Cooking for one can sometimes feel a bit blasé. If you buy too much food at one time, you fear that much of it will go to waste. However, the thought of eating the same thing everyday can also get old – quickly. The solution? To get creative with how you take leftover ingredients in your refrigerator and make them into a range of yummy dishes. One of my regular go-to’s is to whip up a grain, veggie and fried egg bowl. Simple, healthy with just the right amount of indulgence – not only can you make it in a flash, but it tastes delicious.
Ingredients:
Serves One
- Spinach – a good handful
- 1/2 Cup brown rice, cooked
- 1/4 Cup peas, frozen or cooked
- 1/4 Cup butternut squash, chopped into bite-sized pieces & roasted
- 1 Large egg
- 2 Tsp extra virgin olive oil, divided
- Sauce(s) of choice (I used BBQ sauce & spicy mayo)
- Salt, pepper and paprika to taste (adding garlic would also be nice!)
Start by warming up a frying pan to medium heat. Add 1 tsp of extra virgin olive oil to the pan. Then, add the brown rice, peas, butternut squash to the pan. You can also add the spinach if you like sautéed spinach, but I’ll be honest, I like a little crunch from the raw spinach! Add in salt, pepper, paprika to taste, plus any other spices you like. I did not measure, just a little dusting or turns of the salt/pepper grinder. For example, if you don’t like paprika, I think garlic and cumin would also be delicious here. Stir together and add to a bowl with raw spinach (if not sautéing!) when sufficiently warmed.
Next, I recommend adding a bit of flavor and indulgence to your grain bowl. You could add any type of sauce you enjoy. I personally like a good drizzle of BBQ sauce and spicy mayo, but tomato sauce would be great here as well. Bonus: the drizzle also makes it look a little more gourmet! Hehe.
Last, but certainly not least, it’s time for the pièce de résistance. You know what I’m talking about – the fried egg on top! To keep this bowl lower calorie, I put 1 tsp of extra virgin olive oil in the pan that I sautéed the rice and veggies in and spread it around the pan to coat it. Because the pan is already warm, once you crack the egg into the pan, it cooks quickly. I wait for the egg to be sufficiently cooked on the bottom so that it can be flipped and then just cook it for another minute on the other side. I like the inside to be a bit runny, but you can leave it on a little longer if you don’t!
Not counting the BBQ sauce and spicy mayo, this recipe clocks in at 349 calories, 15.7g of fat and 12.6g of protein. If you add 1 tsp of each BBQ sauce and spicy mayo, it’s about 40 calories more. I didn’t count the fat / other implications of it. Here is my rough calculation from the spark recipe calculator without the mayo or BBQ sauce:
All in all, not too bad for a meal that you can make in under 10 minutes!
For more of my recipes, click on this link.