What's in my lunchbox this week?

I attempted to consume this out of doors. However the high winds meant that it was a real effort to get the fork to my mouth before bits blew away!

From top right:

Lovely local Plum and Greengage
Blackberry and marzipan muffins - I had a load of Blackberries that I picked that needed using up. These are delicious. I made them with wholewheat flour and let the marzipan and fruit do all the sweetening.
Salad of pasta, green olives, sweetcorn and a teeny bit of Mr Singh's chilli sauce.
Slices of red pepper and cucumber.

What's in my lunchbox this week?

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.

What's in my lunchbox this week?

It was lunch in the park yesterday and I thought the change of background more than made up for the slightly dodgy photo.

Clockwise from top right:

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.

What's in my lunch box this week?

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.

What's in my lunchbox this week?

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.

What's in my lunchbox this week?

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!

What's in my lunch box this week?

Following last week's selection of foods that seemed to feature an above average amoputn of peanut butter here's the choice for new week:
(Clockwise from top right)
Tofu fish stick (from The Vegan lunch box - only I used frozen tofu whoch looked freakily like fish when I was dipping it in the mix)
Pear
Polenta fries (from The Vegan lunch box - do not make this when you are (a) tired from working and marathon training, (b) have just worn self our further bashing lumps out of white sauce and (c) without following the instructions for ratio between Polenta and water). They should be more fry shaped but they tate delicious anyway!
White cabbage, spring onions and radishes with a hint of rice wine vinegar.

Breakfast has been a bit varied this week as I was able to eat at home for two mornings and there are enough left overs in the fridge to provide me with variety. Likewise I find myself having a number of afternon appointments which distract me from the need to nibble midafternoon.

Expect something sushi like next week - I've got all the bits in the apntry jsut waiting for me to use them.

Things I love Thursday

Growing stuff – Things seem to be going quite well on my allotment. I’m doing good on preparing the ground, the spinach and celery survived the winter and I got my first lot of potatoes in the ground last week. Today I bough Raspberry canes from the market. I love raspberries and have been meaning to grow some for years so I was so pleased have purchased these. Also looking forward to laying out my seed packets and sorting out planting plan.

Lamé leggings – I bought a pair of these from American Apparel in December because my Grandma gave me some £ and wanted me to treat myself. I’ve worn them previously in a non-noticeable way as pretty much as replacement tights. Last weekend I wore them with my grey woolly pillow case top and black buckle boots and felt totally rock and roll. I’ve been doing enough exercise to justify showing off my legs after all.

Purple sprouting Broccoli – I’ve had this in my lunch box every day this week and think it is so yummy.

Vegan cheese on crackers spread with vegan mayo – Holland and Barrett had a three for two on vegan cheese which means I’ve been eating loads of this high fat stuff. I’ve been justifying it to myself that I need it to off set the broccoli and moonwalk training! The offer is now over so I might start restraining my urges for this delicious combo.

Honourable mentions: Tapas with friends, packed lunches, reading the original book the film/tv show was based on, keeping a good average time per mile while walking, cooking leftovers, a possible date for the UK Lady bloggers meet up, rearranging furniture.

Right I'm off to read other TILTs across the web

What's in my lunchbox this week?

Here we have my lunch (clockwise from top right):

Tiny tub of sesame peanut butter sauce (mix peanut butter, soy sauce, seasame oil) and two dark chocolate hearts

Pear

Steamed Purple Sprouting Broccoli

Quinoa with a drizzle of balsamic vinegar

Beneath the lunchbox are:

A tub of peanut butter and jelly bars - just like the mixed berry one I made the other week only with peanut butter and grape jelly in the middle. These came out a bit firmer than the previous ones; it must be all the sugar binding them together. They remind me of Pop Tarts!

Caraway scones - these came out very light and make a nice mid afternoon snack.

What's in my lunchbox this week?

This week I have:

(clockwise from top right)

Carrot sticks

Cheezy chickpeas (cooked chickpeas baked up with oil, nutritional yeast, chillies and salt), green tea pumpkin seeds and melon seeds

Apple

Scattered sushi (sushi rice cooked and mixed with vinegar and salt topped with spicy kale from a sachet I found lurking in the pantry)

I so love looking in the pantry and thinking 'I will use that up this week' rather than 'I'd better save that - it's too good for me to eat'. I've gotten rid of that attitude with clothes so why do I do it with food sometimes???

What's in my lunchbox this week?

This week I have:

(clockwise from top right)

Fried Gluten mock 'chicken'

Kiwi fruit and chili chocolate penguin

Soba Noodles

Brussel sprouts

The gluten came in can. I popped in in the oven, dubious looking juices and all for a bit. After 15 minutes or so I added some BBQ sauce and a big sploge of some ancient pepper and tomato salad dressing that has been in the fridge for ever and shoved it back in until it looked a bit dried out on the top. It's very yummy indeed and I'm afraid that it might not last the week.

Additionally the kiwi will turn into an apple in a couple of days as I've only a few left from those I treated myself to last week.

What's in my lunchbox this week

If I'm going to list what I wear why not what I eat!

I I tend to make up a batch of food on Sunday and eat it (or some kind of variation on it) for the rest of the week. I'm still getting to grips with portion sizes in the laptop lunchbox. So although I'm probably eating more reasonable portion sizes (instead of eating the lot in two sitting or making a tiny portion last all week) I'm still getting used to how much food it takes to fill the various tubs. I think I'm definitely eating a more balanced lunch though.
So here we have:
raw carrots
pears (these and apples are about the only UK grown fruit that is in season)
mix of brown rice and Buckwheat – Never tried Buckwheat before but it was reduced so I bought some and I’m finding it very good.
Chickpea and spinach curry – I fried some spring onions, added a very ancient Indian Oxo cube, cooked chickpea and spinach from the freezer. It’s not very spicy but totally yum.

Don't panic

Yesterday was hectic. Things started out fine but then I had more than I expected. So I left work at usual time rather than early as I had planned. Then the bus didn’t turn up so I got home much later than planned. I only had one book with me (The Heroin Diaries by Nikki Sixx) which I finished while waiting for the bus. This must be the first time in years that I haven’t taken a spare book everywhere.

The shower is leaking (although Dear Heart may have worked his magic on it). I had planned to make tortillas for dinner because I was going to get home early. I also needed to prepare lunch because it was my turn to provide lunch for our ladies who (pack) lunch Thursday.

My dodgy ankle went over as I was hurrying up the road so I’ve got some scraps and bruises. Also today is Dear Heart’s birthday so I wanted to double check that everything was in place. Arggg!

But everything has turned out Ok. Dear Heart and I did a little switch with dinner and had a toast based snack for dinner. Tortillas will be eaten tonight or go in the freezer. I made a lovely lunch which seems to have gone down surprisingly well. I checked everything was in place for Dear Heart.

I really must learn to recite ‘panic is not a word in my vocabulary’. Actually it wasn’t’ panic that slowed me down so much as the urge to tell everyone how much pressure I felt under – just like I have here. A little less conversation, a little more action –words of wisdom from the King!

Lunch tote

Isn't this adorable? My folks bought it back from their trip to Colorado for me, along with a stash of other goodies. The bookstore it came from sounds amazing. The store's website looks pretty good too.

I already have a tin popeye lunchbox (resurrected from childhood) and an insulated thing with a couple of compartments and netbags on the side. Some days I don't use a special bag at all if I have several days worth of food to carry (or dishes that seem to have immense volume!).

This one is just right for taking lunch out to the park (weather permitting!) and easily carries the most vital of lunch accessories - a good book.

Oh and I don't think it's easily readable in the photo but the front reads:

Noonday tea is much improved when taken in the quiet companionship of a good book - Archibald Smythe

New blogs to devour

I’ve taken a couple of blogs that haven’t been updated in forever or have disappeared off my list. Happily I’ve discovered some new blogs to fill the gaps.

I recently came across Queen Lazy at http://stylesavvy.wordpress.com while I was searching for daily outfit type posts. I immediately added her to my favourites list and was thrilled to see that she Twitters too.

Talking of Twitter my new find of the day is Twiller. It’s a thriller written via Twitter. Visit twitter.com and have a look at mrichel and see what you think.

Then there’s queengilda. Not entirely sure how I discovered her but looks like being a blog that I will enjoy visiting regularly.

I’m still visiting littlesipsoftea, iCiNG, Brocantehome and Wardroberefashion on a daily basis. However I am badly in need of some more inspiring vegan food blogs. The ones that I have been reading regularly such as don’t get mad, get vegan and brookethevegan haven’t been posting much for various reasons. Veganlunchbox has been posting over the summer though, which has been good. I think I need a new lunchbox blog to follow into the autumn to fill me with inspiration.

Suggestions please.

Raspberry juice

It's amazing how a small quantity of something can go such a long way.

It's my turn this week to prepare the food for our Thursday lunch group. I'd been thinking about various things to serve and it definitely seemed to be the time of year to go with fresh fruit for dessert. Rather annoyingly the market seemed to be full of peaches, apricots and nectarines imported from all over the world and a real lack of English fruits. Anyway I needed to make up my mind so I grabbed a pineapple and a couple of punnets of raspberries. Then like a complete fool I put them both into the same cotton should back and headed off with the bag thumping against me with every step I took. And, of course, the raspberries were between me and the pineapple. I only realised when the bag had a big circle of pulped raspberry on it and so did my dress.

I took the raspberries out and re-wrapped (the remains of) their paper bag around them and put them in my other bag. I put them right on top so that they wouldn't get crushed any more. Then when I got to my destination and had a chance to reorganise my bags I moved them to the bottom of my shoulder bag. This was the one that came with Easy Living magazine and the fabric seems to be quite waterproof.

So I got home to discover a puddle of juice at the bottom of my bag. Everything in the bag was marked by raspberries juice in some way.

I'm looking on the bright side here. I gave everything in my bag a wipe over and it all looks much brighter. I also had to wash my cotton bags that I use all the time. In all honestly they could probably do with washing at least once a fortnight. The marvellous weather means that they'll be dry in no time. So everyone's a winner in this apart from the poor raspberries. Maybe it's time to start growing my own?

The five a day diet

Back in 2005 the Guardian did a focus on healthy living (although I have no doubt that they've looked at the subject since). One piece challenged 3 volunteers to eat nine a day and see how they got on. Amit's comment really sums it up for me

"To fit in nine portions, you have to have breakfast, otherwise you end up with too much to eat later in the day. You have to drop the junk snacks, which I am fond of. You can't even think about a nice bag of crisps when you've still got an apple or a banana to eat on top of your lunchtime sandwich. "

Fitting in five a day has been on my mind recently. I was really very keen on a few years back when I looked at my (then vegetarian) diet and realised that I wasn't consuming much in the way of fruit and veg. After a few months I had gotten into the habit and stopped worrying abut it. However, I recently purchased Glamour (just for the Benefit lip gloss - this was before the days of The make up diet) and it had an article about five a day.

I realised to my horror that I had slipped. This was mainly due to eating more than five on some days and rather less on others. I got to work on making a few alterations to my diet and discovered that if you are eating your quota you don't have room for much else.

The problems of what a portion was has continued to plague me. I have a handy portion guide on the side of my fridge. However what do you do when you have a bunch of 18 radishes and (according to the chart) a portion in 10? Do you eat 9 on each occasion? Or 10 in one go and 8 later? Eat all 18? Buy more radishes? What exactly does a bowl of salad look like and how does a bowl translate into the square, deep container that I am putting my lunch in?

After faffing around with bowls and the like a simple solution presented itself. I would just weigh the stuff. My 8 radishes that I prepared as a snack for today turned out to be well over the required 80g. I rather suspect that yesterday's carrots were a great deal more than 80g.

So I'll carry on using the scales, work at that 5 a day and maybe (very unsure about this) try 6 a day at some point in the future. I do agree with Helen in the article though - eating this takes some planning! But do Iahve anything that much better to do???

It's a good day...

For sitting in the park at lunchtime. The sunshine feeling extremely welcome on any patches of bare skin. Alas it also caused me to notice the smears of fake tan around my ankles. I initally thought that it was some kind of bruising (possibly bought on by yesterday's rather intense yoga session).

I'm not really a fake tan type but I have on occasion purchased Holiday Skin only for it to then sit in the bathroom cabinet unused. I do hate to see things go to waste so useing it up seemed a great idea as it would clear a small space in the bathroom cupboard, make my legs less dry and make them slightly less pale.

I have been wondering if its tendancy to leave smears of brown and orange is because it'sthe formulation for pale skin. I assumed that this would be less intense that the regular formula. However, the manufacturers obviously consider that the paler you are the more colour you need!

I've only got quarter of bottle to finish up but I'm having to use it in very small amount to avoid looking like I've been tangoed. Believe me it's back to being pale and interesting at the end of the bottle.

Lovely lunches

I've been having the most delicious lunches this week Yummy salads with lots of spinach. Then for dessert a tub with a layer of cooked rhubarb (from the allotment), sliced strawberries and topped off with shavings of home made melon sorbet.

Tomorrow I'm going out for lunch because our staff sports and social club has a new chef. I ran into him on the way to my yoga class on Wednesday and he told me about the yummy stuff on the menu including three meat free salads. I thought it would be rude not to give it a try.

Other exciting lunch based news is that I've joined force with a couple of the girls at work and we are going to take it in turns to make each other a packed lunch on a Thursday. Results will appear on our new blog http://librarylunches.blogspot.com/ No entries yet but do visit it in a few weeks once we've got going.

Now I'm off to ice the lovely vegan cupcakes I made last night following (very loosely) the recipe from galadarling.com I think mine will be somewhat less colourful!

Summer must be here

How do I know that summer must be here? Because last night I put my winter clothes away and got out my summer ones. I'm really thrilled (as usual) to discover that I own so many lovely things. however, I am slightly surprised at the vast quantities of shoes that I have unpacked.

Quite frankly the weather has been so changeable Iwas begining to think that I would just be in my winter clothes right through to October with the odd day here and there taken care of with a few pieces I have made. I am slightly nervous about the chilly temperature predicted for the end of the week but who knows wth weather. It's all chaos theory anyway and sometimes you just have to take a chance.

I am thinking that while delighting in my summer clothes I may plan in advance a few combinations for chillier days.

I'm also going to try and look after myself this week. I seem to have had a few very busy weeks with work and other things. I feel exhausted, am fretting over small things and just don't feel right. My puff pastry wouldn't puff. My eating habits are all over the place (either nothing or too much). I've missed a number of exercise opportunities. A friend suggested that I check my biorhythms and rather amusingly they do seem to be on a downward spiral at present.

Last week I purchased some delicious looking spinach at the market. Then on Saturday when I popped to the deli to do our grocery shopping I discovered raspberry cider vinegar and lemon infused olive oil. So I am planning lots of delicious salads. I simply can't decide which dressing to enjoy first.

So here's to a week with lots of salad, exercise and early nights followed up (hopefully) by lashings of blogging, creativity and cupboard clearouts.

I'm so looking forward to sharing my adventures with henna, updates on allotment and share the joy that having a study slowly emptying of clutter bring.