Random Meals #8

Here's an assortment of stuff, eaten over the past few months. My random breakfasts definitely follow a pattern this time, so apologies if you're not a toast person.

As usual, there are five breakfasts, five lunches, and five dinners here. I eat leftovers a lot, and for some reason, I've found you like looking at the leftovers I eat. So here they are!

Breakfast

A colorful, tasty way to start a morning: Fresh pineapple, a soy milk and Cafix soy latte, some spirulina hemp seed energy bites, and toast with hazelnut butter and strawberry jam. Really, this is a 10 out of 10. It has color, texture, and flavor contrasts and combines a lot of different nutrients.

Here's another similar color profile, with spirulina chia pudding topped with mango and cacao nibs, orange juice, and peppers and "eggs" (JUST Egg) on toast.

For perhaps my very most random of random breakfasts in ages, here we have a marmalade muffin (from my freezer) surrounded by clementine segments, some leftover blueberry-cucumber barley salad, the tiniest bit of leftover chickpea salad with three saltine crackers, and a Cafix soy latte. Say what you will about this, but this was actually a pretty awesome way to get a day going.

More stuff on toast. Here is a fruit salad (clementine segments, strawberries, kiwi), a cup of walnut/almond/job's tears tea with soy milk, and two toasts. One has leftover pea spread with tomatoes. The other has peanut butter, soy yogurt, kiwi, strawberries, and a drizzle of agave. This was a good breakfast!

For this one, the main event really is this gorgeous fruit salad, which was full of summery delights: Strawberries, cherries, clementines, bananas, kiwi, and apricots. I also added some hemp seeds for protein. I had that with some cream-cheese-and-cucumber toast with dill and a soy milk Cafix latte. I may not enjoy the hot weather we're having, but I love the heck out of the summer fruit.

Lunch

As you might have imagined based on seeing that bit of chickpea salad, there was a chickpea salad sandwich (with lettuce on whole wheat toast) in this round of random meals. I had that sandwich with some kale chips and a dessert cup of clementine segments, crispy chocolate-covered Cocomels, and some Dandies mini marshmallows. This was excellent; no complaints.

You may recall the "beef" and barley soup I showed you a while ago. Well, it turns out, it was one of those soups that becomes infinitely better when had the next day. And it's even better when I splurge on a loaf of good bakery bread and a beefsteak tomato (seriously, the cost of beefsteak tomatoes boggles the mind) and make a tomato sandwich to go with it. This meal was amazing.

An extra-basic bento: Rice with shiso furikake, broccoli in miso carrot sauce, saucy beans, and cherry tomato/avocado/corn salad. Such meals are very satisfying, if not much to blog about.

Another leftovers bento: Salad with leftover barley risotto. This wasn't anything exciting, but it got the job done!

I had some leftover Spanish rice--I always seem to make too much Spanish rice--so I opened a can of refried beans for a lazy weekend lunch. I also had a spinach quesadilla, avocado, and some Tofutti sour cream. My favorite part of this meal was the spinach quesadilla--sometimes they just turn out really well, for whatever reason.

Dinner

I had some leftover spinach and artichoke casserole that was not inspiring me, so I added some non-dairy sour cream and topped it with Daiya mozzarella and got it all hot and melty in the microwave. I added a garnish of fresh parsley because, hey, it was there. This was pretty great!

There is spicy peanut butter ramen in about half of these random meals compilations. You expect nothing less of me, right?

This was a stuff-in-the-fridge meal that was actually pretty great: Leftover Mexican rice, a Daiya cheddar-and-veggie quesadilla (onions, spinach, and mushrooms), Tofutti sour cream, and a tofu cutlet with spicy cilantro chimichurri sauce.

This looks like lunch, but it was dinner. The recipe that originally introduced me to the wonders of smoked tofu is "crab" salad rolls from the Viet Vegan. I hadn't had one years, but I had the ingredients on hand and very little energy, so it made a perfect meal one night when the world was unbearable for me.

Another example of a lunch-style dinner: A Chicago-esque hot dog. This one has a bun that has been toasted with a little margarine, some vegan mayo, red onion, dill pickle, mustard, and some thin slices of a tiny tomato. It was fine, and great on a low appetite evening.

Have you had anything special recently?