Random Meals #2

Since you enjoyed my last random meals post, here's another! Having made this a series it is no longer an "interlude." This is just basic food I ate that has nothing spectacular about it except getting the job done, but that may help you get ideas for yourself, so I'm happy to share them.

Breakfasts

Bagel breakfast sandwiches have become a sort of new obsession for me. This one was a plain bagel with avocado, a folded JUST egg, and a slice of non-dairy provolone. Would that we all could eat so well all the time.

Another breakfast, on grocery store day, was a use-it-up special, with two breakfast sandwich halves on whole grain toast. (I didn't have enough of a single filling to make a full sandwich.) Half #1 had JUST Egg scramble with spinach, onion, and Hellman's vegan mayo. Half #2 was crunchy peanut butter and strawberry preserves. I had this with a cup of tea and some soy milk, and it turned out to be one of the best breakfasts of the week. Use-it-up specials often are!

Here we have a grain-coffee-based soy latte (I think it was Postum), leftover rhubarb crisp, a bit of soy yogurt, and a sliced banana. I loved all this together.

This one is a hodge-podge of stuff that needed to be eaten and things that went well with them. First, I'd discovered some forgotten homemade cranberry syrup in my fridge, so I poured some of it over a sliced banana; this is inspired and I highly recommend making your own fruity syrups and putting them over bananas. It totally elevates bananas from "I have to eat fruit this morning to get my potassium" to "Look at me, having dessert for breakfast without feeling sick afterward." Then, I had an everything bagel, cut in half, and one half had margarine, a folded JUST Egg, and half a slice of Violife provolone, and the other half had a green pea spread and black sesame seeds. This was a wonderful breakfast and I ate it three days in a row!

I'm putting this here because it looks a bit strange, but I probably could include a less-odd-looking version in a breakfast round up sometime. This is vanilla blueberry oatmeal I topped with some vanilla Greek-style soy yogurt, more blueberries, chia seeds, cinnamon granola, and a what was meant to be a drizzle of almond butter mixed with rice nectar that I tried thinning out with a bit of water. The almond butter was the denser stuff at the bottom of the jar and refused to drizzle attractively, but it tasted good. So it's porridge with almond sludge! But sludge can be delicious.

Lunches

You've already seen a very similar lunch, so I'm putting this one here: Pineapple chunks, coconut yogurt topped with strawberry preserves, and some vanilla cake protein bites. Pretty good, actually, in the end!

A familiar combination here: A chickpea salad sandwich with spring mix and tomato to put in when ready to eat, some Cara Cara orange slices, squares of dark chocolate, and some kettle-cooked jalapeno chips. A lunch of champions.

You saw this purple potato salad a while ago, along with this dilly bean salad; the dilly bean salad still looks pretty good but of course a few days later, despite being perfectly edible, a potato salad made from avocado is going to get dingy. I had this here with some applesauce topped with cinnamon granola and some homemade cranberry syrup (see my discussion of that above). I don't know if I've ever had granola with applesauce, but I really like it! It would probably be better if you keep them separate until serving, though, so the granola stays crunchy, if you don't want a soft dessert.

All things you've seen pretty recently: Cucumber-avocado salad with scallions and lime, Chinese-inspired saucy beans over rice (trust me, it's down there), and wedges of yam pancake. I actually had this lunch three days in a row. It was good and seemed fairly balanced, so why not?

I posted a dinner of vegan lemon butter pasta with peas and crispy leeks a little while ago; the leftovers became a very easy pasta salad. I just added some Vegenaise and Violife Parmesan and it was perfect as a cold lunch. Alongside it, I had some carrots and cucumbers to dip into some homemade lemon dill hummus. This was a very lemony meal, but hey, I like lemons!

Random Dinners

One of those basic, classic American-style dinners: A Don't Be Chicken cutlet with some homemade dilly lemon caper sauce, mock rice-a-roni made from orzo and long grain rice, and steamed broccoli with carrots. Something about these kinds of meals feels so comforting and old-fashioned. I eat a whole lot less frozen mock meats than I used to before the pandemic, but I do still like them here and there.

Though this may look like breakfast, it was dinner on a hectic evening. I made a scramble of veggies that needed eating with some JUST Egg and had it alongside an everything bagel spread with margarine.

Here we have leftover mashed potatoes and tofu steak with some steamed broccoli. I usually like to cook with an eye to leftovers, because it means dinner comes together quickly. If you want to have leftover mashed potatoes that taste good, I recommend the yellow/butter potatoes; a lot of potatoes don't do as well as leftovers.

A lot of my random dinners involve JUST Egg, I'm realizing--it's such a convenient way to use up veggies when I don't feel like really cooking, though. So this is tater tots and a JUST Egg scramble with mushrooms, onions, red bell pepper, and kale that is topped with some leftover vegan Hollandaise sauce with a side of toast. I know it looks a bit odd but this was delicious and I had it two nights in a row!

Maybe not really random, but definitely a bit redundant: If you hadn't already just seen my picnic food and my what I ate in a day from last week, this would probably be its own post, but as you have, I'm putting it here. I made a deconstructed sushi bowl with my leftovers, as you know. It has a base of seasoned sushi rice with maple Dijon tofu, pickled cabbage, carrot salad, cucumber slices, and strips of nori. I topped that with white and black sesame seeds and sriracha mayo. I should have added spinach to this but didn't think of it.

What random meals are you eating lately?