You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘vegan’ tag.
A quick share of my most recent bento. It contained leftovers from our “yogi dinner” the previous night: recipes from the cookbook Yogifood1 by Jet Eikelboom and Seth Jansen.
Yogi lentil salad with hazelnuts, parsley, red cabbage, corn lettuce and a maple-balsamic dressing, mini plum tomatoes, cucumber, carrot, and more tomato with almond butter dip from my Lithuanian Foodie Penpal, yogi potato mash with thyme and a sea-buckthorn candy from my visit to Vlieland.
On the side: 2 clementines, santana apple and 3 sandwiches (apple-pear butter & houmous).
Local/CSA: corn lettuce, cabbage, carrot, potato, thyme, apple.
Office lunch on Thursday 13-12-2012.
On Thursday I enjoyed an office lunch with several of the Lithuanian goodies I got from my November Foodie Penpal Vita.
The box up front contains both the kūčiukai and cookie rings (yay, cookies to add carbs to my bento ;) a freeze dried strawberry and candied radishes.
The middle ‘meat & veg’ tier holds some onion-leek-garlic-pepper (yellow & green) stir-fry, slices of Healthy Planet “chicken” fillet, a fresh radish, mini Brussels’ sprouts and a skewer of sliced raja potato and gherkin, all on a bed of corn salad. I also brought a small container of tomato ketchup for the faux meat but forgot to include it in the picture.
Dessert comes last of course: apple & clementine.
I didn’t mean to cross the bento-200 line so silently… Alas, I lacked the time to post numbers 200-202 but plan to make up for that later this month!
- – - – -
Join us with a food related post in Beth Fish’s Weekend Cooking!
Today we’re saying goodbye to summer, as it’s Autumnal Equinox tomorrow. But it’s also the day I said farewell to my colleagues in the Netherlands Police Museum – which doesn’t actually exist any more either now that it has merged with two other cultural heritage institutions.
This moment in time called for a comfort food bento in fall colours!
Left tier
Simple coleslaw with avocado dressing and sweet beet salad.
Right tier
Couscous with chili, white paprika with caper and radish flowers, 2 garlic cashews and flat leaf parsley.
On the side (not shown)
Vegan banana-walnut muffin that my friend Janny baked with some plant based butter and raspberry jelly.
My colleagues gave me a gorgeous bouquet, a lovely self-made card with the sweetest wishes and a gift card for which I’m going to purchase something awesome. Summer may be waning but I feel warm inside!
Today’s small Meatless Monday bento, next to which I had two houmous-cucumber sandwiches providing the necessary carbs in my lunch.
Main container
- Steamed broccoli with garlic pepper, salt and dried yuzu zest
- Cherry tomatoes wit basil and black olives
- A date
- 2 homemade parsley-tofu balls with musterd sauce and cocktail sauce
- Chocolate mousse in heart-cup, covered with strawberries
All on a bed of lettuce.
Side container
- Wild peach
- Cucumber slices
- Sauce container carrying basil dressing for the tomatoes, olives and lettuce
On the side
- Clementine
A lunch like this is a good start of the week!
This Messy Meatless Monday Bento is absolutely loaded with proteins. So if you’re one of those people wondering how to get enough of these in a meatless -even plantbased- diet: pay attention!
There’s falafel (with spicy tomato dip and a soy-based garlic sauce), PPK’s tofu scramble with additional mushrooms & onion, lentils in my carrot-rocket-endive-bellpepper-gherkin salad with tomato croutons and seed mix topping (pine nuts, sunflower seeds & pepitas).
Other yummyness in the box: cucumber, leek sprouts, red Batavian lettuce, baked black salsify and a black sesame cracker.
On the side there’s a ginger-almond bread sandwich with soy butter and a fruit salad (blueberries, apple and kiwi fruit in a lemon juice & cinnamon dressing).
Okay, so maybe I overdid it a little: more veggies and a little less proteins would have gotten me a more evenly balanced meal. But I had a LONG day to go after lunchtime so I don’t think I really minded! :)
Oh, and did I mention the vegan cranberry muffins I treated my co-workers to today? Someone even asked for the recipe, which can be found in a previous post! :)
On Thursday, Ascension of Jesus — a national holiday, the weather was so good we decided to take our Mexican dinner to the park. A great opportunity to use my new sakura bento!
I know: baaaad picture — sorry! But I was so hungry that I didn’t have the patience to make a good one… Not to mention the growling tummy of Mr Gnoe next to me. ;)
Contents: flour tortillas with chili (kidney beans, zucchini & red bell pepper), rice, salsa picante, avocado with lime and sea salt, blanched spinach with red onion and jalepeño, salad (lettuce, tomato, spring onion, gherkin, black olives) with balsamic vinegar dressing and nachos. The beer is Grolsch, which I prefer over Heineken any day.
Now it would be foolish to tell you this was supposed to be a burrito bento that I messed up, right? ;)
That I don’t have many occasions these days — nor the energy — to make bentos, doesn’t mean I can resist the occasional splurge on nice gear! So when I saw this modern tumbler at Bento & Co during their Golden Week discount, it took me only seconds to click the right buttons. ;) I bet my fellow bentoïsts can relate?!
"Microwave safe. You can reheat juicy food to enjoy them deliciously."
I’ve been wanting an insulated mug to bring along soup or noodles for ages, so I’m glad I can now cross that “WANT” off my list.
But I didn’t stop at that! Remember I’ve been doing without a picnic bento since my cute rabbit box broke during Hanami two years ago? What better than to get myself a real cherry blossom bento? I love my sakura, and I won’t say ‘No’ to a spray of gold-dust either. ;) Don’t you think this Hakoya box is lovely?
And then there’s the “OMG they killed Kenny!” bottle (a.k.a. Wallmug Sulo) that made me giggle. It can be used for either hot or cold drinks and the snazzy insulation jacket makes it weigh less than a thermos.
You can imagine that receiving these nice new stuffs made me eager to throw together a bento a.s.a.p. Well.. today’s the day! And heeeeeeere’s:
Pastel Bento (#142)
The tumbler contains pasta with black olives and white asparagus. I’ve made this recipe twice now, both when I had omnivore dinner guests coming over, and it certainly won’t be the last time. I microwaved the leftovers this morning and although the mug felt warm to the touch for quite sometime, I was a bit disappointed to find it had cooled down at lunchtime. I guess I’ll need an insulation bag to go with it. Or a microwave at the office. ;)
Upper tier
- Salad ingredients: oak-leaf lettuce, spring onion, radish & radish sprouts, parsley, croutons.
- Miso-dressing.
- Piece of corn on the cob.
Lower tier
- Rhubarb compote.
- Fruit dessert of pear and kiwi with coconut cream (you’ll be hearing more about that when I talk about rhubarb in another post).
- Pickled red onion.
I hope I’ll have another bento to share with you soon!
Find more bento lunches at Shannon’s What’s for Lunch Wednesday (week 52).
It’s only the 2nd day of my ExtraVeganza project and I’m already not keeping up with posting daily. Sorry! But more importantly: the vegan eating is going well and I feel weirdly ehm.. ‘clean’. And you may take that by its different meanings. ;) It feels good!
Day 2 Menu
Breakfast: winter fruit salad (apple, banana, kiwi fruit, pink grapefruit & lemon juice), toast with Marmite & soy margarine (Provamel).
Lunch: 3 ’5-seeds sandwiches’
- Veganaise, avocado, tomato, mustard cress, chili flakes, salt & pepper. My favorite of the day! It was smoothy & crisp — YUM!
- Tofutti ‘cream cheese’ spread (garlic & herbs) with gherkin, walnuts, salt & pepper. This sammy was pretty good too: garlicky, nutty & sour — a good combination.
- Slices of Taifun almond-sesame smoked tofu with tomato, mustard, capers and fresh herbs (thyme & parsley). The mustard was a bit too sharp, overwhelming the tofu. But it was funny to notice this combination tasted slightly Japanese! It was the tamari soy sauce and sesame of the smoked tofu combined with the bite of the mustard and ‘pickled’ capers. Still, next time I will use some other toppings, like the leftover spicy soy-lemon sauce from my Experimental Bento.
Dinner: hamburger
Snacks: home-baked Paradise Cookies, Bonvita vegan chocolate (rice milk chocolate & 71% dark with cranberries), cashews
Experiences
I was hungry again pretty soon after breakfast, but that might have something to do with the fact I had been looking at cookie recipes non-stop. ;)
Since I then made an extra sandwich for lunch (I usually take 2), it tided me over to dinner after 7. Completely averting my usual hunger attack around 4 o’clock! Wow.
Any difficulties?
Nope. What might have been a complication on Day 2 was No-Problem-At-All. We were having dinner prior to a Lost-2 mini marathon at my cousin’s and decided on a hamburger meal together. :)
So I had my Albert Heijn organic vegan burger on a small ciabatta bun from the whole food store, piled with veggies, ketchup and… garlic sauce based on the amazing veganaise I had whipped up in Happy Herbi’s Eat Good, Feel Good cooking workshop that was my official ExtraVeganza kick-off.
And no telly night without snacks to munch on! ;)
I’m one of those rare people that doesn’t have a craving for chocolate. I like a bite every once in a while and at those moments I prefer milk chocolate with nuts or white. You won’t catch me eating a piece of dark chocolate. ;) But my cousin likes it a lot so I wanted to bring some — and of course I tasted both.
To me the ricemilk chocolate couverture tasted pretty dark although the 71% one is stronger and the cranberries are a great addition. This brand uses 100% FairTrade and organic cacao.
Vegan Paradise Cookies
Today was also my first try at vegan baking. I chose an easy-looking recipe from Vegalicious for which I only needed to buy 1 extra ingredient: canned pineapple. My Vegan Paradise Cookies didn’t turn out as good looking as promised — rather pale as you can see, but they do taste nice!
They’re not as sweet as mass-produced, shop-bought and I rather like that. They’re a little crunchy on the outside, soft and a bit cake-like on the inside. I didn’t know they would be that way, so I had them in the oven twice as long as I was supposed to because they still felt elastic to the touch. It also took me waaaaaaay longer to make them than I had thought, because getting the ingredients ready (chopping nuts, mincing pineapple) took some time. So we were a bit late on our dinner date :-o
The recipe on Vegalicious doesn’t mention when to use the vanilla, so I put it in with the flour and baking powder. My batter didn’t turn out too wet to handle, like a note on the original recipe says, but that might have to do with the fact I couldn’t find any ‘sweetened coconut flakes’ and used ordinary grated coconut, which I always have in stock.
Everybody liked the chocolate as well as my coconut cookies. My family also tasted the garlic sauce and thought it good (although they took the dairy version that was also available, probably not wanting me to have too little ;)
So it’s safe to say that our ‘Friday Snack Night’ was a success. ;)
On with Gnoe’s vegan adventures on Day 3 of ExtraVeganza!
- – - – -
New recipe(s) tried for the Whip Up Something New! Challenge!
- – - – -
Join Beth Fish’s weekend cooking with a food-related post!
My BX bookshelf
