Meatless Monday: week 4 roundup

Posted on | January 30, 2012 | 2 Comments


By posting my weekly menu, I hope to show you how tasty, varied and achievable a vegetarian’s diet can be. May my menus inspire you to try something new and different.

Week 2 (23 January – 29 January)

I’ve incorporated green smoothies this week, and they have become a favourite breakfast now. I won’t be eating them every day, but on early weekday they sure are a great way to keep the stomach full till lunchs!

Monday

Lunch was a pleasant (though very spicy) surprise! I tried making yoga maven Kathryn Budig’s tomato, fennel & carrot soup and it was really nice. And I’m not a very big fan of fennel! Nevertheless, next time, I’ll have to be less enthusiastic with the chili pepper…

Dinner was a successful experiment: we had fresh tagliatelle with eggplant & cannellini bean pesto. I didn’t really skimp on the oil, as I stir-fried the eggplant in a few drops, but otherwise the dish would have been too dry.

Tueday

There was a bowl of Monday’s soup left for lunch, though I did succumb to a sudden craving for cheese. The too-expensive, soggy brie sandwich that I wolfed down after the soup didn’t really do the trick.

Dinner made up for my average lunch: it was tempeh curry with sweet potatoes and green beens, over brown rice. I could easily eat this every day. I used regular coconut milk and adapted the recipe a bit, but I’ll definitely return to this basic recipe again!

Wednesday

Ever since I lost my measuring cup for the rice cooker, I’ve been making too much rice at a time. Yes, I could weigh the rice beforehand, but somehow, guessing is just easier ;) And whatever’s left over, I’ll make into salad the next day. So, yesterday’s extra brown rice was added to a very tasty salad with carrot, green beans, raw spinach and avocado.

For dinner, I suddenly wanted potato and kale mash with mushrooms and walnuts. And that’s what I had.

Thursday

I’d ordered a few extra avocados with my CSA, they’re so easy to add to meals or to fulfill a peckish feeling mid-morning or mid-afternoon. For lunch, I added two small ones to bulgur, raw spinach and yesterday’s kale. It made a very green, and ok-ish tasting dish. I’ve had better…

Dinner was really good compared to lunch: homemade oven fries (slices of potatoes soaked in cold water with salt & sugar to withdraw excess moisture, baked for a while. We forgot the coating of olive oil, hence their dryness) with tempeh burgers and a salad of butter lettuce, oak lettuce & lamb’s lettuce.

Friday

Breakfast was a hurried affair, because I had an appointment at the hairdresser’s really early in the morning. I expected to be stuck there for about 2-2.5 hours (a cut & dye job) so I felt only a few slices of spelt sourdough bread would keep me going. For lunch, I had a large spinach/mango/banana/apple smoothie & toast with avocado. We were headed for a 135 min screening of Ace Attorney afterwards… by the time we arrived home, I was starving for a big bowl of pasta.

The tagliatelle with wild spinach, mixed mushrooms and Philadelphia cream cheese with herbs was just what I needed :)

Saturday

Sometimes green smoothies are just the thing, but with the temperature dropping lower and lower outside, it is difficult to withstand the pull of a comforting bowl of congee. I made mine with basmati rice, about a pound of choy sum greens, 100 grams of tofu, mixed mushrooms, celery, a dab of miso, a splash of sesame oil and faux pulled “meat”. If only I had some spring onions to top this glorious bowl…

For dinner I wanted something else pretty quick and tasty, so I made white bean burgers. I had half a can of cannellini beans in the fridge, a few mushrooms, walnuts, lots of dried herbs. Add to that a clove of garlic, onion powder and cayenne pepper. Have to adjust the proportions though, because it was very tasty, but it kind of fell apart.

As for snacking, I felt like doing it non-stop… I made a batch of nori-chips (lightly brushed with sesame oil and sprinkled with salt, baked in a pan, cut into pieces) and even a very yummy coconut milk & vanilla agar pudding. I need to tweak this recipe before I share it with you guys.

Sunday

S. and me felt too lazy to make anything special for our weekend breakfast. I guess a cheese sandwich counts somewhat? For lunch I whipped up another of my favourite green smoothies: banana, frozen strawberries, apple, açaí powder and baby bok choy. But running around downtown to get groceries and library books got my appetite fired up again; my mid-afternoon snack was a bowl of vegetable dumplings and stir-fried baby bok choy.

I had my eye on a recipe from the Everyday Happy Herbivore cookbook. It’s called Sweet Potato Dal and is basically an Indian spiced soup (garam masala and turmeric) with red lentils and half a sweet potato. I replaced the spinach with escarole endive, because I must have eaten close to a kilo of the stuff this past week and the escarole is taking quite a lot of space in the fridge. My adapations included adding more water and more endive. I can’t say it’s bland, because I adjusted the spices and stock, but it just didn’t taste like soup to me. A bit thicker plus perhaps coconut milk would have made it a perfect accompaniment to rice or some bread. Unfortunately, this is not a keeper.

What about you? How was your week?

Happy cooking!

Category: Kitchen
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Comments

2 Responses to “Meatless Monday: week 4 roundup”

  1. Joy Weese Moll
    January 30th, 2012 @ 21:16

    Looks like a good week. The rice salad struck me as particularly yummy. I deliberately cook too much rice to have leftovers.

    Cool that you get avocados in your CSA. We don’t get those here in Missouri. In fact, my CSA is done until spring. I did get to a Farmers Market over the weekend and nabbed some local potatoes and sweet potatoes.

    [Reply]

  2. Uniflame
    January 31st, 2012 @ 18:03

    This looks great as always :) What would a good green smoothie to start with? In a way that you don’t really taste the veggies yet? :)

    [Reply]

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