smoothies Archives | Planet Veggie

Vegan Aubergine and Chickpea Penne Recipe

22nd January 2016 No Comments

I made something healthy, hurrah! Okay, so I served it with a most definitely unhealthy homemade vegan garlic bread but the thought was there. This vegan aubergine and chickpea penne is a dish I’ve made before but I’m going to post it again because it’s Veganuary and, as you might have noticed, I’m posting each – or at least almost each – day to show you what I’ve eaten and if I don’t post what I ate last night, all you’ll have to look at is this photo of the kiwi, frozen summer fruit, cashews and dates Nutriblast I had at lunchtime.

Kiwi, frozen summer fruits, cashews and dates nutriblast — Kiwi, frozen summer fruits, cashews and dates

Vegan Aubergine and Chickpea Penne

This aubergine and chickpea penne recipe was another from the Vegan – 100 Everyday Recipes cookbook that I’ve been getting a bit of use out of so far during Veganuary. This is the third dish I’ve made from it – the others being Vegan Smoky Mushroom Burgers and Vegan Thai Red Curry (as I’m typing this, I’m flicking through the book and have seen a recipe for a sparkling wine sorbet. Oh my).

The original aubergine and chickpea penne recipe calls for cinnamon and coriander, both of which I left out of my version.

Vegan Aubergine and Chickpea Penne Recipe

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Prep time

10 mins

Cook time

30 mins

Total time

40 mins

Adapted from Vegan - 100 Everyday Recipes

Author: Cathy @ Planet Veggie

Recipe type: Pasta

Cuisine: Vegan

Serves: 4

Ingredients

large pinch of saffron threads
450ml vegan stock
2 tbsp olive oil
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 large onion, chopped
1 tsp cumin seeds
350g aubergine, diced
1 red or yellow pepper, deseeded and chopped
400g tin chopped tomatoes
400g tin chickpeas, drained and rinsed
300g dried penne
salt and pepper

Instructions

Toast the saffron threads in a dry frying pan over a medium heat for 20-30 seconds. Place in a small bowl/ramekin and crumble with your fingers. Add 2 tbsp of the stock and set aside.
Heat the oil in the frying pan, add the onion and garlic and fry for about 5 minutes. Add the cumin and fry for another 20-30 seconds, then add the aubergine, yellow or red pepper, chopped tomatoes, saffron liquid and the remaining stock. Cover and simmer for 20 minutes.
Add the chickpeas to the pan and season with salt and pepper. Uncover and simmer for a further 5 minutes.
Serve with pasta.

And now it’s Friday again, which means I get another excuse to make my tofush to go with my chippy chips. Yay.

I’m adding this post to the Pasta Please linky, hosted by Thinly Spread and Tinned Tomatoes.

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Summer Fruit Superfood Smoothie with Acai Berry Powder

14th January 2016 2 Comments

I may not know whether they do any good or not but I do like to add superfoods to my smoothies. Except for spirulina – there’s just no disguising the rancid taste or smell of that stuff.

I’m happy to say the acai berry powder Selva Organic sent me neither smells nor tastes rancid. It’s also a dark purple colour, which pleases my inner goth. Acai berry powder is loaded with omega 3, 6 and 9 fatty acids, fibre, protein and other nutrients and yesterday a spoonful of it went into my lunchtime smoothie.

Despite moaning inwardly there weren’t any bananas left to have in my smoothie, this smoothie of kiwi fruit, frozen summer fruit, cashews, dates, acai berry powder, soya milk and water is now up in my top ten smoothies. It goes to show you should always keep a bag of frozen fruit in the freezer for those bananaless emergencies.

Selva Organic don’t just sell acai berry powder – they have a 14-strong range of South American superfoods starting at £5.99. To check out their range and for more information on the benefits of superfoods, visit the Selva Organic website.

Veganuary Day 13 – Dinner

For dinner last night we had vegan chilli on jacket potatoes again, with mine being topped with Violife vegan cheese and home made vegan sour cream. As I made it last week and posted a pic of it then and it didn’t look any different last night, in true Blue Peter style, here’s one I made earlier.

Jacket potato with vegan chilli, cheese and sour cream

Tomorrow (Friday), I’ve decided I’m going to go into town and be brave and order a hot chocolate in Caffè Nero with soya milk (I know… I know… on a bravery scale of 1-10, it’s not even on the scale. My scale begins at minus-something). I’ve checked Caffè Nero’s website and they do a vegan houmous and falafel wrap and if they’ve sold out of them when I get there, I’m going to have the hump as it will be my first purposely vegan meal outside of the house.

I’ll report back on my vegan food foraging on Saturday.

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Chia Bia Milled & Whole Chia Seeds

30th November 2015 3 Comments

Chia Bia Chia & Cranberry Mix — Chia seeds are great in smoothies

Chia seeds are known as the ‘superfood of the 21st century’ but, unlike some other ‘superfoods’ such as spirulina, chia seeds are tasteless, so you get all the nutrition without any of that ‘I’m only eating this because it’s good for me’ nonsense. (My apologies to anyone who thinks spirulina tastes nice.)

Because chia seeds are so high in omega 3, protein, fibre and antioxidants, people use them for:

digestive disorders
heart health
increased energy levels
joint pain or arthritis
improved memory and concentration
weight loss
lowered cholesterol
increased endurance
hydration
protection against muscle cramping
reduced fatigue

And, because chia seeds are tasteless, that means you can use them in all sorts of ways such as adding them to flapjacks, sprinkling over your breakfast cereal, stirring into yoghurt and – something I do every day – adding them to smoothies.

Banana, mango, pineapple and chia seed smoothie — Banana, mango, pineapple and chia & cranberrry mix smoothie

I’d bought a load of single-use sachets of chia seeds that had been reduced in price from 65p to 16p in Tesco the other week but, coincidentally, just as they were about to run out, Chia Bia (the leading supplier of high quality chia seed products in Europe) asked if I’d like to try their range of chia seeds which includes not just the whole seeds but also milled chia seeds and chia seeds in powder form, including cranberry and blueberry.

I used some of Chia Bia’s powdered chia & cranberry mix in today’s lunch of a tropical smoothie of banana, mango, pineapple and soya milk. Another benefit of chia is that it absorbs up to ten times its weight in water so, as well as keeping you hydrated for longer, it also keeps you fuller for longer, too.

Chia seed recipes

If you fancy doing something other than bunging them in your smoothies, here are a few more ways to use chia seeds.

Vanilla Chia Oats with Maple Pears from Hungry Healthy Happy
Chia Seed Flapjacks from Planet Veggie
Chocolate Chia Seed Pudding from Rough Measures
Chia Seed Muffins from Tin and Thyme
No Bake Chia and Coconut Bars from Celery & Cupcakes

For more information on the Chia Bia range and on chia seeds in general, visit the Chia Bia website.

Drinks

Recipe: Smoothies Containing Blueberries

10th November 2015 No Comments

I generally don’t plan what goes into my smoothies – as I mentioned in my Nutribullet review the other day, it doesn’t seem to matter what combination of fruit you add, it always turns out delicious.

These two smoothies were no exception – I randomly chucked in whatever fruit I could find in the fridge and freezer and out of the Nutribullet came fresh, creamy smoothies. You can see what they were made with in the captions.

Spinach, clementine, raspberry, blueberry, chia seeds and Alpro coconut drink Nutriblast — Spinach, clementine, raspberry, blueberry, chia seeds and Alpro coconut drink

Spinach, blueberry, frozen summer fruit, Alpro coconut drink Nutriblast — Spinach, blueberry, frozen summer fruit, Alpro coconut drink

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Pineapple, Banana and Raspberry Smoothie

9th August 2014 No Comments

Yesterday’s lunch juice was a smoothie made of pineapple and apple juice blended with banana and yoghurt. I’ve run out of apples though and I wasn’t going to dirty the juicer just to juice a bit of pineapple, so I blended pineapple, banana, raspberries and soya yoghurt to make this delicious smoothie. It’s creamy and frothy and almost dessert-like.

Pineapple, Banana and Raspberry Smoothie

1 banana
1 inch slice pineapple
A handful of raspberries
200ml yoghurt

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Gold Kiwi Fruit

13th July 2014 No Comments

I’ve eaten the regular green kiwi fruit many times, but I’d never heard of gold kiwi fruit until Kent-based Chingford Fruit (yes, it is a confusing name, isn’t it? Maybe they started the company in Chingford or something, I don’t know) asked me if I’d like to try some.

Well, of course I did, so they sent me some gold kiwi fruit in a cute little box, tied up with a beautiful purple ribbon (sorry, I’d taken the ribbon off before getting a photo).

They came with a little leaflet outlining the benefits of kiwi fruit. And what a lot of benefits there are:

Research shows eating two gold kiwi fruit a day can significantly improve your mood and give you extra energy.
Kiwi fruit relieves the pain of poor digestion by breaking down stubborn proteins effectively and efficiently.
There is twice as much vitamin C in kiwi fruit than there is in an orange.
One serving of kiwi fruit contains more potassium than a banana and more fibre than a bowl of cereal.
Kiwi fruit is really low in calories – only 57kcal per 100g.

There you go then, lots of reasons to get more kiwi fruit in your diet. It’s so easy to eat too – just cut the top off and scoop out the flesh with a spoon, or add it to a fruit salad, layer it on top of a fresh fruit tart, use kiwi fruit chunks as an ice cream topping, or do what I did and make it into a smoothie with strawberries, blueberries and soya milk.

Gold kiwi fruit is in season from the end of May through to the end of August in the UK (from New Zealand).