Low Bowl #21

 

This has a very unintentional fall color scheme: cubes of smoked tofu, brown rice with everything bagel seasoning, broccoli stalk namul, Korean cucumber salad, and a chickpea flour veggie pancake wedges with soy sauce for dipping. This was my lunch on Thanksgiving Day.

I don't know how my little cucumbers were still salvageable after all this time (and not all of them were, to be fair), but I was grateful for them. This recipe is from Savory Sweet Spoon and turned out to be one of the best cucumber salads I've ever made.

The broccoli stalk namul is a bit tedious to make, but allowed me to salvage my broccoli stems. (I often save the broccoli stems for later because they last longer than the florets, an important thing to be aware of when you're in avoiding-the-store mode.) I've made it before and shown you before, but in case you need it again, the recipe can be found at Plant Based Matters.

The pancakes are a recipe from Beextravegant, and they are the star of this show. Did I forget to add carrot? Yes. Did I accidentally use a bell pepper the same shade as the batter, such that the whole thing is kind of orangey? Yes. Does it matter? No. This was a chickpea flour delight and I adored it dipped in some low-sodium soy sauce. I could make a whole meal out of just the pancake wedges.

This was a successful meal. I wasn't feeling physically well on Thanksgiving, so fortunately none of this was difficult to cook--mostly I just had to chop things and measure and stir stuff. No kneading or keeping track of multiple timings or anything (because the rice was in the rice cooker, the smoked tofu just needed to be cut, and the broccoli stalk namul and cucumber salad could be prepped ahead and stuck in the fridge for later).

Here's hoping that we all find brighter days soon. In the meantime, I was and am grateful for whatever silver linings come with the clouds that are assembling on the horizons.