Buddha bowl

New Year, new you and all that led to my almond butter dressing Buddha bowl. It’s been a long time since I’ve made a Buddah Bowl. I usually resort to these when I have an excess of early spring produce. However, I’ve been looking to make some healthier alternatives for my lunch. I had initially thought I’d use tahini to make a dressing, but for the life of me, couldn’t find any at the store. Rural life problems. I decided I’d experiment with almond butter instead and as it turned out, I really like the results.

I had an interesting cooking weekend this weekend. While my primary focus was on the almond butter dressing Buddha bowl, I was also babying my kefir. Kefir grains are a weird combination of bacteria and yeast that happily culture milk. I recently purchased some grains and left them to culture away on the counter. However, last week wasn’t great at work and the kefir got away from me. I spent most of my morning rescuing the grains and making kefir cheese. Sometimes I think that if I can’t handle my fermented critters, I’m probably not adult enough for chickens, bees, and goats.

Because I was busy with my kefir, I decided to go super simple with my almond butter dressing Buddha bowl. I made up some pearl couscous; sauteed some kale with a little salt, olive oil and red pepper flakes; oven poached some eggs; and opened a can of black beans. And made my dressing. I’m looking forward to my lunch now.

You could most definitely substitute a grain for the pearl couscous, as well as use any sauteed green you’d like. I highly recommend the poached eggs. Once I learned you could oven poach an egg, there’s been no going back to trying to baby poached eggs in gently simmering water. I can barely manage my kefir - poached eggs are just too much right now.

I made four Buddha bowls - just the number of days I need lunch this week. I’ll pair these with some trail mix and possibly (hopefully) some kefir later this week.