What do vegans eat on long, busy days?

Often people wonder, what do vegans eat?  To answer that question, for a full year I had a monthly series in which I documented what I ate for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Click easy vegan meals to see the 12 month round-up.

It's been a while since I've done one of my What Vegans Eat posts. So one day last week I decided to document my vegan meals.

David and I have been juggling a lot of projects lately, and so we were up early and stayed up late.

Breakfast

While I love big cozy breakfasts like a vegetable-packed vegan tofu scramble, sometimes I can't be bothered. So for breakfast I had a very bare bones breakfast burrito with seasoned tofu. It's kind of like the burrito version of my eggy tofu & toast.

How to make this lazy vegan breakfast burrito:

First, I put a half teaspoon of oil into a warm skillet. I crumbled three ounces of vacuum-packed super firm tofu into it, and didn't move the tofu for a few minutes so that it could brown well. Then I gave it a stir, let it brown a while longer, and added about a tablespoon of nutritional yeast flakes, and ⅛ teaspoon of black salt.

(If I'd had any onion powder, I would have added about ½ teaspoon of that too.)

Then I poured the tofu out of the pan, put a tortilla into the warm skillet, and warmed each side. Finally, I put the scrambled tofu into the tortilla, rolled it up, and boom. I served it with coffee & cashew milk.

If I'd had more time & inclination (or had felt hungrier), the burrito would have been more sizable with breakfast potatoes or a veggie sausage stuffed inside.

Lunch

That day I was working on my cooking video for the week. The video featured vegan three bean chili, which is one of my most popular recipes. It's filled with black, pinto, and Great Northern beans. It also includes fire roasted tomatoes, onions, garlic, and spices.

After I was done filming the video, I had a bowl of chili with crackers to celebrate, and sparkling water with lemon.

I’ve been hooked on sparkling water since I started drinking sparkling strawberry lemonade earlier in the year.

Snack

David and I recently watched our friend Ashley's cats, when she went on a business trip. As a thank you, Ashley treated us to fall-spiced sweet potato cookies.

I noshed on a couple of cookies before heading to the farmers market.

Farmers market visit

This time of year is pretty great at the farmers market. Not only are the summer tomatoes still at their best, there are also the beginnings of fall produce like squash and apples.

I picked up some kale, basil, tomatoes, and bell peppers.

Dinner

Once we got home, I made a big kale salad using some of the produce we'd picked up at the market, plus whatever was in the refrigerator. I massaged the kale with vegan tahini dressing, and also added avocado.

On the side we had toasted baguette, plus extra virgin olive oil & balsamic glaze for dipping.

Late night snack

David and I were working late that night. I was editing the chili video, and he was working on a freelance side project. So by the time we finished for the night at 11 pm, we needed a snack while we wound down and watched some TV before bed.

Usually we'd use the air popper for popcorn. However, my air popper died back at the beginning of August, sadly. I'd had the air popper since childhood. It had worked like a champ all of these years, but it started smelling smoky & sparking. We had to let it go.

Luckily, David and I don't get too attached to objects, and we took it in stride.

So that night I made popcorn on the stove instead. It's the way my dad makes popcorn, and so it makes me think of him.

Plus, I always feel like kind of a badass for some reason making popcorn on the stove… It's a lot more interactive than just pushing a button and waiting for it to pop. And you get popcorn out of it. So that's a win/win. I topped it with melted non-dairy butter and nutritional yeast flakes.