Making Cava/Mezeh/Mediterranean bowls at home

[Anonymous]

Is there an easy, not too expensive way to do this, and still keep the calories reasonable?

I generally do a mix of brown rice and greens, falafel, tahini sauce, and loaded up with all the vegetables. But I'd like to be able to do this at home with easy ready-to-go ingredients (and not have to make a cucumber or chickpea salad, tabboui, make falafel at home, etc).

What's a good place to get the ingredients to do this at home?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is there an easy, not too expensive way to do this, and still keep the calories reasonable?

I generally do a mix of brown rice and greens, falafel, tahini sauce, and loaded up with all the vegetables. But I'd like to be able to do this at home with easy ready-to-go ingredients (and not have to make a cucumber or chickpea salad, tabboui, make falafel at home, etc).

What's a good place to get the ingredients to do this at home?

Well, basically you'd be asking for all of these things to be prepared for you. That costs money. And you'd need to buy several items in quantities that you wouldn't use a lot of for one meal, so freshness would be impacted. So, no, I don't think there's an easy, not too expensive way to do this.

[Anonymous]

Op, what exactly are you searching for?

You can make hummus and freeze it. Falafel buy frozen at Mediterranean shop, cucumber salad (you mean tzarziki?) takes a minute to do. Yes, you can do them at home easily. For substitutions to reduce calories I not know.

[Anonymous]

Cava sells their hummus, tzatziki, crazy feta - at Giant stores.

[Anonymous]

I make a version at home. I use brown rice with lemon and chopped salted almonds, lettuce, homemade or frozen falafel, diced raw peppers and cucumbers (sometimes splashed with red wine vinegar and olive oil), premade hummus, feta, harissa, yogurt (sometimes plain, sometimes whisked with lemon/garlic/salt and pepper/herbs) and sometimes black olives and/or spicy pickles. Most is stuff I have on hand. I've added chicken or salmon if I have it around.

[Anonymous]

Trader Joe's frozen falafel is surprisingly decent and you can take out just what you need for each meal. Cava sells their hummus, harissa, tzatziki, tabbouleh, baba ghanoush and Crazy Feta and MOM's and Whole Foods. You can make small batches of pickled oinions and cucumber salad which will last for a couple of days. You can also get small quantities of feta, olives and pickled peppers from an olive bar.
These will all still be too much for a single meal so I'd plan on eating a few bowls in a row to use up everything.

[Anonymous]

The Lebanese Taverna has a deli.

[Anonymous]

You dont want to do any meal prep, but you want inexpensive and healthy. Ok.

[Anonymous]

Where do you live OP, there's a store in Alexandria/Springfield that sells These things by weight.

[Anonymous]

I make a pot of rice and roasted vegetables, and then can use it for various meals in the week. I usually buy the Cava brand harissa at Whole Foods. I pickle some onions myself and make a cucumber dill yogurt lemon sauce too. For the bowl I use rice, vegetables, rotisserie chicken, spinach, tomatoes, cucumbers, dill, mint, pickled onions, feta, the sauce and harissa.

[Anonymous]

If you make it often, it might be worth it to buy the ingredients at WF. But, a small container of CAVA crazy feta costs $9, so it's not necessarily cheap to buy the pre-made products that go into a CAVA bowl.

[Anonymous]

You can make falafel in advance. I actually make it in a mini-muffin tin and then transfer to bags and freeze. I don't know what to tell you about not wanting to chop any vegetables. It doesn't take that long to chop up some cucumbers, tomatoes, red peppers, and herbs for a salad and if you just toss that in a combination of olive oil and lemon juice (or red wine vinegar if that's your thing), it's great.

[Anonymous]

A lot of the ingredients in the salads are repetitive, so I find no need to make 3 of them to approximate the flavors of the bowl.

Make a grain (couscous, tabouleh, quinoa) with onions, pepper, cucumber, tomato, parsley, olive oil, a little red wine vinegar, spices). This'll last a few days, but maybe leave out the tomatoes until you're ready and seed the cucumbers.

Put on greens, add falafel (TJs is good), top with olives, pickles, dressings, feta, etc... and that's about the same flavor.

[Anonymous]

Trader Joe's falafel is extremely caloric though. More than 100 calories per falafel (and they are pretty small ones). It's like 450 calories for 4 small pieces!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is there an easy, not too expensive way to do this, and still keep the calories reasonable?

I generally do a mix of brown rice and greens, falafel, tahini sauce, and loaded up with all the vegetables. But I'd like to be able to do this at home with easy ready-to-go ingredients (and not have to make a cucumber or chickpea salad, tabboui, make falafel at home, etc).

What's a good place to get the ingredients to do this at home?

I would say buy a food processor with a mini bowl for chopping e.g.,...
http://wholegrainscouncil.org/recipes/lemon-mint-freekeh-salad

and a pressure cooker for a lot of bean or veggie dishes, e.g.,:
http://www.fagoramerica.com/my_fagor/recipe_library/pressure_cooker
Traditionally, places like Morocco would use slow method cookings but pretty much all the chefs there use pressure cookers now.

a slow cooker can also work for certain dishes, e.g., beans and for meat that's falling off the bone.

Also, you can freeze certain things like pesto. Anything with dairy probably won't freeze well, e.g., yogurt. So you can buy individual containers vs. the larger size if your family is small. Tahini is basically a paste made from sesame seeds. It can go rancid, so buy it in small quantities and definitely buy it in containers that you can seal to keep out air. You can probably freeze tahini too. Any condiments though freeze in small quantities.

Also, read up on salting and water content of food. Cucumbers and tomatoes have high water content. Deseeding and draining will help keep the crispness of your salads. Eggplant usually requires salting b/f cooking to draw out the excess bitterness and water.