Happy Monday!
Welcome to our first “5 or Less” Challenge Reveal! “5 or Less” is our new Cooking Challenge! Every other week, I’ll give you Five Ingredients or less to make a meal from. Every ingredient will be affordable or already in your pantry—no cricket legs here (unless you’re into it). Your challenge will be to create a dish from them. We’re not strict here so that you can choose your proteins and spices. The only rule is that you have to incorporate all of the ingredients in the challenge. It can be an appetizer, entrée, or dessert. You can substitute anything that doesn’t work with your diet or restrictions. This is meant to inspire creativity and be fun- do not overthink it!
After the challenge, I'll share the recipe I created at the top of the next one. But don't worry, I won't influence your creativity.
Since this is our first week doing the challenge, I’m sharing the entire process with free and paid subscribers. Moving forward, these challenges will be exclusive to paid subscribers. I’m working to create a community here, and upgrading to a paid subscription will give you access to videos, the “5 or less” cooking challenge, and monthly meal inspiration via e-book. Paid subscribers will also have access to recipe books and more. All for $5/month! I’d love for you to join us!
Last week, I challenged you to create a dish with: Fig, Basil, Honey, Cornflakes, and Lemon! Honestly, my goal was to make a dessert from this. I wanted to create a granola bar-type dish, but when our weekend plans stacked up, I decided to use this challenge to make us Dinner for Sunday night.
I made Cornflake and Basil breadcrumb-encrusted chicken thighs with a lemon honey wash over crispy fig chickpeas. It was delicious! I give it an 8/10- In hindsight, I would have swapped the chicken thighs for chicken breasts, making it a 9 or 10. The chickpeas alone were good enough to munch on! I added a little rice for Dan since the meal was very light, and they balanced each other nicely! I would 100% make this again.
Join me in the kitchen below with a little video! Full transparency: This is the first time I’ve put myself (not as Aunt Loretta, IYKYK) on camera, so there’s a little cringe factor, but who cares? Moving forward, all recipes will have videos like this for paid subscribers. I’m so excited to bring you into my kitchen more! These videos will be exclusive to Substack and our community here and won’t be made into reels for Instagram. Why buy the cow when the milk is free, right?
Our next challenge will be revealed on April 29th! In the meantime, I’ll see you tomorrow for a little bit of Soul.