Smoothie week - day 5

Today I made a banana smoothie, very nice and easy to make, but the worst tasting smoothie so far! I will not be making it again! It was much worse than the banana and mango smoothie, at least I didn't want to pour the banana and mango smoothie out.

This is the ingredients you should not mix if you want to make a tasty smoothie for 2; 1 banana, 1 kiwi, 1 small apple, 1 pear and a splash of orange juice (approx 100millilitres).

I have drawn a big X across this recipe in my recipe book as I don't want to make the mistake of making it again!

Smoothie week - day 4

I decided to make my own recipe today, I had some strawberries that needed using.

I named it Smooth Citrus Kick, if you make it you'll understand why. This recipe is for two people. You need 150 grams fresh strawberries, 100 grams frozen raspberries, 1 banana, 1 kiwi and 300 millilitres orange juice. You could probably use less juice if you wanted to, 250 millilitres should be enough as it wasn't very thick.

I really enjoyed this smoothie, it was cold like I like it because of the frozen raspberries and very fresh.

Lots and lots of recipes!

I've been sitting at the library the last couple of days reading about exercise, which lead me to read about healthy eating which in turn of course led me to just "regular" eating. And it gave me an idea for this blog.

Once I (hopefully) get the house I can have themed weeks, food-wise. I can have an Indian week, Italian week, vegan week, soup week, the list goes on... During the themed week I will try to post at least one recipe every day to do with that weeks theme.

Hopefully this will make me try foods I may not have thought about trying earlier, and also eat proper meals instead of just doing something quick like fried eggs or something.

It will have to wait a few weeks though as I would like to have a proper kitchen to cook in and a fridge to store the food in.

I already have a long list of themes for my cooking, but if you have any ideas feel free to let me know!

Hot Lentil Soup

When I was younger I used to eat a lot of soup; meat soup, tomato soup, cauliflower soup, vegetable soup.... Usually, only the meat soup was home made, the rest was usually dry powder instant soup. I remember we used to put macaroni in the tomato soup to make it less boring... I still got sick of it after a while, I still can't eat tomato soup.

When I moved to England I just seemed to stop eating soup. The family I worked for didn't really eat it, I tried a canned soup once when I moved on my own but it was terrible and put me off soups for a long time, so until I started making the extremely simple Potato Leek Soup I hadn't eaten soup for ages. I also tried this Pumpkin Soup, but pumpkin isn't really something they have in all stores in Norway and I have been to lazy to get on the bus to go where I know they might have it just to make the soup as I don't really use pumpkin for anything else.

Anyway. I decided it was time to try a new soup. We have a website in Norway called MatPrat (Food Talk), it's full of recipes, usually with meat, but some of them just need a few changes to make them vegetarian. It's there that I found the following recipe for Hot Lentil Soup. The original has chicken stock and pork in it, but I just omitted the pork and used vegetable stock instead.

I was a bit worried about the amount of tomato in it, and also the lentils as I'v never cooked anything with lentils before, but it turned out really tasty! I made a four person batch and ate myself it all in two days! Of course I guess it might be more filling with the meat in it, I did eat it with some nice bread the second day though and filled up much quicker.

The recipe can also be used as a pasta sauce, just use less or none of the vegetable stock. I think I'll try that one day as it was the first thing that popped into my head when I sat down to eat it.

Ingredients:
1 onion, finely chopped
2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1 red chilli, deseeded and cut into thin strips
1 tbs oil for frying
1 can of red lentils ( I think the one I used was just random lentils...)
1 can chopped tomatoes
1 litre vegetable stock
salt and pepper to taste

Instructions:
1) Sauté the onion, garlic and chilli in a pan with the oil until the onion is glossy.
2) Rinse the lentils thoroughly in cold water. Add the drained lentils and tinned tomatoes to the pan and stir well.
3) Add the vegetable stock and let it simmer for 10 minutes, season to taste with salt and pepper.

A very nice and healthy soup suitable for vegetarians and vegans.

Pumpkin soup

I've been wanting to try pumpkin soup for a while now, and when I saw some pumpkin at the local fruit and veg store I just had to buy some. 

I did try to find a recipe online, but in the end I mainly just threw something together, I did look at this recipe but mainly just for the method. I've only lately started making soup from scratch, it's SO quick and easy, and the ones I've tried so far have been really yummy as well.

Here is what I used, which was a perfect portion for just me:

Some pumpkin, diced

1 carrot, diced

1/2 small onion, diced

1 garlic clove, crushed

1 small chilli, chopped

1 cube of vegetable stock

a bit of oil

a dash of pepper

Heat the oil in a saucepan over medium heat.

Combine the pumpkin, carrot, onion, garlic and chilli in the saucepan. Cook until the vegetables begin to caramelize and slightly change colour, then cover with water. You want them to be completely covered, but at the same time be careful not to use too much water.

Bring the liquid to a boil, add the vegetable stock cube, then turn down to a gentle simmer and simmer for 20-30 minutes until the pumpkin is soft and breaks up when cut with a spoon.

Put the cooked pumpkin soup in a blender and blend until smooth.

I did put some pepper in the soup, but I didn't really need it since, because of the chilli, it was quite spicy. I will definitely make this again, but with a bit less water as it was a bit too thin for my liking.

Potato Leek Soup

I decided to try something new for dinner today. I found a recipe for potato leek soup on Peta.org, I've not found many soups that has been blended that I like, I normally like to have something to chew even in soups, but this one was actually really nice. I did cut down on the ingredients since I was making it only for myself, I ended up getting two big bowls of soup, since it has potatoes in it it was really filling, one bowl would have been enough, but it was really tasty so it didn't really matter.

Click here for the original recipe. Below is the amounts I used.

1 big leek, white part only, sliced (I chopped some of the green part as well since the white part was so short)
2 medium potatoes, diced
1 vegetable stock cube
Salt and pepper to taste

- Place the leeks and potatoes in a pot. Add water to cover. Bring to a boil. Add the stock cube and simmer, covered, for 20 minutes.
- Remove from the heat. Transfer to a blender or food processor and process until thick and smooth.
- Put in bowl and add salt and pepper to taste.

Trying something new...

My dad's girlfriend and I had some fresh pineapple for dessert today. I LOVE pineapple. Then MDG put salt on it! I've never seen anybody do that before! MFG said it was usual to do it in Asia (she's from the Philippines). So I decided to try it.

It was really tasty actually, after I tried it on a small bite I put it on some more pineapple as well.

I still prefer just plain fresh pineapple, but it was interesting to try, and nice to eat something in a different way than what I'm used to.

Have you tried fresh pineapple with salt on it? What did you think? If you haven't tried it you should, and then let me know what you think!

Salads

I love salads. I will often eat them for dinner. Today I had one for my breakfast. As well as a leftover pizza slice, but the salad makes the fat in that disappear so it doesn't count.

In this salad I put lettuce, cucumber, carrot, apple, orange, pineapple, corn kernels and plum. So it was a mix between a normal salad and a fruit salad. It was very nice and I even have some left over that I can have for my lunch or dinner later.

One of the first times I made a chicken salad for my host family, and I put apples and oranges in it, they were really surprised because they wouldn't have thought of putting that in a salad, but they liked it.

Before I turned vegetarian I would put chicken in my dinner salads, but now I put an egg or two in instead.

A lot of people have a kind of set ingredient list of what can go into a salad, but really, anything can be put into a salad. Things I have put in one before include egg, cheese, capsicum, broccoli, grapes and cauliflower. Many of you will probably say I forgot about tomatoes, which most people put in a salad, but I don't like tomatoes so I will put it in for other people but not myself. The other day we also roasted some sweet potatoes, courgette and beetroot and put that in a salad, which was surprisingly nice. Any fruit or veggies that I have on hand and feel like eating I will throw into a salad.

What do you like in your salads?

A coconutty day!

I made Courgettes Pacifico for for the host family yesterday. The Mother liked it, but The Girl wasn't too keen.

Anyway, I accidentally opened a can of coconut cream instead of coconut milk at first, and when I opened the coconut milk the can was so big that there was quite a bit left. So I decided to make something with them today just to make sure they wouldn't just sit in the fridge until they went off.

I used most of the coconut cream for the dinner. I didn't actually use a recipe, just threw something together. I fried some vegetables, then added the coconut milk mixed with some sweet soy sauce, salt and pepper, and served it with rice. It was quite nice and surprisingly filling!

With the remaining coconut milk I made THESE muffins.

They were quite nice, but I thought they looked a bit boring, so I made the icing from THIS page to go with them. I didn't have any almond extract, and I used coconut cream instead of milk, the icing was okay but a bit too sweet. I sprinkled some shredded coconut and chopped almonds over the icing and we ate them with some fresh raspberry sauce. The icing really was WAY too sweet, but the raspberry sauce helped a lot to kind of tone the sweetness down. I think if I make these again I'll make a different icing.

Courgettes Pacifico (and Rosti)

A girl I've met at my current hostel, C, and I cooked together last night. I have not properly cooked something in ages, and not at all since I turned vegetarian. We went to the library and had a look at some vegetarian cookbooks. I am SO looking forward to getting my own place and buying loads of vegetarian cookbooks! Since there is no oven at most hostels we had to take that into consideration. Do you have any idea how hard it is sometimes to find a recipe that doesn't require an oven? And that you actually want to cook? We did find one in the end, for something called Courgettes Pacifico, and to go with it we cooked Rosti, and also bought a nice baguette. The recipe is also Vegan, so if you're looking for a nice Vegetarian or Vegan recipe, here you go!

I love trying new foods. When I go out I will usually just buy what I know I like because I don’t want to risk not liking something and wasting my money, but when I’m just cooking at home I love trying new things, at least I know that if I don’t like it I usually have something else I can eat.

We were a little bit worried because we didn’t have a picture to see what it was supposed to look like when it was finished, but to be honest I might not have wanted to cook it then as I’m not usually big on things with sauce on them. But it turned out really nice actually! We both liked it and ate everything on our plates. I was SO full afterwards.

The Courgettes Pacifico recipe was originally for 4 people, but the one below is for 2 as I halved if while copying it from the book. We did not use any ginger as it seemed silly to buy it just for this one meal as neither of us is normally keen on it. I would also suggest that if you make it you use SMALL courgettes! For us it would have probably been enough with 3 small courgettes or 2 big ones (but then again we didn’t actually weigh them). We also put the Courgette mix into a saucepan before we added the passionfruit, papaya and coconut milk because we didn’t have a lid for the frying pan, but it seemed to work just fine that way.

 

Courgettes Pacifico

15ml (1tbs) olive oil

350g (0.75lb) or 4 courgettes/squash

1 garlic clove, skinned and chopped

1,25cm (1/2 inch) gingerroot grated or shredded

2 ripe (wrinkled) passionfruit, halved

½ ripe pawpaw (papaya) skinned, seeded and sliced

65ml (2fl oz) coconut milk (we used a whole 165ml can, which worked fine)

Salt

Freshly ground pepper

Heat the oil in a (big)frying pan until very hot.

Slice lengthways and add, cut face downwards, the courgettes without crowding the pan.

Cook until browned.

Carefully turn over the browned courgettes, add the garlic and ginger and continue to cook for 1-2 minutes (we had to do this in batches as out frying pan was quite small, but it still worked out)

Scoop the pulp and seeds from the passion fruit and add to the pan with the papaya slices in an even layer. Add the coconut milk, cover, reduce heat and cook for 15 minutes, season to taste.

Rosti

450g/1lb potatoes

Small bunch of spring onions

Salt

4tbs oil

Add cold water and potatoes to a pan, bring to a boil and boil for about 5 minutes or until the potatoes are just tender on the outside.

Trim and chop the spring onions then cut into long thin pieces (we just chopped it “normal”)

Drain and cool the potatoes, not completely cool, just cool enough for you to work with. Then peel them using a knife and your fingers.

Grate the potatoes coarsely, season with a little salt (and pepper if you wish) and add the spring onions.

Heat the oil in a frying pan. Add the potato mixture and use a spatula to press it down to fill the frying pan so it’s a nice circle.

Fry over moderate heat for 7 minutes then turn it over by using a plate (I am rubbish at turning things over, and especially rosti falls apart very easily so be careful).

Cook until the second side is brown and crisp (if your rosti is thick, taste it to make sure it’s cooked all the way through).

Drain it on some kitchen paper and cut into quarters (or halves).

Vegetarian (2)

I am going vegetarian from tomorrow.

I am going to try anyway.

Why tomorrow? Because that's when I leave the host family, it's easier to start as a vegetarian when I don't live with meat-eaters... I think so anyway.

So today I have had what might turn out to be my last pieces of bacon and my last burger made of meat (which was actually shaped like Australia. Minus Tasmania.)

I have been thinking about becoming a vegetarian for a few years now. I actually wrote a post about it nearly one year ago: Vegetarian.

Like I said in my old post I was almost a vegetarian for 18 months with the first family I au paired for. And I didn't really eat much meat after I moved from them either. I hardly had any meat until I moved back to Norway. And I only then started because I was living with my mother and I couldn't be bothered to make my own meal. It's the same now that I've been an au pair. I can't be bothered to make one meal for the family and one meal for me.

I've been eating meat regularly for almost 2 years now though, so I don't know how hard it will be to not eat any meat at all suddenly. Part of me still want to try some meats that I've never tried before though. Like kangaroo and snake and those types of meat you can't always get at your local supermarket, so I might try those if I get the opportunity. Just to try them though, so I can say I've done it... That sounds bad.... But I like trying new things.

I think I will miss chicken, bacon and gelatine (in lollies) the most. Chicken and ham and pineapple pizza was what I missed when I lived with the vegetarian family in England... Those two things, along with salami was pretty much the only meat things I had while in the UK.

It's not so hard to be a vegetarian in the UK though. There are loads of substitute products, and things are marked saying if they're suitable for vegetarians or not and when you go out for a meal most places has vegetarian options. I have already noticed that it's going to be hard here in Australia. There is so many things with meat in it, bakeries, cafes, restaurants, etc doesn't always have a vegetarian option. There are even ads for eating meat! Seriously, people get told to eat pork and lamb and all that!

Why am I wanting to become a vegetarian?

I still want to do it because it's better for the environment. I also want to do it because it's healthier (if you do it "right"), and because I don't think an animal should be killed just to feed me where there are loads of other options.

I have actually thought of becoming a vegan. But I'll see if I'm able to be a vegetarian first. I'll take it one step at a time. If I'm able to stay vegetarian for a year, and I still want to become vegan, I'll give it a try then.

The only thing I'm not looking forward to is telling my mum. She's not very pro-vegetarianism. I don't think she'll try and talk me out of it, but I do think it will be a long discussion and she won't "accept" that I'm doing it.

Don't worry though. I'm not going to be one of those vegetarians that look down on people that eat meat or anything. I hope not anyway. What you choose to eat is your own choice.

(source)

Does anybody have any hints or tips for me as a new vegetarian?