Random Meals #4

 Random meals are the best ones, am I right? I don't think there is much here that is earth-shattering, but I hope they help you anyway--either to embrace your repeated meals as normal, or to see how to shake up the same things to give you a touch more variety by just tweaking your standbys a little. In any case, this is a normal life for me, which involves a lot of leftovers.

Breakfast

Here's a JUST Egg scramble with veggies and a side of leftover things that needed eating up: Toast with zucchini "hummus," avocado, and chives (from a co-worker who'd been growing them), the remaining slices of tomato from a big one I had in the fridge partially eaten, my last two stewed plums, an the end of a tub of Coco Whip. The stewed plums were so much better the second and third day. I left the cinnamon stick in, and they got so wonderfully spiced and flavorful, plus over time the syrup deepened in color to this lovely shade. Lesson? Stew your plums early.

This is a kale smoothie with banana, orange juice, soy milk, and vanilla (basically Kale Julius) with a leftover cherry nectarine crisp with some Greek lemon flavored non-dairy yogurt. I loved this breakfast.

I had one leftover strawberry banana peanut butter pancake, so I made some microwave peanut butter syrup for it (which looks awful; you really should just make this on the stovetop--but it tasted fine), a veggie sausage patty, and a JUST egg scrambled with veggies (mushrooms, spinach, and onions) and some non-dairy mozzarella.

More scramble (this time with mushrooms and chives) alongside a halved grape tomato for garnish, a veggie breakfast sausage patty, toast, and a little bowl of blackberry orange grits (more on the grits coming up in a future breakfast compilation).

Finally, a smoothie bowl that needs a bit more work before it's ready for a breakfast compilation: The base is frozen banana, soy milk, frozen mango, and some blue spirulina powder, and the toppings are banana slices, blueberries, blackberries, kiwi, fresh mango, hemp seeds, and chia seeds. Not pictured, I added granola and cashew butter to round out the meal.

Lunch

Leftover Japanese ketchup spaghetti and a bit of fruit (kiwi and blackberries). This was a really good bento, because it was so low effort, but also delicious.

More low effort and delicious leftovers: Pesto rice, smoky tofu, carrots, and a bit of cinnamon-pecan chocolate.

Are you seeing a theme yet? Here we have leftover spinach mashed potatoes, sauteed veggies (peppers, onions, and mushrooms), tempeh steak, and strawberries. The pat of vegan butter melted into the potatoes nicely when I microwaved my lunch (removing the strawberries before that, of course). I had this same lunch three days in a row and didn't get tired of it.

A working-from-home lunch to break up the endless leftover meals (sort of): I made a pasta salad that morning which was shells, the end of some pesto sauce, Vegenaise, sliced green olives, and a scallion, which I sprinkled some leftover toasted panko on top of before serving. This came alongside an Yves veggie ham sandwich that had Good Planet pepperjack, tomato, avocado, and cucumber slices.

More of my parade of leftovers: Creamy quinoa, sweet potato, barbecued soy curls, and strawberries (cut in half to fit the box). When I packed this, I forgot to season my sweet potatoes, so they weren't very interesting, but this was still pretty good.

Dinner

Delicious redundancy: Leftover refried beans and guacamole with a quesadilla and Tofutti sour cream.

I just didn't think this was interesting enough to stand as a post on its own, so I'm putting it here: Fried rice made from leftover basmati, veggies, and JUST Egg, topped with sesame seeds. Delicious, but since I have little commentary to offer on it, it gets the "random meal" treatment.

A reappearance of Mexican food from a different week: Avocado, a bean-and-mushroom burrito with some non-dairy cheese and non-dairy sour cream, and Mexican rice. I think probably the most commonly eaten thing around here sometimes will involve, in some fashion, Mexican rice and refried beans.

This was just stuff I had left in my fridge on grocery shopping day: Some leftover mashed potatoes, leftover broccoli and carrots, and the end of a package of prepared Italian-style tofu.

I wanted spaghetti and meatballs (Wegmans Don't Have a Cow supplied the meatballs) with garlic toast, but I also wanted to get in some more veggies, and I have to say this salad was one of the best I've ever made. I steamed some broccoli and ran cold water over it to stop it cooking, and tossed that with romaine, red bell pepper, yellow tomato, cucumbers, red onion, and a sliced mushroom. For my dressing, I made my usual shortcut creamy Italian by mixing some bottled Italian dressing with Vegenaise. (Italian dressing is the only one I will buy a bottle of; all other dressings I just make.) I can't deal with raw broccoli but I still love lightly cooked broccoli in salads. I really enjoyed this!