Monbento Original #6 (Double Tier)

Vegan crab cakes (from Vegan Huggs) on a bed of spinach with cherry tomatoes; some rice pilaf I made from a veganized version of the recipe in Barbara Swain's Cookery for 1 or 2 (1978); fruit salad of kiwi, strawberries, mango, and grapes topped with hemp hearts; a kind of tartar sauce-but-not (I have my own recipe for vegan tartar sauce, but I had no time), and an improvisational marshmallow-flavored fruit dip (because the fruit I packed was mostly on the tart side, and needed help).

I realize I haven't tried that many new ingredients this 2019 (there's still time, I suppose!) but I'm enjoying the hemp hearts. They don't taste very strongly of anything, but they're vaguely nutty and add a boost of protein, apparently, as well as a variety of other nutrients, so following advice from Pick Up Limes, I've been trying them out on fruit.

This recipe for vegan crab cakes is so delightfully fishy! Hearts of palm are so amazing shredded up. And it has chickpeas for protein, so you don't feel like something is missing. I do find that for me it makes way more crab cakes than it says, so I halved the recipe and still got 9 cakes using 1/4 cup measure. They're great with tartar sauce--or in this case some Vegenaise mixed with dill pickle relish and vegan Worcestershire, because I was running out of time and energy and just went with the easiest thing.