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Rice bowl: build a quick and nutritious meal

Keep the basic ingredients on hand and then mix and match to suit your tastes.

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The Garden of Eating
A rice bowl with tahini-ginger kale, avocado, egg, and pickled daikon.

Lately, I've been enamored of rice bowls and this one really stands out. I mounded up a big spoonful of short-grain brown rice, added some of the delicious leftover tahini-ginger kale, sliced a perfectly ripe avocado, peeled a hard-boiled egg, and topped it with a little mound of quick pickled daikon radish and carrots I'd made. Then dusted the egg and avocado with some sea salt and sprinkled toasted sesame seeds over it all.
 
It was so good. Not only was it a pleasure to eat – each bite mixing buttery avocado, spiced kale, nutty rice, hearty egg, and zingy pickled daikon – I also felt perfectly full and nourished afterward.
 
Rice bowls are one of those things that are easy to make if you've got the right components lying around – the rice, the pickled veggies, the eggs, the kale, the avocado, etc. It is a meal born of good leftovers and a little advance planning.

So make a batch of the tahini-ginger dressing and leave it in your fridge. That makes it really easy to make the warm kale with tahini-ginger dressing. And you can either make it fresh or just make more than you think you'll eat and save the leftovers for this purpose.

Make a jar of pickled daikon (it's so good, I've been known to eat it straight out of the jar with a spoon) plus a few hard-boil a few eggs and keep them in the refrigerator (you probably already do this if you have kids).

The concept is so flexible and so tasty, you can use different vegetables, different dressings – whatever you have on hand.

Warm rice bowl with tahini-ginger kale, avocado, egg, and pickled daikon
Serves 2
 
1 cup cooked brown rice
2 hard-boiled eggs, peeled and sliced in half
1 ripe avocado, peeled and sliced
1/2 cup pickled daikon (or daikon and carrots)
1/2 cup kale with tahini-ginger dressing
Sea salt to taste
Pinch of toasted sesame seeds
 
1. Put the rice and kale in a ceramic bowl and microwave it for 30-45 seconds to warm it (you can also pop it in the toaster oven for a few minutes if you prefer).
 
2. Arrange the avocado slices, the pickled daikon, and the hard-boiled egg over top of the rice. Then sprinkle with a little sea salt and some sesame seeds. 

Related post on The Garden of Eating: Gingery Miso Peanut Sauce

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