🥔 Food People, Parent Picks: Chef Mareya's Favorite Things
The Fit Foodie’s rapid-fire guide to versatile ingredients, efficient tools, and making nutrition doable.
Food People, Parent Picks: we ask our favorite chefs, food writers, and industry insiders who we interview in our Order Up! Series to share the products, books, and bites they can’t live without.
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If you read Chef Mareya’s Order Up! conversation earlier this week, you already know she doesn’t talk about food in trends — she talks about it in responsibility. From growing up in Alexandria’s markets to building patented food safety systems alongside her father, her relationship to food has always been cultural, scientific, and deeply personal. If you missed that interview, go back. It reframes what “clean eating” actually means.
Today, we shift gears. Less philosophy, more pantry. In this edition of Food People, Parent Picks, Chef Mareya — The Fit Foodie — shares the shelf-stable proteins she swears by, the one tiny tool she refuses to live without, the ingredient she believes works harder than almost anything else in your fridge, and the shortcut strategy that keeps her kitchen efficient without sacrificing intention.
What are three pantry staples you always keep stocked because you can build a meal around them?
Canned seafood — always. Sardines, tuna, clams, anchovies. They’re protein-rich, shelf-stable, and instantly turn pasta, salads, or toast into a real meal.
Quinoa is another. It’s incredibly versatile: breakfast cereal, grain bowl, baked into casseroles, folded into salads. Nutritionally, it’s balanced: protein, carbohydrates, and fat. Because it’s technically a seed, it doesn’t spike blood sugar the way some refined grains do.
And canned tomatoes. They’re as close to a perfect base ingredient as you can get; use them as a sauce, soup starter, braise, condiment. The cooking process actually makes the lycopene more bioavailable, so you’re getting added benefit. Those three alone can take you far. Add good oils, seasonings, and you’re set.
If we’re using your Superfood Sprinkle, where should we start?
Eggs. Any style — scrambled, fried, soft-boiled — it’s the chef’s kiss. If you like heat, the spicy blend replaces hot sauce entirely.
It’s also a must on avocado toast. I use it on broiled tofu, falafel, roasted vegetables, and plant-based bowls. I make koshary, an Egyptian dish with lentils, rice, pasta, and tomato sauce, and it’s perfect there. It shines on foods that benefit from a layered, savory boost.
What kitchen tool or appliance do you genuinely use all the time?
My microplane. I couldn’t live without it. I’m big on zest and on creating volume without excess fat. Finely grating cheese gives you more coverage and flavor with less heaviness. It’s a small tool that makes a big difference.
I also love my immersion blender. No transferring hot liquids into a standing blender. You can blend soups in the pot, emulsify dressings, whip up aioli. And of course my grill, it’s one of my favorite ways to cook.
For busy parents, what’s a healthy shortcut you recommend?
Buy ingredients that can work multiple ways. Plain Greek yogurt can become a parfait, a sauce base, a soup thickener, a taco topping, or folded into scrambled eggs. One ingredient, many uses.
Eggs (and even pasteurized egg whites) are incredibly versatile and cost-effective. I use them more than any other animal protein. You can build savory meals, bake with them, even blend them into smoothies.
And lean into smart convenience: buy baby tomatoes instead of chopping large ones, jarred artichoke hearts for roasting or blending into hummus, pre-washed greens, proteins pounded thinner so they cook faster. It’s about working smarter, not stocking 5,000 ingredients.
Do you have a favorite foodie gift?
To give? Superfood Sprinkle — it’s practical and unexpected.
To receive? Beautiful olive oil. Especially if someone traveled and brought it back. That’s a treasure. [Don’t forget to pick up a bottle—or EVOO duo set, or flavored trio of oils!—from our friends at Kosterina Olive Oil. Read our Order Up! interview with founder & mom Katina Mountanos!]