What I Ate Wednesday - Vegan MoFo 2013 Edition.

I see a lot  of super fancy and super healthy days on What I Ate Wednesday posts but that's not what I'm all about. This is just a day in the life of a regular grrrl who's trying to clear out her fridge! I'm basically showing you what a slightly lazy vegan might eat on a day spent writing blog posts, reading blogs, masterminding MoFo giveaways and catching up with a weeks worth of Neighbours!

I started the day with an Alpro Fruity & Creamy peach yoghurt and a chopped banana with a glass of freshly squeezed OJ on the side.

I'm pretty fussy about yoghurts and the fruity & creamy style Alpro is the only kind I like, those and Sojasun but you can't buy them here.

Unsurprisingly I was hungry within a few hours of eating that so I made a sandwich and gathered some grapes and the last of the Dandies marshmallows from our Portland/Seattle trip.

My sandwich is made with Pizza flavoured Violife slices, margarine and a Warburtons sandwich thin. I think that anyone could probably make this sandwich! Violife sent me every flavour of their cheeses to review recently and I'm diligently working my way through all 10 packs before I write about them. Pizza flavour is definitely up there with my favourites.

A couple more hours passed and it was time for something a little more substantial, enter the baked potato.

I nuked this in the microwave for five minutes before letting it crisp up in the oven at gas mark 9 for 5 minutes each side. I heated up some Heinz baked beans and then fancied the whole thing up with a little of my favourite Vegusto cheese, the Piquant incase you're interested!

When dinner time rolled around I was starving again so I munched on a handful of Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate Covered Mini Pretzels whilst I cooked. I'm down to my last bag so I'm extra glad I'm going to be back in the US at the end of next week.

Because I'm about to go away I'm trying really hard to clear out my fridge and for some reason I have a lot of leeks in my veggie drawer. I was racking my brain for leek based recipes when Nick (that's my husband for new MoFo readers. Hi!) suggested the Leek & Bean Cassoulet from Veganomicon. The man's a genius.

I had no suitable beans and I couldn't be bothered to make the biscuits so I subbed Soy Curls, pre-soaked in veggie stock and thoroughly squeezed, and made a stovetop version. This was delicious and it even used up all of our potatoes, I used to make this dish about fortnightly when my cookbook collection was smaller and I loved this reminder of an old favourite.

According to my MoFo plan today's WIAW was meant to show you guys what a British vegan eats on an average day. I've failed pretty miserably at that because I ate, um, three things that aren't available here at all and one that's only currently available via mail order! I'll try to be more British next week!

What I Ate Wednesday - Halloween

Yeah, that's right, I'm going back to one of my themes! This morning for breakfast I had some of this new cereal...

...mixed into one of my favourite yoghurts. I love the new Alpro yoghurts that come in the two packs. There are two flavour options, cherry or peach, and somehow Alpro have managed to make a creamy fruity yoghurt that isn't too sweet. They're perfect.

For lunch I just recreated what I made yesterday, it was even easier this time because I just needed to reheat the cauliflower and boil the soba noodles.

My afternoon snack was a chocolate extravaganza, Kallo Dark Chocolate Rice Cakes...

...followed by a Nature's Path Chococonut Bar.

Those rice cakes are one of my favourite ever snacks, I also got this great tip from Christina - spread them with peanut butter. It makes them even more epic! I discovered the Chococonut bars when I was in NYC earlier this year and I'm a little obsessed with them. They're chewy, sweet and full of chocolate chips. I brought three boxes back from Austin and I wish we could get honey free granola bars like this over here. You can also see my Halloween nails in that picture, I'm wearing Orly's Fowl Play. I have the classic black with orange accents on my toes using Barry M Black and Orly Orange Punch.

Dinner was a classic British meal with both a vegan & a Halloween twist! We had the Redwood Foods Fish-Style Steaks with mashed potato ghosts, peas & corn.

I got the mashed potato ghost idea from River at Wing-It-Vegan, mine are a little less fluffy because I made Caulipots with skin on potatoes. I also used capers for eyes instead of ketchup because I'm not a massive ketchup fan.

I can't believe MoFo's over for another year! It's been awesome as always, I've loved writing every day, reading everyones blogs and getting to be part of the MoFo team for the first time. See y'all soon!

What I Ate Wednesday

I think I chose What I Ate Wednesday as a theme to give myself a break from my other more labour intensive themes and today I really made the most of it!

Yoghurt & Grapes for breakfast.

Tempeh Bacon & Coleslaw Sandwich on Sourdough for lunch.

Mid afternoon beer.

Breakfast for dinner! Nick recreated the Bouldin Creek tofu scramble perfectly and I whipped up lazy home fries and garlic mushrooms. We ate this with sourdough toast. It was awesome, especially the scramble.

What I Ate Wednesday

Surprisingly I've found today's supposedly easy What I Ate Wednesday theme harder than yesterday's Cookbook Challenge. Less stressful? Sure! But strangely I've quickly gotten used to having what I'm eating planned out or at least randomly chosen for me. 

I started the day with a classic Jojo breakfast, baked beans on toast. Wholewheat's my bread of choice for this meal & I enjoy a co-op own brand organic bean.

After reading a lot of MoFo blog posts and going for a run along the seafront I came back to my kitchen sweaty and starving! The quickest thing I could put together was more toast, I chose Warburton's Sandwich Thins this time around, accompanied by a blob of hummus. Yum!

I followed this with an Alpro Peach yoghurt. These are my new favourite yoghurts, the cherry ones are great too but they seem to have disappeared from my local store.

After showering I snacked on one of these delicious treats. These Nature's Path bars are yet another thing I brought back from America. I love love love these coconutty, chocolatey granola bars.

For lunch I wanted something quick & easy and my go to for quick & easy recently has been this Vegan Omelette For One from the blog Fat Free Vegan Kitchen. I make this as written except I skip the tahini; for no other reason than that the first time I made it I'd run out and I loved it anyway so I saw no need to mess with something I already loved. The ingredients are simple and they whizz up super fast in my mini blender. This is one of my favourite gadgets, I wouldn't ever even entertain the idea of getting rid of it!

After blending you just pour your ingredients into your non-stick pan and cover it with whatever filling you desire - in this case some leftover Smoky Soy Curls from Football Food Sunday.

In the time it took to cook I threw together a quick salad of green leaves, tomatoes and grapes with a drizzle of hemp oil.

I love how you can just fill an omelette with whatever leftovers you have lying around and they always come out great!

When dinner time rolled around I'd been reading about desserts all day and I wanted something sweet. Pancakes for dinner seemed like an awesome idea! It wasn't hard to choose which pancakes to make, I wanted something fruity and seasonal so Isa's Apple Pie Pancakes were the clear choice. If you read my MoFoing last year you might remember this post? I got so overexcited when Isa posted the recipe for these that even though we were about to head to bed I whipped up a quick half batch for Nick & I to enjoy!

Tonight there was none of this portion control nonsense happening though, oh no, these are dinner pancakes and the only correct way to eat a dinner pancake is to have two portions!

These are so amazing, I kinda want to make a triple batch of the apple, maple, cinnamon topping to just slather on everything forever... or, y'know, for the 24 hours it would probably take me to scoff the lot!

What I Ate Thursday!

I enjoyed taking pictures of everything I ate a couple of Thursdays ago so I thought I'd do it again today. I slept 'till 11.30 & woke up starving so I started my day with this classic, baked beans on toast.

This bread is just cheap wholewheat from the supermarket & my beans of choice are the Co-Op's Organic Baked Beans. This is my breakfast of choice, I'd eat it every day but I sometimes feel like I should vary it so I do!

For lunch I went for a big plate of leftovers. There's barbecue tofu from Sunday's football food feast, an apple, some kidney beans from the can I opened to make hummus, the last of the pilaf from yesterday & as you can see I won the battle for the last slice of quiche!

This was a pretty great lunch, I'm learning to love leftovers and the quiche was still as amazing as it was yesterday.

For dinner I got Nick to grab a bag of mixed lettuce on his way home from work & I threw together a quick salad. There are chickpeas, again from the hummus, sliced radishes, cherry tomatoes, grated carrot and the dressing from Monday's Sanctuary Chef Salad.

That dressing is still SO yummy, I love it! This would have been a dull salad without it, I think it'd probably make the dullest iceberg lettuce amazing though!

After dinner Nick & I made fun dessert plates! They have Roasted Almond Cookies with Fleur du Sel that I made for the Cookbook Challenge on Tuesday, a square of my favourite Rupunzel Nirwana Noir nut truffle cream chocolate (we have to ration it because you can't buy it in the UK), two Sweet Vegan marshmallows and a Bio Bis spelt chocolate sandwich cookie.

It's been a pretty good day for food given that I haven't needed to cook anything...unless heating up beans counts?! See ya'll tomorrow for New Food Friday!

Random MoFo Thursday!

Thursdays were always going to be pretty random on the blog during MoFo, I wanted to leave some unplanned days so that I could choose what to eat based on what I fancied that day & so that I could get through some of the inevitable leftovers. Today I've been inspired by peoples What I Ate Wednesday blog posts, so today is What I Ate Thursday!

I started the day with a plate of fruit & a slice of the Co-Op's fruit loaf, toasted & spread with Marks & Spencer Low Fat Dairy Free Margarine.

I followed with a late morning snack of the last Apricot Glazed Almond Cupcake that I made for the cookbook challenge on Tuedsay.

Lunchtime involved more leftovers, this time the last of yesterday's Leek, Bean & Rice Medley from 500 Vegan Recipes.

It might've looked better yesterday but it still tasted fantastic today.

Next I had a delicious bowl of Tyrells Sweet & Salty Popcorn as a mid afternoon snack whilst I was reading MoFo blog posts.

Whilst I was waiting for Nick to finish work I got hungry & ate one of yesterdays Beer Rolls (again from 500 Vegan Recipes) with some Marks & Spencer Low Fat Dairy Free Margarine.

I also hadn't forgotten that I'd promised to make the last recipe of this weeks cookbook challenge today after the rainy day laziness hit hard yesterday, the generator had picked the Quinoa, Tofu & Kale with Walnut Pesto from Color Me Vegan so that's what was on the menu for dinner.

I started by making the Walnut Pesto.

I'd planned to halve the recipe but it was too little even for my mini chopper to deal with so I made the whole lot & now I have pesto in the freezer for next time I fancy it. I always freeze portion sized amounts of pesto in silicone muffin cases & then pop them out into ziplock bags.

The actual meal was really easy to throw together & faster than the recipe suggested, the tofu & kale were done by the time the quinoa was finished & I had time to reconstitute & chop the sun dried tomatoes & toast my pumpkin seeds whilst all of that was cooking. The only change I made was to cut down the oil a little bit & to salt the kale whilst it was cooking rather than adding salt to the whole dish at the end as the recipe suggested.

I was really quite surprised how much I liked this, I love quinoa & tofu but I don't usually like sun dried tomatoes & I'm not the hugest kale fan but it all came together to make a delicious dish. What was actually the most surprising thing though is that Nick (my vegan but fussier-than-me husband) came home & ate some of it! I swear if he'd seen me doing 'weird' stuff like cooking the kale & rehydrating the tomatoes there's no way he'd have touched it! I'll definitely be making this again & I love the cookbook challenge for alerting me to another great recipe that I'd have otherwise skipped & for making Nick eat kale!

I can't promise I'm done with eating for the day so I'll pop back & update this if I end up snacking on anything new...I might just eat the leftovers from dinner though because they were really yummy!