weeknight Archives - meatified

Herb studded meatballs take a dip in a nightshade free, aromatic Thai green curry sauce from https://meatified.com that will have you licking the bowl when you're done!

nightshade free wizardry

basil meatballs in thai green curry sauce

smothered is better

This simple pomegranate glazed salmon from https://meatified.com is quick to the table & a fun twist on typical weeknight baked salmon with its sweet-tart, ginger laced glaze.

it's the taste of the season

roasted pomegranate glazed salmon

blink and you'll miss it

These no bake cranberry butter cups from https://meatified.com are the perfect last minute holiday treat. Bonus: they use up those last few cranberries you always have laying around!

cranberry butter cups

so much goodness

If you can't tolerate nightshades but crave a bowl of classic tomato soup anyway... this tomato-less tomato soup from https://meatified.com will come to the rescue! This recipe has the tangy, rich flavors that you've been missing without tomatoes in your kitchen.

tomato-less tomato soup

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Cod with Leek Sauce & Sweet Potatoes {AIP + pepper}

This is totally a Monday meal. Nothing complicated, comes together in half an hour or less and feels like comfort food. ‘Cause it is! Heat your oven to 400F and while you’re waiting cube up a sweet potato into bitesize pieces. Toss them in some oil and seasonings, then dump ’em out onto a foil-lined […]

Skillet Sausage Stew

Skillet Sausage Stew

What are your go to meals? Especially during the week? This one-pan skillet sausage stew is totally one of mine! Now that it’s really starting to cool down, I’m beginning to pine for some comfort foods. The good news is that this is quick enough to put together on a weeknight as the little bit […]

Super speedy weeknight shrimp & broccoli

weeknight shrimp

You may have noticed I’m on a broccoli kick. Really, it’s the glorious side effect of broccoli being on sale for less than $1 / lb, muahahaha. Since I needed to use the last of my bazillion-pound purchase, I decided the best way was to roast up the last 1 lb. This dish came about […]

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Before & after // I didn’t take any photos for a $Before & after // I didn’t take any photos for a year. Sobering-up-me was a being of fractures. Sharp edges that didn’t fit anywhere, no matter how many times I rearranged or reimagined the pieces. People seem to think (or I apparently assumed) that becoming sober brings an automatic sense of the whole, of coming back together. That it’s as simple as taking away perhaps the only thing that was, in the strangest sense, holding them together in the first place. Magically yielding a version of the ‘before’ that is not yet broken in the ‘after’. Maybe that’s true for some people. But sobering me was an agonizing act of disassembly. It was heading back to cuckoo land and knowing that this time, the nest was never mine. It was realizing that I had always known I was the interloper, pushing others out of the nest to stay alive in a constant state of mimicry that became its own death anyway. Sobering-me wondered if her old creativity was another act of imitation pushing her ever closer to the edge. Hi, I’m the cuckoo, it’s me. When you’ve never known who you are, how can there be anything familiar to fly back to? For some, sobriety might be a reclamation, but mine has been a kind of excavation. Part extrication, part excommunication. I wasn’t yet a year sober when I picked up my camera again, my first foray into what may or may not be left behind. I picked something simple, a cozy soup as a placeholder to practice camera settings & styling again. But that March-cold light wasn’t what I wanted to see. I used to feel like editing photos after the fact was about ‘fixing’ them; that it was about finding what was ‘wrong’ with what I’d made in the first place. The same way that part of me wanted to portray my self-portrait last post as a sober ‘after’ without acknowledging the ‘before’. As though the after is a new version of me, as fixed as my stare. But any after cradles it’s before at it’s heart. So, just as I’ve warmed & brightened this photo to create the sense of contentment that I wanted to see, I’ve shown you the before, too. I can’t have one without the other. There’s no sobriety without what came before. No thawing tenderness that doesn’t follow the cold.$

Eighteen months of sobriety have me seeing myself,

Eighteen months of sobriety have me seeing myself, if not for the very first time, perhaps in the most honest way.

I learned to put on my makeup in a compact mirror, a whole face in shattered parts. Piece by barely framed piece, directing an abstract spotlight on only the detail I thought I needed to fix somehow.

I taught myself never to take a step back, never to look at the whole, never to see truly what was in front of me. To fold myself into my own palm, an enclosed prism. Click.

My face has forever been something yo avoid, a thing I reflexively glaze over, unfocused eyes with too much zoom in the lens, an intrinsic crack in the glass of my sight. Click.

I’ve always been the person behind the camera so that no one could direct it at me. When it whispered, the thought of taking my own portrait for the first time surprised me. Sober me is starting to raise her voice, even if it’s only at herself for now.

The part of me that over complicates everything pulled at me to turn taking a quick snap into an overwhelmingly stylized photo shoot. Another mask; another performance. That voice started listing all the things I had to fix or tidy or make pretty or palatable. Which I realized now was another attempt at staying hidden while pretending to be visible.

Instead, I promised myself that I would set up my camera as simply as possible. Just the same as I would light anything else to let it shine as it is.

So here I am. No distractions, just me looking into my own camera for the first time and meeting myself on the other side. Click.

It’s strange to look at this image - of myself, for once - and see my typical photography style poking through without meaning to. Limited styling, rich depths, pops of bold natural color, perhaps a little more darkness than makes other people comfortable. And still: just me.

Hi, I’m Rach.

Somewhere along the way, I forgot that food was su

Somewhere along the way, I forgot that food was supposed to feed me, too.

Not just my body.

I'm not gonna say that it took a pandemic to learn that, because it's a lesson that life has been trying to teach me for, frankly, decades at this point.

But nearly a year of changed financial circumstances, combined with having made every single meal I've eaten in that same time period myself, has definitely brought the idea of sustenance to the foreground of my life.

Sustenance isn't just keeping my body fueled and fed.

It's not just sticking to a budget while doing my best to stay healthy.

It's not just managing my autoimmunity through diet.

It's nurturing my creativity when I feel like I have nothing else to give.

It's reminding myself with every bite that I deserve to live at home in this body instead of a mere resident.

It's discovering that I can honor myself in a way that I never thought I could.

It's meals like this one of Brothy Italian White Beans with Sausage and Kale. Simple, hearty, whole.

It's food to find my way home.

To myself. Right here. Where I've always been meant to be.

#operationbemoreme

NEW RECIPE: This Basil Black Pepper Chicken & Broc

NEW RECIPE: This Basil Black Pepper Chicken & Broccoli is my kind of weeknight meal. It comes together in one skillet, uses a handful of fresh ingredients & lets the pantry bring the back up to maximize those flavors with no fuss!

The real hero of this black pepper chicken & broccoli, though, is the sauce. It’s slightly sweet, balanced with the gentle heat of ginger and black pepper, salty-savory from the coconut aminos & fish sauce, then finally balanced with a kiss of vinegar & fresh lime juice.

The chicken is tender, the veggies are tender-crisp & everything is lightly glazed with that delicious sauce. If you like, finish with some crushed peanuts or cashews for a little crunch!
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Snag the recipe here 👉🏼 https://meatified.com/black-pepper-chicken-broccoli/

NEW RECIPE: Jalapeño Popper Potato Salad! This is

NEW RECIPE: Jalapeño Popper Potato Salad! This is the new taste of summer with a fun little spin on the classic tater salad. Except, hold the gloopy mayo and bring in this (mostly) plant based deliciousness instead. This bad boy is piled high with creamy baby spuds all wrapped up in a dairy free cheesy sauce that’s studded with roast jalapeño throughout, then flecked with green onions & fresh chives. Bacon is optional and this whole shebang is an addictive mess (in the best possible way!) of comfort food that is easily made vegan, too.
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Snag the recipe here 👉🏼 https://meatified.com/jalapeno-popper-potato-salad/

NEW RECIPE: Crispiest Roast Sheet Pan Chicken with

NEW RECIPE: Crispiest Roast Sheet Pan Chicken with Orange & Olive Potatoes - the title says it all! One sheet, NO PAN SEARING and you still get deliciously crispy skin. What else do you need to know?! Go make it! Aaaaand that concludes the last burst of energy I have this Monday 😂
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Grab the simple recipe here 👉🏼 https://meatified.com/sheet-pan-chicken-orange-olive-potatoes/

Mr Quinn is ready for his boudoir shoot now 😂 H

Mr Quinn is ready for his boudoir shoot now 😂 He looks so fluffy & delicate here, but at approximately 15 months old, he’s finally cracked 11 lbs. He still maintains that I don’t give him enough snacks and is oddly obsessed with trying to stick his face in sourdough starter 🤷🏻‍♀️

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