I aint no cook, but I’ve been really enjoying my new weekly ritual of cooking egg jars each Sunday morning. The jars are simple, healthy, and easy for us to take to work each day for breakfast.

The basic idea is that you prepare some veggies and grains (or legumes), put them in a small jar, drop a raw egg on top, then double boil the jars for about 10 minutes to cook the eggs. The total cooking time is about an hour, but then you are set for 6 meals, and it’s really fun to experiment with. This week’s jars included duck eggs, bamboo rice, mushrooms, and red peppers. I start with a cup of lentils or rice, then add 1.5 cups of chicken broth and let them cook. I made my own chicken broth yesterday, which was way easier than I expected. As for the veggies, I usually do mushrooms and the white part of green onions and try not to overcook them. I set the green parts of the onions in a separate bowl and add them on top after the jars are fully cooked. I really don’t know my way around the kitchen, but I do enjoy making my meals look nice, so I like to add little touche (like the green onions) to make the jars feel more like a meal. Since I was using bamboo rice, which has a great green color, I decided to dice up raw red peppers and mix them in with the rice just for a high contrast. I also like to drop a dollop of sichuan chili oil onto the cooked egg before I add the green onion tops. Another important step is to put a light coat of oil along the inside walls of the jars to make clean up easier. Trust me.

I’m not great at following recipes, but these jars are extremely forgiving and easy to improvise. Each week I stop by Rainbow Grocery and pick out some exotic sounding rice, then figure out some fun things to combine with it. In all honesty, it’s helped me learn a lot more about cooking than what I already knew, and making me feel a lot more confident about learning how to cook more. Plus its a healthy start to each day.