Late nights of meetings and work made this week feel disjointed. I got to make a few items that had been on my list for quite a while though, and a few old favorites.

Shakshuka. I didn’t have any feta, but I added some white beans to bulk it up a bit. Every time I make this I think “why don’t I cook tomatoes and eggs more often?”. Eaten with pita bread.

Miso sweet potato and broccoli bowls. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve made these bowls. They are dead simple, wholesome, and the sauce is dynamite.

Red lentil soup with lemon. This soup almost didn’t happen since I forgot to buy the lentils, but Will saved the day. We made it at the same time as the sweet potato bowls to have for dinner the next night. Besides chopping the onions, garlic, and carrot it was almost no work. The rest of the ingredients just get tossed in, and the lemon to finish takes a humble bowl of soup to a much more interesting level.

Cauliflower Parmesan. This dish is billed as a winter substitute for eggplant parm, but it is probably no surprise that this doesn’t even begin to fill the eggplant parm shaped hole in my heart. It is also no surprise that cauliflower florets are much more awkward to bread and fry than round sliced of eggplant. It was good, as anything fried and then baked with tomato sauce and cheese would be, but further proved eggplant is the ideal vegetable for parmesan-ing.

Honey and harissa farro salad (from The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook). A couple winters ago I became slightly obsessed with this salad and made it on repeat. For some reason I forgot about it last year, but I’m so happy to have it back in my kitchen. I wasn’t able to easily get my hands on farro, so I used barley and barely noticed the difference. The sweet roasted vegetables with a spicy, tart dressing and a big handful of parsley (no mint for me) make for the greatest meal in a salad. If you need to make it even better for you, it is also excellent over kale (make a bit extra dressing).

Breakfasts this week were a little more thrown together, but included the classic avocado and egg on toast (with my sister’s kimchi as the newest addition), and some whole wheat yogurt pancakes with grated apple instead of the raspberries. I recently added a Chemex to our collection of coffee making appliances, and I love the floral (grit-less) coffee it makes. I won’t abandon the French press, but it will be forever in the rotation.