At this time of year I like having salad for dinner - sometimes with a hot or warm element. So you can start with a bed of mixed leaves (lettuce, rocket, baby spinach or whatever you can get that's nice and fresh) and for example saute some sliced mixed mushrooms, bell peppers and almonds in a little oil, then add a spot of lemon juice, and dump the warm mushrooms on top of the leaves. You don't need to bother with a dressing as the juice from the mushrooms will coat the leaves.
A warm potato salad with tofu frankfurters (or cubed smoked tofu) is another good topping for the leaves. So is a bean salad, or chopped avocado and tomato.
You can take that brown rice, add it to zucchini, onions, and green pepper, warm it, add black beans, and make black bean rice burritos. It's great with salsa and also 1/4 tsp. of turmeric in the rice.
How about pasta? I don't know if you want simple suggestions or not. I like pasta with diced tomatoes, garlic, zucchini, and spinach. Sometimes I make a sauce with eggplant, too. That's good.
You can make any number of soups and/or salads, as mentioned above. Do you have any cookbooks or subscribe to any vegetarian magazines such as Veggie Life or Vegetarian Times? Those would be helpful. I couldn't even begin to describe how awesome it is to have cookbooks and to try new things.
Try different legumes, like lentils and black-eyed peas. It's fun to experiment! Oh, and you can't beat a lentil rice soup, Indian-style. Delicious!
It's too hot to cook just now, so tibbouli is my mainstay. Last night, I added in some red beans and corn kernals and though it's not traditional, it is pretty good.
I also like having chef salads for dinner, too. They're extra nice topped with nutritional yeast and tofu dressing.
If you like to grill, you can put things on like corn, eggplant, portabello mushrooms, zucchini, sweet potato, onions, and/or tomatoes. You can even grill some fuits for dessert if you want. Things take on a whole new flavour when grilled.
Vegetarian times doesn't have a lot of vegan recipes, I've found, but they do have a recipe section on their website which is pretty decent. I also like vegweb for their recipes. They help me a lot when I'm stuck for ideas.
If you can find quinoa in your area, try using it in place of brown rice. Quinoa and beans, quinoa and roasted veg, even quinoa and chili is a nice way of breaking the rut.
I have my main meal at lunch time but here are some ideas of what I have. (I love foody threads)
Most often a huge salad:
Watercress, spinach and rocket leaves with cucumber, red pepper, sometimes cherry tomatoes and avocado (I always eat themm togethher as the fts in avocado help digest the cancer-fighting molecules in the tomato), cold cooked sweet potato, sometimes raw broccoli or cabbage or grated carrot, sometimes sweet corn (unsweetned and unsalted), sometimes celery, if no tofu or beans or chickpeas in the salad then I have linseeds, sesame seeds, pumpkin seeds and sometimes sunflower seeds and pine nuts and soy grits as well with tahini as a dressing. Sometimes I add raw mushroom too. If no nuts or pulses in the salad then I will have tofu or falafel or bean burger or kofte or vegan tofu Biona spring roll or vegan coleslaw.
Rarely but very nice, I have vegan waldorf salad.
For main meals of the day I also soemimes have Spirullina pasta with roast veg and Parmazano, or roast/grilled veg and pesto or tomato sauce. Sometimes I have rice salad with cooked broccoli, mushrooms pine nuts, raisins and tahini. Quinoa and veg and tomato sauce or Quinoa cauliflower, carrots, beans and vegan gravy; Tabouleh salad with lotsa herbs. Rice or quinoa salad with fresh herbs and tomato and pine nuts. Pasta salad with swet corn, red pepper, carrot and peas.
Fun meals include Mexican wraps with Kidney bean filling salad and guacmole; or Pitas with salad or grilled veg and tahini or hummus or falafel and hummus; Pitas falafel vegan mayo, raw grated brocc carrot and courgette; Pita bean salad and salad and yeast spread; Pita salad and yeast spread; Pita or roll with grilled portbello mushroom and all the burger trimmings; Pita or roll with a veggie burger, mushroom and trimmings (can also include melted cheezly and tempeh bacon and fried onions and mayo and ketchup an dpickles and salad wth potato wedges).
I love stirfries with veggies and nuts
I love "mock duck" peking.
I love home-made avocado or tofu or beancurd or seaweed sushi
I love home-made cheezly or non-cheezly pizza on wholemeal base with tomato sauce and my favourite veg
I love avocao and tomato or just plain salad sandwiches
I love nut roast with salad or as a full Sunday dinner style meal
Occasionally I will have Redwood products which are lush but expensive and I wonder if processed soy foods are really very healthy
Coz I am a student (and I am poor) I eat a hell of a lot of dhal with brown rice for dinner. I make two basic varieties...a split pea one and a lentil one. Occassionally (or when I can be bothered) I will go out and make something a little more exciting, like last week I made dal makhani (which is basically a dhal made from brown lentils instead of red, with red kidney beans and tomato). To vary it a little...if you can call it variance...I will put different things in the dhal to make it a little more exciting, for example, sometimes I will add:
- chopped spinach (palak dhal) - potatoes (steam them first and add them at the last minute) - mashed pumpkin - chickpeas - eggplant
The salad we have with this is chopped tomato, chopped cucumber, spring onion and lots of fresh coriander with lemon juice. We also have lettuce leaves to scoop up our food and wrap it up...sort of like the purpose of naan or papadams!
Also, when I cook dhal, it lasts for three days so I don't have to cook! If I really get sick of it, My doggy gets it!
I also make sure I eat a stir-fry with plenty of green leafys at least once or twice a week. I make a sauce out of soy sauce, crushed garlic, grated ginger and chilli. You can use any veggies you want, and I have it with either brown rice or cellophane noodles. You can also add nuts/tofu/tempeh or whatever but I normally cannot be stuffed.
When I REALLY cannot be stuffed cooking: - pasta with sauce from the jar - couscous or tabbouli with canned chickpeas or other beans - Grilled portabella mushroom/eggplant burger or veggie burger (drowned in ketchup) with or without wedges and steamed corn - BBOT (baked beans on toast)
I am a student too but since my ED I have stopped letting myself deprive myself of food regardless of price. So of course all those vegan quinova, tofu and tempeh, soy yoghurts and organic nuts, seeds and pulses make my shopping bill every week reach £50 (also I have a HUGE appetite so need lots of food and I eat so much fresh fruit and veg which all comes to alot too).
I like dhal but it takes a long time to cook and I dont have time for that even though I love cooking - between work and all the exercise I do I need instant food when I get home - so chopping a salad and opening a packet or a can of protein and carb-based food is the longest I can wait. Anything that takes a long time to cook that I want during the week - I will make on a Sunday like cooking mixed whole basmati rice, red rice and wild rice for a rice salad later in the week etc... but i like fiddly cooking not boring boiling away somehting like lentils or beans etc - so i just buy them in a can ready to use!!
It is a huge amount to spend on feeding me and all my student budget is soaked up with food -shopping but eating healthy, eating vegan and eating organic as much as possible bring me so much pleasure that I think it is a sacrific i have to make for my health and happiness. I am so afraid of falling back into old habits. I dont go out and drink, i dont have a car, i dont buy clothes and books and cds and dvds, so i guess except for laundry and excrusions with the walking club - it is all i have to spend. I make it work but do worry about it!
Sausage!!! ehrm, not the meat sausage, but vegetarian sausages, quite a lot of them around. Just take the sausaga, kook, and put into bread. accompany with salad in or out of bread, lot's of raw veggies, mabe grilled onion? yum. I thought about sausages, and in the bread they are just like sandwiches, so anything you have in a sandwich, put into the bread, with the sausage. Am I repeating myself? Well, damn. It's nutricious (no, not repeating yourself ) and yummy. try it, takes no effort at all to make.
my version requires only bananas and chocolate. melt some chocolate with a bit of water and cool it in the fridge. Then blend bananas with that chocolate mix with a hand blender.
IS IT GOOD?
well .... maybe my fridge FULL OF FROZEN BANANAS will answer that one
from my experiance : THE HARDER THE BANANAS FROM THE FRIDGE THE YUMMIER
tonight i had posole stew--yum! the posole takes a while to cook but it's not that bad if you soak the kernels over night beforehand.
what was in it: water, posole, anasazi beans, yellow squash, zucchini, mushrooms, onions, bell pepper, potato, jalepeno & little bit of olive oil. the spices: garlic, cumin, curry, cilantro, paprika, chipotle powder, salt, pepper.
A lightly toasted barmcake (teacake, batch, english muffin, whatever you call this) filled with:
Wicken Fen Country Herb Sausages (the Mexicana ones are also nice)
Softly fried onions
Mushrooms (have some of the nice large flat ones today) cooked with lots of garlic
Fried tomatoes
A good grating of black pepper
No spread on the toasted barmcake - dip the bread in any juices left in the pan or pour the juices over the filling depending on your preference - if there's a lot of juice from the mushrooms then use a little for the sandwich and save the rest to use in another recipe.
A simple salad on the side as a garnish - lettuce, cucumber, tomatoes, red onions, beetroot - no dressing, just a grating of black pepper and a little salt - we don't like mayo, dressing, etc.
Everything cooked in a good heavy frying pan with just a drizzle of light olive oil so although everything is fried it's still healthy enough.
Some fresh fruit for dessert.
So simple, so easy, so tasty Enjoy!
Update: 25 Sept 2004
Last night I made a tasty stir-fry with some sunflower oil and toasted sesame seed oil, chunky cut onions, three garlic cloves, one each of red, green and yellow pepper, a carton of chestnut mushrooms, some pre-cooked carrots, a bag of bean sprouts, two good sized vine-ripened tomatoes, half a tin of pineapple chunks, level teaspoon of Marigold stock powder, a really good grating of black pepper, one crumbled-up dried red chilli, a teaspoon of cornflour slaked with eight dessertspoons of pineapple juice, about a teaspoon of Thai Seven Spice seasoning and some organic shoyu ... served this with some lemon rice and sprinkled a good handful of cashew nuts on top of each serving. It looked good and was very tasty.
Last edited by SilverBird; Sep 25th, 2004 at 10:50 AM.
A simple vegan blog about what this ( not me ) vegan eats everyday. This blog came together because once people knew this person was vegan, the first question that got asked was...What The Hell Does A Vegan Eat Anyway?
Roxy, the possum, (pictured left) has just had her dinner of milk formula and banana and is now happily chomping on some leaves and bottlebrush flowers.
Has anyone any knowledge of feeding possums on soy milk as I'd prefer not to use milk based formula but don't want to take any risks?
I like soups. Tomato or V-8 based with whatever veggies are in the fridge and some rice, pasta or potato. Toss in some Italian herbs and a little hot pepper.
Also, corn chowder made with a soy milk base. Add potatoes, corn of course, sauted onion and celery and a little chopped red sweet pepper up or diced pimentos for color.
Nachos made with black beans, tomaotes (canned or fresh), onions, olives, garlic, and salsa. Pop in the toaster oven or microwave and then eat with guacamole. Sometimes I slice up soft tortillas and bake them 5 or 10 minutes to make fat free chips.
pizza made with whole wheat crust (it needs only 20 minutes to rise) top with tomatoes, olives, onions, eggplant, fennel and whatever other veggies you like. You can crumble tofu on top to give a cheesey look. Maybe a sprinkle of nutritional yeast after it comes out of the oven to add a cheesey taste if you like.
in our house we cook from scratch every night - no ready meals. did at one time but no more. we just prefer it that way. this week husband took charge and went shopping and cooked all week, so each dinner was a nice surprise for me. we generally take it in turns to cook.
Lucky you, cedarblue that your hubby does the cooking/shopping as well. I'm still training mine to do so. Dinner last night was a philly gluten steak sandwich, takeout from Veggieworks (www.veggieworksworld.com) and some steamed yams/carrots. It's so hard to find the time to cook meals on a work night. I usually make a big pan of either tofu/veggy bake or vegan mac n cheese on Sunday night but it runs out by Wednesday or so.
Yes, it's hot this time of year, but I like it hot. And I like a good hot meal in the evening. Tonight I had a homemade lentil soup - with a lime squeezed in...gives it a great aftertaste. With crackers. And a cup of hot (apple) tea. Yumm...
i add any and everything to them. there are no rules in the stirfry book!
i take fresh vegtables from the farmers market, (peas, carrots, zuccini, eggplant, mushrooms, onion, garlic, bok choy, eggplant, tomato, pretty much anything!)
and add things like tofu, tempeh, nuts (yum), and even sometimes ill take some noodle from a package of ramen and crush it up into chunks and add that (it doesnt have to cook long, because the noodles are so thin, and they tase great half cooked! ((my grocerie store caries spinach and tomato varieties)))
and of course i use olive oil (not too much)
spices: red pepper, paprika, fresh ground pepper, chilli sauce ( i like it hot!!) and even curry powder make it interesting.
the aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, dunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.
-henry miller
Hi all! Im running low on meal ideas and woz wonderin if anyone can give me a few recipes? Im trying to re-arrange my meals so my lunch is the main and i have a light dinner because i hate goin to bed on a full stomach and i would just prefer to eat a light meal in the PM. Any ideas for a yummy vegan salad?
I had oven cooked 'mock duck' (a wheat gluten product I have recently found that comes in a tin), with roast vegetables cooked in garlic and olive oil with a tomato dressing. I finished with banana and mandarin segments served with a strawberry soya yogurt. I also had a small piece of chocolate too.
pretty much every sunday night i get together whatever fresh ingredients i have in my fridge, and mix them up into some sort of thing (to take to work as lunch for the week).
tonight, it was:
-about three and a half cups of leftover black lentils, wich were seasoned with dried hot peppers, garlic, and onion.
-a whole bunch of fresh spinach
-some broccoli and califlower (about a half a head each)
-a can of tomato sauce (seasoned with garlic and chilli sauce)
-half of a red onion
-a clove of garlic
-some leftover mushrooms (about a cup and a half)
-about 3/4 of a brick of firm tofu
-and when it wass all done i threw a half a bag of shreaded soy cheese (parmesan and romano flavor) on top of it all!
( i usually just throw this all into a big heaping pan... with things that need to be cooked more put in first)
i added some olive oil.. and heated till warm...
and chowed down!
note: this particular expirement yeilded enough food that i will probably have to eat lunch and dinner of said experiment till next week this time! yikes!
maybe ill invite some friends over for dinner!
the aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, dunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.
-henry miller
note: this particular expirement yeilded enough food that i will probably have to eat lunch and dinner of said experiment till next week this time! yikes!
maybe ill invite some friends over for dinner!
When I lived by myself, I once did the exact same thing. I was giving food away all week!
Vegan dinner ideas
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Sausage!
) and yummy. try it, takes no effort at all to make.
Enjoy!
What The Hell Does A Vegan Eat Anyway?
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Re: What should I have for dinner....
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