Day 2 - but we ate leftovers!

Oh me oh my! We had leftovers tonight. Things that by now are not super photogenic. Luckily I have older photos from September.

First up is the previously mentioned seared smoked tofu atop a bed of grains with lemon pepper broccoli. Very good and simple to make.


Next up I made myself breakfast burritos. I pan fried up some onion, shredded potato, bell pepper, faux sausage crumbles and salsa verde. These were great but the best part was that I put them in the freezer to eat at a later date and they turned out so wonderful. Easy to heat up in the microwave on the way out the door or as a brunch snack on the weekday. Since it was not a lot of work I hope to do this more often for an excellent train ride handheld breakfast.


mmmm salsa verde!

VeganMoFo Day 1

To make up for my long silence I present to you my lunches, times four! In September I bought a Laptop Lunchbox to bring my own healthy lunch with me to work.

My first lunch was full of V'Con's Chickpea Cutlets, rice pilaf, veggies, apple slices, salad dressing in the tiny container and a bag of dark chocolate covered blueberries. Was good!

My second lunch was my own take on a BLT with Lightlife's Smart Bacon standing in for poor dead pig. And honestly, who doesn't put Avocado on their BLTs? This was a dip-tastic lunch with ketchup in the kitty and elephant containers to plunge the tater tots into. A container of grapes rounded it all out nicely.
Next I made my very own Cornish pastry from the Vegan Lunch Box cookbook. These were so very very good! The pie crust was easy to make, the filling was delish and it traveled very well. No wonder hand held stuffed pasties have been around for centuries!
And finally I have a picture of a lovely bunch of broccoli! Ok it is really leftovers from my excellent dinner of Smoked Tofu with Lemon Pepper Broccoli over Mixed Grains

Let me know that store bought plantain chips do NOT hold a candle to homemade fresh ones. Now if only I could make these myself all thin and crisplike.

I hope to keep posting all month. I am throwing a potluck at my home this weekend for several VegWeb friends. Expect lots of yummy food posts from that as soon as I catch up on all my September backlog, which consists of 3 more food photos. Doh!

And we are back!

My apologies for the long silence. Things have been busy busy busy! Thursday I should get a big thumbs up from my doctor which will make my life so much better as well.

For now I wanted to get a jump start on VeganMoFo! I did not officially sign up because you all know how darn flaky I am.

Tonight I got home at 7pm after my commute home and a quick trip to the Asian grocer. I threw together a quick but tasty meal supplied by Trader Joes. Yesterday I picked up some teriyaki tofu and a frozen mix of rice and veggies. I simply pan seared the cut tofu, removed it from the pan and then warmed up the mix. It was from the fridge to the table in 15 minutes and was very good. I do wish I had snatched up the adorable baby bok choy I found at the grocer to add to it. Instead I made due with frozen green peas.

It makes me wonder if it is possible to make something like this and freeze it up for later reheating, or if it would be a huge amount of work. Something to think about. But for now, I leave you with this very beautiful picture of dinner!

Medical downtime

On Thursday, August 28th I had a Laproscopic Supercervical Hysterectomy. I will probably not be cooking or blogging much until I recover a bit more.

Sorry for the lack of posts!

Just as a recap though, my discretionary eating went on quite well and I think I will do my best to continue to eat seconds only when hungry and to cut sweets down further in my life. Thanks Chile Chews for the great challenge. I wish I could have posted more about my experience.

I had intended to post more!

Honest, I did.

And tonight I turned on my home computer and got the blue CHKDSK screen of death, indicating that my hard drive was toast. LB has plans to try to resurrect it tonight but until then it makes my computer centric life difficult. No surfing (work blocked) web comics, no playing EQ2 and not being able to upload photos.

I have all of last week's lunches, Monday through Wednesday, on film. As well as dinner last night and today's lunch. Until I can get them here I will share my recipe from last night's dinner. It was a complete improvisation.

Smoked Tofu with Lemon Pepper Broccoli over Mixed Grains

2 cups Water
1 Knor Vegetarian Vegetable Bullion Cube
1/2 cup Brown Rice (10 minute 'instant' version)
1/4 cup Amaranth
1/4 cup Quinoa, Inca Red - rinsed
1 package SoyBoy Smoked Tofu
2 tsp Vegetable Oil
1/2 - 1 cup water
1 Tbsp Lemon Juice, concentrate
1 tsp Lemon Pepper no salt seasoning
2 cups Broccoli florets
2 Tbsp Earth Balance
Salt & Pepper to taste

Directions:
Bring the 2 cups of water to a boil with the bullion cube to dissolve. Rinse the quinoa and add it and the rice and amaranth to the boiling broth. Cover and cook on low for 20 minutes.

In a large skillet, with a lid, bring the oil to medium heat. Slice to tofu horizontally to make 4 pieces out of the two and then diagonally. Place these in the heated pan and sear both sides. Add the lemon juice to the pan and shake to get all the tofu in the bubbling sauce. This will brown up the bottom of the pan but don't worry, the extra water deglazes it in a moment.
Add half a cup of water to deglaze the pan. Quickly add in the spice and broccoli and cover with a lid. Allow to steam for 3 to 5 minutes to your preferred doneness. Add in the Earth Balance, salt and pepper and cover for another minute.

Plate the grains and mound the tofu and broccoli on top.



This was fantastic. Smoky hints making the tofu taste slightly like bacon. The sharp hint of lemon simply enhanced the flavor of the broccoli and the grains were a smooth yet chewy texture with a mild background flavor. I need to find a local source of smoked tofu or make my own because I hope this recipe is on the menu frequently!

The Wonderful Weekend

Our weekends in August and September are taken up by our attendance at the New York Renaissance Faire as I have probably mentioned. I wanted to journal my eating for the weekend in one post real quick.

Saturday morning we got up leisurely and gathered our necessary items. Breakfast for me was leftover General Tso's Tofu, rice and the last spring roll. Unfortunately this set my tummy to nauseous and made for a difficult morning. I did run out to the bank and grabbed a Blue Raspberry Icee to soothe my tummy. Don't ask me why, but it works for me!

I had packed the cooler with water bottles, two PB & Co Dark Chocolate Dreams and Strawberry spread sandwiches, a bowl of chickpea salad, as well as the last of my crudities just so I could have something to nibble on should the need arise.

I drove to the hour plus way into New York and we grabbed a room at the new Hampton Inn in Harriman. Lovely hotel that has only been open 10 days! We garbed up and headed to Faire. I think the rest of the afternoon was full of booze but no food. I might have gotten an order of Spicy Fries but I just simply don't recall! I was drinking Mead and occasionally some Hardcore Apple Cider.

We staggered back (except for LB who drove us) to the hotel and got changed for dinner. TGI Friday's really had three options for vegans that I have eaten: Bruscetta Pasta with mushrooms subbed for the chicken, large garden salad with vinegar and steamed broccoli. My pasta was good but then at that point I was ready to gnaw on the table! I did sip on a Lynchburg Strawberry Lemonade but while it was fantastic in flavor I just couldn't drink any more. Finally we went back and slept the sleep of the heavily intoxicated.

Breakfast was bright and early at the hotel lounge from their complimentary spread. I had a packet of Maple Brown Sugar Oatmeal, a sesame bagel with peanut butter and jelly and a tiny cup of apple juice.

I was not that full unfortunately and ate one of my sandwiches a few hours later as we walked into the faire. I stuck to water for the most part on Sunday just because I knew I would have to be the driver on the way home. In the Friends of Faire garden I nibbled on crackers with hummus, pretzel chips and a peach.

Stupidly I let myself get overheated and was sitting in the shade nibbling grapes, crackers, one stick each of carrot and celery, and some spicy fries. After that it was lots of water and hiding from the evil day star.

The drive home was brutal as I was nauseous again and way too hot. Dinner ended up being very late leftover chickpea cutlets with steamed broccoli and mashed potatoes.

The weekend turned out to be great overall. I did not over eat, though from listing it here it sounds like I did. Trust me, the amount of food in the servings are small or shared. The drinking was probably excessive calorie wise but I have high hopes for hitting the gym 4 days this week, just as I did last week!

Lets see though about my discretionary eating challenge. . . I needed to cut sweets back 50% and I definitely did that. Seconds only when hungry is a big obstacle for me but I think this weekend I went hungry more often than overfull. And even though I did imbibe a lot of mead I don't really count that against my 100% Veg as I still eat honey. Maybe that makes me not a vegan but I feel the only perfect vegan is a dead vegan. My veg line in the sand includes booze of any type or make except dairy.

I am not sure if I will continue to food log on a daily basis. It's been fun but I am sure no one really cares about what I ate all week. haha I hope to have some pictures next post of my first laptop lunch!

Friday Foodstuffs!

Once again my repetitive nature hits!

Again a breakfast sandwich of whole wheat bread, chickpea cutlet, LightLife Bologna slices, Soyblu slices and tomato filled me up for hours! The flavor combination is so perfect, the mild cutlet pairs beautifully next to the juicy tomato and sharp soy cheese flavor. The textures work well too as the bologna gives such a great soft chewy mouth feel. I think this sandwich is more filling than the version with the Boca chik patty.

Lunch was leftovers of Bacon Spaghetti and the last of the watermelon. Crudities and hummus made for a lovely afternoon snack.

Dinner was out at a Mexican Restaurant near our old condo. We nibbled on chips and salsa while sipping margaritas. Well, I tried very hard to only eat a few of the chips and had one strawberry marg! My dinner was a lovely Veggie Fajitas spread that I ate with some of the chips, the hot salsa and a fork. So yummy to scoop up carrot, mushroom, broccoli and a zucchini slice with a chip dotted with refried beans, rice and salsa. Occasionally I even got some guacamole on that pile. So good.

It is always interesting to me to frequent the same restaurants. Some days their service is great others mediocre, some days their food is passable but others, like our experience on Friday, the food is phenomenal. We both left full, happy and raving about the goodness.


Also I received my Laptop Lunchbox in the mail yesterday. I am so excited to give it a try. I hope to do some cooking early Saturday so that Monday morning packing just needs a few minutes. My train reading book has been Vegan Lunch Box for the past week. The first few recipes I want to try are the Samosas and the Cornish Pastry.