Random Meals #13

Where would we be without my randomness? This randomness is a winter-into-spring compilation: Five breakfasts, five lunches, and five dinners, all with varying degrees of weird.

Breakfast

I couldn't decide whether I wanted to go all-savory or have sweet things, so I had a bit of both. I had some kiwi chunks with clementine segments and some cherry tomatoes with mini cucumber on the side of an English muffin with veggie sausage, a folded JUST Egg patty, and some non-dairy cheddar. I had all that with some Teeccino with a bit of soy milk. It was perfect.

Early on in my vegan life, I found a recipe for tofu scramble tater tot casserole that I made over and over because it was something safe and reliable. I didn't have all I needed for it, but it was the inspiration for this casserole during a recent "pantry challenge," with a base of both tater tots and broccoli puffs (I didn't have enough of either to use just one) and the tofu scrambled with onions, peppers, mushrooms, broccoli, tomatoes, and some non-dairy cheese. With some sriracha and toast, this casserole made four delightful random breakfasts.

One morning, when I simply felt too overwhelmed to do anything else, I preheated my oven and baked up some broccoli puffs and a veggie sausage, and had that with ketchup and some toast with I Can't Believe It's Not Butter vegan spread and raspberry-hibiscus preserves. Despite being broccoli, the puffs are not green; they'd be more beautiful that way and so would my breakfast. But they tasted good and went well with breakfast sausage. Not pictured, I made myself a soy latte with date syrup to go along with this, which was great with my sweet toast. This meal was kind of eaten in courses, because broccoli puffs do not go well with jam, but it worked.

I roasted a sweet potato, mashed it with nut butter and soy milk and seasonings (cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla, and salt, as I recall), then topped it with baked apples and some chopped mesquite walnuts. This would have been great with non-dairy yogurt if I had it, but was still delicious as it was.

Here's one of the most soothing breakfasts I know: Fruit salad, a grain coffee and soy milk latte, and buttery farina. The farina is also made with soy milk; it's one of those hidden protein meals. It was delicious, but such things always are.

Lunch

I had a lentil beet burger patty and no interest in doing the salad bowl treatment thing, so I made, well, maybe a burger, but it was on multigrain and seed bread, so maybe more of a patty melt thing? Anyway. I spread the bread with vegan mayo and added a slice of non-dairy cheddar. I packed that with some flaky sea salt, lettuce, and tomato to finish assembling the burger at lunch. I stuck a bag of barbecue chips on the side. It was a good lunch. No real surprise there, of course, because if you add mayo and cheese, that improves many things!

Leftover soup with a veggie salami sandwich. This isn't that random, but there is no where else to put a meal like this!

Leftover breakfast can be lunch. Here we have a clementine, some chocolate chunks, dried cranberries, homemade breakfast sausage patties, and homemade eggy green bean patties. Hey, if you can have it for breakfast and feel good about it, you can have it anytime, I say.

Another sandwich: Toasted seedy bread, vegan mayo, lettuce, tomato, red onion, cucumber, peppered Tofurky, and non-dairy cheddar, all with a Cara Cara orange. This, with a hot cup of herbal tea (not pictured) really made for a perfect lunch on a day I was totally over it.

This was just an assemblage of leftovers: Cucumber edamame salad, brown rice, Korean-style red lentils, and braised cabbage with carrots and onions. This worked out fine, if not at all beautiful.

Dinner

Some weekends, one just needs to raid the fridge for a meal. I had some leftover okra rice and an assortment of vegetables, which I cooked up into a soup with some veggie broth and had alongside an open-faced Tofurky sandwich (I didn't have enough Tofurky or bread for a whole sandwich and wasn't inclined to cut it in half this time). I don't know what made this soup so amazing, but it was delicious, one of the best I've ever had. It can't be replicated, of course, but that doesn't matter. Some good things are just for the moment they're in. Even when that moment is after dark when the photographs of the food are going to look like that. (Sorry, everyone!)

An assortment of leftovers: Leftover white bean orzo with leeks and spinach, roasted cauliflower and broccoli, baked pakoras, and white bean miso hummus. It really worked well! The  baked pakoras hold up really well as leftovers.

Ramen (of course)! But I had some smoked tofu so I didn't necessarily need peanut butter for protein the way I usually do with ramen, so what I did was to chop up the smoked tofu and have that with the noodles in an improvisational miso broth. I used the seasoning packet that came with the noodles (it was a vegetable variety), plus some soy sauce, mirin, sesame oil, and chili oil along with the miso. It very much ended up tasting like my memory of chicken noodle soup, a soothing meal on an emotionally challenging day.

Here's an old favorite we haven't seen here in a while: Frito chili pie! I had one snack pack of Fritos and really didn't want to go to the store yet, so I made some TVP chili with what I had on hand and some cashew sour cream and made this meal. I pulled out some shredded vegan cheddar, romaine, red onion, and black olives while I was at it. Although I made my chili ridiculously spicy thanks to the huge jalapeno with seeds I added in, the cashew cream saved me from the error of my ways. This was delicious.

Finally, we have some leftover pumpkin pot pie, eaten from the meal it was microwaved in. It was tasty, if a bit messy looking.

Here's to eating whatever makes sense at the time!