Hi and happy Tuesday. In my perpetual quest to start new features, I have another one for WFD (to join the Reluctant Vegan, which I am still excited about). This one's easy peasy dinners -- the real stuff you can feed yourself or your fam without a ton of fuss. Today's featured entree is one of my favorites: a super easy antipasti platter.  This very easy meal lets you clean out the fridge and present the contents in a way that feels a little better than regular old scrounging. Add a half-decent glass of wine and you can feel downright fancy with the remnants of a jar of olives and some pesto on its last legs.

Case in point: This platter included leftover artichoke hearts, a couple types of olives and cornichons we had rolling around the fridge, and some of my favorite new mild cherry peppers. For fresh veggies I had mini sweet peppers, carrots and some amazing heirloom tomatoes, plus some greens. And the best part, of course, was the cheese. We had a bunch of smallish bits of cheese in the cheese drawer, and I bought some buffalo mozzarella and drizzled it with pesto, and served the whole thing with some yummy focaccia and crackers.

I like how flexible this meal is. It really is just all the crap in our fridge, but paired with the mozzarella and focaccia it felt pulled together. (I really should have taken a pic of all the open jars and food storage containers that went into "prepping" this meal). Sometimes I might add hummus and falafel or some other prepared substantial food to serve as the hub of the meal. If you eat meat, adding lunch meat, shredded roasted chicken or prociutto would be a nice touch.

The best part about this meal is how crowd-pleasing it is, which is super hard to come by these days. I put the plate in the middle of the table, and everyone takes what they want. It's all healthy, Lou gets to exercise some autonomy at the table, which is such a nice change and makes for a pleasant dinner experience. It's a light meal: when I explained to Lou that antipasti means "before the pasta," both my sister and I mentioned that a little pasta to follow up didn't sound like a bad idea...but by the time we finished the platter, we felt great. So, if you don't already dump the contents of your fridge onto a pretty platter and call it dinner, might I recommend you give it a try? Or do you? And if so, what's your go-to? Thanks for reading and I hope to see you tomorrow!