What I ate today - 5th August 2010

I'm trying to eat more healthily and save money so I am taking my lunch into work with me every day. I'm going through a deli box style salad phase at the moment so today I made a spicy chick pea salad with marinated tofu and pine nuts.

First I made the spicy chick peas. I buy canned chick peas as I'm too lazy and disorganised to soak dried beans over night. I cooked these in the microwave according to the instructions on the tin and then made a sauce for them by combining the following.

• A tablespoon of Brown Sauce
• A tablespoon of Tomato Ketchup
• Half a teaspoon of chilli powder
• Half a teaspoon of paprika

Extreme chickpea close up

This was added to a bed of salad which I bought for £1 from a well known supermarket. 

I then added some marinated firm tofu. I buy the Cauldron brand which was pre-marinated, but I wanted to add a little extra sauce both to add more flavour to the tofu and to provide a bit of dressing for the salad. I made a quick dressing by combining 

• 1 tbsp of light low salt soy sauce
• half a tspn of rice wine vinegar
• a pinch of ground black pepper.

I sprinkled a handful of pinenuts over it and this was the overall result. 

This made a filling and I think overall reasonably healthy lunch. It didn't leave me feeling flat and tired in the way that a sandwich and a packet of crisps type lunch sometimes can and I believe it is much more nutritious over all. However I wasn't sure that I'd got the combinations of flavours right. The spicy chick peas tasted lovely as did the tofu but together they didn't taste quite right. The saltiness of the tofu overpowered the taste of the chickpeas. I think I would definitely make these two again but I wouldn't put them together in the same salad box.

Price wise this was fairly reasonable. I estimate it worked out at about £2.20 a portion which isn't bad for such a filling lunch. I'm on the hunt for cheaper, not marinated firm tofu so that I can marinate it myself and hopefully save a few pennies. 

For tea I made I chilli using this recipe. I made a few alterations, I halved the quantity, added a sweet red pepper instead of a green one and added red jalapeno peppers but no green ones. I also used half a packet of Quorn mince as I didn't know what a burger crumble was!  I served it with corn tortillas and some slightly salted Doritos. 

I'd show you a picture but I forgot to take one before we ate it! I'm not a massive chilli fan and I didn't find this particularly tasty, probably because of all the alterations that I made. I'm not sure that I got the quantities of the herbs and spices correct so I will definitely try this one again to see if I can follow the instructions more closely. The other half liked it though, so he gets to eat the left overs for his lunch tomorrow!