Sausage Jambalaya

Pre-vegan life I loved to make a sausage jambalaya from the My Daddy Cooks cook book, it’s a delicious filling dish and I’ve recreated it with vegan ingredients. I don’t have the book myself (I’m a library lending cook book junkie), but the recipe can be found online here.

The first ingredient I’d recommend is using Linda McCartney’s sausages – either the above version or the extra yummy red onion and rosemary ones. I stock up on these when I see them for £1 as they are tasty, cheap, nearly 18g protein per 100g and they don’t dissolve in sauces like some veggie saucisson.

This is super cheap dish and I make it to use up the least nice pepper (green, duh), and it’s the ONLY reason I ever buy celery (yuk), but trust me in this they melt down to taste amazing! I even double the celery that the original recipe calls for.

Garlic salt, olive oil, tinned tomatoes, paprika, cumin, oregano, black pepper

Celery, onion and green pepper

Hot sauce, rice (40p a bag!), a stock cube and liquid aminos

Garlic

Ingredients;

• 1 T olive oil
• 6 sausages
• 1 onion
• 4 celery ribs
• 2/3 cloves of garlic
• 1 pepper
• 2 T paprika
• 1 t cumin
• 1 t oregano
• 1/2 t garlic powder or garlic salt
• 300g rice
• 400g tin of tomatoes (plus tin filled 3/4 times with water)
• 1 stock cube
• 1 T Bragg’s liquid aminos
• 1 T hot sauce (omit if this scares ya)

Method;

Add the oil and sausages to a medium heat large pan. Chop your veg and add to pan, by now the sausages should be getting soft so chop into 4/5 pieces with your stirring utensil.

Cook the veg for five or so mins and add your dry spices and rice, stir for a minute to coat rice in the spices then add all of your liquids.

Pop on a lid and bubble on low for half an hour, checking every ten minutes that it’s not sticking to the pan – you can also add more water if needed.

This recipe is endlessly adaptable so feel free to chuck in any veg you want to like mushrooms, sundried tomatoes, artichokes or green beans, other herbs (fennel seeds or fresh parsley would be great), and try with another grain such as quinoa or millet or even half rice and half buckwheat.

That’s a big ol’bowl of tasty

Birthday Lunch @ V Revolution

Yesterday was my birthday and we were in Manchester for my Irish/Mancunian/Geordie husband’s aunties 80th. I’ve read about V Revolution before as a sort of vegan mecca, so I was interested to check it out. My birthday was the perfect excuse to spend some money on a meal out – before going to a catered party!

V Revolution is in Manchester’s Northern Quarter – which is only a 5-10 min walk from the centre of town.

It’s all vegan, and as we were about to find out, it’s all lush too.

The Girl chose the ‘Classic Hotdog’ without crispy onions or mustard. She has simple tastes. Her face is all cut-up from an epic downhill scooter accident 😦

The Dogs

The Boy went for the ‘Hamdog’ can you even SEE the dog in there? How cool is the paper wrap?

 

He thought it looked like a squashed Krispy Kreme doughnut when it came, but he loved it and said it was really cheesy and he could have eaten it again.

Classic hipster signage, natch.

Knights in Satay service, I loved the seedy buns.

Hell-Vis Presley

We also got a chocolate milkshake to share between the table – even Bubs had some! They have a help yourself water station which is great as The Girl is a big spiller.

Animated ordering

Bubs having a feed before stealing a lot of tortilla chips

As well as burgers they sell yummy homemade (and of course vegan) cakes and brownies, they also have a small shop section which sells chocolate, fake meats and all sorts of hard to find vegan items – coconut condensed milk, people!!

We went for a slice of both of the day’s cakes which were chocolate and ginger and rose with raspberry, they didn’t last long and it was so nice to have cake on y birthday – have I mentioned that it was my birthday yet?

I’d give this restaurant 4 1/2 out of 5 just because it is lacking a healthy option – I’d have loved to have had a side salad with my burger. It was my birthday so shake, burger, cake was something I’d be happy to eat, but if they added some greens to the menu I think I’d make it a regular visit. On the other side of the spectrum they also don’t do fries, which I like too! Saying that the set up is really great, they cook your food to order so it all came out piping hot (take that Maccy d’s) and it was all incredibly tasty – especially that satay sauce, I’d buy a pint of that stuff!

https://www.facebook.com/vrevolutionuk/

 

First family dinner in our new house

OK, so it’s Linda McCartney burgers, oven chips, shop bought salad and a glass of water. But! we’ve been moving house this week, and amid the chaos of boxes, bags of clothes and general mess everywhere we sat down as a familam and had burger and chips on a Friday night and it was awesome!

That is oregano on the chips, its my new favourite thing

The boy had just got back from a five day school trip and we’d missed him like mad, so we had lots to catch up on. 

For pudding I whipped up salted caramel smoothie (not pictured, but it was beige), made from hazelnut milk, dates, salt, frozen banana and a scoop of raw hemp protein powder – I thought our muscles could use some protein after all of the heavy lifting of moving.

I may have had a second burger…

We then munched on sweets and biscuits while watching the England v Turkey game – well I snuck off and had a long bath while the kids were occupied with the footy.

⚽️

Super Dhal

I love dhal! I only learnt how to make it recently and I think it’s fantastic. It’s super simple, nourishing, tasty and cheap. What more could you ask…? Oh yeah, it only takes one pan. Marry me dhal!

I like to use a base of at least onion, garlic and ginger, but if I have them I will also add carrot and celery. I think frozen ginger is a godsend, I have thrown out so much ginger in my life as I use half of it for a recipe and let the rest rot forgotten. I now know to chuck the whole lump in to whatever I’m making, but these bags are great to have to hand.

I used coconut oil here as this is for my whole family including the baby, so fats are important, but I’ve made this fat-free before and you cannot tell the difference. I know some of the benefits of turmeric are only accessed with fat too, so this might be a reason for you to include it.

I add potato, tomato and spices. I don’t use a set lot of spices, today I used cumin, garlic salt, turmeric, curry powder and asafoetida. I’ve read somewhere that asafoetida can help with digesting pulses, but I never retain the knowledge about why or how these things work. You can totally just use garam masala or curry powder and salt and pepper.

I start the pan sizzling before I add any liquid, this starts to fry the onion and toasts the spices.

I put in a tablespoon of liquid aminos today, but I sometime use yeast extract (Marmite) or just a stock cube. In go the whole pack of lentils – washed. Again you can use yellow or green lentils instead of red. This is so adaptable.

I then add about 3/4 litre of water.

Pop the lid on and cook on low for about 30 mins, or until the potato is soft.

Dhal is good with rice, but it’s GREAT with indian breads, which I think I might make tomorrow for the leftovers.

https://theunprettyvegan.wordpress.com/2016/05/14/vegan-garlic-and-coriander-nanns/

The lentils here cost £1.10 and it makes so many portions – plus you can buy lentils way cheaper than I did. The rest of the ingredients are all so basic that this is an excellent store cupboard recipe to have. I often have a frozen portion or two knocking about in the freezer that I defrost when I make a curry – which turns curry and rice into a multi-dish feast.

 

Ice Cream Cones

We had beans on jacket potatoes for dinner, leftovers for lunch and avotoast for breakfast – not blog worthy!

So I made a little effort and … Wait for it….melted chocolate for dessert. Oh I might need a sit down after all that effort 😉

I used cones, this would be great over icecream in a bowl, on a sundae, on a banana split, with nuts or sprinkles. Go wild.

Melt 100g dark chocolate with a rounded tablespoon of coconut oil.

Drizzle into your cone before and after filling with icecream.

I used M&S coconut milk icecream, this is £3, which is pretty good for vegan icecream.

It goes all crunchy like a choc ice shell.

These were pretty great TBH, just what you want to eat on a hot summers night. Oh great, now I have Meatloaf in my head 😛

 

 

A Breakfast Fail and A Lunch Win

So I attempted to make coconut flour pancakes for breakfast this morning and the results were..edible at a push. It’s the third time I’ve tried using coconut flour and the first that the entire result hasn’t been binned – so I’m getting (marginally) better.

I won’t post the recipe, as I really can’t recommend it 😛 but the pancakes were made from the sum of these parts;

It was a lot more effort that Sunday morning should be.

I had to pretty much burn them to cook them through and then they fell apart when getting them out of the pan. If anybody out there has a foolproof coconut flour recipe, please send it my way!!

Then the girl refused to sit at the table outside as there were spider webs on the chair 🙂

They ended up sitting on the floor – a lot of our family meals end up on the floor.

A quick game of pyjama tennis, as you do.

Then! I also tried making a versions of Laura Miller’s Superfood Coffee https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXIFQUZaXZ0

What a babe, right?

I can’t blame Laura for this tasting gross as I had totally the wrong ingredients and once I’d set up my french press I noticed that I’d run out of ground coffee, so had to use instant. Needless to say burnt pancakes and bitter coffee wasn’t the biggest hit.

Thankfully I resorted to an old favourite and made avocado on toast for lunch.

You don’t need a recipe for this I’m sure, but it was coconut oil, avocado and lemon juice on rye bread for the girls and I added salt, pepper and hot sauce for the rest of us.

Because the internet needs another picture of avocado on toast, am I right?