I can’t believe tomorrow is December. Does anyone else feel like April, May and June lasted approximately 12 years but October and November were a week long? It’s been a weird year!

After a week of eating Thanksgiving leftovers, which was homemade chinese food for us, I’m desperate to get back to the order of meal prepping. And to put all that fried food behind me. There’s only so many homemade egg rolls a person can eat!

I did my grocery shopping at the Co-Op this week. I can get bulk items but they still aren’t allowing us to fill our own bags. They are also still pre-packaging some of the items, like the slivered almonds, which you don’t always know about until your order is complete. The package cucumbers were the only ones in stock. I was surprised how picked over the produce section was. You do the best you can right?

For breakfast this week, I’m making a very simple smoothie with what I had in the house #shopyourfridge. The smoothie is just 1 banana and 1 TBSP pumpkin puree, frozen. Blend that with 1 scoop of vanilla protein powder, 1/2 TBSP of pumpkin pie spice, 1 cup of almond milk and ice. I also had two hard boiled eggs with Everything But The Bagel seasoning. This isn’t fancy but it hits both the sweet and savory cravings and uses what I have.

For lunch, I just wanted a salad! Give me some veggies that aren’t deep fried please! The salad is kale, rainbow chard, pomegranate seeds, carrots, red onion and cannellini beans. I’d normally use chickpeas but, again, the cannellini beans were in my cabinet and ready to go. For toppings, I had slivered almonds, pepitas, hemp seeds and sunflower seeds. I’ll add avocado when I serve it and I have Annie’s papaya poppy seed dressing.

Dinner was found on the instagram account, Thriving on Plants (@thrivingonplants). I was planning something different but Cherie posted this pan fried tofu right before I went grocery shopping and I already had the tofu and ingredients for the sauce so I changed up my plan. The tofu is delicious! I did press mine because I prefer the texture. I also added the cornstarch, though I have to be honest, I didn’t think it made the tofu that crispy. I’d leave it off next time. I paired mine with cucumbers, like she showed, and farro instead of rice. I think next time, I’d add some avocado to the farro/cucumber mixture. The tofu is definitely the star of this if you want to pair it with something different.

Snacks- I’m all about the dark chocolate covered pretzels lately. I like dipping them in Teddie’s peanut butter. Trust me! I’ve also made chai tea concentrate with decaf tea. I didn’t use the cheese cloth that was recommended, mostly because I don’t think I have any. I just dumped it in a pan and strained it with a mesh sieve. It works great!

What do you have planned for dinner this week?