Vegetarian Grain Bowls. Other Things.

I won’t lie.

The debut wearing of my Marni x H+M jacket, necklace by Red Phoenix Emporium.

The only reason there was Effort and an Absence of Black Puffer in my outfit on Friday was because I was spending the entire day at work. Where the corridors and rooms are permanently toasty, the linen bays always well stocked with blankets (unfortunately I don’t work on blanket warmer supported wards.. that would be heaven) and I spend so much time in blue plastic gowns, face masks and gloves it’s almost like walking around in my own personal sauna. Only less restorative, I suppose.

Then I got home Friday night and all pretence at looking like my best possible self got left outside with the car. I’ve been clomping around the house all weekend in ugg boots and draped in throws in my quieter moments. I’ve needed a large mug of something hot every hour or so to keep me going. I don’t think I was designed for winter.

This was me having a raging Friday night. Sipping peppermint tea from a mug with a print extolling the virtues of coffee as I laminated lunch recipes for the working week. One of the recipes I printed off was for this Goodful video for Vegeterian Grain Bowls that I found on my Facebook feed. Link to printed recipe here.

I wanted to add this recipe to my lunch rotation because of the sheer number of different vegetables involved. Also, with the cooler weather, roasted rather than raw vegetables are the order of the day for me. The recipe basically sees you make two different varieties of bowl, each with a different dressing resulting in four lunches for an hour or so of prep and roasting.

The only catch? I somehow managed to spend $50 on the ingredients. At a supermarket, not our local exxy organic grocer even. Vegetables are so expensive at the moment and some things like yellow capsicum weren’t available resulting in my having to double up on the more expensive red capsicum. Also, I probably shouldn’t have added the asparagus, they were $3.50 a bunch and I bought them as an add in because they looked so lovely and I hadn’t seen any at Woolies for ages…

I was especially curious to discover how the roasted red cabbage, broccoli and brussel sprouts would taste (delicious and very moreish, actually).

Prep is easy but a bit time consuming. All you need is to chop up the veg and arrange on two trays for roasting in a hot oven.

Paprika is the key seasoning for one tray

whilst garlic and onion powders feature for the other. Add oil, salt and pepper to the trays and coat evenly.

This is what my non food stylist trays of veg looked like after roasting. I did burn the red cabbage a bit so will add this to the roasting tray later the next time I make this.

Not shown is the tray of canned chickpeas I had to roast later because I forgot to buy them the night before.

Additional carbs for the bowls came via these instant bags of brown rice.

The dressings were both a snap to make. For the soy one, be warned that it does end up a bit salty. Also, I found adding some fish sauce balanced out the flavour for me.

Overall, I’m really happy with how these grain bowls turned out. The roasted vegetables were a refreshing change from how I usually prep my salad vegetables and I didn’t find the bowls too heavy or oily. I do need to remember to reduce the salt I use to season the raw vegetables next time.

In other exciting vegetable news, snow peas have returned to the supermarket after a long absence. It was a looking a bit dire fruit and veg wise for a while but hopefully this is a sign that diversity has returned to this area of the supermarket.