Taller d’aperitius indis

A Londres costen £30 al council. A València el meu herbolari en va fer ahir un per 5€ on els beneficis aniran a una xicoteta ONG.

Estic contenta perquè de les sis receptes, cinc n’eren veganes. Les aniré pujant aquí poc a poc. La gent molt agradable i carolo, el cuiner, si li estiraves la llengua contava històries sobre els anys que va passar a l’Índia.

• Totes les receptes vegetarianes i cursos de cuina vegetariana de Carolo al grup de facebook ‘El taller de Carolo’.

• La ONG on va treballar Carolo i que duu dos orfelinats a Nepal i Calcuta es diu Amigos de Tara. Marco i Piedad van pedalar fins allà per recaptar fons i t’ho conten en aquest vídeo:
  

Menu Plan Monday 16th to 22nd June

Menu planning saves me time, money and makes my life simpler. It just needs some practice and discipline, but sharing it with the community around I’m and organizing junkie does help a lot. Personally, I tend to combine old favorites and new recipes, all simple, healthy and with modest seasonal ingredients. Every week I do at least a salad, a soup, one dish of legumes, one dish of wholemeal organic cereal (such as brown rice, quinoa, wholemeal pasta, bulgur, etc), something my omnivore would cook and a meal from the freezer I can skip in case we eat out.

Sunday

• Lunch: Spinach catalan-style
• Dinner: Vegan bruschetta

Monday

• Lunch: Grilled seitan and garlic spring greens
• Dinner: Superfast simple baked leek in oats cream

Tuesday

• Lunch: Leek and spring greens soup
• Dinner: Vegan chard and quinoa lasagna

Wednesday

• Lunch: Wild rice with grilled tofu and steamed red pepper, kale and broccoli
• Dinner: Grilled asparagus

Thursday

• Lunch: Afghani pumpkin
• Dinner: Vegan ramen

Friday

• Lunch: Stir-Fried Red Cabbage with garlic
• Dinner: Kale, chickpea and coconut milk chapatis

Saturday

• Lunch: Forager’s Freebie Nettle & Wild Garlic Risotto
• Dinner: Onion soup

Healthwise, in addition to that, I take every morning a B12 and vitamin D pill (when I remember), add grounded flax seeds to dishes (when I remember), have simple oatmeal breakfasts (or toasted bread with olive oil), snack nuts and dried or fresh fruits (also I can’t help chips and nachos from time to time), try to drink two liters of water every day (usually only one), try to sleep at least 8 hours (usually it’s 7), do a very soft gym class once or twice a week or run half an hour and have and occasional glass of wine or beer.

Menu Plan Monday: 1st to 7th June

Menu planning saves me time, money and makes my life simpler. It just needs some practice and discipline, but sharing it with the community around I’m and organizing junkie does help a lot. Personally, I tend to combine old favorites and new recipes, all simple, healthy and with modest seasonal ingredients. Every week I do at least a salad, a soup, one dish of legumes, one dish of wholemeal organic cereal (such as brown rice, quinoa, wholemeal pasta, bulgur, etc), something my omnivore would cook and a meal from the freezer I can skip in case we eat out.

Saturday

• Lunch: Vegan penne arrabiata
• Dinner: Chapatis filled with chickpeas and beetroot leaves cooked in coconut milk

Sunday

• Lunch: Escalivada, portobello burger
• Dinner: Apple salad

Monday

• Lunch: Steamed cauliflower
• Dinner: Flageolet beans

Tuesday

• Lunch: Steamed vegetables on brown rice
• Dinner: Squash cream

Wednesday

• Lunch: Avocado maki
• Dinner: Baked leek in oats cream

Thursday

• Lunch: Sprouts salad
• Dinner: Spring greens catalan style

Friday

• Lunch: Seitan stew
• Dinner: Miso soup, maki

Healthwise, in addition to that, I take every morning a B12 and vitamin D pill (when I remember), add grounded flax seeds to dishes (when I remember), have simple oatmeal breakfasts (or toasted bread with olive oil), snack nuts and dried or fresh fruits (also I can’t help chips and nachos from time to time), try to drink two liters of water every day (usually only one), try to sleep at least 8 hours (usually it’s 7), do a very soft gym class once or twice a week or run half an hour and have and occasional glass of wine or beer.

Who cares about the weather black forrest ice lollies

Spring is here! Or it could be! Eventually!

So, who cares? Fruit ice lollies take you to a promised sunny land. Plus, are a ready treat in your freezer. The only thing you really need is an ice lolly mould and the chopper attachment from your blender. My chopper is strong enough, alway check if yours can handle ice!

Ingredients:
* One banana peeled, sliced and frozen
* Handful of black forrest frozen fruits
* Drops of oats milk alternative, or any other milk alternative
* A dried apricot, chopped

Directions:
* Drop in blender the banana and the frozen fruits
* Blend while adding the milk alternative till ice-cream consistency.
* Fill ice lolly moulds and put to freezer.
* Tip: For the mould to easily loosen, rinse with lukewarm water.

Where to get this stuff?
* Lolly moulds: IKEA £2
* Black Forest Fruits: Tesco £2
* Oats milk alternative: Oatly Organic £1.39
* Dried Apricots: Tesco £1

Vegan hearty broccoli stem soup

A hearty soup should be filling, a healthy soup should be plant-based, dairy-free and low-fat. Or at least that’s what The Starch Solution from McDougall MD says. I disagree with McDougall on avoiding completely fat and still using sugar. I avoid refined sugar as much as possible and I still use olive oil, but only a tiny little bit, as macrobiotics do. Few drops are enough to add flavour, and the legumes make it so yummy I just had three bowls of it. Can’t hardly move. Gosh, have to stop being such a fab cook.

Credits for inspiring the idea and a much beautiful pic go to Cheezy loaded potato broccoli soup by Lunchbox. I didn’t use any vegan cheese, they are all very fatty anyway, nor my usual oats milk/cream, so this one is gluten-free too. The florets I used them in another dish yesterday but kept the stem for this one. Most people throw away the stem not knowing it’s edible! Broccoli stems are as nutritious as the broccoli crown. Such a waste of resources. Eat the peel of potatoes too, vitamins are underneath, just buy organic ones and it’ll be fine.

Ingredients (makes 2-4):

• Broccoli stem
• Two small potatoes
• 50gr of split peas
• 50gr of red split lentils
• Eye of garlic
• Small piece of red cabbage
• Half a carrot
• Piece of red pepper

Directions:

• Cut broccoli florets and use for something else. For example this steamed broccoli with dried tomatoes and boiled wheat berries. Yummy!



• Save/freeze broccoli stem for this dish.
• Boil broccoli stem, two small potatoes, eye of garlic and 50 grams of split peas for 20 min.
• Blend
• Add 50 grams of split red lentils and boil 20 min further
• As a topping: chop red cabbage, red pepper and grate carrot. Sauté in a pan with only two drops of oil.
• Add your toppings plus pepper and black sesame seeds, or just regular sesame seeds, or ground flax seeds. We do eat with our eyes after all
• Enjoy!

Menu Plan Monday 23th Feb to 1st March

Menu planning saves me time, money and makes my life simpler. It just needs some practice and discipline, but sharing it with the community around I’m and organizing junkie does help a lot. Personally, I tend to combine old favorites and new recipes, all simple, healthy and with modest seasonal ingredients. Every week I do at least a salad, a soup, one dish of legumes, one dish of wholemeal organic cereal (such as brown rice, quinoa, wholemeal pasta, bulgur, etc), something my omnivore would cook and a meal from the freezer I can skip in case we eat out.

Saturday

• Lunch: Organic soup (from IKEA) and brown bread bun
• Dinner: Homemade pizza

Sunday

• Lunch: Hummus and sautéed shiitake
• Dinner: Spinach catalan-style and potato omelette

Monday

• Lunch: Creamy Roasted Sprouts n’ Pasta
• Dinner: Trinxat de la Cerdanya (potato and cabbage)

Tuesday

• Lunch: Avocado maki
• Dinner: Apple salad

Wednesday

• Lunch: Barszcz (polish beetroot soup)
• Dinner: Beetroot hamburger (Omnivoe will have a meat hamburger)

Thursday

• Lunch: Chard rice soup
• Dinner: Escalivada and baba ghanoush

Friday

• Lunch: Onion soup and Steamed cauliflower with green sauce
• Dinner: Roasted artichokes

Healthwise, in addition to that, I take every morning a B12 and vitamin D pill (when I remember), add grounded flax seeds to dishes (when I remember), have simple oatmeal breakfasts (or toasted bread with olive oil), snack nuts and dried or fresh fruits (also I can’t help chips and nachos from time to time), try to drink two liters of water every day (usually only one), try to sleep at least 8 hours (usually it’s 7), do a very soft gym class once or twice a week (starting now!) and have and occasional glass of wine or beer.

Sexy spooning seitan stew

This was inspired by a recipe of Tempeh stew from Hiulits Cuisine . I just happened to have seitan and used it instead of tempeh. Also wanted to make it a bit more simple, so I skipped all the grounding of nuts and replaced it with chopped mushrooms. The overall main idea is to get something similar to a pea beef stew, wich I had not had in years. My only mistake was not to watch closely my broth, and almost burned it. Be careful when you play with fire!

Ingredients

• Carrot
• Half onion
• Peas
• Half eggplant (small)
• Four white button mushrooms
• Half tomato (small)
• Seitan
• Half bay leaf
• Salt
• Olive oil

Directions

1. Sauté chopped carrot and onion till tender
2. Add peas and chopped eggplant
3. Add water, seitan, chopped mushrooms, chopped tomato, cover and bring to a boil
4. Reduce heat and simmer 20 minutes
5. Serve

Mushroom soup with apple and baharat

What to do with button mushrooms that go bad? I hate to throw away food, and my mushrooms had only brown spots and a bit of liquid. But should I risk it?

After an intense search of 5 min, I have not seen any specific answer to this. Seems that if mushrooms are wild, beware, they could get poisonous just by going bad. But if they are white button and come from the supermarket, it’s very unlikely they contain bacteria or spores that will hurt you. Some websites refer to white mushrooms ‘sweating’ and that you should keep them in a brown paper bag, others, that mushrooms dry away and the brown spots are an indicator of this. My mushrooms were in a plastic container that was partially covered, mushrooms dried, water evaporated, hit the plastic top, condensed, liquid fell. Made sense. Or maybe not, because the liquid was at the bottom. Forget science, I was hungry and decided to take my chances.

If you’re doing something as stupid as this, cook the mushrooms, they’ll be less nutritious but at least you’ll be beating the chances of food poisoning. I actually flambéed them at some point while frying with garlic. Then added apple. Boiled with sliced potato. And blended.

I was not 100% sure about the taste, so I did as millenary cultures: use spices to cover it. This time, it was Baharat, and I’ve got to say this mushroom trip is fantastic. Just joking, I’m perfectly well. Just wished this flying elephant would move and let me see the screen. Recipe is delicious, but will use fresh mushrooms next time.

Widowed lentils soup with carrot and cavolo nero

In Spain, ‘widowed lentils’ stands for meatless lentils. Binary-gender-criticism apart, I wanted to give some sexy greenery and carrot for the widow to play. Cavolo nero is rough enough to stand the long cooking green lentils need, so I gave it a try, and got one new recipe for the win!

Ingredients for 1 serving:
– Green lentils 100gr
– One clove of garlic
– Half bay leaf
– Piede of celery
– Small organic carrot
– Six cavolo nero leaves, chopped
– Salt

Directions:
Soak green lentils for at least half an hour. Some varieties need the whole night, check directions on your label. Boil everything together for at least 15 minutes, you won’t need no oil. Depending on the variety, you might need up to 45 minutes for the lentils to soften. Keep an eye and stir, you don’t want to run out of stock. Serve.

*Menu Plan Monday 27th Jan to 2nd Feb* Check my healthy meals…

This week we are having one of my good old favorite Superfast simple baked leek in oats cream, the recently fallen in love with Cream of Cauliflower, trying a vegan version of the classic cuban rice and getting adventurous with a mushroom raw soup recipe. And since we already have the ingredients, we are repeating some fresh and frozen recipes we didn’t do last week like borscht and lentil soup. I’m still in the quest of ingredients for “Iraqi-Inspired Seitan and Eggplant Stew”, I found Baharat spice at Waitrose, hopefully will find seitan soon 😀  

Sunday

• Lunch: Creamy Roasted Sprouts n’ Pasta 
  
• Dinner: Beetroot hamburger (Omnivoe will have a meat hamburger)

Monday

• Lunch: Widowed lentils soup (I’m adding cavolo nero to the recipe this time)
  
• Dinner:  Superfast simple baked leek in oats cream (Onmivore will add grilled fish on the side)

Tuesday

• Lunch: Borscht and grilled brussels sprouts
• Dinner: Rice noodles with onion, red pepper, dried shiitake, cabbage and carrot (Onmivore will add prawns)

Wednesday

• Lunch: Vegan Cream of Cauliflower Soup
• Dinner: Sweet Potato Cauliflower Soup

Thursday

• Lunch: Vegan quinoa tabbouleh and hummus
• Dinner: Vegan cuban rice (Omnivore will have fried egg instead of banana)
  

Friday

• Lunch:  Mushroom raw soup
• Dinner: Grilled tofu and salad

Saturday

• Lunch:  Black rice with seaweed
  
• Dinner: Vegan sausage with peas and mashed potatoes (Omnivore will have meat sausage)
  

Menu planning saves me time, money and makes my life simpler. It just needs some practice and discipline, but sharing it with the community around I’m and organizing junkie does help a lot. Personally, I tend to combine old favorites and new recipes, all simple, healthy and with modest seasonal ingredients. Every week I do at least a salad, a soup, one dish of legumes, one dish of wholemeal organic cereal (such as brown rice, quinoa, wholemeal pasta, bulgur, etc), something my omnivore would cook and a meal from the freezer I can skip in case we eat out.

Healthwise, in addition to that, I take every morning a B12 and vitamin D pill (when I remember), add grounded flax seeds to dishes (when I remember), have simple oatmeal breakfasts (or toasted bread with olive oil), snack nuts and dried or fresh fruits (also I can’t help chips and nachos from time to time), try to drink two liters of water every day (usually only one), try to sleep at least 8 hours (usually it’s 7), do a very soft gym class once or twice a week (starting now!) and have and occasional glass of wine or beer (or two, hehe).