Mediterranean meatloaf sliders with yogurt sauce

Mediterranean meatloaf sliders with mint yogurt sauce: comfort food meatloaf gets a lean, modern makeover for an easy weeknight dinner.

Note: Updated May 2016

Putting a healthy, delicious dinner on the table quickly night after night is a challenge for all of us – really, all of us: Food bloggers are no exception. While I can often solve the weeknight dinner dilemma with quick-and-easy dishes like rice bowls, soups or salads, I'm still pretty old-school about wanting to eat some protein for dinner. And by protein, I really mean meat. And by meat, I really mean beef (I have been known to refer to myself as The Meatasaurus).

However, this presents me with a dilemma because one of my favorite beef dinners is meatloaf – and meatloaf is not a quick-cooking, get-it-on-the-table-fast kind of meal. And yet I do so love my meatloaf recipe, which is the one I grew up on, torn by my mother from the pages of some 1970s magazine and then customized over the years.

So what's a girl to do when she wants her meatloaf but she also wants it fast?

One word: sliders. Yep, because, when it comes right down to it, what is meatloaf, really, but a big burger without the bun?!

Watermelon strawberry yogurt smoothie

[ While I have been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and its advertiser for this post, all opinions are mine alone. Thanks for supporting the brands that support me! #HappyBlending #CollectiveBias ]

This delicious yogurt smoothie is loaded with protein, probiotics, fiber, fresh fruit and even some secret veggies: healthy breakfast never tasted so good!

While I love fall and the cool weather it brings, I try not to rush it because it also means the end of summer -- which means the end of bountiful, healthy, delicious summer veggies and fruits.

Other food bloggers may have already gotten started on PumpkinFest 2015, but not me: I'm still buying as much ripe fruit as I can get my hands on!

Which means I knew exactly what ingredients to use when I was chosen to create a smoothie recipe using Chobani Greek Yogurt for Smoothie Week, being celebrated at the Kroger Family of Stores this week. Even though it's September, it's still the perfect time to enjoy watermelon, which will be in season for a little while longer.

For this watermelon strawberry yogurt smoothie, I used fresh watermelon but, once the cooler months roll around, you can use frozen watermelon instead; it's a great way to get the feeling of summer back any time of the year. Because of its high water content, watermelon freezes beautifully. I cut it into chunks, spread them on baking sheets, freeze until just firm, then store all the chunks in zipper bags in the freezer. Freezing them individually means you can easily remove only as many pieces as you need.

Avocado goddess dressing

Jazz up your next meal salad or roast chicken dinner with this 5-minute, herb-filled, healthy avocado goddess dressing.

Sometimes it's the little things that can make or break your meal.

Am I right? Can I get an amen?

Like salad dressing. I've been in a simple balsamic vinaigrette rut lately. Not that the vinaigrette isn't good, it's just that I feel I should be whipping up batches of shallot dressing or sushi-restaurant-inspired ginger dressing or even classic buttermilk ranch dressing ... but I just haven't. And it's bumming out my salads.

Until recently.

And it's because of herbs. My "garden" this year, post-relocation, consists of a couple of planters of vegetables on our back patio. Given the end-of-days, seemingly non-stop rain storms we've had nearly all summer long, coupled with the 30,000 crafty, tomato-stealing squirrels and deer, my supply of homegrown veggies so far has been two half-sized cucumbers and four measly Sun Gold cherry tomatoes.

It's a pathetic situation. Thankfully, I've got plenty of farmers' markets around to make up the difference.

But my little in-ground herb garden, on the other hand, has been doing quite well. (Apparently the wildlife prefer their meals to be heartier.) So I've been trying to come up with herb-filled recipe ideas that aren't simply pesto, although a good (or unique) pesto is nothing to scoff at, that's for sure. Trust me, my freezer will be full of it come September!

Enter this avocado goddess salad dressing. Chockful of fresh herbs, this healthier riff on traditional green goddess dressing gets its rich creaminess from avocado and yogurt. And it's the most delightfully cheery green color you could ever hope to add to a salad.

Overnight oats and yogurt parfaits

Juicy frozen fruit turns healthy overnight oats into a sweet breakfast parfait -- like eating a sundae for breakfast!

I'm on a roll with new breakfast ideas. And I'm continuing with the easy / make-ahead / grab-and-go theme because ... well ... because I'm most decidedly not a morning person.

And I'm continuing the whole-grain thing from last week's fruit and grain energy bars with these super-easy overnight oat and yogurt parfaits.

Oats are just so darned convenient and versatile, aren't they? I mean, how many other ingredients can claim such yummy success whether they're whole, ground, wet, dry, stewed, baked, boiled or raw? Not to mention all the good-for-you protein they contain.

Now, if you read lots of food blogs or waste a lot of time on frequently browse Pinterest, you know that overnight refrigerator oats are pretty much all over the place. Confession time: I tried making them a couple of years ago and HATED them. I couldn't find the right combination of ingredients. Most were too thick or just too blah-tasting.

But then I got turned on to the secret of using frozen rather than fresh fruit!

You would think I would have figured this out earlier since frozen fruit is also key to my favorite and easiest breakfast smoothie. Duh.

Easy fruit and grain energy bars

Fruit and grain energy bars are protein-rich, delicious and easy to prepare -- a perfect portable breakfast or afternoon snack. 

These easy, homemade fruit and grain energy bars have successfully gotten us out of our current breakfast rut at Casa de Ninj.

Booyah.

They are just the right amount of chewy and not too sweet -- perfect for a grab-and-go breakfast. The danger is that they are so good that I'm tempted to keep making batch after batch.

But eating them constantly would likely get us into another breakfast rut, right? Gaaaaah, when will I learn?!

Changing up the kinds of dried fruit you use in these energy bars keeps them from getting boring. I use dried cranberries and cherries since we have them on hand most often, but I've been known to use dried apricots and plums, too. (Prunes and apricots are a particularly favorite flavor combination of mine, in case you hadn't noticed.)

And if you're not in a breakfast rut, these are still the bars for you. Their portability (and freezability!) make them great afternoon snacks.

Healthy and easy snack recipes

Six healthy and easy, real-food snack recipes to satisfy all your cravings -- sweet, savory, salty, crunchy, chewy and smooth.

If you're looking for some homemade snacks that will satisfy your cravings without that vending-machine guilt, The Ninj has got you covered. Sweet, savory, salty, crunchy, chewy, smooth? The choice is yours.

6 Healthy and Easy Snack Recipes

1. Fruit leather
2. Dried fruit and cereal bars
3. No-bake healthy oat bars
4. Individual yogurt cups (be sure to check the comments on this one for helpful tips!)
   
5. Artichoke hummus
6. Peanut butter banana snack cake

What are your favorite real-food snacks? Leave a comment: The Ninj wants to know.

Peanut butter banana oatmeal muffins (from your best girlfriend)

Clearly, I can't get over my breakfast obsession.

But before I even get to these yummy, Elvis-y muffins, I have to tell you about my weekend.

We had houseguests, which gave me a great opportunity to trot out some of my favorite recipes from this blog, some not often sampled by anyone other than Mr. Ninj and me:

• Baked oatmeal
• Crockpot oatmeal
• Pancake muffins
• Nicoise toasts
• Scourtins
• Avocado pasta salad
• Chocolate strawberry quick bread

While planning the weekend menu, it finally dawned on me what a great variety of recipes I have collected and tested. And they are all in one place, online, easily accessible in my kitchen without searching through folders full of scraps of paper.

In a nutshell, I'm using my own blog as a database.

I've been fretting for a while that my blog is not useful because it's not niche-y enough -- that is, it's not easy to label, elevator-pitch style. Some blogs are easy to label, as they focus solely on vegetarian recipes, vegan recipes, desserts, Indian food, gardening, canning, DIY crafts, knitting, "skinny" recipes, toddler-friendly food, Southern food ... you name the niche, there's a blog out there filling it.

It can make the generalist feel a little ... well ... too general. (Akin to my engineer husband not understanding why anyone, ahem, would choose a liberal arts education over a more specialized one.)

But my experience this weekend helped me to realize that it's OK to be a generalist because I'm filling my own niche, both for me and for you, my readers: the what's-for-dinner (or breakfast or lunch) niche, punctuated by the occasional foray into the world of DIY (gardening, pantry staples, crafts).

Baked oatmeal

Baked oatmeal

Sorry to give you yet another brown food photo but I'm on a whole grain kick right now and whole grains are, well, frankly, brown.

As part of the From Scratch Club's virtual book club, I'm cooking various whole grain recipes out of Lianna Krisoff's Whole Grains for a New Generation. Our new meeting topic is oats.

Yay! I love oats and oatmeal. This will be a bit easier for me (and for Mr. Ninj!) than spelt.

(Sidebar: We have our book club discussions over on GoodReads and are fortunate enough to have Lianna, the author, as a participant. I just want to say hats off to Lianna for agreeing to do so; I can't imagine too many cookbook authors that sit around and listen to what amateur cooks have to say about their lovingly crafted and tested recipes. Particularly last week, when one of our book clubbers reported back that the recipe she made was "disgusting." Ouch -- thick skin required.)

I was drawn to Lianna's recipe for baked oatmeal for two of my favorite reasons: it's easy and healthy. Not to mention that it makes a panful of breakfast, perfect for either the two of us to eat throughout the week or weekend breakfasts when we have houseguests.

You likely also have all the ingredients in your pantry on any given day. A huge plus.

Oat and yogurt breakfast bars

Oat and yogurt breakfast bars

Regular readers know I'm all about make-ahead, grab-and-go breakfasts.

So imagine my delight when the recipe choice list for my virtual book club this week included a good-for-you, whole-grain cereal bar. I was all over that like white on rice.

When cooking from a book entitled Whole Grains for a New Generation, I didn't expect to find too many sweet recipes.  Frankly, I didn't expect to find any at all, because I'm that new to cooking with whole grains.

This bar is all about the oats (just like my salted oat crack cookies but with actual nutritional value). I'm hooked on making oat flour simply by grinding up oatmeal in the food processor: genius! I modified the original recipe, based on what ingredients I could find (I'm hard-pressed to find quinoa flakes locally and didn't want to have to mail-order them just for this recipe), but I'm super-pleased with the results.

Cherry chocolate Greek yogurt cookies

Cherry chocolate Greek yogurt cookies

It's Valentine's week: guess how much I love my readers?

I'm giving you a delicious, healthy cookie post -- while I'm on vacation.

That's how much.  I didn't want to leave you hanging when there's a sugar-based holiday fast approaching.

I came up with this recipe at the tail end of Detox January; during the last week, I was craving sweets but didn't really have any new healthy (well, healthier) cookie recipes to try. I poked around Pinterest a bit and found a recipe for a Greek yogurt and fruit-based cookie, but it had a big slathering of icing on the top -- not very detoxy.

So I made up my own.

What I like about this recipe is that it is flexible; you can use any combination of fruit and yogurt to really customize your cookies. I used black cherry yogurt and dried cherries because that's what I had on hand. What about mango yogurt and bits of dried mango, maybe with some white chocolate chips thrown in for good measure? Or blueberry yogurt with frozen blueberries and some lemon zest or candied citrus peel?

You can see that the possibilities are nearly endless.

Individual yogurt cups

Yogurt cups

I found myself in another breakfast funk this week. I need variety but I also need make-ahead simplicity, given that I am most decidedly not a morning person.

There are only so many different baked goods you can eat for breakfast before it really just seems like you do nothing but eat cake.

So I decided to try DIY yogurt. Again.

A few years ago of my friends and I got on a big yogurt-making kick because we found a recipe for overnight crockpot yogurt. While the recipe was easy, it did take a bit of time and advanced planning, so I just stopped making it after a while.

This time around, I found another recipe for "crockpot yogurt" at Punk Domestics from One Tomato, Two Tomato. The thing that intrigued me was that you don't actually make the whole deal in the crockpot; it simply winds up being used like a water-bath canner.

This I had to try.

The recipe is very simple: bring some milk to a simmer on the stove, add a little plain yogurt (as a starter, to get all the cultures going), cool it, pour it into canning jars, add the jars to the crockpot with some hot water and let it sit for a few hours.