Ethiopian Cabbage and Quesadillas

My main dish today was the delicious Ethiopian cabbage dish that I make from time to time, the dessert was a coconut pudding with agar agar. I had some leftover quesadillas from a Mexican restaurant and added homemade ones for a bigger midmorning snack.

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.

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.

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.

Polenta Quiche

This lunch consisted in an Italian quiche with a base of polenta. I also brought puff pastry with green asparagus as a snack. And dessert - it wasn't easy to photograph, because it had layers of pureed peach and granola. Very nice!

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.

Mittwochsbox 26th of March, 2013 - Greek

On two wednesdays a month Mone from the German website http://leckerbox.com/ invites bloggers to show a takeaway lunch about a theme she proposes. This week the motto was "Greek kitchen".
Unfortunately I waited till yesterday before I made and photographed my lunch, and I was not really happy about it, especially about the presentation, but I didn't have time for something new.
So, here it is: big white beans in tomato sauce and courgettes with a tomato-bulgur-filling plus some raw bell pepper. The recipe for the courgettes is from Linda Majzlik: A vegan taste of Greece, the same as the dessert based on dried fruit.

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!

Kind of Japanese

For this day I made udon noodles with coconut-curry. It was accompanied by my beloved kinpira-carrots. As dessert I brought little homemade fruit bars with cherry-marzipan-flavour. Yummy!
I also had a very hearty second breakfast - onigiri and raw bellpepper sticks.
I had never eaten onigiri until last week - I just never had had the occasion. Then last week a friend took me to this beautiful Japanese café: http://www.akashigallery.com/, and I tried my first onigiri. I had always wondered if these were made with plain sticky rice or if they were seasoned with rice vinegar like sushi. The one I tried seemed to be seasoned, although subtly. It had an avocado-wasabi filling, and today I tried to recreate it at home. It turned out quite nicely.

Aubergine Curry and Ricepaper Rolls

I cheated again. Well, if you want to call it cheating. When I'm having dinner at my favourite Indian restaurant, I always ask them for a doggy bag, so here I brought their delicious aubergine curry.
I also made vegetarian jelly as dessert.
My midmorning snack were ricepaper rolls with vegetable filling, Italian style. Again I separated the sticky ricepaper rolls with pieces of carrots.

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.

Vegetable Lasagne and Chocolate Mousse

This looks a bit frugal, because I didn't bring a snack (I think I ended up buying something).
But the two things I brought along were both nice and filling. I made a individual serving of vegetable lasagne, which was delicious, and a chocolate mousse as dessert. The mousse is basically just melted chocolated blended with silken tofu. It looks a bit strange in the picture, because I had broken my immersion blender and was still waiting for my new mixer to arrive, so I mixed it by hand. Yes, the texture wasn't perfect, but the taste was as good as ever.

Sweet pepper and corn stew

For this lunch I made three different recipes that were new to me - maybe not the best idea, but it turned out quite okay.
I wasn't keen on the wintery salad with sauerkraut and beetroot, but I loved the sweet pepper and corn stew from the book A vegan taste of East Africa. Okay, the original is probably not served with pasta, but for me the combination was perfect.
I also loved my dessert, a crunchy chocolate snack based on krispbread.
For my midmorning break I had little carrot-pumpkin-patties.
Apart from the milkchocolate dessert, today everything was vegan.

Chilli-Tortilla and Spicy Corn

This day had two facets - spicy and fruity.
My second breakfast was a banana, for lunch I had a tortilla with chilli and spicy corn, the dessert was kiwi-pineapple-compote.
The spicy corn was very easy to make: Just fry some onion, chili peppers and garlic in oil, add canned corn and a bit of ketchup, mix well, ready.