I broke up with winter a couple of weeks ago…. It is April 5th and I think winter possibly just got the memo that we are done with each other… at least for this year. It doesn’t quite feel like spring yet, but we are making progress.

What are you looking forward to now that spring is almost here? I am excited for fresh produce, warmer weather (seriously, I would take a day in the 60s) and longer days. I just love that the sun sets at 7:15 today. It is light out until 7:30. That helps me get a run in after work – and that is definitely a good thing!

So it has been a while since my last blog post. This winter has been long and I lost some inspiration when it came to cooking. Being healthy can sometimes be a little boring and can feel like the same thing day in and day out. But now that spring is here I have gotten the desire to cook new, different things and share them! Today I am making THREE new recipes. One from the Jerusalem cookbook by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi and two from Bountiful by Todd Porter and Diane Cu.

Last night I set my alarm even though I did not have to get up at a certain time. I clicked the alarm on for 9:45 AM. A funny thing – I find that I sleep better when I set the alarm even on the weekends. If I don’t set an alarm for Saturday or Sunday morning I wake up a few times in the night to make sure I am not sleeping away the entire day. If I don’t set an alarm I could easily sleep until 11am – and that would really feel like a waste of a weekend day!

I woke up naturally at 9:20 AM and I felt so well rested! I started my coffee, threw in some laundry and started looking through my cookbooks and making a shopping list. This is the perfect Saturday, in my book! I also made a really good and fairly healthy breakfast for myself:

Whole foods blueberry waffles with fresh blueberries and blackberries. A little Brummel & Brown on top and about a tablespoon of maple syrup. This breakfast felt decadent and really hit the spot.

I headed out to Whole Foods with a shopping list in hand. It was very busy at WF but I was able to find everything I needed for dinner. When I got back, I put everything away and started on my dough for the knot bread I was going to make to go with dinner. I also put together a quick lunch with leftovers from last night. WF couscous, grilled chicken, cherry tomatoes, spinach, a drizzle of evoo and some freshly ground pepper. I think this might be a go to meal now:

This lunch was SO. GOOD. In the afternoon I went out to Seven Stars to pick up a brownie that will go with dessert tonight, and I ordered a chai tea latte as an afternoon pick me up.

I started making my knot bread because it was something I could do ahead of time:

The food scale came in really handy… and I also needed a ruler. Who knew!? Both of these tools were very helpful. I’m going to wrap up this post so that I can get back into the kitchen to start prepping a few more things for dinner. Stay tuned – I will post tomorrow to show you how the rest of dinner came out!