Egg salad with avocado

 

This made a perfectly fine fast lunch. You can mix up the egg salad in advance, adding the avocado and spreading the toast right before serving.

Egg salad meets avocado toast
Adapted from Better Homes & Gardens, April 2020. This is one of those recipes that I made according to how it was pictured in the magazine, not how it was written. The recipe called for mixing the avocado into the egg salad, but it was clearly also spread on the bottom on the toast, and served with lettuce. I decided if it was good enough for the stylist, I’d give it a try.

Ingredients
3 hard cooked eggs, peeled and coarsely chopped
1 tablespoon finely chopped red onion
1 tablespoon mayonnaise
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
½ teaspoon lemon juice
1 small avocado
4 slices bread, toasted
Lettuce leaves

Method
Combine eggs, onion, mayonnaise, mustard, lemon juice and salt to taste. Mash ¼ of an avocado onto each of two toast slices. Chop up the remaining ½ of an avocado and mix it in with the egg salad. Divide egg mixture between the two slices. Top with lettuce leaves and remaining toast slice. Serves 2.

Rating: Perfectly fine. I'm pretty sure avocado chopped into your favorite egg salad recipe would do the trick.

Turkey and apricot wraps

This recipe is brought to you by the Zoom warriors of the world. You know the type: Meeting jockeys who now get their cred/kicks by seeing how solidly they can pack their Teams calendar full of the new remote office version of face time. It was inevitable that the noon hour would no longer be off limits, and in fact become the de facto meeting time any time they needed to pull together a meeting of people from across departments.

So now it's frequently the new norm to have back-to-back-to-back meetings from 11 to 1:30 and beyond. By the time I surface from the meeting vortex, Dave is starved, and I'm starved for time.

So recipes like this one are ideal. It makes a super fast, non-disappointing lunch, which is now my new weekday standard. After a hiatus of probably a dozen or more years, I've actually resorted to putting canned soup on the shopping list. There's only so much a gal can do when the Slack Attack happens at all hours and days of the week. And yes, I know I'm lucky to have a job to complain about, and the ability to not sweat the rising grocery bill too much. Eventually I'll be stuck back in the office eating at my desk while I work, so I treasure even low-aspiration lunches eaten at a table, even if I have to swat away Slack messages while I eat.

Turkey and apricot wraps
From “Taste of Home 5 Ingredient Healthy” as published in Relish magazine. Someday I'll get to my Bon Appetit habit again.

Ingredients
¼ cup softened cream cheese (spreadable works too)
1½ tablespoons apricot preserves
2 (8-inch) tortillas
¼ pound sliced turkey deli meat
1 cup baby spinach leaves

Method
Combine softened cream cheese and preserves. Divide mixture between tortillas and spread evenly over the top. Top with turkey slices and baby spinach. Roll up each tightly, slicing in half horizontally if desired.

Rating: Super fast way to get a lunch on the table that still tastes like you didn’t completely cave.

Variations: Substitute 1 tablespoon harissa for the preserves and substitute arugula for spinach.

Or try mixing avocado with the cream cheese instead of preserves. Or pesto.

Sliced beef, quick-pickled red onions and cucumbers work with TJ’s Green Dragon sauce mixed with the cream cheese.