Vegetarian Archives | Page 5 of 11

Chilli cheese flapjacks

26th November 2013 3 Comments

I’m glad I didn’t make these yesterday on Vegan Monday, as there’s no way I would have been able to resist them until today. Quick, easy and I didn’t even need to leave the house to buy any ingredients. Oh, they’re flipping delicious, too.

Chilli cheese flapjacks (makes 9 slices)
(recipe taken from All Recipes)

50g butter, melted (I didn’t have any butter, so used Flora)
2 eggs
150g any hard cheese, grated
2-3 chillies, deseeded and finely chopped
150g porridge oats
Salt and pepper

Pre-heat the oven to 180C and grease an 8” square tin.
While the butter is melting gently in a pan, combine the other ingredients in a bowl.
Add the melted butter to the bowl and mix well.
Pat the mixture into the tin and bake for 30-40 minutes or until golden brown.
Once the flapjack is cool, cut into slices

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Vegan Monday: Black olive and sundried tomato bread

26th November 2013 No Comments

Okay, I slipped up with the lip balm thing again. And the hot chocolate thing. I am officially rubbish at Vegan Monday.

Still, breakfast (fruit), lunch (leek and potato soup) and dinner (leftover aubergine and lentil curry from last week) were all vegan. As were the snacks – I had peanut butter bars, raw vegan chocolate fudge and I made some black olive and sundried tomato bread in my new bread machine. This bread was so delicious it was fine on its own without any butter – it was Vegan Monday, after all.

Sundried tomato and black olive bread
(recipe taken from Bread Making Recipes)

2 tbsp olive oil
240ml water
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp sugar
150g strong wholemeal bread flour
300g strong white bread flour
1 tsp fast-acting dried yeast
75g sundried tomatoes, chopped (if in oil, pat off the excess with kitchen roll)
70g pitted black olives, chopped

Add all the ingredients except the sundried tomatoes and olives to the bread machine in the order set out in the instructions that came with it.
Set the bread machine to the basic setting, light crust and press start.
When the bread machine bleeps for extra ingredients, add the sundried tomatoes and olives.
When the bread machine’s done its thing, remove the bread and leave to cool on a wire rack.

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Crazy Jack Organic Soft Apricots

6th November 2013 No Comments

I forgot to mention these on yesterday’s Vegan Monday post. I’d been wondering what to have as a snack if I wanted one, as I’d run out of all the vegan sweets I’d bought at VegFest and hadn’t made any peanut butter bars.

Then I remembered I’d been sent a packet of Crazy Jack Organic Soft Apricots to try and thought I’d give them a go.

Usually, when it comes to dried fruit, they get a rating of ‘bleurgh’ from me. But not these, oh no. These are plump, juicy, soft and delicious and a world away from those scabby dried things you get in some cereals.

Blurby technical and nutrition bit:

Crazy Jack’s Organic Soft Apricots are grown in the Euphrates valley, near Malatya in Turkey. After being dried, they are partially rehydrated with water so they don’t need to be pre-soaked and can be enjoyed as a snack straight from the bag or in cooking and baking.

Soft dried apricots are naturally high in fibre, low in sodium and a natural source of iron. They are also a good source of potassium, which helps maintain a healthy blood pressure, and full of antioxidant phytonutrients (no, I don’t know what a phytonutrient is either).

They contain no artificial additives, colours, no added sugar or preservatives, are gluten-free and suitable for vegetarians and vegans.

Available in 250g bags, they cost £2.99 and you can find them in Tesco, Ocado, Amazon and all good health food shops.

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Vegan Monday: stew and dumplings and yet another confession

5th November 2013 1 Comment

After my confession on Sunday about using non-vegan stock for my soup, I thought surely I’ve got it sussed now – there can’t be any more hidden dangers can there? Then, while I was applying lip balm for what was probably the seventeenth time on Monday, it occurred to me it probably wasn’t vegan. There weren’t any ingredients on the tube so I did a bit of a Google and, yep, it contained beeswax and therefore wasn’t vegan. So that meant I’ve failed five out of five Vegan Mondays so far. It also meant when I did my Vegan Month five years ago, I almost certainly failed every single day of it. Bummer.

But, then, aha! I thought, I’ve got a tube of lip balm given to me at VegFest the other week and all products at VegFest have to be vegan. It’s the law and everything.

So, I went downstairs (I have lip balm in every room, every bag and every pocket) and retrieved my vegan lip balm. Thing is though, when I checked the ingredients, it contained the dreaded beeswax. But how could this be when I got it at VegFest?

I emailed VegFest (letting them know it was only a slight niggle to me as I’m not actually vegan, just a mere vegetarian, but thought they should probably know) and Tim – the organiser – replied immediately apologising, saying yelp.co.uk (who’d given me the lip balm as a freebie for signing up to the mailing list) had signed a declaration stating they’d only bring vegan products and he’d make sure this never happened again. Naughty yelp.co.uk.

So, I went into town to buy some vegan lip balm. I went into The Body Shop and asked if they had any. One of the assistants said yes, they’re all suitable but another assistant peeled back the label of one and saw beeswax and put it back. She picked up another one, peeled back the label and said this one’s fine, there’s no beeswax in it. Yay, I thought, that’s Vegan Monday re-veganised.

I got home, peeled back the label to have a look for myself and saw beeswax clearly stated on it. Sigh.

Oh well, I’ll buy some online.

Anyway, enough about my lip balm dilemma. Here’s what I ate for this week’s Vegan Monday.

Vegan stew and dumplings

It’s a stew I made for the first time last year but this time I made my own dumplings using Tesco’s own vegetable suet (which is vegan).

The photo above is from last year’s blog post (which is also where you’ll find the recipe). I made the stew last week and this week had the leftovers with Linda McCartney sausages and green beans.

Even The Meat Eater didn’t feel the need to un-vegan it for a change.

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Bannisters’ Farm Cheese & Roasted Onion Filled Potato Skins

25th October 2013 No Comments

Someone on Twitter last night tweeted she’d seen an advert for frozen baked potatoes. ‘WTF’, she said, ‘get a potato and put it in the oven/microwave’.

Personally, I think anyone who puts a raw potato in the microwave to bake doesn’t deserve to have a potato in the first place but I’ve nothing against frozen potato-based products. Especially when they’re filled with cheese and onion.

Speaking of cheese and onion, by a happy coincidence, yesterday a delivery of Bannisters’ Farm products arrived. All of them potato-based. Oh yes, there’s a happy Meat Eater in the house at the mo.

Amongst the delivery were potato skins filled with cheese and roasted onion, baked potato halves filled with mature cheddar cheese, ready baked potatoes and a bag of roasting potatoes.

I love proper oven-baked potatoes – who doesn’t – but they need about two hours in the oven (unless you put them in the microwave, but see what I said above about microwaving raw potatoes) to cook them to perfection. Which is where frozen ones come in. The cheese and onion filled potato skins I cooked yesterday only took 20 minutes (you can also microwave them for 3 minutes or put them on a BBQ).

You may be thinking ‘okay, they’re quick, but I bet they’re full of crap’. Aha – wrong! The ingredients are simply: potato, cheddar cheese, roasted onion, water, sunflower oil, Monterey Jack cheese, mustard powder and white pepper.

But the proof of the potato is in the eating though, yeah? Yeah. The skin was crispy, the potato was soft and fluffy and there was a creamy topping of cheese and onion. I’d have liked a stronger cheese taste and one of my potatoes was mostly potato but one of The Meat Eater’s was mostly cheese so he said if you average them out, that makes them perfect. I think there’s logic in there somewhere.

I served them with Quorn Mini Kievs and baked beans.

The Bannisters’ Farm range costs between £1.39 – £2.50 and is available nationwide from Morrisons, Ocado, Tesco, Waitrose, Iceland, Booths, Nisa, Farmfoods and selected Sainsbury’s Local stores.

For more information visit www.bannistersfarm.co.uk

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Knorr Onion Gravy Pots

23rd September 2013 4 Comments

Knorr have launched a new range of gravy pots. All you need to do with them is pour the contents of a pot into a saucepan and add 280ml of warm water (half from a boiled kettle and half from the cold tap), heat it up stirring continuously, then let it boil for a minute.

The packaging states one pot will serve 4, but if you’re a gravy guzzler like me, then it’ll be more like two and a half people. I had in mind to freeze any that was left over but after The Meat Eater and I had taken the amount we wanted, there wasn’t enough to save. Still, if you take your gravy in a more moderate manner, you could probably squeeze three portions out of it.

We tried the Knorr Onion Gravy Pots (ignore the bit on the website where it says Knorr Onion Gravy Pots are made with slowly simmered meat juices; they’re not – they’re vegetarian) and despite it having a surprisingly thin consistency, it was full of flavour and went brilliantly with the Linda McCartney Deep Country Pies, mash and green beans I served it with.

For more information on the Knorr Gravy Pots and other Knorr products, visit their website.

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Violife Vegan Cheese

12th September 2013 No Comments

I’ve mentioned before, I’m always a bit dubious about vegan cheese. But, I’m always willing to try a new one so gave Violife a go.

Violife comes in ten flavours, including original, tomato & basil, mushroom, olive, hot peppers and pizza flavour. I had a couple of slices of the hot pepper variety in a sandwich and the hot pepper flavour came through, along with a slight cheesy taste.

Trying a bit of the cheese on it’s own wasn’t so successful as, like most vegan cheeses I’ve tried, although there’s been an authentic cheese taste, the texture was a bit putty-like and off-putting. In a sandwich though, it’s fine. At least it’ll stop me munching the slices on their own each time I open the fridge, like I do with the rubbery plastic dairy cheese slices.

You don’t have to limit Violife to sandwiches, you can cook with it in all kinds of ways – have a look at the recipes on Violife’s website.

Violife is registered by the Vegan Society and you can find a list of stockists here.

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Trek Protein Flapjacks

29th August 2013 No Comments

When I used to do my running commute from Chancery Lane to Walthamstow, I used to have a Trek Protein Bar an hour or so before leaving the office, to give me a bit of extra energy. Well, that’s what I told myself, anyway. I just used to like eating them (especially the peanut and oat variety) and running six miles home seemed like a good enough excuse to me.

Now Natural Balance Foods – who make the Trek Protein Bars (and also the Nakd Bars that I reviewed a while back) have brought out a range of Trek Protein Flapjacks. Yes, healthy flapjacks, yee ha! I had the Morning Berry one on a recent 35 mile bike ride and it was the perfect snack to have with a cup of tea halfway through the ride.

Trek Protein Flapjacks are also available in Banana Bread, Oat Raisin, Cocoa Coconut, Cocoa Oat and Original Oat varieties. They’re wheat-free, gluten-free and suitable for vegetarians and vegans. Find them in health food shops or order directly from the Natural Balance Foods website (they always have special offers on, so it’s worth checking out).

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Tahini muesli bars

16th August 2013 No Comments

I’d finished all my peanut butter granola bars, and my Nutribox and Saviour boxes were empty. So what’s a girl to do when she’s just been for a run and has the munchies? Make more peanut butter granola bars, that’s what. But what if there’s no peanut butter or granola left? Make tahini muesli bars instead. Yeah.

Tahini muesli bars (makes 9 bars)

150g Jordans Nut & Seed Muesli
4 tbsp tahini
4 tbsp honey
1 tbsp wholemeal flour
1 tsp cinnamon

Heat the tahini and honey slowly in a saucepan.
Add the muesli, flour and cinnamon to the tahini and honey mixture and combine thoroughly.
Press down into an 8” x 8” square baking tray and bake at 180C for about 10 minutes.
Score lightly into 9 pieces and leave to cool.

p.s. My peanut butter granola bars recipe is up on the Jordans website, ready to be judged. Wish me luck!

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Giveaway: BFree Gluten Free Wraps

15th August 2013 5 Comments

BFree make a range of gluten free products including multigrain wraps that are vegan, vegetarian and only 99 calories per wrap. Considering most wraps have over 150 calories each, you’d think the BFree ones would be tiny, but they’re not. I had one for lunch today and filled it with the rather bizarre combination of Quorn pepperoni slices, mozzarella, sundried tomatoes, rocket and mayonnaise. I’d like to say it’s nicer than it sounds, but I’d be lying; Quorn pepperoni and mayonnaise isn’t the greatest match made in munchies, that’s for sure.

BFree wraps are coming to Asda soon but if you’d like to try them for free, you’re in luck, as I’m giving away a packet here on Planet Veggie.

How to enter the giveaway

Just leave a comment below, letting me know what your favourite sandwich/wrap fillings are.

A winner will be picked at random after the closing date of Friday, 30 August 2013.

UK entries only.

For more information on BFree, visit the BFree website, or watch this video where the wraps are explained along to the tune of Bohemian Rhapsody.

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