During our kitchen renovation, we decided to get a ready-made meal service, since cooking without a stove or sink didn’t sound super fun. We found a local place called Vegetable and Butcher that provides vegan meals with an option of adding meat to them. Because I’m trying to fight my diabetes diagnosis and know vegan diets have been shown to reverse insulin-resistance, I signed up for the vegan version. David opted for the meat one (I call it “cup of blood” in honor of Noree 😝). So far, a month in, we LOVE this place! Really creative meals, all in compostable containers.
I’ll be sharing our lunches here in this thread to give you some ideas for your own!
Lunch 10-17-21: Peanut Citrus Salad with Dates and Balsamic Vinaigrette
Thoughts on this:
Do NOT pass go until you learn how to make your own salad dressings. They take minutes and are 5 million bazillion times better than any bottled dressing. Google will pull up good recipes for balsamic vinaigrette (you can’t go wrong: vinegar, garlic, Dijon, salt, olive oil) that you could adapt as any other type of vinaigrette by replacing the vinegar (eg Italian=red wine vinegar, lemon=lemon DUH).
I usually don’t like fruit on my salad, but this is incredible when mixed with a handful of granola (yup! I think any granola would work here!), canned mandarin oranges (or peeled fresh clementines) and a few slices of peeled grapefruit with white coating taken off. And throw in chopped dates?!! Forget about it!
You don’t need to use peanuts—this also had some roasted cashews in it which were yummy!
Lunch Saturday 10-16-21
Chicory Roasted Vegetable Salad + Toasted Pumpkin Seeds
Includes chicory, mustard greens, red endive, spring mix, candied walnuts, pumpkin seeds + roasted carrot, turnips, parsnips, butternut squash. Dressing is lemon-dill-mustard based.
My thoughts on lessons learned here:
Roasted root vegetables add so much flavor and could be done ahead of time
Nuts add awesome crunch texture to a salad
A good dressing can really pull a salad together
Use weird greens in salad instead of boring old lettuce