One of the many joys of being an adult is preparing and eating my own meals, even though it’s sometimes a pain to have to do it every single day. In the time since I wrote this post, I’ve learned a lot and tried countless recipes. What follows is an overview of some of my favorite dishes that Heidi and I have made over and over again in the last few years.

Peppers and Gnocchi

We found this recipe online, and it’s behind a paywall now, but that doesn’t matter because it’s extremely simple anyways. You chop up four bell peppers, mix them with a package of gnocchi, garlic, oil, and some spices, and toss that mix in the oven on a sheet pan. When it’s done, you break up some burrata, tear up some fresh basil, and top it with balsamic glaze. The prep for this one is so straightforward it always kinda surprises me. Best in the summer.

Dumpling breakfast

I’m not sure how it happened that dumplings became a breakfast staple for us, but it’s been true for years now. There’s this bag of potstickers that Costco sells, Ling-Ling brand, that we keep in constant stock in our household, and we often half-fry, half-boil these for a nice breakfast on a day off. Our serving method of choice involves rice, soy sauce, seaweed, chili crisp or sriracha, and for me—an excess of green onions.

Chili Crisp Egg

Speaking of chili oil, I have a simpler breakfast recipe that I’ve been having a few times every week for months now and have yet to get sick of. It goes like this: feta on the hot pan. Chili oil over the feta. Two eggs and cover it. Wait a few minutes and flip it. Smack it on some toast. That’s literally it and I can’t stop eating it, though I’ve been experimenting with some additions, like spinach most recently.

Congee

Rice porridge. I didn’t even know about this not long ago, but it’s quickly become a go-to meal for us because it’s so simple and so comforting, especially in this cold weather. A minimum of garlic, ginger, and chicken bullion go into the porridge itself, and for topping this gets a lot of the same stuff as the dumpling breakfast. It’s also a good candidate for a shredded Costco rotisserie chicken.

Tofu and Veggies

I understand that this is hardly specific enough to count as an individual recipe, but the fact is that we fall back on making this all the time, partly because it is so flexible. We started learning to cook with tofu years ago after getting annoyed one too many times about handling raw chicken, and we’ve since perfected our technique for crispifying the tofu by using corn starch in the prep. Tofu and rice make an appearance every time, but the sauce and the vegetables are up to you. When we originally made this meal, we were using store-bought sauces, but if you keep a well-stocked enough pantry, you can throw together a variety of homemade sauces with stuff you have anyways. Orange, lemon, gochujang, and peanut are some of our classics. For a side of vegetables, we typically roast broccoli or make a cold cucumber salad.

Dense Bean Pasta Salad

You may have heard that the “Dense Bean Salad” has been having kind of a moment recently, and I’m certainly not above following a viral food trend (see: the aforementioned cucumber salad). The best part of this meal is that it’s quick to prepare and makes a ton of food—it’s also easy to take elsewhere because you eat it cold. It basically consists of a ton of beans, a ton of veggies, and some kind of dressing, but the details are super customizable. The Mediterranean variant is usually our choice, and we like adding banana peppers and sometimes orzo or some other pasta to round it out. Also, if there’s a maximum amount of fresh herbs you can add to this meal, we haven’t found it yet.

Philip Rienstra

Phil Rienstra (they/he) (’21) studied writing and music, and since graduating has developed an interest in labor rights and coffee. They’re an amateur chef, a perennial bandana wearer, a fledgling dungeon master, and an Enneagram 4. He lives in St. Paul with his spouse, Heidi.