Thursday, March 28

Peasant pasta recipe

I worked with an Italian lady who said that this kind of pasta is known as 'peasant food'. Though very simple, I find that this is a lovely way to enjoy pasta (and very good to make when food stocks are running low!).

Serves 2

2-3 tbsp olive oil
1 clove garlic
Large handful of continental parsley, chopped
Cooked spaghetti for 2

1. Heat the olive oil in a small saucepan. Crush the garlic with the flat side of a knife and fry in oil until golden, taking care not to burn it. Remove from heat and discard garlic.

2. Drain the spaghetti and return to the pot. Pour over warm olive oil in small batches, mixing between, until pasta is nicely coated but not dripping with oil.

3. Throw in the parsley and mix until combined.


Happy eating! :)

What I'm eating: a touching farewell present

I recently left my job in child care and one of my colleagues, who is himself moving toward a more animal-friendly diet, gave me a very thoughtful farewell present. LINDA MCCARTNEY COUNTRY PIES! I have always bought them online and, being a poor student, have only had them as a special treat. My colleague has informed me though, that the Foodland on Glen Osmond Road, Frewville, sells them and many other Linda McCartney products! So if you're in Adelaide and want a box of tasty pies, you now know where to look!

Anyway, I was very touched by this lovely farewell present. As such, I ate the pies for dinner that night with chips and sauce, in front of the TV. The way a pie is supposed to be eaten.


Happy eating! :)

Homemade muesli recipe

I love pottering around in the kitchen on the weekend with the lovely smell of baking muesli wafting through the air and that feeling you get in your heart when you're being all crafty and self-sufficient(ish). I also love knowing what's going into my food. Most muesli is packed with sugar, coated in honey, and surprisingly lacking in fibre. Not so when you make it with this recipe! Not only is this muesli delicious but it is extremely fibrous. This is of course good for your bowels but I must warn you, it's only good for them if you drink plenty of water! So eat up, then drink up!

6 cups rolled oats
1/2 cup sunflower seeds
1/2 cup sesame seeds
1/4 cup dessicated coconut
1 cup wheat germ
2 cups bran (NOT bran flakes or pellets, just plain wheat bran)
1/3 cup oil
2/3 cup golden syrup
1 cup chopped dried apricots
1 cup chopped dried apples
1 cup chopped dried prunes

1. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C.

2. In a large bowl, mix oats, seeds, coconut, wheat germ, and bran until well combined.

3. Stir in the oil, then the golden syrup.

4. Bake muesli in a large, deep, baking tray for 20 minutes, stirring twice. It should be golden in colour.

5. Leave to cool, then add dried fruit and stir to combine. Store in an airtight container.


Happy eating! :)

Sweet and sour chicken recipe

Sweet and sour was something I'd always disliked, until I gave this recipe from No Meat and Three Veg a try. Wow. While it takes a little while to prepare, the finished product is well worth it! As Jeff said, "A++, would eat again", I totally agree with him. The whole time we were eating it we just couldn't stop raving about how delicious it was! I also took leftovers to work for lunch the next day and it was just as good.


Happy eating! :)

What I'm eating: kiddie ice-cream

Those who know me personally will know that in many respects I am just a large child. I also work in early childhood so most of my friends are under five years old. My childishness also extend to my food choices. For example, ice-cream is awesome at any time of the day. Especially chocolate ice-cream. With LOTS of chocolate topping. And rainbow sprinkles.

Go on, live life on the child side.


Happy eating! :)

What I'm eating: Asian take-away

There is an excellent dine-in/take-away Asian restaurant called Vegetarian Delight (details under the tab labelled 'places I like to eat in Adelaide'). The place is like mock-meat heaven and everything is delicious. We recently got a (large!) take-away order for them and pigged out in front of the TV - because sometimes those things just have to be done.

Here (clockwise from top) you can see beef and black bean, satay tofu, samosa, honey chicken, special fried rice, and prawn crackers. A mighty feast!


Happy eating! :)

What I'm eating: pizza on toast

Some days you feel like something yummy and relatively healthy but you just don't feel like doing much cooking. Enter pizza on toast. Pizza on toast is a concept I came up with as a starving teenager, constantly searching the house for more food to fuel my growth and with little consideration as to how odd the combinations of ingredients might seem to others. Basically, pizza on toast is: toast, topped with tomato paste, then grilled with whatever pizza-like toppings you can find (including tinned corn when I was in said starving teenager stage).

My latest pizza on toast experience involved dried 'Italian herbs', capsicum, pineapple, tomato, and nutritional yeast. Mmmm...


Happy eating! :)

Cheater's sausage roll recipe

Until recently I worked at a child care centre; this recipe was shared with me by the chef there who made these sausage rolls for vegetarian children. I will never make (healthier) sausage rolls from scratch again. I have tested these on children myself and also on meat eaters and all agree that they are awesome!

The recipe uses regular Sanitarium vegetarian sausages, which I normally detest as they are rubbery and have a strange flavour, instead I always buy the fancier Sanitarium sausages. However, the cheap crappy sausages work wonderfully in this recipe! Do not use nice, fancy sausages as your sausage rolls will turn out horribly.

Serves as many as you like

Sanitarium vegetarian sausages
Frozen puff pastry (check the ingredients for butter)

1. Preheat oven to 200 degrees C (or whatever it says on your pastry packet)

2. Thaw pastry according to packet instructions.

3. Wrap sausages in pastry.

4. Bake until golden.


Happy eating! :)

Savoury muffin recipe

I discovered the recipe for these little gems here on an excellent blog called No Meat and Three Veg. I really love this blog and as well as having heaps of yummy, quick, and easy vegan recipes, it's also Australian so all the ingredients are easy to source.

These muffins are similar to quiche in many respects and are great for lunches or picnics. They are amazingly tasty but what would you expect from a recipe modified from Play School? I won't post the recipe here as you can find it on the link above. I do make some changes though when I make them; firstly, I use a small tin of corn rather than corn on the cob, secondly, I use regular white vinegar rather than apple cider vinegar, and lastly, sometimes I don't use fresh herbs. The only reason for these changes is that is suits my individual pantry and shopping habits.

I highly recommend you pop on over to No Meat and Three Veg, I know I have a few more recipes from there waiting to be tried out!


Happy eating! :)

What I'm eating: hot cocoa

While reading a book about the history of Cadburys, I really got into cocoa. I don't think I'd ever actually had cocoa as a drink before but now I'm hooked. I started making it with cooking cocoa because that's the closest match to the cocoa that was being drunk in my book, rich, fatty, and with no added sugar or other agents to help it combine with the milk. Wow, I love it! You get these nice little creamy lumps of cocoa and I love that it's not sickly sweet unlike many hot chocolate mixes. I must admit, I was even drinking this in the height of summer. Now that the weather's getting cooler, it makes my cocoa addiction seem less insane.



Happy drinking! :)