Quick supper

Root veg from the back of the cupboard :-) We've finally found a nice box scheme that is mostly local and no air freight. The first box arrived today, so tea tonight is eating the last few bits from the back of the veg. cupboard before we start on the yummy new box tomorrow :-)

So we had

4 Sweet potatoes
1/2 large Swede

3 red onions
1/2 bottle passata

and in the freezer about 1 cup frozen sweetcorn.

Cooked and mashed the sweet potatoes and the swede (cubed, cooked stove top with a little water, lid on pan over low heat). Stirred in the sweetcorn. Turned off heat to stand whilst the sweetcorn heats through.

Chopped red onions and sauted in a little water, turned off heat and stirred through the passata.

Serve mash with sauce on top.

We all ate enough :-)

Fasta Pasta

Feeds my family for a weekday lunch

250g pasta - preferably wholegrain :-)

2 handfuls peas
2 handfuls sweetcorn kernals
small handful pinenuts
1 medium onion, finely chopped.
Something red (either a couple of tomatoes or a pepper)
1 sundried tomato, soaked and minced. (optional)

Hemp oil

Put pasta on to cook.

Gently cook onion in a little water. When cooked stir through peas/sweetcorn/pinenuts and continue to heat for a little bit. Take off heat and stir in the red food of choice.

Stir in the cooked pasta.

Drizzle whole with some hemp oil and stir through - not too much oil, just enough to ensure moisture.

Serve and put a spot or two of sundried tom on top if wanted, maybe some black pepper.

Yum, with some winter baby greens and black olives...

And from April to now...

And life has been so hectic that I forgot all about this :-)

So - a recipe. A speedy one :-)

And depending on how you make it it can be raw too :-)

Its a tray un-bake :-)

Basic mixture

You'll need one *very very* ripe mango, enough oats to soak up the moisture (so around a cup and a half, more if you want a *really* stiff mixture). Smoosh these two things together. Leave to stand for 5 minutes. (If making this really raw use oat groats and smoosh them together in a blender.) To eat 'plain' spread it out on a baking sheet and leave to stand overnight, or in the dehydrator or a fan oven without the heat on.

Goji version

Take a 1/4 cup goji berries, and the juice of 1 lemon.
Soak the berries in the lemon juice - 5 mins is fine, but overnight makes them all gloopy and lovely.

Spread out half the oat/mango mix, spread over the goji, spread the rest of the oat mix on top.

Blueberry version

Take a small punnet of blueberries - spread out mixture on a silicon sheet, top half with the blueberries, and using the sheet fold over the other half on top. Again, leave to stiffen in a breeze or in the dehydrator :-)

'Mince no-meat' version

Blend 3 figs, 3 dates and 2 TBsp sunflower seeds together. Stir in handful dried berries, handful dried raisins, goji (to taste) to this. Spread out half the oat mix into a deep dish or a loose bottomed baking tin, put in the mince no-meat, and spread the rest of the oat mix on top. Leave to stand to stiffen, slice and serve (easier if done in a loose bottom tin this, as when stiff you can just cut into slices in tin, then remove the sides leaving the base in place for easy access :-)

If you want this *really* filled raw style then you spread out the oat mix in two pieces, leave them overnight or in the dehydrator; and then construct the unbake in the morning in whatever version you desire.

Introduction

Well here I was, standing in Ottokars this afternoon staring at the self of cookbooks.

And I realised that there were *lots* of books on vegetarian food, a sizeable proportion of which were about *fast* vegetarian food. Flicking through them showed a fairly horrific thing, from mpov anyway :-) Pretty much every single 'fast' recipe had eggs or cheese as a constituent part.

Sure there were a few Vegan cookbooks. But they really didn't offer much that could be cooked in under and hour, much less under 30 mins. At least, very little that were a pasta/sauce combination, or made use of some really quite processed stuff.

Now sure, I like the occasional Redwoods 'sausage' or similar. I love miso soup (which has to be one of the fastest vegan dishes going, even without resorting to the powdered kind). But I don't want to live on that stuff. And I have 3 kids, a DP who commutes, and a household to run, and a couple of businesses, and a whole slew of blogs :-) And I often want to feed us all without it taking two hours and every pan in the kitchen and a whole load of ready-made things; or resorting to chips and baked beans *again* (although sometimes I think that my children would live on chips and baked beans given the option, lol).

So here I am The Speedy Vegan. That's me. There will be a book - but first (drum roll please :-) I present 'The Blog'.