Are you on the Instant Pot train yet? The Instant Pot is a type of multi-cooker — it can slow cook, make rice, and even ferment yogurt, but its superpower is pressure cooking. While I fully admit the Instant Pot hasn’t replaced my slow cooker, and it isn’t always a magic bullet for faster meal times, it does one thing incredibly well: meal prep.

Meal prep is the final step of meal planning and the one that puts your plan into action. You can spend a few hours meal prepping on Sunday night or you can do a little meal prep in spurts throughout the week.

This week I’ll be your meal prep guide and show you how I’m using the Instant Pot to prep healthy staples and how I am turning them into dinner throughout the week.

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I must admit that I am a latecomer to the whole “loving cauliflower” thing. When I was a child, my first taste of cauliflower was a watery, steamed, poorly prepared version of it, so I just assumed I hated it for the rest of my life.

There never seemed to be a reason to try it again, either. Brightly colored vegetables seem vibrant, healthful, and flavorful, but cauliflower just looked like dead broccoli.

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Since the advent of Pinterest, the world has been inundated with a tidal wave of tips and “hacks” designed to make our lives easier and more efficient. Some of those ideas are good! But some of them are real head-scratchers, like using a washing machine as a giant ice bucket, or the dishwasher to clean potatoes.

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While chicken is a staple for so many of us at dinner and lunch, it rarely makes its way to our breakfast plates. Sure, it might not ever compete with bacon as our favorite morning meat, but it can definitely make for a tasty choice. (Fried chicken and biscuits, anyone?)

Here are seven great ways to eat chicken for breakfast.

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If you love the couple behind Fixer Upper and Magnolia, then you might already know that today is Joanna Gaines’ 40th birthday. And Chip is not letting the day pass without a special kind of fanfare.

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Most of the internet food world has spent the last six months going gaga over Alison Roman’s salted chocolate chip shortbread cookies, but as a mom of two little kids, I can tell you that a shortbread studded with dark chocolate and sprinkled with flaky salt does not pass as a chocolate chip cookie for anyone under 10 years old.

There are many, many recipes for chocolate chip cookies on the web (Kitchn has about a dozen — here, here, and here), but when you need chocolate chip cookies immediately for a play date or a bake sale or honestly just a rainy Saturday at home, this chocolate chip cookie recipe (that I’m currently obsessed with) saves the day.

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You’ll never catch us saying traditionally prepared risotto is hard, but we’ll certainly be the first to admit it does require some attention. But if you think your cooking routine doesn’t leave much room for this technique-based dish, don’t write it off just yet!

In fact, what if I told you creamy, dreamy restaurant-style risotto with a fraction the effort is still within your reach? Yes! You can have all that without the constant stirring or even the need for a special tool. I’m talking about baked risotto!

Baked risotto, with hardly any stirring at all, delivers a pot of tender rice in a rich and savory sauce. Stir in sweet and nutty basil pesto and a handful of fresh green peas before topping with pancetta and Parmesan, and you can easily add this springy risotto to your weeknight meal plan — no fuss required.

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As chicken thighs have become a staple on so many of our meal plans, it’s all too easy for them to feel mundane — that is, of course, unless you give them a little special treatment.

Diverge from the usual and chicken thighs can quickly transform into fancy (yet still as fast as always) meals that are perfect for dinner parties or just a normal Wednesday night at home with your family.

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From here on out, creamy chicken soup from the slow cooker shall be known as change-your-life chicken soup. Try to imagine all the goodness of chicken soup — moist, tender chicken, bites of sweet carrot and peas — but wrapped in a creamy broth flecked with black pepper.

This creamy chicken soup is how you do comfort food from the slow cooker. It’s perfect for weeknights or cozy weekends at home. All you need on the side is a spoon for slurping and a few buttered biscuits for dunking.

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We’ve heard for years about the wonders of the Mediterranean diet. Featuring foods like olive oil, whole grains, fish, legumes, fruits, and vegetables, it’s considered an all-around healthy way of eating. Even if you don’t adopt it completely, it’s easy to work a few more Mediterranean-inspired meals into your weekly menu plan, even if it’s just for the bright and satisfying flavors alone.

Here are 25 of our favorite recipes — from breakfast to dinner to snacks — that will help you do just that.

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