When M and I first moved in together, we were just about as young and naive as two people could be. We had only been dating for about 5 months and I had been working a job at a bakery that was 40 miles away from where I was living. I decided that if I wanted to really keep working at the bakery, I was going to need to move closer and since M worked from home, he came along for the ride. We’re definitely trial by fire type people and still to this day that was one of the hardest learning experiences.

One of the biggest shocks was day in and day out food. Sure, we had eaten together quite a few times but we also ate out quite a bit. However, living was more expensive and so we focused on eating at home (it would be about this point in time that he might pipe into the conversation and mention something about me cooking ‘Erin’ sized meals for a person twice her weight). I was eating vegetarian and he was eating everything but vegetarian, so finding middle ground was really challenging- especially since I had just started learning to cook.

Through trial and error we found that one of our biggest assets was the grill. I could cook multiple items at one time and create simple meals based around those items. M would get a piece of grilled chicken while I’d grill vegetables that we would split (and my half would be made into some sort of grain/bean bowl). We made it work and through that, I found a deep love for grilling vegetables. These skewers are rather large step up from the vegetables I was grilling back then but are highly worth the extra bit of effort. Grilled sweet potatoes are nothing short of amazing and when paired with a salty cheese, I could eat for days. The kicker (literally and figuratively) here is the sriracha. My spice tolerance right now is at an all time low, so feel free to add as much as you want- it’s really up to personal preference!

(PS- if you scroll to the bottom of any page, you’ll see a new area on the site that is featuring all images tagged #naturallyella on instagram. If you make a recipe from the site, share it, and tag it- you might just see your image below!)

