As a successful lifestyle blogger, I’m no stranger to telling you all about what I’m eating. But usually, the meals I share on here aren’t so…balanced. But the times have changed and so have I, and now I am cooking real meals at a frenetic pace. In the last few weeks, I’ve made myself:

• Stuffed peppers with homemade avocado cilantro crema
• Sweet potato quinoa tacos
• Ginger soy cucumber salad
• Asparagus soup in a single-serve blender
• Goat cheese pizza with fresh garlic and diced tomatoes
• Lemon garlic pasta with mushrooms and peppers
• Kale black bean tacos with homemade chimichurri sauce
• Hot toddies with homemade ginger simple syrup
• Almost-daily breakfast burritos using taco leftovers
• Zucchini noodles with homemade tomato pesto sauce

Cooking a complete, healthy meal can be a way to show yourself that you’re worth the effort. Self care is a must! But after spending three hours making stuffed peppers on a Saturday night, aren’t you sending a smoke signal by way of your greasy stovetop that HI, SOMEONE SHOULD PLEASE COME EAT THIS MEAL WITH ME!

Because while making food from scratch is a very good thing to do, how many homemade sauces does it take to say PLEASE TAKE ALL THE NEWS APPS OFF MY PHONE, I CAN’T HANDLE ALL THE SCARY ALERTS?

So no matter what else is happening in your life, you too can finish out 2017 by learning how to thicken a pasta sauce. I did, and it was much easier than admitting that I HAVE MADE NO SIGNIFICANT CAREER PROGRESS THIS YEAR AND THAT PROBABLY WON’T CHANGE BY THE TIME I GO HOME FOR CHRISTMAS.

But if nothing else, at least the sauce was a success. 🙂