Lately I’ve been busier than ever before. From October to December, it’s almost impossible to catch a breath in Dubai. Restaurants decide to launch; alfresco dining and outdoor terraces decide to reopen; all the PRs want to squeeze their events in before all the winter festivals, and bloggers run around like headless chickens.

The old me would have simply started eating out/ordering in more at a time like this; the new me really wants to resume home-cooking and eating in a lot more. I’m not one for meal-prep because both M and I get bored easily and crave need variety in our meals, so no way on Earth can I bag identical meals or even ingredients for the rest of the week. Also, I crave very specific flavors, and nothing else will do when that’s the case, so the best sort of meal prep I can do is simply have various and basic ingredients ready.

Every Saturday night I’ve started placing an order for whatever fruits and vegetables I feel I’ll need during the week, and my favorite online grocer delivers them at a very reasonable rate. Also, I grill chicken breasts with very little and pretty versatile seasoning, and then I just braise it while I’m assembling my salad of the day. Since I had some pumpkin hommus in this fridge, I decided to throw together a little grilled chicken mesclun salad , rocket, and Pumpkin Hommus salad today.

Here’s all it took:

• A couple of hand-fulls of Mesclun
• 1 chicken breast (I poached extra, but you only need one per serving)
• 2 tablespoons of pumpkin hommus
• black pepper
• salt
• celery leaves
• 6-8 basil leaves (chiffonade)
• raspberries
• Pumpkin seeds

Directions:

1. Spray the pan with some cooking spray, and grill the chicken breast(s) in it.
2. Once the chicken is nice and golden brown, crack pepper and salt on it, add some water and celery leaves.
3. Once only a few tablespoons of water are left, mix in pumpkin hommus, and basil chiffonade.
4. Slice the chicken breast, place atop the mesclun, sprinkly the berries and pumpkins seeds and enjoy.

Easy peasy.