Travel Snack March 31, 2008
Posted by tuimeltje in dinner, snack.Tags: chinese supermarket
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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?
Week In Review March 31, 2008
Posted by tuimeltje in review.Tags: project
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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…
Capucijners March 31, 2008
Posted by tuimeltje in dinner.Tags: bread, legumes
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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.
More Soup March 21, 2008
Posted by tuimeltje in dinner.Tags: chinese supermarket, soup
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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.
Green March 20, 2008
Posted by tuimeltje in breakfast.Tags: randomness, recipe, smoothie
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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…
Twigs and Tofu 