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?

Lots of carbs

A big lunch with lots of carbs - just the way I like it! ;-)
I had spaghetti with soy sauce and fried vegetables as lunch, a sandwich with olive spread and some chocolate as second breakfast and sweet bulgur with orange slices and almond flakes as an afternoon snack.

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.

Couscous and cabbage

Nothing new here. For this lunch I brought couscous with a vegetable sauce, I added some chickpeas for extra protein. My side dish was an Ethiopian cabbage-potato-mix.
As second breakfast and snack I had little turnovers with a feta-leek-filling and a banana.

Tomato Soup and Microwave cake

I'm not super-original lately, I'm tired of trying out new recipes and often reach for my favourites.
Here we've got a Mediterranean tomato soup which I made because we had too many tomatoes and some leftover bread, which are both key ingredients for this recipe.
My dessert was a microwave cake. I tried this one for the first time because we just bought the microwave a couple of months ago. For this you mix some basic ingredients in a pot and put it in the microwave for two or three minutes. Mine has not turned out perfectly, it was a bit soft on the outside and hard on the inside, I'll see if I try this again.
My midmorning snack was delicious, though - I had toast rolls with a filling of (very finely chopped) fried pumpkin with pumpkin seeds and garlic. Yummy! I brought some radishes as well.

Easter Holidays

Hi there,
I'm taking a week off, and I'm going to restructure the blog when I come back. I'm thinking about blogging on Monday, Thursday and Friday and maybe write some bigger posts for Sundays.
See you on Easter Monday!

Arroz a la cubana

For this lunch I made a dish that's very popular here, it's called "Arroz a la cubana", which means "Cuban rice". It's basically rice with fried tomato passata (which can be bought already prepared) and a fried egg. It's not the most healthy thing in the world, but nice from time to time.
As snacks I brought some grapes and a leftover piece of chocolate-pear cake.

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.

Aburage and Strawberries

On this day I made aburage, Japanese tofu pockets filled with sushi rice. They were accompanied by a side dish of marinated champignons with cherry tomatoes. My snack / dessert was very strawberry-ish - I not only brought some berries, but also a piece of puff pastry filled with marzipan and homemade strawberry jam.

Pasta with Broccoli Sauce

This simple lunch consisted in a container with pasta plus a creamy broccoli sauce. As a snack I brought along some pieces of apple and little skewers with gouda cheese and cherry tomatoes.

Soup and Quiche

This was a big lunch and very yummy, I had pumpkin soup and a little leek quiche. My second breakfast was a simple sandwich with cheese, accompanied by yellow cherry tomatoes.

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.

Bulgur and Baked Courgette

For this lunch I brought bulgur with bell pepper and slices of courgette that I had coated with breadcrumbs and baked in the oven. My midmorning snack was a burger with fried vegetable instead of a patty, and a greenish smoothie. I'm not into the traditional green smoothies, but this had a bit more of green stuff than usual, I added a bit of salad, avocado and cucumber.