Holy Crap, best lunch ever

So, Brit (my room-mate) has decided she needs to loose a bunch of weight before short season and has set herself a fairly sizable goal. Being as she kinda has strange eating habits, and issues, I've been charged with meal planning. Actually, meal planning is not something we've really been doing, just kinda randomly eating whatever we want.

So in line with the fact that May is 'Stick to your budget, and your diet' month, I've actually gone and made an actual meal plan. It's been crazy. But today for lunch was an amazing mixture of delicious and yum. Today was chickpea salad and broccoli soup. Soup and salad for lunch? Who would have ever thought!

Chickpea salad is as follows:

• One can of chickpeas, drained
• 3 T of finely chopped red onion
• 1 garlic clove, smashed
• juice of a lime
• one rib of celery finely chopped
• 2 T of soft tofu mashed up or 1T of mayo (or something like that)
• salt, pepper, whatev other stuff you usually put in tune/egg/potato salad
  
• a handful of lettuce
• a handful of tomato, chopped or whatev
  
• a handful of cucumbers, chopped up

In a bowl, mash up the chickpeas with everything other than the lettuce, tomato and cucumber. In whatever bowl/container you're going to eat it out of, add the lettuce, tomato and cucumbers. Whenev you're ready to eat it, add the chickpea mixture on top of the lettuce mixture. Holy yum. Seriously? Other than the bad breath, with which to offend my colleagues? Perfecto.

Broccoli soup I've posted about before. Together is a delicious lunch extravaganza full of fiber and with tons of fat fighting potential.

I'm also on a 'bring your lunch to work' thing. So this is day 4 in a row, and so far it's managed to actually do good things for our afternoon. And I've learned that a salad only option is going to leave me totally hangry later in the day. I have a massive craving for a tunafish sandwhich, but that's so sadly out. But tuna salad? I can totally do that...perhaps tomorrow.

Claire came over last night and we had some delicious bean and mushroom burgers. It's pretty much exactly what you would expect them to be made of, and they'll be on the salad sometime later this week. Oh yeah, we ate them last night with a lettuce 'bun'.

When did the lettuce 'bun' become an ok substitute. That's totally a girl/diet thing right? I obv can't eat it, but don't other people want to rebel against the lettuce 'bun'? I want to try for a polenta 'bun'. I'm going to think about it. What about a polenta toad-in-the-hole? Oh holy crap I'll bet that would be good...so on the breakfast list.

OK, I'm going to get to work!

He's A Natural Born Lover...

...and he takes care of business!! He's an NBL and a TCB, NBL and a TCB, NBL and a TCB!!!
Sharon Jones and the Dapp Kings "Natural Born Lover" is rockin out my ears this morning and by the by, I love an acronym.

If this song does it for you like it does it for me, also check out "How Long Do I Have to Wait for You?". Doing some chair dancing and revising my initial Thursday angst (yelled loudly to everyone about how it was breaking my spirit to deal with a Thursday for the last couple of weeks) It's Friday tomorrow gang, the fact that I can say that makes me happy. For now I'm going to keep workin it Sharon style.

Pilates & Korean

Jumped onto the pilates train this evening with the girls, engaged the core and it ROCKED. Soooo-hhhoooooo-oooooo exhausted and limp on the couch. Our teacher is really inspiring, a pole dancing master who's so cut and fabulous. Decided to get Korean tonight bc it's a super easy option if Craig and I are both getting home later and hot damn, it was good!!!! Lots of protein and cabbage. My dinner...


Thank you kimchi and pilates for fantastifying my Tuesday. Soooo tired and old.... deciding between passing out on the couch and climbing upstairs to bed...... need some ZZzzzzssss, night! XX P.S. Night Jess in HK!! Missed you tonight, know you're rockin the South! Enjoy!

This was supposed to be a comment, but there was some flailing involved.

Jess here, I am jumping on this Bento-train like it's my last chance out of...someplace unpleasant...like a mall...or a house that smells like cat pee...or work on a friday afternoon. I even made Brittany and myself a 'take delicious and healthy food to lunch' incentive chart. You know how we love an incentive chart. And I found this online :

http://www.reusablebags.com/store/laptop-lunches-bento-wbook-p-528.html

Gettin me one of those.

My Name is Clam

Way back in '07, the first time I went to Estados Unidos otherwise known as Ame-rica, the people in Starbucks couldn't figure out what my name was. They asked for my name after I'd paid so they could yell it out once my giant coffee was ready and I told them and got some really confused looks, then was asked again, and again, and then it was decided my name was Clam. 

In Australia we speak with a very flat nasal "a" sound, whereas the Estados crew have the Big R sound and big A so announcing my name in my Australian twangy, unlovely accent was heard as "Clam", and incidentally, I find clams delicious. Was I compelled to nibble on myself after accepting my new name - surprisingly no. But we do like to go down to the market nearby and grab some to cook up. 

Easiest recipe ever, and provided guests eat shellfish, this one is ALWAYS a hit. 

To make, prep some veggie stock, then cook a load of finely chopped garlic, chillies, and shallots, put it all together in a pot and get it boiling, add some white wine and a pile of clams (we usually do a kilo-kilo and a half) and cover for 8 mins, until most of the clams have opened up. Spoon out large clumps of clams and eat with salad and a baguette for dunking in the broth. Discard all clams that haven't opened up.

 

Inspired by the fabulous justbento blog I took this photo of my staple salad. Adapted from a Susan V. salad, from the point at which this photo was taken you can go in all sorts of directions - adding big gorgeous borlotti beans, tuna, shrimp, semi-dried tomatoes, black kalamatta olives, banana (for the fruit fiends, ahem), lentils, brown rice - anything!!!! This morning I made a kick-ass dressing made with sliced and chopped garlic, honey and white vinegar. All that was missing was hummus which I have the hardest-corest-craziest craving for today. Mack-damn-it I am so hungry for some hummus. Making some later. Will be worth the wait.  

It's hot and we've been getting our summer drink on. Hanging out on the verandah (deck, patio, whatever) drinking wine and cold beer in the afternoons. LOVING IT! Fab weekend vibes sending out to yall. XClam  

Gazpacho, with a hint of pasta

For this week's cooking extravaganza, we invited my friend Madoka, who is totally adorable and fun, and Robin, also fun, but I'm afraid Madoka win's on adorability. Robin has other fantastic characteristics. I'm sure she can swear in Mexican and drink tequila better than Madoka, but I would like to see the tequila part put to the test.

So, while in the park the other day I read something about sweet potato french fries with honey, cumin and ginger. I wanted to try that out, and since it's spring time we wanted some spring like food, so we made spinach salad with strawberries (except there weren't any and we used papaya instead) and gazpacho. I learned my gazpacho recipe from my friend's mom way back in the day and it used V8 juice instead of stock (which makes the whole process go about 20X faster) but lacking that, I used a tin of spaghetti sauce with italian herbs. The result was good, but had hints of pasta.

                                                                                                                                                                        Madoka got the fun job of wrestling with the sweet potatos to turn them into fry shape, she did admirably. The blender did a fantastic job with the rest. The salad was the winner in my opinion, I'm going to do a lot more spinach/fruit salads in the near future. I liked the papaya as it was not too sweet, and when mixed with some balasamic/mustard dressing because rather delicious. Also it's very colorful and I'm into that. My mom used to make a spinach salad with rice noodles. I must ask her for that recipe sooner rather than later.

Summer in Shanghai being what is, it's very key to have a good stock of cold and easy dishes available.

I'll get on Claire to post some pictures and write more! Anyone who wants recipes, write and tell me! I'll be happy to post but right now I'm pretending to write for work...

Makin' cheese and polenta, then putting them together

In an effort to make ourselves feel better for missing Nina's birthday, we decided to gorge ourselves on polenta and home-made cheese in an open 'lasagne' situation. Taking some fantastic cues from the wonderful lady at 'fatfree vegan' we made a totally not vegan option, that I am soon going to make into a not even vegetarian situation.

Basically it comes down to 

a) Making polenta, and I added some bay leaves and dried herbs to the water. I forgot that I find making polenta mindnumbingly boring, but the result is so awesome that I'm going to suck it up and do it again.

b) Making cheese. The best thing I ever learned how to do, and I can't believe I just learned. It's  SO. FREAKIN. EASY
c) Making some vegetables, adding the cheese to it.
d) Making some tomato sauce. We used a can of chunky tomato                                                         sauce and then added some onions and other deliciousness.

If there was more time available I would have correctly baked it, but I didn't care and it was so incredible as it was. We just make a pile. I now love polenta more than life itself, although it doesn't make up for not being able to eat bread.

NEXT TIME...or sometime sooner than later, I read a recipe in a magazine for baked sweet potato wedges with ginger, honey and cumin. Um, yum?

OK, back to work!

p.s. I have an unhealthy addiction to pineapples at the mo.