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This baked Feta Cherry Tomato Pasta (aka TikTok Feta Pasta) took the internet by storm. And for a good reason – it’s freaking delicious and super easy.

I’m a little behind on the trend, but it’s definitely better late than never. It’s perfect for a weeknight dinner when you really don’t want to fuss with much. The basis for the TikTok Feta Pasta is a block of feta cheese (cause feta makes everything betta), 2 pints of cherry tomatoes, and olive oil. I made a slight variation by using garlic, honey, lemon zest and juice, and a few handfuls of chopped fresh spinach.

Ingredients

Pasta: You’ll want to use a short-shaped pasta like rotini, penne, shells, cavatappi, or elbows. It mixes into the dish well. I wouldn’t use long kinds of pasta like spaghetti or fettuccine.

Feta cheese: Make sure that you get the block of feta, which tends to be higher quality than the pre-crumbled kind.

Cherry tomatoes: You’ll need two pints, but if your grocery store is out of cherry tomatoes, you can sub in grape tomatoes. This recipe roasts the tomatoes in the oven, which brings out a lot of favor and is really great if you’re making this in the wintertime when tomatoes are out of season. Roasting off-season tomatoes is a great way to increase their flavor.

Garlic cloves: Fresh is best when it comes to garlic. I thought two cloves were perfect, but if you really want to keep the vampires away, you can always use a little more.

Honey: Sometimes tomatoes can be a little acidic, and I knew I wanted to add some lemon zest and juice to make the dish a little brighter, so I also knew that I needed to balance this with a drizzle of honey. It was probably about 1 tsp or so – the honey will also help the tomatoes caramelize.

Olive oil: Olive oil is an excellent pairing for tomatoes, but I didn’t have any on hand, so I subbed avocado oil, which worked great too.

Lemon: I mainly used the zest with just a touch of the juice to brighten the flavor a little bit, and it was outstanding in the dish.

Spinach: You’ll definitely want to opt for fresh spinach as frozen will have too much water. You can use baby spinach for smaller leaves, but you’ll want to give it a rough chop before adding it to the tomatoes if you use regular-sized fresh spinach.

Basil: Tomatoes and basil go together like PB&J. Fresh is way better in this case, but if you’re in a pinch, you could use dried, but you’ll only want to use about 1 tbsp. of the dried.

Extra toppings: These are entirely optional, but I really enjoyed putting chopped kalamata olives, more chopped fresh basil, and red pepper flake on top. The dish will be delicious whatever you choose.  

How to Make Feta Cherry Tomato Pasta (aka TikTok Feta Pasta)

One of the reasons that this recipe went viral on TikTok is how easy this is to make. First, you’ll cook your pasta to the package’s directions. Then you’ll place the block of cheese in the middle of a large baking dish and arrange all the tomatoes around the cheese. You’ll then season the cheese and tomatoes with garlic, honey, olive oil, lemon, salt, and pepper. After it bakes for about 35 minutes, you mix the cheese and tomatoes together. The tomatoes kind of fall apart, and the cheese melts into the tomato juices to make this super delicious sauce.

I rounded it out with chopped spinach for a little more veggies. I chopped the spinach fine so that I didn’t get a big, stringy piece of spinach when I was eating it. The chopped spinach will wilt more evenly into the pasta. You’ll add in some fresh basil at this point as well. Then you’ll mix all of this with the cooked pasta and top with your favorite pasta toppings. I used chopped kalamata olives, extra fresh basil, and red pepper flake.

What to Serve with Feta Cherry Tomato Pasta

You can certainly serve this all on its own, but if you want some extra protein, I’d recommend making my Air Fryer Turkey Meatballs. They’re easy and will cook up fast in the air fryer while the feta and tomatoes bake.

Additionally, if you’re looking for a wine pairing, you’d want to go with something like Winc’s 2020 Sister Snack Grenache. Winc has some great wine options that are shipped right to your door each month. I love that you can read about each wine’s food pairings on their site before choosing which ones you want, especially when I’m not sure what food goes with what wine. So if you’ve got certain meals that you know you cook on the regular, you can check out what each wine pairs well with, so you always have some great tasting pairings! Right now, Winc is offering 4 bottles for $29.95 PLUS free shipping! That’s an average of $7.50 per bottle, which is awesome for high-quality wines. You can skip months that you don’t want wine to come or cancel at any time.  There’s zero commitment. Plus, they’ll replace any bottle that you don’t love!  

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This Buffalo Chicken Flatbread Pizza recipe is the perfect weeknight meal that comes together in just 15 minutes. This recipe is also a great way to use up leftover shredded or rotisserie chicken.

Clearly, I have a thing for all things buffalo-flavored. I don’t see this as a problem, though. It’s really an asset if you ask me. These Buffalo Chicken Flatbreads are a weeknight wonder and come together so quickly, which is precisely what I need after a long day.

Ingredients

Dill sauce: My homemade dill sauce is a staple in my house. You can use it to dress any type of vegetable, and I use it for salads regularly. It is a 50/50 blend of plain Greek yogurt and mayo. You can use regular plain yogurt, but the consistency will be more liquid. Then apple cider vinegar and honey balance out a sour and sweet flavor profile. Then I use garlic powder and dried dill, which are two of my favorite spices. Then I season with a little bit of salt and pepper.  

Buffalo chicken: I use leftover rotisserie chicken or make this Instant Pot Shredded Chicken for this recipe. I toss it with about a tablespoon of melted butter and just enough buffalo wing sauce to coat the chicken. It can’t get much easier than this.

Flatbreads: Use your favorite flatbread or Naan bread from the grocery store. If you’re feeling a little more ambitious, you can make my two-ingredient yogurt flatbreads, which is what I like to use.  

Toppings: I like to use a combination of pre-shredded broccoli slaw and thinly sliced bell peppers. If you’re in a rush and don’t feel like chopping, you can replace the bell peppers with more broccoli slaw. And, of course, it wouldn’t be a flatbread pizza without shredded cheese. My favorites for this recipe are a sharp cheddar or pepper jack.

How to Make Buffalo Chicken Flatbread Pizza

First, you start by making the sauce and setting it aside. Then you’ll toss the chicken with butter and wing sauce. And, you’ll top each of the flatbreads with the chicken, vegetables, and cheese evenly. Lastly, you’ll bake the flatbread pizzas for 8-10 minutes at 400 degrees F. After the flatbreads come out of the oven, you can drizzle them with some of the dill sauce.

You’ll probably have some extra dill sauce leftover. You might also have some broccoli slaw leftover too depending on the size of the bag. Tossing the remaining slaw with the remaining dill sauce is a great idea to serve alongside the flatbreads. Or, you can save that for another day or use them separately.

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Intuitive eating might sound self-explanatory, right? It sounds like you just follow your body’s cravings and whims to eat whatever you want, whenever you want. And yes, when you intuitively eat, you do those things, but you also do so many other things too.

We’re all born intuitive eaters. Babies are wired to make their needs, including food, heard. Babies also know when they feel full, and they intuitively stop eating when it’s uncomfortable. But somewhere along the lines, that intuition gets disrupted. The disruption can come from several different sources throughout one’s lifetime. For example, as an infant, your parents may have pushed you to finish the bottle, so there wasn’t any waste. Or, they encouraged you to clean your plate because there “were starving children in the world.” And, maybe your parents, siblings, peers, or the media you consumed as a kid pushed you towards dieting behaviors. Some of these types of disruptions come from a well-intentioned place, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t damaging consequences that affect your relationship to food and your body.

Sometimes that disruption doesn’t come from a well-intentioned or positive place. Maybe you had food insecurity growing up or an abusive parent that didn’t feed you with consistency. Whatever it might be, something disrupted our natural intuitive eating behaviors, and suddenly trying to eat intuitively as an adult feels like a foreign concept.  

Intuitive eating is the process of shedding external cues and getting in touch with internal cues. It is also about taking care of ourselves and meeting our needs. Nutrition and health are both parts of the intuitive eating process.

But won’t I just end up bingeing on all the foods that may not be good for my health?

Maybe for a time, but with persistence and patience, those desires begin to feel less overwhelming. The body craves variety. Intuitive eating doesn’t feel intuitive to us at first because society (or family, friends, media, etc.) has taught us that we can either focus on nutrition OR pleasure. So we have to make peace first with food, learn about ourselves, and explore how food makes us feel before genuinely understanding how nutrition plays a role in our lives. If we only focus on nutrition in the intuitive eating process, it becomes another set of rules or dieting. By flipping the script and understanding ourselves first, we can approach nutrition in a whole new way.

So, what are the 10 Principles of Intuitive Eating?

Intuitive eating is an evidence-based framework that is based on 10 principles. Those principles are:

1. Reject the diet mentality
2. Honor your hunger
3. Make peace with food
4. Challenge the food police
5. Feel your fullness
6. Discover the satisfaction factor
7. Cope with your feelings without using food
8. Respect your body
9. Exercise: Feel the difference
10. Honor your health: Gentle nutrition

Many people ask if it is necessary to move through them in order. If you want to and it seems to work well for you, that’s great. It’s a pretty logical order, but I do jump around with the 10 different principles with clients a bit depending on where they are in their journey and their pressing needs. My 1-to-1 coaching is all individualized and focuses on YOU as the expert of your body.

I hope you found that to be a good explanation of what is intuitive eating. If that sounds like something you want to explore more, let’s set up a complimentary video call to discuss if my coaching is a good fit for you. You’ll get to share about your struggles, and I’ll be able to answer any questions. We’ll determine if my services and intuitive eating are a good fit for you. You can schedule this free call by going to my coaching page.

If you’re not ready for 1-to-1 coaching and want to explore more on your own, check out my resources page for more.