Last Friday I was running a little late for the train and didn’t feel like I had the time to cook up a proper meal, so I decided to make proper use of my collection of containers and take along some stuff to snack on while traveling so I wouldn’t be all hungry and grumpy because of delayed dinners.

Veggies!

Taking along a healthy snack isn’t that difficult, apparently. It doesn’t even take any planning. Provided one already has everything necessary at hand, of course. If that’s not usually the case, some planning might be needed after all.
While I had originally packed this food as a snack, it was filling enough to reframe it as a meal.
Along with it I drank the roselle juice I got at the Chinese supermarket earlier that evening (going there was part of the reason I was running a little late…), which was quite tasty. I had taken some pictures of the bottle, but they were all flou so I’m not going to bother posting them. Sinead already has the bad pictures of good food covered and I wouldn’t want to step in on her territory. Though to be honest, her pictures aren’t any worse than mine. Certainly not flou.
Her food’s probably better, though.

ETA: The pictures seem to be showing up somewhat wonky. At least when I’m looking at the main page. Is this happening to anyone else?
I don’t remember it being like this, so I’m somewhat confused. I tried editing some pictures to make them smaller, but it made no difference. Does anyone know if a changed layout might have something to do with it?

So, in order to see how it would be like to prepare all my meals using foods I already had at home, I chose to not do any grocery shopping at all this past (almost) week.

It wasn’t all that difficult, it saved me time, and it most likely saved me money. It got me using some long-forgotten mysterious foods, it got me soaking beans again, and I ate more soup than I normally do. And while I didn’t buy any fresh vegetables, I still had plenty at hand to make reasonably healthy meals. I could’ve eaten some more fruit, though. I had three fruity breakfasts and a meal containing an apple, but apart from that my fruit intake was pretty pathetic.

While I will have to do some grocery shopping in future, I will try to look ahead a little more and use the things I already have instead of continually buying more food.
This will take some planning, but I should be able to get myself organised enough to set up a basic meal plan. Probably…

A little late due to a somewhat hectic week spent mostly away from my trusty Dorcas, but here’s the final dinner from last week’s experiment.

Ingredients:

It’s basically a tin of capucijners (I have not been able to find an English translation for these things. They’re a kind of pea or bean or something and really rather tasty) heated up with some piccalilli put on it just before eating. I learned about this combination when I was hanging out at a nursing home for a few weeks, helping for a bit. I think the people got bacon or somesuch with theirs, and probably (hopefully) some more veg, but only this bit stuck with me. It’s even more convenient than Thursday’s soup since it’s quicker and doesn’t require anything frozen, which, since the shared freezer I use is tiny, is a definite plus.

What I ended up eating:

I thought I’d use up the last few chapatis I had left and eat the avocado before it had gone off. Unfortunately the avocado wasn’t any kind of ripe, despite making it share a paper bag with a bunch of bananas for a good few days. This made the whole thing just off and not as enjoyable as it could have been. Still, it kept me from going hungry, and I just chewed through the avocado first so I still had some yummy mushy stuff afterwards.

Tonight’s dinner was some more soup. This time a very, very basic unblended vegetable soup. This is the sort of food that’s convenient to make when you don’t feel like doing anything particularly complicated and don’t want to run to the supermarket. It’s the sort of food you can eat after coming home from being away for some time and you haven’t been able to do any groceries, since it needs the sort of ingredients that can easily be kept as part of a basic pantry (provided you have a freezer, of course) if you’re even remotely organised about your food stores.

Ingredients:

Half a bag of frozen mixed soup vegetables, a tin of tomato paste (that silvery circle. Forgot to put it on it’s side), bread and margarine, and, only because I didn’t want to let it go to waste, the remaining water chestnuts.

I considered adding vermicelli but felt I already had the grains covered with the sopping bread. I could’ve added that dehydrated watercress I sometimes add to this soup (or instant noodles, to make me feel I’m at least making an attempt to prepare something vaguely healthy) because I have no clue what else to do with it, but I forgot about it. I also forgot about the remaining oatly cream, which probably wouldn’t have gone very well with this anyway, so I stuck that in the freezer hoping I would be able to use it later. I doubt I’ll be able to use it tomorrow, and next week it’ll have gone off.

After putting veg and tomato paste in the cooking pot along with some water and boullion powder and letting the whle thing heat up for a bit and thawing the sopping bread, I got this:

It’s not any kind of spectacular, it wasn’t nearly as satisfying as the soups I made earlier this week, and it always seems to end up as rather bland and watery when I make it (maybe it needs more tomato paste…), but it’s decent, quick food that kept me from getting peckish this evening.

I got three servings out of it, though I used one of my deep plates rather than one of my soup bowls (must do dishes tomorrow), so I can’t properly compare it to what I got with the other soups. Even so, the other soups kept me feeling satisfied a fair bit longer, so it the exact comparison isn’t all that relevant to me, to be honest.

The water chestnuts weren’t that special in this soup. While I enjoyed their crunciness as part of yesterday’s noodly, it didn’t really work for this soup.

As the grapes weren’t getting any fresher and I wanted to try something colourful for breakfast again, I thought I’d make me a smoothie again. A green one, this time.

Ingredients:

My basic smoothie recipe is banana+soyamilk+something flax+whatever else vaguely suitable currently available, which, today, was frozen spinach. The same conveniently cube-y kind I used for the noodly thing yesterday.

Put the desired amounts of everything in a suitable container, hit it with an immersion blender, and you will end up with this:

A very green, very tasty, very liquid breakfast. From what I could see, the flax seeds seemed all flaky, so I hope this means their goddness will be properly absorbed.
Again, this smoothie kept me going for a good few hours and was a nice start to my day.

I just realised that this one, if put next to the pink one, would basically be the Doe Maar colour scheme. Since the music has been in my head all week and I watched that musical for the third time this evening (it might be starting to get ever so slightly out of hand), I am rather amused by this.
I should remember this in case I ever have some themed party or something…

Today I had the day off, so this dish was intended as late breakfast or possibly lunch. But since I was running late, I decided it to go with popped rice and an apple instead and have this wait until later.

Ingredients:

The left-over bamboo shoots, frozen soya beans (I think this might actually be edamame), frozen spinach, conveniently sold as a bunch of small cubes rather than one solid block of frozen greens, some more tinned fermented stuff, instant noodles, water chestnuts (I used a little over half the tin), and santen (didn’t use the whole package, natch). I also added some five-spice, shoyu, and sesame oil.

After chucking all the non-noodly things in the frying pan, and adding the noodles after preparing it according to the instructions, I got this:

I’m not sure how healthy this is, what with the instant noodles and me using the entire spice packet and all (don’t those things tend to be very high in sodium?), but it sure was tasty. I had considered adding some harissa as well, but I’m glad I was too lazy to bother. I don’t know what it was (probably the tinned fermented stuff. IIRC, it had some supicious red flakes), but something I had added was already quite spicy.

The noodle-to-vegetable ratio was a bit off. Normally I prefer to have more vegetables and less noodles (or rice, spagetti, couscous, whatever). Still, as it was tasty and properly filling, I won’t complain.

Those fermented veggies are actually quite nice. I bought them because it looked interesting and new, but never quite got around to finding out how to use them until this week. Might actually get them again. This is the sort of lazy, random food I regularly prepare, and the fermented veggies work well with this. Mustn’t forget to properly check the ingredients, though. It might contain levels of sugar and salt that make me not want to use it too often.

While the water chestnuts on their own taste blandly pukey, combined with a bunch of other things they suddenly get pleasantly crunchy and have the ickiness masked by the other flavours. Though I don’t remember ever eating them before and the taste of lone water chestnuts was new to me, their crunciness was familiar.
Now to find something to do for the remaining few…

Today I tried this recipe. Well, more or less, of course. I generally kind of lose at properly following recipes and I didn’t have the herbs they wanted. Also, I liquidised the whole thing, which was not mentioned in the recipe.

I’ve had a butternut squash lying around for a good while now and I bought a bag of aduki beans after seeing some random food thing with them somewhere. Making small talk, I asked about them for a bit, and found out they’re not just fun to look at but also macrobiotically good for me, whatever that means. Still, that, combined with my general love of legumes, especially if they have nice colours, was more than enough to make me get some next time I came across them. Or actively plan a trip to the Chinese supermarket to get me some. Heh.

Here are the ingredients:

I didn’t use all of those beans for the soup. Once they were done cooking, I put a good part into the freezer for easy use later. They didn’t turn out as red as I had expected and hoped they would, but they did smell like some of the sweet things I’ve found in Chinese supermarkets.

Soup!

This is what I ended up with. Times 6. Almost filled my pot to the rim, it did.
Not as tasty as yesterday’s soup, but still pretty decent. I’ve had similar soups before but without the beans, and this one didn’t actually taste that different. It had little chewy bits in it, though. Kind of like small seeds. I don’t know what it was, but it was quite tasty. Instead of the recommended herbs, I added a bit of harissa at the same time I added the miso, which I had dissolved in water, not stock.

For this soup I also used the cream (which, at least at first, was somewhat thicker today), which did seem to make a nice difference. I can’t say it got creamier, exactly, but it was good. I didn’t manage to use all of the remaining cream, though. Those packages may look small, but they contain plenty.
I ate the first bowl with some chapati, but didn’t bother with it for the other bowls.

By the way, does anyone know if I can do something fun with the squash seeds? I saved them, but I’ve saved seeds before (of pumpkins, at least) and was always too lazy to actually do anything with them.

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Though I had intended to not buy any food this week, I kind of broke that rule today. I went to the market to get some dried fruits for my boyfriend to try and see if he likes it so it can be part of his survival package when he’s in a not-too-veg-friendly place where he doesn’t speak the language and is far from supermarkets.
He’ll be coming over this weekend, and I wanted him to try it before we both forgot about it.

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Continuing yesterday’s randomness, this time with things that aren’t even remotely related to veganism (unless someone involved with either the band or the musical was ever vegan, but if that’s the case, it’s a complete coincidence). Really, there’s no mention of veganism after this bit, so if that’s all you want to read about, don’t click here

Today’s dinner was pretty much all vegetables, no tins at all. A little more often than I should, I buy vegetables and don’t end up using them quickly after. As was the case with the beets and potato I ate today, something you can probably make out on the picture below, what with the shrivels and sprouts all over. Granted, the onion and carrot weren’t exactly fresh from the shops either and have bits sprouting from them as well, but these things tend keep well enough and can be used with pretty much everything, so I generally try and have these at home most of the time.

Photographic evidence of sprouting and shriveling:

So using these four simple and, all in all, pretty cheap vegetables, I more-or-less made this borscht-like soup.
Since I had actually bought the beets with the intention of making something borscht-like, I looked around for a bit to check out different recipes. Most recipes called for things like cabbage and dill, which I didn’t have, and demanded grated beets, which, since I don’t have one of those fancy food processors (yet), I didn’t much feel like doing, especially since my beets were small and I wouldn’t be able to grate much of each beet before grating my fingers on my grater, which is probably not vegan. I’m also rather fond of my immersion blender (my only electronic kitchen tool) and the results I get with it, and this was the only recipe that even mentioned something like that. All others seemed intent on having us eat something chunky. Which may well be more authentic, but I don’t actually care. I just want it to be easy, tasty, and reasonably healthy.

I didn’t, of course, properly follow the recipe (hence the more-or-less earlier). As if!
My version is much simpler: While the pot is slowly heating up (I use an electric stove. I suspect it takes longer than a gas stove), cut up the onion, peel and dice the potato and chuck them in, letting them sauté a little while chopping up the beets, adding just a little splash of apple cider vinegar. It probably helps to stir occasionally, which I did, occasionally, but I could’ve probably done it on a few more occasions. Still, my lack of focus in that department doesn’t seem to have done any harm.
Anyway, when I was done with the beets, I added those (ignoring that 10 minute sauté thing) and started on the carrot, which, again, I added as soon as I was finished. Pretty quickly after that I added water (not waiting anywhere near the 20 minutes mentioned in the recipe. Also, no boullion powder added. Clean forgot about that, I must admit. That and the nutmeg, which I do actually have), another little splash of apple cider vinegar, and a little splash of shoyu. No salt added at any point, though I did add some pepper after pouring it into the bowl.

Soup with pepper:

Soup with oatly:

Though I didn’t initially intend to add any cream, I did it anyway. I’ve had a little carton of oatly cream for a while now, and it’s technically past the sell-by date. Tastes just fine, though. Trouble with these things is, I never use a whole carton per meal, so I get stuck with half a carton left over which will then go bad because I don’t make specific plans to do anything with it and forget about the whole thing until it’s entirely too late to use it.

I’m not sure adding the cream made much of a difference, but it made it slightly pinker, which works for the post’s title. That’s something.
The soup itself was most tasty, a lot tastier than I was expecting. It had a very rich taste, and I’ll most likely try and replicate it later.
I’m very pleased it’s so easy to make something this tasty with so few ingredients and so little effort.

These vegetables got me three bowls of soup, which, with nothing to accompany it, was a decent and satisfying meal for one. I had half intended to have me some chocolate soya dessert after, but I couldn’t really be bothered since I was perfectly sated.
Adding some bread (I’ve seen a reccomendation for pumpernickel with one of the borscht recipes I came across) and maybe a side dish or salad could probably stretch that to a decent meal for two.

Other random vegan-ness: Vegan was today’s word on Wordsmith. It was fun randomly seeing it on that GMail webclip bar today.
And, not strictly vegan, but I’m suddenly rather fond of NutritionData.com, where I can search for pretty detailed nutritional information on all kinds of foods. There are also some interesting-looking tools, like recipe analysis, which I’ll probably check out later. So far I’ve mostly been checking out the basic info.

Today, I decided to have a smoothie for breakfast. I had all the ingredients, and with me being too lazy to cook up some oatmeal and feeling like something not either Weetabix (which I don’t actually have at the moment, so with the “no grocery shopping” thing, that one was out anyway) or popped rice, I decided to go with that.

The ingredients:

I didn’t use all of this. I still have most of the flax seeds left (of course. Who’d use a whole bag in one smoothie?), over half the grapes, half the frozen berries (a mix of blueberries, cranberries, and redcurrant), and most of the soya milk.

I considered chucking in some frozen greens as well, either a few cubes of kale or a few cubes of spinach, whatever I still had left in my freezer. It makes it a nice green colour and adds some easy leafy green veg to your day, but I rather liked the idea of drinking something pink for the morning.

After watching some Michael Greger video about nutrition (I’m currently listening to the mp3 of this nutrition talk about fats, which is interesting. Not sure I particularly I like his article about honey being vegan, though), one where he showed us how to make fun tasty stuff, I bought a bag of flax seeds. I’ve been using the oil on-and-off for a while now (easily added to smoothies, by the way), but this video made me think the actual seeds may have some advantages. Something about lignans, if I recall correctly.
I never really bothered with those before, since before they’re any use, they have to be ground, and after grinding, they get rancid pretty quickly.
Dr Greger din’t seem to see this as a problem and simply chucked some in a blender to grind them, which looked very easy and convenient. Since I don’t (yet) have one of those, I was hoping my immersion blender would do the trick. It tended to cut up grape seeds, after all.
I’m not sure it properly ground the flax seeds. I’m sure it didn’t grind all of them, at least, because I saw some whole ones float around, but it may have ground up some. I hope so, anyway. It’d be nice to use this instead of the oil.

Anyway, here’s the smoothie:

Because I’m lazy like that, I drank it straight from the measuring cup and didn’t bother pouring it into a nice glass.
Though it doesn’t look like much, this breakfast kept me going for a good few hours. With my current job I have a pretty late lunch, and I didn’t get any hungrier than normal before lunch. I still have enough left for one more smoothie like this, what with the few berries left. Still, might make me one of those green ones without the berries. No shortage of bananas here.

I bet you all thought I was dead. Not so. I have, however, been neglecting this blog for a while now. I could write up the usual excuses, but really, it wouldn’t have taken that much time to write the occasional short post, so they don’t work that well and therefore I won’t bother.

Anyway, to the food.
Lately I’ve been reading rather a lot of personal finance/frugal/productivity blogs, which, among other things, lead to me install GnuCash and getting entirely too excited about getting receipts and recording my spending. Doing this made me a little more aware of my hamster tendencies, so I thought that, instead of simply buying whatever food looks good for tonight’s dinner, I’m going to eat only what I already have at home.
For the coming week, at least.

Luckily I decided this after buying a loaf of bread, a few cartons of soya milk, and a bunch of bananas, so I will eat pretty much as I normally do except with a few more things coming from tins.

It’s not quite thrifty eating (except for the bit about it all being home-cooked rather than eaten in restaurants, but I very rarely eat out so it’s not some big thing for me to cook my own damn food already), but it might teach me to check out the contents of my pantry before running off and buying more food. And perhaps meal planning. I could do with some proper meal planning, even if it was only to make proper use of all those dried legumes I have lying around.

For tonight, I threw together mostly things I’d once found in one of the Chinese supermarkets that had been lying in my little cabinet of curious foods.
Bamboo shoots (half a tin), fermented mixed vegetables, mock shrimp (basically yams cut in a vaguely shrimp-y shape) with vegetables, tomato paste, a bit of nori, and some buckwheat noodles.

Illustration:

As it was pretty late already and I was feeling particularly lazy, I just chucked the mock shrimp and vegetables, fermented vegetables, cut-up bamboo shoots, and tomato paste in a frying pan to heat it up properly, and boiled the noodles. I added some garam massala to the frying pan and a few drops of sesame oil to the noodles when they were done, and nori flakes after bringing the plate up to my room.

Result:

Though nothing spectacular, it tasted quite nice. The mock shrimpy things were a little odd and had a slightly icky texture, so I think I’ll stick to the other mock tins when I’m at the Chinese supermarket again, should I feel the need to get any at all.
The fermented mixed vegetables weren’t as weird and scary as they seemed when they were still in the tin (though the white pigeon on the tin was comforting), being largely ignored by me because I had no clue what to do with them, so that was good.
I’d used the bamboo shoots before, and though they don’t seem to have much flavour, apart from maybe providing some freshness, I like the texture.
Adding the tomato paste made it seem like it actually had a proper sauce. Initially I wasn’t too sure about adding this, as I didn’t think the flavours would go well together, but it was quite nice.

I liked this dish best when I still had some noodles left. Though the vegetables were perfectly edible on their own, it tasted better when combined with the noodles.

ETA: Along with the personal finance/frugal/productivity blogs, I also discovered the joys of the Google Reader, and will be adding the blogs I have in my blog list here to that. Might help me to actually properly read them.