I plan to ring in 2016 from my bed, fast asleep under the gigantic pile of Middle Eastern cookbooks that eggmom and eggpop gave me for Christmukkah. Maybe I’ll have a bagel dog for dindin! Or something else unhealthy, before we all start our diets. What about you? Do you have plans? Maybe it’s already the new year where you are? (Hi, Australia!)

Eggboy and I spent our last bit of 2015 all over the midwest: hurrying to Fargo for Star Wars on the big screen, driving to Chicago to eat bagels and vareniki with my family, and then stopping in the twin cities on the way home where we watched Garrison Keillor wish us a happy anniversary on air (!!!) and then had one of those long perfect brunches with alex, sonja, yossy, melissa, and sarah… the kind where time gets gobbled up almost as fast as sarah’s danishes. 

Now we’re back for a good molecule of time while I forcibly extract some words to go in my book. If macaroni keep laying at the rate that they are, maybe I’ll never have to leave! I’ll just stay burritoed up in a blanket with the clack clack clack of my typewriter. 

To begin the New Year on a fun note, here is one thing that I have always had extreme excitement for, and will always have extreme excitement for: A cute meal, cutely arranged with cute individual compartments and delivered on a cute tray.

And in bed. Hollllllller breakfast in bed. (My one complaint about Eggboy’s 12am-12pm sugar beet harvest shift this year was that I couldn’t make him breakfast in bed every morning like I did last year when he had a 12pm-12am shift. But that’s ok, now we’ve got all winter, when Eggboy’s existence is devoted to paperwork and fixing tractors on a laid back timeline that doesn’t demand odd hours, so I’m resolving to make more breakfast in bed!)

Or rather, mezze in bed, because this one’s got a middle eastern vibration since it’s the new year and… health! Whenever anyone asks me why I won’t shut up about Israeli and middle eastern food, I tell them it’s because it’s good and it makes eating healthy extremely easy. So here on this tray, I’ve compiled some of my favorite little middle eastern-inspired breakfast bites that are healthy and flavorful and perfect for a New Year’s morning breakfast in bed.

Labneh // drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with za’atar

Whole wheat pita // make it!

Muhamarra // a toasted walnut and red pepper spread of MAGIC

Kale // sautéed with olive oil and garlic and sprinkled with ararat

Coffee // jazzed up with hawaij

An itsy bitsy bite of tahini blondie 

And a six-minute egg!

-yeh!

This post was created in partnership with west elm! All of the goodies you see here are from West Elm, including the reason I’ve been getting better than normal sleep at night, bedding from West Elm’s new Coyuchi line! It is beautiful and comfy and makes me want to stay in bed all day. Enter to win a bed set here!