a not-so-subtle smoky flavor that you can really taste. And it's readily available in most grocery stores. Booyah.

This tomato soup recipe caught my eye because of the smoked paprika. And because it has olives in it (I know, right?). And because it is topped with roasted potatoes. Too crazy!

Verdict? It's fantastic! This is no ordinary tomato soup.  The flavors are smoky and spicy and the briny tang of the olives is the perfect complement. Plus, the roasted potatoes turn it into a meal rather than simply a soup.

Savory olive bread

Savory olive bread

It's funny that this bread ended up as the star of its own post.

You see, it began its life -- well, its life in The Ninj's kitchen, anyway -- as an afterthought, just a little somethin'-somethin' to go with a corn chowder recipe I was testing (stay tuned).

And yet, as wonderful as the chowder was (still stay tuned), the bread really deserved some solo props.

I needed a side for the chowder that would suffice as both bread (because I wanted it) and a vegetable or salad (because I needed it). That's a tall order, I know. But I was willing to stretch the truth a little if I found something even close.

Browsing through my Pinterest food boards, I came across a recipe I had pinned a while ago for a quick bread loaded with greens: perfect.

Then I read the recipe.

It involved a whole lot of onion carmelization before you could even start thinking about the bread batter. That wouldn't work, as I needed a quick bread, not a stand-around-and-carmelize-till-the-cows-come-home bread.