Things in Bowls Vol. 8

Here's the latest from our Things in Bowls series! It has been awhile but dark evenings and lots of soup didn't make for anything exciting to share. As always, be sure to check out all of the Things in Bowls posts in one place if you want more recipe ideas!

Sheet Pan Cuban Chicken

This was SO good, both the night we made it and as leftovers for lunch the next day! Even better, you just toss everything together on a cookie sheet. While it's in the oven, the rice has time to cook and you can clean up the kitchen or go read a book 🙂 The only thing we changed was using a jalapeno instead of a fresno pepper in the mango salsa because, from what I read, fresno peppers can be a little spicier and I'm not about that life. I will add less cayenne pepper next time for the same reason 🙂 UPDATE: We tried it with half the amount of cayenne and I like it much better.

Cilantro Lime Shrimp

We don't usually buy shrimp but this recipe looked fantastic and we thought it would be a nice change from our usual burrito bowls. It was very easy and got rave reviews so I'm sure we'll be making it again! We really just used the recipe for the shrimp marinade. I didn't make the corn salsa but sauteed frozen corn with a sliced bell pepper. We ate this over brown rice.

Falafel + Golden Rice

We've been having falafel once or twice a month as a cheap, easy dinner but the recipe is one I just made up and this falafel recipe looked too easy to pass up. I'm glad we tried it because it is definitely better than my made up version! I went ahead and made the golden rice to get the whole experience but plan to go back to serving these in my standard homemade naan in the future. The rice was fine (and very easy!) but I like naan much more 🙂 For the falafel, I used broccoli and carrots for the veggies and substituted sunflower seeds in place of sesame seeds. I didn't make the sauce and we used this salad dressing instead. We can never find tzatziki at our grocery stores anymore and this dressing was a perfect substitute.

Black Bean Meatballs

I'm always looking for meatless meals to help out the grocery budget and we somehow ended up with a lot of bean-based "meatballs" this time around! I came across this while I was searching for a workout video to do one morning. The recipe needed a little help but I think we finally figured it out. The main issue is that the recipe as-is is very runny and impossible to form into a ball. Here are the changes I made:

• 2 cans of black beans, drained + rinsed
• ground flax instead of chia (because that's what I had)
• 1/4 to 1/2 cup breadcrumbs - I just add 1/4 cup at a time until it's thick enough
• Left out the mint because it was expensive
• 1 egg instead of 2

I like that you can basically just toss everything into the food processor and you're good to go! We had these with the homemade naan and yogurt dressing from the falafel recipe above. And I know this isn't in a bowl but it ended up in a bowl shortly after this picture. It was so much easier to eat that way, so I think it qualifies for Things in Bowls!