salads, stews and rice-y things
Arg, I'm so, so behind on this...

Anyway. Today I made a nice 'egg' fried rice type thing, only it wasn't that fried and the egg was tofu. It was good though!

50g rice (cooked)
1 smallish leek (chopped)
few mushrooms (chopped)
1/2 courgette (chopped)
some brocolli florets
1 tin water chestnuts
knob ginger (grated)
clove garlic (crushed or chopped finely)
1/2 block marinated tofu (mashed)
soy sauce
vegan cooking sherry
mirin
sugar
1dsp sunflower oil.

1) Cook rice.
2) Heat oil in frying pan/wok on gentle heat. Add ginger and garlic. Cook, stirring every so often, for a couple of minutes.
3) Add leek, cook for another minute, then add courgette.
4) Meanwhile, cover brocolli and chestnuts with hot water and bring to the boil, boil for a few minutes until the brocolli's tender.
5) Add mushrooms to sauteeing veggies.
6) When mushrooms are cooked, add tofu and rice.
7) Make some teriyaki type sauce by mixing together equal measures of soy, mirin and sherry, plus a teaspoon of sugar. Mix together then pour over rice and stuff. When sauce is hot, it's all done!
8) Serve with chestnuts and brocolli on top (I stuck some garlic pepper on the brocolli too).

It was really nice!


I've been making salads for lunch, as I find whenever I eat anything with carbohydrate in it, it kind of makes me feel all heavy and sleepy and disinclined to work. I've been making sure it's a balanced salad though, with lots of different proteins and textures. I also want to fend off illness/fatigue as exam time = high stress and I don't want to fuck up my immune system by getting run down. Last year I got shingles, which was not good.

Stuff I've been doing:
- basing salads around chopped raw spinach instead of lettuce, as it has more nutritional value and loads of iron which is released due to...
- dressing involving vitamin c related things! I usually make mine by mixing equal measures of lemon and orange juices and apple juice concentrate plus some carroway seeds and grated fresh ginger (which is incidentally another ace immune system booster).
- OR, dressing involving flax seed oil, which gives me my omega 3s and 6s. The nicest one involves that, apple cider vinger, apple juice concentrate, oregano and tomato puree. Yum yum yum.
- Adding seeds/nuts/dried fruit. I don't add many (because of fattiness) but if they're chopped up a little goes a long way and makes the salad taste lush. I normally use 3 walnut halves and two dates if I'm using those, and a couple of teaspoons of pumpkin seeds if I'm using them. All good fats and other virtues! Some protein too.
- If I don't get protein from nuts/seeds I use beans/pulses of some sort. Usually kidney beans, black-eye beans, chickpeas etc. Normally they're leftovers from the night before!
- Failing all that protein-wise, there's always tofu! Marinated, smoked, hazelnut or basil tofus are all really good in salad.
- If I haven't had much for breakfast I might make a couscous based salad.
- Other ingredients I use can be all or a selection of: grated carrot, celery, sweetcorn, cucumber, peppers, lettuce... all that sort of good stuff.

Finally, I've got a fledgeling idea for a stew/casserole type thing but it didn't quite work last night...
It will involve sweet potato and leeks in a sort of sweetcorn and tomato sauce... I was going to type out what I did and get suggestions for amendments but I'm knackered, so I'll do it tomorrow. Night night xox