One of my favorite ways to shop, prep, and cook is to start with a simple list of seasonal ingredients and see how many meals I can stretch it into. The trick is finding ingredients that can work across several meals without making every dinner feel like the same dinner.
And when I find meals that are simple to prep and cook, have delicious in-season ingredients, and an overall hit with at least 3 of my 4 children, I’m all in. Today, let’s dive into a handful of excellent summer meals to add to your rotation, while we still have a solid 4 weeks of summer left to go. Welcome to a new summer menu series, where I’ll be putting together simple, seasonal grocery lists and showing you how I turn them into several meals without buying a completely different set of ingredients for every recipe.
The Menu
- Roasted Salmon with Fresh Tomato-Basil Relish and Rice
- Balsamic Chicken with a Strawberry-Pecan-Feta Salad
- Mediterranean Chicken Rice Bowl with Homemade Tzatziki
- Optional: Homemade Sourdough Loaf
Grocery List:
- pint cherry tomatoes
- bag of Persian cucumbers
- small carton of strawberries
- 16 ounces of mixed green lettuce
- 1 red onion
- 1 shallot
- 1 lemon
- 1 small tub of feta cheese
- 1 small Greek yogurt cup
- 1 pound salmon
- 1.5 pounds chicken breasts
Additional ingredients you’ll likely have on hand, but if not, add it to your grocery list:
- Olive oil
- Kosher salt & freshly cracked black pepper
- Balsamic
- Red wine vinegar
- Dijon mustard
- Fresh garlic
- Basil & Parsley (if you have an herb garden)
- Unsalted pecans
- Rice
- Honey
The Ingredient Overlap
The goal isn’t to make every ingredient appear in every meal. It’s to buy a handful of things that can play several different roles.
- Tomatoes: relish for the salmon + Mediterranean bowls
- Cucumbers: tzatziki + salad + Mediterranean bowls
- Feta: strawberry salad + Mediterranean bowls
- Rice: salmon dinner + Mediterranean bowls
- Chicken: balsamic chicken + Mediterranean bowls
- Red onion: salad + Mediterranean bowls
- Fresh herbs: tomato relish + Mediterranean bowls
What Prep Looks Like
The beauty of this menu is that almost nothing is being prepped for just one meal. While the rice cooks, I chop the vegetables. While the chicken and salmon cook, I make the tzatziki and tomato relish. By the time everything is done, I have three completely different meals assembled from many of the same ingredients.
- Cook 1 ½ cups of rice, I like to add 3 cups of water, big pinch of salt, a pat of butter, a drizzle of olive oil. Bring to a boil, stir well with a fork, cover the pot, lower heat to the lowest setting, allow rice to cook for 18 minutes.
- Season your salmon with salt and pepper, set aside.
- Preheat oven to 500-degrees, turn on your outdoor grill to preheat.
- Make balsamic vinaigrette (balsamic vinegar, splash of water, avocado oil, dollop of Dijon mustard, squeeze of honey, salt and pepper), set aside the portion you’ll use as salad dressing, then use the remaining vinaigrette to marinate the chicken.
- Prep your fruits and vegetables: thinly sliced red onion, thinly sliced cucumber rounds, grate cucumber, quarter strawberries, quarter tomatoes, mince garlic, mince shallot, thinly slice basil, chop parsley, chop pecans.
- Grill your chicken breasts, roast your salmon in the oven. Set aside when done, allow to rest, then slice the chicken once warm to the touch.
- Begin tzatziki sauce (greek yogurt, lemon juice, minced garlic, grated cucumber, salt and pepper).
- Assemble tomato-basil relish for salmon (tomatoes, salt, pepper, garlic, red wine vinegar, oil, basil).
- Assemble your salad: lettuce, strawberries, pecans, sliced cucumbers, sliced red onions, feta, season with a pinch of salt.
- Assemble your Mediterranean chicken bowls: rice, grilled chicken, tomatoes, cucumbers, red onions, feta, parsley.
- Assemble your salmon: rice and salmon topped with tomato-basil relish
- Clean-up, hopefully you’ve been cleaning as you go!
It’s a fair amount of work, but I find this kind of cooking incredibly satisfying. Everything is happening at once, ingredients are doing double duty, and by the end of about two hours—from unpacking the groceries to washing the last dish—I have three meals ready to go.
The Recipes
Here are two of the recipes, if you want a more in-depth view: Roasted Salmon with Fresh Tomato-Basil Relish and Rice + Balsamic Chicken with a Strawberry-Pecan-Feta Salad.
The Cost
I spent $48.83 at the grocery store on ingredients. Of course, $48.83 isn’t the true cost of every ingredient used. I already had olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic, pecans, basil, parsley, rice, honey, and a few other pantry staples on hand. But that’s also part of the point: a well-stocked pantry makes this kind of cooking much easier.
I hope you enjoyed this series, and I’ll be back next week for another summer menu to share!