On the Road Again

I made another one-night jaunt over to the west coast and knew I'd have limited access to decent foods. So I think I actually packed more food than clothes. I took:

Barley and split pea soup with roasted onion and nutritional yeast
2 bananas
2 TB cocoa powder to dip bananas in
Spinach/chickpeas/tomatoes/onions atop quinoa
1/2 cup walnuts
3 peanut butter sandwiches (2 pieces whole wheat 50 calories bread with .75-1 TB PB)

I had some fruit at the event I was there for, but because I went a long time without eating, I was starving by the time I got back to the airport. And then my flight was delayed. So I ended up buying a bag of jalapeno chips and a hummus/veggie sandwich in case the plane didn't have any food I could eat. However, I lucked out- United offers snackpacks that aren't horrible for you. My RightBite included:

Bumblebee Sensations Lemon & Pepper Seasoned Tuna Medley (3 ounces, 110 calories)
Late July Organic Crackers (1 package, 100 calories)
Wild Garden Hummus (1 jar, 73.5 calories)
Stacy's Multigrain Baked Pita Chips (1 ounce, 130 calories)
Fino Selections Gouda cheese (1 ounce, 101 calories)
Newman's Own organic California raisins (0.5 ounce, 45.5 calories)
Mini-Toblerone (12.5-gram bar, 66.5 calories)

Sweet Potato Supreme

I spent a ridiculous amount of time and energy going grocery shopping today, despite the fact that I'm leaving for 10 days on Saturday. So when I got home it was already 3 and I was starving. I wanted something quick that I could get going while I cooked lunch and I remembered my favorite go-to veggie for quick- the sweet potato.

I nuked a medium/large sweet potato for about 12 minutes while I chopped up some fresh cilantro and chives from my up-until-this-point-sort-of-disappointing Aerogarden as well as 1 clove of garlic. When the potato was done, I cut it in half and cut out a small hole from the middle of each half to which I added some Earth Balance margarine, garlic, herbs, and salt and pepper. I meant to add chili powder but forgot.

I smushed it all up and ate it on 2 pieces of whole wheat toast. Perfect quick afternoon meal.

Lentil Burgers Pt II: Repurposed and Back with a Bite

Since my lentil burger recipe made a million burgers, I had some for dinner last night and lunch and dinner tonight. I figured I'd do something a little different for tonight, so I changed them up a little bit. Not much, but enough.

To the cauliflower cheeze sauce I added a little spicy brown mustard. It was the best move I've ever made. Since I bought bread today, I made an open faced sandwich with my new sauce on the bread side and on the top so my roasted onions seasoned with salt and pepper would stick. Amazing.

Sweet Potato Lentil Burgers

I had an extra sweet potato, and, while I was tempted to make another pot of soup with it and some peanut butter, I opted for something new. I did some Googling and found someone else who's done some Googling and came up with something similar to what I wanted. These red bean, sweet potato, and quinoa patties seemed great, so I took a crack at it and made a few substitutions.

1/2 cup uncooked quinoa

1/2 cup uncooked lentils

1 medium (fist-sized) sweet potato

1 medium red onion

4-5 cloves garlic

6-7 baby carrots

1-2 TB chopped fresh basil

1-2 tsp dried basil

2 tbsp tomato paste

1 TB red wine vinegar

Salt and Pepper to taste

1/4 cup uncooked couscous in lieu of breadcrumbs

This used up a lot of pots, so I inititally cooked the lentils until tender but not quite mushy. Then at the same time in different pots, I:

1. Boiled the sweet potato that I'd cut into small chunks
   
2. Cooked the quinoa


3. Cooked the onion in a little olive oil until clear, then added garlic and carrots for another few minutes.

Once done, I added them all to a bowl that could have been slightly bigger, along with the basil, vinegar, salt and pepper. I smushed the sweet potatoes on the side of the bowl and mixed everything together. I added the couscous at the end and gave it a few more stirs. Then I let it sit in the fridge for a few hours until I was ready for it.

I'm not a big fan of frying, whether it's deep or pan. After shaping into patties, I sprayed some olive oil (my mom gave me a great pump thing so it sprays just a little pure oil) on both sides and put on a baking sheet at 350 for 20-30 minutes, flipping mid-way through the cooking time. I cranked it up to 400 for the last 10 or so minutes to get it crispier. It made 7 large patties, though I ate one before I cooked it. You can easily stretch it to 8, and I calculated there are about 1000 calories in the whole batch.

I didn't have any bread, and didn't want to make roti since the patties were slightly labor intensive. So I steamed a head of cauliflower and made a cheezy cauliflower sauce for the patties. I put about 1/2 cup of the cooked cauliflower in my immersion blender attachment (a blender is fine) and added some salt, pepper, fresh cilantro, soy milk, tahini, and nutritional yeast.