The Mediterranean Meal Plan Cookbook: Simple, Nutritious Recipes to Eat Well, Feel Great and Look Fabulous (2024)

The Mediterranean

Meal Plan Cookbook

Simple, Nutritious Recipes to Eat Well, Feel Great and Look Fabulous

Neda Varbanova

Creator of Healthy with Nedi

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Table of Contents

About the Author

Copyright Page

Thank you for buying this

Page Street Publishing Co.

Foreword

Eating real food in a processed-food world is not always easy. The temptation to eat fast food and packaged pre-made convenience foods is strong when these foods are everywhere—especially when you have a family and life gets busy. At times, it takes extreme dedication to cook the majority of my meals at home and save myself from pulling into a fast-food drive-through just to keep my sanity. Although I’ve dedicated my life to investigating the ingredients in processed food and sharing the truth with anyone who will listen, it can be hard to walk the talk all the time. I might be known as the Food Babe who crusades against the Big Food industry, but the reality is that I need constant inspiration to avoid processed foods and to stick to real food in my own life. This is why I enjoy listening to podcasts about how specific ingredients in our food affect our bodies. I read books daily on the health benefits of real food and how specific ingredients can prevent heart disease and cancer—and how processed ingredients like soybean oil cause damage to our bodies. I’m continuously experimenting with new recipes to motivate myself to cook at home with healthy ingredients for myself and my family. I’m always looking for like-minded people to keep me inspired and strengthen my convictions.

Neda Varbanova is one of the people I continually turn to for inspiration and motivation. She is an expert at sharing the beauty of cooking with her family, showcasing her delicious recipes with tons of vegetables and healthy ingredients. Neda’s recipes are presented in such an inviting and beautiful way, so distanced from the conveniences of processed food, which makes me want to drop whatever I’m doing to make whatever she’s cooking up in her kitchen. Neda embodies what the real food lifestyle is all about. She has the unique ability to inspire me to use the healthiest ingredients to cook meals that are awesomely delicious. I don’t know what I’d do without people like Neda in the world to keep me on the right path.

You see, cooking and eating real food hasn’t always been a part of my life. When I was a child, nearly everything I ate came from a box or a fast-food window. This eventually led me to being 30 pounds (13.6 kg) overweight—first as a teenager, then later as a professional management consultant in my twenties. I was fat, tired and stressed. It wasn’t until I had a major health scare that I found the motivation to change my diet. I went on a quest to investigate all of the processed and fast foods I was eating and what I found shook me to my core. The vast majority of my food was composed of man-made materials from a factory. I was not eating real food. This food was DEAD—which is how I felt most of my life. I didn’t have energy, I had lots of health issues, and I was on tons of prescription drugs.

I realized that I could no longer give up control of my diet to the Big Food industry. I could not continue outsourcing my health or my food, and I certainly couldn’t let the food industry dictate what was healthy for me anymore. I knew I had to figure out how to make meals in my own kitchen with whole, real foods. This is when I taught myself how to cook—and everything in my life changed! All the health issues I had—asthma, eczema, allergies—disappeared. I started feeling energetic and comfortable in my own skin.

The old motto garbage in, garbage out is so, so true. There is no doubt about it—you feel horrible when you feed your body fast and processed food. When I began cooking, my health soared and the excess weight came off—and now, nearly 20 years later, I’ve never had to go on a diet again and have never felt better. I want everyone to feel this way! I believe that real food is medicine, and cooking has saved my life.

Cooking can save your life, too. But first, it is vitally important to make your health and wellness a number one priority in your life. You need to take a vow to yourself to shun all those processed and fast foods that bombard you at every turn, and make a dedicated effort to make cooking and eating real food a part of your daily routine. Commit to making most of your meals and snacks at home, instead of outsourcing your meals to restaurants or packaged foods. When you outsource your food, you are consuming food prepared by someone else with a list of ingredients chosen by someone else, who usually doesn’t have your health in mind. When you eat food prepared by yourself, you automatically avoid hundreds of processed food additives (preservatives, flavor enhancers, thickeners, colors) that you’d otherwise be exposed to. This is the key to taking back control of your health with your diet.

Neda provides you the essential tools you need in this cookbook—along with a 30-day meal plan—to make cooking real food in the kitchen flawless and fun. Her 30-day meal plan will keep you on track so it’s easier to avoid processed food temptations that try to stand in your way, because they always will.

We need more people like Neda in the world to shine a light on the beauty of getting back into our own kitchens and cooking with our families. It is my hope that Neda inspires you as much as she does me, and that you enjoy the incredible recipes in this cookbook with your loved ones. This just might save your life.

—Vani Hari

New York Times best-selling author and founder of the Food Babe and Truvani™

Introduction

Hi! I’m Neda Varbanova, the creator of Healthy with Nedi, a platform that I made to share my love for food and wellness. I am a certified health coach with a master’s in food studies from New York University (NYU) and a certificate in culinary nutrition from the Natural Gourmet Institute.

One of my true joys in life is sharing time in the kitchen with my mom and grandma cooking up delicious meals from fresh ingredients. My yiayia (grandma) lives in Greece, and I spend most of my summers there with her. We prepare every meal from ingredients that we pick up at the laiki (farmers’ market) each week. This style of eating adds so much joy and vitality to my life, and it is my dream to inspire everyone to live the Mediterranean way—eating fresh, local foods, prepared with love.

I spent my childhood close to the Mediterranean, in Bulgaria, where the food philosophy is very similar. My family sat down to home-cooked meals every day. We would share our stories and connect over a table spread with vegetables, whole grains and lean meats prepared with love. My family cooked all the time and I loved observing in the kitchen. As a little girl, my mom would put me on a small stool and have me help by adding spaghetti to the pot or stirring something on the stove. It was a beautiful way to grow up, a dynamic I thought all families experienced. I loved eating this way, but I never realized it was healthy. It was just the way we ate in our home—no labels, just food and joy.

When we moved to the United States when I was 11, our lives and eating habits changed dramatically. I was taken aback by portion sizes and the fast-food restaurants on every corner. There were many foods I had never eaten, and I took an interest in exploring processed foods in shiny packages. This eating style began making me very sick; I would feel bloated and constipated for days at a time. I seriously struggled with my gut health and was eventually diagnosed with irritable bowel syndrome. That’s when I knew I needed to return to the style of eating I had enjoyed as a child. When I began eating a Mediterranean diet again, I felt my vitality return and my digestive problems almost completely disappeared.

From that revelatory moment in high school through my master’s program at NYU and in my work with clients, I have dedicated my life to sharing the pleasures of eating wholesome, fresh Mediterranean-inspired foods.

Over the years I’ve seen my clients experience incredible results by shifting to a Mediterranean diet. People have reported that this lifestyle makes them:

• Feel happier

• Become more