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Have you heard of VeganMoFo yet?
It’s October turned into a vegan treasure box!
During the month 500+ bloggers around the world will highlight the wonders of a vegan lifestyle.
My posts will mostly focus on being EXTRAveganza, or ‘vegan on the road’. That’ll include bentos (dôh), travel-friendly recipes and examples of how I fared on our recent holiday in France — my first as a vegan. And then there will be some side-trips. ;)
Are you ready? Here we go!
Tiny Track ’n Snack Bento (#197)
Yesterday I went hiking with a group of friends. A snack I always bring in situations like this, is a small selection of nuts and dried fruit. That’ll keep me on my feet when I my legs get wobbly – which always happens when I get hungry. Not only aren’t we always sure we’ll be able to buy food on the way, as a vegan I prepare myself for the chance that one can only get a cheese sandwich or a piece of apple pie. ;)
Nuts are packed with unsaturated (= good) fats, protein & fibres, which make you feel satisfied quickly — and it’ll last for a while. In my experience some dried fruits have the same effect.
Now if you’re worried about the calorie intake… You shouldn’t! Nuts are really good for you. Unsaturated fats actually help balance your cholesterol and protect against hart disease. Nuts also contain plenty of vitamins & minerals like iron, zinc, magnesium, omega-3, calcium, phosphor, vitamins A, B, E and more. And hey, hiking = burning calories anyway!
Of course not all nuts are good for you, just unroasted and unsalted ones like, for example, almonds, walnuts and cashews. Still, sometimes I bring some of the ‘bad’ ones as well. A grrl can have a treat, can’t she? ;) Yesterday there were a few (salted) rosemary-garlic cashews and cocktail nuts in my little box among more healthy goodies like died cranberries, apricot and apple, candied pineapple, walnuts and Brazil nuts.
Oh, and I almost forgot… I also indulged in some chocolate-covered soy beans! :D Got those in France so I’ll tell you more about those later in a post about Les Vacances de Mme Gnoe! ;)
I hope all this talk didn’t make you go nuts?
This is the first time in my 5 years of bento-ing that I’ve actually heated up an office lunch. One of the tiers anyway. Fall has definitely started so it was comforting to have a warm meal!
Left(over) tier
Turkish rice with chickpeas, red lentil-cauliflower curry and briami (Greek layered vegetables from the oven). All leftovers from this week’s menu.
Right tier
Cumin spiced quick bread, dried apple and date, mixed sprouts, lettuce, mini plum tomatoes, corn on the cob and cucumber.
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!
On our journey to the Hautes Alpes we had an Asian style lunch along the autoroute. All leftovers, packed by Mr Gnoe.
The second tier from the left was actually more fanciful than it looks now, but we dropped the box when getting it out of the car. We were a bit impatient to have lunch, hence the carelessness. ;)
From left to right
- Homemade atjar ketimoen (cucumber pickles) with pickled white onions, gherkins, caperberries and a super chilli from the balcony. A small yellow heirloom tomato.
- Tempé goreng and a variation of heirloom tomatoes.
- Gado-gado leftovers: salad, cabbage, steamed carrots & green beans, baked tofu, spring onion and pecans for lack of peanut sauce.
- Can’t remember exactly what was in this tier but it must have been something like a salad with tofu, cucumber, spring onion and sesame seeds. Dressing in the small container. No need to mention the carrot – that one’s obvious!
But that was not all. We had a long way to travel so we’d also made some Thai carrot soup. Contrary to what the thermos says, it was chilled. Yum! In celebration of summer we also had a huge snack box full of fruit: seedless grapes, strawberries and cherries.
Of course we brought lots of other provisions -kind of a vegan emergency kit- but our main ‘meals on wheels’ consisted of the above. And then there were foods we bought along the road, but that’s something for another post. VeganMoFo is coming up soon!
What do you bring when you’re travelling?
Do you have any suggestions for our next trip?
Our Sunday dinner with guests provided some more leftovers for August 7’s office lunch.
Toast, spinach pesto, white bean pate, crudités (radish, aragula, cucumber) and a courgette flower from the balcony! In the beginning our -first ever- zucchini plant just produced male blossoms but today #3 of the courgettes is getting bigger by the day! :)
Although the bean spread made this bento pretty filling, it was not enough to get through the day so I brought a sammy on the side.
Meatless Monday office lunch a month ago (August 6th).
Leftovers from our Sunday dinner with guests: cold (not so) spicy bell pepper soup from VEGAgerechten, polenta cakes with improvised tomato-corn-black olive sauce and steamed green beans with herbs.
When there was a warm summer night at last on July 25th, we immediately took off to our back garden the park to have dinner. Of course there were plenty of others who’d had the same idea, some of them BBQ-ing, others eating takeaway or -like us- having their own healthy homemade yummyness.
The large container holds the last spoonful of Lebanese bulghur and spinach pesto that I also had the day before. Next to it there’s the first dish I cooked from vegan goddess Isa Chandra’s bible Veganomicon: basmati rice with chard, chickpeas, dill and lemon. It was good cold as well as hot! A mixed salad containing marinated zucchini leftovers fills the other half of this box.
The medium box has half a veggie dog, ajvar (bell pepper relish), spelt crackers and red berries for dessert.
And finally the small side container holds some more crackers (olive and rosemary) to eat with both spreads and chilled soup: we brought green gazpacho in a thermos, a new recipe coming from Puur Plantaardig. In fact: I’ll be making the same soup again for my mother-in-law’s birthday tomorrow. Perfect in this tropical weather!
If you think I haven’t been making any bentos lately, you’re wrong. ;) I’ve got four of them to share, so you may expect some posts in the next few days! Starting with my office lunch from July 24th: Bulghur Bento.
The name comes from some leftover Lebanese bulghur — which was very good! As were the other components of this lunch: spinach pesto (from our first Kookgrrls cookalong) with olive toast, caper berries and a few chickpeas, decorated with purple basil and flat parsley leaves. A mixed salad containing marinated courgette accompanied this meal and I had some sugar coated red berries for dessert.
The spinach pesto was a great success — I brought another batch to a potluck on the 1st Friday of this month and it was one of the most favourite dishes. :D It’s super easy to make, so I plan to post the recipe on Graasland. Seems like a fab contribution for VeganMoFo in October, of which you’ll hear more later!
I love this round usagi box but don’t often use it because of the rectangular bag I bring to the office. Right-angled bentos are a better fit. ;) But this Wednesday I had a lot to carry so I took a backpack — and chose a container shaped accordingly!
Clockwise:
- Green salad (Romaine lettuce, cabbage, leek sprouts, snow peas, cucumber) and a cherry tomato.
- Strawberry-rhubarb muffin.
- Red berries.
- Olive crackers, sesame dressing for my salad, tip-top-tofu loaf, parsley, chili sauce and cucumber spread with dill & nori blossoms.
Obviously this bento was a bit too high on proteins and too low on carbs. But I made do with what I had in the fridge. It was delish so why complain? :)
Here’s today’s lunch!
Fruit tier
Cherries, red berries and nectarine.
Middle tier
Cucumber, lettuce, asem manis tempeh, roasted red paprika stuffed with nasi goreng and extra fried rice.
Bottom tier
Slices of gherkin & icicle radish and tahini sauce for the steamed green beans with seroendeng.
Except for the fruit and raw veggies these are all leftovers.
NOM! :)
Graasland 