Sequestration Meal #583

 

I followed no recipes here. And I think this is the best meal I've had so far this year! This is a mashed potato bowl with spicy barbecue chickpeas, pepper and onion sauté, and steamed broccoli in carrot miso sauce, all topped off with black and white sesame seeds.

I remember that well before I was vegan, I would look at vegan food blogs and think how odd some of the foods were. And when I was a baby vegan, I was willing to try them, but I'd be highly unlikely to cook them. I think this bowl may fall into that "maybe too vegan for most" category. If that's you, don't worry. There are plenty of other options.

But if this seems good to you, but also challenging, take heart, too--because this was so simple to prepare. That may be true because I have nearly seven years of vegan cooking under my belt, but honestly I don't think so.

Its starts out with my usual mashed potatoes (Yukon gold, peeled and boiled in salted water, drained, mashed with vegan butter and soy milk) that have been slightly elevated with some onion powder, garlic powder, and black pepper. 

One of my favorite things to have with mashed potatoes is some sauteed strips of bell pepper and onion, so while the potatoes cooked I tossed half a sliced onion and the remainder of some bell peppers I had in my fridge into a skillet with some olive oil and salt and pepper, then just stirred them here and there while I prepped the rest of the things.

Then, we have the chickpeas. I had half a can left in the fridge after making some smashed chickpea salad, and I had an open bottle of barbecue sauce in the refrigerator door. It was Wegmans Asian-style barbecue sauce, which I'd bought on sale a while ago. It's spicy, with a kick of jalapenos (which aren't Asian, but we won't argue). I chopped up the rest of the onion I had left from the onions and peppers, and I cooked the chopped onion in some olive oil and a pinch of salt. When that was done, I added the chickpeas and warmed them through, then finally added some of the barbecue sauce and let it simmer a bit.

Finally, the broccoli. I cut it and steamed it in my microwave steamer, then tossed it with leftover carrot miso sauce (you saw some penne with that sauce on Friday). I warmed that through and we were ready to assemble.

On top of a bed of mashed potatoes, I arranged everything else, and since it had a vague East-West fusion thing going on due to the "Asian" barbecue sauce and the miso for the broccoli, I decided to garnish it all with sesame seeds.

I love that even on low energy days I can still pull something together like this--delicious, balanced, and reasonably nutritious (though of course follow your doctor's advice on your nutrition). I never could have, long ago, when I probably would have opened a can of baked beans to eat with rice and maybe some steamed broccoli. And that's still a good option! But I can tell, from a meal like this, how much my thinking around food has been rewired. Here's to progress. And mashed potatoes.