Happy Sunday!
I hope y’all are having a happy holiday season and/or had a great Christmas! New Year’s is almost here, and I’m excited because that means the holiday season is almost over. I also get to try to be a better person and use the new year as an excuse for putting self-improvement off for this long.
This year, I’m setting a couple of resolutions:
Read more books – My goal is to read one book a month. We’ll see how it goes, but I’m starting strong with The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan. I’ve already read 50 pages and really enjoyed it, so I’m aiming to finish it by the end of January. If all goes well, I’ll share my thoughts with you then.
Take my blog more seriously – Some weeks, I give this Substack my all, and other weeks...well, let’s just say procrastination wins. Starting next year, I want to bring more consistency and variety to my posts—beyond just meal prep. So, stay tuned for that!
Anyway, this week was finally a normal week - I wasn’t sick, and I didn’t have to travel, so I really had fun with this meal prep. It ended up leaning a bit Italian-American? I wasn’t planning on it, but looking back, everything I made has that same vibe.
Breakfast
For breakfast, I focused on a lemon-and-poppy-seed theme. I made lemon poppy seed mini loaves and lemon meringue chia pudding. My favorite was the lemon meringue chia pudding. It was a lot of work upfront, but once it was done, we got to enjoy it all week without doing anything extra. It worked great as a breakfast or a little late-night treat.
The mini loaves were just a classic lemon poppy seed bread—moist and delicious, and they still felt like a special breakfast treat.
Lunch
For lunch, the Italian-American vibes really came through. I made burrata pasta pomodoro (again) and Caesar pasta salad. Yes, I made the pasta pomodoro last week, but this one was better—I promise! The key difference was adding spinach and black truffle burrata. These two additions made the pasta so much better, and I’ll definitely make this version again.
The Caesar pasta salad was a compromise because my mom wanted a salad, but my dad doesn’t think salad counts as food. So I made a pasta salad to disguise it. It was definitely a salad, though. I served it with a homemade Caesar dressing that I swear by—I’ve been making it ever since I tried it a few months ago. The dressing uses anchovies, lemon, and parmesan, but the most important ingredient is good quality mayo. If you don’t use a heavy-duty mayo like Kewpie, the dressing just won’t taste the same.
Here’s the Menu!
Breakfast #1: Lemon Meringue Chia Pudding
Lemon Meringue pie but in a chia pudding. Find the recipe here
Lemon base chia pudding
Lemon curd
Toasted meringue
Breakfast #2: Lemon Poppy Seed Mini Loaves
A classic that’s all. Find the recipe here.
Classic lemon loaf with poppy seeds
Moist and fluffy crumb
Lunch #1: Burrata Pasta Pomodoro
My Italianx recipe (my bf is Italian). Find the recipe here
Black truffle burrata
Cherry tomatoes
Basil
Lots of parmesan
Spinach
Heavy-handed garlic
No backstabbing was involved in the making of this. Find the recipe here
Homemade Caesar dressing (anchovies, lemon, parmesan, and Kewpie mayo)
Romaine lettuce
Everything-seasoned chickpeas
Pasta noodles
That’s everything I made for meal prep this week! I hope you guys enjoy it, and let me know if you try any of these. What are your New Year’s resolutions?
Catch you next week—mwah!
