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.

Mashed Potatoes and Company

Finally a bigger lunch again. I had homemade mashed potatoes and two soy sausages, accompanied by fried cherry tomatoes with a touch of garlic. Yummy! My midmorning snack was a sandwich with a sauerkraut filling (shown open) and some radishes.

Tofu on bread

Oops, another lunch with a sandwich. That was not what I had planned, I had made a bell pepper-tofu-filling that I usually use for pita bread, but there was none left, so toast it was.
I also brought a Mediterranean courgette roll, filled with dried tomates, an olive and an almond. Wasn't there a joke in an Asterix comic about the Romans eating a cow filled with pork filled with lamb filled with pheasant filled with hare filled with squab? Well, this would be the vegan version.
The smoothie that I brought as a snack (with grapes and kiwi, among other things) tasted a lot better than it looked.

Travel Provisions

I visited my family in Germany during the long weekend and could not get a direct flight, so I planned a lot of food for my morning on planes and airports.
I usually bring similar stuff, this time I had energy balls made of cocoa, dates and nuts, vegetarian pigs in a blanket, some cherry tomatoes and sandwich with a chickpea filling. Lots of proteins here!
I usually buy a bottle of water or a smoothie once I've passed the security check.

Potato Stirfry and Tomato Soup

Hhhhmm, this was so nice. I made an Italian potato stirfry - not photogenic but yummy - and accompanied it by a tomato soup. The soup was a convenience product, but the recipes for the potatos and my snack - puff paste with a chocolate-nut-filling - were from a German cookbook with vegan Italian recipes:
Cucina vegana by Heike Kügler-Anger. I'm a big fan of hers and always recommend her books!

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.

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.

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.

Japanese Box, Italian Lunch

So, I bought myself a bento box! This is a three tiered model by Unit Colors.
I had been tempted by this line ever since I saw it first on the internet, because of its beautiful colours.
I actually did not think these boxes would be superpractical for my style of life, but then I found one with a 50% discount in a fancy-schmancy shop just around the corner from my office and succumbed.
It has one big container and two slightly smaller ones. I like the fact that you can pack things that are going to be reheated and those that are eaten cold separately, and that I can transport everything vertically.
But although the box has a total volume of nearly one liter, which is a lot, I feel kind of restricted by the form of the containers.
Here is what I packed into the bento box on its first outing:

In the middle we have my lunch, which consisted of gnocci with a vegan mushroom-sauce,
on the left a skewer with cherry tomatoes and pieces of marinated mozzarella and on the right puff pastry with a filling of fresh spinach.

Pasta with Pesto and Cabbage Wraps

This lunch wasn't a big success... I brought pasta with pesto, cherry tomatoes and wraps filled with coleslaw. The coleslaw recipe was new to me and kind of meh, so I will try something else next time.

Mexican Lunch

For this thematic lunch I made chili sin carne, quesadillas and mini tomatoes filled with guacamole.
The quesadillas are really easy to make, I learned it the other day on the internet: Place a tortilla in a hot pan without oil, sprinkle some grated cheese on it and put another tortilla on top. When the first tortilla starts to brown slightly,flip the whole thing and wait until the other side is slighty brown, too. Serve cut into quarters.

Tomato Soup and Leek Pastries

For this lunch I brought a Mediterranean tomato soup that was absolutely delicious. I think the crucial ingredient was the spoonful of tomato purée, I really have to remember to add it in all my tomato dishes, it's just adds a much more intense flavour.
As midmorning snack and side dish I brought some vegetable pastries, which are becoming a real staple for me. This time they had a leek filling.
I also brought some radishes and a homemade "chocolate coin".