Korean kimchi noodle soup with thinly sliced tomato, tofu and spring onion. This is my go to late-night snack and if i’m still hungry i eat some nuts and dried fruit as desert.

Stovetop popcorn: 5 min. Heat pot, add oil, add popcorn, pop. Eat.

Noodle soup: Less than 15min.

(This recipe is easiest and fastest with pre-prepared frozen vegetables.)

In oil, fry off a couple of cubes of frozen ginger and garlic with a handful of chopped spring onions whites, for a few minutes till fragrant.

Add vegan chicken broth stirred together with miso paste, vegan oyster sauce, chinese mushroom stock, a bit of kombu, a good pinch of white pepper and a healthy dash of soymilk for richness. Add frozen sweetcorn and cubed tofu to preferred amount, and bring this all to a rolling boil for a couple of minutes at a high heat.

Add the rice noodles into the broth and a fuck ton of chopped spring greens/dark leafy veg on top. Do not stir in the leafy veg or it will over cook. Cover the pot so steam doesn’t escape, switch off the heat and leave it alone for 5 minutes to finish cooking through.

Stir everything together, add spring onion greens to garnish and eat your soup.

Yesterday I made the following:

• cooked some small potatoes in the microwave (10-12 mins)
• added some rehydrated small textured soy
• added tomato sauce I had in the fridge and needed to finish
• added spices (tomato powder, basil, garlic, chilli pepper flakes… I don’t remember what else)
• mixed all and heated it for one or two extra minutes
• added chia seeds and nutritional yeast

If you don’t have the tomato sauce you can use some oil and add other spices to your taste.
I love textured vegetable proteins because they are so convenient; since those are dried they are easy to keep, won’t spoil for a long time and rehydration usually takes little time.

Keeping on with the pasta theme, keep a couple of mushroom soup cans in your cupboard pantry for this very reason.

Cook some pasta, and drain the water a good minute before the pasta is cooked. To that pan add a tin of mushroom soup and season with pepper. You end up with a creamy mushroom pasta. Top it off with any garnish, including cheese or herbs of your choice. It takes as much time as it would to cook the pasta.

I dont forget to eat dinner, because food is one of my greatest joys. 😅

However, what I usually make if I’m in a real hurry, or just don’t want to bother cooking something that takes real effort, is spaghetti aglio e olio.

Cook spaghetti as you like it, transfer to a colander when done and turn the heat off.

Whilst the spaghetti is cooking, chop some garlic. I usually do one or two cloves for a single portion. Don’t use a press as we’ll fry the garlic, and it’ll burn if you do.

In the now empty pot, put in a couple of tablespoons of olive oil and the garlic. Fry until fragrant. It should only take a minute or two. You can turn the heat back on if it doesn’t come up to temperature to fry. Be sure not to burn the garlic.

Put the spaghetti in the pot and toss with the olive oil and garlic, to coat the spaghetti. Put the dish on a plate or in a bowl.

Here’s the secret trick: Pour over some more olive oil. Olive oil loses some of its great flavour when cooked, so we want to add some room-temperature oil for flavour. It makes a difference.

This takes about 10 minutes to make, its super easy, only uses one pot and a colander, and it’s super tasty. Add chopped parsley and some chili flakes for extra flavour if you want. Its a nice addition, but not needed.

Huh, that actually sounds like an interesting mix.

I eat dinner very early and almost always have leftovers in the fridge or stock ingredients I use often. A few things I would eat if I was in a hurry:

• Pasta with pesto or a quick sauce of cooking cream, nutritional yeast, and sautéed garlic and dried tomatoes.
• Raw carrots, cucumbers, or pepper strips with hummus
• Rice with tofu in a soy/maple syrup sauce, similar to teriyaki
• Rice and beans
• If I have avocados that are ripe, I’ll slice them over bread I put in the oven for a few minutes.