Quinoa and Samosas

Today's lunch is my beloved quinoa salad by Poor Girl Eats Well, only that I used peas instead of the usual edamame, because I hadn't any left. I also brought homemade samosas and a smoothie with apple, melon, kiwi, orange, thickened with oatmeal and almonds.

Brave New Food

Hm, strange new stuff today. First things first - I dreamt about my main dish the night before. It is boiled black quinoa arranged in layers with combinations of fried vegetables (pumkin, bell pepper and carrot for the orange layer, tomatoes, bell pepper and red beans for the red layer). I loved recreating in reality what I had seen in my sleep, but the taste was just so-so, so I don't think my dream was the presage of a big carreer as a famous chef...
I also brought an interesting dessert, it is an orange "pudding" made with orange juice + a bit of sugar that I boiled with agar-agar. Not bad, I might make something like that again.
My midmorning snack was a bagel with fried vegetables.

Soup and Pretzel

For this lunch I brought lentil soup and a pretzel. The most interesting thing was probably my midmorning snack - sweet quinoa cooked in orange juice with dried fruit and nuts.

Chili

Today I brought some homemade chili with beans, seitan, bulgur and potatoes. It was nice but turned out a tiny bit too spicy. I accompanied it by a pretzel-type roll.
I also brought my typical quinoa-salad as second breakfast. Maybe an unusual choice, but this one of the very few dishes that make me feel filled and satisfied during hours. And it's delicious, so what's not to like?

Quinoa Stir-fry and a Bell Pepper Side Dish

For this day I wanted to do something with quinoa and looked around on the internet until I found a recipe for a vegan quinoa chowder. I did not want the soupy consistency, so I made it as a stir-fry instead. As a side dish I prepared some fried bell pepper with garlic, almond flakes and soysauce. My midmorning snack were cucumber sandwiches.

Mittwochsbox - 12th of March, 2014: Mexican

Today I'm participating in my first blog event, I'm really exited! On two wednesdays a month Simone from the German blog http://blog.leckerbox.com/ invites everybody to show a lunchbox about a theme she proposes.
This week it's Mexican cuisine. I already had a Mexican lunch with my standard dishes not long ago, and I did not want to just repeat all those typical variations on tortillas and avocado (although they finally make an appearance...), so I did a bit of research.
It's not easy to find authentic vegetarian/vegan Mexican dishes that are a bit different, so I ended up chosing some ideas inspired by Mexico on the German website http://veganwelt.de/ .
On the right you have a potato stirfry and two mini bell peppers filled with quinoa on a bed of chimichurri champignons.
On the left you can see my midmorning snacks and dessert: burrito-"sushi" filled with homemade zucchini-salsa, seitan and avocado, two tangerines and sweet empanadas with pineapple filling.
So ... that's a lot of food. I'm not an ambitious person, but I always want to do things "right", so I might have overdone it a bit. At least today I will not have to buy a chocolate bar on my way home because I've run out of provisions!

Quinoa Salad and a Sandwich

For this lunch I brought my beloved quinoa salad by Poor Girl eats well:
http://www.poorgirleatswell.com/2011/07/recipe-quinoa-edamame-sweet-pepper-lettuce-wraps.html
I also made a grilled sandwich with homemade vegan cheese (which was kind of okay, nothing more) and brought one of the vegan lemon cupcakes I made for my birthday.
Actually for my birthday on the day before I had prepared a whole picknick basket with nice things, but then I unfortunately forgot to make a photo.

Fried Quinoa with Kimchi and an Equally Exotic Dessert

This day I did again what you should never do and made three new recipes at a time. Don't try this at home, kids! I have to say that none of the three really convinced me, although I finished everything.
The main dish is this recipe of fried quinoa with kimchi:
http://mrandmrsvegan.wordpress.com/2013/10/08/home-cooking-kimchi-fried-quinoa/
I have to admit that I had never eaten kimchi before. I supposed I would probably like it , because I love sauerkraut so much, but it's really, really different and I still have to get used to it. The dish turned out totally okay, but I used too much sesame oil and couldn't really taste the rest of the ingredients, so that was probably not how it was supposed to be. I'll probably try this again at another point.
Then there's the dessert. This is sautauthig, the blueberry-corn-pudding of the Native Americans. This might not be a very unusual thing for you depending on where you live (Isn't the internet marvelous?), but believe me, for a German living in Spain it doesn't get much more exotic. It's not even very usual to find blueberries in the store, so when I spotted these, I just had to try something new. The dessert was nice, but, well, unusual.
And finally there are some stuffed mini-bell-peppers as a snack. I loved the idea of these, but will try another stuffing next time.