I don’t know about you, but the cold weather this time of year makes me want to stay inside as much as possible. It’s such a cozy vibe, to turn on light music in the background, and cook dinner while snow falls softly outside the window. 

If I’m cooking at home, I want one thing in a recipe. Ease! I don’t want to be stressed out trying to find a million different ingredients or struggle to follow directions that are unclear. Which lead to me creating my own bowl meals. 

Each bowl recipe consists of three main ingredients: rice, protein and veggies! You can easily substitute any seasoning or sauce to your liking and make the meal your own. These three beginner-friendly recipes take 15 minutes or less to make, and are great for meal prepping!

Key points in the recipes:

-prep veggies and protein as much as you can for the week.

–microwavable minute rice

–air fryer

Chicken bowl

• Chicken breast. I grill mine with cajun seasoning but you can prepare yours however you like
• Sliced fresh cucumber
• Pre-shredded carrots 
• Minute rice (can be whatever kind of rice you want, but I like brown rice in this meal)
• Fresh avocado
• Lemon pepper olive oil dressing

Salmon crunch bowl

In this recipe, I precut raw salmon and place it into a plastic bag. If I pre-make the salmon, it doesn’t taste as good! Also, make sure you are taking the skin/scales off of the salmon before cooking.  

• Take a tiny bowl and mix together the following: salt, pepper, garlic powder, Cayan pepper, and panko bread crumbs
• Put olive oil on salmon cubes
• Dip salmon cubes that are coated in oil in the seasoning mixture, and coat thoroughly 
• Place in the air fryer at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for 5 minutes
• Microwave rice (I like to use white minute rice)
• Cucumber slices
• Shredded carrots
• Fresh avocado
• Sometimes I add broccoli
• Mix honey and soy sauce in a separate bowl. Then drizzle the mixture over the bowl once everything is in it.  
• Add sweet chili sauce for an additional kick, to top it off!

Pesto Bowl

• Ground beef, season to your liking
• White or brown minute rice
• Place fresh spinach into a bowl and let it sit for a couple of minutes so it can wilt from the heat
• Add Broccoli 
• Fresh avocado
• Grape tomato halves
• & Pesto seasoning to your liking– I put a couple of spoon fulls into the bowl

I hope you enjoy these meals!  Let me know your favorite easy winter meals in the comments!