What's in my lunchbox? When I grow up I want to be a sandwich

It's that glorious time of the year. The market is full of produce. Friends drop by with food to share. Lunches are easy to prepare, and eat.

The man at the vegetable stall added a few extra aubergine to my purchases. So I roasted them on Sunday morning. The form this basis of this lovely sandwich ingredient salad. For best results you should add the olives, tomatoes and bread while the aubergine is warm. However I can't say that waiting until it was cold has impaired the flavour. The sourdough bread is softened by a morning in a tub with the fresh vegetables but remains chewy. This works well against the other softer textures.

 

I was a bit surprised by how well this combination worked. I suppose though it's only a Brie, grape and celery sandwich minus the bread and Brie. Sweet and savoury. Soft and crunchy.

To read: Real World by Natsuo Kirino

Does one enjoy Kirino's novels? I was drawn into Out, and the same is true of this one. Maybe it's something about the way the characters feel as if they are acting out their own lives. The ways secrets are never secrets. The glimpse of Japan that isn't the exotic Western view. This had a David Lynch feel in the way the actions of one character impacted on a community.

 

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What's in my lunch box? Just add veg

 

Saturday was the monthly gathering of Chelmsford Veg Up, a vegan meet up group. I made cashew cheese to share as part of our pot luch arrangement, and was pleased to bring some home. Teamed up with a little veg, some bread and a little dessert it made an easy and tasty lunch.

Clockwise, from top right:

• Cucumber and wonderfully sweet cherry tomatoes
• Greengage and piece of Sue's flapjack, packed with fruit and seeds
• Lightly toasted sour dough with cashew cheese
• Radishes

To read: The Yard by Alex Grecian

The review that prompted me to track this title down pointed out this the author was American, and had never visited the parts of London he describes, but added that this was hard to believe. I agree. Grecian conveys the atmosphere of London in the 1890s with no effort. You are simply sucked in wanting to now what happens next. What happens next is you devour as many pages as you can before having to go and do something else.

 

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What's in my lunch box? Sling it all in potato salad

On Saturday I headed to the London Vegan Beer festival where I drank various fine vegan beverages, listened to bands, took part in karaoke, and partook of some vegan BBQ.

One of the dishes on offer at the BBQ was a potato salad. Alas it was so tasty I ate the lot before thinking that I should have snapped a photo. However let me describe it as the house special fried rice approach to potato salad, only not fried and minus the kind of animal related items. The potatoes had been mixed with peas, corn, gerkins, and mayonnaise. Possibly a few other items crept in to this king of potato.

I attended a family BBQ on Sunday. As is the case with my family it was over catered. So it would have been rude not to bring home with me some leftover jacket potatoes and create my own multi ingredient potato salad.

Into the mix went: chopped jacket potatoes, radishes, carrot, cooked peas, Fry’s Polony, Plamil garlic mayo, and gherkin burger relish.

To read – On stranger tides by Tim Powers

I’ve been trying to find a title of his that lives up to The Anubis Gate. This isn’t it, but it’s still pretty good. A good tale with plenty of swashbuckling, and a bearable amount of magic to add spice. I found the descriptions of sea battles hard going but it was satisfying watching our hero develop, and seeing plot elements come together.

 

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What's in my lunchbox? Rice, not potatoes

 

Usually at this time of the year I’m all about potatoes. But I had a big bag of rice in the cupboard that seemed to be heading to be way out of date. So I cooked the whole lot and froze it. This was a brilliant move as it allows me to make dishes like this spicy rice. Perfect for using up the odds and ends in the fridge. Also perfect for when you find you have no soy sauce left.

Use plenty of oil and fry an onion and some garlic. Dump in the cooked rice. Then add whatever you have to hand. In this case the last of a pan of marinated tofu ( a soy sauce free marinade), my faithful chilli flakes, and my new favourite seasoning turmeric. Then take this from plan old fried rice to amazing fried rice by turning off the heat and stirring in a few handfuls of greens.

It reheated really well in a microwave. Clearly it’s one of those dishes that benefits from reheating. I served with tomatoes and cucumbers. They complement the flavours and the heat nicely.

To read: The long earth by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter

This is so easy to read, but at the same time fills your head with thoughts about how you would cope with the situation, and what the right thing to do would be. It’s the literary equivalent of enjoying a really well prepared and presented meal that leaves you feeling full but not stuffed.

I like the way that individuals are presented as being different, and that they are not always thrilled by this prospect. I'm intrigued by the different ways they deal with not fitting in. By contrast other characters think that they’re thinking outside the box, but they’re not. It’s a great demonstration that when mankind is presented with something really exciting their first thought is money, and their first action seems to be destruction.

This reads like a perfect blend of Stephen King, David Brin, and Philip Pullman. I'm delighted that it's the first in a series.

The concept of the long earth itself is massively exciting. To be able to be elsewhere in an instant. To be able to escape from the madding crowd. To be alone. I was almost tempted to put my potato crop to use and build a stepper.

 

 

 

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What's in my lunch box? A tale of two pancakes

I’ve had a real craving for some kind of vegan cream tea. A scone with strawberries and vegan cream of some kind. Then a non-vegan chum told me they were planning Eton mess but had forgotten to buy meringues so they used pancakes. And so was born my lunch of stuffed pancakes.

From top right:

• Cucumber
• Vegan pancake filled with macadamia crème and strawberry compote
• Vegan pancake filled with cashew cheese and raw spinach
• Cherry tomatoes

To read: She-wolves by Helen Castor

I love to read about history, and Elizabeth I has always been one of my heroines. That said I have a slightly less rosy view of her than I did as three year old. Anyway I was intrigued by the thought of reading about other strong charismatic queens and I haven’t been disappointed. Family trees for the various noble families are always complicated and confusing so looking at three families in detail has been brilliant for filling in the gaps in my knowledge. I now understand why the loss of the White Ship was so significant. I’m finding this hard to put down which has got to be a good sign of readability.

 

 

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What's in my lunch box? For a grey June day

 

This seems at first glance a warming, hearty dish, and so surely inappropriate for the height of summer. However as we've experiencing our usual changeable weather with a good dose of grey it actually suited summer vey nicely.

Plus it's very easy to put together. It's a vegan version of this Butter bean, parprika and chorizo stew. It's a very forgiving recipe which happily adapts to the ingredients at hand, and you pretty much just chuck it in a pan. Mine included gently fried onions, garlic and peppers. Then I threw in parprika and rosemary, gave it a good stir and finished off with a can of tomatoes.

I served with toast, lettuce, radishes and advocado.

To read: Arcadia by Lauren Groff

With most of the actions taking place on a commune it's a delight to find a book where the characters are pretty much all vegan. As a result a reference to quesadillas filled with mushrooms and soy cheese, or squash ravioli is a meal that I can really relate to. We follow Bit through his hippie childhood until utopia falls apart. And then we pick him up in his adult life when things don't seem to be much more stable. Yet the thing that makes this so enjoyable is Bit's ability to appreciate small delights. From his observations of nature on the commune to the feeling of connection that domestic lights create in a city.

 

 

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What's in my lunch box? Seasonally new

 

The thing I really like about trying to eat in a seasonal manner is how the variety in my diet massively increases as the summer gets closer. I was very happy when I got the market last week and was able to pick up new potatoes, asparagus, and radishes. This was a nice easy lunch to throw together with some tofu and a few bits from my allotment.

Salad – boiled new potatoes, boiled asparagus, raw spinach, raw rocket, radishes, fried tofu (Dragonfly brand – and a particularly tasty batch). Dressing made with oil, cider vinegar, mustard, salt, pepper.

Rhubarb crumble – home grown rhubarb topped with flour, brown sugar, oil, cinnamon, and ginger

 

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What's in my lunch box? Visitors = variety

It’s not that I’m a lazy cook when I’m just cooking for me. However it would be fair to say that I tend to make a dish and stretch it over several meals. Hence weekend guests encourage more variety. This weekend I made creamy cauliflower soup, grilled ‘cheese’ and ‘pepperoni’ sandwiches, tofu and kale delight, and a sort of Chinese inspired cabbage served with spring rolls. Most of these left no remains. The ones that did are finding their way into my lunch box this week.

In the mix:

• Cabbage, shredded and fried in sesame oil with leeks, garlic, peanut butter, and soy sauce.
• Brown basimati rice
• Hoisin 'duck' rolls – picked this V-bites item up in my local health food shop
• Spring rolls from the Coop – a cut price bargain I couldn't resist
• Samosas from Iceland – still using up excess Christmas provisions.

To read

I’m still working my way through A Greedy Man in a Hungry world by Jay Rayner. Happily a bus malfunction( the wing mirror fell off!) allowed me the time to actually finish this. It’s a book where every page gives you something else to think about. I liked that he was Clare Rayner’s son and seemed to have inherited her common sense. I enjoyed the anecdotes about his childhood, and recognition of when he was basing an opinion on something other than facts.

I did indeed find that he made me think differently about things like farmers’ markets. I can see that the situation with food supply is a tricky one, and that there is no easy answer. One cannot simply say supermarkets are evil and be done with it. Indeed Rayner points out that supermarkets are both evil and not evil at all. I think this book was saying that there is a need to embrace both the big and the small, accept that there is no one solution for anything, and really focus on sustainability. This need to embrace multiple viewpoints is what makes the content of this book so difficult to take.

Oh, and I should add that I thought his comment that vegans had difficulty getting enough protein a tad on the ill-informed side. A pity when research had clearly been carried out in a thoughtful manner in other areas. He might have been better off simply saying theat veganism wasn’t for him. Which in the context of the book surely Rayner would have agreed would be perfectly fine.

 

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What's in my lunch box? Double chestnut

 

Looking at the photo of my lunch I'm impressed with how autumnal it seems. I'm slightly disappointed in myself at including two types of chestnut dish but I'm sure I can live with it.

Clockwise from bottom right:

• Roast chestnuts - so easy to do. Fun to shell. And surpringly filling.
• A delicious ripe conference pear
• Pasties filled with chestnut purée. I made Chestnut soup last week and has some left over so it seemed the idea filling for these cute mini pasties.
• Roasted garlic Brussel sprouts from VWAV. I still prefer them steamed but as the oven on...also enabled to breathe anti vampire fumes!
• To read - The first book of Calamity Leek by Paula Lichtarowicz. This reminded me of Room crossed with Lace crossed with The Amtrak Wars. The use of language is inventive and has a quirky charm. I enjoyed the cultural references, and the different ways things could be interpreted depending on context. The reader is torn between which characters to root for - knowing full well that they can't all get what they want.

Wishing you green ink and good food,

Annastasia

 

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What's in my lunch box? Peas and the past

Ever keen to expand my knowledge of pulses, I decided to give marrow fat peas a go. I vaguely recalled reading somewhere that they were grown and produced in the UK (although I haven't investigated this any further. I'd also read somewhere about the benefits of eating seaweed, something I do enjoy. So I purchased a nice packet of Hijiki harvested in Japan to keep my carbon footprint skyhigh!

Putting these together I planned to make something fish and chips inspired. Theoretically the marrow fat peas should have been made into mushy peas for dipping polenta fries into. Old habits die hard though and I ended up making something more akin to refried beans. Guess my love affair with chilli isn't anywhere near cooling off.

Clockwise from bottom left:

• Refried marrow fat peas - soaked, boiled and fried up with oil, onion, lemon juice, salt and chilli.
• Polenta fries - from The Vegan lunchbox cook book
• Roasted Brussel sprouts with toasted garlic from Vegan with a vengance. These are favourite vegetable and I love them so much that I hate the thought of interfering with the flavour. However the oven was on so I gave them a go. Tasty and they keep better than steamed sprouts.
• Hijiki seaweed - bought dried and soaked in hot water

To read: The boy who loved books by John Sutherland. I don't know where I picked this up but I put off reading it for ages.the appeal had been the thought of someone else who's childhood was definded by what they were reading but I thought it might get heavy or overtly sentimental. I was also worried he's waffle on about books that passed me by as a child (Roald Dahl for example). Instead it turned out to be a smashing read for the most part. Sutherland shares his largely neglected childhood in war time time Colchester. It was wonderful to get a glimpse of how the town used to be. He'd read different things to me but it didn't matter. He's fabulous at summing up a book, and offering what he thought then, and what he thinks as an adult. The last few chapters where he talked about his time at university and his alcohol problems were less engaging but that hardly surprising. He clearly found them gloomy too.

 

Wishing you all things green,

Annastasia

 

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What's in my lunchbox? Prepared in advance

I had a marvellous Saturday. I spent the morning at my allotment mainly harvesting produce. Then I devoted the afternoon to cooking said produce plus the goodies I'd picked up at the market earlier in the week. I was tired by the end of the day but so happy.

Clockwise from top right

Caramel apple peanut bar – This is divine. The photo does not do it justice. It's from Veganomicon. And a tip for anyone else making this – follow the recipe. Do not decide that you will make some sugar syrup because you don't have any date syrup, or believe that a microwave works just as well as a pan over a low heat. It still tasted good but I want to experience the 'ribbons' of caramel the recipe refers to.

Mexican millet – another Veganomicon favourite. I successfully deviated from the recipe by chucking a load of sweetcorn in.

Tortilla – This is my take on a Spanish omelette with potatoes and onions. I replaced the eggs with a gram flour batter. I am currently experimenting with the various approaches (fried potatoes? Boiled potatoes? Thick batter? Thin batter? How much salt? Add nutrition yeast?) in search of the perfect combination.

Radishes, cucumber and rocket

Wishing you all things green,

Annastasia

What's in my lunchbox? Simply idyllic

The word 'idyllic' springs to mind as regards this lunch. It was a pleasure for so many reasons.

From a food point of view:

It used lots of produce from my allotment, or lovely seasonal things from the market. It was easy to throw together as it used leftovers from the weekend. I got to try out some of the ideas in An everlasting meal simply by throwing a load of vegetables in the oven.

From the top down:

· Cherries, purchased from the market and gently cooked to make them extra yummy

· Popcorn, home popped and mixed with coconut oil, salt and nutritional yeast

· Salad with spinach, rocket, roasted chickpeas, peppers and onions, with a drizzle of oil and balsamic vinegar

From a location point of view:

I explored the other side of the river and found a new delightful location to eat in.

Wishing you green ink and good food,

Annastasia

 

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What's in my lunchbox? Just for the dressing

I made this lunch pretty much entirely for the delicious dressing. It’s from a recipe in The Garden of Vegan. It’s easily overlooked as the recipe title focuses on the spinach and tofu that form the salad, rather than on this delicious tangy dressing. It’s perfect for the hot weather we’ve been experiencing of late.

The hot weather has also made lunch outside a truly enjoyable experience. Having recently moved offices I’m getting to appreciate riverside walks and plenty of delightful spots for lunch right on my doorstep.

Clockwise from top:

• Sex and Stravinsky by Barbara Trapido - enjoying this so much I might have to do a rare book review post
  
• Home grown strawberries and dark chocolate
  
• Twiglets
  
• Wonderful dressing – a blend of miso, oil, vinegar, ginger, soy sauce and garlic
  
• Salad – radishes, various leaves (spinach, rocket, Oak leaf lettuce) and Italian style tofu (yes, plain fried tofu would have worked fine but I was feeling inspired).
  

This is where I enjoyed my lunch while listening to birds and watching butterflies.

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What's in my lunchbox? Best in the sun

Given the amount of meals I base on pantry, fridge and freezer clearouts you could be forgiven for thinking that I either have massive amounts of food hoarded, or that I buy so much food I can't keep track of what I've got.

I must confess I'm pretty amazed myself when I consider what to make for lunch, and uncover ingredients that compliment each other beautifully. It's almost like I planned it. Maybe I'm subconsciously batch cooking!

Clockwise from top left:

Pasties made with sesame seed pastry and filled with home-made vege burgers (made from tofu, soy mince and …who knows). Both pastry and burgers were in the freezer just waiting for me to put them together.

Salad dressing (in red pot) – a blend of Safflower oil and balsamic vinegar.

Twiglets – I was given a box of these last week and decided they are excellent nibble sized food.

Snack mix – my favourite combination of dates, salted almonds, pistachios, dark chocolate.

Salad with spinach, rocket, red pepper, cucumber, hazelnuts, and the last of the Field Roast meatloaf. Utterly glorious sprinkled with dressing.

Best eaten in the sunshine. Preferably with grass to sit on and a cool breeze from the river.

Wishing you green ink and good food,

Annastasia

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What's in my lunch box? With extra ingredient

There is something momentous about the dessert in this lunch. It’s not that my allotment is having one of the years where it produces mounds of fantastic strawberries. Or that this is the first time I’ve tried Field Roast meat loaf, and it is as good as I’d heard.

No, this is to do with the Gingerbread rhubarb pie. I’ve made this recipe (based on the apple version from Vwav) many times, and it always tastes delicious. However, I’ve never actually put ginger in it because I’ve never had any to hand. Well no more –this time ginger was present as indicated in the recipe and I must say it did add a certain tang to the mix of spices.

Clockwise from top left:

Gingerbread rhubarb crumble and strawberries – home grown strawberries and rhubarb

Dates, pastachios, salted almonds and dark chocolate – I still can’t get enough of this combiantion

Salad with new potatoes, rocket, spinach, asparagus, spring onions, red pepper, cucumber, Field Roast meatloaf – this was an awesome combo. When I was ready for lunch I tipped it into a bowl to mix it up and poured the dressing over.

The passage by Justine Cronin – reminding me of Stephen King but with less hope

Salad dressing – cold pressed Safflower oil with cider vinegar and garlic powder

 

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