Random Meals #6

This was an interesting set of meals. I was really stressed out for many of the days represented here, so this compilation has a lot of easy, safe food. There are many scrambles and toasts. I got really into sandwiches and had my share of ramen, too. It ebbs and flows; sometimes one just has to go with it!

Breakfast

Keeping muffins in my freezer makes for an easy breakfast sometimes; here, a ginger pumpkin chocolate chip muffin from my freezer accompanies a lemony banana and mango smoothie. This was wonderful, though I made a bit too much smoothie (is there such a thing?) and felt overstuffed for most of the morning.

A very typical breakfast: Fruit (bananas, mango, and Clementine segments), toast, JUST Egg scrambled with veggies, and a vegan sausage patty. This is one of my favorite ways to begin a day.

Hash brown casserole, some Beyond Breakfast sausage links, and toast. Not pictured, I had orange juice with this and spread some margarine and strawberry jam on my toast. This was a really enjoyable, savory, warm breakfast on a chilly morning.

Some of this you've seen in other iterations. Here we have odds and ends that ended up making a great breakfast: A molasses almond butter energy bite, a cup of hot molasses soy milk (I guess I was into molasses--must have needed iron or something!), and toast spread with the last bits of roasted carrot spread and beet hummus, topped with sliced tomato, flaky salt, and fresh ground black pepper. It was vibrant and pretty and would have been Instagram-worthy, probably, if I had put some shredded spinach on the toast for a pop of green.

This is something we'll call adventures with leftovers. I had a leftover fruit salad cup (though maybe I should call that make-ahead fruit salad), a mocha latte I made with some mocha Teeccino I'd made the night before and didn't finish, some toast with margarine, and a chickpea flour scramble that included, among other things, some leftover garlic mashed broccoli. This was amazing and I'm wondering if it even deserves to be included with the randomness, as good as it was.

 

Lunch

This one needs no explanation, really, but here's a brief overview: This is a Tofurky and non-dairy smoked gouda sandwich on whole grain toast with Vegenaise, lettuce, tomato, red onion, and dill pickle. One the side, I have some sweet chili potato chips.

And another sandwich meal: Tofu eggless salad ready to assemble with spinach, tomatoes, red onion, Spanish olives, and a little cup of flaky salt. That goes alongside some Clementine segments, some dark chocolate pieces, and some chickpea puffs. Classic and pretty!

Having been in sandwich mode more than usual, here's yet another one: Tofurky, spinach, red onion, and avocado on multigrain bread is served along with chickpea puffs, some tea biscuits, some chocolate pieces, Clementine segments, and sliced kiwi. This is how you eat close-but-not-the-same meals two days in a row without feeling like everything is redundant.

Taking a break from sandwiches, here I have some sliced apple, Clementine segments, a few squares of dark chocolate, Hippeas, and Tofurky-olive-cream cheese pinwheels. Not bad for grocery shopping day!

But of course I went right back to sandwiches, because this was that kind of season for me. So here is a Tofurky and Follow Your Heart smoked gouda sandwich with some jalapeno-flavored potato chips and a cucumber-apple salad. I enjoyed this very thoroughly and would not have changed a thing.

Dinner

With some leftover liquid mozzarella, I decided to use up a bottle of barbecue sauce in my fridge and make a barbecued chickpea pizza. It consists of the sauce, onions, red bell pepper, and chickpeas coated in more barbecue sauce and seasonings, the obvious liquid mozzarella cheese, and a post-baking addition of a cilantro ranch sauce I drizzled over everything. It looks messy and it was messy to eat, but it was pretty good. I don't think I've perfected this yet, though.

Spicy peanut butter ramen is a redundant, easy classic for me now. It's definitely replaced my previous default "can't deal with things right now" meal (Annie's frozen tofu scramble dinner used to hold that spot). Given what things cost these days, it helps to know I have something cheap and easy to rely on. That frozen tofu meal is four or five times the cost of peanut butter ramen!

As I tried to avoid redundancy with my ramen--and I also had a few odds and ends to use up--I took my noodle bowl in a different direction one day. This is a creamy coconut curry ramen. I read a bunch of recipes before mostly setting forth on my own, but I was largely guided by Pinch of Yum's recipe. My tofu was leftover baked maple Dijon tofu I warmed up, though, and I used (rather faded) broccoli rather than bok choy. I also scaled it down to one serving. I don't know how much it ended up resembling anybody's recipe, but it was good. The broth, especially, is one I would definitely make again. It consisted of the veggie seasoning packet from my ramen noodles added to water and coconut milk, plus the curry powder, garlic, ginger, and veggies added a lot to the dish, too. It was so much broth that you can't really see the noodles and my tofu is largely submerged, so this wasn't really that photogenic of a meal, but it was delicious.

Sometimes, what I put together doesn't seem to, well, go together, but it works, somehow. This is Russian salad, some leftover beans I'd simmered with onions, garlic, and Rotel tomatoes, and a quesadilla made from some non-dairy pepper jack, spinach, onions, and mushrooms. This one may be random, but it was one of my best efforts. It was delicious and reasonably well-balanced. So who cares if it is even remotely logical?

I liked that mushroom and spinach quesadilla so much I made it again the next day to go with some of my Amish style ham and pea salad. I also added some non-dairy sour cream to go with my quesadilla. This was a cheesy, delicious meal.

Bonus Randomness

I was working on a recipe for pumpkin grits with spinach and tried something out; it was good but needed a bit of work. Nonetheless, it was pretty enough to show you! Not shown here, I had these grits with tea and a sausage patty. And I did end up working out a recipe worth sharing, in the end.

I tried something out and it wasn't great, which happens sometimes. I made the recipe for cranberry pudding in American Wholefoods Cuisine, which consists pretty much of wheat flour, molasses, and cranberries, and topped that with some homemade lemon custard. It was, sadly, not great, and I wasn't able to finish the whole batch. I thus have not included it in a breakfast round-up, because I don't recommend it, but I am glad I tried it anyway.

Hey, we do what we can, and sometimes it works!