Back when I was first trying to adjust my diet and lose a little weight, I tried a few different cottage cheese bowls. Mostly sweet ones involving fruit and nuts, maple syrup, chocolate, granola, etc. But I did give one savoury recipe a try. I didn't really care for it, so I've stuck to the sweet versions since then. My go-to involves apples, cinnamon, pecans, raisins, and a bit of maple syrup or stevia. And that's honestly been really great. It's tasty, it's filling, it's easy, and it can be made with staples that I basically always have on hand.

Unfortunately, I wasn't really feeling it this morning.

I had a green smoothie bowl for breakfast yesterday and that was really nice. But I'm pretty sure we're all out of mango now and I know that we don't have any pineapple. I think it would also be good with peaches or nectarines, but we won't have any of those until our produce basket arrives later today. And I wasn't feeling super enthusiastic about any of the other possible toppings I could think of. So I wrote off the smoothie bowl for this morning. But that left me drawing a big, ol' blank for breakfast today.

For whatever reason I really wasn't feeling the sweet cottage cheese bowls this morning, but the idea of cottage cheese itself wasn't unappealing. So I decided to see if I could put something together that hit the right notes for me.

We had some ground chicken and leftover zeytoon parvardeh (Persian marinated olives) in the fridge, so I decided to try to do something that would incorporate those. That said, I think this would also work with green olives and walnuts (and maybe a few extra seasonings) in place of the marinated olives. And you could probably get away with substituting chicken lunch meat for the ground chicken in a pinch (although I think the ground chicken is better here).

I may play around with the exact ingredients and proportions a bit if I make this again. But I think this was a good starting point.

Olive and Walnut Cottage Cheese Bowl

Ingredients

• 100g ground chicken (chicken breast for low-fat/diet-friendly option)
• 1/8 tsp. coarse sea salt
• 1/4 tsp. ras el hanout
• 1/2 c. cottage cheese (fat-free for low-fat/diet-friendly option)
• 1/4 c. diced cucumber
• 4-5 green olives, halved
• 1 Tbsp. chopped walnuts
• 1 Tbsp. fried onions
• 2-3 tsp. pomegranate molasses
• 1/2 tsp. za'atar
• 1/8 tsp. black peppercorns, ground
• 1-2 Tbsp. chopped fresh parsley (optional)

Directions

1. Season the chicken with the salt and ras el hanout and cook over medium heat until no longer pink.
2. Place the cottage cheese in a bowl and top with chicken, cucumber, olives, walnuts, and fried onion.
3. Drizzle with pomegranate molasses and sprinkle with za'atar and pepper.
4. Garnish with fresh parsley if desired.