You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘Tastebuddies’ category.
Where has ’22 gone to so fast? Regular media are looking back on past events and deaths; social media are being flooded with New Year’s resolutions for 2023. And me? I’m just looking forward to another Japanese Literature Challenge hosted by Dolce Bellezza. That’s what I like about this time of year!
The challenge runs from January through February. Will you join us?
Here’s what I have planned…
- Read De Zwemmers (The Swimmers) by Julie Otsuka.
- Read Tokyo Vice by Jake Adelstein (providing I can get my hands on an affordable copy).
- Make a dish from the Vegan Japan Easy cookbook.
- Continue to listen to Jake Adlestein’s interesting investigative podcast The Evaporated: Gone with the Gods about the “fascinating and bizarre world of Japan’s jouhatsu” (missing persons).
By the way: this is the first post on this blog that I made in the WordPress Gutenberg editor! #learning
I’ve got a busy week ahead so it seems wise to pick up menu planning & prepping again to make sure I keep eating well ánd do not have to throw away leftover vegetables. I hate discarding food, don’t you?
Menu plan
- Sunday
Surinamese roti with vegan No-chicken Chunks from The Vegetarian Butcher - Monday
Potato-leek soup (fridge), greek salad with fermented tofu “feta” and pizza sandwich with leftover tomato sauce - Tuesday
Nasi goreng (fried rice), tofu rendang and stir-fried chicory - Wednesday
Valentine’s Day dinner date with the hubs :) Three course vegan meal by De Gewilde Keuken accompanied by suitable teas from TeaLounge. Photos (hopefully) to follow!
Cleaned vegetables and baked tofu in advance for quicker cooking.
I’m curious about the Taifun “feto”. I’ve made faux feta myself a long time ago; I enjoyed it but didn’t really bother preparing it again. Maybe this store-bought version is a good alternative?
– – – – –
Join Beth Fish’s Weekend Cooking with a food-related post!
Last time we did some menu planning was halfway June, when Mr Gnoe started a new job. We were full of resolutions, but didn’t manage to keep it up. Trying again – just a few weeks before the end of CSA season O_O
Menu plan 29 November – 2 December
- Saturday: Pumpkin mash with endive and oven baked lemon tofu
- Sunday: Turkish Feast by Mr Gnoe: millet with sun-dried tomatoes and olives, eggplant casserole, fasulye (beans) and spicedcabbage salad (pictured above)
- Monday: Isa Chandra’s Braised Cabbage with Seitan (p.97 Appetite for Reduction), potato mash and mushroom gravy (either this recipe or this one)
- Tuesday: Lisette Kreischer’s easy pumpkin-sunchoke soup (substituting large‐leaved chicory for pak choy and adding a little leftover coconut milk) with bread and salad
I love that I no longer have to think about what to eat the next few days! And looking forward to the meals to come :D Will be planning more after our next CSA arrives on Wednesday. Luckily I’ll have a sneakpeek of the contents on Monday as I have to write the accompanying leaflet this week. Need to think about Friday’s Sinterklaas dinner! We’re not really celebrating but there’s a guest coming and I want to make something special.
Yesterday I had my first bento lunch in a long time. That makes me happy. :)
Meatless Monday Bihun Bento
Curious about the contents of this bento?
Right tier
Mihoen (bihun) goreng with faux chick’n leftovers from Soy, my local Chinese vegetarian restaurant, topped with fried courgette and parsley.
Left tier
Red Batavia lettuce, tomato, creamy borlotti-balsamic bean spread (recipe from Think! Eat! Act! A Sea Shepard’s Chef Vegan Recipes by Raffaella Tolicetti), pickles, kalamata olives, and a spoonful of capers.
On the side
Rosemary crackers.
Where from?
I won the Sea Shepard’s vegan cookbook I few months ago on Lisa’s Project Vegan blog and the recipes I’ve tried so far are all thumbs up! I hope to spend a post on the book sometime soon so I can link it up to Trish’s Cook It Up — but let’s not get ahead of myself. I used local borlotti beans out of our organic CSA haul for the bean spread this past weekend. Other local and organic ingredients in this lunch are zucchini, lettuce, tomato and parsley.
I hope I’ll be presenting my next bento again soon… See you then?
Friday Try-out
Friday seems a good day to try things. Like those unfamiliar ingredients I bought on a whim, or that instant dessert I got sent but haven’t dared dip into yet. And don’t forget about the vegetables I don’t like much and need to find tasteful recipes for. Like beetroots, for example…
Gonna beat those beets!
Beets & I, we don’t get along very well. Can’t blame them because I used to HATE them as a child -of course that was in the time the only beet dish we knew in Holland was (over) cooked- but it beats me what my excuse is. Love their colour. ;) Okay, I guess I just don’t like the combined flavour of sweet and “earthy”. I’m more of a spicy, savoury kind of grrl; not too fond of a sweetish dinner.
Over the years I’ve found a few beet recipes that I can appreciate: beet risotto, red beet hummus, cooked beet salad or roasted beet salad, even chocolate beet cake. Still, each time those red veggies pop up in my CSA I go like: uh-oh. And I give them to my aunt. So the search continues until I root for beets!
Beet ’n Berry smoothie
Time to try a beet smoothie. I found this rather attractive looking recipe on Choosing Raw combining beet with orange (juice) and frozen berries. Many of the ingredients I usually have at hand… unfortunately not today. I was not to be deterred though and experimented with substitutes from my pantry.
Ingredients
Serves 1 (about 1 litre)
1 medium beet, steamed (cooked), cooled, peeled & roughly cut
3 handfuls frozen mixed berries & strawberries (about 200 ml)
200 ml apple juice
250 ml vanilla soy milk
splash of rice milk
1 teaspoon of almond butter, heaped
1 tablespoon hempseed
1/2 tablespoon flaxseed oil
1 teaspoon sucanat (or other sweetener)
Preparation
Blend all ingredients together in a high speed blender. I have a multi-purpose kitchen machine with blender option in which it took less than a minute.
The Verdict
Although it was not as delicious as my favourite breakfast smoothie, I rather liked this beet breakfast. I barely noticed anything earthy; only when the liquid starting warming up it appeared. Of course nothing beats the flavour combination of beet and orange of the original recipe so next time I’ll definitely try that. Still, apple juice complements quite nicely as well. I would have loved to use dates for sweetener but I hadn’t planned that: they need to be soaked for several hours. I’ve tried using dates dry once and I tell you: my immersion blender did not like that. At all. O_o Of course you need to cook, steam or roast your beet in advance as well, and give it a chance to cool down. So unless you’re using the pre-cooked kind that gives you enough time for soaking too.
I did a not-100%-successful experiment roasting my beet in the microwave… It seemed logical: if you can make jacket potatoes in it, the same goes for beets? Well, guess again (or smell my kitchen). Next time I’ll just nuke it in a normal way or cook it on the stove. If you’re lucky to have a Vitamix you can just blend beet raw!
Another thing: next time I’m going to use only frozen strawberries or raspberries. A smoothie should be velvet-y and the hard seeds of other berries annoy me. But your hearing me right: I’m talking about next time!
If you can recommend any beet recipes I’d really appreciate it!
* This post will be updated later to share whether this breakfast took me all the way to lunch or if I got hungry before that. *
VeganMoFo brings you a Month of Vegan Food. Bloggers all around the world share their favourite recipes, mouthwatering food pics, quick cooking tips, nutritional info and anything else food related to show that vegan living is awesome. It’s the best choice for animals (dûh), our planet and people! Check out the blogroll and drool… Or better yet: join us!
* Due to circumstances MoFo posts #3 and #4 are currently missing but will be updated as soon as possible *
One of my reasons for joining VeganMoFo is that I seem to have lost my appetite for cooking and blogging. VeganMoFo combines the two and may be just the thing to get my mojo back!
The same goes for bentoing… Might this bento be a whole new beginning and not just the start of a new week???
Meatless Monday VeganMoFo Bento #210
“A Meatless Monday VeganMoFo Bento” — now THAT’s a mouthful!
And a tasty one as well haha (yup, bad joke). A lunch that I happily dug into during my break.
Carbs tier
Pasta salad (chilli pasta with sundried tomatoes, spring onion, black kalamata olives, parsley and a pesto vinaigrette) on iceberg lettuce.
Veggie tier
Corn cob (freezer stash), cherry tomatoes, cucumber, bell pepper and radish to dip with houmous.
On the side
Houmous in the small container, carrots and two sandwiches with apple butter that are not shown in this picture because they were not in the box but in snacktaxi baggies.
Local & organic: corn, cherry tomatoes, lettuce, carrots, parsley
Organic: cucumber, olives, sundried tomatoes, pasta, apple butter, ingredients vinaigrette
What did YOU have for lunch on this VeganMoFo Meatless Monday? Have you ever made a bento?
VeganMoFo brings you a Month of Vegan Food. Bloggers all around the world share their favourite recipes, mouthwatering food pics, quick cooking tips, nutritional info and anything else food related to show that vegan living is awesome. It’s the best choice for animals (dûh), our planet and people! Check out the blogroll and drool… Or better yet: join us!
The little monkey in my brain is saying that this is bento number 210 because there’s been a sloppy no.209 a while back. But I can’t find any pictures of it (looked everywhere!), so we’re back to the old saying: “No photo? No o-bento!”
Ergo: meet today’s office lunch — my easy summer meal bento!
Right tier
Leftover gado-gado with tofu, bawang goreng and pickled white onions.
Left tier
Emping, summer fruit harvested on my own balcony: strawberries and raspberries. Fresh basil for colour.
On the side
Leftover pickled salad (not shown) and an apple.
Shabby seems to be my new style.. :\ That’s because I’ve been lacking inspiration to make bentos. Not only that; I rarely feel like doing anything food-related lately. Uhm except eating of course. O_o I hope it’s just a phase that will pass soon!
This office lunch bento no. 208 is in African-Eastern style. I used leftovers from dinner I made following recipes from the Cookbook Challenge #1. Remember I said there were a few more recipes I wanted to try from the Modern Moroccan cookbook? Well, this box contains creamy couscous, agave-roasted courgette and home-made harissa. All delicious. :) Especially the couscous was surprisingly good.
The other tier is more… fusion. It holds some gherkin and pickled onions, mixed green salad with lemon olives, grapes, pecans, garden cress, fennel and spring onion. There’s onion bhajee with tamarind sauce in the paper cup (Indian takeaway) and a small piece of veggie dog with tomato ketchup.
Some more seedless grapes on the side.
I haven’t gotten around to blogging much (I’m spending more time away from the computer these days), and I actually had this lunch on the 28th of March. So far, the first bento of April has still to come. :(
We’re eagerly awaiting spring here so we can celebrate o-hanami in the Japanese cherry blossom garden with our traditional picnic — that should make up for a lot of bentos in one go! ;)
Have you made any bentos lately?
On Wednesday I made my first bento in almost two months… I had a movie date in Amsterdam with my friend Loes. We went to a special viewing of the classic 1983 Palm d’Or winner The Ballad of Narayama (Narayama bushikô), a film by Shohei Imamura. Last week was the Dutch première -yes, after 30 years!- and there are only a handful of screenings.
The film tells the story of Orin, a 69 year old woman in a rural hamlet of late-1900s Japan. It’s tradition, or rather law, that inhabitants reaching the age of 70 go to the top of the mountain (Narayama) to commit obasute: death by starvation, to limit the amount of mouths to feed. The eldest son is supposed to carry his mother on his back to her resting place. But Orin is still very strong and healthy…
The Ballad of Narayama is an unusual movie: at the same time pretty much “in your face” as well as burlesque — the latter possibly to soften the hardships of life that are shown. But it’s also something I’ve come across before in Japanese cinema. Isn’t the sometimes caricatural play not reminiscent of kyōgen theatre and kabuki? Anyway, I enjoyed myself regardless of the slow pace. The many images of nature are gorgeous and it’s interesting to witness how life in a poor Japanese country village may have been in another age. I was touched by the way Orin’s son was torn between his unwillingness to let his mom go, and not wanting to shame her by refusing to go along. His difficult journey into the mountains felt like a period of mourning and Orin’s first-born carrying her to her death mirrored the process of her giving birth to him. The cycle of life.
The title of the film refers to a song about Orin’s life stage made up by her grandson in the beginning of the story (wintertime), recurring several times until The End, on the threshold of another winter.
Contemplating this I seem to have a theme going in my life at the moment. My current book is Wild by Cheryl Strayed, relating of her experiences hiking the Pacific Trail Crest (PCT) in her early twenties, a few years after her mother died. I’m totally absorbed in the story and can’t wait to read on.
But first it’s time to get back to the subject of this post. I was travelling to the cinema at dinner time so I’d eaten a hearty lunch earlier that day and made myself a simple dinner bento to have on the train.
From top to bottom
- Aubergine caviar with corn kernels, Italian crackers and walnut spread.
- Lemon macadamia cupcake with lemon frosting (recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World), more crackers, dried apricot and baby fig.
- Cucumber salad with mini plum tomatoes, olives, radishes, chives, a cheezy dressing (recipe from Bryanna Clarke) and hemp seeds sprinkled over.
It was GOOOOD! I hope to have more bentos and nights like this. :)
Submitted to What’s for Lunch Wednesday #145 and Beth Fish’s Weekend Cooking.
Graasland 