Lunchopolis #91

 

As winter recedes, it leaves us with some good stuff, like this wintery fruit salad--fresh pineapple, Cara Cara oranges, banana, and kiwi--gingerbread fudge topped with crystallized ginger, a mustardy sweet potato lentil salad, and fire roasted tomato-flavored Triscuits.

I ate this on the day of the spring equinox, and suddenly the first blooms had come out on the trees around the library where I work. It felt like winter was fading, even though I know there is plenty of wintery food left while we wait for the spring harvests to come in. (Asparagus anyone?) And there is plenty of wintery weather left to get through in my part of the world, too.

Pineapples are at their best this time of year, all sweet and juicy and delightful, so this salad was also sweet and juicy and delightful. The kiwi was also sweeter than most I have had, and my banana was at the point I think they're perfect. Nature outdid itself with this fruit salad.

The fudge is a recipe from Vegan Richa, and I very highly recommend it. It's a very easy recipe and has hidden veggies in it (in the form of pumpkin puree). Plus it has the crystallized ginger on top. So good.

The sweet potato lentil salad is a recipe from The Full Helping. It seemed like good weekend food prep, as well as being a good way to use ingredients I had around. I used cilantro rather than parsley because that's what I had and it seemed like it would go well with these flavors; it definitely did. Sweet potatoes and lentils both don't get into my rotation often enough, but they definitely should appear more often, especially these days, when I'm looking for cheap food.

If you're looking for an allergy-friendly option, though this lunch has no specific allergy-friendly tags, it would be a gluten-free meal without the crackers (so just sub something gluten free for that), or nut-free without the coconut oil in the fudge, so you could swap that for plain chocolate, or soy free if it weren't for the tamari in the sweet potato lentil salad, but you could swap coconut aminos for that (if you can have coconut).

Go forth, and eat well.