Courgette and Carrot Falafels

We picked up courgettes for 49c in Aldi last week and they aren't the favourite vegetable in this house.  I am  going to make chutney with some of them but I wanted to try some in a falafel recipe today.  Usually when I make falafel I use soaked chickpeas but I didn't have time today. 

This made 12 falafels at a cost of  about 80 cents 

Ingredients

Tin of Chickpeas - drained and rinsed

Onion - chopped

Garlic

Cumin

1 carrot - chopped

1courgette - chopped

Wholemeal Flour

Salt

Chili pepper

Sesame seeds

Method  Add everything to your food processor except the flour and blitz until smooth.  Add enough flour to get to a consistency where you can shape the mixture into balls but wet enough to easily coat in sesame seeds.

Bake in a hot oven for 20 mins,

We had these with crushed chips, salad and a slaw made form even amounts of celeriac and carrot

Quick and easy homemade pasta sauce

You will never buy a jar of pre-made sauce again!

What you need

Food

One punnet of cherry tomatoes

One clove of garlic

A handful of fresh spinach

A handful of fresh basil

A pinch of salt

A tin of mixed beans (I used a tin from Aldi, 59cents on 18/03/21)

Pasta

Equipment

A large saucepan

A mini-chopper or small food processor

A colander

Start cooking your pasta as per package instructions

Put tomatoes and garlic into the mini chopper and blitz.  Add spinach and basil and blitz.

Set aside

Drain and rinse the tinned beans .

When the pasta is cooked, drain it and return it to the saucepan.  Add the blitzed tomato mixture.  Add the beans.  Heat through and serve.

Easy Stir Fry with Sauce

You don't need  packet sauce.  This is easy, tasty and good for you 

What you need -

Garlic - I used four cloves

Ginger - I used one inch

Chilli - 1 with seed

6 Cherry Tomatoes

Whizz all of this in a mini-chopper and add to a wok or a large pan with a little water

Veggies

Chop your veggies - today we used one yellow pepper thinly sliced, a bunch of spring onions, one courgette, a large bag of spinach.

Add the veggies to the pan and stir.  Add a little soya sauce or tamari and if you need a little more water add it now.

Noodles

We always use wholewheat noodles.  Put them in a bowl, cover with boiling water and microwave.  Strain them, rinse them and then add them to the wok.

Going Shopping. A vegan lament

I wrote this poem the other day.  I feel this every day.

Please humans stop being so vicious to each other, other animals and the planet.
 

Food Art and Porridge Art - this week's Instagram Project

I didn't mean it to become every day, it was just one day.  But you know, we have to take one day at a time.  And it's been a week.  Only a week.  

Anyway, time has an ethereal quality right now.  Caught in lockdown to lockdown and not knowing when it is going to end, it feels almost like life is on hold but my mirror tells me that life is very much ongoing as I see my hair growing longer, my wrinkles deepening and my daughter overtaking my 5 foot 9 inch height.

Anyway again, this post isn't about my musings of time, this post is about the art I've been creating this week on my morning porridge.  I wanted to put a post together so I would have all the photos together.  So here goes.  

Friday 19th March

Why is it Froggy Friday? Well, it's Friday and it's that time of year when you're likely to see frogspawn in ponds. Froggy says she's happiest when her spawn is left alone.

Frogspawn is always laid in clumps, and shouldn't be confused with toadspawn (which will appear in a long pearl-like chain, rather than a bundled mass). Remember, if you do spot any, it's always best to leave them alone - don't move them from pond to pond and definitely don't collect them in buckets.

Have a lovely Froggy Friday 🍏

Thursday 18th March

This little bear is out for a walk with his big green balloon.
I couldn't get him to smile for me. I asked him why so sad little bear.
He said he was worried about the plastic in the balloon, if he lost his grip and it floated away it could end up somewhere and cause dismay.
I said it's okay bear, your balloon's made of kiwi but very good point about the plastic. We should all be more aware. Please smile little bear, it's not down to only you to save the world ❤️💚

Have a lovely day! If you supermarket shop today, leave your plastic behind 💚🌿

Wednesday 17th March

Greetings from Ireland
Today is the day
We celebrate st Patrick
Driving the snakes away

Lá Fheile Sona Daoibh
Happy St Patrick's Day to you!

Don't forget to eat some extra green fruit for Ireland today!
☘️🍏🥝🍐🍈💚☘️💚🍈🍐🥝🍏💚☘️
P.S. there were never snakes in Ireland because the ice land-bridge with Europe melted before they got here
P.P.S. snakes are a metaphor for paganism. Too bad it's not a metaphor for sneaky politicians!

Tuesday 16th March

Happy bunny says have a lovely day and asks you to eat an extra piece of fruit for her, if you can, on this grey day ❤️
If you overslept, like me, this morning, I hope you're not late for anything other than breakfast

Monday 15th March

What's on your #veganmenu today?

Our household has been vegan for years and our daily menu, in its simplest form mostly looks like this

1 Porridge
2 Soup and sandwich or toast and salad
3 Root vegetables/wholegrain carb green vegetables or salad, bean or lentil dish

Snacks - fruit with yogurt, chocolate, tea, coffee, plant milk, water

Wise porridge owl says it's easy peasy!

Sunday 14th March

Sunrise

Saturday 13th March

A Butterfly but it didn't really work out!

Friday 12th March

Hearts

Thursday 11th March

Happiness

Tahinopita, Irish style!

We are missing my son who is in Cyprus. He moved to Limassol in August 2019 with a new job. We haven't seen each other since November 2019 because of Covid19. We missed his 21st almost a year ago and he will be 22, still in a partial lockdown in Cyprus.

I have spent a lot of time in Cyprus over the years and it has a special place in my heart. It took me a while to discover as a foreigner that Cyprus food is very vegan friendly. You wouldn't know this from reading tourist menus. But dig a little deeper into the wonderful culture and you will discover a host of delicious, vegan friendly food all over this lovely island. And it is mostly, wholefood and very healthy too.

It was #greenmonday there on Monday. Thinking of Cyprus and of my son and this fasting period before Easter made me think of Tahinopita. These are delicious vegan friendly pastries that are traditionally dairy free, egg free and oil free.

I adapted the recipe from www.kopiaste.org. I have made tahinopita before - if I was more organised I would have my own recipe to share now, but alas, it was lost in the move a few years ago. If I make them again I will make some changes to this recipe too. I used a strong bread flour which is great for home-made crusty white bread but I wouldn't use it in this recipe again because it is not very pliable.

Here are the ingredients:

For the dough

350g flour - I used half bread flour and half self raising flour

14g dried yeast

1/4 cup of caster sugar

pinch of salt

2 tspn of cinnamon

Enough lukewarm boiled water to make a pliable dough, about 150ml

For the filling

3/4 jar of tahini (you can buy it in Tesco)

1/2 cup of caster sugar

2 tspns cinnamon

Method:

Add all of the dry ingredients to a mixing bowl.

Make a well in the centre and add about 100 ml of the water. Mix. Add enough water to make a workable dough.

Turn out and knead the dough, Divide into six even pieces.

Leave them to rise for half an hour while you make the filling.

Mix the tahini with the sugar and the cinnamon.

Take the dough and roll out each piece to a round of about 30cm x 20cm

Spread the filling on the dough. Fold the edges in. Then fold the dough lengthways so the edges touch in the middle. Then fold it again lengthways so you have a long thing sort of tube shape.

Hold one end of the dough and start twisting the other end. The aim id to get it to double in length. I couldn't do that. But when you've got it as long as you can, twist it round into itself so that it forms a circle shape.

Do this with each piece.

Bake at 180 for 45 mins.

Glaze with a sugar water cinnamon mix.

Hack

This is a bit like cinnamon buns. It you wanted to get the tahini deliciousness without the hassle of making the dough, you could use pre-made pastry, spread the tahini on the flat pastry, roll it up and and cut it into rounds. Follow pastry pack cooking instructions.

Not quite as healthy but I reckon it would still taste good!

Supermarket Challenge Week 4 - Back to Aldi!

This week we (@yesdaveitsvegan and me @louisamoss) decided to go back to Aldi because I wrongly thought that they had tomatoes on offer.  Karen @yesdaveitsvegan needed courgettes and they did have them on offer in both stores, so we both got them!  Karen tells me that courgettes are good in porridge.  Hmmm, I thought.  I'll try it and report back soon!

The super six was pretty good this week and we both made good use of it.  However, we changed things up a bit with our list this week so that we were buying some vegan store cupboard staples.  It was good fun as always - I'm sure the security guards in the Dublin and Essex stores wonder what we are doing filming ourselves picking things up off the shelves!

Our shopping list this week was:

Item	UK £	IE €	UK price in Euro	Price difference
Spicy bean burgers	1.15	1.69	1.34	0.35
Soya Milk	0.55	0.75	0.64	0.11
Soyummy Yogurt	0.85	1.49	0.99	0.5
Ice-cream	1.99	2.49	2.33	0.16
Spinach	0.99	0.85	1.16	-0.31
Garlic	0.55	0.79	0.64	0.15
Courgettes	0.69	0.49	0.81	-0.32
Onions	0.57	0.59	0.67	-0.08
Potatoes	1.15	2.99	1.34	1.65
Cabbage	0.49	0.99	0.57	0.42
Lentils	0.99	0.79	1.16	-0.37
Strawberries	2.69	3.39	3.14	0.25
	12.66	17.3	14.79	2.51

 

I found this interesting because I’m a bit of a nerd like that.  Some of the items that I consider essential in my kitchen like split red lentils (honestly when everyone else was panicking about toilet roll last year I was stressing because there were no lentils left on the shelves – we eat them every single day) were much more expensive in the UK store.  Spinach was more expensive; onions were more expensive.

   But despite all of this, the overall shop was still cheaper in the UK by 16.9%. 

I swapped the potatoes though.  Karen bought 2.5kg of Maris Pipers for £1.15.  The same potatoes in in Dublin were priced at €2.99.  Aldi had a kg of white potatoes on offer for €.49 so I bought them instead which had a big impact on the bill, making the Irish shop only 3% more expensive than the UK.

A couple of other things to note:

1)      I couldn’t get the chocolate brownie ice-cream that Karen got.  I picked up the very last vegan vanilla ice-cream in the store.  Please Aldi, jeep stocking this, it is fantastic - despite the fact that it is much more expensive in Ireland!

2)     Yesterday was Global Recycling Day.  I took great care at the end of my shop to remove as much packaging as possible.  And then I looked around for a recycling bin.  I couldn’t see one, so I asked a staff member where the recycling station was.  Apparently, Aldi have never had recycling stations?  Is that correct?  Aldi shopping is new to me so I’m not sure.

 

So overall, a good shop.  I also picked up some growbags for €1.99.  I missed them in Lidl last week.  Had some success with vegetables last year and will be trying again this year. 

Food you have grown yourself tastes much better, it is free from plastic and it is like printing your own money.

 

Have a lovely day and look out for our next shopping challenge!  We will be mixing things up a bit next week and it should be a lot of fun.

 

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