Tuesday

Breakfast: Half a grapefruit. Bowl of oat bran with coconut. Black coffee. The coconut is dried coconut from the lady who sells the beans and spices at the farmers' market. It adds fat to the oat bran. This is also good if you want to add a little cocoa powder and raw sugar but I'm not doing that this morning.

Lunch: Sandwich - portobello mushroom marinated in balsamic vinegar, onions, and lettuce, on multi-grain bread. Avocado.

Dinner: Open to suggestions.

Two Sandwiches

A couple of sandwich meals I've been having.

Here's a favorite:

White mushrooms soaked in balsamic vinegar, mixed greens, alfalfa sprouts, onions, and Vegenaise. (If you don't have Vegenaise, use olive oil mixed with your favorite spices - that's what I often do.) In this picture, it's on country white bread, because they were out of multi-grain, but multi-grain is my personal favorite for this sandwich. This sandwich keeps well, if you want to make it in the morning and wrap it up for lunch. Because the mushrooms soak up the vinegar, you can have a lot of flavor without the ingredients being too wet.

On the side: green beans lightly sauteed in olive oil with salt and pepper. Don't cook them long - leave them crunchy, and then coat them with crunchy sea salt. These are also a great movie snack. And of course, if you have a sour pickle to add on the side, all the better.


I don't think this next one photographed as well, but it's a good hoagie.

That's Tofurkey kielbasa cut into strips and heated in a skillet on the stovetop. Top that with raw onions, alfalfa sprouts, and a little bit of the sauerkraut you're going to have for your side dish. The roll is a standard hoagie roll from any Philadelphia corner store. (Or your favorite steak roll from wherever you live.)

Side dish: seared brussels sprouts and sauerkraut. Use a small amount of olive oil, salt and pepper for the brussels sprouts. Cook them over high heat. You want to leave them crunchy but blacken parts of them. Some of the outer leaves will fall off and those will get nice and crispy. Don't use too much oil because when you add the kraut, there will be a lot of moisture. Keep the heat high and add the kraut - this will blacken a little, too, and get smoky. Sprinkle the whole mess with pepper.

Good times.

BYO Lunch

And by lunch I mean things I'll be snacking on all day. I am bringing:

2 carrots
1 apple
a bag of pecans
a snack thing of dried, salted seaweed
a sandwich kit consisting of:

A small plastic bowl with a lid, containing sandwich greens, onion slices and chopped mushrooms soaked in balsamic vinegar and coated lightly in olive oil and pepper, along with two slices of cracked wheat bread in a sandwich bag. The sandwich components will be assembled at school.

and a Thermos full of soup containing beans, quinoa, and kale, among other things

I am going to be so full.

All of these things are prepared and waiting either in my bag already or in the door of the fridge. There's a note on the front door telling me not to leave without all my snacks.

Now, it's all about the sleep.

Perfect sandwich greens from Landisdale Farm

I take back what I said about these being overpriced. I would pay a zillion dollars for these sandwich greens.

You eat them with thinly-sliced Portobello mushrooms drenched in balsamic vinegar, coated with olive oil, onions. Mustard would be perfect, but I don't have any. Had a very thin coating of Vegenaise on each slice of bread, because the cracked-wheat bread is very heavy and requires dressings. I would prefer mustard. You want to layer the greens with the mushrooms. Pile them pretty high. Remember, your bread is heavy, so lots of wet ingredients are good, and your mushrooms and greens are coated in oil and vinegar.

My camera's batteries died before I could photograph the finished sandwich.

Sandwich Fail

It wasn't a complete fail. It did its job.

See, today is the first day of NaNoWriMo, and besides that, I have two major exams coming up in 13 days. So, those two situations conspired to cause me to put off eating until I was very very hungry.

As a result, when I went into the kitchen to fix a sandwich, I was compelled to put absolutely everything onto it.

Started with toasted multi-grain bread. Cut a small, maroon carrot into very thin slices and sauteed those with garlic, rosemary, curry, and salt. That's going to be the dressing.

So put that on first, and then on top of that, raw onions, raw portabella slivers. Then I was going to have some Brussels Sprout on the side. I only made one, because I figured the sandwich would be pretty filling, I just wanted a little Brussels snack. But it was so crispy after it was sauteed, I decided it would be good on the sandwich. Topped everything with green leaf lettuce. Rub the leaves in the container where you had your carrots and sauce, to get it all.

It wasn't so good. With the curry and the Brussels Sprout, it was all a bit much for a sandwich. The first half was good, because I was so hungry, but there was very little compelling me to finish the second half, other than the desire to not be hungry later. With an evening of writing and calculus coming up, that was enough motivation, and this mess did fill me up for a good while.

I'm at 2,492 words on NaNo. I wish I could quantify for you my progress on learning instructional design, or functions, for that matter. I'm just trying to hang in there at this point. Between the antioxidants in the carrots, the iron in the sprouts, the heat in the curry, and sheer will, I might live to see December. It's going to be a long month.