Color To Your Plate

It snowed quite a bit here in NYC this weekend, so while my hubs was hard at work shoveling out the car, I enjoyed a few episodes of The Chef Show which I had started awhile ago due to my obsession with the movie Chef, but never watched more than the first episode.

I’m not sure what made me decide to pick it up again yesterday but I did, and I found myself basically drooling through each episode and wishing so badly I could reach into the TV and eat everything they were making and/or featuring.

I’m not a “real chef” though (and don’t forget I’m super lazy and only make things that seem easy enough) so most of the things they showed I could only long after – not make for myself.

It wasn’t until I got to Episode 3 where they make Scarlett’s Pasta that I thought (besides OMG I NEED THAT NOW) “Hey – I think I could actually make that!” And funnily enough I only realized now as I’m writing this blog post that there’s an actual recipe link out there! But I didn’t need one as all I needed to do was watch Roy and Jon make that goodness and devour it immediately after. And I knew I was going to make this for dinner the day after (today) because I wouldn’t be able to stop thinking about it until I did.

Meal prep is not something I excel in or do regularly. It sounds like such a chore so I’m often hurdled by my own false notions of how time consuming it will be.

But it really isn’t as difficult as I imagine. Leftovers + Trader Joe’s + Instant Pot is my new road to success!

This salad took 5 minutes to pull together, was delicious and satisfying, and made me feel good about eating something healthy and bright for lunch. But the 5 minutes it took was enabled by a few tools and things I had done earlier in the week:

The trick to a good Monday can be as simple as a delicious grilled cheese for breakfast. It can be fancy and gourmet while also being completely uncomplicated.

I’m a fan of using whatever is in the fridge – and this time that happened to be:

• a few slabs of leftover cheese from Trader Joe’s Party Tray Cheese
• 2 leftover slices of salami from a Christmas party cheeseboard
• a handful of kale
• and a fried egg to make it breakfast-y (I cooked this as I unfortunately don’t keep fried eggs handy in the fridge)
• The one thing you do need (at all times in my opinion) is really good sourdough. My favorite is almost any loaf from Bread Alone.

Salad for breakfast was an unappealing idea to me until recently. That might be because salad for any meal is unappealing to me in general.

When it comes to raw or cooked veggies, I always tend to prefer cooked. I love them roasted, grilled, sautéed but don’t usually extend the same affection toward them when raw.

But beautiful vibrant photos of breakfast salads have been appearing in all the magazines I love and the notion has been making its way into my heart, so I’ve been waiting for an opportunity of a slow Sunday to attempt this for myself and Dan.

I woke up earlier than usual for a Saturday morning due to the fact I needed to pee.

Instead of returning to bed, I decided to take breakfast duties upon myself (usually my hubs makes pancakes or waffles on weekends – yes, he’s a good one) and change things up a bit today.

I’ve had Pioneer Woman’s Sunday Fritatta recipe pinned in my Pinterest for years and thought today was the day I was finally going to make it. I quickly looked through the recipe and figured although I was missing many of the ingredients and I didn’t have an oven safe skillet – I was still going to make this because I had what I deemed were the essentials, and I was determined to have fritatta for breakfast.