Veganizing a recipe from the Aldi website - Banana and Oat Bread

I know everyone seemed to be making Banana Bread last year. I did a lot of baking at the start of the lockdowns but we didn't make banana bread.  We made cakes and cookies and crusty breads and we usually eat out bananas before they go brown. But I missed these three and I didn't want to waste them.

Yesterday we did our supermarket challenge in Aldi again and  I bought some dates there, I use dates a lot in cooking and baking and I wanted to try the Aldi dates.

I couldn't find a recipe on their website that was okay for vegans so I decided to take one and veganize it and also replace the sugar with dates.  Easy!  

Sugar Free, Dairy Free, Egg Free and Low Fat Banana Oat Bread

or

Delicious Banana Oat Bread

Ingredients

240g SR Flour

90g Oats

1 teaspoon baking powder

pinch of salt

150g dates

boiling water

1 teaspoon vanilla essence

3 or 4 mashed bananas

1 dessert spoon maple syrup

2 dessert spoons of oil - rapeseed or sunflower

Glaze

Maple syrup

Equipment

Mini-chopper/processor for blitzing the dates

2lb loaf tin

Lining paper

Method

Turn your oven on to Gas Mark 4

Cover the dates with boiling water and leave to soak while you 

Add all the dry ingredients to a bowl

Mash the bananas with the vanilla essence, maple syrup.

Blitz the date and the water in the food processor

Add the dates to the banana mix

Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients and add the wet mix.

Mix well.  

Pour into the lined tin.

Bake for around 40 minutes.  Cook to see if it is cooked through with a skewer.  

Turn out from the tin and cool on a rack.

Glaze with maple syrup.

This slices well and is perfect with tea.

Suggestions:

If I make it again, I will add cinnamon and some nuts

Check out the Instagram reel here!

The best, the tastiest and the easiest brown soda bread recipe

The Best Irish Soda Bread

This is my recipe - years of trial and error and it is the best soda bread and it is easy!  Suitable for vegans and omnivores!

500g wholemeal flour

1 heaped teaspoon of bread soda - sieve this - this is important

1 teaspoon of salt

300ml of unsweetened soya milk

3-4 teaspoons of lemon juice

A baking tray, a little extra flour for shaping and baking

Method

Pour your soya milk into a jug and add the lemon juice.  Watch it start to thicken.

Add dry ingredients to a bowl and mix them thoroughly.  Remember to sieve the baking soda when you add it

Add the wet mix to the dry, by making a well in the centre of the dry mixture.  Pour half the milk into the bowl and mix, then keep adding.  You want a dough that you can work with, so not too wet. If it is too dry add a little more milk.  

Turn out the dough and knead it into a round.

Flour the baking sheet a little.

Place on the baking sheet and score the top with a knife.

Bake for around 40 mins at 170C.

Supermarket Challenge Week 3 - Lidl Dublin and Essex

 Week 3 of our supermarket challenge didn't quite work as planned.  Maybe it was the weather, maybe it was because we changed the day - Wednesdays can be funny days, you never can tell with a Wednesday, the weekend is still a long way away and we aren't thinking about weekend food or relaxing.  

Mid-week is also the day before the special offers change in a lot of stores.  

Our list was a bit different this week too because it contained a lot of the Veganuary specials, we wanted to see if they had been kept on.  

I wasn't sure if they had stocked them in Ireland at all because I stick to buying fruit, veg, carbs with some treats along the way as a rule.  Even though, our shops weren’t a success in terms of getting the products, they were interesting shops as both @yesdaveitsvegan and I @louisamoss had very different experiences. 

Full disclosure, I love Lidl.  I love Lidl because it's close-by.  I love Lidl because they have good specials on fruit and veg that changeover every week, they have coconut stick ice-creams that are delicious and healthy, they have competitively- priced, quality dates and nuts.  They have Fairtrade coffee and chocolate. I love Lidl because when I harass their customer service team they reply pronto and are generally helpful even if I'm being stroppy - yeah, it happens sometimes, I know it's hard to believe!

*edited to add, another reason I love Lidl is because it was the first supermarket in Ireland to sell competitively priced tinned kidney beans way back in the early 2000s. I used to drive to their Mullingar store to stock up once a month.  Then Tesco started selling them too.  But thanks for that Lidl!*

So here is the list that we had this week.

Almond Milk - I managed to buy this and noticed that they had a new barista milk range that I will go back for to try.  I don't usually buy Almond Milk cos environment, but I used this in the cauliflower soup I made yesterday, and it was great.  It cost €1.66 in Dublin.

I wasn't sure what a Round Lettuce was.  I Googled it and it seemed to be an Iceberg lettuce, so that's what I bought.  I should have rung my mum or checked with Karen because it's what we call here 'Butterhead Lettuce'. Totally lost in translation.  Iceberg lettuce was 89cents.

Vegan sausage rolls from the fridge section. They weren't available in either of the stores but what I noticed when I went to look for them was that the vegan section had been arranged nicely and there were loads of vegan burgers and sausages and vegan meats. I was really impressed.  There were quite a lot of prepared salads too and the guacamole was marked vegan.  Another win I thought. Apparently, the UK store was not as well laid out in this regard.  Look at Ireland, Team UK!

I looked for a vegan ploughman's sandwich and couldn't find any sandwiches that were suitable for vegans.  There was one egg sandwich that might have been okay for vegetarians.  But poor selection really unless you like eating dead chickens.  It felt weird for me even looking through the sandwich boxes.  No sandwiches available for Karen either in Essex.

*do other vegans get sad walking round supermarkets and seeing dead animal body parts in fridges being sold for as food? *

Next on the list was vegan coleslaw, I have bought this before to try it, but I make my own coleslaw usually so it's not a regular on my shopping list.  This wasn't available in either store, despite the rest of the excellent salad range in Lidl Dublin.

Tawny Tomatoes - I got them in Dublin, Karen couldn't get them in Essex.  They cost €2.19 for 250g. 

Neither of us managed to get the vegan berry ice-cream, sadly.

Cherries - the only item we both managed to buy and what a difference in price.  Sorry, there's no pic.  I've already eaten them!  Delicious but they would have tasted nicer if they were 99p instead of €2.79.

However, the cherries were on offer in the UK, and they weren't in Ireland.  So, you know, maybe they wouldn't normally be that much more expensive here.

Lidl Ireland had different offers and they were good offers, so I bought the lot and wish I'd bought more.

1kg rooster potatoes, celeriac, 250g baby plum tomatoes, 6 golden delicious apples, bag of pears, organic beetroot all for 49cents each.  I used 4 packets of the tomatoes for the soup I have made today, and they have cooked beautifully, soup is deep red and gorgeous tasting.  Please bring these back on special Lidl!

Lidl also had fresh herbs on offer - 59 cents instead of 99, so I stocked up on them.  I also had some Lidl vouchers to use from their app so got some blueberries for €1. 

Both Karen and I both bought the new Lidl vegan friendly beauty products.  These deserve a whole post of their own.  Thanks, Lidl Ireland, for confirming that all their own brand products are cruelty free.  We love this!  I like that the products are marked 'Vegan Friendly' as opposed to 'Vegan'.  I think it demonstrates an understanding of the vegan philosophy.  Well done Lidl.  

@yesdaveitsvegan and @louisamoss will be back with a different shopping list to Lidl next week so we can do a proper price compare. 

If you spot any good offers, please let me know!

Here's the link to our IGTV chat about the shop

Here's the link to our instagram pages - give us a follow!

@louisamoss

@yesdaveitsvegan

Join us for out IGTV Live next Thursday! Look out for the time on our IGs.  See ya then!

 Cauliflower and Almond Soup

by Louisa Moss

4 servings

Gluten free, Suitable for vegans, this soup looks elegant

Easy recipe

Ingredients

1 onion, chopped

a couple of cloves of garlic, chopped

a cauliflower broken into florets

100g split red lentils, rinsed

1 medium potato

water

almond milk - we used about half a litre

salt and pepper

chives

Method

Add chopped onions to the pot and saute in a little water

Add the garlic and stir for a minute

Add the cauliflower, potato and lentils

Add enough water to almost cover the vegetables, around 3/4 of the way - if you are using an Instant Pot.  If you are using a saucepan, add enough water to the reach the top of the vegetables.

Add salt.
Set the Instant Pot to HP for 8 minutes.  Then QPR.

Saucepan, bring to the boil and simmer for 25 minutes.

Blitz with a hand blender.

Add almond milk to reach the desired consistency.  Adjust seasoning to taste

Serve with fresh chives and enjoy! 

Oh it's Chips, It's Chips!

 The best low-fat chips if you don't have an airfryer (and maybe if you do have an airfryer!)

1. Scrub your potatoes

2. Chip them into even sized pieces

3. Put them in cold water in a microwaveable dish or if you don't like using a microwave cook them on the stove in a saucepan

4.Cook them until they are soft but holding their shape

5. While you are doing this turn on your oven as high.  Put the baking sheet in your oven to heat up

6. Drain them and dry them in a clean tea-towel

7. Put them back in the bowl and toss them in a teaspoon of oil.

8. Pour them on to the hot baking tray and bake in the oven on high until crisp

There you have it, low fat chips that aren't too much hassle, that are soft and fluffy on the inside and crispy on the outside.  They taste naughty even though they aren't!

*Product Review* Aldi Sweet Potato Burgers

What an absolute delight to find good value, tasty vegetable burgers on the Aldi chiller.  

I picked up the Aldi 'the deli' Sweet Potato Burgers with Chunky Chickpeas, Sweet Potato and Fiery Indian Spices last week when I did the supermarket challenge -

212kcal per burger

4.2% fat

6.1% protein

look at that texture - perfect

and give it up for my chips! These are double cooked and baked in a teaspoon of oil

they weren't part of our list but I needed something like that for our fridge for the weekend.

Honestly, I wasn't expecting much because I've been disappointed by veggie burgers so often over the last 40 years.  I wasn't expecting burgers that sell for €1.79 in a discount supermarket to rack up the positives with me  I also wasn't expecting the rest of the family to be impressed but how wrong was I.    These burgers got top marks from all of us;  they look great, have a lovely firm texture and taste delicious. 

We had them on our Saturday night junk food night but being one of your five a day and only 4.8% fat, do they really qualify as junk food?  No, I don't think they do!  Fast food but not junk food.

Well done Aldi!

We will definitely buy them again and we will be back to try the other flavour options on offer too.

5/5

Trainer Gordon Elliott from Summerhill, County Meath has had his license suspended for a year, the IHRB have announced, with six months of that suspended.

Why is there so much uproar about him sitting on a dead horse?  The horse was run to death after a lifetime, like every other racehorse, of being exploited and used.  Shouldn't the uproar be about the racing industry and how horses are disrespected, used and abused throughout their lives?

http://offtrackthoroughbreds.com/2013/09/20/big-winner-nearly-dies-on-the-way-to-slaughter/

https://www.irishexaminer.com/sport/racing/arid-40238783.html#:~:text=Trainer%20Gordon%20Elliott%20has%20had,sport's%20governing%20body%20in%20Ireland.