Tingling my Tastebuds...a round up of recipes

I'm Veggie and have been all my days.

It was never a massive decision, more of a happening; being a vegetarian is something that happened to me.  I do not like the taste of meat.  I hate the texture of meat.  I therefore hate meat substitutes.

I am also fairly fussy; I'm getting better in my old age, but being a hater of certain textures, like mushroom and aubergine, it kind of narrows down my choices a wee bit.

I am very fortunate however to live in the golden age of internet, where I can make specific searches for recipes I can actually get excited about, which with my self-placed limitations can be difficult.

Here's a wee round up of recipes I've been drooling over this week, along with links to see for yourself.

1.Tomato and harissa stew with cheddar dumplings

Source:bbcgoodfood.com

I'm not going to lie - it's the dumpling bit that's doing it for me - check out the recipe here.

I'm a massive carbohydrate/cheese fan, but I love some spice too, so this ticks a lot of my boxes.  It pretends it's a bit healthy with all the veg and the chickpeas, but it's luring you in with the oh-so-yummy promise of dumpling naughtiness.

I've never tried harissa, and being a busy mum of three who rarely has time to shop alone, let alone search for something new, Id probably substitute in red and yellow peppers instead, which would still sit nicely in amongst the tomatoes and chickpeas.

2. Chickpea and Vegetable Curry

Source: The Vegetarian Society (www.recipes.vegsoc.org)

A veg curry is always my go-to favourite if I can't think of anything else, and it never fails to satisfy.  It's quick, it's easy and it's a really satisfying make, which if you portion up just right,can last a couple of days.

A veg curry is the best - you can pretty much chuck anything in, add some chopped tomatoes or even some coconut milk and you can mix up the flavours no end.  I love a chickpea curry - there's something really satisfying and filling about one, and you can find the recipe for this one from the Vegetarian Society here.

3.Easy Pizza Dip with Cream Cheese

Source www.tinnedtomatoes.com

Oh holy monkeys, this really tickles my tastebuds and makes me drool a wee bit.  This is ridiculous - a dip which tastes like pizza, but one which you can dip vegetable crudites into and thus feel a little bit less guilty (just try to forget about the cheese!)

Have a look at this glorious recipe from my good friend Jac at Tinned Tomatoes.  This is definitely a good one to pull out when you have visitors or if you want to settle down to a good movie with some tortilla chips and beer; why no go all out? Heaven in a dish!

4. Greek salad with Feta

Source: Oh, sweet Basil (www.ohsweetbasil.com)

I LOVE a Greek salad.  I've been to Greece a few times now, and it's definitely my best and most favourite part about going there - you cannot beat the absolute freshness of the food and the zing of all the different fresh flavours hitting your tastebuds. Delicious!

Coupled with tzatziki and some frsh bread, this has to be my ultimate dish.  Simple, quick, but totally flavoursome - and healthy too. Have a gander at Oh, Sweet Basil's take on this classic, here.


5. Battered Halloumi

Source: www.planetveggie.com

Dear good god. Battered Halloumi for the win!

I did say I hate meat substitutes, but I think this is the closest I will ever come.  The texture of halloumi is odd.  It's squeaky.  It's a bit rubbery.

But boy, does it taste good in batter!

I've had battered halloumi a few times - it seems to be quite fashionable at the moment as the vegetarian opton of choice for bar and restaurants, but I am so very glad when I see it n the menu instead of bloody macaroni or stupid stuffed aubergine. Again.

Planet Veggie is right when she proclaims she now wants to 'batter all the things'. Check out her recipe here.

Long live battered halloumi!


Right, now I am very extremely hungry.  I'm off to do some cooking!

Hearty Butternut Squash, Caramelised Onion and Feta Pie

I've been feeling a bit glum this week - the winter weather has not been very kind so far and with yet another night of rain lashing and wind howling through the house (turns out old stone cottages are a bit draughty!) it was time to raid the stores and come up with a winter warmer for everyone to tuck into.

So, here's my recipe for 

Serves 2 greedy adults (or 2 adults and 2 not-so-fussy-as-our kids)

Ingredients (fills a 15cm cake tin, so adjust as needed):

4 small red onions, chopped

Half a large Butternut Squash, peeled and cubed into bitesize bits

175g (or half a tub of Apetina Feta cubes, if you want to be lazy, like me)

Pre-rolled Shortcrust Pastry sheet - enough to cover cake tin and provide a lid for pie

3 cloves of garlic (unpeeled)

Balsamic vinegar

Sugar (preferably brown, but I used white as I had no brown sugar!)

Olive oil

Salt

Method:

Grab a bowl and toss the  Butternut squash and garlic cloves in oil. Sprinkle a bit of salt over the top and place on a baking tray.  Roast in the oven for around 20 mins or until Butternut is slightly browned.

Meanwhile, toss your onions in a pot with some oil and fry for about 5 mins.  Add some healthy slugs of Balsamic Vinegar and about a tablespoon of Sugar and watch the onions turn into a deliciously sweet mixture. Fry off a little, then set aside.

Line your cake tin (or an actual pie dish, if you are more civilized than I am!) with the rolled Shortcrust Pastry

Grab your roasted Squash and Garlic.  Squeeze out the garlic from it's papery skin, chuck in a bowl with the Roasted Butternut, Caramelised Onion, and tip in the Feta cheese. Pour into the pastry case and fashion your lid over the top.

Some tasty filling going on in here!

Bake in the oven until pastry is cooked.

Slice and serve.

We had our with some pretty sweet Sweet Potatoes.  Very yummy!

This dish is such a surprise, because of the salty/sweet taste that you get.  The sweetness of the Onions and the Squash is very much challenged by the saltiness of the Feta and the pastry for a perfect combo.

Delicious!

Pizza Under Duress

Mealtimes can be hard.

I know.

Two small boys who clamour for food most of the time is a challenge I meet daily.

Actually, who am I kidding?  Pretty much hourly.

'I'm hungry mum'

'Can I have a snack?' (re: everything in the fridge)

or the classic, 'I'm finished, but I'm still hungry!'

It's like living in a continual Masterchef judging hell-pit.  They are fussy little buggers.

'I don't like that'

'It's got red bits'

'It's got green bits'

I only like bananas on a Sunday at noon in the glare of the sun'

'Those apples taste like apples, I wanted ones that tasted like cheese'

'I don't like cheese' (lies!)

So when we make something from scratch that has fresh ingredients in it and they eat it and love it and want it, we MAKE it.  We make it so hard, we make sure that we make it the most makiest way ever until we are so done with making that we can't make anymore.

You get the picture.

Thus was the case when we dropped Tom off at school this morning and Ethan caught the smell from the school cafeteria.

'What's that smell, Mummy?'

'I don't know pal, what do you think?'

'Smells like...smells liiiiiiike...pizza?  My want to make PIZZA!  Let's make Pizza, Mum!'

'O.k, we can make Pizza'

'Can we make it Mummy?  Can we make pizza?'

'Yes, we can make pizza'

'We make pizza when we get home mum?'

'Yes, we can make pizza, okay?'

'We gonna make pizza?  Can we make pizza?  Can we make it?'

'YES'

'But we gonna make pizza mum, we can make pizza?'

'Yes, shoosht, we are going to make pizza.'

'Muuum?'

*ignores*

'Mummyyyyyyyy?'

*tries to talk about something else, gets overrun with...*

'We can make the pizza now?'

All. The. Way. Home.

So, what did we do?

We watched T.V.

Joke - we made Pizza.  Do you honestly think I would get away with it?

So here's my Under Duress Pizza.  It was 9.15 a.m. Nobody should have to make, cook and eat pizza by quarter to 10 in the morning, but that's what we did.

Why?

Because he is 3 years old and CRAZY.

And I am a total pushover.

Crazy eyes

INGREDIENTS

450g Self Raising Flour
Slosh of Milk (approx 200 ml)
Slosh of Olive Oil
80g Butter

Sauce

Passata
Grated Cheddar
Sneaky Veg for underneath (if you are feeling like being all healthy and sneaky.  I wasn't.  It was too damn early to be making pizza)

If you are feeling especially brave, allow the toddler to help.  If you want a long, drawn-out experience where crazy comes to stay, let the toddler sit on the worktop beside you while you do your damndest to stop him from basically tipping flour and butter all over the floor.

Guess what I got to do?

As toddler allows, put all ingredients in a bowl and mix.  If toddler is there you might need two spoon so he can 'help do mixing' ie. steal both spoons and proceed to eat the raw dough while coercing you into doing the same.

Crazy offerings

DO NOT eat the raw dough.   Ignore the small child doing the same.  Or not.  Apparently anything will encourage him at this point.

Finally, roll out dough into a thin bed for you to spread the passata on.

This might take a while as toddler will insist on 'helping' of course, mainly by stealing a bit to use as 'playdough' and then mashing it back into the pile, thus ensuing you have to start again.  Don't aim for perfection.  Aim for 'that'll do'.

Spread passata on while toddler screams about wanting yellow sauce instead of red.  Argue with toddler about colour of sauce for 10 mins before conceding that red is yellow.

Grate cheddar. Allow toddler to steal cheddar to keep him quiet.  Try not to lose temper - you are very close to the end.

Steal some cheese in comfort-eating moment of glory.  You have earned it.  Fuck it - you can grate more.

Sprinkle cheese on pizza and try to convince toddler to save pizza until tea time, or even lunch.  Give in to angry, desolate wails of doom and slice up pizza so you can stick a slice in the oven for him.

Console crying, angry toddler who is sad that you have 'broken' the pizza.

Mash 'slice' back into pizza base in an effort to make it look as though it has never been sliced.

Nearly cry.

Console sad toddler who just wants pizza.

Sneak 'slice' into oven when toddler isn't looking.

Tell toddler pizza is nearly ready.  Watch him make this face.

Take him into living room and sit him in front of Peppa Pig while you wait.

Present him with pizza.

Watch as he cries because it is too hot.

Wait until it cools.

Watch as he won't eat pizza.  Cajole him into trying.  Despair as the little sod refuses and asks for yoghurt instead.

Send him to nursery for the afternoon and become so relaxed and carefree after crazy pizza debacle that you leave slice on table.  

Watch the little bugger eat the whole slice as soon as he comes home from nursery while he is waiting for the pizza to cook for everyone else's tea.

Wonder why the hell you bother sometimes.

It's the face!

The things we do for our kids!

We started with Mean Green: The Juice Diary

Well, the juicer is here, we bought enough veg for a 5 day juice-fest, so...here we go!

I scoured Dundee, and let me tell you, getting something like a juicer in a middle-sized city in Scotland without having to resort to going online is impossible!

I spent a whole afternoon last week going around five large-chain shops to no avail.

In the end, I came home and did what i should have done in the first place and bought a Vivo juicer from Amazon.  At £38.99 it's at the cheaper end of the scale and has been getting some very good reviews, and I have to say i'm chuffed with it.  It's easy to clean, easy to use and very powerful.  I just hope it stands the test of time.

Dave and I have both decided to aim for a 5 day reboot, using the Joe Cross Reboot Your Life book.  See our previous post Rebooting my life - or trying to for more info on the reasons behind this!

Alternatively check out www.rebootwithjoe.com to find out more about juicing.

We were in Asda today for Frozen (it's finally out!  Yay!), and stupidly decided this would be a good time to go shopping with the kids for our fruit and veg.

It's the Easter holidays here, the schools are off, and the shop was packed.

I always seem to turn into some kind of 'no' demon in the supermarket with the kids - they seem to become possessed by the naughty fairy and everything gets real ugly, real quick.

We did manage, however, to get the majority of our shop, as well as remember dog food for Sparky and popcorn for the film, so we did very well indeed. And, our weekly shop, despite shopping in Asda rather than our usual Aldi, was very cheap indeed.  This excited me more than anything else!

So now the kids are frozen by Frozen and Dave and I cracked on with the juicing.

First up, it was Joe's Mean Green.

Now, you are supposed to start at the beginning of a plan, but Dave and I are nothing if not unconventional.

We decided to start by having some juice for dinner instead of what we were thinking about (pizza).  We decided to ditch the unhealthy choice and dive right in.

Joe's Mean Green contains:

8 sticks of celery
2 whole cucumbers
16 handfuls of spinach
5cm fresh root ginger
4 apples
1 lemon

Looking Mean and Green!

First impressions

Dave thought it would be a good idea for us to include videos of our first juice tastings.  I'm wishing I'd ran a comb through my hair!

 The juice tasted fresh and clean - and was surprisingly filling. We had Ginger Pear-snip for dessert, which was quite nice (or so I thought - Dave was a bit miffed at the fact that it was trying to pass as pudding, which made me laugh.  That man loves his pudding!)

Ginger Pear-snip is simply:

3 parsnips
3 pears
4cm of root ginger

Juice-catching 'tache!

  Now the rest of the night will be spent avoiding food and not answering our cravings.

I've stocked up with Peppermint tea and shall be going through that as my cravings for sugar and caffeine arise.

Tomorrow will be the real test - a full day of nothing but juice.  I'm kind of excited as the recipes look tasty.

Maybe it's because I've been a life-long vegetarian, but a lot of these drinks really appeal to me, and I'm chuffed to be getting my 5 a day so easily.

Or should I say, 10 a day now, according to the news reports!
I genuinely thought that was an April Fool - imagine printing something like that on the 1st of April!

Sneaky Chocolate Banana Muffins!

I woke up today full of the joys of Spring!

Well, maybe that's a slight exaggeration.

I woke up today a little less tired than usual, which somehow, these days equals some kind of rapture inside - because a day not spent scraping myself up off the floor due to heavy, heavy tiredness is a day which should be celebrated.

Ah, the joys of kids!

I cleaned, I did the week's shopping (with toddler in tow!), I walked the dog, I got on top of my washing pile and then when I came across these old bananas, instead of carelessly ditching them in the bin because I was to tired to envisage actually being able to function well enough to do anything with them, I actually thought 'hey, let's do some baking!'

Check me out, I'm on a roll!

Manky auld bananas!  Yum!

I'll be the first to admit, it doesn't look promising, does it?

'Bananas! In pyjamas!'

Ethan was at home with me today, so of course he wanted to get in on the action.  If only to mooch around the kitchen and see what else he could get to eat and sing the theme tune from Bananas in Pyjamas.

They looked better once peeled!

I did Google for a 'Banana muffin' recipe, but once I did this I discovered that although I had the bananas and the will to make something awesome with them, I was slightly lacking on the ingredient front.  However, I'm not as green as I'm cabbage-looking, thus I was able to compensate with other ingredients I already had.

So!  Here's my recipe for Sneaky Banana Muffins (makes approx. 12)  They are sneaky because they look like awesome chocolate muffins, but the manky old bananas are hiding!! Ha ha!

You will need two bowls.

Bowl #1

2 manky auld Bananas (they mash better when they are brown and old)

50g Melted Butter

1 Egg (beaten)

A slug of Natural Yoghurt

Bowl#2

150g Caster Sugar

50g Chocolate Chips

135g Plain Flour

1tsp Baking Powder

20g Cocoa powder

Once the bowls are combined:

A slug of Milk (preferably full-fat)

Combine the ingredients together in their separate bowls.  Once thoroughly mixed, pour the wet bowl into the dry stuff.  Mix thoroughly.  Adda slug of milk to loosen the mixture to a soft, shiny consistency.

Ethan getting in with the spoon!

Stop for a well-deserved yoghurt break

I think these cooked for around 20 minutes - 30 minutes at 160 degrees, but between tidying up and arranging various things for Ethan, such as putting on Jake and The Neverland Pirates for the umpteenth time, I cannot be sure.  What I do know is that you can see if they are ready by sticking a sharp knife into the centre - if it comes out sticky then another 5 mins should do the trick.  Be aware however that the end result is slightly gooier inside than your normal muffin, so a wee bit off goo on the blade is o.k.

Warning - little helpers cannot resist temptation!

We baked them in lovely silicone cases too, which varied in size, so we got about 12 out of them, but I'm sure you could make smaller ones with normal-sized paper cases and get more for your money!

Serve with a delicious glass of cold milk - complete with curly straw, of course!

Ethan's verdict? Well, he had a sniff, he tasted it slightly, but it was a resounding 'no', much to my disappointment.  My mum however yummed one down as soon as she came in, and then Dave and Tom both gorged themselves after tea tonight, so I think they are a resounding success.  They are very tasty - crunchy on the outside and a bit softer and gooey in the middle.  Gorgeous!  Maybe if Ethan hadn't helped this one time, he wouldn't have see the bananas going in (I really do think this is why he didn't eat any) and they really would have been Sneaky Banana Muffins.

I shall duplicate this recipe soon when he is not around and let you all know!

Raspberry and Blueberry Smoothie...or How I made a Delicious Sorbet!

Like everyone, the colder weather has had me loading up with carbohydrates left, right and centre.
But now the finer weather has started to appear over the horizon, I have started to crave healthier foods.  Being a vegetarian, naturally I lean towards salads and fruit.
Today I am craving smoothie.

So I have:

 125g Raspberries (Tesco's frozen)
125g Blueberries (Tesco's frozen)
Natural fat-free yoghurt
A dribble of Apple Juice

I don't have a blender, so I used a mini-chopper which was kindly gifted to me by a lovely friend.  It's a fab wee thing and does an awful lot of work in this house!  I use it for nearly everything.

Of course, word gets out quite quickly that 'Mum is cooking' (ha ha!), so what is supposed to be a quick and easy job is doubled, but the payoff is getting something healthy into the boys.

 Actually, we never have any trouble getting Tom to eat fruit - he would eat it all day every day if we didn't stop him.  And raspberries are his favourite!  Ethan on the other hand won't eat much fruit.  He tasted the end result, but I think the texture put him off. I don't fight him on it - I was a fussy eater as a child and totally understand where he's coming from.  I never force the issue - there's no point.  He loves 'cooking' though, so I'm hoping that if he interacts with fruit long enough, eventually it'll happen!

The raspberries look lovely when frozen and as Tom discovered 'They do melting in your mouth!'  He also mentioned that some of them 'look like they are shouting for help!', which I suppose is quite sinister when you think about what is about to happen to them :0

Ethan likes to 'cook' up on the counter, while Tom is just tall enough to reach the whizzer, for the all-important button pressing!

The yoghurt, rasps and blueberries look lovely all together just before blitzing.  As you can see, Tom pinched a couple raspberries - he couldn't resist.

We whizzed it all up.  The only problem was, it was quite thick and the whizzer stopped whizzing! The mixture was a wee bit too thick. Never mind, Ethan to the rescue with the wooden spoon!  This is where we added a splash of apple juice to loosen it up a bit.

But, if you get the apple juice out then you have to pour juice for the boys.  In their favourite cups of course!

The result: not quite a smoothie, but some kind of frozen, chilly sorbet with delicious pieces of still-frozen fruit to 'do MORE melting in your mouth, Mum!'

It definitely comes Thomas-approved!  The cups were ditched and bowls and spoons became the order of the day, which was fab.  Must keep this in mind for summertime snacking.

'It's really delicious mum.  I really love it!'

Presumably if we had waited longer, or used unfrozen fruit the result would have been more smoothie-esque, but as it stands, this is a delicious treat for young (and old!) people.  There's definitely something moreish about it.

I think in the summer, I might try to freeze it on ice-lolly sticks - maybe then I can convince Ethan McFussy-eater to try them!