wrapping up vegetarian week!

Sunday after the race I was pretty tired, but since I didn't cook on Saturday I had TWO more vegetarian meals to try!  For lunch, I had Steamed Vegetables in Peanut Sauce with Rice.  This was supposed to be served over rice, but I had some rice noodles that needed to be cooked, so I made a quick and easy substitution.

I immediately ran into a problem: I don't have a steamer!  So I improvised.  I took a pan and filled it with about an inch of water, and then placed my mesh strainer in it, resting on it so to speak.  Then, I put on the lid to keep the steam in.

This worked out alright for the vegetables... but not for my strainer!  The plastic handle ended up a little bit... disfigured.  Oops.

Anyway. while the veggies were cooking, I mixed up the peanut sauce, which was delicious.  Hoisin sauce is awesome!

Then, I just tossed it all together!

It wasn't really quite enough peanut sauce for my liking, so I added some extra for flavoring.

The dish turned out well, except for the eggplant.  It was definitely not cooked enough, or something, and both the texture and taste were not exciting me.  So while I ate all the rest of my veggies, I ended up with a pile of eggplant on my plate at the end of lunch.

I think in the future I would just forget steaming and cook the veggies in a pan like I normally do.  Gotta make sure that eggplant is all the way done!

Onto dinner!  I was excited about this meal ALL WEEK.  I made Tortellini with Garden Vegetables (recipe is approximately the same).  The recipe suggests broccoli, but I was all out - so I had peas and corn instead.  Since this was just a "throw it all together recipe I don't have too many pictures, but here's what dinner looked like:

Even better, I had obviously bought a whole package of tortellini, so I had plenty of leftovers, which served as lunch today!

So, today I had more tortellini for lunch... and I think I have it in my head to "keep up the challenge" of vegetarianism - I've now completed day #9!  For dinner, I made Cheesy Vegetable-Rice Skillet, which was so, SO simple and very delicious.

I love anything CHEESY!

And, again, since I had to open a can of vegetable broth and a package of long-grain and wild rice mix, I figured I might as well make it all ... which means leftovers for lunch tomorrow!  Hooray leftovers!

This is probably the first vegetarian dish I made that "felt like" it was missing the meat.  In fact, the dish very closely resembled a dish I made back in May, just with chicken added in.
So, while most of the week without meat I felt great and full, I have to admit though, I was hungry before bed last night and I'm hungry now!!  I think these past few recipes have lacked protein, which means I'm not staying full as long.  I might need to find a protein-heavy snack before bed!  Although there's a vegetarian lunch in store for me tomorrow, I'm not sure how much longer I'll keep it up!

10K training officially starts tomorrow morning - let's hope my legs are a little less sore by then :-)