Good morning and happy weekend friends! I am in Asheville for the weekend to complete a module of my 300-hour teacher training. I can’t wait to tell you all about it when I get back to Charlotte!

We don’t start until 10:30a this morning so it’s felt luxurious to sleep in, sip coffee and get some work done before I walk over to the studio. I’ve edited a bunch of food photos from the last couple of weeks for a recent eats round up.

BREAKFAST 

I have to share the Perfect Bar first because I literally just finished eating one while working on this post. I typically don’t eat a lot of bars but I am on a big Perfect Bar kick right now. I love that they have a good amount of protein without a bunch of weird ingredients and a decent number of calories. They taste amazing and like a treat to eat. And Perfect Bars actually keep me full for a few hours. They’re a perfect light breakfast or substantial snack.

Last week I tried the almond butter flavor but my favorite is the dark chocolate chip peanut butter with sea salt and that’s what I just ate while writing this post. Oh also, I like them a little softer and melted after being out of the fridge for a bit but they’re good cold too.

Tip: they are $1.89 at ALDI.

I made a big pot of oatmeal for Finn one morning and it fed us for two mornings. It was coconut oil, mashed banana, oats, chia seeds, milk, water, raisins, a pinch of salt, a little cinnamon and cottage cheese stirred in at the end. He likes oatmeal and it’s one of the only ways I can really get him to eat fruit. (The other is smoothie bowls.)

Half of a Dave’s Killer Plain Awesome Bagel with butter and cream cheese (I also ate half of Finn’s half too) with cottage cheese scrambled eggs and grapefruit.

Peanut butter toast with honey, sliced bananas and hemp hearts on Dave’s Killer Good Seed bread. The peanut butter was sent to me by Homeplate. I am always game to try new peanut butter brands. If you want to try out Homeplate peanut butter, use code JEN15 for a discount at checkout! The crunchy peanut butter is the crunchiest I’ve ever had!

LUNCH

I am FEELING this soup + toast lunch right now! Avocado toast with lentil kale soup. I picked the soup up from a local deli (Laurel Market for Charlotte readers) and I need to recreate it because it was so delicious and flavorful.

Avocado toast and minestrone soup from Whole Foods.

Sourdough cheese toast with low-sodium tomato and roasted red pepper soup from Trader Joe’s.

Goal for next week: make a big pot of homemade soup instead of buying it.

Sourdough toast topped with mayo, avocado, bacon, runny fried egg and colby-jack cheese.

This was the Veggies + Greens salad kit from Trader Joe’s. It’s a mix of chopped broccoli, shaved cauliflower, shaved brussels sprouts, radicchio, green cabbage and kale with pistachios, dried pear crumbles and a honey-ginger dressing. I added more pistachios, dried cranberries, feta and a little more of a miso-ginger dressing that I had in the fridge. I topped it with half an avocado and served it with a buttered slice of freshly baked sourdough.

DINNER

Seared filet with sautéed mushrooms. One of my teacher trainees in Tennessee gave me some steaks from her family farm so I pulled the filet out of the freezer to cook last weekend. On this night I ran out of steam to prepare sides for myself so I had Finn’s leftover mac and cheese and green beans. I shared this photo on Instagram stories with commentary about how I secretly loved canned green beans and have since childhood and I couldn’t believe how many people replied back in agreement! 🙂

There were two servings of steak in the pack I defrosted so I did roast some carrots and potatoes to eat with the leftovers.

Here’s that same Trader Joe’s salad kit (it made two meals for me) topped with baked chicken thighs and half an avocado.

No shame in my frozen pizza love. This was a Whole Foods Mediterranean pizza to which I added pepperoni and a little extra cheese. Extra cheese is NEVER a wrong move.

ETC

You’ve seen a lot of sourdough in this post! I have just really been craving it and enjoying baking it lately. I pulled my starter out of the fridge a few weeks ago after not baking any bread since before Thanksgiving. Since then I’ve baked lots of loafs and they’ve been turning out so well.

Here’s are my must-have tools for baking sourdough and here is my step-by-step recipe guide. I have seriously thought about offering a class in Charlotte to help people learn the process! I totally understand how intimidating/foreign it can be at first but I am so glad that my dad really pushed me to learn how to do it. It really isn’t complicated and now that I’m comfortable with the process, it takes no time/effort at all.

Brownie, vanilla ice cream and a chopped Reese’s cup.

Caramel cake.

OKAY! That was a lot but hope I gave you some inspiration for your meals for the upcoming week. Enjoy your weekend and I’ll be back with a full recap of my Asheville weekend when I get home.

QUESTIONS

Have you tried Perfect Bars? Do you eat bars? What is your favorite bar?

Have you ever tried baking homemade bread? Favorite kind of bread to bake?