How to make mini pizzas in 3 minutes

Got one hour between one class and another and you have to eat? But you really, really don't want to eat insta-noodles again, do you?

No worries!! There are healthier alternatives!

Here's how to transform whatever you have in your refrigerator into a delicious lunch.

#1. First, gather up all the ingredients that you have in your refrigerator.  I used a tomato, tomato sauce, tofu, and the rest of my whole wheat bread. But you can use an onion, bell peppers, zucchini, etc. Any  veggie will work.

Start by cutting your bread and placing the sauce on top (or olive oil, if you don't have sauce).

#2. Decorate your "pizzas" with the veggies that you have. Season with oregano, basil, olive oil and salt.

#3. Bake until your veggies are cooked. Voilà! Enjoy your meal!

How to make popcorn

Ah, popcorn! My favorite low-budget student snack! Who has never chomped nervously on popcorn while figuring out a tough integral or while stressed to finish a report on time?

Needless to say, I have jars and jars of popcorn kernels in my closet.

But how do you pop them without burning them?

#1. Cover the bottom of a pot with oil. Yes, cover it completely in oil. You can substitute the oil with melted butter or margarine, but be careful. Too little and the popcorn will be hard and tasteless.

#2. Let the oil heat up on its own for a minute.

#3. Place enough popcorn kernels to cover the bottom of the pot in one layer. That's the trick to making just enough popcorn. If your kernels start to over lap, you might have put in too much.

#4. Let the popcorn fry without a lid until the kernels turn yellowish. This is the real secret. I'm not sure why this works so well, but I found it a couple years ago online and it's been working magic for me ever since.

#5. Cover the pot with a lid. Keep listening.

#6. Once there are a good number of popped kernels, shake the pot to make sure that the unpopped kernels are still on the bottom.

#7. Keep listening. Stick to the 2 second rule: If you can count to 2 in Mississippis without any popcorn popping, that means that your popcorn is done.

#8. Take the pot off the heat, but with the lid still on. Unpopped kernels might still pop.

Salt away and eat! Go back to studying, you!


But if you want to make your popcorn special, you can season it! This is my favorite family recipe : 4 season popcorn. The four seasons are : salt, black pepper, red pepper (or Tabasco), and lemon juice. Season with taste!

Vegan picnic #2

More ideas for vegan picnic :

High in calories, sugar, and energy.

Apples keep well inside backpacks and during long stays. 

Eggplant, lettuce + tahini on wholewheat bread

Preparing for your vegan picnic

Hey guys!

Since I study environmental science, I get to go on a lot of field trips and I do a lot of outdoor sports with my friends. Every time this happens, I know that I'll have to plan my food in advance- mainly because there's not a snack-shop in the middle of your hiking trail. And even if there is, odds are that they will sell ham & cheese sandwiches, tuna sandwiches, chicken breast sandwiches . . . you get the idea. It's hard to sell fast snacks to a vegan.

But I have some clever ideas I've coined up over the years. This is one of my favorite: the roasted eggplant sandwich. There are many variations: you can dice the eggplant and fry it with garlic and fill your sandwich with that. This is the best, yummy alternative I came up with, but it has downsides. It's greasy with olive oil and it's not really nice eating garlic and not having a place to brush your teeth later. But it sure hits the spot, and can be eaten hot or cold.

Diced eggplant & garlic, served on pasta.

Another alternative is picking the roundest eggplant you can find at the supermarket, and slicing it so that you have a plump disk that is roughly the same size as a hamburger. Cut it a little thicker, though, as it will flatten.

Bake it for about 20 minutes with a sprinkle of salt. It will be charred on the outside, slightly gooey on the inside, and substitutes perfectly a hamburger/ham/meat option. 

Then add lettuce, mayonnaise, tomatoes, and everything else you like in your sandwich. I added black olives


to mine.

Other ideas for vegan sandwiches:

-Grilled bell peppers, roasted shitaki mushrooms with lettuce and tomatoes

-Shredded carrots & shredded beets with a hint of olive oil and salt on whole wheat bread

-Lentil or bean burger (this takes considerably more time. Best if made way before, and frozen for when it comes in handy)

Other ideas for vegan picnic:

-Pasta salad with diced celery, spinach, green beans

-Cold rice salad with diced carrots, cabbage and veggies

-Bean salad with chopped veggies

-Tabule

Hopefully I'll get to show some of my other ideas with pictures.

This is my baggy, all set to go spelunking. I added cashew nuts, tabule, peach and iced water in addition to my eggplant-burger sandwiches.

Bon appétit!