Random Meals #12

In the midst of all of the strain we've all been experiencing, sometimes, all we can do is to feed ourselves. Here's what that's looked like for me over the past few stressful months, with fifteen random meals I pulled together--5 breakfasts, 5 lunches, and 5 dinners.

Breakfast

On a morning when I was deliberately using stuff in the fridge up, I made fried rice with leftover rice, an assortment of veggies I found in there, and a chopped up folded JUST Egg (the last one in the package). This is one of my favorite things in general, so of course I enjoyed my breakfast.

I don't know what I was setting out to do here, but it's a pancake bowl, basically--little pancakes made from a mix, homemade berry syrup, banana slices, some non-dairy yogurt, and a sausage for protein. It looks a bit strange and was a bit messy to eat but it tasted good.

I had the syrup but no pancake mix anymore, so this breakfast was a result of that: Toast with margarine and sweet potato butter, a grain coffee soy latte, and sliced bananas topped with almond milk yogurt and berry syrup. It was good; I'm not going to overthink it.

Eat the colors! Here I have a sliced peach, some raspberries, toast spread with almond butter and sweet potato butter and garnished with chia and hemp seeds, and a double-blue peppermint moon milk. I love that moon milk recipe (found at Moon and Spoon and Yum), and every time I make it I wish there were someone around to give a bit to for a taste. This was an amazingly satisfying breakfast.

When summer began giving way to fall, I predictably started to want more savory options. This breakfast consists of a soy and grain coffee latte, roasted butternut squash, tofu scramble, and two slices of seedy toast with different spreads: Margarine and pistachio cream. This worked well! I had the roasted butternut squash left over from something else, or otherwise wouldn't think to have it for breakfast, but now I think it's a perfect side for a scramble--sweet, savory, and seasonal.

Lunch

Sometimes, you want your leftovers to seem different, so I turned my mashed potatoes into mashed potato cakes. Because it was so unbearably hot and my air conditioning really was not doing the job (this was a summer random meal), I tried baking them in the toaster oven alongside a couple of Beyond breakfast sausage links (I didn't want to stand over the stove). They didn't firm up well, so I wouldn't recommend that method unless tweaks were made, but they were delicious and that was what mattered. With that, I had some leftover lemony green beans and some peppers sauteed with onion (perhaps more onion than pepper). This was perfectly serviceable.

This isn't different at all, but it's fine: A vegan sandwich with deli slices of some sort (I think they were the Lightlife garlic slices), some non-dairy cheese (probably gouda), and vegan mayo on whole grain toast, some butter lettuce with homemade tahini dressing, some lentil crisps, and the end of a bag of kettle cooked gochujang potato chips. It did the job! I don't think tahini goes with butter lettuce, though; I would have a lemony vinaigrette next time.

This was a lunch to mostly just clear stuff out of the fridge. I had part of a can of white beans, some cooked quinoa, a partial can of diced tomatoes, and some spinach getting sad. I cooked a bit of onion and then added the rest with a bit of veggie broth and simmered it down with some seasonings (Italian seasoning, onion powder, and garlic powder, if I recall correctly). I had that with the end of some tofu cornbread. It wasn't the best meal I have ever had, but it wasn't bad, either!

When grocery shopping day comes around, one gets creative. I have here a leftover ketchup-glazed tofu sandwich (whole grain toast, mayo, cucumber, and green leaf lettuce) and some leftover un-sauced firecracker brussels sprouts. I mixed a bit of the sauce with mayo and used it like a sriracha mayo dipping sauce for the brussels sprouts, which functioned as nuggets. This was delicious!

This is a bit unconventional, but somehow it worked. I had some Caribbean cauliflower rice with black beans in my freezer, and some Banza chipotle rice in the fridge, so that was the main basis for the bowl. I also had some leftover cashew and sweet potato cheese that I thinned out with some soy milk to put on top. Banza rice turned out to be amazing with some cheesy sauce! I rounded out this lunch with sliced avocado and a quesadilla on a protein tortilla with non-dairy cheese and veggies I had on hand--mushrooms, onions, red bell pepper, and spinach. I wouldn't purposefully set out to make something like this, but on this day, it was perfect.

Dinner

I had some leftover mashed potatoes, but not enough for me to consider it a full serving. So I shredded a carrot, chopped a scallion, and mixed everything up with what was essentially homemade ranch dressing. I had that potato-carrot salad thing with some vegan nuggets. Weird? Yes. But I ate it, and it wasn't bad!

It's a vegan cheeseburger and fries--self-explanatory, and delicious. I sometimes need convenience food. The store had very few potato options, so I settled for these crispy oven fries.

Would this be a random meals compilation without peanut butter ramen? Of course not. So here's this most recent peanut butter ramen, made with gochujang and absolutely delicious.

Every so often, I need some beans and weenies with macaroni and cheese (all vegan, of course). I hadn't made this in ages, but it called to me. I'm glad I did, because this was delicious!

Here's a fridge clear out meal: I had some leftover green rice, so I made a sort of Mexican egg fried rice with JUST Egg, mushrooms, red bell peppers, onions, and spinach. Alongside that I had some seedy toast with spicy red pepper hummus to finish off both the loaf of bread and the hummus. It was unconventional, but tasty.

Have you had any interesting combinations lately?