Five ingredient lunch + hot sauce

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Lunches should be quick to prepare and not too heavy, otherwise your productive afternoon turns into a majestic desk nap. Here is what I had today. Fried noodles with lots of veggies and very little other ingredients.

Super Easy: Carrot Soy Sprout Salad with Black Sesame

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Again, one of those "stuff I still had in the fridge" meals. :) The salad was one half of our lunches today. The other part was fried rice with veggies and sesame. Oh, sesame. <3

Ingredients:

• 4 medium carrots
• a handfull of fresh soy sprouts (whatever happens, never ever use the nonperishable ones that are sold in glasses!)
• 6 nice leaves of lettuce
• 200g of soy (or any other non-dairy) yoghurt
• 1 tablespoon of mustard
• 1 tablespoon of vegan honey (yes, this exists, basically, it's honey flavored sugar...stuff)
• salt
• 50g of black sesame (or really... as much as you like. Sesame is good for you!)

Red Lentil Veggie Soup

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Yet another incredibly easy dish! And super tasty, too. If you happen to not have one ingredient or the other in the house, you can always replace things. You can basically swap out any of the veggies as long as you stick to the lentils, water, and seasoning.

Ingredients for six servings:

• 150g red lentils
• 3 large carrots
• 1 leek
• 3 onions
• 3 cloves of garlic
• fresh ginger (about the size of a thumb)
• salt
• 3 tablespoons of vegetable oil, for example, sunflower seed oil.
• 50g tomato paste
• 1l of water
• a handfull of hazelnuts
• half a green bell pepper
• half a red bell pepper
• 2 table spoons of balsamic vinegar
• a handfull of fresh herbs, for example, parsley or basil

Leftover Fried Rice with anything

Okay, this is probably not even a recipe. I just took everything that was left over or needed to be eaten for any other reason.

Ingredients:

Anything that needs to get out of your fridge. In my case:

• (cooked) white and red rice
• Carrots
• Onions
• Savoy Cabbage
• Chick peas
• Leeks
• Mock Duck
• Salt
• a clove of garlic
• a few table spoons of canola oil
• optional: some soy sauce

Veggi Galore: Massaman Curry

Have a few Euros to spare? Help my friends at the Café Mousebear (vegan guerilla living room café) open a real café to spread the vegan love! Check out their crowd funding campaign. Every Euro helps!

How do you put as many different vegetables as possible in one pot? Curry is definitely a good option here!

The last leftovers that I could save for the photo before the
boyfriend devoured it all!

Disclaimer: This is most likely not a traditional Indian curry. That's ok. I just don't know any better. So far everyone who has tried this curry, though, said that it was good. Still - I'm not claiming any sort of authenticity.

Ingredients:

• 4 tablespoons of coconut oil
• 8 tablespoons of curry paste
• 1 l of veggi stock
• 1 l of tomatoes
• 1 pineapple
• 5-6 small onions
• 250g spinach (I used frozen)
• 300g peas (I used frozen)
• 5 carrots
• 1 eggplant
• 2 large bell peppers
• 1 can of coconut milk

• As much rice as you want - we ended up not making any rice in order to keep this a low carb dish.
• This is also a dish in which you can nicely add a couple of TSP (texturized soy protein) chunks. Cook a handful or two in salt water, press out the excess water and add them to the pot.

Easy: Winter Stew

As I may have mentioned in earlier blogs, we get a box full of vegetables and fruit from a local organic farmer once a week. This week, one vegetable proved to intimidate me a little bit as I had never worked with it before, the Scorzonera hispanica. In German, it is commonly known by the name "Schwarzwurzel" which literally translates to "black root" - quite fitting. In English, it goes by more impressive names such as black salsify or Spanish salsify, scorzonera, black oyster plant, serpent root, viper's herb, or viper's grass. I like "viper's grass" best! :) It does not necessarily look very edible at first:

Fried Noodles with Tons of Veggies! (and maybe some mock duck)

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I love to cook for other people... and for myself. But I think eating ought to be a social activity. So today I made some food for the boyfriend and a friend who does not have the time to cook.
And who would say no this:

Carrot Ginger Soup

When life gives you carrot, ... make carrot soup.

Preferably yummy soup that doesn't look like baby food. Fresh ginger, coconut milk and a bit of good vinegar should be on the list.

Since the local organic veggie box from my last blog came with a lot of carrots and I still had about 700g left in the fridge, I decided not to give them any chance to spoil and made a big pot of soup. And please notice the incredibly awesome R2D2 soy sauce dispenser the boyfriend got me for our 9-year anniversary. That man knows how to please the ladies! <3

Carrot Ginger Soup

Ingredients:

• 1kg of carrots
• 3 onions
• 2-2.5l of veggie stock
• 3-4 medium sized potatoes
• 1 leek (how do you call pieces of leek? The German word would be "Stange" which would literally translate to "stick" oder "bar") 
• 500ml coconut milk
• 100g tomato paste
• a big chunk of fresh ginger
• more ginger
• some olive oil
• salt
• agave sirup
• 5 table spoons of white wine vinegar

Almost like Christmas!

Word of mouth informed me that there was a small organic farm in the north of our city. Word of mouth continued to inform me that they delivered weekly veggie crates! Being the person that I am I got overly excited about it and ordered the largest version they had available. Today was finally the day of days! The box got delivered! The boyfriend even suggested we'd do an "unboxing" video. I was tempted to do that. Then I was to lazy and only took pictures.

Rain and other yucky October weather didn't keep the driver from bringing this colorful beauty to our place. I truly feel like I am a little too excited about a collapsable plastic box full of vegetables. But that's okay. Other people go crazy over shoes with a red sole. I guess when my braincells were programmed, I got lots of those "books and food" ones and very few from the fashion department. Fine with me.

And here it is in all its glory: