I am a huge fan of rice bowls. I’ve been making variations of rice bowls to bring to work throughout the week over the last few years. One of my quick go-to lunch bowls is a carnitas bowl. For the meat, I usually use pork shoulder, but I’ve also used tofu, chicken, and shrimp. In my pork shoulder version, I make a dry rub, rub it on the pork shoulder, brown the meat, and then cook the meat in a slow cooker with some fresh homemade salsa for several hours until the meat is fork tender. Carnitas bowls are my go-to bowls for lunch during the weekdays when I don’t want to spend too much time cooking in the kitchen.

During our trip to the Bahamas, we ate at a specialty restaurant, Jamie’s Italian. One of the dishes I ordered from the menu was a crab spaghetti dish. The dish featured capers, tomato sauce, lemon, and crab. It wasn’t a very complicated dish, but the flavors worked very well together. After indulging in so many delicious dishes, I made mental notes to recreate some of the dishes when I returned back from my trip. Read more about my trip to the Bahamas here. For lunch today, I tried to recreate the simple pasta dish using some of the ingredients in my pantry.

Kevin and I recently returned back from a short vacation to the Bahamas. We had taken a four-night Royal Caribbean cruise departing Miami, Florida, traveling to Nassau and CocoCay, Bahamas, and then returning back to Miami, Florida aboard the Mariner of the Seas. One of the specialty restaurants we ate at during our trip was Jamie’s Italian. We had read on cruise forums that one of the recommended dishes offered at Jamie’s Italian was the cured meat plank. We knew we definitely wanted to try the plank during our visit to the restaurant.

Weekend breakfast and brunch are not the same without a serving of potatoes on the side. My usual go to breakfast potatoes are roasted potatoes or breakfast hash. I recently started grating russet potatoes using my box grater. It is the perfect tool for shredding potatoes. Once I started using my box grater to shred potatoes, it became a game changer for making crispy, evenly browned potatoes.

I started making individual servings of chicken pot pie two years ago. The first time I made a chicken pot pie, I made it in a large pie dish and served it by the slice. The filling spilled out after I cut a slice and the bottom piece of pie dough became soggy. It was also a bit difficult to store and eat the following day. I solved the issue by making individual servings in small ramekins using one piece of pie dough to seal the top of the ramekin.

My favorite weekday pasta is lemon Cacio e Pepe spaghetti. It is one of those dishes you whip up when you barely have anything in your pantry. Two items I always keep on stock is a large piece of Parmigiano Reggiano cheese and a bowl of lemons. You never know when you need to whip up a quick pasta because you are too tired to cook.