tuna & avocado brown rice bowl

Life’s been just a little bit tiring around onebitemore HQ. The past week alone has held kids’ camp cooking classes, 30th birthday celebrations (multiple!), an engagement party (not mine!) and various bits and bobs of dinners and work events and accounting and reporting paperwork piling up around my ears.

Needless to say, it’s hard to remember to eat well at times like these and I found myself slipping ever so surely down the path of shoving a half-cooked bowl of instant noodles or still semi-frozen bits of bread into my mouth as I dashed between things-to-do. When I remembered to, that is.

That’s the thing about being busy – all of the things that don’t fall on the “URGENT” list get pushed to the wayside until it’s far too late to do anything about them because you should have left for work ten minutes ago. I did try on occasion to get something good happening (in the form of smoothies that I could drink whilst running about) but failed miserably on most counts and often found myself starving at 7pm and wondering where lunchtime had gotten to.

I probably shouldn’t have been so surprised when I woke up one morning last week with a scratchy throat, blocked nose and a serious case of the crankies.

(I definitely shouldn’t have put it down to “hayfever” and powered on).

(I certainly should have checked that my blurry eyes were well rested before I started taking photos of this recipe, and not assumed that the top photo was full focussed when it wasn’t. Ops.)

I was lucky (in some respects) that it was just the crankies and not a full blown cold, though Koji fared far worse than he would have if the case had been reversed, and took that as a sign to get myself well before it was too late.

Tell you what, though, a bit of proper eating and a good bit of sleep has done me wonders inside and out.

Especially this dish, with the goodness of brown rice (that I have finally figured out how to cook properly – hurrah me!), creamy avocado, a smoosh of protein rich tuna and a googly egg.

It does take a little while to cook, but it’s not labour intensive time. It’s pop-things-on-the-stove-and-then-go-about-life-and-check-on-it-later kind of cooking, which is a godsend as long as you’re a little bit organised. (And it’s far less work than making a three-layered spaceship cake, complete with matching starry night cupcakes and planet-themed cake pops for a certain someone’s birthday).

I had this twice last week and am keen to repeat that process in the next couple of days, particularly as the weather heats up and the busy-ness of Spring kicks in. (I have not one, but two weddings to head off to this Saturday and have accordingly planned a date with my bed all day Sunday and into the long weekend).

So what are your plans for the upcoming long weekend (in Australia)? And what do you eat when you’re feeling a little run down?

(I could definitely use the tips and tricks right now, I’m almost as fried as that egg up there!)