Moussaka for StL

Dinner
-Moussaka

I’m trying to prepare a bit in advance my meals so that I don’t have to rush every evening, preparing one meal and two bentos. So on Sunday evening I prepared this vegetarian moussaka which I had only to reheat yesterday evening. This left me time to prepare our bentos, and spend the evening at our favourite jazz club.

The title needs a little explanation. StL is one of my best friends. She’s also always complaining that my meals are full of spices. In her opinion, food is good when it tastes of what it should taste (I’d rather say, when it’s plain…:) just kidding).
So here you are, if you like food with little spice, this meal is for you. If not, don’t be scatterbrain and just add the additional spices I usually add (see recipe).

Solar eclipse

Bento content
-Spinach mix, ratatouille
-Mushroom, tomato and cucumber slices
-Parsley hedge
-Glazed seitan with Brussels sprouts
-Broccoli trees, carrot flowers, cheese suns and nori planet
-Black rice, white rice.

We were speaking about bento making and decorations with Bear. And, when looking in my cupboards he found this black rice, that I cherish, and came up with this idea of solar eclipse. One picture before the eclipse and one during it, using the two rices. It took me quite a while but I believe I managed to feature the image he had in mind.
On the cooking side, the only new item is the glazed seitan with Brussels sprouts. The spinach is the left-overs of the filling of the spinach pancake we made on Saturday evening, the ratatouille is the left-overs from Sunday meal.
The broccoli was cooked in water flavoured with ginger, chilli pepper powder, garlic, salt and pepper. The carrots are raw and cut with tiny cake cutters, the stalks of the flowers are made out of parsley stalk.

Thinking about Maki’s challenge and advised proportions : Bear told me that one half of the bento full with rice is far too much…Have to review my proportions!

Vegan mock of blood West-Indian sausage

Dinner
-Vegan sausage near to the West-Indian blood sausage
-Ratatouille (Bf’s way)
-Couscous

They are some recipes that I miss. Couscous with spicy sausages is one of them.
I’ve modified the vegan sausage recipe using gluten flour. This gave the sausage
a texture of West-Indian blood sausage. BF was so pleased we managed to approach this texture.
Though I have to admit this was not truly the sausage we were looking to create!
A happy experiment! Believe we’ll repeat it.

Spinach and tomato pancakes

Dinner
-Spinach and tomato pancakes
-Mushroom salad.

BF is slowly recovering. What would be better than these spinach and tomato pancake?
Mum made us this meal quite often, and I have to agree each time, it’s the same pleasure.
We had planned to do it one evening this week, but somehow, We didn’t manage to stick to our weekly meal planner.
But BF didn’t forget that this meal was planned and bid me to prepare it…How could I say no?

Hangover lunch

Yesterday night, BF had a welcoming party with his colleagues at the office. He came back knowing so much more polish thanks to a real polish helper: Wodka (Polish spelling for Vodka)! So I ended up taking care of him all night, and well…today’s morning too. I still managed to drag him down to the market to buy some veggies and fruits. After I just had time to prepare a little snack for me and this is what I came up with:

Lunch
-Vegetarian croque monsieur (see below)
-Lentils and pumpkin seeds cupcake
-Red cabbage and young green onion salad with my Japanese vinaigrette
-Mandarine.

This croque-monsieur is just a vegetarian sandwich grilled in a George Foreman-style grill. I’ve put inside this vegetarian pâté I received, a radish spread, some sliced mushrooms and a piece of Polish cheese whose name his quite misleading: ser salami. Nothing to do with salami it’s only a cheese really similar to Gouda I would say.
Well, I’m just killing time…he’s sleeping.
Tonight, I’ll offer him a French-Polish dictionary, the side effects when using it to try to speak Polish are less obvious than Wodka!