Lately all I have energy for in the kitchen is easy, simple, and nutritious. I want to get the most bang for my proverbial buck. I will not go into the details of why I am not motivated to get creative and complicated, for this post let's chalk it up to the grey skies of Chicago in March.

Easy. Simple. Nutritious.

Last night I had to cook for myself. My love was out of town on business and I had had a salad for lunch. I needed food, but like I mentioned, not really into the whole get creative, especially since I was cooking for just myself. I recently discovered that you can buy a bag of frozen artichoke hearts at the grocery store. I am pretty stoked about this development. I had some spicy Italian sausage in the freezer, and the artichokes. In the crisper drawer I had flat leaf parsley, basil, and dandelion greens.

In my biggest cast iron skillet, I sauteed 4 garlic cloves, 2 shallots, and an onion in olive oil. I sprinkled in some herbs de Provence, fennel seeds, salt and pepper. I didn't add bay leaf because I was too lazy to open the jar that they live in. Then I added some mushrooms and the two thawed links of sausage cut up into slices. Then I dumped the frozen artichoke hearts in. I added a little bit of stock. I let that do its thing for until the artichokes were hot and the sausage was cooked all the way. Then I added the chopped dandelion greens, parsley and basil. I tossed it all until the greens were just wilted.

Then I ate a big ole bowl of it while I read a book. Easy. Simple. Nutritious.