Quick Beany Lunch

I <3 quick AND healthy food so I thought I'd share my lunch (not literally!) with you today.

First I spread a couple of tortilla wraps with houmous, added some 'napolina five bean salad', chopped green pepper and baby spinach leaves. It's as easy as that. Minimum time, minimum washing up, minimum ingredients... Maximum yummyness! :D

Swede & Parsnip Bake

Finally a new recipe! That incidentally received 9/10 from a local food critic ;)

I found (and then adapted) this one on the BBC good food website which has quite a few almost vegan meals if you’re willing to have a search. I’ve looked at every recipe on The Vegan Stoner now. I love how simple it is and how cute the illustrations are! Defo worth checking out, recipes usually need a specialist ingredient though.

Cooking Time: Just over an hour, only need to be in the kitchen for the first half.
Ingredients:
1 medium sized swede
1 large turnip
3 tablespoons of golden syrup
About 4 slices worth of breadcrumbs
A hefty chunk of marg
2 eggs worth of egg replacer (I use no-egg)
A drizzle of Olive oil
Salt
A generous shake of thyme

Serves two

1. Chop the turnip and swede into small cubes and boil for around 14 mins. (put the swede in by itself for the first few minutes... I forgot.) Preheat the oven to 180 C.

2. Drain and mash the veg with some marg. Add ¾ of the breadcrumbs, egg replacer and goldon syrup. Mix well.

3.Place the mixture into a baking dish and smooth the surface. Mix the remaining breadcrumbs with a little oil and lots of thyme. Layer this on top and dot on some marg.

4. Place in the oven for 35 mins, keep an eye on it near the end, boil up some veggies and use the water to make gravy!

I am pre-empting a big shop at Single Step tomorrow so perhaps I’ll be making some new adventurous things next week...

Caribbean Bean Stew

Found this uber healthy and filling dish at Vegan Village and I pretty much stuck entirely to their recipe minus tabasco and bay leaves. I also left out the black pepper as I haven't got round to buying any yet (quite a faux pas for a food blogger, no?) and the carrot as I didn't quite feel it fitted with the recipe.

The ingredients are all easy to get hold of and once you have done the frying;

you just need to add all the other ingredients and stir occasionally for 30 mins.

I cheated and used Uncle Bens 2mins microwave rice (possibly my last white rice for a while if my boyfriend, Josh, has anything to do with it!)
And this was the finished result:

Perhaps not the most aesthetically pleasing but still a hearty and really easy dish to prepare as long as you don't mind quite a bit of chopping. The recipe made about 4 portions this size so if cooking for less the ingredients could be halved. (Provided you don't mind using half a tin and saving the rest, it's a pet peeve of mine as I can never use the remainder before it goes off!) Having said this, I kept the leftovers of the stew in the fridge and heated it up in the microwave and it still tasted great.

This week I've also cooked Pizzas, Mish Mash Ratatouille and my favourite Mint and Pea Soup. I'll hopefully get round to blogging about the former two soon, somewhere between film editing, travelling to Dartmoor for the weekend, writing my dissertation and helping to run LU people & planet society!

Freshers Week

A week of chips, vodka, chips, soup, Chinese takeaway, chips, cider, and chips.
A very enjoyable but wonderfully unhealthy week. I have a lovely clean new kitchen and new flatmates who I haven't actually used the 'V' word around yet and I'm really looking forward to doing some cooking! I haven't got round to making peanut butter cookies or crisps yet so hopefully I'll find some time next week in between multiple societies and meetings.
I went for lunch today at the Whaletail in Lancaster (my second visit this week) and ate Thai carrot soup, spicy but sooo tasty and hopefully going some way to getting rid of my freshers flu! I also called in at Single step, the wholefood store in Lancaster to stock up on vegan cheese as well as some instant Miso soup and a Ginger cake to take to people & planet society on Wednesday. That's all folks, hopefully I'll have something a little more exciting for you next week!

Bourbon Biscuits.

empty packet hehe.

I was getting some bourbons for my omni-friends the other day and decided to check the ingredients just on the off chance that they didn't contain milk/egg. I've always assumed bourbons would so I stick to rich tea as they're usually a safe bet but these bourbons were vegan!
My mum picked them up from Iceland so I won't be able to get them once I get back to Lancaster (tomorrow) but I'll check a few packets in Sainbury's/ASDA and see if I have any luck there. I was never actually that much of a bourbon fan but it's just exciting to find something new to snack on. In fact I really wanted to make some peanut butter cookies the other day but I ran out of time so perhaps that might be a good way to make some new friends in freshers week ;)

Potato and Mushroom Blintzes.

‘What the hell is a blintz?’ Exactly what I was thinking when I noticed this recipe in ‘Veganomicon’. It is, in fact, just a posh name for a pancake parcel but it makes food sound so much more gourmet so why not use this fancy label? I used ‘No-egg’ to make the pancakes but there are loads of different egg substitutes on the market as well as homemade options. The rest of the ingredients are all things you’ll have lying around so it’s a good last minute option if you cba going to the shops.

Cooking time: 5 mins making pancake mix earlier in the day and then about 45mins before serving.

Pancakes
1½ [360ml] Cups of soymilk (or rice milk)
¼ [60ml] Cup of water
1 Cup of plain flour (or combinations of chickpea and plain if you feel like being fancy)
½ Teaspoon of salt

Blintzes
1 pancake mix (I made blintzes for 2 so only used about ¾ of the mix and had the rest for pudding)
½ Pound of potatoes, roughly chopped
1 small onion, chopped.
½ Pound of mushrooms, sliced (I used chestnut mushrooms and they were lush)
Salt, pepper and olive oil
Serves 3

Earlier in the day:
1. Whisk all the pancake ingredients together to get a smooth viscous liquid. Leave in the fridge for at least an hour.

About 45 mins before you want to eat:
2.Get the potatoes boiling (leave for about 25 mins or until they get squishy enough to mash)
3. Start frying the onion in a little olive oil. After 12 mins add the mushrooms and continue to fry until the mushrooms are cooked. (Try one!)

 4. Fry the pancakes, you should hopefully get about 8 out of the mix, layer them on a plate.

5. Drain and then mash the potato, adding a little salt and pepper. (I’d recommend adding wholegrain mustard here as I’m addicted to the stuff but as I was cooking for my dad as well I just added it on the side of our plates)

6. ‘Fold’ the mushroom mix into the mash potato.

7. Place 3 tablespoons of this mixture in the centre of a pancake in an oval shape, fold over the two long sides of the pancake and then the two shorter sides over these.

8. Fry this package, folds facing downwards, until it has sealed well then turn over for a further 30 seconds frying and then remove and plate up. Do this with the rest of the pancakes; three or four can be frying at once depending on your blintz-making-speed.  I made some ‘Bisto favourite’ gravy to go with them and added wholegrain mustard on the side but green beans would be a nice addition for a bit more variety.

Feeble attempt at a fancy finishing touch.

It’s probably worth mentioning here that I always put my plates in the microwave or oven for a while before serving to warm them a little as more often than not there’s one part of my meal which isn’t quite ready at the same time as everything else and this helps to keep everything hot.

I had enough batter left after the blintzes for three more pancakes so I loaded them up with some dark brown sugar and lemon juice for pud. ‘Veganomicon’ states that the pancakes can be kept in the fridge for just over a week so it might be worth making double the amount and heating them up in a frying pan for a breakfast treat later in the week!

Puuuuding

So I was doing some exploration of other vegan blogs last night and I came across Chocolate-Covered Katie. There are A LOT of things I need to try out on here once I'm back in Lancaster and I have access to Single Step, the wholefoods shop I use. I've kind of gone off desserts since I became vegan as I didn't think there was much variety but it seems I couldn't have been more wrong. Oh and I made an incredible cake yesterday which I will post about soon. Cake and a cup of tea for breakfast, lush.
Feels like I need a picture here...

http://www.merchdirect.com/

Big love x

p.s. Finally a post with no exclamation marks(want to put one here so badly)......!