Meal Plan Wednesday (27/2/13)

1. Chinese Sweet & Sour 'Pork'
So super yum.  As you can work out I forgot to take a pic but I will totally make this again.  For us I used soy chunks (tvp chunks) hydrated with water, soy sauce and a splash of liquid smoke.  I didn't do the breading and frying part.  While I love fried stuff it's not really that good for ya and more importantly I had a short person hanging off my trouser leg trying to pull and push me out of the kitchen so I had to shorten the method a bit.  The sauce for this is glorious.  I skipped the optional tomato soup powder as well as the food coloring and I dare say I probably doubled the pineapple but again there was this little person saying something like "want pine apple" (yup she says it separated like that, so cute).  I added the extra because I knew she would be picking a bunch out for herself.

2. Lentil & Vegetable Soup
I feel like everyone has a veggie lentil soup on their blog and I'm sure they're all tasty.  Let's face it, veggie lentil soup is pretty quick and easy.  You can add any veg you'd like and the stock can be light or dark.  It's simple healthy delicious food (well unless you add something not delicious, unhealthy and/or complicated).  This is a good place to start if you've somehow missed the boat on lentil soups.

3. Jambalaya (Vegan Diner pg 105)
Yes, this is a photo of some ugly food.  I could have prettied it up I suppose given more space and time but we wanted to eat.  Given the first two meals of the week we should all consider ourselves lucky I managed to snap a photo at all.  All that out of the way this was some good food.  In the past I've really enjoyed the recipe in Veganomicon but since I've been focusing on giving Vegan Diner a good testing I chose this one.  It's some excellent comforting food let me tell you.  I doubled the recipe (reminder, I have a hungry husband)  and added kidney beans because I knew they wouldn't take anything away from the original recipe and it would stretch the meal out a bit more yet.

4. Mashed potatoes, broccoli and Chickpea Cutlets with Rich Brown Gravy (Vegan Diner pg 176)
The real focus for me in this meal was the Vegan Diner's Brown Gravy because I love me some tasty gravy but a happy discovery occurred while further simplifying and deglutenizing the already simplified chickpea cutlet recipe.  The original recipe for the cutlets was a winner in my book already but I now have a couple issues with it.  1. We don't have vital wheat gluten so readily available to us these days and 2. we're shifting away from eating wheat and gluten.  So with that in mind along with an impromptu trip out to Frampton Marsh left me rushing to get dindins out.  I'll post my  modifications after I make it again just so I'm not sharing something that will leave you all hating me when it turns into a big pile of slop in a bowl.  What about the gravy you ask?  It was delicious and pretty nutritious as gravies go.  Julie doesn't use corn starch to thicken here instead opting for a couple flours mixed with the other seasonings.  My only criticism of it is that there may be too much dried onion powder in there for my tastes.  I actually reduced it when I made it, suspecting that the printed amount would be a bit over powering.  Noodle ate this first.  She scraped it off her potatoes and cutlets and into her mouth then asked for more.

5.Baked Potato & Greens Soup with Potato Croutons (Veganomicon)
I have had my eye on this soup ever since getting a copy of Veganomicon but for some completely unknown reason never actually made it.  I probably had it in my head that I didn't have enough time or it wasn't hearty enough of some lame-o thing or other.  Whatever the reason I totally should have made this ages ago.  It's delicious and easy (my two favorite things in food at the moment).  I only added chickpeas to round out this to a one pot meal and create some leftovers.

6. Pigs in Clover and for lunch we had a nice big salad of spinach, avocado, cucumber, beet, chickpea bacon and hummus dressing.  No pic of the salad but it looked like a salad, trust me :)  I definitely recommend the chickpea bacon.  Super yum and a great way to boost your salad (Lex asked for a good high calorie salad).  I liked the idea for this baked potato dish and liked the idea of making it more of a twiced baked potato thing even more as it made it a bit less fiddly to accomplish.  I used lentils instead of oats and also added fennel as it always instantly reminds me of sausage.  Since I had a baked potato item on the agenda for the previous night I went ahead and baked the potatoes for both nights at the same time which cut down on time and energy to make this.

7. Pan-Fried Chickpeas, Brussels Sprouts with Crash Hot Potatoes and Rough Rider Barbecue Sauce (Vegan Diner pg 178)

I can't get enough potatoes, can you tell?  Crash Hot Potatoes is another recipe I've had bookmarked for a while.  I knew I would like them and I'm always looking for more ways to enjoy one of my favorite foods.  The barbecue sauce was excellent.  It really is a good classic barbecue flavor as far as I'm concerned.  I know barbecue, like chili, is a regional thing.  For me this is classic barbecue.  I might be making this regularly and keeping it on hand rather than buying premade stuff with the extra preservatives.

Noodle Snacks:

Figgy Pudding Gingerbread Granola
I love this idea.  I've been thinking about granola a lot but didn't want the Noodle to be eating all the sugar that traditionally covers those lovely chunks of oats and nuts and other goodies.  This was my first go at fruit sweetened granola and I'm sure we'll find our favorites and I'll improve my methods.  I used this recipe as a guide and used some additional bits I had about (like a single super ripe banana).  I meant to snap a photo before the chunks were all eaten up but well, they were all eaten up.  I can't believe the Noodle maintained interest throughout the whole batch rather than getting bored of it after the first day.  Toddlers aren't so much picky as fickle in regards to food.  Well as long as they have a good diverse palate from the start.

the market haul

The groceries:
kale (250g)
red grapes (500g)
2 parsnips
cherry tomatoes (500g)
4 bell peppers (3 yellow, 1 orange)
lemons
bananas
apples
carrots
oranges
sm potatoes
mushrooms
flax seed
soy milk
tvp mince
tvp chunks
muesli
oats
raisins
peanut butter
baked beans
canned tomatoes
tomato sauce
coconut milk

Totally lost track of the slips this week but there was little pantry restock this week.  Mostly the regular weekly stuff.  Definitely less than £50, I'd be surprised it if was £30 but I don't have my totals so we don't know for sure.