Planet Veggie

Goody Good Stuff is an all-new natural gummy range of sweets (eight varieties; all vegetarian, four of which are vegan).

They have developed a food technology which allows them to remove the gelatine from Gummy candies while still producing a deliciously smooth and clear consistency. This makes their product range a first and only of its kind in the market. In addition, they have taken out all of the artificial colours and flavours and use only natural fruit and vegetable extracts in their range. Lastly, they have removed all of the other harmful food additives and possible allergens such as gluten, to create a truly all natural alternative, which is completely allergen free.

And apart from all that healthy stuff, I’ve tried the cola bottles and strawberries and cream varieties and can vouch for their deliciousness!

For more information and stockists, visit the Goody Good Stuff website.

A few days ago I posted about Linda McCartney’s competition to find the UK’s tastiest meat-free dish. As most of the dishes on here are from recipes found either on websites or in my collection of vegetarian cookbooks, I didn’t think I had anything to enter. But going back through my posts, I found my recipes for meatfree balls in a spicy tomato and spinach sauce and aubergine melt and duly submitted them.

Each week, ten recipes are chosen as that week’s favourites and this week both of my recipes were chosen! I thought that maybe they didn’t get many entries but I was assured on Twitter (@MeatFreeTweets) by the organisers that they get lots of entries, but not all of them make it on to the weekly favourites.

You can see my dishes, along with the other favourites, here.

Please vote for me!

This was so quick and easy. You can use whatever you need to use up in the fridge.

1 packet of ready-rolled puff pastry
2 tablespoons sundried tomato puree
2 portabella mushrooms
1 leek
1 pack of mozzarella
1 tomato
salt and pepper
olive oil

Spread the sundried tomato puree over the pastry.

Slice the mushrooms, leek, tomato and mozzarella and layer them on the pastry.

Season with salt and pepper, drizzle with olive oil and bake for about 25 minutes on 200C.

Linda McCartney foods are launching ‘The Search for the UK’s Tastiest Meat-Free Dish’ and they would love for you to be involved. They’re inviting people across the country to help create the next Linda McCartney meal. So get creative and show the UK that meat-free doesn’t have to mean taste-free.

Here’s how it works:

1. From the 15th of November 2010 until 28th January 2011 people can submit their meat-free dish online at www.tastiestmeatfree.co.uk

Each recipe has to meet some simple criteria:

• The recipe should be a complete dish – preferably no salads or soups.
• It should only contain vegetarian ingredients, like cheese and stock, and of course – no meat!
• It has to be tasty!
• People can also upload a photo

2. In February 2011, the judging panel will select what they consider to be the top 3 dishes, worthy of the title ‘The UK’s Tastiest Meat-Free Dish’.

3. Then, in Spring 2011, each finalist’s home town will be visited to film them making their recipe on the Kitchen Table. The mini-films will go on air in April on ITV. Each finalist will also win a Baumatic cooker worth up to £1,500.

4. ITV’s This Morning viewers will be invited to go online to vote and a winner will be chosen.

5. Each week the favourite dishes will feature on the website, Facebook and Twitter.

6. The winner’s dish will then be developed into a Linda McCartney product, with the winner themselves featured on the box. They will also win a beautiful Titchmarsh & Goodwin hand-made kitchen table, worth £4,000.

I think I’ve made the perfect soup. Or is it just that you can’t go wrong if you add chilli and cheese to everything? Either way, this soup was amazing. No exact quantities, it was a chuck it in the pan with some stock and see what happens kind of soup. 

Spicy potato and cabbage soup with camembert (serves 5)
1 onion, chopped
1 red chilli, chopped
3 medium potatoes, cut into small chunks
Half a savoy cabbage, chopped
100g (roughly, I’m not really sure) camembert, cubed
1,500ml vegetable stock
Salt and pepper

Cook the onion and red chilli in some of the stock until the onions are soft
Add the potato and the rest of the stock and simmer for about 15 minutes
Add the cabbage and simmer for another 5 minutes or until the potatoes and cabbage are tender
Add salt and pepper and blend
Add the camembert and blend again

I wanted to cook something tonight instead of heating up something frozen from a packet (like I often do on Fridays) but I didn’t want to go shopping for ingredients and so I looked in the fridge and there was a red pepper, a bag of spinach, some green beans and a savoy cabbage. I couldn’t think of anything to do with them and so I decided to have the meatfree balls that were in the freezer and make a tomato sauce and chuck in the red pepper and spinach. So that’s what I did. I also chucked in a red chilli.

Meatfree balls in a spicy tomato and spinach sauce (serves 4)
1 packet of meatfree balls (I used Sainsburys own)
Olive oil
1 onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 red chilli, chopped
1 red pepper, chopped
2 tins chopped tomatoes
Half a bag of spinach, roughly chopped
Salt and pepper

Cook the meatfree balls according to the instructions on the packet.

Meanwhile, fry the onion and garlic in the oil for a few minutes, then add the red chilli and fry for another couple of minutes.

Add the red pepper and fry for a bit longer.

Add the tins of tomatoes and simmer for a few minutes.

Add the meatfree balls and spinach and warm through until the spinach has wilted.

Season with salt and pepper.

Serve with spaghetti.

I cancelled my Graze box about eleven months ago when I moved house. Partly because I thought I’d save my money, partly because they kept sending me seeds and partly because I thought not having high calorie (albeit healthy and delicious) snacks delivered through my letterbox would be more conducive to losing weight.

But then I started seeing Tweets about flapjacks and focaccia topped with cheese and onion and I thought mmmmm, maybe I should get a box again, you know, just a one-off, just to have a look, not to commit myself to a weekly one, you understand.

And so I did. My box was duly delivered by my orange postman and inside the box were 7 fruits flapjacks, kalamata & amphissa olives in a med marinade, fiery cashews and west country cheddar, red onion and chutney focaccia.

Also inside the box is a napkin and a little personalised booklet giving you the nutritional information about each item, along with some vouchers to give your friends so they can get a free box, and when they sign up for a free box, Graze will give you £1 off your next order (or you can choose to give £1 to charity).

If you’d like a free box, go to graze.com and enter this code: 26RFNXZ3.

The Meat Eater was very successful at growing chillies this year and ended up with a greenhouse full of them. Which is a good thing as I love chillies but what to do with so many?

Chilli jam, that’s what.

Chilli jam sounds weird. And that’s because it is weird. It’s not jam like you’d have on your toast (although I have been having it on ricecakes with my soup for lunch); apparently you have it with cold meat (or, in my case, fake meat) or cheese or add it to soups or stews or chillies or, well, anything really. It has a very thick jelly-like texture and isn’t burning hot but makes your throat warm and your lips tingle.

Go make it. I made it from Nigella’s recipe.

In the pan, bubbling away (or, a rollicking boil, as Nigella puts it).

Close up bubbles.

Cooling down.

All jarred up (the recipe makes four jars, I halved the ingredients to make two).

I hadn’t planned anything for dinner tonight and didn’t want to get moaned at by The Meat Eater so thought I’d better rustle something up and so I had a look on the BBC Good Food website to see what they had involving cabbage, as I had some left over from last week’s Riverford vegetable box delivery (well, kale, anyway; same thing isn’t it? Sort of?) and came across their gratin of white cabbage & lentils in a Provencal sauce recipe.

I was a bit perturbed by the reviews, as they were mostly along the lines of ‘it was ok but wouldn’t bother making it again’ but it’s one of the nicest meals I’ve made in a long time and will definitely be making it again.

As I didn’t have a white cabbage and only had about 150g of kale, I made up the difference with brussel sprouts, which I cut in half. I also added a spoonful of chilli jam (that I made yesterday; I’ll blog it soon) but not sure if that made any difference to the taste.

I got sent one of these

in this week’s Riverford box. After ignoring the old ‘Google is your friend’ thing, I posted a photo of it on Facebook and asked what it was. I got the following answers:

‘No idea – I’d probably draw it!’
‘Put batteries in it and sit on it…. ?’
‘Whatever it is I think u will be parping for a few days after u eat it!!’
‘Take acid, wait a bit, stare at it and if it gets scary … eat it.’
‘Put a pair of sunglasses on it first’

None of which, although amusing, were particularly helpful. But on investigating the Riverford website, it said I’d been sent a romanesco cauliflower and so I googled it and lo! lots of pretty pictures of bright green trippy alien optical illusion Christmas tree type vegetables appeared.

I also googled what the hell to do with it and found out – quite disappointingly really – that you treat it like a normal cauliflower.

So I made cauliflower cheese. Albeit a posh cauliflower cheese with spinach and pasta.

Here it is.

I used this cauliflower cheese and spinach pasta bake recipe from the BBC Good Food website and very nice it was too.

Next week in my Riverford box, I’m not getting an alien cauliflower, I’m getting brussel sprouts.

Bah.