Hot Links and Green Beans, oh my!

I think we can call this my chopped lunch. I cut Hot Links and French Green Beans and stir-fried them in a wok with some Sriracha. I then chopped mozzarella, roma tomatoes, and basil, with extra virgin olive oil, salt and pepper and made what I am calling my Chopped Insalata Caprese, Also brown rice and grapes and blueberries.

Sausage (not really) - #33

The "sausage" is a Mexican chipotle vegan grain meat sausage I get from Whole Foods. It is expensive and has more sodium than I would prefer, but I love it. To it, I added some steamed broccoli, cauliflower and carrots. I had this package of Trader Joe's Harvest Grains blend (Israeli couscous, orzo, baby garbanzo beans and red quinoa) in my cupboard for a few months, so finally got around to making it. It was good, nutty...interesting. Finally, some Lavash bread (again from Trader Joe's) and a salad of cherry tomatoes with red onion and balsamic vinegar. All in all, a good meal.

Boring black lentils - #32

Tofu with sriracha, garnished with sweet peppers, roasted beets on top of sautéed beet greens (with garlic and onion), split-pea soup (the recipe that I used) and black lentils.

The lentils, to put it simply were boring by themselves, but mixed in with the split-pea soup, excellent. I made the soup this past weekend and that was the last of it.

Bean beans everywhere - #31

So I soaked some Tuscan beans (white kidney beans, great northern beans, cannellini beans, whatever you call them) overnight. In a pot, I sautéed some onions and garlic and of course, sriracha sauce. Then added vegetable stock. After an hour or so, I added garbanzo beans then bok choi. Over brown rice, delicious! Paired with what I had in the house, which was a 4 bean salad (from CostCo), short-grain brown rice and asparagus.

Lemon-Herb Tofu - #30

Today we are doing a vegan bento. We have Lemon-Herb Tofu with Scallions (from Whole Foods), miso soup, mixed tomato salad and berries with soy nuts. This was about the easiest bento I have made (a large part because I bought instead of made the main dish).

Asparagus and enoki mushroom beef wraps - #29

Asparagus and enoki mushroom beef wrap with watercress, coconut-seeped rice, sweet pickled cucumbers and fish cakes.

You can't really see the enoki all that well, and they really aren't bold enough to stand up very well in this dish. The pickled cucumbers I made with the following recipe:

http://nourishnetwork.com/2010/07/14/spicy-sweet-pickled-cucumbers/.

It was really easy and I like the results a lot.


The jar of pickled cucumbers I made

A Man's Bento #28

Stir-fry pork with green onions and mushrooms in a srirancha/teriyaki sauce, rice with furikake, bok choy, and carrots and gobo (burdick root) boiled in sake, mirin and soy sauce (which I hated and did not eat more than the first bite).