Wordless Wednesday

A Day in the life of Cats...

Meat Free Monday Round Up

It's been a while since I've done a Meat Free Monday post so I thought I would do a round up of the last few week's dishes and include some recipes...

Artichoke and Red Onion Paella

I used this recipe but made a few adjustments.

I used sun dried tomatoes instead of cherry tomatoes and I didn't bother to pre-griddle the artichokes I used marinated ones and added them straight into the paella.

Vegan Gumbo

I have posted this recipe before... here it is!

Vegeree :)

This recipe was inspired by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's Vegeree recipe in River Cottage Veg Everyday.

I made my own blend of spices to create a homemade curry powder, chopped up some courgettes and chinese eggplants and coated them in the curry powder before roasting.

Then I cooked some brown rice in stock, spices and turmeric and added 2 hard boiled eggs and the roasted veg once the stock has been absorbed by the rice.

Veggie Carbonara (with spinach and sun dried tomatoes)

Ingredients

For the sauce

· 200ml soya cream

· 1 garlic clove, crushed

· 150g cheddar cheese, grated

· 2 tbsp crème fraiche

· salt and freshly ground black pepper

· 2 free range egg yolks

To serve

· 450g penne (or which ever pasta you like)

· 12 sun-blushed tomatoes

· 4 handfuls baby spinach

· parmesan, or similar vegetarian grating cheese

Preparation method

For the sauce, heat the soya cream in a small pan over a medium heat until reduced by a third. Stir in the cheese until melted, then add the creme fraiche and season with salt and black pepper. Then separate your eggs and store the yolks into the sauce.

Divide the spinach and sun dried tomatoes between two serving bowls.

Cook the pasta in boiling water, then add to the serving bowls.

Add the pasta evenly between each bowl and mix well.

Grate over some parmesan and crack some black pepper on top.

Birthday Celebrations

This week I saw in another birthday and a lovely quiet one it was. I got some beautiful gifts...

Considering I said I didn't want to do anything for my birthday I did lots of things to celebrate and despite being ill I had a lovely time.

OH provided me with a treasure hunt for my presents :)

We had lovely food and lots of friends over for drinks the night after and regardless of my fear of a red wine and beige carpet combination, there were no alcohol induced accidents.

Then today my family came round which was a lovely way to spend the last of my few days off.

Not Again

Oh no! I did it again! I let a whole month pass without blogging :(

In my defense I did move house 1 week before Christmas.

This is what has been happening...

Wordless Wednesday

Mumma's Making Vegan Gumbo

Last night I made my first ever Gumbo (vegan gumbo at that!)

I had always shied away from making Gumbo as it is normally made with meat and seafood (and I'm a vegetarian.)

However, my veggie friend made a fantastic vegetarian one and I thought I would give it a bash, I must admit I did not follow a recipe, I looked at a few for inspiration and then made it up as I went along.

Recipe...

• First mix equal amounts of vegetable/olive oil and flour together over a medium to high heat to make a brown rue. (I probably used about 1/3 of a cup of each.)
• Next chop in large chucks/slices 2 red onions, 2 cloves of garlic and 3 sticks of celery. Fry these off in the rue for around 7 minutes.
• Whilst the onion, garlic and celery are frying prepare 4 cups of veggie stock (1 stock cube per 2 cups of hot water) and chop 1 green bell pepper, 4 spring onions, 1 pack of okra.
• After the 7 minutes, add the stock and then all these spices...
• ... 3 bay leaves, 2+ tablespoons of cayenne pepper, paprika, chili powder, Cajun mix (chili powder, oregano, dried garlic, dried onion, black pepper, paprika, cayenne pepper, dried chilies), oregano, thyme, sage, black pepper, dried chilies, 4 tablespoons of vegetarian Worcestershire sauce, 1 chopped green chili.
• Then add the remainder of the chopped veg and add some sweetcorn (optional) and add 3 chopped vegetarian/vegan sausages of your choice.
• Then add enough brown rice to feed 2-4 people.
• Let it cook for 30 minutes to an hour.
• Add more spices to taste if you feel it needs it.

Take out the bay leaves and enjoy :)

My Halloween Weekend...

... Looked like this!

Friday evening was spent at a Celebrity face mask themed birthday pub crawl!

I was Nigella Lawson :)

I was up until 2am Friday night, then up at 6am Saturday morning caring, baking and sewing for our Halloween Party Saturday night (I made my costume and parts of OH's) I finally finished my patchwork dress in my lunch break at work on Saturday :)

Happy Halloween :)