Lunch: Quinoa Salad and Black Bean Dip

I love quinoa in a salad. And I almost can't wait to go to work tomorrow so I can eat this one!

I found this reicipe: Green Goddess Salad (from Healthy. Happy. Life.) on Pinterest and thought it'd be a perfect portable, filling but light lunch to take to work.

My greens were peas, brocolli and english spinach shredded. I also chucked in a tomato I found in the fridge. I used quinoa instead of cous cous because it's what I had in the cupboard. Next weeks lunches might have to feature whole wheat cous cous! I used a chopped ruby red grapefruit instead of orange (really good idea! I love grapefruit.) The dressing I chose was the tahini option (see recipe) but I skipped the maple syrup because I don't have any at the moment.

Nadine and I shared a small bowl of this when she got home today as an afternoon snack. AKndnnewkjt34$%@.

I'm really liking this whole taking cold salads to work for lunch instead of leftovers thing. I don't have to wait for microwaves, it's always tasty, and it changes up the routine a bit. I also get to try many more dishes too! And all of the salads I've made so far can be made ahead, therefore I can do like 3 days of lunches for us at once and all I have to do is get the container out of the fridge in the morning, no fart arsing around.

I also usually make some sort of bean based dip to take for morning teas to eat with carrot/celery/other vegetable sticks. This week I've made Monumental Black Bean Dip from Eating Bird Food.

I usually make a simple hummus but this week I felt like a change. When I made this I added a half cup of extra black beans because I found it a bit thin. Also straight after making it the flavours were pretty mild, but Nadine took it to work today and said it was really good :) So the flavours must soak in a bit more overnight.

Attractive, isn't it? Hehehe.

Tofu Ricotta

Just a basic staple recipe I like to make every now and then. I actually made it today for use in a recipe I'm making for dinner, but the recipe only uses half a cup, so I had plenty left to eat as a snack!

Ingredients:

300g firm tofu (I use Nutrisoy and did not press it)

1.5 tbsp rice bran oil
1 garlic clove, crushed
half tsp dried oregano
Freshly ground salt to taste

Put it all into a blender/food processor. Crumble the tofu up a bit.

Blend until thick and smooth!

Store in an airtight container in the fridge for about a week. I doubt it'll last that long, this stuff is just that damn tasty!

I couldn't resist it being in the fridge so I cut up a small carrot, celery stick and a tiny little granny smith apple and used it as a dip. I ate it outside in the nice cool breeze with a cup of coffee :)



Guacamole!

Yes it does look like a big bowl o' vomit, but I just wanted to post that the trick with using some frozen peas and white beans in place of an avocado in guacmole was a success :) Idea from Robin Robertson's Vegan on the Cheap -

Guacamole

Makes a big soup bowl full

Ingredients

1 large avocado (I used a shepard avo)

1 cup frozen peas, defrosted

1 cup white beans

2 roma tomatoes, diced

1 garlic clove, grated/crushed

a generous amount of sweet chilli sauce

black pepper

juice of half a lemon

Roughly mash the avocado in a bowl

In a food processor, blend the beans, peas and garlic clove until very smooth.

Mix it all in a bowl with the other ingredients and eat!

We blobbed ours on top of vegan nachos, that I made up from 1 cans worth of kidney beans and 1 can's worth of white beans, mashed up, 1 onion, garlic, 1 cup of 'chicken' stock and a taco seasoning packet. I figured out that the secret ingredient to the deliciousness of taco seasoning is cumin. I bought the home brand version of it (instead of old el paso, for example) because it was less than half the price and the only difference in ingredients was the lack of cumin. So I juct chucked in some cumin with the packet :) Who doesn't have cumin in their spice rack? I put it on top of corn chips, covered the lot with vegan cheese (that we had left over from pizza night) and baked it in the oven until the cheese melted. The sour cream from the same book was also a success, though not quite as good as tofutti. But probably a lot better for us!

We also drank a carton of beer and watched bad movies til 3am, most of which were quite good. Except one. 'Bitch Slap'. It was so bad. Worst movie I've ever seen. I dare you.