Raw Bento

So my story of becoming vegetarian was really being an adventurous omnivore (you wouldn’t believe the stuff I ate; I was like into weird parts) to being very raw to semi-raw or high-raw. Labels!

Anyway, I have found that I’m happy to be raw till dinner but I had always cooked meat dishes until two years ago. I realized that such recipes didn’t translate well into veggie ones; I had to re-learn how to use spices and herbs; how to make veggie dishes less bland; and tried new cuisines that I wasn’t familiar cooking. Eating, yes, but cooking was a new challenge.

I like hummus but always had store-bought ones which I think even the most healthful ones have preservatives so I plucked this one from here and it’s so freakin’ easy! YUM!

Recipe (in a high-speed blender):
2 cups soaked and cooked chick peas (soak overnight and boil for 45 min)
2 tbs of tahini (raw or cooked)
1 clove garlic
Juice of half a lemon
2 tbs extra virgin olive oil
Sea salt to taste
Paprika as a topping

I ate my hummus in a whole wheat tortilla wrap with romaine, slices of carrot and cucumber, plus a drizzle of my pine nut dressing. This recipe needed more salt but I have been using very unsalty sea salt from Sado Island and had to use more than usual…Does anyone have thoughts on this — sea salt that is not salty?

Another great discovery for me were red lentils. I’ve always had yellow ones but red is faster to cook as they are flatter and smaller than brown or yellow. I like a fiery curry with steamed broccoli and brown rice.

I know I haven’t been making bentos and dug this one out of my photo archives. When I am craving for Chinese flavours, nothing beats a wokful of garlic-and-shoyu-flavoured rice with veggies. I made this for an evening train ride out of Tokyo for one of my summer weekend getaways. In Singapore while growing up, my mother would make Chinese fried rice with fresh tomatoes and cucumbers on the side so I tend to eat my fried rice this way, too.

Hope you enjoyed looking at some of my fave cooked vegan eats. It came as a surprise to me that I had to learn how to cook again and there was period of time when I was frustrated that my previous flavour combinations didn’t work but getting online and reading vegan blogs helped me a lot.