What We Eat In A Day! What Chefs Really Cook At Home, Winter Edition

As long as we've been friends, I've been asking Carrie, what did you have for breakfast today? What did you make for dinner last night? And what are you going to have for lunch? And when I hear her answers, it always inspires me to maybe try a new dish or think about a meal in a new way. Hi, it's Sonia. Today, Carrie and I are talking about what we eat in a day. We're each sharing what we ate and cooked for breakfast, lunch, and dinner over the course of two days. These are the things we are really eating at home. The recipes we're relying on to get dinner on the table. We're also sharing some of our strategies for make-ahead dishes and meal prep that can make lunchtime in particular feel easier. You can find all the recipes from this week's episode in the show notes. You can also get them sent straight to your inbox by subscribing to our sub stack, foodfriendspodcast.substack.com. And if you want to see the photos of what we ate in a day, we'll be posting them on our Instagram at foodfriendspod. Stay tuned to hear all about what we eat in a day. Welcome to Food Friends, a podcast inspiring home cooks to try new dishes in the kitchen by sharing trusted recipes, tips, and friendship. Hi, I'm Sonia. And I'm Keri. We met in Los Angeles over 15 years ago as personal chefs and haven't stopped talking about food since. We're so glad you're here. hi cari hi sonia it's hard to choose favorites but these episodes really rank so high for me i completely agree because i always want to know what you're cooking i feel like i got so much more of this when you and i lived in the same city we would talk to each other especially when we were collaborating a lot on projects you know we'd have to meet up early in the morning and i would always ask you like what did you have for breakfast and we would eat lunches together I love these conversations because then we can really share and it always inspires me in my kitchen. The other thing is that like when we do these episodes, I definitely think about mixing it up a little because especially for breakfast, my go to is usually the same every day. So I actually like an opportunity to make it a little different. It's still really what I would eat in a day, but maybe put in a tiny bit more effort, right? Well, I'm so glad you said that because I definitely found that I had a little bit of that. And then I also had a couple of these things where I was just like, this is just what I eat. This is just what I eat. Yeah, this is what I eat. And also consistency is nice. I completely agree. And it's a perfect segue into my day one of eating, which is I really most days start my morning with a yogurt bowl, which has yogurt, I add ground flax, goji berries, sometimes a nut butter, sometimes a handful of nuts, sometimes fruit, something like that. This week, I actually made a batch of granola, which you know, I make a version of your granola. I call it Carrie's granola. It's the first recipe in my cookbook because it's such an important recipe to me and I hadn't made it in a while. We haven't talked about granola for a minute either. We haven't talked about granola for a minute and granola is something I love to make and have not made for at least a year. I don't think it I think it's been a very long time since I've made granola. So you said you put flax. I've been on a ground flax thing where I just put ground flax into my yogurt and it adds a little nuttiness and it's I like the nuttiness I've done that in the past yeah so what makes your granola carries granola different than other granolas is you always add some kind of puff cereal to it and you've added puffed cammit or puffed millet or puffed rice and I had recently made rice krispie treats as you know and I had leftover rice krispies and I was like I don't really eat cereal like that you know Right, right. Also, the Rice Krispies are not that exciting in a bowl with milk. I don't. On their own. No, on their own. They need to be mixed with other stuff. And I was like, oh, I could make Carrie's granola and use up some of these Rice Krispies. So I combined the Rice Krispies oats. I actually threw in some millet because I like that crunch. I added some hemp hearts I had around. This is like everything but the kitchen sink, which I love for granola. I had half a jar of coconut flakes that I had been sitting there forever. I was like, I got to use this up. I had like a small jar of pecans that I wanted to use that some almonds, some pepitas. Okay, the other thing I added that made me think of you because I think you said you were going to do this, but I don't think you actually did is I added some of the zoom chocolate dark chocolate tahini to my granola like as part of the coating. Didn't you mention you were going to try that? I did that in granola bars. I used Sally of Sally's Baking Addiction has a tahini granola bar in her cookbook. And you just use regular tahini and then you drizzle it with chocolate. And I made that version, which was delicious. But Zoom had gifted us a few jars of their tahini, including the chocolate one. And I used the chocolate tahini in those bars. Yeah, we're not sponsored by Zoom, but we genuinely they're genuinely our favorite it was the only brand I used in my restaurant so they graciously sent us some jars and the chocolate tahini is if you're a tahini person this is something for you and adding tahini to your granola is just another fun way to kind of get it clumpy and delicious I mean rich I imagine it was a lot richer I didn't add too much so it was more just like a subtle cocoa flavor and not too heavy you could add a little less oil then and a little less sweetener. So it's always about balance. I like using recipe, but then I actually taste the granola before it goes in the oven. And I like it kind of salty. Like I like to be generous with the salts on it too. It brings out the sweetness. Pop that in the oven. And at the end, I added dry cherries, which kind of plump up in the residual heat once you take the granola out of the oven. And the other key about granola is once you take it out of the oven, do not move it. Yeah, don't touch it. Let it fully cool. Yeah, let it cool on the pan. I really love what you're saying about using granola. I think you said everything but the kitchen sink. I don't know that I ever thought about it that way, but that's how I like to make granola too. Because I always generally follow a recipe, but if I've got like little bits and bobs of like a few of these nuts over here, a little bit of this here, I think it just makes it more interesting. Yeah. Yeah. And I think once you get the ratios down, you can play it with whatever nuts, seeds, dried fruit that you like oh i also added sesame seeds which i think go really well in a granola they go so well in a granola because they really add that really nutty crunch too yeah so okay i had a yogurt bowl with my granola some fresh kiwi just i never have kiwi but it's so good right now it's so good in this some goji berries some flax for lunch it had been a minute since i made egg salad one of our favorite dummy salads yes one of our first points of contention did you make your egg salad or did you make my egg salad? I love you with all my heart, but I made my egg salad. I make something I call golden egg salad, which is really just you take the yolks and you kind of mash them up. I don't even use the food processor or anything. I just mash the yolks separate from the whites with a fork. I add mayo, mustard, a little pickle juice or something briny. That's all you really need. And then I just mash that up again later with the egg whites and it becomes kind of a dressing for the egg whites. This week was all about things I made ahead of time. I've been really into having kind of deli salads in my fridge for the week because I've been working more than normal and it's been busy. But if I take a little extra time one day of the week, it really helps me out. So egg salad was already in my fridge. And then I made one of my kind of snacky lunch plates where I had the golden egg salad. A snacky plate. This is like my favorite thing that you talk. Yes, it's an official term. Just different textures and flavors. I had the golden egg salad. I had those kind of black sesame brown rice crackers. Did you dip your egg salad in those crackers? Oh gosh, how delicious. Highly recommend a rice cracker with egg salad. I had a really good tangerine. I cut up some carrots. I had some sauerkraut. I had some grapes on hand. I also had quick pickled some kohlrabi several weeks before this. Just like on a random day, you just decided to quick pickle some kohlrabi. Let me tell you, Carrie, I know I always sound, I really feel like I sound extra, but I think that, you know, I want to be honest about who I am. This is really how I eat. For me, a lot of things is if I make a little time in advance, then I have all these fun things to eat later. I love kohlrabi quick pickled. I actually had saved some brine from something else I'd pickled and I had been sitting in my fridge for months, pickle brine. And I was like taunting me like you got to use it. And I had this kohlrabi and I was like, oh, I could just throw my kohlrabi in this quick pickle brine that's been sitting there. And that's what I did. And then two weeks later, I could add it to my snacky plate and it took zero effort. That is something I love about you. I think your Soviet heart loves anything pickled. And I think what you're saying, though, is actually genius. We buy some pickles from a place near us and they make these honey mustard pickles. And I save that pickle juice because it also is a great marinade for chicken But this idea that you just save your pickle juice and leave it in your fridge and then you can take a raw vegetable something that's seasonal that you already have in your fridge and make a pickle that then you eat on a snacky plate is really, honestly, that's how home cooking works. And you know, I would say you can only use the brine one time. I won't use that brine again once the kohlrabi is done. And it won't be as strong as the first time, but it certainly quick pickled my kohlrabi. I could have done that with celery. I could have done that with radish. It's really just what's on hand and what's around at the market when I'm picking up. So that was a fun treat. It took me all of five minutes to assemble this lunch when I was ready to eat. But of course, it took some time on different days ahead of time when I made the egg salad or when I made the pickles. I'm sure it also felt special because on a day that you're really, really busy, I find that having some fuel and even just taking that moment and what you're describing sounds both lovely and fancy and also really simple. I think, you know, it's fun and it's colorful. And I think especially in the chillier months, having a bright color for lunch, it always boosts my mood. So I'm also thinking about that. Okay, then for dinner. So I have a new client that I cook for every couple weeks and I deliver meals to them. And one of the great things about this client, who's also a friend, is she loves to send me recipes that she wouldn't make herself, but she would want me to try. She's interested in. Yeah. And she doesn't expect me to make them, but I'm like, this is perfect for me. I love trying a recipe that maybe I wouldn't have found on my own. So she sent me this recipe from Hedy Louis McKinnon for a tomato and lentil stew with crispy potatoes on top. I'm so curious. My interest is very piqued right now. This is a very Carrie friendly dish. This is something I really see you making. For one, it's a one pot dish. It's pretty simple. I will say one thing. I do find sometimes with some of Hedy Louis McKinnon's recipes that the cooking time takes a little bit longer than the recipe says. And I do recommend reading the comments sometimes in the New York Times before you make a recipe, because I did that and all the comments were like, I think this takes a little bit longer than it says. And so that actually helped me mentally prepare. And I do think that's an expectation for you. Yeah. So it's, but it's really simple. There are very few ingredients and yet the ingredients have big payoff. What you do is you what you do is you saute onion celery and carrot the usual suspects and i think you add some garlic to that too and then you add to your sauteed vegetables crushed tomatoes from a can some stock i actually may have even just added water i don't think i had stock on hand lentils sugar a little sweetness for the tomatoes crushed red pepper flake salt and pepper are your lentils cooked are you're cooking the lentils cook in all of this the lentil okay so that's the comment in the comment section. So a bunch of people said it's better if you parboil your lentils, then it won't take as much time. But instead of parboiling, because I did not want to get another pot out. I just rinsed my lentils. I put them in this, but I did simmer it longer. And I did add a little bit more liquid at one point, I think. And so you could kind of choose what works for you. And basically, once the lentils are almost done cooking, like they're just tender enough, At this point, you're going to top them with sliced potatoes. So while your lentils are simmering, you take a couple of potatoes, you slice them really thin into rounds, almost like you would for scallop potatoes. Did you use your mandolin? I didn't. I just used a knife. You could use a mandolin, but I just used a knife. And then you toss them lightly in olive oil, salt and pepper. And then you can arrange them in a pretty pattern or just throw them on top, whatever you want to do. And then you stick everything in the oven. So the lentils finish cooking in the oven and the potatoes create kind of like a seal and they get browned and crispy. Again, I think it takes a little longer than she says. I think she says 15 minutes and I think it really took closer to 20, 25 for them to cook through and crisp up. Are you broiling them or are you just putting the whole entire pot into a very hot oven, like 400 degrees or something? Precisely. It's a 450 degree oven. So a very hot oven. So it gets nicely browned. The other thing I forgot to mention is before you top with the potatoes, this is such an important step, you add in a bunch of kale and a bunch of fresh chopped dill. So this is going to boost the flavor so much. And you let that wilt down and then you top it with the potatoes and then you stick it in the oven. And then when it comes out of the oven, you top it with more freshly chopped dill. The dill and the lentils go so well together. I think having, certainly we love soup, we love stews, adding lentils and then adding all these vegetables. But I love something crunchy with my soup. And I love being able to have something like a crouton. But the idea of having crispy potatoes on top of a one pot soup is genius, honestly. Yeah. Well, it's a stew. It's definitely not soupy at all. It's thick. We love to disagree about the definition. No, but this is truly, there's no liquidy part of it. It really thickens in the oven and in the sauce. And that also helps keep the potatoes crispy. If it had too much liquid, they would not crisp up. That's a great point. So it really is a stew. The other thing I should mention is it makes a pretty decent amount of food. So actually, we had leftovers for at least one full other meal after this. Wow, that's really good to know. Well, that's a recipe I'm going to try. I will definitely circle back. Well, Sonia, my first day started with a Dutch baby. Do you know what a Dutch baby is and have you made one of the cheddar? Oh, I've made many a Dutch baby. They're those skillet pancakes that puff up and are amazing. Yeah, it's a skillet pancake. I have to say this was my first Dutch baby. Yeah, I've never made one. I don't know why. I honestly don't know why that I've never been called to make one, but I love this idea of a pancake that's shared. It's like a pancake for two, three, or four people. I like it because it's also, it's like the souffle of pancakes. Yes, that's a great way to describe it, I think, for someone who's maybe never had a Dutch baby or seen one. But I was inspired to try this because, as you know, my food friend, Maylynn, I see her every week. And the last couple of weeks, she has confessed she's made like several Dutch babies. She's actually been making them for dinner. Malin really, she just self-defines as I don't really like pancakes that much. And so I found it really funny that she was kind of led to make this dish several times. I decided to give it a try based on being inspired by her. And I made the einkorn version from our food friend, Adrienne Hale, wrote a book about using einkorn wheat. And I do love einkorn wheat. And so I used her recipe. I also checked out a couple of other recipes. The one that Maylynn, I think, has been using is from the New York Times. I kind of combined the two because the one from the New York Times is basically throw everything into the blender. and by everything I mean three eggs, a little bit of milk, a little bit of seasoning, some flour, basically just blend it up. And the thing that I think is interesting about the Dutch baby is you get your oven really hot, 450 degrees, and you stick your pan in the oven and then pull your hot pan out, add the butter, and then add the batter on top of that. And that's what really helps it puff up. I think the high heat and the hot butter helps the eggs really rise because there is no leavening beyond the eggs. I made it for breakfast for Mac and he came downstairs to eat and he was like, you made me pancakes on a weekday. And that's what I kind of loved about it is it's really not a fussy recipe. It takes a little bit of time. And one of the key parts is actually that your eggs need to be at room temperature. So I just left my eggs out overnight and I used them the next morning so that I didn't have to worry about the timing. And I tell you the other trick for room temperature eggs that I learned on set years ago from a food stylist. If you put them in warm water, not too hot, you just get like warm tap water and you stick your eggs in there for five minutes and maybe change out the water twice depending on the size of the bowl, it will get them warmed up enough that they're room temperature, which is what I always do if I have forgotten to leave it out. I love that. So Sonia, as you know, I'm not actually a huge breakfast person. So I really made the Dutch baby for Mac. I had like a couple of bites of it. But by the time lunch rolled around, I was actually quite hungry. And so I made huevos rancheros for lunch. You did? I did. You don't usually make a lunch like that. I don't at all usually make a lunch like that. But we had gone to visit James on set like a few days before we were there when they were serving a meal. And this guy was like, do you want some huevos rancheros? And he had this huge griddle. He was basically making them to order. That's what I had for my meal on set. And when I came home, I was inspired to make my own version. What I never realized is when you make huevos rancheros, you basically make a sauce with a salsa. You cut up your onions, your cilantro, your jalapeno, your tomatoes together. You kind of have that and you use half of it as a salsa a fresh salsa and then you cook the other and make a sauce out of it What I was inspired to do was use leftover salsa from one of our meals at a restaurant So I cooked a little bit of it. Once you have all the ingredients ready to go, it's actually a very easy and quick meal to make. I reheated my beans. I added them to my toasted tortillas. I added the egg. I put a little bit of the sauce over top of it. And it was a very delicious lunch. I love how one can get inspiration from places you don't expect. And just to clarify, your husband is a producer. He produces film and television. So you were on a TV set and a caterer or craft services person. Is that where this is happening? It was a meal. So it was the catering. And it's like, so you could just show up at a place you didn't plan on having a meal and have a meal. And then it inspires your cooking in your own kitchen. And I've heard you talk about that before like you went to the baseball game and came home and had to replicate the tacos. I just love that. And I love huevos rancheros. And it's been forever since I had them. And I don't think I've ever made them at home. So my question is, you heat the sauce, do you cook the eggs in the sauce? Or do you cook them separate? I just cook my eggs separate. I like my eggs have a little bit of crispiness on them. Yeah. And actually, I fried the egg first and then pulled it out of the pan. And then I added the sauce to the warm pan and just heated it up a little bit. And you know, I want to go back to something that you said, which is I actually love huevos rancheros. I eat them at restaurants all the time. I think the joy of going to set and being in front of an actual caterer is that I got to watch him make the whole thing. And so that's what was so fun about being there. And then we came home and I was like, oh, I kind of have all the elements. I already have the beans. I already have some tortillas in the fridge. I have salsa and I don't really have to do much more. Yeah, it's perfect. What a perfect meal. And so then Sonia for dinner, this is a meal I'm really excited to share with you. I made a roasted cauliflower sheet pan salad and I fed it to Mac and he loved it. Wow. I don't know if you've ever made a sheet pan salad that has roasted elements and fresh elements in them. We've talked about sheet pan salads before. My sister-in-law made this really great sheet pan salad meal that they invited us over to. So for anyone who doesn't know, a sheet pan salad is basically a salad made on a sheet pan. And there are a couple of ways that you can do this. You can just make a regular salad, like a Caesar salad or a Greek salad, and you can make that on a sheet pan, all the raw elements. You serve it on a sheet pan. You serve it on a sheet pan. So people have that fun of like, it's just a huge pile of salad and sometimes it's in rows, right? Of ingredients. Yeah. But what I love about winter salads, and we talked about this in our winter salad episode, is that in winter you can have salads that are a mix of roasted vegetables or cooked vegetables, and then some crunchier raw vegetables. and that's what was actually really great about this salad. It called for cauliflower and red onion. You roast the cauliflower and the red onion on your sheet pan and once that's cooked, and red onion always reminds me of you because I feel like you're always putting red onions in things like in nachos, in sheet pan meals, and it's like its own delicious ingredient. So I really also loved the combination of, I have purple cauliflower and the red onion, it made it really pretty. Beautiful, yeah. And so you roast your vegetables. And then while your vegetables are roasting, you kind of get the rest of the ingredients together. The recipe is roasted cauliflower salad with arugula, feta, and dates. And I didn't have any arugula, but I used the feta and the dates and I used some radicchio. And while your vegetables are roasting, you just make like a very quick vinaigrette. You toss your greens in the vinaigrette. You pull your vegetables out. You add the feta for like five more minutes to kind of make it a little bit soft and crispy on the edges. and then you add your greens on top. And so you end up with this delicious roasted vegetable bottom and then all these fresh greens on top. I love that. And I feel like you could really add like chickpeas or even maybe a white bean to this or some toasted nuts if you wanted it even heftier, right? Well, I'm glad you said that. So I do love chickpeas. I kind of liked that this one did not have any chickpeas or beans in it. I did use nuts. I'm glad you asked about that because I used some of those toasted Freddy Guy hazelnuts that you sent me for Christmas. At first, Mac was kind of digging around them. And I was like, oh, have you gotten a nut yet? Have you gotten one of the hazelnuts? And he was like, no, I'm kind of avoiding them. And I was like, you know that hazelnuts are what's in Nutella and magic spread. So, and he goes, oh. And so then he started looking for them and then he dug all of the hazelnuts out of the salad. Such a win for me. Gosh, I love that. Yeah. And magic spread, in case you didn't hear when we talked about it, magic spread is a date cocoa and hazelnut mixture from this place called Cloud Forest in Portland, Oregon that I love to send to people because it's really a magic spread. Yeah, it's really a magic spread. And it's like Nutella, but with dates as the base. And it's so rich and delicious. So anyway, I felt as a parent and- It was a win. It was a win. Sounds amazing. Okay, Carrie, I feel like there's some overlap with what you just talked about and my day too. So I'm loving that. For breakfast, I've been trying to have breakfast with a couple eggs more times in the week because like I said I usually do a yogurt bowl so I'm trying to do eggs just like once or twice a week too especially if I have a big morning and I you know my sister in law is Turkish and her Turkish mother taught me a lot of recipes and dishes and techniques that have stuck with me for years and do you know about Turkish style eggs I don't actually one time you and I went out to friends and family in Los Angeles that restaurant I remember we had those beautiful eggs over yogurt with the herbs that isn't that is like Turkish eggs yeah so traditionally Turkish eggs the style is poached eggs that you put over yogurt that's been flavored with garlic and dill and you have a kind of butter sauce with different spices that you pour over the top and I on a weekday I'm just not going to do that although I do think that's lovely for a special brunch but I was like oh could I get like the flavors of a Turkish egg dish but like in 10 mince or less. And that's what exactly what I did. So I got out, I had this dill that I was using in that lentil dish. So I had all this extra dill that I was keeping in a jar of water on my counter. And I was like, Oh, I could add dill to some yogurt. Forget the garlic. I didn't want that in the morning. So I just roughly ripped up some dill on some yogurt, put it on my plate, got my pan out, put some butter in it, put a little sprinkle of smoked paprika, a flake of some Aleppo pepper, but chili flake would work just as well. I just happened to have that. And then I cracked my eggs into that buttery spiced mixture, seasoned them with salt, got a fried egg, done, and then just plopped that onto the yogurt and toasted a little piece of bread. And I was like, wow, this is the best breakfast I've eaten in weeks. It was so good. I mean, I think that's such a genius idea. I guess not everyone cooks their eggs in butter. You can obviously cook them in olive oil. You could do this in olive oil. Yeah. Right. But this idea of adding a really delicious spice like a smoked paprika which is really going to add some depth of flavor some smokiness a little aleppo which adds a little bit of heat that immediately makes your breakfast way more exciting it was definitely an exciting breakfast but jonathan didn't get to eat it because he was not here for breakfast and then i told him about it i showed i took a picture to share on our instagram and i showed him and he was so devastated and so now i'm going to make it for him for him yeah yeah no i'm going to make it for him actually today because he's been wanting it since I made it and it could be for lunch which I love all right so then for my lunch because I had this great egg dish in the morning I also made another sort of I wouldn't say it's like a totally light lunch but I wanted more vegetables and I had had some winter salads that I made ahead because in our winter salads episode we talk all about this there are just salads that I like to have in my fridge and this was again a week where I just made a bunch of stuff at once and had it sitting so I could have quick lunches. So I had a citrus salad, my citrus salad with pomegranate and mint that I had already in the fridge. And then I had the kohlrabi and celery salad with dates and almonds in my fridge. And I also had an herby tuna salad because I made some for the client when I was making some for them. I just made some extra for me. My herby tuna salad is just my go-to way of making it. It has celery, a ton of dill, and dill is a theme this week, parsley, mayonnaise, lemon zest and lemon juice. It's really light. I will say as a person who has mixed feelings about canned tuna, I will say your tuna salad is really, it's so light and so flavorful because you put so many herbs in it. It really, to me, brightens it up. This is, again, it took five minutes to assemble. I threw a scoop of tuna on and some salads and called it lunch, but it's easy to do the same thing with just like a pile of washed lettuce or a pile of arugula. I certainly do that in the past and maybe some cut up vegetable that you might have on hand it doesn have to be make salads just a scoop of tuna and some kind of vegetable for me is a really great lunch and it doesn weigh me down and it keeps me going till dinner I have one question one follow up question which is what kind of citrus did you put in your citrus pomegranate and mint salad? Did you have caracaras, blood oranges? There was a caracara, there was a blood orange, there was like a daisy tangerine. I think those are the three I had. And I'm not making that all the time, but we've been talking about it. And I really love that salad. And so I was like, Oh, this will be nice to just have around. Well, I also love that both of your salads have a little bit of sweetness in them. Because I also love celery, date, almond salad. And I love that pop of citrus. That's like a great lunch to have really keep you going for the rest of the day. It did it really did. And then for dinner, I've been doing something with chicken thighs. That's really simple, which I just I call them shawarma chicken thighs. But I think that sounds fancier than what it actually is. I have a Sharma spice blend that I like that I'll link, but there are so many different Sharma spice blends already available. And I don't even marinate my chicken. This was a quick weeknight mail. I got chicken thighs out of the fridge. I coated them in Sharma spices. I salt and peppered them and I let them sit. Are they bone in skin on or are they boneless? Thank you for asking. The recipe I'm going to link by Sam Sifton. He uses boneless skinless thighs but I actually prefer roasting bone in skin on thighs I think they stay juicier so that's what I got the recipe works either way and so I just let it sit and pre-eat in my oven for a while because I do like when your chicken can get up to room temperature I took an onion from the pantry I cut it into wedges and then when I wanted to put in the oven I just tossed the onion a little bit of oil salt and pepper and laid it around the chicken thighs put it on a sheet pan, plopped it in the oven. While that got going, I cut up some parsnip and some carrots and then tossed them in some oil. And I had some thyme. I just added some thyme to that. You could use any spice or herb you like. And I popped that in the oven a little after I put the chicken in. They both roasted at the same time. While that was roasting, I did whatever else I needed to do, like put away dishes or I don't even remember what I was doing. And then 45 months later, everything's cooked, ready to go. And it's just a simple protein and some vegetables. Made exciting by just using a spice blend that you had on hand. And I think someone isn't familiar with shawarma or doesn't like those flavors, you could certainly use chili powder. You could use any of the spice blends that you like at home. I think that's such a good point, Carrie. Just on some chicken thighs with some onion. With some roasted vegetables that you've got, like whatever vegetables you have in your pantry or fridge. And I do just say thyme with parsnip and carrot goes so well. I'm going to link a recipe that's really similar to what I did. It's so simple. In that recipe, they also drizzle it with honey. I didn't even feel like it needed honey because the carrots and parsnips have been really sweet right now this time of year. Yeah, especially in the winter months. They're so sweet and delicious. You don't really need anything more. Well, Sonia, for my day two breakfast, I had made peanut butter and honey cereal bars, which is something I shared on our sub stack months ago. My day too also has some overlap with some of the things that you made because I wanted to make these cereal bars, which I make with grape nut cereal, which is a very, remember, it's like. Yes, it was based on that granola bar in Colorado that you had. Yeah, no, that my clients brought. They went on a trip, they brought me these granola bars, and then I recreated them with grape nuts, basically just melted honey with a little bit of melted peanut butter. But my son has some notes about these crunchy cereal bars. And I also had extra leftover Rice Krispies. And I had made Rice Krispie treats and I had some leftover. I cut those grape nuts in half and I just added more Rice Krispies instead. And it really likes- Mac doesn't like the density of the grape nuts on their own in these bites. And so to combine that with Rice Krispies would really lighten it up. It made it crispier, not crunchier. And what it kind of reminded me of were my grandmother's peanut butter balls. But what I loved about these were they weren't so heavy. My grandmother's peanut butter balls are like a pound of butter, a pound of confectioner's sugar. They're very sweet. And this is more just like honey, peanut butter, a little bit of grape nut cereal, and then the Rice Krispie treats. I made them for Mac's basketball team. And we had a few leftovers and we had them in little snack bags. So I just stuck them in the freezer. And that's what I ate for breakfast, along with a smoothie that I made for him. And, you know, I was sort of get razzing you about quick pickling kohlrabi, but I bought some kohlrabi at the farmer's market a couple of weeks ago. I've been taking the greens from the kohlrabi and throwing them in the blender with banana, with orange, letting that really blend up well. and having that in Mac's smoothie, which he can't really tell that it's fruit and vegetable. I also add some hemp hearts. I keep those in my fridge. I pour some of those in. I add a big scoop of full fat Greek yogurt, which adds like a richness to it. And so I had peanut butter bites and a little bit of smoothie for breakfast. There's so many fun overlaps here. I know, I love it. And then for lunch, I made another taco. So I had a package of corn tortillas that I had used the day before when I was making my huevos rancheros and I had a little bit left over, I've been testing out saucy chickpea recipes because, you know, recently I posted a saucy braised chicken recipe on our sub stack and I've been wanting to make something like that that uses chickpeas and has like sort of a saucy tomato sauce. There's at least one night, if not two nights of the week where we come home kind of right at dinner time. And so I've been thinking about how to have something that's almost ready to go. And a slow cooker is really the place that you can do that. I've been testing out this recipe where you just throw the chickpeas, some tomato sauce, some spices in the slow cooker and let it go for a couple of hours. And what's amazing about chickpeas is that they really absorb the flavor of what they're being cooked in. And so for lunch this day, I just heated up my tortillas. I added a little bit of sour cream. I added the saucy chickpeas and then I added a little bit of shredded cabbage. It was such a delicious lunch. And Sonia, I just shared that recipe on our sub stack. And you can find the link to our sub stack in our show notes. It's free to subscribe. All of our recipe posts are free. And there's also the opportunity to upgrade to paid and join us for a monthly live zoom. It's so fun to connect with each other and ask all of your burning home cooking questions. Okay, so Sonia, for dinner that night, we had some leftover pizza that Mac and I were going to heat up and eat together. But we had gone to the farmer's market, we had some radicchio. At the market, there were all these beautiful greens. And so I just tossed together a salad, a basic vinaigrette. I had balsamic vinegar, a little bit of mustard, olive oil. I put it in a jar, shook it together. But the couple of things that I did to make this radicchio salad a little bit more exciting is I took a little bit of panko and olive oil in a pan and I toasted it for like a makeshift breadcrumb. I think a toasted panko is often used as a great little textural topping on a salad. I think it's really smart to do that. I like the crunchiness of the panko. And so I added a little bit of garlic, a little bit of red pepper flake in with the olive oil and the panko, let that toast, added that to my radicchio salad. And I also added more of those hazelnuts because Mac was really into them the night before. And he also ate that radicchio salad with his pizza. I want to know where you got your pizza. I want to know what was on it. The pizza was from Prime, which is this great shop in my neighborhood. It was very basic. We ordered a large half pepperoni, half cheese pizza. We had a couple pieces of each. We threw them back in the oven, leftover pizza, this really delicious radicchio salad. And it kind of felt like we breathed new life into all of our leftovers. You know, that's one of my favorite meals of all time. As it is mine. Oh, I love this. It's always so fun to hear what you're eating. It really is. It's different. I get a window into your daily life. Same, same. And I feel like it always kind of gives me that inspiration boost of thinking about breakfast differently, thinking about lunch, instead of feeling kind of annoyed or overwhelmed when those meals come up, I'm like, oh, I can make a salad ahead of time and have that waiting for me when I'm having a busy week. Well, and same here, I'm thinking about saucy chickpeas this week. And this is the whole point is to get new ideas, because that question of what do we eat for breakfast, lunch, dinner just comes up every single day. For everyone. For everyone. Yeah. Well, until next time. Bye. Bye. Thanks for being our food friend. If you enjoyed our podcast, please subscribe, leave us a review and share this episode with friends. We love hearing from you. So follow us on Instagram or drop us a line at foodfriendspodcast.com. Yes. We'd love to hear from you and your food friends. Happy cooking and eating.