I first began posting my recipes online in 2012. I used a Blogspot and an early iPhone, and I lived in a teeny, tiny NYC apartment where the kitchen was quite literally just the hallway connecting our two shoebox rooms. I was a senior in college at NYU, making recipes before heading to my classes and my internship at Seventeen Magazine. Any meals I shared were just dishes I was cooking for myself that with the little free time I had between work and school.

My blog was popular with friends and family, but it wasn’t until I started posting on Instagram in 2013 that things began to take off. I had graduated college and moved back to Los Angeles, and I started my first big girl job at a boutique PR agency. I was still using an iPhone and those horrible early Instagram filters, sometimes taking pictures of my food on the floor. I would make both breakfast and lunch before heading to work, and then I’d type up the blog post and a caption on my lunch break.

Now, creating recipes is my full-time job, and I’m not only snapping photos, but I’m shooting and editing videos, posting my day on stories, and writing and producing a newsletter. It truly is a dream job, although that’s not the point I’m trying to make here.

Unfortunately, a lot of the spontaneity in cooking has become lost when I have to plan out content to fit a schedule. There are times when I love mapping out my week of recipes, as they allow me to fine tune them exactly to my liking and have all the appropriate ingredients on hand. However, I sometimes find I’m most creative when I’m forced to just work with whatever is in my kitchen. This recipe today is one such recipe.

I had actually planned to make some spicy tuna hand rolls this week (which will still be on the roster, don’t worry), but mid-cook, I realized I didn’t have enough canned salmon. So I had to make a quick pivot and work with what was inside my fridge. And you know what, it worked out even better! I loved the recipe, and this kind of easy, pantry-filled meal is perfectly emblematic of this series. It felt like spontaneous cooking again. And that’s what these 30-minute budget meals are supposed to be about! Ease and convenience!

It’s hard to resist a one-pot dish, and lately I’ve been really into the texture of pearl couscous. I love the lemon and coconut together, which give it a fresh, bright profile, and then of course we have our chickpeas for protein and some kale for our veggie. This one doesn’t even take the full 30-minutes, so it’s great for when you’re in a pinch!