Staycation Meal #3

 

After my overwhelming trip to the grocery store--which was really just a mad dash for things I knew I needed, rather than the kind of thoughtful trip I usually take--I pulled together a surprisingly good, seasonal meal for a staycation lunch. This consisted of poppyseed noodles, a rich butternut squash broccoli casserole with chickpeas in a spiced coconut milk broth (recipe from Yummy Bowl), and a veggie side I improvised (more on that below). This was really satisfying.

The casserole still has quite a bit of "juice" when it comes out of the oven, but I figured that would be the case, so I served kind of plain things with it and put everything in a bowl to let the flavors mingle. It had been a while since I made this style of vegan noodles (macaroni dumplings, but they look and feel like egg noodles), but they go with basically anything. They're delicious, mind you, but they also go with everything, I am telling you.

For the rest, I cooked some onion and mushrooms down until they'd browned, then added some spinach. After it had wilted, I splashed in some soy sauce, and that was it--that way to cook spinach and mushrooms together remains one of my absolute favorites.

This may look messy to an extent, but by putting it a bowl, I let the coconut milk broth run down underneath the noodles and spinach, and everything went together perfectly. Happy staycation to me!