After a few weeks of eating up random leftovers and being in locations that didn't require a lunchbox I'm very pleased with how this one has worked out.
Admittedly I'd run down supplies of fruit and veg to almost nothing which I felt justified indulging in all the lovely seasonal produce on the market.
This one was easy to prepare. We had a BBQ on Sunday night and I prepared the dishes to go with and am consuming what was left for lunch.
Clockwise from top right:
Slices of tomato and red onion
Plum (sweet, cold and delicious)
Potato salad with green beans. Potatos, beans and finely chopped spring onions were all home grown.
Corn on the cob and lettuce. I carefully chopped my corn cob into bits of the right length to fit but forgot how wide corn is! Having to put in half the amount as a result.
This is the debris of the other half of lunch - cupcakes from the hummingbird bakery consumed in a pub across the road. Alas as they don't sell vegan cupcakes I was unable to partake in the sugar rush.
Then we all got a bit peckish and ordered some platters of meze and nachos. No one took the single slice of red pepper in a very polite British sort of way. Instead we carried on chatting as we had been all day about everything under the sun except blogging. It was a interesting day. A bit like 8 people who all live in the same street getting together. We knew stuff about each other's lives but needed to search for common ground. It really made me think about the boxes of getting to know you games for reading groups and made me wonder if we (I?) could adapt one of those for next time.
I'm certainly in for the next one anyway and propose starting with lunch (an excellent way to break the ice) and following up with a browse of a handful of charity shops. Also must remember to take more photographs.
Thanks to Aimee Marie and Vixel for sorting it out and everyone for being so lovely and braving various types of public transport in order to be there.
This week's contents came together more by luck than anything else. I made a big pan of roasted veg at the weekend. Then a friend offered me a tub of vegan cream cheese that she wouldn't be using. then I saw some reduced price bagels that said vegan on the label.
Clockwise from top right:
Vegan chocolate and summer fruit cupcake - leftovers from some I made for a lunch party. Still getting to grips with glace icing. Used my new silicon cases and they worked really well.
Bagel filled with vegan cream cheese and roasted veg, surrounded by shredded lettuce and spinach with a dollop of vegan mayo.
Compote of cherries and raspberries.
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Potatoes - from my allotment. I poured a little vinegar over them while still hot to enhance the flavour.
Peas - I cooked them with mint from the garden. Alas they failed to pick up the taste but were quite tasty anyway.
Courgette tart - Made with a mix of home grown and 'end of day' market courgettes. Added a bit of salt and chilli to enhance the taste.
Cherry, raspberry and strawberry compote - with the last of the alltoment strawberries.
After a few weeks of simple (uninspiring?) lunches consisting mainly of raw fruit and vegetables I one again felt the urge to make something more interesting. I guess the slightly lower temperature don't hurt either. For the first time in a few weeks not much grown at home produce in the box, but lots of local produce in the market and shops here.
Clockwise from top left:
Buckwheat - got to eat more of this stuff it's so easy to cook and so good for you
Peas - I used to hate peas as a child because they were too sweet but I am very fond of them now and I find shelling them a very calming thing to do
TLT salad - my take on a vegan BLT without the bread. Little gem lettuce, tempeh rashers and sun dried tomatoes in oil. Very tasty.
Red fruits compote - I love cherries but they like me better if I cook them first. So here we have gently cooked cherries, strawberries and raspberries. I got to use my cherry stoner for the first time too.
By the way I was interested to hear about version 2.0 of the Bento lunch system from laptop lunchboxes. I have no plans to upgrade but I always love to hear about new lunchboxes.
I blame the weather. Usually I have a pretty good idea what will be in my lunch by about Friday of the previous week and I do preparation on Sunday. Not this week. I just couldn't find the inspiration. Hence I feel back on this old vegan standby - peanut butter.
Clockwise from top:
Strawberries - Yes more strawberries. I'm still picking and trying to find ways to use up those I can't eat. Strawberry wine is looking quite promising in this area but it'll have to wait at least six months before I can taste test!
Radishes - From the allotment
Cucumber - Why is it so hard to buy a cucumber that isn't encased in plastic?
Crackers with peanut butter - The cucumber went really well with this.
Just realised this is my first lunch for some weeks with no Asparagus!
This is the half home grown lunch box. Thrilled that I grew fifty percent of this box.
From top right:
Tofu - marinated in watered down dregs of BBQ sauce and then baked.
Radishes - Grown on my allotment. I've never been able to get radishes to grow before and isn't the colour divine!
Strawberries - These taste amazing. My plants are producing so many at present that we starte to make Strawberry wine on Sunday. Might try some jam next.
Pasta with peas and asparagus
A perfect lunchbox for eting in the park under a blue sky.
The strawberries are here! so I've been a bit inspired by cream/cricket/picnic teas in this week's lunch.
Clockwise from top right:
Vegan sausages (Vegetarian Choice in the freezer cabinet at Holland and Barrett) and gently cooked Aspargus
Radishes, cucumber, red pepper and a stray bit of asparagus
home made scone (rather heavy - I need a light touch) and some vegan whipping cream I found hanging around at the abck of the pantry. Tastes a bit like the custard in doughnuts.
Strawberries from my allotment.
Quite frankly the strawberries are so delicious I am happy to eat them untouched by anything else but they do decay rather swiftly so compote may be putting in an appearance.
My strawberries are so close to being ready to harvest (jumps up and down with excitement and squeals with glee). I'm giving definite thought to some kind of (vegan) cream tea theme to my lunch box next week. In the meantime:
Clockwise from top right:
Radishes
Cucumber (and is it me or are there more cucumber being sold this year that aren't encased in plastic?)
Lightly steamed cauliflower - I got two from the market because they were cheap at the end of the day and let me tell you these are totally delicious. I'm thinking about these with a tiny smear of margarine the way I would normally think about mashed potatoes with loads of oil.
Nut loaf - I looked in the pantry and discovered I had several bags of nuts that needed finishing up. A quick consultation of Rose Elliot's Vegan Feast, a few minutes with a blender and a saucepan and this was in the oven. Topped with leftover mango chutney from a weekend curry.
It was lunch in the park yesterday and I thought the change of background more than made up for the slightly dodgy photo.
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Little tub of soy sauce and wasabi and three dried Figs. These are Crazy Jacks brand and are huge. However they are delicious and are making me impatient for the strawberries on my allotment to be ready to eat.
Ted's Asian Asparagus - prepared according to the instructions in Vegan Lunch Box minus the dressing. I just pour any leftover soy sauce over it.
Sushi containing red pepper or brown lentils. I'm getting much better at making sushi. The trick with the rice is to use almost equal amount of rice and water and to the turn the water right down when it comes to the boil. Do not be tempted to add more water! Also don't overfill the rolls.
Salad of Gem lettuce, radishes, cucumber and red onions.
A rather haphazard mix this week of combined sunday lunch leftovers and things knocking aorund the back of the cupboard.
From top right:
Aparagus - locally grown (not by me!) and baked for bit.
Cauliflower - The bits that wouldn't fit int he steamer when we were making lunch on Sunday
Rice spring roll wrappers filled with lentils mashed with various oils vinegars and spices, radishes, carrot, cucumber, white cabbage. I'm not very good at getting these to roll up. Contents were inspired by a recipe for vegan wraps from The Everyday Vegan. However I think the author had tortilla style wraps in mind, not brittle disks that need soaking and drying with a tea towel. This is the last of the packet I bought with a wheat avoiding friend in mind. I've no idea how I was intending to serve them to her but I probably won't bother - Life is too short to stuff a rice paper wrap.
Rhubarb crumble - Sweeter and runnier than I usually make it as it was served to our Sunday lunch guest. I realised that most people do not relsih the sour taste of rhubarb quite the same way as I do. I bought the rhubarb because my own plants have started to flowerand I still trying to work out if this is a good thing or not!
I seem to be cooking far too much food then my lunchbox needs at present. I think I'll have to look at freezing some of it for days when I don't have so much time.
From top right:
Spinach (from my allotment) and radishes
Watercress toppped with roasted aspargus
Pesto and mushroom tart
Rosewater rice pudding
Who says that vegans don't eat interesting food?
From top right:
Baked tofu (marianted in a mix of soy sauce, nutritional yeast flakes and agave syrup).
Baked Asparagus (slightly over cooked but still very good indeed)
Salad of cos lettuce, watercress, spinach (home grown!) and radishes
Quinoa dressed with olive oil, raspberry vinegar and salt/pepper.
I love it when the season foods on offer begin to expand. I'm really looking forward to the first strawberries. The plants on my allotment are all flowering at present so I'm hoping for a really good crop this year.
I've been very busy of late. Hence the lack of blog posts. One of the more pleasing side effects of extreme occupation is that I don't plan every detail of life in an obsessive manner. So I open the fridge and find food that I bought and forgot about or ran out of time to do something with. the unexpected half cauliflower at the bottom of the fridge combined with an unexpected BBQ forcing me to remember dishes I haven't made for ages has made for a packed box this week.
Clockwise from top right:
Cos lettuce (new season) and roasted Asparagus (new season)
Boiled potatoes (from the allotment)
Easy Cauliflower dahl from a Linda McCartnery book. The spinach just keeps on coming so I threw a couple of huge handfuls into the lentils towards the end of cooking.
Buckwheat with Marinated mushrooms. The mushroom recipe is another Linda McCartney one and tastes so good BBQed. It's not bad made in the oven either.
Another round of spinach and Purple sprouting brocolli!
Clockwise from top right:
Spinach ( from the allotment) lightly steamed and then served with a splash of raspberry vinegar
Tempting Tempeh sticks - recipe from Cooking with PETA
Steamed cauliflower - served with salt, pepper, nutritional yeast and pure margarine
Pasta and lightly boiled BSP with vinegarette and nutritional yeast.
I can't believe how healthy this is and how filling! Usually I crave a snack mid afternoon so either I'm to busy to be hungry or too full.
From top left:
Crazy Jacks dried figs and apricots
Steamed purple spuriting brocolli - totally delicious and grown on my allotment!
Fridge mix pastie - Odds and ends from the fridge (couple of spoonfuls of potato salad, couple of spoonfuls of lime lentils, cooked Basimati rice), cooked spinach (from the allotment), nutritional yeast and dried chillis all wrapped up in puff pastry.
Steamed potatos - more allotment goodies served with a tiny blob of margarine.
Hopefully the Rhubarb will have come on enought this week for me to enjoy some in my lunch next week.
So what have I got this week?
Clockwise from top right:
Stewed Rhubarb - I did this in the microwave which was very easy. However there was quite a bit of liquid so I added a sample of Jordan's muesli that I had lying around that just so happened to be vegan. Very yummy and a change from pears!
Tempeh and dried apricots - I love Tempeh and had to resist eating the whole packet in one go. It's so good when it's fried. The dried apricots are the last of a bag from the stall on the market. I've got Crazy Jacks Apricots that I got at the Vitality show to move on to after these and they look totally different.
Carrots and hummus - Dear Heart and I popped into the Co-op on Sunday to buy something random and I noticed that there was a reduced pot of hummus so it came home with us to add a little something to my lunchbox.
Italian Style rice - A veganised version of a recipe from Lunchbox by Amanda Grant. It tasted a bit bland so I added some chili sauce. It reheats very well.
I seem to have been filling up the freezer a bit over the past few weeks so I'm definitely thinking that next weeks menu needs to clear things out a bit. Breakfast wise this week I've been eating leftovers (I just love it when the fridge has all kind of odds and ends in it) - Lemon spinach sandwiches, baked beans. I'm not finding that I have such a need for afternoon snacks so I guess that my body has adjusted to all the extra exercise.
Incidentally if you need inspiration to eat nice, healthy food, first lose your appetite by visiting this is why you're fat and then recover it by heading over to this is why you're thin!
I looked forward to eating this all morning.
clockwise from top right:
Lemon spinach - a Linda McCartney recipe that was soeasy I can't think why I've never bother before. In fact cooking spinach is so easy I can't think why I don't have it my box more often especially as the perpetual spinach is still merrily growing away on my allotment.
A mix of soy sauce and wasabi - I like to mix wasabi into my soy sauce so that come lunchtime you get a dipping sauce that brings the two flavours together. I think I might use a slightly smaller squirt of wasabi in future though. The sauce that didn't get used on the sushi got added to my spinach.
A piece of dark chocolate
Sushi rolls - filled with Umeboshi. These were so good. Sushi is really filling so five rolls was plenty and I managed to cook the rice perfectly for once. I need to make the rolls a bit smaller in future as the these were only just able to squeeze int the dipping sauce pot.
Pear - Getting bored of these - thankfully the Rhubarab on my allotment is coming along nicely.
I've totally failed at organising anything for breakfast this week. My pathetic excuse is that we had Dear Heart's mother over for Mother's Day. So it'll be toast unless inspiration strikes!
