Pizza and snacks

This looks like a sad little lunch, but it was actually quite okay. I had pieces of premade pizza and a little container with two soy sausages and some mini-bell peppers filled with tomato-potato-salad. Yummy!

Dal and Potato Bhajias

A lunch with Indian inspiration - I had rice with dal and the potato bhajias from Linda Majzlik: A vegan taste of India. I brought some ketchup as a dip in the small container.
My midmorning snack was a sandwich with avocado and a red coleslaw.

Baked Potatoes with Zaziki

This lunch was quite big and hearty. I had baked potatos + vegan tzatziki and a radish salad.
The most interesting thing was probably what I had brought for second breakfast, a huge portion of pasta frittata. Sometimes it's funny how ideas come up. Although I try to limit my consumption of eggs, from time to time I love some fried pasta with scrambled egg. The other day I came across a blogger who had served this same dish in a slightly different form - as a frittata, which is really practical as food on the go, because you can actually eat it with your hands. It was a real Duh!-moment.

Mittwochsbox 26th of March, 2013 - Greek

On two wednesdays a month Mone from the German website http://leckerbox.com/ invites bloggers to show a takeaway lunch about a theme she proposes. This week the motto was "Greek kitchen".
Unfortunately I waited till yesterday before I made and photographed my lunch, and I was not really happy about it, especially about the presentation, but I didn't have time for something new.
So, here it is: big white beans in tomato sauce and courgettes with a tomato-bulgur-filling plus some raw bell pepper. The recipe for the courgettes is from Linda Majzlik: A vegan taste of Greece, the same as the dessert based on dried fruit.

Couscous and Burger

This looks absolutely huge, but that's because I brought a burger for second breakfast and packed all the ingredients separately. In the small container I had some homemade zucchini-salsa.
When planning my lunch, I had a look in the freezer and found this - a second portion of the African corn-stew that I already had weeks ago, this time with couscous. As a side dish I brought some edamame.

My difficult relationship with Spanish cuisine

First I would like to apologize for the fact that this post is not only longish, but also a bit of a rant...
Whenever I'm telling people abroad where I live, their reaction usually is: "Spain? How wonderful! The sun, the beach, the delicious food!"
I totally agree about the weather and the beach, but after ten years of permanent residence here I'm still looking for the delicious food. You see, Spain is not a great country for vegetarians. There are quite a few vegetarian restaurants, especially here in Barcelona, but the problem are all the other restaurants that have never heard of the vegetarian diet and the fact that eating out is such a big part of social life in Spain. In no-vegetarian-restaurants my only choice is often a green salad and a tortilla, which is okay, but just not great.
So I really don't appreciate the Spanish cuisine apart from Catalan bread with tomato, the already mentioned but a bit too omnipresent tortilla, gazpacho and the spicy patatas bravas.
A Catalan friend of mine argued that I can actually not judge the local kitchen for the simple fact that I would not try the 90 % of it made with meat/fish/poultry. And he somehow has a point, although I'm still wondering - do I WANT to appreciate a way of cooking and eating that is depending so much on cruelty against animals and shows so little variety of ingredients and ways of preparation? Do I WANT to appreciate a cuisine that does not take me into account?
Wanting to have an open mind, I finally bought this cookbook
http://www.amazon.es/The-Spanish-Table-Anya-Bremzen/dp/0761135553/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1395320575&sr=8-1&keywords=new+spanish+table
in the hope of finding interesting recipes that were in part vegetarian or easy to adopt. Hm, although it offers a huge array of dishes, it still did not convince me, but I will try to make some of the recipes and see if I can reconcile with the food of my "adopted country".
Here I'm starting with some very classic dishes. I made gazpacho (yummy!) and "meatballs" with tomato sauce, which seem to be very popular here. It's been a while that I ate real meatballs, but this version made of tvp tasted uncannily similar. The green stuff is my take on a typical Catalan dish - spinach with pine nuts and raisins. I used chopped dates because I'm not keen on raisins. I also tried to make an eggless version of the tortilla de patata, but it turned out more like latkes.
So, that's it. The subject of food here in Spain will probably turn up again, so stay tuned. :-)

Edit: If anyone can recommend any good cookbooks, magazines or websites for Spanish Vegetarian cooking, I'm very interested! I read Spanish and Catalan, no problem.

Turkish inspired

For this lunch I made a kind of Turkish mini-pizza. For the topping I used a recipe for lahmacun and substituted the meat by tvp. The lahmacun that I have seen in Turkish takeaways is more like a kind of wrap, but I my dough usually get hard and dry if I try to roll it out so thinely and then bake it, so I prefer to make it a bit thicker, like an Italian pizza.
As a side dish I brought big white beans in a ketchup-mustard-marinade, which were surprisingly delicious.
My second breakfast was a bagel with hummus and a grated carrot.

Rice and Raw Vegetables

I had a gestalt-workshop last Saturday and had to prepare my food for the day fast. Fortunately I still found a container with stirfry-rice in the freezer, which I accompanied by raw vegetables, a pretzel and a banana.

Pasta with Soy Sauce

For this lunch I prepared one of my favourite recipes, pasta with fried vegetables and soy sauce. I improvised a little salad as a side dish.
My midmorning snack was nut bread with a tomato-radish-spread. I'm showing you one piece of bread without the spread so that you can admire the incredible texture. I made this easy and delicious bread myself following this recipe by My New Roots:
http://www.mynewroots.org/site/2013/02/the-life-changing-loaf-of-bread/
I also included two sweets in the photo. Lately I'm succumbing again to my "addiction" to sugar and sweets, so I thought I should document that as well and not only show you the healthy stuff I eat.

My Big Fat Greek Lunch

One of my boyfriend's uncles loves everything Greek, and the other day he gave me a package of delicious pita bread as a gift. I decided to create a thematic lunch around it. So I brought a vegan moussaka (on the right) and two vegan homemade spreads with the bread. I prepared skordalia, a potato dip, and mohamara (made of bell peppers and walnuts), which is actually more Libanese than Greek, but well. I filled the remaining space with raw cauliflower.

Asian

For this lunch I made potstickers, or gyoza, for the first time in my life. I really like to eat them, but I know only one place here in Barcelona where they sell a Vegetarian version, and it's far away from my daily routes. So I always wanted to make them myself but was discouraged by the idea of making the dough myself. But when I found premade dough in an Asia shop, I gave it a try. My filling consisted of cabbage and TVP, I first steamed and then fried them. They turned out quite okay, although I still have to work on the filling.
What I'm really proud of are the korokke, the Japanese croquettes, which were my second breakfast. I improvised a filling with potatoes, corn and peas and coated them with panko. If you ever want to try them (there a lots of recipes to be found on the internet) I really recommend to freeze them before you coat and fry them, it makes it so much easier to handle them and they don't fall apart.
I also brought some storebought tonkatsu sauce for the croquettes and spicy cucumber slices as a side dish.

Japanese Box, Italian Lunch

So, I bought myself a bento box! This is a three tiered model by Unit Colors.
I had been tempted by this line ever since I saw it first on the internet, because of its beautiful colours.
I actually did not think these boxes would be superpractical for my style of life, but then I found one with a 50% discount in a fancy-schmancy shop just around the corner from my office and succumbed.
It has one big container and two slightly smaller ones. I like the fact that you can pack things that are going to be reheated and those that are eaten cold separately, and that I can transport everything vertically.
But although the box has a total volume of nearly one liter, which is a lot, I feel kind of restricted by the form of the containers.
Here is what I packed into the bento box on its first outing:

In the middle we have my lunch, which consisted of gnocci with a vegan mushroom-sauce,
on the left a skewer with cherry tomatoes and pieces of marinated mozzarella and on the right puff pastry with a filling of fresh spinach.

Quinoa Stir-fry and a Bell Pepper Side Dish

For this day I wanted to do something with quinoa and looked around on the internet until I found a recipe for a vegan quinoa chowder. I did not want the soupy consistency, so I made it as a stir-fry instead. As a side dish I prepared some fried bell pepper with garlic, almond flakes and soysauce. My midmorning snack were cucumber sandwiches.

Mittwochsbox - 12th of March, 2014: Mexican

Today I'm participating in my first blog event, I'm really exited! On two wednesdays a month Simone from the German blog http://blog.leckerbox.com/ invites everybody to show a lunchbox about a theme she proposes.
This week it's Mexican cuisine. I already had a Mexican lunch with my standard dishes not long ago, and I did not want to just repeat all those typical variations on tortillas and avocado (although they finally make an appearance...), so I did a bit of research.
It's not easy to find authentic vegetarian/vegan Mexican dishes that are a bit different, so I ended up chosing some ideas inspired by Mexico on the German website http://veganwelt.de/ .
On the right you have a potato stirfry and two mini bell peppers filled with quinoa on a bed of chimichurri champignons.
On the left you can see my midmorning snacks and dessert: burrito-"sushi" filled with homemade zucchini-salsa, seitan and avocado, two tangerines and sweet empanadas with pineapple filling.
So ... that's a lot of food. I'm not an ambitious person, but I always want to do things "right", so I might have overdone it a bit. At least today I will not have to buy a chocolate bar on my way home because I've run out of provisions!

Kind of Japanese

For this day I made udon noodles with coconut-curry. It was accompanied by my beloved kinpira-carrots. As dessert I brought little homemade fruit bars with cherry-marzipan-flavour. Yummy!
I also had a very hearty second breakfast - onigiri and raw bellpepper sticks.
I had never eaten onigiri until last week - I just never had had the occasion. Then last week a friend took me to this beautiful Japanese café: http://www.akashigallery.com/, and I tried my first onigiri. I had always wondered if these were made with plain sticky rice or if they were seasoned with rice vinegar like sushi. The one I tried seemed to be seasoned, although subtly. It had an avocado-wasabi filling, and today I tried to recreate it at home. It turned out quite nicely.

Pasta with Pesto and Cabbage Wraps

This lunch wasn't a big success... I brought pasta with pesto, cherry tomatoes and wraps filled with coleslaw. The coleslaw recipe was new to me and kind of meh, so I will try something else next time.

Rice with Vegetables, Lentils and Hummus Rolls

For this lunch I made a colourful rice with fried vegetables and accompanied it by a fruity lentil dish. My midmorning snack were carrot rolls filled with hummus. I wasn't to keen on the rolls because I had to precook the carrots to be able to bend them, and I don't really like the sweetish taste of cooked carrots, unless they are nicely seasoned or combined with something a bit stronger.
Today everything was vegan.

Leek Soup and Mushroom Sandwich

For this little lunch I prepared a leek soup with some soy milk and a sandwich with a mushroom-seitan filling. I brought two tangerines for second breakfast.

Couscous with Ratatouille

I prepared this lunch the night before and in a hurry, so I needed things that were easy and fast.
The main dish was couscous with a ratatouille sauce that was a convenience product, I just had to add vegetables and water.
I brought two different things as snacks - first little breadballs with nuts and seeds. They are quite simple - I unfroze a premade pretzel, cut it into pieces and covered those with the nuts, then I put them ten minutes into the oven - ready.
The strange white thing in the photo is a hardboiled egg. I usually don't eat many eggs, but I had bought some Japanese eggformers some time ago and never used them, so I wanted at least to try them. It didn't really work (the egg should look like a star, not like a blob), probably because my egg was too small. I think I'll try again and then I might pass the shapers on to somebody who eats eggs more frequently, maybe my little niece.

... and a Red One

Lately I seem to be drawn towards thematic lunches, especially those involving colours. Today I had a lot of red things - my lunch were spaghetti with a vegetarian Bolognese sauce and a cherry yoghurt. For second breakfast I brought little vegetable patties with pumpkin, carrots and red cabbage plus a little ketchup for dipping.

White lunch

I suppose this could be considered a thematic lunch, as this day everything I brought was white/whitish.
My main dish was a pasta salad that brings lots of childhood memories. My parents and I  don't have the same taste when it comes to food, but this is one of my mother's recipes that I make regularly.
It couldn't be easier, just mix cooked and cooled pasta with mayonnaise, cooked peas and pieces of tangerine. Salt and pepper, ready! Whereas usually it's recommendable to use fresh vegetables and fruit, this salad is best made with both peas and tangerines from the can. I find it quite retro. Or is it vintage, if my mother has been making it regularly since the seventies? ;-)
My second breakfast were sandwich bread rolls with cheese, mustard and gherkins, accompanied by raw cauliflower.