I don’t very often mention what I have for lunch on here. But often people will ask me questions like “What on earth do you take on sandwiches?”, so I thought I’d do a quick post about my work lunches.
Usually, they’re leftovers. I tend to make more of a dish than I’m going to eat on purpose so that I can bung the rest into tupperware and reheat it at work the following day. This can cause great interest in the staff room and great wonderment about the strange food I’m eating and how difficult it must be to be vegan (they’re normally on their 4th ham and tomato sandwich of the week).
Sometimes I do make things specially for lunch – usually if I’ve got a bit of a glut of vegetables, or I know that for whatever reason I won’t have leftovers. Today’s lunch was an example of this. I had fresh pineapple leftover from the taco shells, andquite by chance I had all the ingredients necessary for the Veganomicon cashew-pineapple quinoa stir fry. I know that I ought to eat more quinoa. If by any chance you aren’t vegan (or are a vegan but have just landed from Mars) you might not know that quinoa is A VERY GOOD thing, because it’s a complete protein. I also think that it has more calcium than milk but I may just have made that up. Or read it on Wikipedia. So it must be true.
Anyway, this was a pretty tasty mixture of quinoa, pinapples, cashews, red peppers, peas (or in my case courgette) and some nice flavourings like chilli and soy sauce. It was a nice light lunch, serve it hot or cold.
Other things I make myself especially to have at lunchtime are Veganomicon quinoa, black bean and mango salad, VWAV chickpea hijiki sandwich, pate and crackers, vegetables with hummus, soba noodles with edamame – the list goes on. If you really want some vegan lunchbox inspiration try either of these sites:
Vegan Lunchbox
Vegan Homemade (find some of the laptop lunches posts – truly an inspiration!)
Just forget about the ham sandwich…
Cooking the Vegan Books 
Lunch is the best part of the workday 🙂 I’ve been slacking on the laptop lunches lately, hoping to get back into a rhythm once my living/working sitch is back to normal.
This didn’t work a second ago but I’ll try again…
‘How hard it is it be a vegan?’ The last person who mentioned how they couldn’t imagine being vegan was a supposed omnivore who couldn’t stand to not have meat in a meal yet couldn’t stand bones in the meat, anything with tomatoes in, anything with cheese, anything that was ‘brown’ (wholegrain), any fish or seafood and thought it unthinkable to put fruit in a main course.
I know which way I’d rather live.
I’ve just come to your blog from Lizzie’s looking for things to do with tofu. Since i have had a low budget this year, we are eating more vegan and vegetarian food and it has opened up my eyes to a whole range of exciting food I wish I had investigated before. You blog so far has been very useful- thank you.