Eating Green: Mini Food Journal

Happy St. Patrick's Day! I've decided to do a mini food journal today to record my Irish (and not so Irish but at least green) eatings. I do believe I have some Irish blood in me, though I am mostly English and Scottish. But John is half Irish, 2nd generation American, so there is definitely a reason to make it somewhat authentic for him. You'll see later what I have planned for dinner....

8:20am
But first, the breakfast that made me late for work. You guessed it, irish oatmeal!! (aka steel cut oats). I couldn't think of anything green to add to these, so it's topped with agave nectar, bananas, and frozen raspberries. It's sticking to my bones right now. Oh, and do you like our crocheted green shamrock? That's from my sister-in-law. Isn't it cute? I really need to learn to crochet. More updates as the day goes on, I need to get to work now.

12:15pm
Lunch time!! Which usually means leftovers for me at my desk. Over the weekend I made a tofu scramble with Mori Nu tofu. Usually I use the refridgerated kind, but John wanted to experiment because the aseptic package has fewer calories. We discovered this was mostly water since the tofu cooked down to about half the starting amount. Oh well, still tasted fine. So this isn't really Irish, but it's very green! Additions include asparagus, swiss chard, mushrooms, onion, and pesto. Wrap it in a whole wheat pita and you've got yourself a meal. Over lunch today I made my shopping list for after work: raisins, Earth Balance buttery sticks, and more swiss chard. Any guesses as to what I'm making?
6:30pm
For dinner, I wanted to have one of John's more traditional St Patrick's Day foods, Irish Soda Bread. (you were right, chocolate covered vegan! the chard was for another part of dinner) I veganized a recipe that has been passed down in John's family, my only modifications were to use non bone-char sugar, soymilk, and nonhydrogenated shortening. I followed cakespy's advice and soaked my raisin in sugar water, yielding a plumper, moister raisin when baked. This stuff is hard to beat when freshly baked with a few pats of Earth Balance.

The rest of the meal was a bit less traditional, but one component is still typical Irish fare. I made veganyumyum's version of colcannon (you were right too, amy!). My modifications were using blue potatoes, swiss chard instead of kale, and tempeh bacon instead of seitan. I left the skins on the potatoes, which gave a nice texture. The saltiness of the tempeh was the perfect contrast to the creamy potatoes. We have lots of this leftover. On the side were some sauteed apples, which ended up getting stored in a tupperware because the soda bread and colcannon were so filling. But they'll be yummy warmed up with some vanilla soy ice cream. Or maybe even for breakfast. Still one more treat coming your way this evening. Hopefully I'll have some room to eat it, otherwise you may just get the photograph.
9:00pm
And finally, dessert!! These are neither green nor Irish, but they are super fudgy and rich. Yesterday I made a batch of the crumb topped brownies from My Sweet Vegan (after oogling them on other blogs such as overflowing with awesome ). Oh my, I like to think that I am one of those that has endless amounts of room for sweets, but these brownies fill you up. The crumb topping adds a fun crunch. Oh, and can you see the little face on the corner in the center of the photo (down in the fudgy part of the brownie)? Hopefully it's not just me.
Hope everyone enjoyed eating, drinking, and wearing green today! Maybe this post will help give me a little luck of the Irish.