Lunchmonkeys

I'm here to say I've had two of the best lunches of my life for the past two consecutive days. On Friday, I served the kids leftover pumpkin and lentil soup with animal shapes pasta, but unfortunately there wasn't enough left for me. So I decided to make myself a sandwich with the pumpkin and caramelised red onion foccacia that I'd baked the previous day. I don't generally eat a lot of sandwiches - I'm a bit sniffy about whether they constitute a proper meal or not, and I'd never eat anything so heavy for a snack, and generally I prefer hot food over cold. So even though I probably enjoy eating sandwiches more than soup, my overall preference for hot food would lead me to choose soup instead. Perfectly illogical, I know!

What to fill it with? No hummus, no roast veggies, no tapenade, no (edible) vegan cheese in the fridge. But there was tofu. So I quickly whipped together a tofu eggless salad - 1 cup chopped tofu, 2 finely sliced spring onions, 2 diced Polish pickles, 1/2 tsp sweet paprika, freshly ground mixed pepper, salt and plaimil mayo - and spooned it up between two slices of foccacia.
The result was an immense, delicious sandwich. My seasoning for the salad was perfect, bland-textured yet salty and creamy, very authentic! The foccacia was better the day after too. It was soft and yielded complicitly to the bite, the onions adding some chewy, roasted contrast. I could have eaten another of these straight away, but I didn't as I'm trying to be a little more sensible in my eating decisions at the moment!

Today - Saturday - my kids have ballet and tap classes in the morning. So we're kind of up and at 'em first thing and they usually have a bowl of cold cereal and some juice to eat before we go rather than the leisurely breakfast I would prefer them to enjoy. So, I had a brainwave as I got them ready this morning. Breakfast-for-Lunch! Tasha at the Voracious Vegan posted tantalising pictures of her pumpkin pancakes yesterday, and as I still had about 2 cups of pumpkin puree leftover, I decided to make pumpkin-choc chip pancakes with Linda Mac sausages and baked beans. I used the recipe for Daniyell's banana pancakes from 'La Dolce Vegan!' but substituted 1/2 cup pumpkin for the banana, used hemp seed oil for added nutrients, upped the sweetener to 1/4 cup and stirred about 1/2 cup dark chocolate chunks and 1 tsp cinnamon (we ♥ cinnamon!) through the flour mix before adding the wet ingredients. I'd gone and bought a new non-stick frying pan from Tesco this morning while McGonnagle was at her dance class simply because my last really good one - that I'd had for about six years - finally died on me and two crap pans later, I couldn't stomach the thought of no pancakes in my future. Especially considering they are the birthday breakfast of choice for my little ones. This pan can stay because I think it just helped me make the best pancakes I've ever eaten.

Soft, fluffy and delicious with that spicy warmness of cinnamon and warm melty blobs of dark chocolate, these babies rocked!
I still have a little pumpkin left so I think I'm going to make some more foccacia. There's also the small matter of tidying the garden up for winter. Hope you all have a great weekend!
P.S. I'm just about to take the kids to Mill Farm for some spooky-dooky goings on, so I thought I'd dress in appropriate colours.

Yes, that's right - I really am a black-hearted old trout!

Over and Out....