Plenty Of Food

(We don’t really know the official rules for Elf on the Shelf,

but I move her around the house and Mazen thinks she’s magic!)

Hi friends!! (I just wrote Friday – lol!) I have lots of food news to share with you.

First: did you know Kodiak Cakes makes flapjacks in a cup!?

It’s basically pancake mix that you add milk (or water) to and then microwave for a minute. Insta deep dish pancake! I found this at Wegmans, and it made for a great super quick breakfast. I am thinking that you can DIY one too with any pancake mix and a cup?

More breakfasts in a hurry:

Not my most glamorous meal of late!

Lunches have been better though! Oh how I missed you cold smoked salmon <3 I wrapped some up with cream cheese and red pepper strips. I would have added some spinach or greens if I’d had any but the fridge was empty as can be until…..

….the highlight of my lunch week, however, has been ordering some meals from Plenty!

The owner, Della, is a badass personal chef here in Charlottesville (her Instagram will blow you away!) Each week she sends out a menu on Thursday, and you can opt in to any of the dishes by Sunday – including lunch/side salads, quiche, soup, and a handful of dinner entrees. You can order as much or as little as you wish. I love that there’s no required subscription so you can order more or less depending on your week in both number of items and portion size. And Della DELIVERS the delicious, healthy real food meals to your home on Mondays.

I am used to having plenty (haha) of time to prepare lunches, but now that I’m home solo with a little baby, my time is much more limited. While I could food prep during his nap, I’d rather spend my time on other things, like writing blog posts, getting in a workout, or, ya know, showering?! So I figured now was a great time to treat myself to some really nourishing meals.

This was my first week and I ordered the following:

+ half a quiche with green chili, cheddar, and chorizo and a homemade butter crust (I love that you can order just a half – it was still huge!)

+ a curried sweet potato and farro salad

+ a fall kale salad with sweet potatoes, feta, pine nuts and the most delicious lemon maple dressing

+ one dinner entree: mini salmon cakes with arugula and a Mediterranean quinoa salad with feta, herbs, bell pepper, and a lemon dressing

You GUYS it has been so fun to have all this food in my fridge. I can’t wait to see what’s in store for next week!

(The farro and kale salads mixed with quiche on top!)

Thomas and I loved the mini salmon cakes, and the portion size was perfect for two.

Our dessert game as been 100% as well because we made Gimme Some Oven’s Chewy Ginger Molasses Cookies.

They are amazing. Highly recommend!!

In non-food news, I did some re-organizing of my house. Call me Mrs. Grinch, but when the Christmas clutter comes out it forces me to simplify everything else. I spent some time re-styling our living room shelves aka taking away 1/3 of the clutter. I also minimized the color palate to white, aqua, wood, and a little gold, and I like the look more than the rainbow I had before. (Our foot sacks are from Etsy )

Linens were thinned and consolidated. (These were previously stuffed into a geometric basket.)

I also swapped in my more neutral couch pillows so balance out all the red and green : ) Little Birch says hi! BTW, the Dock A Tot might be my MVP newborn item…

When we got the Kitchenaid mixer down for the cookies, I realized how awful it was to have such a heavy appliance up so high. It used to sit between the seagrass baskets below. I realized that these chicken wire baskets I had downstairs fit perfectly in that slot. (They were a find from Wal-mart actually! They have such a great inexpensive storage options.) Where the other white basket is we used to have a wine rack, but I never used it because I had to get a step stool to reach the wine (no bueno!) So removed the X part and put a wire basket there too that now holds papergoods.

Wine + Kitchenaid are now on my little island cart that I bought on Etsy. (More wine is on the way!!)

I’ll leave you with this photo of B from our family photo shoot. More photos will be shared soon!

HI GUYS!