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Yesterdays lunch/dinner was the Butternut Squash soup from Vegan with a Vengance. I liked it but I’ll likely never make it again as butternut squash is a rare occurrence here in Sweden. Incredibly easy to make, tasty and filling. Yum! I wanted it fat free so I just left all the oil out. It worked well without it too.
We had a very mixed culture breakfast this morning. An exotic mango, banana and blueberry smoothie in our terribly Swedish viking glass served with some delicious French croissants made by an American company and baked in my Swedish oven. All of this served on a lovely plastic tray with an eastern motive featuring some flowers and the text ‘feng shui’. It just doesn’t get much more multi culti than that.
Mango-banana-blueberry smoothie: 1 big glass
Dice the mango, put everything in a blender and whiiiizzz. It’s filling, healthy and gorgeous!
You have to be a real masochist to make tabbouleh. Or at least a little crazy. Preferably both. This is my quinoa version. I love quinoa. It’s tasty, it’s healthy and it’s a perfect protein. Plus the name makes me happy. Quinoa quinoa!
I love tabbouleh too, it’s very tasty. Quinoa tabbouleh is a match made in heaven. I rarely make it though, it takes too long! I tried making it in a food processor once, being lazy the way I always am, but it really didn’t work. It just doesn’t taste good! Sure, it’s ok if you want a parsley-mint-bulgur pesto, but as a salad it’s pretty crap. It’s pretty easy to make once you’ve chopped everything up, it just takes a while!
This version is great for people that can’t tolerate gluten. Plus it’s so good you’ll want to eat it every day!
Tabbouleh: Makes lots!
Rinse the quinoa in lots of hot water. Pour stock over and bring to a boil. Boil for about 15 mins until the quinoa is ready. Let cool.
Chop everything incredibly finely. You want to work that knife! Practice your chopping skills. Mix the oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper with the chopped up vegetables and the herbs. Add the quinoa and stir.
Oh the horror and joy of moving. Our current home is half in boxes and the rest in chaos. Cookie, my lovely little monster cat from hell, is feeling heat and tries to rub against/kill/pee on everything that moves and everything that doesn’t. I’ve been cooking lately as always but there has been no time for interneting.
Today we had a lovely vegan Ciabatta with pesto and grilled vegetables. It was simple to make and OH so tasty. For the next two weeks I’ll be trying to make food like this every day; easy, filling and tasty.
I can’t even remember what I actually put in the pesto, or well I can, it’s just the amounts that are all wrong! It has basil, walnuts, olive oil, salt, pepper, sun-dried tomatoes and garlic in it. The sandwich was delicious. I had some ready bought grilled courgette slices that I used on them as well as grilled aubergine, grilled yellow peppers, sun-dried tomatoes, baby spinach and some cucumber slices. Easy as pie and so delicious. I could eat this baby every day.
Two great things and a bad one. I’ve been making pesto and tapenade. And then putting them on pizza! That’s the good things. The bad thing is my oven breaking. It just kind of broke one day. The front fell off so now I’m without an oven for a while. We’re moving in just two weeks, so it’s no big deal, but food is going to be rather boring for a while now.
I just discovered (while writing this post) the ceiling lamp falling down on the floor. This place is falling apart!
Tapenade is one of my favourite things ever. You can have it on some bread, eat it with an Mediterranean style meal or mix it with quinoa for a quinoa caviar. I love quinoa caviar and eat it on bread with a bit of sour cream and red onion. It reminds me of a typical Swedish summer meal of fish caviar, sour cream and red onion on bread. I used to not like it much at all, but in this version it makes me think of summers by the Swedish coast eating great food and drinking cold bear. It’s odd in a way, I don’t drink and I can’t remember many summers by the sea. Anyway. Tapenade is good and you should definitely try it with quinoa. The store bought versions typically have FISH in them. I had no idea when I started being veggie and have eaten more than one ‘vegetarian’ sandwich with it on. My version is foolproof, easy and very very tasty.
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Tapenade:
De-seed the olives, unless you bought de-seeded ones already. Drain the capers. Put all the ingredients in a mixer or food processor and mix mix mix! you don’t want it to be completely smooth, it tastes so much better when there are ‘chunks’ of olive. Salt and pepper to taste. It’s so simple!
I too have made the famous baked seitan veggeroni. Thank you, thank you, thank you Susan. This recipe rocks. The word has spread, this weekend (probably) my mother is making it and soon enough it will take over Sweden. I’ve seen all the sexy veggeroni posing everywhere, but my log decided to pose with one of this kitchen’s very best friend, the very handsome soy bottle.
Next time I make this I’ll tweak the seasonings a bit. It was fantastic though and I’ll now go on a mission to convert everyone.
I spent a good amount of wednesday night making dolmades, and eating them too. They’re not at all difficult to make, it just takes a while. I made them on my own, but if you were two or more it would be easy and quick too (well, relatively speaking). I was a real moron though, I documented every little step of the process but in my stupidity I forgot to actually take a picture of what they looked like when ready. Doh!
I love all food that is wrapped up, either in some sort of bread (pasties, pitas, wraps, pizza) or like this, in vegetables!
Dolmades: makes 35 or so
Chop up the onion. Fry it in a tablespoon of oil with the rice and the cinnamon until the onion is see through. Add the pine nuts and the water and let it boil for about 20 mins. Open the package of vine leaves and rinse them well, several times. Drain them and pat them dry. Cut off the stems. Chop the tomato finely. When the rice is cooked, add the tomato, mint and parsley. Season to taste. Any broken vine leaves that you have, cover the bottom of a pan with them. Put about a tablespoon of rice mixture on each wine leaf (the shiny side down and the side with the stems up!), fold it up and roll it to a rather tight package. Put it in the pan with the seam down. Pack the dolmades tightly. Slice up the lemon and cover the dolmades with lemon slices. Pour some oil over it all and pour just about enough vegetable stock over the dolmades to cover them. Put the lid of a pot on top so they don’t float up. Simmer gently for about 45 minutes. Let the dolmades cool in the water and then drain any remaining water. Serve them lukewarm or at room temperature. I had to use two pots for all my dolmades, but it really depends on the size of your pot.
They’re SO good with some potato wedges and some tzatsiki. I’m thinking of making these lovely things for my housewarming party once I’ve moved. They can be prapared in advanced and then served at room temperature. It’s the perfect finger food.
On of the simplest and tastiest things you can make is refried beans. I love it on a tortilla with some sallad and avocado. Love it! There’s going to be a lot of simple food for a while now. I want to put all my energy into packing, sorting, organising and throwing away. With only three weeks until we move (but I don’t think I’ve really realised yet!) there are a billion things to get done and only a few days to do them. This weekend we’ll not only be enjoying some free time and some of our really unorthodox Easter celebrations (we’re not Christian) but we’ll also be packing boxes, sorting through things and, at times, wanting to kill each other. So that’ll be fun.
Back to those damn refried beans. It’s actually one of my favourite meals, ever. It’s just zero effort for all that taste, and it’s so filling. I don’t actually have, or use, a recipe for them. It’s like having a recipe for your normal pasta with tomato sauce you know. Here’s how I do them (the beans that is), usually.
Frijoles refritos:
Heat up a pan with some oil, add the beans and start mashing them with a fork while heating them through. Sprinkle ground cumin on top. Make the whole thing moist with some tomato salsa (home made or bought) and keep heating. Salt and pepper. Enjoy on a tortilla.
One of the many cookbooks I own has a recipe for a pasta primavera. I have no idea what’s so spring like about the vegetables in it, there’s onion, garlic, carrots and the like in it. But it sounded great so I decided to make something similar for lunch yesterday. It was a simple dish, the ingredients list long, but all in all it took me about 15 minutes. Pasta is far from my favourite, but sometimes it’s nice to have. It always amazes me to hear people talking about having to cut down on the pasta for dieting reasons, I’ve never had that problem. I’ll eat pasta maybe once every two weeks? Maybe slightly more. Bread on the other hand…
I was going to have whole wheat pasta with it, but noticed that my man had eaten all of it without even telling me, so we had pasta hearts instead. It’s not as healthy as wholegrain, for the body atleast, but it does wonders for your mind.
Early Spring Pasta: Serves 2
Get the pasta going. Boil water with salt, add the pasta. Cook until al dente.
Chop the onion and the garlic finely. Slice the carrot. Heat up a frying pan with a bit of oil in it. Sauté the onion, garlic and carrot for about 3 mins. Slice mushrooms and courgette, chop the bell pepper and the tomato. Add to the onions together with the herbs, sauté for another 5 minutes. Salt and pepper to taste. Add the water and let ‘steam’ for a few minutes until the vegetables are tender. Serve with pasta and a squeeze of lemon.
And also. I have tulips! I was given some tulips by my caretakers sister-in-law as thanks for helping her with her computer. They’re lovely, and Cookie (my cat) loves chewing on them.
Spring is really here now. I can feel it in every part of my body, I feel re-energised so full of life and happy. It’s fantastic. We’ve had quite a few really nice days now and I’m seriously contemplating buying a grill so we can start having barbecues, handily, I got my pay check today, so we can afford it! I’ll see if I can find something nice, small and cheap. With my sister being here, the spring being fantastic and me being lazy we didn’t do much cooking this weekend, like I’ve already said.
One of the few things I did manage to cook up this weekend was a tasty chick pea soup. It’s one of our new favourites. SO easy to make, so filling and so comforting. If it was winter still I’d make it every other day. I had it for dinner with some bread, and then for lunch the day after. I will definitely be making this again. Several times.
The recipe is really simple. It’s from a book, but I have no idea which one since it’s a recipe I copied ages ago from a friends cookbook. I modified it a bit, and it turned out great.
Spanish style Chick pea Soup: 3-4 portions
Chop the onion and the garlic finely. Fry in a bit of olive oil for a little while. Add basil, ground cumin, chopped tomatoes, tomato purée, sugar and salt. Cook for about 15 minutes or so. Mash half of the chick peas or use a hand mixer. It’s not supposed to have any bits left. The rest of the chick peas you leave as they are. After cooking the tomato mix for 15 minutes you add the mixed/mashed chickpeas, lemon and enough water to make the soup ‘soupy’ but still pretty thick. Add the last whole chickpeas and pepper to taste. Maybe you’ll want to add some more lemon (I did!). Serve with a nice bread. It’s very very filling because of all the chickpeas and full of things that are good for you.
