Weeknight dinners are tough. Usually you are battling fatigue, a fussy baby and an empty kitchen (especially during the end of the week). I like to keep my freezer stocked with organic vegetables for nights just like this. I found this frozen quinoa and kale item at Costco, its organic and comes in individual-sized bags. Each bag is two servings and can be thrown right into the microwave.

You can also cook up some standard quinoa which doesn’t take much effort either; bring water to boil add the quinoa, lower the heat to a simmer and let cook for 15 minutes.

For this weeknight meal I drew inspiration from what I had available — sometimes you have to get creative! I took a peek into our vegetable drawer and saw that I had portobello mushrooms caps from my last weekend grocery run, so I decided to center the meal around those.

Recipe: Grilled Portobello Mushrooms With a Side of Green Beans and Quinoa

Ingredients:

• Frozen Green Beans
• Frozen Quinoa and Kale
• 4 Portobello Mushroom Caps

Marinade:

• 4 Tbsp Balsamic Vinegar
• 1/4 Cup Olive Oil
• 2 Cloves of garlic (minced)
• Pinch of salt

Clean mushrooms and remove stems. Place cap on a baking tray with the gills up.

In a small bowl, whisk together the balsamic vinegar, olive oil, minced garlic and a pinch of salt and pour over mushroom caps. Most recipes will require you to marinate the caps for an hour, but usually I don’t have time for that. I don’t stress about how long they have marinated for, sometimes it’s only 15 minutes or the time it takes for me to prep the table and prepare the other menu items.

Boil a small amount of water in a saucepan in preparation for cooking the green beans. Add your desired amount of green beans and cook for three minutes. (Put just enough water in a pot to cover the bottom. Don’t fill the pot, because the intent is to steam the string beans in the boiling water, not to boil them fully immersed.)

Health Tip: Never fully immerse vegetables in boiling water and cook them for more than a few minutes. This leaches out their nutrients.

While the water is boiling for the green beans you can pop the quinoa bag into the microwave and cook for six minutes.

Next you can heat your grill pan on the stovetop and prepare for cooking the mushrooms. Place the mushroom caps gill side up and cook for about eight minutes, the caps should start to juice by this time.

After eight minutes flip them over and grill another two minutes. Remove and serve immediately!

Bon appetite!