Some packed lunches

I think I've finally managed to incorporate making a packed lunch into my evening routine. So, here's a peek at what this vegan eats in a working week (in no particular order, as I can remember the lunches themselves better than which day I had them):

* White rice with soy sauce; steamed broccoli; sticks of raw carrot and cucumber; little pot of wasabi paste and Plamil garlic mayo. By 'steamed' I mean I scattered the bits of broccoli over the top of the rice for the last two minutes or so it was cooking. Dinner the evening before also involved rice, to avoid using an extra saucepan. I made rather too much rice - this is the only day where I ended up throwing anything away.
*Chopped cucumber, red pepper and tomato, butter beans, grated carrot and pine nuts, in olive oil, balsamic vinegar and a small amount of Provamel cream cheese. (this is basically vegan goat cheese, although you wouldn't know it wasn't margarine from the fairly basic packaging) This was the only time I have had to go and buy a snack, as the salad itself didn't fill me up. The butter beans were boiled from scratch over the weekend - I have some more in the freezer. Should have kept more out.
*2 lentil burgers (homemade, see a few posts down for the recipe); couscous salad with spring onion and olive oil; shredded lettuce; hummous
*Brown rice and chickpeas topped with shredded lettuce and grated carrot. I ate the salad and half the rice mix and was full. Resurrected it with extra salad dressing and mayo the next day.
*2 lentil burgers with quinoa, grated carrot and watercress. This meal was put together at midnight after a few glasses of red wine.
*Couscous salad with cucumber, tomato, spring onions and pine nuts, in olive oil and balsamic vinegar; topped with shredded lettuce.

For the sake of maintaining harmony in a shared office, I've steered clear of ingredients such as raw garlic in packed lunches. I may try to introduce small amounts of onion and see if anyone reacts. At any rate, what I can make is usually healthier than what the canteen has, and is certainly cheaper. It normally takes about half an hour to put something together - maybe longer if waiting for rice or couscous to cool down, but you can always go off and do something else during this period. I think there are a couple of lunches where 'special' products like vegan cream cheese or mayo are used, but this is largely based on what I had in the fridge at that point. They aren't essential.

Travel menu

I am currently on something that is part health kick, part not-getting-ill kick and part sheer terror of starting to dislike crisps due to consuming too many while travelling. Commuting for me has always meant a day or so of eating crap. That's ok if it doesn't turn into four days a week of eating crap, for several months. So, this week i'm bucking the trend a bit. I boiled up a triple-load of quinoa, chopped a few different vegetables, made dressing and divided the lot between a Swedish Glace container and a margarine pot. And put some on a plate for today's lunch, of course.

So...
Lunch today: quinoa, chopped carrot, yellow pepper, raw garlic and ginger (chopped VERY SMALL to save mouth-burning!) with green salad, hemp oil and balsamic vinegar
Dinner tonight: quinoa, spring onions, peppers, sunflower seeds, green salad, hemp oil and balsamic vinegar.
Lunch tomorrow: quinoa, carrot and celery with hemp oil and balsamic vinegar, also any leftover green stuff
Snack (the whole time): 1 jar of brazil nuts.

How to transport green leaf salad: get a sealable freezer bag. Place leaves etc inside, not packing them tightly. Seal bag with as much air as possible. Place in plastic tub, large enough to put it in without squeezing air out.

What I ate today

I don't know how interesting or useful food posts are to anyone reading this, but today's lunch bears mentioning because it contained one of the staple foods I wrote about last week, another ingredient which some new vegans find scary, and also used up some perishables.

Quinoa
This is a pretty cool grain. It costs a little more than rice and pasta, but way better nutritionally and about the effort/time level of the white versions of these ingredients. Allow 50-100 g per person (depending on how much other stuff you have) - 75g half-filled one of my coffee mugs, if that's any sort of guide. Cook in double its quantity of boiling water (in my case a whole coffee mug full) with a little salt. (The salt does improve things - i'd recommend it, unless you have really severe high blood pressure) Wait until the little curly sprouts start to show and detatch - this takes about 10 minutes. In the meantime, there are a few other things you could do...

Tofu
I had half a block of smoked tofu left over that needed using up before I go away. Smoked tofu is good, as it saves on having to flavour the stuff from scratch. I used about 100g for one serving. I pressed it (but didn't bother with dry-frying this time) and cut it into thin strips, then cooked it under the grill. It didn't take long - I'd cut and grilled the tofu by the time the quinoa was properly cooked.

Vegetables
In this case half a red pepper and three mushrooms that needed using, and some fennel which didn't but was available. These went under the other half of the grill (mushrooms first, as I have a slight horror of biting into a raw mushroom and would have to be literally starving to do it on purpose) for slightly less time than the tofu.

What else?
Everything under the grill got turned over or around at least once.

The last step...
I mixed everything together in the quinoa saucepan, stirring in a bit of olive oil. It was pretty much warm salad writ large, but more filling than the word 'salad' suggests.

Muck factor
One saucepan, bowl, spoon, chopping board and knife dirtied. The bowl i'd stored the tofu in overnight (needs to be stored in water, preferably in the fridge) also needed washing. This meal also involved two bits of tinfoil over the grill (one on each side, not double-layered) - this is always a useful thing to do if sharing a kitchen with omnis.