I mentioned in a previous post that I invented a Twitter game called #guessthesoup. Today I spiced it up a bit by also posting a photo and I thought today’s soup would be a tough one, but Rachel eventually guessed correctly.
Other guesses were:
Pea Asparagus Leek Sprouts Cabbage Watercress Courgette Spinach Broccoli Tomato and food colouring (thanks, Michelle)
until kale was guessed (I let them off the sweet potato bit).
Kale and sweet potato soup (serves 4)
2 tbsp olive oil 1 clove garlic, sliced 1 red onion, chopped 200g kale, chopped 1 medium sized sweet potato, chopped 1000ml vegetable stock 200ml (soya) milk Salt and black pepper
Fry the garlic and onion in the oil for a few minutes until softened.
Add the kale, sweet potato, vegetable stock and season with salt and pepper.
Simmer for about 20-30 minutes, until the sweet potato is tender.
It’s that time of year when I sober up and want something other than cheese, chocolate and crisps in my diet. So, today, I looked in The Boxing Clever Cookbook to see what was seasonal and cycled down to my local farm shop and got myself a big bag of vegetables.
Healthy meal no. 1 was today’s lunchtime soup. I’m not sure I’ve eaten swede before, I certainly haven’t cooked it before as it always looked like it would be hard to peel but it was as easy as peeling a potato. This soup was delicious (and vegan, as I used soya milk instead of moo juice and didn’t add cheese to it for a change).
Swede and leek soup (serves 4-6) 2 tbsp vegetable or olive oil 700g swede, peeled and diced 225g potatoes, peeled and diced 450g leeks, sliced and washed 1 garlic clove, crushed 1/2 tsp mixed herbs 1.5L (2.5 pints) vegetable stock Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste 150ml (1/4 pint) soya milk
Heat the oil in a large pan and sauté the swede, potatoes, leeks and garlic for about 5 minutes.
Add the mixed herbs, vegetable stock and season to taste.
Bring to the boil, reduce heat and simmer for about 30 minutes or until the vegetables are soft.
Soup can be left like this, or puréed if you like a smooth texture.
I popped into Holland & Barrett to use up the £1.50 voucher they’d sent me and buy some of Redwood’s Making Waves Fish-Style Steaks that I loved so much when I tried them a few months ago. After seeing a TON of Redwood’s food in the chiller cabinet reduced from £2.99 to 50p, I came away with a packet of chicken-style pieces, two packets of beef-style pieces and a packet of pepperoni-style slices, not forgetting the packet of fishless steaks that I actually went in for in the first place. The whole lot came to about £3.50. A bargain haul indeed.
Tonight I made a stir-fry with the beef-style pieces. These won’t suit vegetarians or vegans who don’t like their meat alternatives to be too meaty – these beef-style pieces are beefy, especially in the texture. I loved them though, they worked really well in the stir-fry that I served with egg-fried rice, egg noodles and mini spring rolls.
I’d never heard of a Morcilla sausage and on looking at the Deli Fry’s website, it says it’s an alternative to the traditional Spanish black pudding. I’ve never had a black pudding – Spanish, or otherwise – so I’ll just have to take their word for that.
What I can tell you though, is that it’s bloody gorgeous. If you miss the deli-style slicing sausages like pepperami or salami, you’re going to love this. It’s gungier than slicing sausage from what I can remember, but it’s just so tasty.
I had it in a sandwich with cucumber, tomato, pak choy (I wasn’t being a ponce, I just didn’t have any salad leaves) and mayonnaise. I could eat the whole lot straight out of the packet though in one go, it’s that nice.
Guess what I’m having for lunch tomorrow?
Deli Fry’s Gourmet Morcilla Style Slicing Sausage is 100% vegan and Vegetarian Society Approved.
‘Fruit juice, water or Prosecco?’ Prosecco? Did she just say Prosecco? I’m at a Nãkd Wholefoods launch and I wasn’t expecting any alcohol. I’m not sure she actually did offer me Prosecco, so I play it safe and ask for a cherry juice. Then someone walks in and gets poured a glass of Prosecco, dammit! Still, it’s not long until I have a glass of wine in my hand and the event begins.
Brill Café in Exmouth Market is full of bloggers, PRs, and the team from Nãkd Wholefoods. We’re here because Nakd Wholefoods have launched two new flavours – Rhubarb & Custard, and Caffé Mocha. I’m asked if I’d like to try one of the new flavours and I’m led past a counter laden with hummous, olives, stuffed peppers, cashews, pitta bread (that I’m avoiding as I’m meeting a friend for dinner later) and two bowls containing the latest Nãkd flavours. Not being a lover of coffee, I try the Rhubarb & Custard flavour. I’m not sure how they’ve done it, but it’s just like the old-fashioned sweets. Nicola, a yoga teacher from Camden, who blogs at Peace Under Pressure, asks me how I think they’ve made a custard flavour out of natural ingredients and I say I’m not sure, maybe they grew a custard plant? I’m then asked if I want to try the Caffé Mocha flavour. I hate coffee but I’m willing to give it a try and I’m surprised, but pleased, that it doesn’t taste like coffee, it’s more of a fudge brownie taste.
We’re then given a talk by the founder and managing director, Jamie Combs, and Lucy-Ann Prideaux, a nutritionist at Simply Nutrition.
After the talk, we’re invited to make our own Nãkd Bars. Nãkd Bars all have the same base of dates and cashews, to which other raw ingredients are added.
Bowls containing ingredients and flavourings were brought out for us.
A couple of other bloggers and I made a banoffee flavour bar with banana slices and toffee flavouring.
The end result didn’t look appetising (the blogger in the middle of the photo was obsessed with calling it a turd) but smelt gorgeous.
At the end of the evening, we were given a generous goody bag, bulging with Nãkd Bars and raisins.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t one of the fetching Nãkd t-shirts I’d been admiring on the team, but perhaps if someone from Nãkd reads this, I’m a size medium, and my address is…
I’ve been eating a lot of food out of packets recently, so tonight I decided to have something healthy. There’s a farm shop local to me that sells seasonal vegetables, so I scooted down there to see what they had and made a super-healthy dish that probably contained at least 8 of my 5-a-day.
Pasta with roast vegetables and tomato sauce (serves 6)
1 tbsp vegetable oil 1 onion, chopped 1 leek, sliced 1 red pepper, deseeded and chopped into chunks 1 aubergine, chopped into chunks 1 courgette, thickly sliced 200g mushrooms, sliced 100g spinach 2 cans chopped tomatoes 2 cloves of garlic, crushed 1 tsp mixed herbs salt and ground black pepper
Pre-heat the oven to 200C. Place the red pepper, aubergine and courgette into a roasting tray and drizzle with some oil. Bake in the oven for 20-30 minutes. Fry the onion and garlic in the vegetable oil for a few minutes until soft. Add the mushrooms and leeks to the onion and fry for about 5 minutes. Add the roasted red pepper, aubergine and courgette to the onion, mushrooms and leeks. Add the tinned tomatoes to the vegetables and simmer for about 20 minutes. Add the mixed herbs and season to taste. Add the spinach and cook until wilted. Serve with pasta of your choice.
It was 1992 when I first became vegetarian. In the beginning, I shied away from the ‘meaty’ vegetarian burgers as I was one of those people who thought ‘if you’re vegetarian, why eat something that’s pretending to be meat?’ So, before I learnt to cook, I bought vegetable burgers that consisted of some kind of unidentifiable soggy vegetable encased in soggy breadcrumbs.
Because of this, I’ve spent 20 years avoiding vegetable burgers and have been embracing the more ‘meaty’ types of burgers (I’m no longer one of those annoying ‘why eat something…’ type of people). But since Dalepak sent me a hamper of their vegetarian range which is all about the vegetable, I’m a convert.
The latest product I’ve tried is their Spicy Bean Quarter Pounders. They declare on the packet ‘big size big taste’ and I can confirm that these beauties are big. They also pack in a hefty 272 calories per burger, so you only need one of these.
The golden brown breadcrumbs were crispy and the texture was firm and not at all gungy. The only slight complaint I have is that the burger crumbled slightly when I cut into it and didn’t want to stay on the fork.
Dalepak aren’t lying about the ‘spicy’ bit – there’s a definite warmth to them that’s not too spicy for the lightweights out there but spicy enough for those of us who like a bit of heat to their food.
I am impressed with these bean burgers and what I’ve found even more impressive is that they’re only £1 for a pack of four. They’re exclusive to Iceland but if that’s not somewhere you shop often (I’m not sure I’ve ever been in an Iceland store), if you’re going past one, they’re definitely worth popping in for.
Tesco have added a load of vegan products to their ‘Free From’ range. I first read about them on the Fat Gay Vegan blog, then forgot about them, until I passed them in my local Tesco the other day. My Tesco doesn’t have the huge range Fat Gay Vegan’s seems to but they did have the Creamy Sweet Chilli Spread, which according to the tub is ‘a delicious dairy free alternative to soft cheese’. Yay, I thought – then I tried it. Yuk, I thought.
I wanted to like it. I’d Googled it and found only favourable reviews but it smelt like margarine and was the texture of putty. I tried a bit on its own and found it dry and cloying. I smeared a tiny amount on a couple of ricecakes, topped them with sprouts and tried it that way. Edible, but not much of an improvement.
It’s obviously good news for vegans that Tesco have created this range, but I won’t be buying the chilli spread again.
Free & Easy Roasted Red Pepper and Birds Eye Chilli Sauce is a blend of roasted red peppers, birds eye chillies and spices in a tomato based sauce. Sounds good, yes?
Well, here are the good bits:
Suitable for vegetarians and vegans
Low fat
Free from wheat, gluten, dairy, soya, celery, mustard, nuts and preservatives
And here are the bad bits:
I found it bitter and without trace of any heat from chillies but this was easily remedied by covering it with Encona hot sauce and cheese. Everything can be improved with hot sauce and cheese.
Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t terrible but not one I’d be rushing out to buy again, if only for the simple reason that it’s not exactly difficult to make your own tomato-based sauce.
I fried some mushrooms, courgette and garlic, added the sauce and served it with spaghetti.
I was in Holland & Barrett the other day and, hurrah, they’ve fixed their freezer and chiller and they had the most amazing range of vegetarian and vegan food in there. Fortunately for my wallet and my already full freezer, I didn’t have enough room in my rucksack to buy everything I wanted but when I saw Redwood’s Vegan Tuna Style Paté, I knew I wanted to try it.
So, today – as I never had a tuna melt when I was a meat-eater – I made a vegan tuna melt. I should point out that it was only the vegan tuna style paté that was vegan but the rest of the sandwich would be easy enough to make vegan by swapping the cheese, mayonnaise and butter for vegan alternatives (actually, I’m going to do that next time and make a proper vegan tuna melt – I will report back).
The vegan tuna doesn’t taste like tuna. It doesn’t even taste like fish. It is nice for what it is though (whatever that may be).
Free & Easy Roasted Red Pepper and Birds Eye Chilli Sauce is a blend of roasted red peppers, birds eye chillies and spices in a tomato based sauce. Sounds good, yes? 
