Potato Salad

I suppose I could call this "Official Salad Week". Basically it's too warm to eat anything else.
We have a salad with boiled potatoes, tomatoes, bell peppers, cucumber and pumpkin seeds. My snacks for the day are a smoothie with grapes, an apple and an orange plus tofu sausages, mini cheeses and cherry tomatoes.

Rice Salad

A simple cold meal for a hot summer day: A salad with rice, cucumbers, tomatoes and macadamia nuts, little apple-coconut pancakes and grapes.

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.

Aubergine with Mushrooms

For this day I tried out some new stuff - my main dish was a mix of fried aubergine and mushrooms on tomato rice (I just cooked the rice in tomato juice, which was nice, but it took much longer than usual). My side dish was this Carrot Slaw from Healthy. Happy. Life: http://kblog.lunchboxbunch.com/2014/06/turmeric-curried-golden-carrot-slaw-11.html
As dessert I made a fruity pudding with orange juice and chia seeds.

Pasta Salad and Scrambled Egg

 This food was for a day that I didn't go to the office and thus didn't have a microwave, so everything could be eaten cold. As a midmorning snack I had scrambled eggs with fried cherry tomatoes and mushrooms. My lunch was my mother's pasta salad and a storebought mini-gazpacho. Everything was quite yummy!

Potato Dumplings and Homemade Sherbet

Wow, this looks huge! I made "Schupfnudeln", which are a kind of potato dumplings from Germany, similar to gnocchi, for example. I made mine from scratch according to a vegan recipe found on the internet (most recipes contain eggs) and  fried them with chopped onions and bell peppers. They were accompanied by a salad with tomatos and avocadoes.
My midmorning snack were grapes and a sandwich with bell pepper paste, brie cheese, kohlrabi slices and fried onions. Everything tastes better with fried onions!
My dessert was something new and I'm quite happy with how it turned out - I made a peach sherbet by blending a couple of peaches with some sugar, freezing the mix and breaking it up with a fork from time to time. This first try hasn't been perfect texture-wise, but the taste was great.

Courgette "Pasta Bolognese"

Here I tried something new, instead of normal pasta with bolognese sauce I made the "courgette spaghetti" that I had often seen on the internet. I sauteed the stripes of courgette with a bit of garlic rather than making a raw version. The taste was nice, I quite liked it, but noticed very much during the afternoon that this is not as filling as real pasta, as I was hungry again soon. I accompanied the main dish with a little salad.
As a midmorning snack I brought some leftover Spanish potato omelette. My omelettes don't usually turn out nicely, so my boyfriend is the one who makes them.

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?

Risotto and Vegan Omelette

For this lunch I tried two recipes from a book about Italian cuisine - risotto with peas and a vegan vegetable omelette. I wasn't keen on the omelette, I'll have to try some other versions to see if I find a vegan recipe that I like. When I wanted to photograph everything, I found that it lacked some colour, so I added a salad made of tomatoes and bell pepper.

Tabouleh and Leek

Today's dinner has a kind of Oriental vibe. I brought a container with tabouleh (an Arabic couscous salad) and a Turkish dish of fried Leek. My midmorning snack was a fruit salad with some nuts and seeds

Mittwochsbox 9th of April 2014 - French Toast (and Pumpkin Gnocchi)

Today I'm participating again in the Wednesday blog-event by Mone from http://leckerbox.com/
This week's theme is breakfast, or more precisely a breakfast for celebrating the Easter days. I have to admit that I don't do anything related to religion on Easter, but I just love breakfasts in any form, so I still wanted to participate.
I made French toast, which interestingly is called "Arme Ritter" ("Poor knights") in German.
I wasn't familiar with this dish in my childhood and first heard of it when I watched the beautiful film "Kramer vs. Kramer" which I highly recommend to everybody, and in which father and son bond over preparing breakfast together (among other things).
French toast is usually made with eggs, but I substituted them by a mixture of ground hazelnuts and soy milk, an idea based on a vegan French Toast recipe from the wonderful German website
http://www.regenbogenkombuese.de/
I also prefer my French toast with salt and pepper instead of the sweet version.
And of course I also had lunch this day, this time there were homemade pumpkin gnocchi with blue cheese-sauce and a tomato salad.

Spätzle and Beet Salad

For this lunch I made "Spätzle" (literally "little sparrows") , a type of homemade pasta that's typical for the German region of Swabia. It's usually made with eggs, but I've found a vegan recipe on the internet. I also fried it with vegetables instead of gratinating it with cheese, like it's often done. The side dish is a beet salad.
I'm not showing my midmorning snack because I went to the office late and had a big second breakfast with bread and leftover soup at home before leaving.

Salad with Asian Noodles and Toast Rolls

This was really nice. I had a salad with radish, bell pepper, champignons and Asian glass noodles plus a small side dish of cauliflower. The cauliflower recipe was from a book about Spanish tapas - I'm still looking for nice Spanish recipes, and this was really good.
The little snack box contained a collection of cherry tomatoes (a woman in the supermarket had asked me if those were plums) and toast rolls with homemade lemon pesto. Sometimes everything comes together nicely - just a couple of days ago I had read that it is easier to make these rolls when you put the toast in the microwave first, and then I found a packet of toast cut lengthwise specially for rolling. Of course after all this I had to try it and the rolls turned out really nice.

Baked Potatoes with Zaziki

This lunch was quite big and hearty. I had baked potatos + vegan tzatziki and a radish salad.
The most interesting thing was probably what I had brought for second breakfast, a huge portion of pasta frittata. Sometimes it's funny how ideas come up. Although I try to limit my consumption of eggs, from time to time I love some fried pasta with scrambled egg. The other day I came across a blogger who had served this same dish in a slightly different form - as a frittata, which is really practical as food on the go, because you can actually eat it with your hands. It was a real Duh!-moment.

Pasta with Soy Sauce

For this lunch I prepared one of my favourite recipes, pasta with fried vegetables and soy sauce. I improvised a little salad as a side dish.
My midmorning snack was nut bread with a tomato-radish-spread. I'm showing you one piece of bread without the spread so that you can admire the incredible texture. I made this easy and delicious bread myself following this recipe by My New Roots:
http://www.mynewroots.org/site/2013/02/the-life-changing-loaf-of-bread/
I also included two sweets in the photo. Lately I'm succumbing again to my "addiction" to sugar and sweets, so I thought I should document that as well and not only show you the healthy stuff I eat.

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.

Pasta with Pineapple

My main dish today is probably the weirdest recipe I have in my repertoire: Pasta with a tomato sauce containing pineapple from a can. I don't eat this frequently but I like it from time to time.
I thought that my main dish needed a bit of a colour contrast, so I added my version of a "green salad" - one with cucumber, avocado and edamame.

I had quite a big second breakfast - bread with a homemade parsley spread, two cherry-tomatoes and two storebought seitan-sausages.

Pasta with Aubergine Pesto

What a pity that this lunch looks so colourless in the photo. Well, it actually was.
But nice though. I brought pasta with aubergine pesto and a kohlrabi salad. The dessert were pieces of tangerine with chocolate, an idea I got from Pinterest. My chocolate wasn't very liquid and just wouldn't stick, so instead of dipping the pieces into the chocolate, I kind of spread it on the slices with a spoon.
My midmorning snack was a bagel with vegetable filling - basically pureed white beans with finely chopped vegetables like a carrot and leek. So tasty!

Rice and Salad

For this lunch I brought a spicy rice dish with TVP and peas.
As it seemed a bit pale, I added a colourful salad made of tomatoes, carrots and corn.
As a snack I prepared a sandwich with homemade potato spread and little skewers with grapes, walnuts, dates and smoked tofu.
Today everything was vegan.

Ethiopian

I love to eat at Ethiopian restaurants, so I want to try some typical vegetarian recipes at home. This was my first take:

I made injera bread, a dish of fried cabbage with potatoes and carrots, and a salad. The injera did not turn out tasty at all (I'll have to go on experimenting) and I was not keen on the salad either, but the vegetable dish was totally delicious.
I had been making this late in the evening and had not any ideas or strength left to make something for second breakfast, so in the morning I just grabbed some pieces of krispbread and brought along a bit of margarine and a piece of camembert cheese.