Creativity in the Kitchen

So, it’s the end of the month and the end of the week, so that means taking inventory of the fridge and pantry and making amazingly delicious and creative meals out of ingredients like, sauerkraut, eggs, and walnuts.  This is where I make some of my most interesting meals. (Interesting has many interpretations) I was in need of some breakfast, no wait, make that brunch, as it was already 11:30am.  I had slept in until 10am, which is pretty unheard of for me.  Was I out partying last night, you say?  No, but I did make it to that Halloween party:

I’m not much of a partier, so it was an early night, with a couple of episodes of Awkward before bed J.  I think I was just tired form having a busy week, and needed a good night’s sleep.

So, I took inventory of what I had in the fridge, and between my roommates plethora of leftovers that they never eat, nor will I, I found some eggs and left over sweet potatoes from dinner the other night.  So I decided to make a simple egg scramble.  I melted some Kerrygold butter in the frying pan, and if you haven’t tried it yet, you need to!!!!  It’s butter from Ireland and is made from cows that roam out on the green fields of Ireland and graze peacefully on the abundance of grass there.  Something like this:

It taste much better than your average butter, and is healthier, as cow products made from cows that are fed their natural diet of grass have a lower content of Omega-6 fat, and too much Omega-6 fat causes inflammation in the body…now nobody wants that!  You can find it at Costco and most grocery stores.  Here’s a visual for you:

So, after the butter was melted, I cut up some sweet potato into small pieces and warmed them in the butter.  Once the potatoes were warm, I added three eggs.  Now I am fairly lazy when cooking.  Well, maybe not lazy, but I like to make things as simple as possible.  So when I want scrambled eggs, instead of whisking them in a separate bowl, which just makes more dishes to do, and when you are the dishwasher, you care about these things, I just crack the eggs into the pan, let cook a little and then stir with my spatula.  When you have a nice amount of butter, coconut oil, or bacon grease, this works well, as the eggs don’t stick to the pan and can be mixed nicely.  I used about half a tablespoon of butter.  While the eggs are cooking, I stir periodically.  This whole process doesn’t take very long.  Maybe 10 minutes from when the idea sparked in my head to when I was sitting down ready to eat. 

When I looked at my finished product, it looked a little monochromatic; yellow sweet potatoes and yellow eggs.  As a health and nutrition coach, I teach my clients about eating colorful foods and having a variety of colors on your plate.  This ensures that you are getting a variety of vitamins and minerals.  Well, all I had was yellow, so what could I do to add a little color? I knew I was out of spinach, and I wasn’t feeling the red onion left in the veggie drawer, so I found some tid-bits of parsley left and added them to the top of my scramble.  Ahhh…this looked better.  And it was delicious!  The parsley made the dish. 

So when it looks like you have nothing to eat in the fridge, take inventory, and be creative!  You never know what you will get.