Vacillating

This past week I’ve gone back and forth between cooking semi-elaborate meals and really having no energy for that sort of thing.

With the rest of the boiled seitan I made on the weekend, I made the ‘Belgian-style seitan stew with dark beer’ from Vegan Planet. I used a bottle of homebrew that we made on St Patrick’s Day, a Dublin Pilsener. We weren’t sure that beer was going to turn out well, because it fermented wrong—I think it was too hot out. But, I was pleasantly surprised when I opened it up to find a perfectly fizzy, deeply flavoured beer. The seitan stew was really good, but a bit on the sweet side.

The next night I had a meeting and didn’t get home until dinner time, and I seriously considered eating a bowl of cereal. But instead, I remembered a ripe avocado in the fridge so I made a lazy guacamole. The avocado was just the right ripeness so it mashed to a creamy consistency, and then I just added some lime, salt & pepper, fresh coriander and diced tomato. Some crackers and toast were the perfect accompaniment.

The one downfall of eating such simple meals is the lack of leftovers to have for lunch the next day. So last night I put in a bit more effort, used up a few things that needed using, and made enough for two meals. Ready-made falafels, which Andy picked up on markdown before he went diving; Moroccan-spiced fava beans and rice with tomato-tahini sauce; spicy olive hummus; stale tortilla wedges; and a pickle. This meal left my quite full but without a heavy feeling, plus, I have beans and rice and falafels left for lunch.

That meal almost left me too full for dessert. Almost.

A few days ago I saw a photo of banana bread made by Textual Bulldog and I realised I love banana bread, but I literally cannot remember the last time I had it—probably upwards of three years. I had two ripe bananas in the freezer, and one in the fridge, so I made the ‘Banana Bread’ from Alternative Vegan. The only change I made was to use tahini instead of peanut butter. For the chopped nuts, I used macadamia pieces. Sweet mother of all that is good in the world, this banana bread was amazing. The outside was crunchy in a good way, and the inside was delicately sweet. I only wish I had cream cheese to have on top.

I’m looking forward to the upcoming three-day weekend, which conveniently rolls into a week long lecture-recess. No teaching means more time for blogging (and, well, research and stuff) so I hope to post about more than my hum-drum single gal meals.

Have a good Anzac day, everyone!