Browsing Category

Lunch and Dinner

Whether you’re looking for lunch and dinner ideas for your next family night, dinner party, or tomorrow’s in-law visit, you’ll be able to find something right here. This category features all of our lunch and dinner recipes, rolled up into one, easy location. We cover everything from meatballs to pizza to salads. Our recipes are budget, family, and living-on-your-own friendly, and easy to make! We’ve made every recipe featured here and our posts will let you know how we liked the dish. Let’s be honest, we’ve loved pretty much everything. Leave a comment if you have one. If you’re looking for something more specific use our search bar or check out one of our niche categories. Thanks for stopping by, hope to have you back soon!

All Recipes/ Comfort Food/ Lunch and Dinner

Copycat Frontega Chicken Sandwich

August 7, 2024
Frontega Chicken Sandwich

Let’s talk about eff-me bread. It’s what I call Trader Joe’s focaccia bread. If you haven’t had Trader Joe’s focaccia bread, you need to try it. Bread makes a sandwich and the combination of everything in between makes a delicious meal, but this bread makes this Frontega chicken sandwich. “Eff-me,” is the phrase that exits my mouth after taking a bite of this focaccia bread. Fatima made this sandwich two…

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All Recipes/ Healthy Living/ Lunch and Dinner/ Vegetarian

Miso Glazed Salmon with Cashew Dressing

July 11, 2024
miso glazed salmon

If you tried the salmon quinoa salad then you’ll love this miso glazed salmon with spicy cashew dressing. This recipe is a mix of a bunch of different recipes we mashed to make our own. We’ve been experimenting with rice bowls and making sure to include salmon more often in our diet. One of my favorite bowls so far has been this blackened salmon and corn salsa rice bowl. Lilies…

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All Recipes/ Healthy Living/ Lunch and Dinner

Crispy Chicken Salad with Honey Mustard Vinaigrette

June 20, 2024
honey mustard vinaigrette

We’re continuing our journey through “make your favorite fast food salad at home” with a trip to Just Salad. One of my favorites is their honey crispy chicken salad. It combines corn, romaine, spinach, red cabbage, crispy chicken, crumbled feta, quinoa, crispy onions, carrots with honey mustard vinaigrette drizzled all over. This salad fills me up every time. To make this crispy chicken salad at home, I pared it down,…

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All Recipes/ Healthy Living/ Lunch and Dinner

Crispy Chicken Salad with Poblano Ranch Dressing

May 15, 2024
Poblano Ranch Dressing

I’m hitting a wall on lunch options. It’s the most boring meal of the day; I’d rather skip it. Once we started making these salads, I felt inspired to continue my journey to find new lunch options. So the next stop on this salad journey is a crispy chicken salad with poblano ranch dressing. I took some inspiration from some of my and Brian’s favorite salads. Broiled corn, avocado, pickled…

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Cooking Through Full Plate/ Lunch and Dinner

General Ayesha’s Honey Chicken: Cooking Through Full Plate

May 8, 2024
General Ayesha Honey Chicken

If you don’t already know by now, we love a make-at-home-takeout meal (copyright “make-in”?). Why? Mostly to cut down on all the unnecessary additives and sodium. I was flipping through Ayesha Curry’s The Full Plate and stumbled on General Ayesha’s Honey Chicken and it looked delicious. I had to make it. Lilies and Loafers has affiliate relationships, so we may get a small share of revenue from your purchases. Items…

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All Recipes/ Healthy Living/ Lunch and Dinner

Guacamole Greens Salad

May 1, 2024
Guacamole Greens Salad

Sweetgreen is one of our favorite salad places when we’re eating lunch in the city. Once it started to feel like spring, we went into salad mode. We’ve been in salad mode for two months now! I thought it would be a good idea to try and recreate one of our favorite Sweetgreen salads, guacamole greens. We love our salads. One of Brian’s favorites is from Cravings. Personally, I like something…

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All Recipes/ Cooking Through Cravings/ Lunch and Dinner/ Side Dishes

Orange Chicken Fried Chicken Sandwich: Cooking Through Cravings

August 16, 2023
Orange Chicken Fried Chicken Sandwich

Oh my gosh. This orange chicken fried chicken sandwich was so good. There are notes, but overall, this was a really good sandwich. I love anything Fatima fries. Chicken, shrimp, fish tacos; there’s really nothing she can’t fry. Lilies and Loafers has affiliate relationships, so we may get a small share of revenue from your purchases. Items are sold by the retailer, not by Lilies and Loafers. This recipe can…

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All Recipes/ Comfort Food/ Lunch and Dinner/ Vegetarian

Cornmeal Fried Cod Rice Bowl

July 12, 2023
Cornmeal Fried Cod Rice Bowl

At a certain point, we cycle through the same meatless meals every month or two. Specifically, our fish entrees. We have only so many salmon, white fish, shrimp, and fish tacos to go around. I love them all, but adding this cornmeal fried cod rice bowl, gives me more time between the last salmon dinner and the next. I went out to lunch at a place called Fieldtrip and ordered…

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All Recipes/ Lunch and Dinner/ Vegetarian

Blackened Salmon and Corn Salsa Rice Bowl

May 10, 2023
Blackened salmon

My new favorite salmon dish is here. It’s light, yet satisfying, savory, and flavorful. Who knew that a blackened salmon with corn salsa would slap? Blackening the salmon is the hardest part, mostly due to the smoke it causes (just us?), then everything else is really easy. Whenever my sister-in-law visits, we’re always trying to figure out what hearty vegetarian dish to make. We usually stick with salmon or some…

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All Recipes/ Lunch and Dinner

Meatball Pizza

May 3, 2023
Meatball Pizza

A previous version of this post for Meatball Pizza was published in July 2012. We added some word content as this was just a picture post — not sure what we were doing in 2012, ha! In the first few years of living together after college, Fatima and I lived on meatballs and pasta, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and cereal. Not only were we busy with work, we were just…

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All Recipes/ Comfort Food/ Lunch and Dinner

Cheesy Gordita Tacos

April 19, 2023

We love a taco night. Who doesn’t? Fatima and I had one of those weeks where we wanted the best, dirty-delicious takeout food. We were stressed, our kids were sick, and all we wanted was Smashburger, Taco Bell, nachos, and every fried blooming onion I could find. Instead, Fatima whipped up these cheesy gordita tacos to keep our cravings at bay. If you don’t know, you buy cheesy gordita tacos…

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All Recipes/ Celebrations/ Lunch and Dinner/ Thanksgiving/ Vegetarian

Thanksgiving Baked Ziti

November 20, 2022
Thanksgiving Baked Ziti

What makes this a Thanksgiving baked ziti? I make ziti for Thanksgiving. With a handful of vegetarians in my family, I need to find other mains for the plate that aren’t just vegetables. So we get Thanksgiving baked ziti. What I love most about mid-to-late November is bringing my family together and cooking for them. I enjoy putting together a family dinner. I show you that I love you when…

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All Recipes/ Celebrations/ Lunch and Dinner/ Thanksgiving

Parmesan Mashed Potatoes: Cooking Through Cravings

November 16, 2022
parmesan mashed potatoes

I don’t make mashed potatoes often. I usually make them with a few select meals like parmesan chicken, Thanksgiving dinner, and as the star in these mashed potato bowls. When we bought Chrissy Teigen’s latest cookbook, these parmesan mashed potatoes were one of the first things we tried. We made these for the first time on Thanksgiving last year! Did we take these photos almost a year ago? Yes. This…

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All Recipes/ Celebrations/ Lunch and Dinner/ Thanksgiving/ Vegetarian

Collard Greens

November 4, 2022
collard greens

A few years ago I decided to make collard greens for Thanksgiving. It had been a while since we had greens at our family dinner, and I had never made them before. For my first experience, it was quite the process. Now, I prep and cook those collard greens in no time. There was one year I looked at the Thanksgiving spread and thought, “There is nothing green here. Just…

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