She Likes Bento

Weekend Cooking: Nacho oven dish

2012-02-11T11:26:00.002+01:00

I encountered this dish on Yummy in my Tummy. I really wanted to try it because I never had nachos this way before but it seemed really tasty and it was! I did adapt quite a bit with this recipe and there are many ways to make a similar dish. I upped the veggies versus nacho ratio because after the first time making the dish, I thought the ratio was off and I wanted more veg. So here is my adapted version:

This was the first time I made it, without beans

Nacho oven dish with veggies (serves 3)
- 150 gr nachos
- a small can of corn
- 1 tomato or bell pepper (both taste good)
- 1 ripe avocado
- 2 spring onions
- a small can of kidney beans or black beans
- 125 gr sour cream
- some grated cheese
- salt and pepper

Peel, remove the pit and cube the avocado, remove the seeds from the tomato or bell pepper and cube. Cut the spring onions into small rings. Drain and rinse kidney beans and corn. Mix all veggies together and add a little bit salt (be careful because the nachos are fairly salty as well) and pepper. Spread the nachos in an oven dish and spread the veggies on top. Top it off with sour cream and a bit of grated cheese. Place in a pre heated oven on 200 degrees (180 in microwave oven) for 10 minutes and serve. Make a salad on the side for a complete meal.

This post is part of Weekend Cooking. Don't forget to check out the other participants to see what they have been up to food wise :)

Vitatas #13

2012-02-10T13:24:00.000+01:00

So it is time for another weekly menu post! Sadly something went wrong with our order this week and we didn't get the bag we ordered. We always order the bag with extra veggies but got a normal one instead.

In the veggie bag this week there are two zucchini (courgette), celery, butter lettuce, broccoli and celery root. Next to the bag we also got black salsify, avocado and sweet potato. The menu will be kept fairly simple this week, because I don't have a lot of energy with these sub-zero temperatures. A lot of easy recipes on repeat and not much new this week.

The menu for week 6-7 will be:

Friday: Lettuce mashpot (recipe here)

Saturday: Cream of Broccoli soup (recipe here)
Sunday: We are at Tsunacon, a Japanese culture convention
Monday: Black salsify and avocado salad

Tuesday: Gnocchi with courgette/zucchini sauce (recipe here)
Wednesday and Thursday: Courgette/zucchini- bell pepper quiche

Bento for Tsunacon: 3 different stuffed onigiri including Sweet Potato onigiri (recipe here)
Bento stash: Courgette/zucchini fritters which I meant to make last week but couldn't due to illness. (recipe here)

I will use the celery root next week, but who has a good recipe for me to try?

Meatless Monday: Gnocchi with Mushroom Sauce

2012-02-06T12:33:00.001+01:00

I only discovered gnocchi fairly recently, and all I can say is, where have you been all my life? I just love it! After making the same delicious gnocchi recipe a few times, I decided that is was now time for a new recipe. This recipe is adjusted from "Vegetarisch Fit", a Dutch vegetarian magazine.

Gnocchi with Mushroom Sauce (serves 4)
- about 500 gr mushrooms
- 1 tbsp butter
- 400 gr gnocchi
- 200ml herbal cheese
- 150 gr cherry tomatoes
- a bunch of chives
- salt and pepper

Cook the gnocchi is water until ready. Meanwhile clean and cut the mushrooms, and bake those in a pan with the butter. Cut the chives and tomatoes and add these to the pan with the cheese if the mushrooms are done. Stir together and add some salt and pepper. Warm through until the cheese has melted and a sauce is formed. Drain the gnocchi and place in a large oven dish. Add the mushroom sauce on top of the gnocchi. Optionally you can add a bit of grated cheese on top. Place the dish in the pre heated oven for 15 minutes on 200 degrees (180 for microwave oven).

Here are some pictures I took during cooking:

Making mushroom sauce in the pan

Before it went in the oven

All done!

This post is part of Midnight Maniac Meatless Mondays.
MMMM is a weekly carnival dedicated to those interested in improving their personal health and the health of the planet by reducing meat consumption one day a week. Every Monday you have a chance to feature a link to something meatless. It doesn’t have to be a recipe {although that would be nice}, it can be a picture of a meatless meal you ate that week, an interesting article you read about meat consumption, a post on your blog about going meatless, perhaps a post on someone else’s blog you found helpful, anything Meatless Monday appropriate.

Weekend Cooking: Everyday Happy Herbivore

2012-02-04T11:35:00.073+01:00

I have been following Lindsay's blog for a while now, and because I heard so many good things about the book I got really curious. When I saw the book only costs about 13 euro in the pre order on the book depository,I decided to buy it.

Title: Everyday Happy Herbivore
Author: Lindsay S. Nixon
Subject: Vegan Cooking
Publisher: BenBella Books, Inc.
Release date: December, 2011
Length: 336 pages

Summary:
From Goodreads:
"After vegan chef Lindsay S. Nixon wrapped up her popular cookbook The Happy Herbivore Cookbook last year, she went back to her kitchen in her new home of St. Maarten. Island living encouraged her to come up with simpler recipes, which led her to create a follow-up cookbook with a focus on recipes that bring tasty back to quick-and-easy.

Now, in Nixon’s much-anticipated follow-up cookbook, Everyday Happy Herbivore, readers will see, once again, that just because plant-based eating is optimal for health, that doesn’t mean it has to be expensive or time-consuming.

Everyday Happy Herbivore will include more than 175 doable recipes—recipes that are so quick and easy, you could cook three healthy meals from scratch every day.

Each of Nixon’s recipes are made with wholesome, easy-to-find, fresh ingredients and include no added fats. With additional notes indicating recipes that are ideal for preparing ahead of time and those you can whip up with just a few dollars, Everyday Happy Herbivore will be the must-have cookbook for anyone desiring a healthier, happier menu!"

Personal opinion:
When I finally got this book on my doormat, I was really excited! I just couldn't believe that such a nice looking cookbook with so many pictures only cost me 13 euro! I mean if you buy a book like this in the Netherlands, you easily pay 20-30 euro, so I was astonished really. Lindsay holds a brief introduction on the basics of quick and healthy vegan cooking but jumps right into the recipes after that. I loved that for once a recipe that claims to be quick, actually was! In a lot of other cookbooks, when it says you will have the meal done in 30 minutes, I spend an hour in the kitchen. So when I made my first recipes from this book, I went in an hour before dinnertime, only to be finished 20 minutes later, for real! I was really pleased by this and therefore I think I will use this a lot when I want something quick and tasty.

The book does have a wide variety of recipes, which I really like. I do notice that there are a lot of bean recipes in there though. So if you dislike beans, this book might not be for you. Otherwise most recipes use easy ingredients, especially if your pantry is vaganised already. My pantry isn't, so sometimes I still wonder where to get certain items, but I have this a lot less than with certain other vegan cookbooks I own. In the back of the book there is some handy information on certain ingredients and a metric conversion table. The latter is great for me of course :) As you may have noticed I am very positive about this book, and I will probably buy Lindsay's first book too when I have the chance.

Purchase links: The Book Depository
Other reviews: None yet.
If you have reviewed this book and want your link here, please leave a comment with the link, and I will add it :)

As always a recipe from the book :) This time I will share a salad that I tried and loved!

Southwest Chop Salad (serves 2 - original served 1, but I adjusted)
- 2 cups chopped lettuce
- 1/2 cup cooked rice (the original uses brown, I used multi grain)
- 2/3 cup canned black beans, drained and rinsed (I also had leftover kidney beans, so tossed those in as well)
- 1/2 cup yellow corn
- 1/2 cup tomatoes (which we forgot to add, oops)
- 2 tbsp chopped cilantro
- 2 tbsp chopped green onions
- optional corn chips (we left them out)

Mix all ingredients together, except for corn chips. Break chips over top of the salad if using. Add the dressing. I used smoked BBQ sauce as a dressing, which I thought was great with these ingredients, but the book also suggests hot sauce with fresh lime juice or salsa. It is a great salad for lunch and also in a bento.

But this is not all! I have a little extra for you, namely an author interview with Lindsay! She was so kind to answer some questions :)

Q: Why should people consider going vegan?
A: There are so many compelling reasons to eat a plant-based diet. It's the best thing you can do for our planet, for your health, for the animals and for humanity.

Q: What is an easy dish that you would recommend to someone who is
vegetarian but haven't made the switch to a vegan lifestyle yet?
A: Everyone has their owns likes and dislikes, so it's really up to that individual. Scope out some vegan recipes and see which ones appeal to you, which ones sound interesting or delicious and give it a try!

Q: What are the three ingredients you would advise to purchase if you are
going vegan? (Please keep in mind that I live in Europe and not
everything that is available in the states is available here)
A: I just spent the last year as an ex-pat living on a French and Dutch island... and then I spent a month in Europe... and will be going back for three months in 2012 (to live in Germany) so I'm not too attached to any american products except, maybe oatmeal and peanut butter, which you can find in most of europe.
For Europeans, I'd say find a soya or almond or rice drink you like and stick with it. I found soy yogurts and soy butters pretty common over there, and those could be helpful too, though not necessary and not something I'd recommend. Same with tofu. Nice if you can find it, but not necessary.
All you need to be vegan is fruits, vegetables, grains and beans -- and thankfully, those are in abundance all over Europe!

Q: Because I am a huge fan of home made burgers, what is your favorite
vegan burger recipe?
It's a tie between the mushroom burgers in my first cookbook, The Happy Herbivore, and the Quick Burgers (black bean burgers) in my second cookbook, Everyday Happy Herbivore.

Thank you so much Lindsay, for taking the time to answer these questions!

This post is part of Weekend Cooking, please check out what the other participants have been up to :)

Vitatas #12

2012-02-03T13:01:00.000+01:00

We took a two week break from the Vitatas because we had other obligations on Fridays and didn't have time to pick up the bag. But this week we have one again, with a lot of tasty goodies!

In the bag there is cauliflower, a large crop of butter lettuce, 3 leeks, 1 large zucchini/courgette, a bag of stir fry veggies and cooked beets (which will be donated ;) ) We also got a bunch of fruit this week because my body is screaming for smoothies. I have a slight cold and I have a real craving for them despite of the cold weather.

The menu of week 5/6 will be:
Friday: Pancakes with cream cheese and chives (I have some chives in the fridge that need to go)
Saturday: Lettuce mashpot (recipe here)
Sunday: We get some take out because we have a meeting here.
Monday: Noodles and stir fried veggies
Tuesday: Creamy potato-leek soup (from the how to cook vegetarian app)
Wednesday: Something with cauliflower (Zeronic is in charge of cooking that day, so I let him decide)
Thursday: Quick burgers (Everyday Happy Herbivore, page 81)
Lunch/bento stash: Zucchini/courgette fritters (recipe here)
Snack: Smoothies!

Snack Review: Pocky Double Chocolate

2012-01-31T12:00:00.000+01:00

Because Tofu Cute had a lot of new Pocky flavors in their store I was able to try plenty of them. This is one of the flavors I was very curious about, because I really love chocolate, and double or triple chocolate is almost always a hit with me.

When I opened the package a strong chocolate scent was released. That was a promising start. I tasted my first one, and I was actually surprised by how strong the chocolate flavor was. Normally the chocolate of Pocky is not really strong and this was pretty intense. The thick chocolate coating is sweeter than the dark chocolate biscuit, which gives this snack extra depth in flavor. There isn't really that much to say about this snack. If you are a chocolate lover you will most likely appreciate it. With 1,99 pounds this is a more expensive type of Pocky than some of the others they sell. For this price you get a 46 grams package which equals to about 23 sticks. Get it here at Tofu Cute.

Meatless Monday: Cranberry Muffins

2012-01-30T12:32:00.004+01:00

After making a delicious pumpkin cranberry risotto, I still had plenty of cranberries left so I decided to try my hand at cranberry muffins. While I thought the cranberries we a bit too sour this way, Zeronic adored these muffins so I really want to share them with you all. I found these on Yummy in my Tummy, but because that is a Dutch site, I will translate the recipe below that I adapted slightly.

Cranberry Muffins (makes 12)
- 150 gr fresh cranberries
- 265 gr flour
- 3 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 160 gr cane sugar
- 240 ml milk
- 1 egg
- 85 gr butter
- pinch of salt

In a large bowl, miks flour, sugar, baking powder, cinnamon and salt. Melt the butter and mix with the milk and egg. Add wet with the dry ingredients and mix with a wooden spoon. Add the cranberries and stir lightly until mixed. Pour the matter into a muffin tin. Place it in a preheated oven on 200 degrees for 15-18 minutes. (180 degrees for a microwave oven). You can sprinkle powdered sugar on top for a decorative effect.

Weekend Cooking: BBQ Tempeh Sandwich

2012-01-28T09:19:00.001+01:00

My fellow foodies Chinoiseries, Graasland and JannyAn are part of this Tofu and Tempeh Hop. We did a hop on dips in the last weekend of December and we had so much fun that we decided to do another hop and this time the theme is tofu and tempeh. I have had tofu before and while I can eat it alright, it never got me really excited. Tempeh I never had before, so that is why I decided to try to cook with this, especially when I saw a post on Healthy, Happy, Life on sandwiches that featured a BBQ Tempeh Sandwich that looked very appealing. Inspired by her post I made my very own.

BBQ Tempeh Sandwich (makes 4 large sandwiches)
- 1 package of tempeh
- Your favorite bread (I used freshly baked multi grain bread, that I made that morning)
- Lettuce
- Cream Cheese or Toffuti cream cheese to veganise it.
- Cherry tomatoes
- Cucumber
- Your favorite BBQ sauce (I had smoked BBQ from calve)
- Mayonnaise or vegan mayonnaise
- Appel cider vinegar
- Sunflower oil

Slice the tempeh. Heat some oil in the pan and bake them for 1 minute on each side. Then put on a good deal of BBQ sauce and coat the tempeh with it. Turn the heat lower and let it simmer for a few minutes. Let the tempeh cool down a bit.

Meanwhile slice the tomatoes and cucumber, wash the lettuce and sprinkle some apple vinegar on there. Slather cream cheese on one side of the sandwich. Toss a heap of lettuce on top together with tomatoes and cucumber. Place some slices of tempeh on there. Slather the other side of the sandwich with some mayonnaise and you have build yourself a nice filling sandwich!

Most people would eat this for lunch but I made this for dinner on a Sunday evening. It was so filling that I had enough after only one sandwich.

If you want more Tofu and Tempeh recipes check out the following links:
Chinoiseries made Tempeh Burgers
Graasland made Faux Feta
JannyAn made Gado Gado

This post is part of Weekend Cooking. Make sure you check out what everybody has been up to food wise. It is always a lot of fun!

#118 and #119 Burgers, muffins, wraps and falafel bento

2012-01-25T12:28:00.002+01:00

Well not all of that in one bento but in fact in two ;)

This bento I made yesterday for Zeronic. It actually holds lots of fruits and some veggies hidden in all those dishes. There is an apple-pumpkin muffin and a cranberry muffin, tofu-tomato-zucchini burgers, apple wedges and a laughing cow cheese.

My bento for today also has more veggies than meets the eye. The wrap is filled with kidney beans, mushrooms, zucchini and spring onions and is a left over from dinner. In the other tier is some BBQ tempeh and red lentil falafel. I also have a laughing cow cheese to fill it up.

I realize that these bento doesn't look as appealing than the ones with lots of different and colored veggies, but it is more practical this way, still healthy and just as tasty :) I can't wait for summer though because then it is so much easier to add some color to a bento :)

Snack Review: Kabaya Saku Panda Chocolate Monaka

2012-01-24T12:46:00.046+01:00

When I encountered this cute cookie on J-list, I couldn't resist and grabbed one with order.

Kabaya is a brand I never heard of before but they are famous for their Candy Toys. These are figurines that come with candy. They are more oriented on boys, so that could explain why I never have seen anything by them before. This cookie is nothing like that though and it didn't come with any toy.

The snack is basically a cup made of cookie and filled with a thick bubbly chocolate layer. Or maybe I should say a wafer because it is the exact same type that you get served with ice cream sorbets. The brown chocolate parts were really tasty, however the while milky chocolate parts were kind of bland. Normally I like the sweet milk flavor but this hardly had any. This is too bad because if it would have been the other way around this would have made for a perfect snack. I do have to compliment on the concept though. It is one I never seen earlier and I quite like the idea. This cookie can be bought for $1,50 on J-List.

Meatless Monday: Cream of Broccoli Soup

2012-01-23T11:23:00.033+01:00

Last week I got myself the How to Cook Everything Vegetarian app for the iPhone from Mark Bittman. Of course I had to try a recipe from this app and I happened to be looking for a cream of broccoli soup and the app provided :) I am planning a review of this app in the future but for now I will share this recipe with you for this Meatless Monday. Of course I adjusted it a bit, because I can never follow a recipe blind ;)

Cream of Broccoli Soup (serves 2 as a main)
- 450 gr broccoli, in florets
- 30 gr butter
- 1 spring onion, chopped
- 2 cloves of garlic, chopped
- 800 ml vegetable broth
- 125 ml sour cream
- salt and pepper

Put the butter in a deep saucepan over medium heat. When the butter has melted, add onion, broccoli, garlic, a pinch of salt and some pepper. Cook for about 5 minutes. Then add the broth and cook till the broccoli is very tender, about 15 minutes. Puree the soup with a handheld blender until smooth. (till this point you can make it in advance and store the soup in the fridge up to two days) Stir in the sour cream, season to taste and serve.

As a variation you can also make this soup with cauliflower.

Weekend Cooking: Crisis Soup

2012-01-21T12:30:00.053+01:00

I just love recipes that clean out leftovers and this soup seems to be the king of those kind of recipes because you can basically throw in any kind of leftover veggies you have. I fond this on a Dutch site Puur Gezond and they called it crisis soup, because not only can you toss in a lot of things, it is also really cheap to make! I am going to post the version that I made here, but this soup will be different every time it is made, because there are never the same things in the fridge.

Crisis Soup (serves 5)
- 200 gr of red lentils
- 1 can of cubed tomatoes
- 3 cloves of garlic
- 3 tbsp of oil
- 1000 ml water
- 800-1000 gr fresh greens from your fridge

Cut up all the fresh greens in small pieces. (I had half a butternut, bok choy, Chinese cabbage, half a cauliflower, fresh parsley and some spring onions). Chop the garlic. Heat some oil in a large pan and fry the veggies. Add the lentils and the tomatoes with the water. Let it cook for 20-25 minutes. Taste and see what it needs. This will vary because it will never be the same. Add salt, pepper and other spices to taste. The soup thickens a lot and it will be really filling. We just served it with bread and garlic butter.

Can you believe how much it thickens?

Some tips:
- Instead of lentils you can also use all kinds of beans that you have in your pantry. Adjust cooking times accordingly.
- If you have very leafy veggies add them when the soup is almost done. Spinach is a good example.
- This is also a great way to clean out leftover cheese or creams that you have.
- I added parsley but other fresh herbs that you have a bunch of, can also be used up. Just make sure you taste.

What are your favorite recipes that clean out leftovers? I would love to try them, if they are vegetarian.

This post is part of Weekend Cooking. This is a weekly meme where bloggers share all kind of food related things. Please hop over to check it out!

Weekly Menu Weeks 3-4

2012-01-20T15:03:00.000+01:00

We don't have a Vitatas vegetable bag this week because we didn't like half of what is in it. And while we love to try new things and new challenges, we took a break this week and went to the market instead to get a nice batch of veggies. Half of these are still organic and they cost us 8 euros for the whole week.

From the market we choose a huge amount of turnip tops, a cauliflower, broccoli, half a pumpkin, 2 zucchinis, black salsify and a lemon that I needed to make lemon cake ;) Not on the picture are mushroom, which we bought as well.

The menu for week 3-4 will be:
Friday: A warm salad with the black salsify and avocado (from Kookblog Rozemarijn) with baked potatoes and a meat replacement.
Saturday: Sushi!
Sunday & Monday: Turnip tops mashpot (recipe here)
Tuesday: Wraps with mushrooms and zucchini (and more)
Wednesday: Pumpkin-cranberry risotto (I still have cranberries left, recipe here)
Thursday: Cauliflower Manchurian with rice and peas from the Everyday Happy Herbivore Cookbook.
Bento: I have build up quite a stash from cranberry muffins, red lentil falafel, BBQ tempeh and tofu-zucchini-tomato burgers. So I don't think I will be making more this week, but you never know :) I will make a loaf of tomato-basil bread in the machine this weekend though :)

#117 - Tofu Burgers and Cranberry Muffin Bento

2012-01-18T13:39:00.000+01:00

This is the bento that I made for Zeronic today. He doesn't always need a bento on Thursdays but because of the bad weather her today, I thought I might just give him one anyway :)

His main is rice with mixed beans and in the other tier there are two mini tofu-zucchini-tomato burgers and a cranberry muffin. The tofu burger recipe still needs so tweaking so I won't be posting that on the blog just yet, but the cranberry muffins are very much liked by Zeronic so that recipe will appear on the blog soon.

Snack Review: Lotte Kancho Love Biscuits - Hazelnut

2012-01-17T12:46:00.000+01:00

I have reviewed several filled cooking snacks before but I never had one with a hazelnut filling, so I was curious to try these when I found a package on Tofu Cute.

This was a type of filled biscuits that I haven't had before. Not only flavor wise but also the brand is new to me. These cookies are manufactured by Lotte, the same company that is also behind the Koala biscuits that I bought several times before. This biscuits aren't much like the Koala type though. Koala's have a thinner biscuit and more filling while these are more similar to the Hello Panda biscuits from Meiji. They have a thicker layer of biscuit and less filling.

The smell of this snack is subtle and not as overwhelming as some of these snacks can be. I liked the taste of the filling a lot. It was like eating a biscuit filled with Nutella. Maybe a little less creamier, but taste wise quite close. Unfortunately the biscuit itself tasted a bit stale. It wasn't as crispy as I am used to and that was a bit of a downer. I checked the package on any holes, but there weren't any, so that can't be the reason. That is a bit of a pity really, because otherwise hazelnut is surely a flavor I enjoyed. These biscuits can be bought for 0,99 pounds on Tofu Cute.

Meatless Monday: Red Lentil Falafel

2012-01-16T12:26:00.000+01:00

This is my first time making my own falafel and I didn't make them with chick peas but with red lentils. I was actually planning to make red lentil burgers, but Zeronic requested these instead. I loved these home made falafel and they are perfect in a bento, which you can see in my bento from last Wednesday. This recipe comes from the Essential Vegetarian Cookbook. I adjusted it a bit, like I mostly do with recipes. Do mind that this recipe is fairly time consuming, but it leaves you with a lot to stash away for later use :)

Before frying/baking

Red Lentil Falafel (makes 45-50 balls)
- 250 gr red lentils
- 2 spring onions
- 2 cloves of garlic
- 1 tsp cumin
- 80 gr fresh bread crumbs
- 125gr grated cheese
- 1 large courgette
- 150 gr cornstarch
- oil

Cook the red lentils in water. This should take about 15 minutes. Meanwhile, grate the courgette in a large bowl. Chop the spring onions and the garlic in the kitchen machine and add them to the bowl with the cumin, grated cheese and bread crumbs. When the lentils are done drain them and chop half of them in the kitchen machine. Add this and the other half of the lentils to the mixture. Mix everything well. Shake the cornstarch on a plate.

Mixture before rolling

At this point I tool the plate of cornstarch and the bowl with mixture to the living room so I could sit during rolling the balls. Scoop about a tbsp of mixture and roll this into a ball. This should go really smoothly because the mixture is just perfect to work with and didn't stick too much. Roll the ball through the cornstarch to coat. Place the balls on another plate and make about 45-50 balls this way. You can store them in the fridge until you are going to fry them.

For the frying you can just add a layer of oil to the pan, wait until the oil is hot enough (it will form tiny bubbles). Gently place a few balls in the oil, bake them for 1 minute and scoop them out. Lay them on a plate with kitchen towels to drain the moist. Continue this with all the balls. If you don't like to fry them, you can also bake them but you will still need a fair amount of oil.

Red lentil falafel with fries and salad

Serve them with pita bread and garlic sauce, or any yoghurt based sauce. We served them with fries and a salad.

Book Review: Rabbit Food Cookbook

2012-01-14T12:25:00.003+01:00

Title: Rabbit Food Cookbook
Author: Beth A. Barnett
Subject: Vegan Cooking
Publisher: Sasquatch Books
Release date: October, 2011
Length: 224 pages
I got this book: from the publisher for review.

Summary:
From Goodreads:
"This isn’t just a cookbook; it’s a thoughtful and accessible guide eating well for your body and for the world. Beth Barnett is an incredibly popular illustrator and writer – and Rabbit Food is her opus. Including tips on everything from how to plant your first garden to how to sew your own reusable grocery bag, Barnett provides ample detail for living a thoughtful, sustainable life."

Personal opinion:
This book is indeed much more than just a cookbook. Beth writes about various subjects like the history of food, about nutrition for vegans, how to start your first garden, what a vegan pantry should include and cooking times on grains and beans. The book doesn't have any pictures but it is full of tiny illustrations which give the book something personal. Another personal touch is the fact that the part with the recipes is handwritten. The recipe section has various menu items like we know from most cookbooks, like soups and main courses, but also vegan baking gets a place in the book. I have two minor points about the book. One is that the main courses do rely a lot on tofu. So if you are not a tofu lover, this book isn't really for you. The other thing is that with the recipes it doesn't always state how many servings a recipe makes and I find this a bit hard to work with. It surely is a cute book that gives that bit of extra information that can make it easier to start on a vegan diet. I got an e-book for review but the real cookbook is spiral bound, which is always a plus.

Purchase links: Amazon
Other reviews: None yet.
If you have reviewed this book and want your link here, please leave a comment with the link, and I will add it :)

Of course here is a recipe from the book. I choose an easy, low budget pasta recipe to make. I loved the white beans in a pasta dish. I never had that before.

Pasta with White Beans (serves 3)
- 2 cups pasta
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 1 onion, diced (I used spring onion)
- 3 cloves of garlic, choped
- 1 can white beans, drained and rinsed
- 1 can diced tomatoes, Italian style (didn't have those so I just added Italian herbs myself)
- 1-2 tsp fresh rosemary
- dashes of pepper, oregano and basil

First cook the pasta. In the mean time heat some olive oil skillet on medium heat. Add onion and sauté for about 5 minutes. Then add the garlic and sauté until the onions are softened. Add the beans to the pan and stir occasionally for a few minutes. Add the tomatoes, rosemary and other spices. Cover and let it simmer for about 10 more minutes. Rinse and drain the pasta when done and add with the sauce or serve the sauce on top of the pasta.

This post is part of Weekend Cooking. Please make sure you check out the other participants as well. You never know what you will end up making! :)

Vitatas #11

2012-01-13T11:42:00.000+01:00

This week the vegetable bags weren't delivered at our local organic store so we were allowed to pick out our own veggies from the assortment they have. This resulted in a rather summery vegetable bag. Mainly because they didn't get the wintery vegetables delivered.

In the bag we have a lot of broccoli, lettuce, fennel, grean beans, 2 courgettes and cherry tomatoes. I also have some leftover veggies from last week but I found a recipe that will clean that out in one go :)

The menu for week 2/3 will be:
Friday: Crisis soup - this is a soup where you can basically toss in all your leftover veggies :)

Saturday: Gnocchi with courgette sauce (recipe here)
Sunday: BBQ-tempeh on Italian home made bread with a heap of veggies.
Monday: Tofu burgers with courgette and tomato with a salad.
Tuesday: Cream of broccoli soup

Wednesday: Pesto pasta with fennel beans (recipe fennel beans here)
Thursday: Broccoli Quiche (from CyV on Met de Paplepel, in Dutch)
Lunch: More home made Italian bread :) And who knows if I will make something else this week.

So a nice balanced menu with 5 new recipes and 2 on repeat. I wanted to try cream of broccoli soup for some time now and because we have lots of it this week, I have placed it on the menu but I haven't got a good recipe yet. So if you have one for a vegetarian cream of broccoli soup, please let me know :)

#116 - Falafel and dip bento

2012-01-11T07:47:00.002+01:00

I have spend a lot of time in the kitchen yesterday making my own falafel for in the bento to take to school today. I also used my bread machine for the first time to make my own bread!

In this bento there is red lentil falafel (recipe will follow), roasted cauliflower dip (recipe here at Always cooking up something), a laughing cow cheese wedge, a broccoli muffin and mixed beans in sajoer sauce. Not in the picture is the thick slice of multi-grain bread I will be taking with me too ;)

Snack Review: Panda Pocky

2012-01-10T12:38:00.000+01:00

I am a bit of a pocky fan and I especially like to try the more exotic flavors so I was really curious to review this limited edition panda pocky from J-list. Pocky is a product from Glico and comes in many varieties. The most common is chocolate but they often come up with cool limited edition flavors where this one is a part of.

The snack is called panda pocky but the actual flavor is cookies 'n cream. This is a flavor that I really love in chocolate bars, so they can't really go wrong here. Let's see how true this will be ;)
Unlike most pocky sticks (except for Choco-banana) these pocky sticks aren't vanilla but chocolate biscuit. The outer layer is white cream with bits of chocolate in it. They smell really sweet and vanilla like, and they taste like that too. I wasn't really able to taste the outer chocolate pieces, but otherwise this is a great flavor combination if you are a fan of sweet things. The last bit of biscuit without coating is a bit dry though. A great plus here is that unlike with a lot of typical flavors, these don't taste chemical.
A fun detail is that the plastic package inside the box has drawings of cute pandas on them to accommodate the theme. I would certainly buy these again, because I am very pleased with this combination. They are $2.50 a box on J-List.

Meatless Monday: Sweet Risotto

2012-01-09T12:22:00.006+01:00

I still had a butternut squash left when I encountered this recipe in a Dutch vegetarian magazine that is called "Vegetarisch Fit". I actually have a few of them but didn't cook from them much. I thought that had to change to I browsed through one of the previous winter editions. I will be cooking three recipes from the magazine this week because they fit the vegetables in my organic veggie bag so well.The first one I made is Sweet Risotto which tasted very good and is a great comforting winter dish.

This is a case of it tastes better than it looks. The risotto remained a bit soupy because it didn't want to absorb the last bit of moist, but the taste was good nevertheless. It also made me discover that I rather like cranberries, which I never ate before.

Sweet Risotto with Butternut and Cranberries
- 400 gr butternut squash
- 2 shallots
- 2 cloves of garlic
- 1 twig of fresh rosemary
- 400 ml vegetable broth
- 600 ml cranberry juice
- 2-3 tbsp olive oil
- 150 gr fresh cranberries
- 250 gr risotto rice
- 4 tbsp fresh chopped parsley
- 4 tbsp grated cheese
- 40 gr butter

Cube the flesh of the pumpkin. Peel shallots and garlic. Place them together with the leaves of the rosemary in the kitchen machine to chop everything up. Boil the cranberry juice together with the vegetable broth in a pan. Heat olive oil in a second pan and stir fry the garlic, shallots, rosemary, butternut and cranberries shortly. Add the rice and bake this shortly with the rest. Then add about 1/3 of the cranberry juice and broth mixture and let it boil softly for about 20 minutes while stirring occasionally. Add the rest of the broth bit by bit, waiting everytime until the rice absorbed the moisture before adding more. Keep stirring now, or else the risotto will burn. Never leave risotto alone! Lastly stir in the parsley, butter and cheese through the risotto, just before serving.

Progress picture, when the first broth went in.

Weekend Cooking: Restaurant Sakana

2012-01-07T12:29:00.051+01:00

Somewhere mid December I went to this all you can eat sushi restaurant called Sakana to celebrate the birthday of my friend Fhant. I sometimes see restaurant impressions done by other participants of Weekend Cooking and I always enjoy those very much because it isn't very likely that I will visit those far away places. So I thought I would return the favour and post an impression myself.

Salmon Handroll

Sakana is a Japanese all you can eat sushi and grill restaurant in a city called Den Bosch. I have no idea how the sushi restaurants in Japan work but this restaurant works with an all you can eat concept. You order in rounds and each round you can order 5 items of food maximum. This can be hot or cold food. What I love about this all you can eat concept is that they don't like it if you waste items so you have to pay extra if you not finish what you order. Of course when you are with a group there are always a few garbage cans that can stuff some more away ;) But I think it is a good concept that makes you think before you order.

Some flamed fish nigiri

I don't eat fish very often as I eat mostly vegetarian but I do make an exception when I eat out in a sushi restaurant. I just can't resist and mostly the vegetarian sushi offer is very limited. However if I make sushi at home I often do opt for vegetarian also because Zeronic doesn't like to eat fish. What I liked best in this restaurant were the flamed nigiri's. I am not sure I ever had these before. They serve the nigiri with warm fish instead of raw and they are marinated in some sauce and flamed. I found these very unique and I find them a nice addition to the more traditional nigiri.

Dragonballs - Picture by my friend Belsammael

Another thing I tried were these sweet sesame balls. They are called dragon balls and I think they had red bean paste in them. All though a bit odd I liked them but I find it more of a snack or dessert item, not really for a main meal. Come to think of it, I think I did eat only sushi apart from these dragon balls. No hot items except for some mushrooms. I guess I just love sushi too much and because I can only eat fairly small portions, I take what I like best.

Some nigiri and inside out maki

I do realize that I only took pictures of the food and not of the restaurant itself. This is mainly because I only made the pictures to share on twitter in between orders and I only thought up later that I wanted to write this post. Hopefully you guys enjoyed this impression regardless.

I am curious now though how Japanese restaurants function in other countries. Do they have the same concept or do they have another concept entirely?

This post is part of Weekend Cooking. Please check out the other posts as well, because you never know where the idea for your next meal will come from! :)

Vitatas #10

2012-01-06T13:45:00.005+01:00

And with the New Year the vegetable bags are also back! Not that I didn't have bags in the last 2 weeks of the year but I just couldn't find the time for proper menu planning. Anyway, the weekly menu's are back now :)

In the bag there are bean sprouts, bok choy, parsnip, Chinese cabbage, cauliflower and chicory. Otherwise we have many leftover mushrooms in stock, also a butternut pumpkin and some more stuff. It is hard to use everything up that you had without proper menu planning.

The menu for week 1/2 will be:
Friday: Baked potatoes with chicory salad with apple and mandarins and a meat replacement.
Saturday: Garlic roasted mushrooms with baked potatoes and meat replacement.(based on this recipe on Kiss My Whisk)

Sunday: A sweet butternut-cranberry risotto. (recipe here)
Monday: Tomatosoup with bread and cauliflower dip. (recipe here at Always cooking up something)
Tuesday: Lentil burgers, I have to see what I will serve next to it. Maybe red cabbage salad.
Wednesday: Creamy parsnip-potato soup with bread.

Thursday: Pasta with white beans. (recipe here)
Bento: Cranberry Muffins

Three of these recipes come from a Dutch vegetarian magazine. I decided to use those more because they have original recipes with veggies of the season. So perfect in combination with my veggie bags. If these recipes turn out good, they will appear on the blog during the next weeks. As always I will update the post with pictures later.

#115 - Longing for Spring Bento

2012-01-04T12:29:00.000+01:00

So, the holidays are over and now we can skip the rest of winter? I wish! My subconsious must have been in a spring mood because flowers popped up everywhere in this bento!

Basically this bento is made from leftovers from the New Years party. I still had two salads that needed to be used, which I decorated with nori flowers. And while it was so stormy outside, and more the weather for a soup bento, these had to be used up quickly. Together with apple and cucumber flowers, this makes for quite a spring theme. Oh well, it is no secret that I strongly dislike the cold winter season ;)

Snack Review: Koala's March - Cheesecake

2012-01-03T12:32:00.001+01:00

It has been a while since I reviewed a type of Koala Cookies, so it is about time for a new exotic flavour.

Koala's March is a product made by Lotte. With this snack they support the Australian Koala Foundation. They are filled biscuits shaped like Koalas and also have pictures of Koala's on them. They come in various flavors but chocolate and strawberry are the most common ones. Those are even available in the Netherlands in the bigger Asian supermarkets but the less common flavours are not therefore I imported these and I paid $2.50 for a 48gr box on J-list.

The smell of these cookies was nice and sweet, not overpowering like with some of these cookies. They taste kind of buttery. The filling is creamy and feels a bit greasy but not in a bad way. There is also a hint of lemon in there that builds up after more biscuits are eaten. I am not sure if I would identify the flavour as cheesecake but it does taste nice and I didn't mind finishing that box. If I would came across it I would buy this again, but I won't go out of my way to hunt for it. Still these are one of the better exotic flavours I came across with these type of snacks.

Weekend Cooking: New Year's Dip Quartet

2011-12-30T19:00:00.003+01:00

One day early for Weekend Cooking but my great blogging friends Chinoiseries, Graasland and JannyAn are joining me in a blog special about dips. Because what is New Year's without a good dip? Of course you can run to the store to buy a quick dip, but making your own is much tastier, healthier and really easy! It is done in less than 5 minutes! If you have a large enough kitchen machine, that is ;) I had to make mine in two batches because the kitchen machine turned out to be too small ;) But it can easily made in advance :)

Bean Pate (Makes about 2 small jars)
- 425 gr canned white beans
- 130 gr cream cheese (if vegan use Tofutti Cream Cheese)
- 1 clove of garlic,
- 1 spring onion
- 3 tbsp pesto (I had red pesto in this case)

Add the garlic and the spring onion to the kitchen machine and chop them finely. Rinse the white beans and drain them. Add them to the kitchen machine together with the pesto and cream cheese and purée everything together. If you have a small kitchen machine like me, then you can just do it in batches and stir them together later in a bowl so all ingredients are evenly mixed.

Great as a spread on Turkish bread, Bagels or to dip vegetables in!

Also visit:
Gnoe at Graasland who made a carrot spread.
Chinoiseries at Always Cooking Up Something who made a roasted cauliflower dip.
JannyAn at JannyAn's Blog who made a blue cheese dip with eggs and walnut. (in Dutch)
This post is part of Weekend Cooking. Make sure you check out what everyone has been up to food wise :) It is great fun!

Weekend Cooking: Mushroom Ragout

2011-12-24T10:58:00.002+01:00

In this very hectic period, I have to admit that I am not cooking that much at all. I planned all easy and quick recipe last week, and this week I tossed the menu planning out of the window completely. However I made a vegetarian version of mushroom ragout. It is a thing that is often served on x-mas and New Years eve in the Netherlands but I haven't had it since I stopped eating meat. In the canned mushroom ragout they sell in the supermarket, there is still meat. Luckily Vegatopia provided :) Because the website is Dutch I will translate the recipe below.

Mushroom Ragout (serves 4 as a side)
- 500 gr mushrooms, sliced
- 1 clove of garlic, chopped
- 50 gr butter
- 25 gr flour
- 200 ml vegetable broth
- 1 tbsp thyme leaves
- some wine (optional, I left it out)

Bake the mushrooms in some oil on high heat until the moist has vaporized and the mushrooms are soft. Turn the heat low and add garlic, butter and thyme. Add wine, if using, and leave it simmer for a bit. Sift in the flour and keep stirring until you get lumps. Now add the broth bit by bit and keep stirring until it thickens. Add some pepper and salt if desired but we didn't because the broth adds enough. Serve with Turkish bread or toast.

This post is part of Weekend Cooking. Make sure to check out the other participants as well :)

#113 and #114 New recipes going bento

2011-12-22T14:14:00.001+01:00

Lately the bento had all been a bit of the same but in the past week I launched some new recipes in the mix.

Zeronic's bento has the endive noodles that we tried last week, which were a bit too gingery for me but he liked them. Zeronic did say that the next day the ginger was overwhelming even for him, so recipe needs tweaking. Other than that he has apple wedges, a broccoli muffin and laughing cow cheese.

My bento has gnocchi in courgette sauce, which was most excellent cold. So I will surely take gnocchi with me more often! In the star cup there is a homemade bean pate which was very good! I also have a broccoli muffin, cucumber for dipping and a laughing cow cheese. Not on the picture is some Turkish bread I took to go with my pate.

Meatless Monday on Tuesday: Pumpkin Risotto

2011-12-20T12:37:00.003+01:00

I already tried to make this risotto two weeks back, but stupid me let the risotto burn the last time because I was too tired to pay enough attention. But because this recipe came so highly recommended to me by some girls from the kookgrrls mailing list, I just had to try again. Glad I did too because this risotto was nice and creamy! It is a good way to clear out some leftover pumpkin. The original recipe in Dutch can be found at the kookgrrls site. My slightly adapted version is below.

Pumpkin Risotto (serves 2 as a main, 4 as a side)
- 200gr pumpkin, seeded and peeled
- 1 spring onion, chopped
- olive oil
- 200gr risotto rice
- 500ml vegetable broth
- tomato puree
- some grated cheese

Heat some olive oil in a cooking pan and bake the onion and pumpkin cubes shortly. Add the risotto rice, and tomato puree and stir well. I made this risotto the lazy way by just adding all the broth at once and let it cook on low heat for about 20 minutes while stirring regularly but not constantly. I did stay in the kitchen through the process though because as I learned the hard way: never leave risotto alone!

Snack Review: Double Pretz Matcha Vanilla

2011-12-19T12:59:00.031+01:00

Glico is most famous for their pocky sticks. But next to this line of sweet sticks, they also have a savory line that is called Pretz. Tofu Cute had some new flavors in stock so I picked one out to try and review.

For the people who don't know it, matcha means green tea. So it is basically green tea and vanilla flavor. This might seem kind of weird, but in Japan matcha is commonly used as a flavor for snacks and it is very popular. So what did I think myself? Well to me it certainly is weird to eat anything with tea flavor. I think it does taste a bit like when you accidental have some tea leaves in your cup while drinking and it is not something I am that fond of. That being said, if did have a certain depth in flavors. One bite would taste like that weird tea powder, but then it is followed by that sweetness of the vanilla. It did gave me a dry feeling in my mouth though and have a bit of an after taste. They aren't really bad, but I am a bit indifferent about them. If you are a huge green tea fan, you can buy this snack for 1.70 pounds on Tofu Cute.

Vitatas #9 for Weekend Cooking

2011-12-17T11:56:00.003+01:00

Normally I post my organic vegetable bag on Fridays. But I was extremely busy yesterday so I thought it would be nice to share my bag of fresh produce for Weekend Cooking! Together with my veggie bag, I always post a weekly menu with it. It is for inspiration for my readers to see what good vegetarian and vegan meals you can make. But also for myself, because it is easy for me to have it posted so I can look back during the week.

This is a normal organic produce bag for 2 persons. I often have and extra large bag, but I also have veggies from last week in the fridge. So I change which bag I choose depending on how much I need. In this bag there is a broccoli, a large crop of endive, red cabbage, parsnip and a bulb of fennel. In the fridge I also have, half a butternut pumpkin, a courgette, more fennel, mushrooms, leek and a large carrot.

The weekly menu for week 50-51 will be:
Friday: Baked endive mashpot. (recipe here)
Saturday: Going out for sushi on a friends b-day.
Sunday: Stir fried endive with noodles (recipe came with the bag, will blog it if it is good!)

Monday: Risotto with butternut squash (recipe here)
Tuesday: Gnocchi with courgette sauce (Made this last week and it was such a hit, that we will make again! Recipe here)
Wednesday: Turkish bread with homemade mushroom ragout (recipe here)
Thursday: Undecided, I have a few options open: cream of broccoli soup or carrot-fennel soup. Not sure yet!
Bento/lunch: Home made bean pate on bread.

I opted for an easy menu this week with dishes that take 30 minutes to prepare max. Still I have some new recipes on there. I wanted to make mushroom ragout and bean pate for a long time now and the butternut risotto I just wanted to try again, because I burned it last time because I was too tired to cook... So... take 2 on that one!

Do you plan your menus out in advance?

This post is part of Weekend Cooking! Please hop over to check out the other participants :)

#110 #111 and #112 Bento from the past week.

2011-12-14T11:11:00.000+01:00

In the past week I made three bento. One for myself and two for Zeronic.

This bento has rice & veggies with chimichurri sauce, two broccoli muffins and a wedge of laughing cow cheese. There are also some cherry tomatoes hidden next the the wedge. I took this bento to school with me, but made it the night before so the picture is taking with evening light :S

In this bento for Zeronic are 6 falafel balls, a wedge of laughing cow cheese, a pumpkin-apple muffin and little bites filled with shiitake and bok choy. Because we had lettuce in the veggie bag, I was able to use that as separator. I used to buy lettuce just for that purpose, but I decided not to so that anymore and just use lettuce if I happen to have it. Even though it makes the look of a bento much more appealing.

In the last bento I made, also for Zeronic, there is another pumpkin-apple muffin and apple slices. In the other tier there is a white bean burger, rice and more beans.

I noticed that I really find it handy to have things like muffins and burgers in stock for a bento. I am also looking for easy and cheap snack ball recipes :) Making them yourself is much more healthy and they are perfect for bento. So all vegetarian suggestions are welcome :)

Meatless Monday on Tuesday: Gnocchi

2011-12-13T11:36:00.001+01:00

I was always curious about gnocchi and I finally tried them because I saw a very easy and delicious recipe on Kookblog Rozemarijn. The recipe that she made is a bit too spicy for me with all the peppers but I adapted it and both Zeronic and I thought this recipe is a keeper! Zeronic actually labelled this as the BEST recipe EVER! ;) For the original recipe please go to Kookblog Rozemarijn (in Dutch). My adapted version is below.

Gnocchi with courgette sauce (serves 3 as a main)
- 400 gr gnocchi
- 1 courgette, grated
- about 60 ml creme fraiche, but you can use more to taste
- 4 sundried tomatoes, cut
- 125 gr mushrooms
- 1 spring onion, chopped finely
- 1 clove of garlic, chopped finely
- 1 tsp red chili paste (sambal oelek)
- olive oil

Boil the water for the gnocchi. Heat some oil in the pan and fry the spring onion and the garlic in it. Add the mushrooms and fry a bit longer until they start to brown. Then add the grated courgette together with the red chili paste and bake it for about 5 minutes until it has lost most of it's moist. Lastly add the creme fraiche and sundried tomatoes. Taste how much creme fraiche you want to add the balance out the spicy taste from the red chili paste. Add more for a less spicy taste and just the 60 ml if you like your dish more spicy. Cook the gnocchi in a few minutes and drain them. Mix them with the sauce. You can add some salt and pepper to taste, but I didn't think it needed more. Serve with a salad on the side and optionally grate some cheese on top.

Snack Review: Hello Panda Creamy Milk

2011-12-12T12:26:00.002+01:00

Today I review the last flavor in the Hello Panda series that I bought on Tofu Cute. They are filled biscuits from Meiji with a cute panda picture on them.

When I opened the package, the biscuit gave off a sweet smell. I didn't really think that they tasted like milk but I did like the sweetness of this snack. The cookie and the filling are nicely balanced and that make these cookies a tasty treat. There wasn't that much filling in the biscuits but flavor wise I didn't really notice that. I will buy these again especially because they are not that expensive. I paid 1.20 pounds for them.

Please go to the snack review page to read what I thought about the other Hello Panda flavors.

Recipe: Carrot Lasagne

2011-12-11T12:08:00.004+01:00

I had a lot of carrot to finish and because I didn't really eat carrot before I had the weekly vegetable bag, I am trying all kinds of new ways to prepare them. This carrot lasagne is not the most healthy thing there is because of the cheese sauce, but it was really good! The carrot gives it some sweetness that I never had in lasagne before.

Carrot Lasagne (serves 4)
- 50gr butter
- 60gr flour
- 750ml milk
- 150ml creme fraiche
- 100gr cheese, grated
- 4 eggs, beaten
- 2 tbsp pesto (I used pesto rosso)
- 500gr carrots, grated (I just toss them in the kitchen machine)
- 250gr lasagne
- some pepper
- bit of olive oil

Heat he butter in a large pan. Add the flour on low heat and stir until the mixture is light golden. Don't worry about lumps. Mix milk, creme fraiche and some pepper and add that to the pan. Bring it to a boil while stirring, in about 5 minutes. Place the lid on the pan and let it boil shortly until the sauce thickens. Remove pan from heat, stir in the cheese and let the mixture cool down a bit. Add the eggs slowly while stirring. Set 1/3 of the sauce aside for the top layer. Add the pesto and carrot to the other 2/3 of the sauce and stir well. Pre heat the oven to 150 degrees. Coat the oven dish with some olive oil. Scoop a layer of the carrot mixture in the dish, then some lasagne, 3 layers of each. Top it off with the sauce that you kept separate. Let the dish rest for 15 minutes so the pasta can soften. Place the lasagne in the oven for 40 minutes. After it is done, let it rest for another 15 minutes. The lasagne will be easier to cut that way.

Weekend Cooking: Jamie's 30-minute Meals

2011-12-10T14:42:00.001+01:00

Title: Jamie's 30-minute Meals
Author: Jamie Oliver
Publisher: Michael Joseph Ltd
Release date: September, 2010
Length: 288 pages

Summary:
From Goodreads:
"In his new book, "Jamie's 30-Minute Meals", Jamie proves that, by mastering a few tricks and being organized and focused in the kitchen, it is absolutely possible, and easy, to get a complete meal on the table in the same amount of time you'd normally spend making one dish! The 50 brand-new meal ideas in this book are exciting, varied and seasonal. They include main course recipes with side dishes as well as puddings and drinks, and are all meals you'll be proud to serve your family and friends. Jamie has written the recipes in a way that will help you make the most of every single minute in the kitchen. This book is as practical as it is beautiful, showing that with a bit of preparation, the right equipment and some organization, hearty, delicious, quick meals are less than half an hour away. You'll be amazed by what you're able to achieve."

Personal opinion:
I have been watching some TV shows of Jamie Oliver lately and that is what inspired me to borrow one of his books at the library. While the book isn't vegetarian only, I love the fact that Jamie does pay attention to pure and organic products and that he is also very respectful about the origins of the meat he gets. In the register the recipes suitable for vegetarians are marked with a V, so they are easy to find and there are quite a lot of them. The downside is, that while Jamie uses plenty of veggies and vegetarian elements, very few total menu's were vegetarian. So to me it did came down to cook separate dishes even though that is not what the book aims at. On the other hand, this didn't really bother me because it turned out that I was quite intimidated by this concept anyway. To me it just seems impossible to put such menus on the table in just 30 minutes unless you have very fast knife skills and can multi-task easily. That are both qualities that I don't have ;) That and only having a 2 pitted stove, didn't make this concept work for me. However the separate dishes are still very inspirational and it is a joy to see what Jamie does with veggies in terms of flavor. It are very simple things to incorporate. I will surely pick up more cookbooks from Jamie.

Purchase links: Amazon

As I stated above I have made separate dishes from this book instead of whole menus. I am going to share Jamie's Sweet Chili Rice recipe here. I think it is an awesome recipe to give flavor to your rice.

Sweet Chili Rice (side dish - serves 4)
- 1 large mug basmati rice
- 2 spring onions
- 3 eggs
- 1 tbsp soy sauce
- 1 tbsp sesame oil
- 1/2 lemon (I used 1/2 lime because I had one at hand)
- fresh coriander
- Sweet chili sauce
- bit of olive oil
- pepper

Slice the spring onions in small pieces. Scoop the mug full of rice in a pan together with 2 mugs full of boiling water (use the same mug) and let it cook for 7 minutes with the lid on. Add spring onions in a bowl together with the eggs, sesame oil, soy sauce and a bit of olive oil, mix well. Remove the lid from the pan and add the mixture to the rice, stir it in. Squeeze the juice of the lemon over it and add some pepper. Place the lid back on the pan, and leave with for 5 minutes on low heat. When done, add the chili sauce royally and top it with fresh coriander.

I used the rice cooker with the same amount of rice-water. This works perfectly, only you need to add in the other ingredients together with the rice from the beginning. Stir it trough and stir again at the end. Then add the chili sauce and coriander as above.

Jamie made a menu with the rice, bok choy, broccoli and asparagus in soy sauce and lime, scallops and brownies for dessert all in 30 minutes. I served the rice with stir fried mushrooms and veggies in soy sauce and lime.

Don't forget to check out the other participants of Weekend Cooking. Who knows where your next food inspiration will come from?

Vitatas #8

2011-12-09T12:39:00.001+01:00

I got a beautiful vegetable bag again. Only what to do with all those beets?! I still have a batch of pre cooked ones in my fridge as well. But this week we will have beets on the menu!

In the bag there are: lettuce, celery, bok choy, white cabbage, beets, a muddy carrot and 2 courgettes. In my stash I still have leek, sweet potato, cooked beets and some broccoli.

The menu for week 49/50 will be:
Friday: Oven fries with a salad. (Really low on energy today, so I will keep it simple)
Saturday: Noodle Soup with bok choy (recipe here)

Sunday: Gnocchi with a sauce from courgette and sundried tomatoes. Inspired by Rozemarijn. (recipe here)
Monday: Baked potatoes and coleslaw in a pesto mayonnaise and a burger or other kind of meat replacement.
Tuesday: A Pataks curry with sweet potatoes.
Wednesday: Broccoli-Leek mini quiches.
Thursday: Spiced up beets in coconut milk.
Lunch: French toast and maybe Turkish bread with hummus.

If you are curious about the previous weekly menus, please check them out on my weekly menu page. As always, I try to update the menus with pictures and recipes during the week.

Recipe: Samosas

2011-12-08T11:28:00.002+01:00

I have had a lot of carrots in my vegetable bags lately. I was never too fond of carrots but I found out that this was mainly because in my youth they got either served with peas and potatoes or in a mashpot and I just didn't like that too much. But now I have tried some creative dishes with carrots, I do like them more. I used them in samosas for example, dough filled with whatever you like basically. There are so many variations on the filling for samosas but here is mine:

Samosas (makes 8)
- 200gr potatoes
- 200gr carrots
- 500 ml herbal broth
- 2 tbsp of wok oil
- 1 clove of garlic
- 1 spring onion
- 2 handfuls of peas
- garam masala
- salt and pepper
- 8 sheets of puff pastry or your own dough

Peel and cube the potatoes. Cook them in the herbal broth. Drain the potatoes but don't rinse them. Defrost your puff pastry. Cut the carrots into large pieces and toss them in a kitchen machine together with the garlic and spring onion. Stir fry this mixture shortly in the oil. Then add the poatatoes, peas, garam masala and a bit of salt and pepper. Fill the puff pastry with about 2 tbsp of the mixture. I always make these little packages so they are filled up nicely. I just spoon the mixture in the middle and get all for corners together in the middle and then press the edges together with my fingers so that they are closed. Place them in a pre-heated oven on 170 degrees for about 20 minutes. I served them with a cucumber-yoghurt dip. The recipe is vegan if you make your own dough or look carefully what sheets of pastry you buy. Serve them with sweet-chili sauce instead of the cucumber-yoghurt dip.

You can also make mini samosas by cutting each puff pastry sheet in four squares and fill them with a teaspoon each before you fold them the same way as the big ones. Great as a healthy party snack!

Snack Review: Pepero Almond

2011-12-05T12:30:00.028+01:00

In the world of Japanese stick snacks, pocky is the most popular brand. In the Dutch anime scene all other stick snacks are often seen as fake copies of lesser quality. People often go as far that they won't even buy the snacks unless it is pocky and are very brand sensitive. Now the question is, is this a justified conclusion? Or are these just as good or even better than the world famous pocky?

Pepero is a product of Lotte, who are more famous for their koala cookies. They are indeed inspired by Pocky and even have their own day. On 11-11 students exchange boxes of pepero to wish eachother to grow as tall and slender as a pepero stick.

I got this box from a friend of mine, so I don't have the exact price information this time (and no not on 11-11 ;) ). The box contains 36gr of pepero sticks. What is different for pocky is that the layer of chocolate seems much thicker on pepero sticks, this also goes for the biscuit sticks. There are also plenty of almonds in the coating. The quality of the chocolate is still mediocre compared to Dutch chocolate but about the same quality as pocky. I really loved this combination and the whole box was gone before I knew it! But with only 36 grams in a box the damage isn't too great. I will buy these myself for sure if I encounter them! They are a great snack to munch on! My verdict is that these are just as great as pocky and I would encourage people to set their brand issues aside because you are missing out!

Recipe: Sunchoke Soup

2011-12-04T11:29:00.036+01:00

I wanted to post this recipe because Heather of Books and Quilts is hunting soup recipes for her father. Sadly her father has some health problems and therefore isn't allowed anymore to eat canned soups. So now Heather is collecting recipes to add in a binder to gift her parents so that they can make their own fresh soups. I already mailed her a few of the recipes I have on the blog but it happened that I made this great tasting sunchoke soup the other day and now would be the perfect time to share :) Please, if you have any tasty soups to share hop over to Heather's blog, it would be a great help!

Sunchoke and potato soup
- 500gr sunchokes, peeled and cubed
- 250gr potatoes, peeled and cubed
- 200gr hazelnuts, toasted and chopped
- 150gr mascarpone
- 1 litre vegetable broth
- 2 cloves of garlic, chopped
- 1 spring onion, chopped
- a handful of fresh thyme
- some butter

Melt some butter in the pan and bake the onion, garlic, potatoes, sunchokes and thyme shortly. Add the vegetable stock and bring it to a boil. Leave the soup simmer for about 30 minutes or until the potatoes and sunchokes are soft. Purée the soup with a handheld mixer and add some marscarpone to it. I find this a very tasty and creamy soup which doesn't need additional salt if you already have added some to your broth.

The post is part of Weekend Cooking. Please make sure to check out the other posts. There is a lot of good food related content submitted every week!

Weekend Cooking: Cooking without using mixes

2011-12-03T10:08:00.004+01:00

This week there is a movement going on in the Netherlands about cooking without store bought mixes. This is started by Koken met Karin. She also has a cookbook on the subject. Why would you want to cook without using those store bought mixes? Well they often contain much more salt than is good for you. And then there are all kinds of other unhealthy things they slip in there. So it is worth to make the extra effort to make certain things yourself. A lot of people think that it is much more time consuming to cook yourself, but this is not always the case. Today I share with you an easy and fresh cucumber dipping sauce that you can eat with all kinds of snacks. I served it with samosas, for example.

The Black Pete is a part of Sinterklaas, a tradition in Dutch culture.
He is juggling some pre-bought mixes here.

Cucumber Dipping Sauce
- 125ml yoghurt
- 1/4 cucumber, grated
- 1tsp ginger, grated
- some pepper and salt to taste
- juice of half a lime
- pinch of cumin

To make this very tasty dipping sauce, just mix all these ingredients together. That's it! It is just as easy as whipping up mix from a bag with some yoghurt :) I served them with Samosas I made but it will also taste great with these Spanakopita Triangles

To help you further on the way, I will link to some relevant recipes I posted earlier:
Creamy Mushroom Soup
Homemade Peanut Sauce
Quick Tomato Sauce

This post is part of Weekend Cooking. Please make sure that you check out the other participants! (Please note that I don't have a working internet connection at home atm. I will try to see if I can visit the blogs from my phone, but I probably won't be able to comment. I will also try to link back when the Weekend Cooking Post is up! But I am borrowing a very slow network from the neighbours now, so sadly I can't make any promises. But because of the occasion, I really wanted to blog this!)

Vitatas #7

2011-12-02T12:53:00.005+01:00

Menu planning was another challenge this week. I mean, I have 4 leeks! And they aren't planned in yet ;) I have several leek recipes but I will wait until Zeronic is home so he can have a say too on which one it will be :) To add to this mix: I have also 2 courgettes and a butternut pumpkin left. I also bought cherry tomatoes :)

The Weekly menu for week 48/49 will be:
Friday: Pumpkin Risotto with grilled courgette and oven roasted cherry tomatoes.

Saturday: Onigiri with Sweet Potato filling (recipe here)
Sunday: Turkish Bread with Pizza topping from homemade tomato sauce, courgette, eggplant and cherry tomatoes with some cheese. (Sharing with friends)

Monday and Tuesday: Lasagne with carrots and pesto, a recipe that Zeronic wanted to try. (recipe here)
Wednesday: Fennel Soup
Thursday: Creamy Leek and Spinach with pasta
Bento: Broccoli Muffins (recipe here)

If you are curious what menus I have created in previous weeks, please go to the weekly menu page.

Recipe: Fennel Beans

2011-12-01T18:21:00.000+01:00

I got about three bulbs of fennel in one of my vegetable bags a few weeks back. Fennel was this kind of veggie what I had no idea what to do with it. Luckily the Puur Plantaardig (Purely Plant based) Cookbook had a solution for me. (click on the title for the review) Because this recipe is so simple and tasty I will share my adapted version of the recipe with you.

Fennel Beans: (serves 3 as a side dish)
- 250gr green beans
- 1 spring onion
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 1 tsp sugar
- 1 tsp Italian spices
- 1/2 bulb of fennel
- 200 gr white beans
- salt

Cook the green beans for about 15 minutes in some water. Cut the spring onion and the fennel. Heat some oil in a frying pan and add onion with the sugar and Italian spices and bake it shortly on low heat. Then add the fennel and bake it some more. Place the lid on the pan and let it simmer for 2 more minutes or so. Add the white beans and let it simmer for a short while. Drain and rinse the green beans and add them with the fennel mixture. Lastly add a bit of salt.

The original recipe had raisins as well. because both Zeronic and myself aren't a big fan of raisins, we left them out. If you want to add them do so when you add the white beans. I served this on top of some pasta in pesto (also in the book). And it was a very tasty combination.

Recipe: Leek Quiche

2011-11-29T12:59:00.047+01:00

I made this wonderful leek quiche a few weeks back. I am not too keen on leek as a main ingredient, but these came out really well. Do note to eat this all in one go, because this quiche doesn't taste good anymore the next day, so we've found out. This recipe comes out of the essential vegetarian cookbook.

I forgot to photograph it, so here is a nice leek picture by Robyn Lee

Leek Quiche
- 150gr rocket lettuce, sterns removed
- 1 large leek, white part only
- 2 gloves of garlic, chopped
- 2 eggs
- 125ml milk
- 125ml cooking cream
- dough, bought or home made
- oil
- basil
- grated cheese

Place the dough in a quiche tin from 23 cm. Heat some oil in a frying pan. Add leek and garlic and stir fry for about 5 minutes. Add the rocket lettuce and stir it through for one minute. Remove the pan from the heat and the the vegetable mixture cool down a bit, then add the mixture in the quiche tin on top of the dough. Mix in a bowl the milk, eggs and cream and also add this on top of the quiche. Put the quiche in the oven for 50 minutes on 180 degrees. Optional you can add some grated cheese and basil in the last 15 minutes of the baking process.

Snack Review: Pocky Blueberry

2011-11-28T11:16:00.031+01:00

Blueberry pocky is one of the more luxery pocky snacks that I bought on Tofu Cute, a webshop located in the UK. Pocky is a product from Glico and comes in many varieties. This type of pocky differs from the standard pocky because it has an extra thick outer coating on the biscuit sticks with tiny pieces of real blueberry. Because of this the price is also higher. I paid 1.30 pounds compared to the 0.75 pounds I pay for standard pocky.

If the above sounds familiar, you are right! I also wrote a review about Lychee Pocky a few weeks back and this Blueberry Pocky is from the exact same series. While they are similar in their description, I preferred this one over the lychee ones because it's flavor wasn't so overpowering. They are just as juicy, but unlike with the lychee pocky, you also are able to taste the sweetness of the biscuit stick through it, which I rather like. They do look less appealing though because of their coloring, but this is a case of: it taste better than it looks.

Recipe: Kohlrabi Soup

2011-11-27T10:59:00.001+01:00

Last week I made this easy and tasty soup for lunch from a kohlrabi from my vegetable bag. To be honest I had never heard of this vegetable before and I had no clue what to do with it but luckily Graasland was able to help me out and send me this simple recipe. I adapted it a bit because the original recipe had white wine in it and because we don't ever drink it, I refuse to buy a bottle just for cooking.

Kohlrabi soup (serves 2)
- 1 kohlrabi
- half a spring onion
- 1 tbsp oil
- 0.5 litre vegetable broth
- some creme fraiche
- 2 handfuls chives
- salt and pepper

Peel the kohlrabi and remove the leaves, cut into small pieces. Cut half of a spring onion. Heat the oil in a pan and bake the onion and kohlrabi shortly. Add the vegetable broth and bring to a boil. When the vegetables are soft (this takes about 15 minutes), you can mix the soup with a hand held mixer in the pan. Add a few spoonfuls creme fraiche, salt and pepper to taste. Garnish the soup with about a handful of chives for each bowl.

This post is part of Weekend Cooking. Please visit the other participants as well! :)

Weekend Cooking: Fine Cooking Cookies

2011-11-26T12:06:00.001+01:00

Title: Fine Cooking Cookies
Author: Fine Cooking Magazine
Publisher: Tauton Press
Release date: October, 2011
Length: 256 pages
I got this book: from the publisher for review through NetGalley.

Summary:
From Goodreads:
"Name your cookie! Shaped, drop, bar, roll and bake, or slice and bake, they all get professional treatment and triple testing from Fine Cooking magazine, the most trusted name in cooking. This fresh batch of more than 200 amazing recipes will inspire great baking. From classic favorites like snickerdoodles and chocolate chunk to more sophisticated treats like biscotti and fruit bars, there’s something for every occasion. Bakers will roll out these sweets for the holidays, for dessert, or just to fill up the cookie jar. Also includes Fine Cooking’s signature style of tips and secrets from the pros, step-by-step photos to help master techniques, ingredient profiles, and shortcuts. For anyone who wants to bake like the best, Fine Cooking Cookies has all the right ingredients."

Personal opinion:
I really like this cookie book because not only it has a good variety of recipes, it also has clear instructions on shaping techniques. They use step by step pictures in this book to illustrate the process and this makes it a lot easier to understand how to shape certain cookies for me. Things that were out of reach for a long time, are now worth giving a shot. That being said, it is still not as easy as it looks, but at least I now know where to start and how to go from there. The only downside of this book I found the huge amount of cookies that each recipe wields, some up to 8 dozen or so. I mean, I get that you can gift cookies or freeze a part of the cookie dough for later, but still 8 dozen cookies are way to much for this household of two, even if I would give most away. But because this is the only downside that I could find, I would buy this book, if only for the clear instructions, even if it means I would have to downscale the recipes.

Purchase links: Amazon
Other reviews: None yet
If you have reviewed this book and want your link here, please leave a comment with the link, and I will add it :)

From this book I made the black and white crescents, which are moon shaped chocolate cookies with a white chocolate decoration.

Black and White Crescents (Makes about 42 cookies)
- 1.5 cups all purpose flour
- 1/4 tsp table salt
- 1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 cup unsalted butter at room temperature
- 1/2 cup + 2 tbsp sugar
- 1 large egg
- 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
- 60gr white chocolate

Several hours before baking:
In a bowl combine flour and salt and sift in cocoa and soda, stir well to mix. Beat the butter and sugar on medium speed with a mixer until light and fluffy. Beat in egg and vanilla, scraping the bowl until smooth and blended. Add the flour mixture and mix on low speed until will combined. Wrap the dough in plastic and chill for at least 2 hours.

Bake the Cookies:
Heat the oven on 350F, mine was on 200C (it doesn't go higher). I placed baking sheets on my oven trays. Scoop a heaping tsp of dough and roll a ball. Roll each ball into a cylinder, tapering the ends slightly. Place the cookies on the tray and curve the ends to get the crescent shape. When one sheet is filled, bake for 8 minutes while you fill another sheet (there was NO way I can fill a whole sheet in 8 minutes, it took me about 30 minutes a sheet). Let the cookies cool and bake the other sheet(s).

Decorating:
When the cookies are completely cooled, melt the white chocolate and place in a zip-top bag, cutting a tip. Pipe the chocolate over the cookies in zig-zag stripes. Let the chocolate harden before storing the cookies away. (I used a handy technique, not from the book. I grate the white chocolate in a small plastic sandwich bag and place that in the microwave on a low voltage for 30 seconds. Then kneed the chocolate in the bag and repeat until completely melted. No more burning the chocolate! I also used it for the piping but my hole was slightly too big.)

This post is part of Weekend Cooking. Don't forget to check out what other participants have been up to, food wise :)

Vitatas #6

2011-11-25T13:08:00.008+01:00

Last week I was ill with the stomach flu (still am a bit) and therefore all the cooking went a bit down the drain. Zeronic still cooked but some things I planned were a bit too much for him to make, combined with his new job and all. Therefore we ordered a smaller vegetable bag this week so we can use up the leftovers from last week.

In the bag of this week are rutabaga, a small butternut squash, bok choy, sunchokes and beans. I have left over from last week: 2 large carrots, 2 courgettes, 2 bulbs fennel and beets. The 2 huge stalks of celery mysteriously disappeared to the house of a friend of mine ;) In the fridge I also have part of a cucumber and some limes laying around.

Menu for week 47/48 will be:
Friday: Homemade bean burgers with avocado and baked potatoes.

Saturday: Vegatable samosas with potato, carrot and peas (recipe here) served with a yoghurt-cucumber dip. Normally this is more of a lunch dish, but I felt like making them so we will have them for dinner, leftovers will be frozen for bento.

Sunday: We celebrate Sinterklaas and won't cook. But we did end up ordering sushi in with a couple of friends :)

Monday: Pesto pasta with fennel beans. (recipe here)
Tuesday: Rutabaga in peanut sauce with vegetarian sausages.

Wednesday: Sunchoke soup with bread (recipe here)

Thursday: Coriander rice from Jamie Oliver with stir fried veggies including bok choy. (recipe here)
Bento stash: Courgette-Basil Muffins and maybe onigiri.
Snack: Maybe lime cake or carrot cake, depending on how much energy I have left.

As always pictures and recipes will follow during the week :) If you are curious to see what we ate in the past weeks, see the weekly menu page :)

#108 and #109 - Muffin Bentos

2011-11-24T18:45:00.001+01:00

A lot of my bento feature muffins these days because there are easy to make and to store. They are also very tasty and the varieties are endless. I guess this is a trend that will continue for a while ;)

Also Zeronic has found work again as a mail man. He will only work a few hours a day, mostly, so I will have to focus more on portable snack bento. I can still use suggestions for those :)

The bento has rice and mixed means in sajoer sauce. In the other tier there is an apple-pumpkin muffin and a strawberry cupcake that my friend Wietz-chan made!

This bento was actually for myself but I fell ill with the stomach flu so Zeronic took it to work with him. It has Noodles with broccoli and mushrooms in a nori sauce, two pizza muffins and walnuts.

Pumpkin Special

2011-11-22T12:01:00.000+01:00

Lately I experimented with new pumpkin recipes because we had two of them in a fairly short time and I don't always want to make soup from it ;) Today I will share two recipes that I made with pumpkin. The first one is for Pumpkin Pancakes and the second one is for Stuffed Pumpkins.

I got the recipe for Pumpkin Pancakes from the blog: Kook je vegetarisch met mij mee?, a Dutch blog on vegetarian cooking. For the Dutch people please click the link to go to the recipe, for the rest I will translate below. No picture though because all my pancakes broke ;)

Pumpkin Pancakes
- 1 kg pumpkin cubes
- 200 gr raisins (we left those out)
- 2 tbsp cinnamon
- 2 tbsp vanilla-essence
- 2 tbsp sugar
- some salt
- 200 gr flour
- 2 eggs
- some butter or oil to bake

Cook the pumpkin for about 15-20 minutes, depending on the size of the cubes. Drain and mash the pumpkin with a handheld mixer. Add the eggs and mix it some more. This way it will prevent lumps in the batter. Now add the other ingredients and stir everything through. Bake the pancakes in some oil or butter and serve with powdered sugar or syrup.

The next recipe if from one of my most used cookbooks: The Vegetarian Student Cookbook (click on the link to see my review). The original recipe uses butternut squash but I didn't have that one at hand.

Stuffed Pumpkin (serves 4, I only had 1 pumpkin though but I didn't halve the rest of the ingredients and that worked perfectly for 2)
- 2 small pumpkins or butternut squash (I had only 1)
- 3 tbsp olive oil
- 1 onion, chopped (I used spring onion here)
- 1 clove of garlic, chopped
- 1 tbsp chopped thyme
- 1 tsp coriander powder
- 50 gr breadcrumbs
- 50 gr walnuts, roasted and chopped
- 50 gr sundried tomatoes, drained and chopped
- 2 tbsp basil, chopped
- 200 gr feta or goats cheese
- salt and pepper

Pre-heat the oven on 190 degrees (170 in microwave oven). Make little holes in the pumpkin(s) with a fork and place it in the oven for 35-45 minutes. Let them cool down. Fry, garlic, oinion, thymer and coriander in some oil for about 10 minutes. Fry the breadcrumbs in another pan for 4-5 minutes until crisp.
Cut the pumpkins lengthwise and remove the seeds. Carefully remove the flesh and mix this up with the onion mixture, breadcrumb, basil, tomatoes and salt and pepper. Fill up the pumpkins with the mixture and add the cheese on top. Place in the oven for 30 minutes.

I now see that Zeronic, who cooked those, didn't follow the recipe like he should have and didn't remove the pumpkin flesh to mix with the other ingredients. So we had more a pumpkin out of the oven with a crust ;) Oh well I can't complain because he did the cooking while I was ill ;)

Snack Review: Pucca Sweet Potato Cookies

2011-11-21T12:21:00.036+01:00

Pucca is another type of cookies from Meiji who also make the more famous Hello Panda snacks. These are fish shaped cookies filled with chocolate or flavored chocolate, in this case sweet potato. I am always fascinated with this flavor because I love sweet potatoes, yet in snacks it never lives up to my expectations. This was also the case with these cookies. The filling was sweet and intense but I didn't really detect a resemblance to sweet potato. My boyfriend thought they taste like apple. I really liked the taste of the biscuits though which is a bit sweet but not too much and they smell like butter and raisins. I didn't really like them that much because of the taste of the filling but Zeronic liked them very much. It was not that I absolutely hated them but after only 3 biscuits I had quite enough. I got these on J-list for $2,50 for a 46 gram box.

Weekend Cooking: Quick Lo Mein

2011-11-19T10:40:00.001+01:00

Last week I had green cabbage in my vegetable bag. A veggie I never cooked before and I had no idea what to do with. Eventually I found a recipe in Vegan on the Cheap by Robin Robertson that I wanted to try. I found out that I don't mind the taste of the cabbage but I didn't like the thick structure so much. The next time I will slice the cabbage even thinner ;)

Quick Lo Mein (serves 4)
- noodles enough for 4
- 16 ounces extra firm tofu (I used quorn meat replacement, but I am not sure that is vegan)
- 1 tbsp cornstarch (leave out if using quorn)
- 2 tbsp neutral oil
- 2 garlic cloves, minced
- 2 tsp grated ginger
- 4 green onions, chopped
- 4 cups shredded green cabbage (I just used most of one cabbage, because that is what we had)
- 1 1/2 cups sliced white mushrooms
- 3 tbsp soy sauce
- 1 tbsp rice vinegar (I used apple-cider vinegar because had that at hand)
- 1 tbsp tomato ketchup
- 1 tsp sesame oil

Just prepare the noodles like you normally would, or use some leftover spaghetti. But don't season them.
Cut the tofu, if using, into cubes and toss with the cornstarch and some salt. Cook the tofu for about 7 minutes until golden brown in 1 tbsp of oil. Remove from the skillet and set aside. (you can skip this step when using quorn like I did.)
In the same skillet heat the other tbsp of oil and toss in the mushrooms, garlic, ginger, cabbage and green onions. (or any other veggies you like to add, like carrots or broccoli. Also add the quorn here, if using)
Stir fry to soften for about 5 minutes. Then stir in the soy sauce, sesame oil, vinegar and ketchup. Add the tofu and the noodles (drain first) and toss to combine. I always add the noodles little by little or else the noodles and the veggies won't mix properly. You can add some water if the mixture is too dry.

Also check out the other participants of weekend cooking! It is a fun feature that is all about food.

Vitatas #5

2011-11-18T13:49:00.003+01:00

Be careful what you wish for because it might actually come true. Last week I didn't get the bag I ordered. But this week I got the Extra bag again and as a bonus even MORE extra veggies. I mean I have 9 different veggies now and it is more than we consume in a week!

The loot this week is 2 large pieces of celery, broccoli, courgette, butter lettuce, kohlrabi, cooked beets, kale, carrots and fennel. Making the menu was challenging and it took me over two hours. I got a lot of help from my twitter time line too, thanks all! I didn't manage to use all the veggies in this weeks menu, so some of them will be taken into next week and I will just get a smaller bag.

Weekly menu (week 46/47)
Friday: Chili sin carne with the leftover leek from last week.

Saturday: For lunch a creamy kohlrabi soup (recipe here) and for dinner a gratin from potatoes and fennel with a green salad.
Sunday: Chinese food at my moms place because it is her b-day.

Monday: Stuffed pumpkin (not on the picture but got one from a friend of mine last week, recipe here)
Tuesday: Noodles with Norichips (recipe here)
Wednesday: Mediterranean kale mashpot
Thursday: Biriyani from vegetables with carrots and courgette.
Snack: Chocolate and vanilla cookies

Options for next week:
Spiced up beets
Fennel crumble
Beans and fennel

As always pictures and recipes will be added during the week. It are almost all new recipes to me so I will probably make a selection which ones I will share. For the menus from previous weeks, please look here.

Recipe: Mushroom Stroganoff

2011-11-17T12:43:00.001+01:00

This is another recipe from the Vegetarian Student Cookbook that I have reviewed before. (click on the link for the review) I needed a recipe to toss in some celery and this seemed a good one. I did have to buy loads of mushrooms though but we like mushrooms ;) Still I am not too fond of celery. I already knew this because I had encountered it in salads or soup before. I guess I just don't like bitter tastes. Anyway, here is the recipe:

Mushroom Stroganoff (serves 4)
- 1 tbsp sunflower oil
- 1 onion, chopped
- 4 stalks of celery, sliced thinly (I chopped it up in the kitchen machine so I didn't have to taste it ;) )
- 2 cloves of garlic, chopped
- 600 gr mixed mushrooms, sliced (we had white, brown, shii take)
- 2 tsp paprika powder
- 250 ml vegetable broth
- 150 ml sour cream
- salt and pepper

Heat the oil in a pan and bake the onion, garlic and celery for about 5 minutes. Add the mushrooms and paprika powder and bake for another 5 minutes. Pour the broth in the pan and cook for about 10 minutes until the sauce thickens. Stir in the sour cream and warm though on low heat for another 5 minutes. Serve with rice.

Recipe: Quick Tomato Sauce

2011-11-16T12:09:00.006+01:00

I made my own fresh tomato sauce before but because the tomato season is over and that sauce while tasty is time consuming, I needed a quick alternative. I have found one on the website from de Vegetarier that we tried and enjoyed so I will share that here. It is nice to still be able to make a fresh tomato sauce in winter and not have to resort to the pre made ones in the supermarket that are less healthy and more expensive. The Dutch readers can click directly on the link above to be taken to the recipe. For the rest, please read on for the translation.

Quick Tomato Sauce (serves 4)
- 3 tbsp olive oil
- 1 onion, chopped
- 1kg canned tomatoes, drained and chopped
- fresh basil or parsley
- salt and pepper

Bake the onion in the olive oil for about 3 minutes. Add the tomatoes, salt and pepper. Cook the sauce for 10 to 15 minutes until the tomatoes fall apart and the sauce thickens. Add herbs to taste. Optional you can add some grated cheese on top.

Thats it! The sauce is enough for 450 gram pasta. Of course I added some other veggies as well, in this case courgette and red bell pepper. But it can be served with any veggies you have on hand and taste good with pasta.

You can vary with the sauce endlessly because this is just a base sauce. For a creamier sauce you can add mascarpone or you can variate with the herbs you add. For instance, oregano, thyme or add some garlic.

Snack Review: Pocky Lychee

2011-11-14T12:43:00.001+01:00

Lychee pocky is one of the more luxery pocky snacks that I bought on Tofu Cute, a webshop located in the UK. Pocky is a product from Glico and comes in many varieties.Lychee pocky differs from the standard pocky because it has an extra thick outer coating on the biscuit sticks with tiny pieces of real lychee. Because of this the price is also higher. I paid 1.30 pounds compared to the 0.75 pounds I pay for standard pocky.

There are 15 sticks in a package, this equals to 37 grams. The outer coating has a strong smell and it kind of tastes like roses to me. Because of the extra thick outer coating and the bits of real lychee they do taste a bit juicy. This is something that I enjoyed. However I am still not sure if I really like the flavor or not. To me it was a strange flavor that I can't quite decide about. The after taste of this snack is really strong. Even 30 minutes later, I could still taste it in my mouth. I don't think I will buy these again While I do adore lychee ice cream, this just tasted odd to me. It doesn't mean the quality of this snack is bad, but it just wasn't the right flavor for me.

Weekend Cooking: Roti Recipe

2011-11-12T12:46:00.004+01:00

Roti is a dish from Suriname that I always used to make from a package like this:

This is a processed package of mix for roti that include the marinade for the chicken (which I don't use), sauce and roti pancakes. It is fairly costly too and you still have to include all the fresh ingredients yourself. That and it is less healthy because of all the add inns, hidden sugar and fat that they put in processed foods. So when I came across a recipe on how to make your own roti stuffing on Kook je vegetarisch met mij mee?, a Dutch blog with all kinds of easy vegetarian recipes, I was eager to try this myself. She features three different kinds of stuffing, but I only made one because of the contents in my vegetable bag. For the Dutchies: go here for the recipe, for the rest I will translate below. I adapted it a bit, but not much.

Roti Stuffing with potatoes, beans and egg (serves 3)
- 600gr potatoes, peeled and in large cubes
- about 200gr green beans, ends removed in small pieces
- 3 roti pancakes (buy in an international supermarket or make your own)
- 1 tbsp mashed tomatoes
- 2 tbsp garam masala (spice mix)
- 1 tsp cumin powder
- 1 onion, chopped
- 2 cloves of garlic, chopped
- 1 cube for vegetable broth
- some oil
- fresh parsley
- eggs, boiled (optional, without the eggs the recipe is vegan)

Bake the onion and garlic shortly in some oil. Add the vegetable cube, masala and cumin and bake for about a minute. Then add the tomato mash and bake again shortly. Add the potatoes and 3 cups of water, mind you that these are coffee cups or so, not the measurement cups. Let it simmer until the potatoes are almost done. Then add the beans for about the last 10 minutes. Make sure that you add some more water if it gets to dry or else the potatoes will burn. Add the eggs in the last 5 minutes so they can absorb the sauce. I also added some fresh parsley at this point. The end result shouldn't be too watery but it must be a thick sauce. If it is too watery, just remove the lid and if it is too dry, add some more water. Serve with the roti pancakes.

This is a neutral version that is non spicy and suitable for children too. For the spicy version add a Madame Jeanette pepper, or part of one. These are very tiny spicy peppers. Be careful when you prepare them and never touch them with your bare hands, because the pepper gets between your fingernails easily and can stay there for hours.

The first time it might be a bit more expensive if you haven't got any of the spice mixes, but if you buy them they will last much longer and it will all be cheaper in the end. And because it is just as easy as making it from a box, I see no reason not to make it fresh :) Because I already had all the spices in my pantry, I only had to add the fresh ingredients, which made this a low budget one. If you are interested in cooking more whole foods and out of the box, check out my review for the Kitchen Counter Cooking School on my other blog Uniflame Creates.

This post is part of Weekend Cooking, a meme for all things foodie. Please take a look at the other posts as well.

Vitatas #4

2011-11-11T14:30:00.009+01:00

This week I learned that it is pointless to plan menu options ahead of time because you never know which veggies you actually will receive ;) This week we ordered the Extra veggie bag, but they swapped it for the Holland bag instead so I got a whole different set of veggies than I planned for last night. Including a much feared green cabbage ;)

In the bag we have green cabbage, broccolo, 2 leeks, celery and turnip tops.

And the menu for this week (45/46) is:
Friday: Mac and Cheese with broccolo and basil. A homemade, more healthy version. (no recipe yet, while okay, it needs tweaking)

Saturday: Vegetable soup for lunch (with part of the celery, leek and other leftover veggies), take out for dinner.
Sunday: Turnip tops mashpot
Monday: Mushroom Stroganoff with the rest of the celery (recipe here)

Tuesday: Lo Mein with noodles (this includes the green cabbage, recipe here)

Wednesday and Thursday: Quiche with leek, cheese and rocket lettuce. (recipe here)
Bento Stash: Pizza Muffins (recipe here on Allrecipes) I used less cheese (1 1/2 cups), and replaced part of the onions with mushrooms, which I baked quickly before adding them. Next time I am going to up the herbs though. They are good, but I am still tweaking them to my taste.

I have a lot of veggies this week that I never cooked with or almost never, so a lot of new recipes again. Mashpot seems to be a returning item because it is easy and cheap winter food. I am a bit behind with posting all the recipes for the past weeks but I hope I will be able to fix that soon. I cook so much more new recipes these days because of the vegetable bags ;) If you want to see what I ate in the past weeks, check out the weekly menu page.

Recipe: Baked Endive Mashpot

2011-11-10T12:31:00.047+01:00

In the Netherlands mashpot is common winter food. It can be made with a variety of vegetables like kale, sauerkraut, carrots, lettuce and endive. But eating this over and over again in the cold seasons can become rather boring, so here is a recipe to pimp your mashpot.

Originally this recipe is from the cookbook "de Dunne Vegetarier" (the thin vegetarian) but it is also featured on the site de Vegetarier. As always with Dutch recipes, I will translate it here. The recipe is called Endive-pisang because it has banana in it, but because Zeronic doesn't like baked banana, we left it out. The end result was still really tasty.

By Eva at de Vegetarier

Baked Endive Mashpot (or Endive-Pisang):
- 1 KG potatoes
- 1 crop fresh endive
- 2 bananas (optional)
- 100gr baked onions
- 300gr grated cheese (old would be best)
- some milk
- salt and pepper
- butter or oil

Make a standard mashpot by cooking the potatoes and washing and cutting the endive. Make a potato mash like you normally would. I always add a bit of milk and spice it at the point (salt, pepper, but you can also use nutmeg for example). Stir in the endive and optionally bananas and onions. Heat some oil or butter in a frying pan and add the mashpot. Make sure that it is spread evenly. Bake it until the bottom is golden brown. Add the cheese on top and bake that side shortly. This is all there is to it and it adds great flavor to your mashpot. Even if it falls apart, it still tastes great.

Product review: Veggiedeli Visvervangers

2011-11-08T10:42:00.001+01:00

As most of my readers would know I normally blog in English, but today I am going to review a few Dutch fish replacements. Because you probably wouldn't be able to get those in many other countries, I decided to blog in Dutch today.

Een paar weken geleden kreeg ik een mooi pakket binnen van Veggiedeli, een winkel die allerlei veganistische vervangers verkoopt. Als iemand die veelal vegetarisch eet, maar soms nog vis op het menu heeft staan, was ik erg benieuwd naar de visvervangers en ook erg enthousiast om deze te mogen testen. Zou ik door deze visvervangers de echte vis kunnen laten liggen?

De producten komen uit Duitsland maar gelukkig staat er op de website voldoende informatie over de producten in het Nederlands. Van deze producten heb ik inmiddels de scampis, visstukjes, zalm en visburgers getest. (klik op de namen voor meer informatie over de producten)

Als eerste testte ik de visstukjes. Deze gingen door de Chimichurri, een gerecht dat ik normaal met witvis maak. Ze namen de marinade goed op en gaven ook een vissige geur af. De smaak was in orde en paste goed in het gerecht. Waar ik wel tegenaan liep, is de strctuur van het product. Van vis ben ik gewend dat het een zachte structuur heeft, terwijl dit product meer in de buurt kwam van babymais qua structuur. Als je hier geen problemen mee hebt, dan is dit product erg geschikt om als vervanger te gebruiken in bijvoorbeeld roerbak gerechten met saus. Het is alleen wel aan de prijs: 5,99 euro voor 300 gram.

De scampis gingen door de Pad Thai. Net als garnalen hebben ook deze vervangers een hoge decoratieve waarde. Een gerecht ziet er meteen mooier uit door de scampis erboven op te leggen. Ik moet eerlijk bekennen dat ik eigenlijk nooit iets van garnalen eet, dus ik kan in dit geval niet vergelijken of het in de buurt komt qua smaak. Net als met de visstukjes hebben ook de scampi de structuur van babymais. Doordat de scampi zijn ingesneden nemen ze ook goed smaken op van sauzen en marinades. Ik vond zelf deze wel de minste van de producten dit ik tot nu toe getest heb. Je betaalt voor de scampis 5,99 euro voor 300 gram.

De zalm wilde ik testen in de sushi. Dit is een gerecht dat ik regelmatig maak en het liefste met zalm. Het zou dus erg mooi zijn als ik dit kan vervangen. Ik ben erachter gekomen dat dit product niet het meest geschikt is voor rauwe verwerking. Dus daarvoor zou ik het dan ook niet willen aanraden. Dit vind ik wel jammer want echte zalm is heel erg veelzijdig te gebruiken. Qua smaak is deze zeker wel vissig, maar niet zoals zalm. Ik heb echter maar de helft gebruikt, dus deze krijgt nog een kans met een warme bereiding, zoals aangegeven op de site. Met 5,59 euro voor 300 gram is de zalm prijzig, maar hier staat tegenover dat zalm zelf sowieso ook een prijzig product is.

De visburgers kwamen voor mij het beste uit de bus. Ze hebben een smaak die erg dicht in de buurt komt van een echte burger. Ik vond de vissmaak van deze burgers zelfs aan de sterke kant omdat visburgers vaak van witvis gemaakt worden die minder sterk smaakt. Ik serveerde de burgers met knoflooksaus en salade op een broodje. De burgers zijn zonder saus wel een beetje droog, maar om eerlijk te zijn vind ik geen enkele burger zonder saus lekker. De burgers zouden voor mij een echte visburger kunnen vervangen, de volgende keer zou ik ze wel parneren, dan zijn ze denk ik nog smakelijker. Vooral voor de prijs hoef je het bij deze burgers niet te laten. Ik vind 2,39 euro een goede prijs voor twee burgers.

Ik heb nog niet de kans gehad om alles te testen. Dit wordt dus nog vervolgd.

Kijk op de site van Veggiedeli voor deze, en nog vele andere producten. Ze bezorgen aan huis, en hebben ook een heel voordelig starterpakket met mooie producten.

Vitatas #3

2011-11-06T09:40:00.007+01:00

It is time for the weekly menu again :) I love that since we have the Vitatas, I am back to planning my menus. It takes a bit of time, but I don't have any hassle for the rest of the week. This weeks vegetable bag was interesting. We switched back to the Extra bag, but somehow got a combination of various bags this week.

In the bag we have some kind of lettuce (it was supposed to be iceberg, but this definitely isn't iceberg lettuce), sauerkraut, a pumpkin, red bell pepper, grean beans, apples and a courgette.

The menu for week 44/45 will be:
Friday: Jerusalem artichokes and potatoes out of the oven with a paprika-cheese meat replacement on the side. (recipe here)

Saturday: Homemade Bean Burgers with oven fries and a salad with apples and cucumber (recipe here)
Sunday: We will probably order in because we have friends over that day.
Monday: Pumpkin Pancakes (recipe here)
Tuesday: Sauerkraut mashpot and lettuce mashpot (recipe lettuce mashpot here)
Wednesday: Pasta with at least the courgette and the paprika in a quick tomato sauce. (recipe here)

Thursday: Homemade Roti with green beans, potatoes and eggs. (recipe here)

Lunch option: Fake fishburgers with salad
Snack: Homemade cookies (black and white crescents, recipe here) and banana-apple smoothies.

If you want to see menu's of previous weeks, you can go to the weekly menu page.

Weekend Cooking: Experimenting with new veggies

2011-11-05T11:17:00.001+01:00

Well new to me anyway..... ;)

For the past two weeks I ordered an organic veggie bag and because of that I encountered some veggies I never ate before or not since I was very little. Of course I prepared those veggies and for this weeks Weekend Cooking, I am going to share two recipes with you :) I hope you will enjoy it as much as I did.

Beet Soup with apple: (Serves 4, from vegatopia)
- 500 gr pre cooked beets, cubed (save the juice)
- 2 shallots, chopped
- 2 cloves of garlic, chopped
- 2 large potatoes, peeled and cubed
- 2 sour apples, peeled and cubed
- 1.5 litre vegetable stock
- butter or oil
- salt and pepper
- creme fraiche
- balsamic vinegar (I didn't have it at hand so didn't use it)

Heat butter or oil in a pan and toss in the shallots and garlic. Make sure that they don't brown. Add the beets and bake them for a bit before you add the potatoes and apples. Also add the stock and beet juice and bring to a boil. Let it simmer on medium heat until the veggies are soft. Mash everything with a hand held mixer in the pan until you have a smooth soup. Add salt and pepper to taste together with the balsamic vinegar. Scoop the soup in bows and serve with a spoonful of creme fraiche.

For the next recipe I looked at some different site for inspiration and then created my own dish.
Jerusalem artichokes and potato casserole: (Serves 4)
- 400gr Jerusalem artichokes
- 400gr potatoes
- some white mushrooms
- 250ml cream for cooking
- some handfuls grated cheese
- fresh chives
- fresh thyme
- olive oil
- breadcrumbs
- lemon juice

Peel and slice the Jerusalem artichokes and potatoes. Cook them for about 10 minutes, they don't have to be fully soft, but you want to pre cook them a bit to shorten the oven time. Arrange the slices of potatoes and Jerusalem artichokes in an oven dish together with slices of mushroom.
Makes a sauce from the cream, 2 handfuls of cheese, some fresh chives and thyme and lemon juice. Pour this over the oven dish and put it in the pre heated oven for 30 minutes on 200 degrees. In the meantime make a mixture for the crust with the breadcrumbs, 2 handfuls of cheese, some olive oil and more fresh thyme. Crumble the mixture on top of the dish when the half hour is over and place back in the oven on 180 degrees for a bout 15 minutes. You will get the prefect crust that way without it being too dark.

If you are up for desert take a look at the Lemon Cake recipe that I posted yesterday.

Don't forget to check out the other participants of Weekend Cooking. People share a lot of nice food related things, like books and recipes.

Recipe: Lemon Cake

2011-11-04T11:12:00.001+01:00

I found this wonderful recipe for a very quick lemon cake on Yummy in my Tummy. It is one of my favorite foodie sites and I recipes from this site on a regular basis. It is not a vegetarian blog, but they do often post recipes that are suitable for vegetarians or easily adjusted. I made this lemon cake twice in the past week, because Zeronic loved it so much and he insisted I would make it again when we had friends over. For the Dutch people: the recipe can be found on Yummy in my Tummy and for the rest, I will translate it here, as always :)

The cake tin I had was too large, but it was still good!

Lemon Cake:
- 175 gr self rising flour
- 175 gr butter
- 175 gr sugar
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 3 eggs
- 2 lemons
- salt
- 100gr extra sugar (optional)

Make sure that all ingredients are on room temperature. Grate the two lemons and squeeze out the lemon juice. Sieve the flour, salt and baking powder in a bowl. Add the butter in cubes, the eggs, lemon zest and sugar. Mix everything with an electric mixer for about 1.5 minutes until you have a smooth batter.
Line the bottom of an 18 cm cake tin (I have a 24 cm tin, and it will work but you get a thinner cake) with non stick paper and put some butter on the edges to prevent sticking. Scoop the batter in the cake tin and place it in a pre heated oven on 180 degrees (about 170 on a microwave oven) for 40-45 minutes. The cake is ready if you can stick a toothpick in it and it comes out clean.

The cake does taste really good like this already but if you want an extra sour kick proceed with the next steps. Stick several holes in the cake. Mix the lemon juice of the two lemons with 100 gram of sugar (or the juice of 1 lemon with 50 gram). Spoon the mixture over the cake 1 spoon at a time. Make sure that the moist has been absorbed by the cake before you spoon over more.

Personally we discovered that we liked the cake best plain, but it is worth to experiment with to see how you like it best!

#107 - Nori Noodles Bento

2011-11-02T10:48:00.002+01:00

It is tempting to bring soup to school every time now, but I didn't. I enjoyed some leftover noodles in my bento that I brought to school.

As my main dish I had the noodles with norichips from the book Puur Plantaardig which turned out to taste really awesome cold. (recipe) As my sides I brought a golden kiwi fruit, mixed nuts, a wedge of laughing cow cheese and a piece of Meiji Meltykiss chocolate.

Do you still bring cold dishes with you now that it is fall? Or do you stick to hot dishes only?

Snack Review: Meltykiss Whips

2011-10-31T09:35:00.001+01:00

Because I reviewed and loved a meiji chocolate product before, I really wanted to try another one. These Meltykiss Whips looked like the perfect candidate to put through the test. I bought these for about $3.00 on J-list. Meltykiss are chocolate cubes and they sell them in different flavors as well as seasonal limited products.

The cubes are individually wrapped and there are 13 cubes in the box. This does make them perfect for a bento because you can use them as a gap filler and include a small treat. These little cubes have powdered cocoa on the outside making them somewhat bitter. The inside is somewhat bubbly and more sweet. While they didn't taste bad, I had better chocolate taste wise. I would have expected the interior to melt in you mouth more and to be more bubbly than it was. It still makes for a good semi-sweet treat and I think a lot of people will enjoy them. But they don't compare to the marshmallow chocolate I had before from this brand.

Weekend Cooking: Just Tacos by Shelley Wiseman

2011-10-30T08:26:00.000+01:00

Title: Just Tacos
Author: Shelley Wiseman
Publisher: Taunton Press
Release date: October 18th, 2011
Length: 176 pages
I got this book: from the publisher for review through NetGalley

Summary:
From Goodreads:
"Once a staple of Mexican street food, tacos have crossed the border to great popularity. Taco’s endless variety of great-tasting flavors satisfies any time of day—in all kinds of ways. Convenient, portable, and affordable, tacos are equally welcome at a dinner party, for brunch, or as an afternoon snack. Just Tacos celebrates this versatility with 100 original recipes featuring beef, pork, lamb, seafood, vegetables, breakfast ingredients, and more. Easy-to-make and easy-to-eat, adults, teens, and kids can all try their hand at turning out a tasty taco (or making their own tortillas), whether it’s filled with ethnic ingredients or pantry staples. And in these pages tacos don’t go it alone—information-packed sidebars offer up excellent salsas, sauces, fun drinks, and solid how-to techniques. Just Tacos is a great showcase for this much-loved comfort food."

Personal opinion:
All though I often review books on vegetarian or vegan cooking, I couldn't resist a book about all kinds of tacos. I wasn't disappointed because this is a very complete book on the subject. It explains with clear pictures how to make your own (flavoured) tortillas and has a whole chapter on vegetarian taco fillings. To make it even better, it also includes explanations on products that are typical for the Mexican pantry, all with clear picture instructions. It is a book that does deliver what it promises and I think it is a must have for every taco lover because it offers a lot of original ideas on the subject.

Purchase links: Amazon
Other reviews: None yet
If you have reviewed this book and want your link here, please leave a comment with the link, and I will add it :)

Of course I also tried a recipe. I don't eat fish very often, but I still do on occasion, so this time I picked out a recipe with fish because I was intrigued by the combination. I tried and made this together with a friend who loves fish. I do have to say though, that if you choose to eat fish, make sure you check where it came from to minimise the strain that is on the environment.I personally think that is very important!

Asian Tuna Tacos:
- flour tortillas
- 450 gram Tuna steaks
- 3tbsp olive oil
- sesame seeds
- salt

For the wasabi mayonnaise:
- 1/2 cup mayonnaise
- 1tbsp wasabi
- 2 tsp soy sauce
- 2 tsp lime juice
- 1/2 tsp sugar

Serve with: avocado, scallions, cilantro and/or radish sprouts.

For the wasabi mayonnaise just toss all the ingredients together and stir. Taste for seasoning and set aside in the fridge. Pat the tuna dry with paper towels and season with salt. Put the sesame seeds on a plate and coat both sides of the steak by pressing the tuna on the plate. Add oil in a pan (or use a panini maker!) and sear the tuna when the oil is hot about 2 minutes a side. Wrap them up in the flour tortillas with some veggies and the wasabi mayonnaise.

It was a good combination taste wise, but the book says it is for about 8 to 12 tacos while we had trouble even filling up 4. Other than that this is a very tasty recipe.

Don't forget to check out the other participants of weekend cooking! You never know where your next cooking inspiration will come from!

Vitatas #2

2011-10-28T14:01:00.003+02:00

I always get my Vitatas (organic vegetable bag) on Fridays. This week I choose the Dutch produce bag, which means that all veggies have been grown locally. We paid 7.50 euro for this bag instead of 10.00 for the Extra bag. Yet we find that this bag is more expensive for what you get. The bag only contains four different kind of veggies this week, so that we find a bit too much. Next week, we will probably switch back.

We have endive, sauerkraut, Jerusalem artichokes and green beans.

On the weekly menu we have:
Friday: Potato curry with half potatoes, half sweet potatoes, cherry tomatoes, spinach (from my own balcony) and mushrooms. (I still have a pot green curry sauce that we need to finish that I used for last weeks Pad Thai)
Saturday: We eat out or order in because we are going swimming with friends
Sunday: Endive fritatta (recipe here)
Monday: Sauerkraut mash pot / endive mash pot (I really can't eat sauerkraut but Zeronic loves it!)
Tuesday: Mixed beans with rice in "sajoersauce"
Wednesday: Sushi with salmon replacement/avocado/sweet egg or other things I come up with.

Thursday: Jerusalem artichokes probably out of the oven in some way (recipe here)
For the bento stash: Courgette-feta-sundried tomato muffins (recipe here) from the leftover courgette from last week.

Snack: Lemon cake (recipe here).

Here is a link to last week's menu! I have updated it with recipes and pictures.

Recipe: Vegetarian Sloppy Joes

2011-10-27T12:05:00.001+02:00

I have to admit that this won't be the most healthy recipe that I have posted here, but I am sure that it is more healthy than the meaty original. I try to eat fairly healthy but sometimes I too crave something hearty and comforting. All though I have never ate a Sloppy Joe in my life, I saw it somewhere and I really wanted to make an easy and cheap version of it. So I combined ideas from several sources and came up with my own version.

Please do excuse the look of the Sloppy Joe. This is a typical case of it tastes better than it looks. Brownish food is already hard enough to photograph as it is, and that we are reaching the point that I have to use my flash during the daytime, that doesn't help. Anyway, on to the recipe:

Vegetarian Sloppy Joes (makes 4)
- 4 buns
- 200gr crumbled soy ground meat replacement
- 1 small shallot
- about a handful of mushrooms
- 1/4 cup vegetable stock
- 3/4 cup vegetarian barbecue sauce
- some grated cheddar cheese
- vegetable oil
- lettuce of choice

Dice and slice the shallot and mushrooms. Heat some oil in a pan and bake the shallots shortly. Then add the mushrooms, soy meat replacement, barbecue sauce and stock. Cook for about 5 minutes until it is heated up nicely.Arrange some stuffing on a bun with some grated cheddar and lettuce on top and enjoy!

There are a lot more ways to make vegetarian or even vegan Sloppy Joes. I saw recipes that use red kidney beans or lentils for example. I reckon that these would be more healthy, but I went for the fast way this time ;)

Vitatas #1

2011-10-23T15:49:00.003+02:00

This week I had my first organic vegetable bag from Vitatas. I was in doubt a long time before I decided to go this route. With a lot of these bags you had to subscribe and I didn't feel like that. With the Vitatas there is the difference that you can decide each week if you want a bag and on top of that, for a family of two, I get to choose between four different types of bags each week. There is a standard bag, a combi bag of veggies and fruits, a Holland bag with veggies only produced here and the extra bag which has more different veggies than the standard. This week I choose for the latter.

The bag contains: Broccolo (crossover between broccoli and cauliflower), bok choy, turnip tops, 2 courgettes, red bell pepper, green pepper, cooked beets and bean sprouts.

It took me about 1.5 hours to puzzle a menu together because I also have a beautiful set of vegan imitation fish that I wanted to incorporate (more about that in a later post). But this is what I will have this week:
Friday: Chimichurri with imitation fish flakes, red bell pepper and snow peas (frozen)
Saturday: Wraps with green pepper, imitation bacon, brown beans, mushrooms and sour cream
Sunday: Turnip top mash pot with feta cheese and eggs (recipe for lettuce mash pot)

Monday & Tuesday: Pad Thai noodles with the bok choy, bean sprouts and imitation shrimp (and some other additions)
Wednesday: Broccolo with baked potatoes and a meat replacement called Valess.
Thursday: Beet soup with apples. (recipe here)

Snack: Courgette-chocolate muffins - Recipe on Happy Herbivore

Leftover: 1 courgette (I saw a recipe of courgette chips with a cheesy crust which I would love to try)

I might edit this post later on with more pictures or share recipes during the week, if I find the time. Recipes new to me are the Pad Thai, Beet Soup and Courgette-chocolate Muffins. Vegetables new to me are the broccolo and I haven't eaten beets since I was a child. So I am curious how it is all going to turn out :)

Weekend Cooking: Puur Plantaardig

2011-10-22T12:27:00.220+02:00

I was very lucky to receive a review copy from the publisher of this new vegan cookbook. The book is in Dutch though, so I am going to do things a little different this time around. I am going to post semi bilingual so the Dutch people who don't read English that well also have access to the information. All black text is in English and green pieces in Dutch. Even though non Dutchies probably won't be able to enjoy this book, I am going to translate a recipe for you all, so don't run away just yet ;)

Normaal gesproken is dit blog in het Engels, maar omdat het kookboek dat ik vandaag ga recenseren in het Nederlands is, heb ik besloten semi tweetalig te posten. De zwarte stukken zijn Engels, de groene tekst is in het Nederlands. Ik hoop dat op deze wijze iedereen mee kan lezen.

Title/Titel: Puur Plantaardig (Purely Plant-based)
Author/Schrijver: Antoinette Hertsenberg & Jacinta Bokma
Subject/Onderwerp: Vegan Cooking / Veganistisch Koken
Publisher: Karakter Uitgevers B.V.
Release date: September, 2011
Length/Aantal pagina's: 136 Pages/Bladzijden

Summary/Omschrijving:
This cookbook focusses on a plant-based lifestyle. It features about 100 quick and tasty recipes to try at home, or to prepare for your meat-eating friends. They would be surprised that there is no meat, fish, egg, cheese or dairy used in these recipes. No-fish sushi? Vegetable burgers? Brownies? It is all possible.

Van Bol.com:

"Op de haar kenmerkende wijze – laagdrempelig, herkenbaar en snel – geeft Antoinette Hertsenberg samen met Jacinta Bokma talloze recepten die passen in een vegetarisch, maar ook veganistisch eetpatroon. Puur plantaardig geeft veel verrukkelijke hoofdgerechten uit alle windstreken die je in een handomdraai op tafel zet. Wat te denken van No-fish sushi? Puur plantaardige hamburgers? Brownies? Het kan allemaal."

Personal opinion/Persoonlijke mening:
When I first got this book, I started to tag pages for which recipes I want to try. And it turned out that I want to try out a LOT! The book has a bit of everything, including side dishes, main dishes, party snacks and vegan baking. It has a lot of original recipes in there that are either totally new to me or give a twist to a classic. What I like most about this book is that the recipes are not very time consuming and are easy enough to prepare, this means that I will actually use the book. Another thing that I like is that the book includes a seasonal fruit and vegetable calendar. To me this book only have two small downsides. The biggest is that the cooking instructions sometimes are a bit confusing. The other thing is that a lot of the recipes focus on 5-6 persons. Even so, I think this will be a book that I will use a lot and I am really happy to have this book in my collection.

Toen dit boek binnenkwam, ben ik er meteen mee gaan zitten om briefjes tussen de bladzijden te stoppen met recepten die ik wil proberen. Dit waren er best veel. Het boek is erg gevarieerd. Van bijgerechten en hoofdgerechten tot party snacks en veganistisch bakken. De recepten zijn erg origineel en de meeste dingen zijn nieuw voor me, of geven een verassende draai aan een klassieker. Het fijnste aan dit boek vind ik dat de recepten snel en makkelijk te maken zijn, dat betekent dat ik het boek ook daadwerkelijk zal gebruiken. Verder vind ik de bijgevoegde groente en fruit kalender een handige aanvulling. Voor mij heeft dit boek maar twee minpuntjes. Het eerste is dat de beschrijvingen van de recepten some onverzichtelijk zijn voor me. Het tweede ding is dat veel recepten voor 5-6 personen zijn. Ondanks dit zal dit een kookboek zijn dat ik verwacht veelvuldig te gaan gebruiken en ik ben erg blij dat ik dit boek aan mijn collectie kan toevoegen.

Purchase links/Aankoop mogelijkheid: Bol.com
Other reviews/Andere recensies: De plantaardige keuken
If you have reviewed this book and want your link here, please leave a comment with the link, and I will add it :)

And here is the promised recipe. Voor de Nederlanders: klik hier voor het recept op de site van Jacinta Bokma.

The vegetables ended up on the bottom but it is all in there!

Noodles with Norichips (5-6 servings)
- 500gr noodles
- 200gr sugar peas (I used string beans, because I had those)
- 1 large broccoli, in florets
- 3 tbsp soy sauce
- 3 tbsp sunflower oil
- 4 sheets of nori
- 2-3 tbsp aromatic wok oil
- 1 tbsp brown sugar
- 1 lime
- 150gr shii-take, cut
- sesame oil

Cook the noodles. Steam the broccoli and the sugar peas for 3 minutes in some water. Rinse the vegetables with cold water and set aside.
For the sauce mix 100ml water with the soy sauce, sunflower oil and 2 sheets of nori. Blend this with a hand held mixer till it is a sauce.
For the nori chips heat a bit of sesame oil in a frying pan and place a sheet of nori in the pan on medium heat. Fry each side for about 1 minute and do this with both sheets. Now fold the nori a few times and cut this into small strips for garnish.
Heat the wok oil in a large wok and add the sugar. Grate the peel of the lime finely above the pan. Add the shii-takes and bake for about 2 minutes. Add the sauce and bring to a boil. Then add the noodles and vegetables and toss everything lightly in the pan.
As garnish you add the nori chips, some basil and cashew nuts.

Don't forget to check out the other participants of Weekend Cooking! There is a lot of delicious food posted every week.

#106 - Dutch Spiced Muffins & Soup Bento

2011-10-19T10:01:00.000+02:00

This bento is from last week when I had school. I just had to take more soup with me because the last time it was a huge success.

The bento contains cauliflower soup (recipe behind the link) decorated with black sesame seeds, a broccoli muffin (recipe behind the link) and Dutch Spiced Muffins. There is some soy butter in the cup to go with the Dutch Spiced Muffins.

I found the recipe on the Dutch blog Spaarcentje kookt. So the Dutchies can just click on the link. For the non-Dutchies I will translate the recipe here, including how you can make your own Dutch Spice Mix. The muffins on her blog are even sugar free, but I don't have the stevia she uses, so I made them with sugar. They are also easy to make vegan since you can replace the milk with soy or nut milk. They are low budget and I have never seen an easier muffins recipe than this one.

Dutch Spiced Muffins (makes 12)
- 250 grams wheat flour
- 4 or 5 tsp Dutch Spice Mix*
- some salt and pepper
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 250ml milk (or soy milk etc)
- 150gr sugar

Mix all the dry ingredients together in a bowl. Lastly add the milk and stir it in with a spoon. Scoop the batter into a muffin tin and place them in a pre-heated oven for 18 minutes on 180 degrees. Let them cool down a bit and cut them in half. Serve with a little butter.

*To make your own Dutch Spice Mix:
- 6 tsp cinnamon
- 2 tsp ginger powder
- 2 tsp nutmeg
- 2 tsp cardamom
- 2 tsp clove
Or you can replace it with gingerbread spices. I believe they come pretty close.

This post is part of What's For Lunch Wednesday. Check out the other entries of this week for inspiring bento and other lunch ideas.

Weekend Cooking: Cauliflower Soup

2011-10-15T12:49:00.003+02:00

I am having a double feature for this weeks Weekend Cooking! I read Lunch in Paris by Elizabeth Bard last week. This is a non-fiction book with recipes. I choose for this approach because book reviews are a part of my other blog Uniflame Creates and recipes are more fitting to post here. So if you are curious of my review please head over to read it here.

And now for the recipe: I made this for dinner last week and took the leftovers with me in my thermal bento. The recipe is very easy and low budget. It makes a nice wintery soup.

Cauliflower Soup: (serves 6)
- 3 tbsp olive oil
- 1 onion, chopped (I used spring onion)
- 1 medium cauliflower, in cubes of 1cm
- 1.5 litre vegetable stock (original uses chicken stock)
- 1.5 tbsp sesame paste

Put the oil in a big pan and fry the onion in it for about 5 minutes. Make sure it doesn't get brown. Add the cauliflower and 125ml of the stock. Place the lid on the pan and let it steam for about 20 minutes. Stir occasionally. Add the rest of the stock and cook for 10 more minutes. Make sure you don't overcook the cauliflower as it will turn grey and starts to smell. Mix everything up with a mixer or blender, add the sesame paste and blend again. I decorated my soup with the green parts of the spring onion or black sesame seeds.

Don't forget to visit the other participants of Weekend Cooking. It is a lot of fun and you never know where your next cooking inspiration may come from :)

Weekend Cooking: Quick-Fix Vegan by Robin Robertson

2011-10-09T09:12:00.002+02:00

Title: Quick-Fix Vegan
Author: Robin Robertson
Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing
Release date: October 4th, 2011
Length: 224 pages

Summary:
From Goodreads:
"Robin Robertson's Quick-Fix Vegan provides 150 vegan recipes ranging from starters, snacks, salads, sauces, and sandwiches to stovetop suppers, pastas, soups, and desserts that can all be prepared in 30 minutes or less. Quick-Fix Vegan also features "Make-Ahead Bakes," convenient recipes that are assembled ahead of time (in less than 30 minutes) and then baked before serving."

Personal opinion:
I will just throw it out there and say that this book is one of the most complete vegan cookbooks I have seen so far. It starts with explanation of the basics like what to have in stock, kitchen equipment and time saving tips. There is a chapter of basic recipes about cooking from scratch and then the fun really starts. The offered recipes draw from a variety of cuisines and are easy to prepare. Unlike so many other cookbooks, this book really delivers what it promises: tasty, healthy and especially quick vegan meals. No fuss. Another thing that I love about this book is that it has all kind of conversion sheets in the back of the book. This makes the book suitable for people all over the globe and it is a big plus for me to grasp those American measurements.

And if that wasn't enough, this book doesn't come with all the standard recipes but uses creative recipes like hummamole (a mix between hummus and guacamole), soba slaw and coconut-pistachio cookies. I only tried two recipes so far but there is lots more I do want to try from this book. Of course now follows the big question, would I buy this book? Yes, I would! I think this is a great addition to a vegan cookbook collection or even as your first vegan cookbook. There is only one downside that I can think of and that is the fact that there aren't any pictures with the recipes. For me personally this isn't a problem at all, but I know that for some people it is. I am also very curious about Quick-Fix Vegetarian by the same author, I really want to check that one out after this promising book.

Purchase links: Amazon
Author's Website: Global Vegan Kitchen
Other reviews: BermudaOnion's Weblog, VegKitchen
If you have reviewed this book and want your link here, please leave a comment with the link, and I will add it :)

And as always, now it is time to share a recipe from this book which I used in this bento. The left one is mine and is completely vegan. The recipe I am sharing is from the Vegetable Fritters.

Vegetable Fritters:
- 3/4 cup all purpose flour
- 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/4 tsp black pepper
- 1/2 cup non-dairy milk (I used soy milk)
- 1 yellow onion, shredded (I used spring onion)
- 1 small Yukon Gold potato, shredded (I used just a small potato)
- 1 cup frozen corn, thawed
- 1/2 cup frozen peas, thawed
- 2 tbsp minced fresh parsley
- 1 tbsp olive oil

In a bowl mix flour, salt, pepper and baking powder. Add the peas, corn, parsley, onion, potato and non dairy-milk. Mix well to combine to a thick mixture. Heat the oil in a non stick pan and spoon in two tbsp for each fritter. Flatten them with the spoon. Make sure you don't overcrowd your pan. Cook until golden brown, flip, and brown the other side. This should take about 8 minutes. If you want to eat them hot, you can keep the fritters warm in the oven on a low temperature. I made mine for bento so I just let them cool off and ate them the next day.

I really loved these fritters and it is good to see that you don't actually need milk or eggs to make them. That being said, Zeronic didn't like them because of the taste of the soy milk. I personally didn't taste much difference.

I also tried the Pasta with Creamy Avocado-Herb Sauce from this book earlier.

This post is part of Weekend Cooking and Cookbook Sundays. Make sure to check out the other participants in both features. It is a lot of fun!

#105 - Noodles & Falafel Bento

2011-10-04T14:34:00.000+02:00

I made this bento for Zeronic two weeks ago, but I did forget to post it.

This bento has left over noodles with sateh sauce, green beans, quorn and yellow bell pepper. In the other tier there is spicy falafel, a mix of broccoli and cauliflower and one piece of candy.

Weekend Cooking: #104 - First Soup Bento

2011-10-01T13:17:00.001+02:00

I really wanted to have a thermal bento for a few years already and now I finally got one! This is great because I am now able to take soup with me to school.

The bento has two compartments, one for soup that has a watertight lid and one that you can place on top of that to take some side dishes. As you can see the 2nd compartment isn't too big, since I could hardly fit in two broccoli muffins. This bento comes as a set and also part of it is a fitting bag and chopsticks. But I was in a hurry that morning before school, so I forgot to take a proper picture of the whole set. The bento did hold up very nicely and the soup was still warm when it was lunchtime, so I am very pleased about my new bento set. If you are interested to get one of your own, I bought mine on e-bay. You can click here to go to the seller and to see many great pictures of this set.

I also have a recipe for you of the soup I made. I really wanted to make pumpkin soup because the pumkins are in season again but I added sweet potatoes as well :)

Sweet Potato Pumpkin Soup (serves 4)
- 500 gr pumpkin
- 500 gr sweet potatoes
- 500 ml vegetable stock
- 300ml coconut milk
- juice of 1 lime

Peel the sweet potatoes. Remove the seeds from the pumpkin and cut both pumpkin and sweet potato in pieces. Toss the veggies in a large pan and add the vegetable stock. Let it boil for about 40 minutes until the veggies are soft. Mash the vegetables with a hand held blender until you have a smooth texture. Add the coconut milk to make it more creamy. Let the soup simmer for a bit and lastly add the lime juice for a sweet and sour taste.

The post is part of weekend cooking. Please go check out what others have made this weekend as well.

Weekend Cooking: Herbal Cheese Pancakes

2011-09-25T12:48:00.001+02:00

Before I got this book, I never baked my own pancakes. Pancakes was my avoidance recipe because I am terrible at flipping them. They always break. But this recipe looked so good that I made them anyway. However I did let someone else bake them for me after I made the batter. This was all a few years ago, and I have gotten a bit better with flipping pancakes, but I am still not that good at it ;) Even though I made this recipe for the first time a few years back, it is still a recipe that I return to, if I need a comfort food pancake. I have to say though, that this is not a pancake for people on a diet because of all the cheese and cream. The recipe comes from the book "Heerlijke Pannenkoeken en Flensjes" by Carine Buhmann. It is translated from German to Dutch but I haven't found on English translation. Still I hope you will enjoy the recipe since it is perfect for lunch because you eat the pancakes cold.

Herbal Cheese Pancakes:
For the pancakes:
- 300 ml milk
- 2 tbsp fresh herbal cheese
- 3 eggs
- 100 gr wheat flour
- a bit of salt
- fresh chives
- oil for baking

For the filling:
- 125 gr fresh herbal cheese
- 125 gr sour cream
- more fresh chives
- salt & pepper

For the batter mix the milk, cheese and eggs. Add the flour and the salt and stir till you get a smooth batter. Cut the chives and add this. Cover the batter with a tea towel and let it rest for 30 minutes. For the filling mix up the sour cream and the cheese. Add some cut chives and mix in some salt and pepper to taste. Put this in the fridge for later. Put a bit of oil in the pan and bake 8 pancakes. Don't forget to add some oil in between. Let the pancakes cool down. Spread the filling over the pancakes, roll them up. If you want to add them to a bento, cut them gently in rolls.

Don't forget to check out the other weekend cooking posts! It surely is the place to look for some cooking inspiration!

Weekend Cooking: #103 - Lots of Veggies Bento

2011-09-17T13:12:00.001+02:00

I don't think I have ever posted a bento as a weekend cooking post before, but here it is. My blog started mainly as a bento blog after all so I wanted to share this bento that I made last week together with a simple recipe.

I made two bento. The left one is mine and is completely vegan. The right one is for Zeronic, and since he does eat meat, I added some in his bento because he doesn't like tomatoes. In the bento there is some pandan rice, mixed beans and corn in a sajoer spice sauce, vegan vegetable fritters and oven roasted eggplant and grape tomatoes. I ate mine for lunch during the school day and it filled me up nicely, and to me it beat a sandwich every day.

As for the recipe, it is very easy and fast to make. The oven roasted veggies do taste best when they are just prepared (I had them for dinner and used the leftovers for bento) but especially the tomatoes are very sweet cold too. It is a good alternative for buying expensive sun-dried tomatoes. I got the inspiration for this recipe from the blog Spaarcentje Kookt. It is a Dutch blog about healthy cooking on a budget.

Before they went in the oven

You can do this with a lot of veggies like bell peppers, courgette, eggplant, mushrooms, tomatoes and pumpkin. So feel free to experiment with different veggies and herb combinations.
This is how I made mine:

Oven Roasted Eggplant and Tomatoes
- 1 eggplant
- about 15 grape tomatoes
- thyme
- basil
- rosemary
- olive oil

Cut the eggplant and halve the grape tomatoes. Lay them on a baking sheet. Chop the herbs finely. Sprinkle some olive oil on the veggies and top off with herbs. Place them in the oven for about 45 minutes on 180 degrees. Toss them every 15 minutes.

I love recipes best that are as simple as this. I can do other stuff in the meantime and still have a nice dinner on the table :) Don't forget to check out the other weekend cooking posts :)

Weekend Cooking: Pasta with creamy avocado-herb sauce

2011-09-10T18:13:00.000+02:00

I recently picked up a new vegan cookbook from NetGalley for review. It is called Quick-Fix Vegan by Robin Robertson. The book won't be out until October but since I will be doing a review of the book somewhere around the release date, I am currently planning to cook some recipes from it. Tonight I tried this pasta recipe, that I will share with you as a sneak preview ;)

I also bought measurement cups which have both cups and ml on them so I don't have to convert most of the American recipes anymore :) I actually did bought them a few weeks back but I haven't made any American sourced recipes until today. I have to say that it takes a load of my shoulders not having to convert everything into grams. In this recipe I only had to convert the pasta since that was in ounces. Anyway, now I declared my happiness over my new found cups, on to the recipe! The recipe uses a lot of fresh herbs, which was fine by my because I had everything on my balcony except for thyme. So this makes it a very low budget recipe for me.

Pasta with creamy avocado-herb sauce. Serves 3 (book says 4, but I disagree ;) )
- 300 gram of pasta (bite size preferred)
- 2 avocados
- 3 cloves garlic
- 0.5 cups cashew nuts
- 0.5 cups fresh basil
- 0.25 cups fresh parsley
- 1 tbsp fresh chives
- 1 tsp fresh thyme (I upped this a bit)
- 1 cup/240ml vegetable broth
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 2 tbsp lemon juice
- bit of salt and black pepper

Boil the pasta. This should take about 10 minutes which you can use to make the sauce. Put the garlic, cashews and salt in the food processor and pulse until fine. Then add all the fresh herbs and a little bit of pepper and pulse once more. Slice the avocados in half, remove the peel and pit and chop them. Add them in the food processor together with the lemon juice, vegetable broth and olive oil. Mix until you have a smooth sauce. Drain the pasta and return to the pan. Add the sauce, mix together and serve immediately.

Note: While I always try to make recipes that I can cook in bulk and store away, this recipe is an exception. You want to eat this right away, or else the avocado will turn brown.

Please take a look at the other weekend cooking posts! It is a lot of fun to read what everybody has been up to in the kitchen.

#102 - Double Falafel & Salad bento

2011-09-06T15:39:00.000+02:00

Tomorrow I have to start school again so it was finally time to prepare another bento :) Zeronic has been working only half days lately so he didn't really need a bento. He also works a half day tomorrow, but I had to make one anyway, so he is lucky ;)

In this bento there are pita pockets (I so regret that I can't find mini pita pockets anywhere) which will be filled with the falafel and salad. The salad contains of endive, cucumber, feta and rocket lettuce. Mine also had grape tomatoes. There is dressing in the cup.

The rocket lettuce is actually growing on my own balcony! I started planting some veggies lately but the rocket lettuce is the only one that I can harvest so soon :)

I really like having my own veggies on the balcony and I hope I will be able to grow a lot more next season. I have some more for the fall coming up. But they aren't ready yet. Hopefully I will be able to harvest some more from my balcony this year :)

Weekend Cooking: Homemade Tomato Sauce

2011-09-03T12:16:00.088+02:00

Recently Zeronic and I made tomato sauce for the first time and since it went so well, I wanted to share the recipe! You do need to make some time for it, that can be a con. But there are a lot of reasons to consider making this yourself. It is cheaper, healthier and tastier. And since the recipe yields about 8 portions, you won't have to make sauce for a while. Especially if you are just a family of two, like us. The jars are also a nice gift :) If you are planning to make this recipe, it is wise to save up some jars beforehand. I used this recipe from Vegatopia as base, so Dutchies can just click the link. As usual I will translate the recipe to English for the non Dutchies :)

Homemade Tomato Sauce (8 portions - about 2 large jars)
- 1.5 KG pomodori tomatoes
- 4 shallots, chopped
- 4 cloves of garlic, pressed
- some chilli powder to taste
- 150 gr canned mashed tomatoes
- 4 bay leaves
- 1 tsp sugar
- 1 tsp sea salt
- 1 tsp dried provencal herbs
- 3 tsp dried oregano
- 2 handful fresh parsley, chopped
- bit of oil

Boil some water. Cut a little X on the back of every tomato. Blanch the tomatoes for 30 seconds each and cool them immediately in ice cold water. If the tomatoes are cooled somewhat you can remove the skins. Chop the tomatoes into quarters, remove the seeds and chop the rest of the tomato in little pieces. Throw away the seeds.

Bake the shallots in some oil and add the garlic and chilli powder. Then add the mashed tomatoes and two mugs of water. Stir and then add the tomatoes and bay leaves. Stir again till everything is mixed well. Add sugar, salt and dried herbs and taste. Season some more if needed. Place a lid on the pan and let it simmer for a good while until the tomato becomes soft and it is more of a sauce.

Add the fresh parsley and let it simmer some more. You can add more water if the sauce is too thick or let it cook a bit if the sauce is too thin. Remove the bay leaves. I actually used a mixer at this point because we both like a really smooth sauce. This does speed up the process too ;) It isn't in the original recipe, but I liked the way my sauce turned out because of it.

Now carefully transfer the sauce into the jars. I actually used a funnel for this part. Screw the lid on immediately, it will create a vacuum when the sauce is cooling down. This way you can store your sauce for quite some time.

Please check out the other weekend cooking posts! I always find them very inspirational :)

Weekend Cooking: Cherry-Blueberry Smoothie

2011-08-20T17:26:00.002+02:00

I have tried various smoothies in the past weeks, but this one is rapidly becoming my favorite. It is a very sweet smoothie and it doesn't require sugar to sweeten.

Cherry-Blueberry Smoothie (serves 1)
- 1/4 glass vanilla yoghurt
- 1/4 glass milk
- a handful of cherries
- a handful of blueberries

First remove the pits from the cherries. I made sure that my blueberries were frozen ahead of time. That way the smoothie doesn't require any ice. Of course you can also freeze the cherries after you have removed their pits. Because my blender is one that has the knives in the bottom, I have to mix the milk and vanilla yoghurt first before adding the fruit. But if you have a better blender, you can just toss it in and blend until smooth. As always, leave the dishes till after you finished this, because smoothies are best when drank immediately.

Don't forget to visit the other weekend cooking participants. Who knows where the inspiration for your next meal will come from :)

#101 - Noodle Bento

2011-08-16T12:07:00.000+02:00

I made this bento last week for Zeronic but forgot to post it. We ate the most delicious noodles last week and that makes for excellent bento food :)

In this bento are the noodles with bok choy, two types of mushrooms, garlic, ginger and spring onions in a garlic-coriander sauce. In the other tier there are some vegetarian dumplings and blueberries. It is a very easy and quick bento.

This might be the last bento for August. Zeronic only has to work half days this week and next week he is mostly off because of Abunai. However, I do have some recipes in store for you that I made :)

Weekend Cooking: Creamy Mushroom Soup

2011-08-13T10:46:00.002+02:00

It is supposed to be summer over here, however that fact is hardly noticeable. So I thought it was time to try my hands at home made mushroom soup. I found an easy recipe in the vegetarian student cookbook. Really, I just keep cooking from that book and I almost have to force myself to grab another book from my selection. But honestly, these recipes are cheap and fast and since I am extremely busy at this point, this is exactly what I need.

Now I was surprised at how easy this is! I mean now I tried making my own, I never want store bought again! It is so tasty and really not time consuming at all.

Creamy Mushroom Soup (serves 4)
- 1 tbsp sunflower oil
- 1 spring onion, chopped
- 500 gr mushrooms, chopped
- 600 ml vegetable stock
- 1 tbsp chopped parsley
- 2 tsp cornstarch
- 150 ml whipped cream
- salt & pepper

Bake the mushrooms and spring onion in some oil for about 4 minutes. Add the vegetable stock, salt, pepper and parsley and bring to a boil. Let it boil for about 15 minutes with a lid on top. Mix the cornstarch with some water and add this to the soup, let it cook for another 3 minutes until the soup thickens. Add the cream and serve.

Don't forget to visit the other weekend cooking posts. It is a lot of fun!

Snack Review: Pocky Choco Banana

2011-08-09T21:32:00.000+02:00

Picture by Mosterijo

This is another of the pocky flavors that I could get some different kind of pocky for a reasonable price on Tofu Cute, a webshop located in the UK. Pocky is a product from Glico and comes in many varieties. The most common is chocolate but today I will review the choco banana flavor.

I bought this package for 0.75 pounds on Tofu Cute. The package is a bit smaller than the chocolate one and only contains 25gr. The biscuit has a chocolate flavor and has a banana coating. When I opened the package it really smells like banana. The banana coating does taste strong but nice. But the chocolate biscuit I couldn't really taste at all. The snack isn't balanced because the banana overpowers the chocolate biscuit.
However, I do really like this flavor of pocky, and I would surely buy this again because I just love the way the coating tastes. The only downside is the size of the package. It is way too small!

Weekend Cooking: Paprika Pancakes

2011-08-06T12:26:00.051+02:00

In the Netherlands on twitter @boerenfluitjes started an action to make us city girls more aware of what we eat. Instead of just massively cooking and eating what is on discount in the supermarkets, we decide ourselves what veggie or fruit we want to put in the spotlight. I am not sure if it is really going to help, but awareness must start somewhere, right?

We started off easy last week and cooked with paprika. I was going for stuffed paprika first since that was something I wanted to try for a while. But then my attention was drawn to a recipe for paprika patties which I found quite unusual and sparked my curiosity.

I also looked up some facts about paprika and while I am not going to share a whole lot here, I learned that a paprika contains 6-9 times as much vitamin C as a tomato. It is also a great stomach acid neutraliser.Now let's get to the recipe, which I got again from the vegetarian student cookbook (review here). However they were supposed to be patties, but since Zeronic used the food processor a bit too enthusiastic, the batter was too fluid and I baked pancakes instead. They turned out tasty though. So I will be sharing them like we made them that day. If you like spicy pancakes, this is for you :)

Paprika Pancakes
- 1 red paprika, chopped
- 80gr green beans, chopped
- 2tbsp sunflower oil
- 4 cloves of garlic, chopped finely
- 2tsp mild chilipowder
- 425gr canned red kidney beans, rinsed and drained
- 80gr breadcrumbs
- 1 egg yolk
- flour
- salt & pepper

Boil the green beans shortly till they are soft but still crispy. Bake the paprika together with the chilipowder and garlic for about 2 minutes. Add the mixture to a food processor and add the kidney beans, egg yolk and bread crumbs. Mix till the ingredients are chopped finely for patties. Then add the green beans, salt and pepper and mix a bit longer. (here Zeronic left the food processor on too long, resulting in a batter, which is fine too). If you have a mixture you can spilt it into 8 portions and form patties with some flour on your hands. Then bake them in some oil for 3 minutes on each side till crispy and golden brown. As for pancakes, just add a spoonful of batter for each pancake (small ones are better for turning in this case). The baking time is a little shorter because they are thinner.

I served them with a lemon-mayonnaise which you can make to add some lemon peel and juice to your mayonnaise to taste. It works really well because of the freshness of the mayonnaise in combination with the spicy pancakes.

Don't forget to check out the other weekend cooking posts :)

Recipe: Courgette Muffins with Feta

2011-08-02T17:22:00.000+02:00

I went to a theme park last Sunday and since the offer for vegetarians at most theme parks, doesn't go further than fries, I baked some hearty muffins to take along. Also because we were with three vegetarians in total to enjoy it ;) I got the recipe from 500 cupcakes but added sundried tomatoes to mine. I love this book BTW, it is my cupcake and muffin bible, because the recipes never have failed me yet!

Courgette Muffins with Feta (makes 12)
- 230gr flour
- 1 tbsp baking powder
- 2 eggs
- 125ml olive oil
- 150gr courgette, grated
- 100gr feta crumbs
- 1.5 tbsp lemon peel, grated
- 4 sundried tomatoes, chopped
- salt

Mix up all the dry ingredients together in a bowl. In another bowl mix the eggs with the oil with an electric mixer. Stir the courgette, tomatoes, and lemon peel carefully through the wet mixture. Then add the dry ingredients and stir till they are mixed, but do not over mix! Spread the batter in a muffin tin with 12 muffins (or 2 of 6, like mine) and bake them for 30 minutes in a pre heated oven on 160 degrees (microwave-oven, or 175 degrees on an electric oven).

Weekend Cooking: Vegan Bean Burgers

2011-07-30T12:40:00.061+02:00

I recently made my first veggie burgers, which I love a lot. And I wasn't even thinking of trying another red bean based burger until I saw this recipe in Vegetarian: 100 best recipes by Linda Doeser. There are a few differences between this recipe and the one I used before. The one big difference is that these burgers are vegan. And that sparked my curiosity even more.

I have to say that I love these burgers. They are really tasty! The downside was that they are a bit more fragile and some didn't survive the flipping. But that can also just be me, because I am not good with flipping stuff anyway. The texture of these burgers is really sticky in fact, on my hands at least, but not so much to each other ;) Now I read the recipe again to translate it for you (because I own the Dutch version of the book), I actually think I didn't chop the mushroom small enough, I just made slices without thinking, oops. Either way, they do taste great so I advise you to try for yourself :)

Vegan Bean Burgers (makes 4-6)
- sunflower oil
- 1 spring onion, chopped
- 1 clove of garlic,chopped
- 1 tsp coriander powder
- 1 tbsp cumin
- 115 gr mushrooms, chopped
- 425 gr red kidney beans, rinsed and drained
- 2 tbsp fresh parsley, chopped
- pepper and salt
- flour

Heat up some oil in a frying pan. Fry the garlic, cumin and coriander shortly. Add the mushrooms and spring onion and fry about 5 minutes till the moist has vaporised.
Place the beans in a bowl and mash them with a fork. Add the mushroom mixture, together with the parsley and some salt and pepper.
Make 4-6 portions (I matched mine with the size of the buns, and made 4 + some bento sized ones) and shape these into patties. Use some flour on your hands before you shape them. If the mixture isn't sticky enough, you can add some extra oil. I would advise not make them too big and let them rest for a little bit before baking them. You can grill them are bake them in a pan, for about 4-5 minutes on each side.

Please check out the other weekend cooking posts :) There is always a lot to learn and to try.

#100 - Veggie Burger Bento

2011-07-29T12:21:00.000+02:00

Nothing special for the 100th bento on this blog, because I have passed that 100 mark a long time ago already. I actually lost count how many bento I have already made before I even had this blog ;) So just another bento today ;)

Sorry for the overexposed picture ;) The bento contains two vegan homemade mini burgers, tomato ketchup in the cup, two ginger candies and the other tier has stir fried veggies. (broccoli, mushrooms, paprika and red kidney beans.)

Book Review: The Vegetarian Student Cookbook

2011-07-23T09:26:00.009+02:00

Title: The Vegetarian Student Cookbook
Author: Hamlyn Cookery
Publisher: Octopus Publishing Group ltd.
Release date: 2005
Length: 256 pages (Dutch version)

Summary:
From Amazon:
"All the basics in one book! This is the essential cookbook for students learning to cater for themselves. Over 200 recipes ranging from cheap eats for one, to meals for entertaining mates. All the recipes are easy to follow with clear instructions so that even the most inexperienced of cooks can attempt them with confidence. Recipes include the favourites like veggie burgers and nut roast as well as more adventurous dishes like mushroom and mozzarella stacks."

Personal opinion:
I got this book because it was so cheap and looked good! Granted, some recipes are really easy for me since I am not a beginner at cooking anymore and I would hardly calling them recipes, but for students this really is everything that it claims to be. It has information about ingredients, basic cooking techniques, base equipment and even how to share a dorm with meat eaters. And it is packed with recipes that are all easy to follow.

The chapters are a bit different than the most cookbooks I know and it is noticeable that this book is aimed towards students. It starts with breakfasts, soups and salads, budget foods, viva Italia, Orient express, eating with friends, sweet recipes, baking, cocktails and anti hangover recipes.

The good thing about this book is that it actually will learn students (or any beginner cook) to make things from scratch and how easy this can be. People don't have to live off canned soups all the time ;) Since the book is packed with easy recipes for people on a budget, I have cooked a great deal from this book already and it is currently the most used book in the house. I do have to say that sometimes I do tweak the recipes a bit and there was one recipe for a sweet potato curry that didn't turn out as I had hoped, but over all it is a very valuable addition for people on a budget. It is a perfect starters book which has a good variation of recipes. One warning though: the book doesn't contain any pictures. I would recommend this book for everyone who is new to vegetarian cooking, is interested in vegetarian cooking and vegetarians on a budget.

Purchase links: Amazon
Other reviews: None yet. (if you want to link up, just say so in a comment and I will add your link)

Of course I also will share a recipe with the review :) Today's recipe will be Stuffed Mushrooms :)

Stuffed Mushrooms: (makes 4 portions)
4 huge mushrooms (I used portobellos)
50gr of (mini) macaroni
1 onion, chopped (I used spring onion)
25gr walnuts, chopped
1 tbsp chopped parsley (I used basil, because I didn't have parsley)
25 gr grated cheese
1 tbsp mashed tomatoes
1 egg, beaten
some olive oil
salt & pepper

Cook the pasta and drain. Chop the sterns of the mushrooms and set aside. Place the hats under a medium hot grill for about 5 minutes. Toss the onion in a large bowl and add the mushroom sterns, macaroni, walnuts, parsley, cheese and mashed tomatoes. Mix this together. Add salt and pepper and mix in the beaten egg so the stuffing will stick together. Fill up the mushroom hats and then some ;) Sprinkle a dash of olive oil on top and place the mushroom under a grill for 15-20 minutes till the top is crunchy. Since my grill is not that strong I placed them on 150 degrees in the oven first for about 10 minutes :) Serve with a salad.

Other recipes I made from this book are:
Avocado-Mozzarela Ciabatta
Homemade Veggie Burgers
Hummus
Mushroom Stoganoff
Stuffed Pumpkins

Don't forget to hop by the other participants of weekend cooking :)

#99 - Build a sandwich bento

2011-07-19T12:56:00.001+02:00

I made hummus for the first time yesterday. I never tasted it before too! Do you know how hard it is to make something that you never tasted before? I have no idea if my hummus actually tastes like hummus ;) But I did use it in a bento today ;)

I bought some Turkish bread to go with the hummus in the star shaped cups. I heard it wasn't a good idea to spread the hummus already on there because the bread would get too soggy. That is why I gave it to Zeronic in another container so he can build a sandwich at work. For veggies to top or to dip there are red paprika, cucumber, spinach leaves (hiding under the cucumber) and spring onions. The vegetables are all organic and the bento is completely vegan, even the bread. I didn't realise this when I was putting the bento together and it won't be a the norm from now on. But it might be something I will be trying.

I will share the hummus recipe that I used, however do keep in mind that everybody makes a different kind of hummus. Seriously I have never seen so many different recipes out there for a single dish! And I am not totally satisfied with my hummus. I found it a bit too sour while I already reduced the amount of lemon juice. I used a base version from the vegetarian student cookbook, but I adjusted so many aspects of the recipe, that you can't even compare it to the original anymore. So here is my version:

Hummus: (makes about a jar full)
- 300gr chickpeas (I used canned)
- 1 large glove of garlic (or 2 small ones), grated
- 100 ml lemon juice (but will use even less next time)
- 4 tbsp tahin (sesame paste, buy in a organic store)
- some water
- 1 tsp cumin powder
- 1 tsp coriander powder
- 2 tsp paprika powder

Rinse and drain the chickpeas. I removed all these pesky little skins from the chickpeas. You don't have to but we both don't like skins of any sort so I removed them. I placed all the chickpeas into the kitchen machine and chopped them up nicely. Then I added the grated garlic. I added the tahin and the lemon juice gradually. Keep tasting here, because it is hard to find a balance. Make sure to stir really well every time you add some. Too much tahin can make it bitter and too much lemon juice can make it sour. I added some water because my hummus was too thick (and it will become thicker when you cool it). Lastly I added the spices. And here also tasting is the key. Set the hummus away to cool for at least one hour. Before serving you want to add some olive oil to make it more smooth again. Hummus can be stored up to a week in the fridge, if you cover it up.

Weekend cooking: Easy Banana Milkshake

2011-07-16T12:18:00.002+02:00

Picture by Roboppy

Last week I had an ice cream recipe and today I will share a recipe for a very easy and delicious milkshake I made twice in the past week.

And twice I forgot to take a picture from it because I drank it before I realized it! Actually this recipe is a bit in between a milkshake and a smoothie. Since it doesn't contain any ice cream, but it does have a milkshake like texture.

I adapted the recipe from Smoothies Maken.

Banana Milkshake (serves 1, but I multiplied it once for 3 and once for 4 persons and that works fine)
- 1 banana from the fridge (or freezer if you want it colder)
- Vanilla Yoghurt, as much ml as the banana weighs in grams without the peel.
- 160ml rich milk
- 30 gr sugar
- Cinnamon to taste

Basically you just bland everything together until you have a smooth mixture :) However if you have a blender like mine with the knives on the bottom of the blender, better mix it this way:
- Mix the milk with the sugar and cinnamon first. Then add the youghurt and blend again. Lastly add the chunks of banana and mix on high speed for a few minutes until the mixture is smooth. Serve immediately! I am serious! Leave the clean up till after you drank the milkshake :)

Don't forget to check out the other weekend cooking posts! People share a lot of inspirational food stuff each weekend :)

#98 - Mini onigiri bento

2011-07-14T22:46:00.000+02:00

Today I made a bento with mini onigiri as a main dish. I had a craving for onigiri myself so I made some for lunch today and of course I put some in a bento too for Zeronic.

There is a lot of rice in this bento ;) The main dish is the onigiri I made today. I made onigiri with pieces of Japanese omelet and added some furikake as well. In the bottle there is some soy sauce. In the other tier there is a teriyaki mushroom sauce also mixed with some rice. There is also a cup of Japanese cucumber salad made with little snack cucumbers and a laughing cow cheese wedge.

Weekend Cooking: Mango Ice Cream Recipe

2011-07-10T12:24:00.001+02:00

I recently bought an ice cream maker. It was something that has been on my wishlist for a while and I was lucky to come across one on discount. Now that Zeronic works in a fruits and veggies store and gets a discount on them, it is really worthwhile to make ice cream and smoothies ourselves. Besides the store bought ice cream has often so much sugar and artificial ingredients that it is much more healthy to make your own. Another thing is that it messes up our taste buds completely and let us believe that mango for instance should taste like the artificial stuff that is produced. I do love ice cram especially in summer time so I decided that it was time for change now. If it was up to me I would eat tons of it, so better make a more healthy kind when I can ;)

I found a good recipe for eggless mango ice cream on Yummy in my Tummy. I opted for eggless because it has much fewer health risks and my health already isn't that great. Do keep in mind though that eggless ice cream will melt a little sooner than ice cream that is made with egg. For the Dutch people, you can find the recipe on Yummy in my Tummy. For the non Dutchies, I will post a translation here:

Mango Ice Cream: (with real mango, OMG!)
- 1 Mango
- 200ml whipping cream
- 100ml milk
- 70gr sugar

Peel the mango and cut it up. Mash the mango a bit to free up some juices. Warm the mango with the sugar on low heath so the sugar gets absorbed. Keep stirring and let it simmer for about 2 minutes. Remove from the heath and let it cool down. Transfer the mixture into a bowl and add the whipping cream. Mash everything up with a hand held blender. Add the milk and mix. Then add the mixture to the ice machine. It should take about 40 minutes. Then place the ice cream in the freezer for a minimum of 2 hours. Remove 30 minutes before eating.

To me it took me a bit to getting used to the flavor since the ice cream taste very pure, but I will be honest that my taste buds have been spoiled by factory ice cream as well. But I really want to get used to this, because it is so much better for me :) Do you make your own ice cream?

This post is part of Weekend Cooking and Whip Up Something New. Please check out the other links :)

#96 & #97 - various stir fry bento

2011-07-06T12:24:00.000+02:00

I have made two more bento. One is from the past week and the other I made last Monday.

This is a vegetarian bento with potatoes, mushrooms, quorn and spring onions. In the other tier there is a hearty muffin from my freezer stash, edamame, golden kiwi fruit and a wedge of laughing cow cheese.

In this blurry picture (oops) there is a non-vegetarian bento with ham, baked mushroom and paprika in garlic & coriander sauce and a laughing cow cheese wedge. In the other tier there is rice and veggies in teriyaki sauce.

Weekend Cooking: Temari-zushi recipe

2011-07-02T09:23:00.002+02:00

I ran into this idea at the site from Anna the Red, who post the most awesome bento and recipes. Since I had guests over for a planned Japanese snack weekend (more on that in later posts), I wanted to try to make this easy but fancy looking sushi called temari-zushi.

As you can see this looks beautiful but they were so easy to make :) You actually use plastic wrap to make this. Just lay your filling on the piece of wrap, then add some rice. Pack the corners of the wrap together and twirl the plastic into a ball :) Since Anna posted a nifty tutorial with good looking pictures on this recipe, I invite you to take a look over there for the recipe.

I didn't take pictures from all the sushi I made, but next to salmon I also had avocado, salmon and avocado (see back of the picture), kiwi and cream cheese (a very nice vegetarian sushi combination that I thought of myself) and scrambled tamago. The latter was in the tutorial as well, but for me it didn't work at all. So with those I made just normal filled onigiri.

Don't forget to visit the other blogs linked to the weekend cooking meme. They post a lot of inspiring food related things :)

#95 - Puppies bento

2011-06-28T15:34:00.001+02:00

I don't do it often but sometimes I make an effort to make a cute bento :) The reason that I don't do this very often is because it took me over 1 hour to make this since I am just slow in the kitchen.

In the top tier is a vegetarian home made hamburger from kidney beans (recipe) which I had leftover from dinner. The puppies are white & pumpernickel bread sammies with cheese, cream cheese and paprika salami, but are also easy to make vegetarian of course :) I really wished I had those nori face cutters. I still need to buy them sometime. Then I would make things cute more often XD Snack cucumber and a laughing cow cheese as gap fillers :)

#94 - Pasta Salad & Poffertjes bento

2011-06-26T22:51:00.001+02:00

This bento I made last week for Zeronic. We had pasta salad for dinner and I put the leftovers in his bento for the next day :)

The pasta salad has spinach, mushrooms, mozzarella, sundried tomatoes and pesto mayonnaise as a dressing. I also filled the bento with some more poffertjes (little Dutch pancakes) and powdered sugar in the cup. It is not a very original bento but he liked it :)

#93 - Poffertjes Bento

2011-06-21T13:26:00.000+02:00

I have used them before in my bento: the little Dutch pancakes known as poffertjes. Zeronic asked for them so there we go :) The sad thing is that I still have to buy pre made ones in the store because I don't own the pan that is needed to make these. But it works even though making your own is way nicer. Luckily Zeronic isn't picky :)

I filled one tier with the poffertjes. I placed sugar eyes on one of them for a funny effect with the pick :) In the new sauce cup is some powdered sugar. In the other tier there are some stir fried veggies & quorn, a snack cucumber and egg. I wanted to do something cool with the egg, but Zeronic had to be at work 30 minutes earlier than I had in my head so I had to rush. Oops ;)