Soy Curl Taco Lunch

Soy curls rehydrated with veggie broth paste, water, chili powder, onion powder, and cumin powder
cilantro
onion
lime

For dinner we had these on crispy taco shells, but I didn't want to try to transport that to work, so I opted to eat these with a tortilla.

Served with guacamole with corn, celery, orange, and hummus.

Tempeh Rice Lunch

Ingredients
Rice
Cilantro
Lime
Tempeh
Onion

Method
Cook rice in rice cooker. After cooking, add chopped cilantro and lime juice.

Cook up a couple of tempeh bacon slices and onions on the stove top.

Notes
Served with kimchi, carrot, avocado, hummus, and blood orange.

Bonus picture of a tea sample I have from Upton. This tea from Indonesia is amazingly tasty. I had everyone smell the tea after I opened it. Too bad I can only have a 1/2 cup a day due to my caffeine intolerance.

Vegetable Bowl

As the day was winding down at work today, I was trying to decide what to make for dinner. We had several vegetables near the end of their lives and I knew that we had a lot of lentils and rice in the pantry. Thus the vegetable bowl with lentils and rice was born!

Serves: 2 (with about 1 cup leftover lentils, and 1 cup leftover vegetables)

Ingredients
Lentils
1/3 - 1/2 cup brown lentils
1+ cups water
cumin
chipotle powder
turmeric
smoked paprika
salt
pepper

Rice
1 "cup" rice
1.5 "cup" water
1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds

Vegetables
1/2 medium butternut squash
3 stalks broccoli
1/2 onion
4 stalks rainbow chard
olive oil
salt
pepper
basil
rosemary


Method
Lentils
Measure and rinse lentils. Place in a small saucepan and add water and spices. Cover and bring to a boil. Turn to a medium simmer and stir every so often to prevent sticking. Cook until the lentils are tender, about 30 minutes.

Rice
Using the "cup" measuring device from your rice cooker, measure and rinse rice. Put rice in rice cooker with the water and cumin seeds. My very simple cooker has one setting, but if you have a fancy pants cooker, you might want to set it specifically to the type of rice you are using. Cook until rice is done.

Vegetables
Preheat oven to 400F.

Peel and cut butternut squash into 2 cm pieces. Place on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Cut broccoli into 4 cm long pieces, place on prepared baking sheet. Chop the onion into large pieces and place on baking sheet. Any other "roastable" vegetable can be used here - carrots, beets, potatoes, etc. Drizzle with olive oil, salt, pepper, basil, rosemary, and anything else you think would be tasty. Stir vegetables to coat.

Place in oven, and bake for about 25 minutes or until tender, flipping vegetables over halfway through. You can also bake the remainder of the butternut squash at this time, but if you leave it in large pieces, it will have to bake for longer.

While the vegetables are in the oven, chop chard into 2 cm pieces. Sauté in a cast iron pan with olive oil, salt, and pepper, until wilted.

Grab a bowl, put in a scoop of rice, a ladle full of lentils, half the roasted vegetables, and half the chard. Repeat with second bowl.


Notes
This was delicious. I was reminded that we need to do vegetable medley dinners more often. We get a lot of produce with our food box delivery and I hate seeing portions of it go to waste each week. My husband was a big fan of this meal.

Other ideas for combinations:
Quinoa, beets, sweet potato, spinach
Quinoa, kale, carrots, potatoes
Rice, kidney beans, onion, carrots, jalapeno, cilantro, avocado
Rice, white beans, cabbage, onion, thyme
Millet, chickpeas, carrots, chard, onion (inspired by Vegan Richa)
.
.
.
The possibilities are endless!

Falafel and tzatziki sauce

Wednesday, I got home after my zumba class and I needed to eat. I was trying to decide if I should just heat up a can of soup or go with the original plan of making falafel. I decided that I would be much happier with falafel.

This is based on the recipe from Rabbit Food cookbook, which is a fabulous cookbook.

Ingredients
1 15 oz can chickpeas, drained
1/4 red onion, diced,
3 - 4 garlic, diced (I love a lot of garlic flavour)
1/4 cup fresh parsley, chopped
1/4 cup flour
lemon juice
cumin
cayenne pepper
black pepper
salt

plain coconut yogurt, this was a tad bit too sweet
1/4 cup diced cucumber
lemon juice

tomato slices
cucumber slices
pickles
lettuce
sriracha sauce

pita bread or tortillas

Method
Using a potato masher or food processor, mash up the chickpeas until there are no whole ones left. Usually I use the food processor, but I didn't want to dirty up the food processor bowl, so I used the potato masher and it works okay. Make sure that all the other ingredients are diced very very small. Add all the other ingredients and mix until evenly distributed. The mixture should be able to stick together when pressed.

Heat up a cast iron skillet over medium heat. You can also deep fry or bake the falafel, but I prefer to shallow fry them in a skillet. Using a 1/4 cup measuring cup, measure out a 1/4 cup and mash into about a 6 cm diameter patty. Place on the skillet and cook until browned on both sides, about 5 minutes per side. Continue making patties until the mixture is gone. I made about 8 patties.

To make the tzatziki sauce, mix together the yogurt, cucumber, and lemon juice. Set aside to let the flavours blend.

To serve, heat the bread or tortillas until warm and pliable. Place 2 patties in the center and add the tomatoes, cucumber, lettuce, pickles, sriracha, and tzatziki.

Notes
These were surprising good. The recipe is so simple and came out really well. The patties didn't get hard the way they do when falafel is fried, and even though the fell apart a bit, they were still good. My husband had already had dinner, but he kept stealing bites because he liked it so much. We ate the leftovers for lunch on Thursday and they were still quite tasty.

Raw Walnut Meat, salsa, guacamole

I was working from home this week and was trying to decide what to make for lunch. A few blogs I follow had posted recently about raw walnut "meat", so I decided to try it with a salad.

Change up the spices to your tastes. This is a great recipe because it comes together quickly.



Serves 1 - 2

Ingredients
Walnut Meat
1/2 raw walnuts
2 - 3 sun-dried tomatoes, soaked in hot water for 10 minutes
soy sauce
sriracha
salt
pepper
chili powder
cumin powder (We are out of cumin powder, so I added cumin seeds)

Garden Salsa
Tomatoes (I used cherry and roma from the garden)
Onion
garlic chives
hungarian wax pepper
olive oil
salt
pepper
juice from 1/2 lime

Corn Guacamole
1 ear corn
1/2 avocado
salt
pepper
lime juice

Lettuce

Method
Walnut Meat
Place the walnuts and tomatoes in a food processor (I used the smaller bowl because I am using such small amounts). Pulse until it appears to have the texture of ground meat. Add the seasonings to taste.

Garden Salsa
This is just what I had ripe in my garden, feel free to use whatever you think would be good in salsa.

Roughly chop the tomatoes, onion, and chili. Place the tomatoes, onion, chili, and herbs in a food processor (again I used the smaller bowl) and pulse until still chunky, but mixed. Transfer to a bowl and season to taste.

Corn Guacamole
Shuck the corn. Place the ear of corn upright and using a knife, cut away the kernels into a bowl. Add the avocado and mix. Season to taste.


Wash and dry the lettuce. Chop into a bowl and add the meat, salsa, and guacamole.

Notes
This was really really good. The walnut meat has A LOT of flavour. I'm going to try it again with pecans because my husband is sensitive to walnuts. I'm happy that I was able to make the salsa completely from our garden. Garden vegetables taste waaay better than anything bought from the store.

I had a couple of tortillas in the fridge that needed to be used. I put them in the toaster oven until they were crispy and served it with the salad.