Grilled Greens for Dinner May Not Sound Like A Lot (But It’s What I’ve Got)

I would love to be a meal planner. I really would. I’d love to be someone who makes abig batch of beanson Sunday and knows the"nine surprising ways to use them all week long". But that's not the life I lead right now. Because instead of one life, I lead two.

The first is the typical nine-to-five life of a media soldier (I'm the Associate Social Media Manager of this website—hi!). The second is the life of someone who runs a restaurant in Brooklyn that’s open until 11pm.

That someone is my boyfriend Bill Clark, co-owner ofMeMe's Diner. Not long after we started dating, he told me: "I'm opening a restaurant soon, and our lives are going to change drastically. You know what I mean?" Having little-to-no idea what he meant, I replied with an enthusiastic "Of course! I’m in.”

And I am. Many nights after work, I head to Bill's restaurant and jump right in beside him. When I get there, he's already been working since 9am. If I'm not running food and clearing tables, I'm downstairs helping him prep the batches of biscuits, pies, cakes, babka, and sticky buns he bakes. Sometimes I help him do inventory, or shoot something for their Instagram, or manage their online orders—all the things you need to do to run a restaurant, but don't have time for...because you're busy running a restaurant.

If I'm lucky, Bill and I make it home around 11:30 pm. Once I unlock the door, my priorities are as follows: let the dog into the garden, get a martini in my hand, and get food in my stomach, ideally before the clock strikes midnight.

Of course, getting good food into our stomachs requires having groceries in the house, and that requires a little meal planning, and that—well, please see the beginning of this article.

But one night, while scanning our understocked kitchen for something two tired adults could possibly call dinner, I spied some stragglers: a half-loaf ofShe Wolfpullman bread, a bunch of Tuscan kale, a couple of lemons, and a box of cherry tomatoes crying to be used up. I hollered for Bill to light the grill, andmy favorite quick summer dinnerwas born.

Love you whenever you're together, love you when you're apart.

Photo by Chelsea Kyle, Food Styling by Kate Buckens

It’s less a recipe and more of a loose formula: grilled greens, burst tomatoes, and toasted bread. (Themartiniis optional—for you.) To make it, all I do is toss the kale and tomatoes with olive oil, salt, and pepper, and drizzle some more oil on the bread. Martini in one hand, I throw everything on the grill. A few minutes later I'm rubbing garlic on the toast, piling the greens and burst tomatoes on top, and squeezing the charred lemons over it all.

The grilled greens/veggie/bread formula isn’t rigid. You just want to make sure you’ve got a veggie like the tomato that adds a sauciness to the bread when it’s grilled. (No tomato? Try some cut-up summer squash.) You can add some chicken to the mix, or do what Senior Food Editor Anna Stockwell does: add some halloumi.

I love finishing this with smoky grilled lemons, but you can drizzle the whole thing with a vinaigrette. And if it's not midnight yet, you might have the energy to grab asalad cutterand make a chopped, grilled panzanella.

Could you make this on a hot cast-iron grill pan? Sure. But it’d be a little less fun. For me, the quick act of grilling outside is what transforms a bunch of kale, some tomatoes, and a loaf of bread into a proper dinner. When all those components are sizzling on the grill together, and I know a proper meal is on the way, I can pretend for a moment that I’m a person with a normal schedule. Sometimes I even believe that I'm a person who can meal plan.