Jeff and I just had a delicious mixed lunch of various yummy things.

Our favorite Pacific brand creamy tomato soup. We go through a carton of this stuff every week!

Some quinoa with chickpeas that I made in the rice cooker. Making it with vegetable broth rather than water makes it so much tastier.

Smashed avocado on toast with seaweed flake. We don’t use iodized salt in our house so I try to sneak seaweed in wherever I can to get in our proper iodine fix.

And some leftovers from last night: honey mustard salmon and sauteed veggies. I sliced up some red bell pepper, shiitakes, carrot, and gai lon broccoli (found this at the market and had to try it, it has a broccoli-like stalk but with leaves rather than florets.) I threw in some leftover brown rice, just a touch of soy sauce, and toasted sesame seeds to finish it off. So fresh!

Jeff made us our third round of tea for today to have with lunch. He likes to use the black tetsubin I got him for Christmas when he needs to make a lot of tea.

Awesome lunch of many of my favorite flavors!

Trying to decide what to do with the rest of our day. The sun is finally shining after nearly a week of rain and/or gloom.

What are your weekend plans?

Behold, the newest addition to my kitchen army!

I have been wanting and needing one of these for a long time! This little baby is a Zojirushi induction-heating rice cooker, we bought him with Christmas money we got from family.

Take a peak under the hood…

Yeah, tons of cargo space. This is my kind of hot-rod.

Before heading out to the gym today I filled my new toy with 1 cup quinoa and 2 cups water and set him to cook while I was gone.

That may look more like rice than quinoa to you because it is rice. That’s a shot of some rice I made last night that didn’t turn out too great because I had it on the wrong setting, but I forgot to take a picture of the quinoa before cooking, so this’ll do.

When I got back from the gym I had this waiting for me…

Perfect, fluffy quinoa ready to eat and still warm!

There was a ton of it so I decided to make two different preparations, one sweet and one savory.

For the sweet one, I added the following:

• handful of chopped almonds
• 1/2 cup or so mixed dried cranberries, golden raisins, and goji berries
• about 1/4 cup desiccated coconut
• 1 tsp. cinnamon
• zest of a small orange

I then made a dressing with the juice from the orange and a spoonful of honey, and heated it in the microwave so it would be thinner and distribute better. I just tossed it all together for this delicious sweet treat.

That one will be awesome in the morning with some almond milk drizzled over, or piled on top of yogurt. I’ve made a sweet maple cinnamon breakfast quinoa before, but this one is even better!

For the savory one I added:

• half a red bell pepper, chopped super small
• one chopped scallion
• one carrot, grated
• a handful of spinach, chopped finely
• zest of a lemon

For the dressing I used the juice of half the lemon, a pinch of salt and pepper, about 2 tsp. white wine vinegar, 2 tsp. tahini, and olive oil whisked in.

To make I just grated the carrot directly over with a microplane to get it really fine…

And added the chopped spinach…

Having a quality knife has been so wonderful!

Mixed in the dressing and here it is!

Believe it or not, this one was even better than the sweet one!

I had both for lunch with an apple dusted in cinnamon.

The quinoa gave me a big dose of protein to repair my sore muscles after today’s workout. Both preparations were so delicious and I managed to whip up both of them in about 20 minutes total.

I am hopelessly in love with my new rice cooker. I can’t wait to try cooking millet, farro, oatmeal, and of course rice, in it!

Look for many, many rice cooker recipes to come!

It’s been a good day. I mostly sat around the house, wrapped some presents, did some cleaning, nothing special.

I’ll be really honest, this breakfast was not from this morning. Today I had pancakes, but we all know how photogenic those turn out so here’s a picture of a bowl of yogurt with granola, pecans, buckwheat, pumpkin butter, and apple butter instead…

As long as we’re being honest, this salad was also from yesterday’s lunch…

Aren’t those bean sprouts the wackiest things ever?!? They look like little alien hatchlings stretching squiggly tentacles out of their newly-cracked shells. Ok, that was gross, I don’t want to imagine that the next time I’m eating them. Too late I guess.

On to stuff that actually happened today!

We hit up Java Monkey in downtown Decatur for a coffee date. Here’s my swirly soy latte which was so creamy and delicious!

And Jeff is giving me that snide glare that says “Are you taking a picture of me?”

No honey, never.

After that we revisited Ma Li for a tasty thai dinner. We started with a refreshingly springy seaweed salad dressed in toasted sesame oil.

And had an obligatory sushi appetizer of an Amsterdam Roll and two pieces of inari. Mmmm….fried bean curd and teeny fish eggs, two of my loves.

I got spicy basil tofu which was delicious but face-meltingly spicy.

And Jeff got his favorite red curry duck.

We had a fabulous date together, I always love going to Ma Li.

Now we’re gonna finish the night by cracking open a few beers we picked up at Ale Yeah! and watching some Neflix streaming under a fuzzy blanket.

Ahhh…I’m all warm and toasty just thinking about it!