Kate L Pugh - Cookery Diary

This is highly experimental. Don't be surprised if I get fed up of updating it. It's dual-purpose - first, it'll give new vegans or people thinking about becoming vegan an idea of what a real actual vegan eats day-to-day; and second, it'll encourage me to cook properly instead of living on toast.

Week Beginning Sunday 18 February 2001

Sunday

• Brunch: lots of nice coffee with soya milk; orange juice; toast with Marmite and soya margarine; all consumed slowly and happily while reading the Sunday papers with doop.
• Supper: I had some chickpeas left over from a can I didn't finish last week, so I made a stew thing with them and some well-browned thinly-sliced onions, some red and green (bell) peppers, some chewy delicious Chinese mushrooms and a small spoonful of vegan red pesto from a jar. I served it over garlic mashed potato (throw some peeled garlic cloves in with the potatoes halfway through the cooking time; mash the potatoes and garlic together with soya margarine, soya milk and a bit of salt).

Sunday's a good time to do a bit of cooking ahead. I made extra mash to see how well it reheats tomorrow (I put it into a covered tub as soon as it was done, to stop it drying out). When cooking the onions for tonight's stew, I cooked far more than I needed (browning onions to that degree takes at least 20 minutes - I don't usually have that amount of time to spare just for onions!) and used them in a mushroom and pinto bean stew (chopped carrots, chunked Chinese mushrooms, canned pinto beans, a dash of red wine, some Kikkoman soy sauce, some paprika and some ground cumin). Half of that will be tomorrow's lunch, with the spare mash, and I've frozen the rest as a half-hearted attempt to replenish my frozen home-made ready-meal stocks.

I've not got any nice portable breadstuff to do muffins for breakfast like I did last week, so I decided to go Middle-Eastern. I'd bought some flat bread from a local mini-market in the afternoon, so mixed up some packet falafel mix - I'll have the flat bread spread with tahini/lemon juice mix and filled with falafel for tomorrow's packed breakfast. I'll assemble two of those and freeze one for Tuesday, and hope that I get around to organising a Tesco Direct delivery for Tuesday evening.

I'd bought some dried apricots to try out a lentil and apricot soup that I saw posted on alt.food.vegan, so I made a start on that, and also tried a recipe from The Vegan Cookbook, by Wakeman and Baskerville, which was basically soaking finely-chopped dried apricots in soya milk - the apricots rehydrate by absorbing liquid from the soya milk, which consequently goes all condensed and creamy.

Monday

• Breakfast: um, I didn't have any.
• Lunch: The falafel-filled flatbread that I made last night - it was going to be for breakfast but I wasn't hungry.
• Supper: Didn't really have much supper, either. I ate the apricot pudding thing from last night when I got in from work (not bad; will try it again some time), and ate some of the lentil and apricot soup later - but I don't like it. It's not a bad recipe, I just don't like it.

I've still got the mash and stew that was going to be for today's lunch, so I didn't bother cooking tonight. I'd intended to put the rest of my bitter Chinese greens in it, but forgot, so I cut them up and washed them and put them in another tub to steam in the microwave tomorrow. I think that might even be a nicer way to have them.

Tuesday

• Breakfast: The other falafel-filled flatbread.
• Lunch: Mashed potato (it reheated really well! I'll try this again), pinto bean stew, steamed greens, as described yesterday.
• Supper: BAD LAZY KATE! Just some tofu out of a packet and some instant noodles.

Got my Tesco Direct order, but too tired to cook. Made up some Marmite and peanut butter muffins for the rest of the week's breakfast, but looks like I'm getting a sandwich for lunch tomorrow. I did bake some rather nice chocolate brownies, but that was just random.

Wednesday

• Breakfast: In work - Marmite and peanut butter muffin as prepared last night, and coffee with soya milk. I'd forgotten to bring a new carton of orange juice, so bought a bottled smoothie on the way in.
• Lunch: Popped out for a hummous and salad bagel.
• Supper: I felt quite tired this evening, and didn't eat till late, since I had a job interview at 6:30 over the phone (!). I was considering phoning for a takeaway, but then spotted a ripe avocado in the cupboard, so I cooked some couscous (mixed with paprika, celery salt, garlic powder and onion powder and soaked in hot water), then added chopped avocado, red pepper, fennel (the very very end of a bulb that was hiding in the fridge), courgette and sundried tomatoes, and dressed it with fresh lemon juice and some of the oil from the sundried tomatoes, then served it with hot pepper sauce on the side. This is quite a neat tip for when you can't be bothered cooking - just cut up all the veg and have them raw with the thing (rice, couscous etc) that you'd have served them with cooked.

Not much time for cooking tonight, so I made a quick supper as described above, and for tomorrow's lunch took out the mushroom stew that I'd frozen on Sunday, and mixed some dry couscous with onion powder, garlic powder, celery salt and dill to have with it.

Thursday

• Breakfast: In work - Marmite and peanut butter muffin, coffee with soya milk, and some cranberry juice from a carton I brought in to keep in the fridge.
• Lunch: The mushroom stew I defrosted last night, heated in the microwave, and the couscous mix, cooked by adding boiling water to the tub and soaking for 8-10 minutes.
• Supper: Fried tofu cubes and stirfried vegetables simmered briefly in Blue Dragon Yellow Bean Sauce (comes in a sachet), served with white rice made in the rice cooker.

I made an extra portion of rice and left it in the rice cooker for later use. [Note added later: It dried out a bit, probably because the bowl of the rice cooker is quite big and there's lots of air inside. Best to pack it into a smaller tub straight away.] I also pre-fried the tofu and did a whole packet, and saved some in a covered bowl in the fridge. It's Friday tomorrow, so I'll be going out for lunch.

Friday

• Breakfast: In work - same as yesterday.
• Lunch: A hummous and roast vegetable baguette, bought and consumed on the way to the pub (lunch hour not long enough to eat in the pub)
• Supper: Out for pizza with friends.

Um, no cooking this evening. Got home late and fell into bed.

Saturday

• Brunch: Nothing exciting - toasted muffins with soya margarine and Marmite, orange juice.
• Supper: Now this is really lazy. I put the rest of Thursday's rice and tofu in a dish, poured over a can of chopped tomatoes, and microwaved it. Not bad, though.