Do you love to go out to eat when you are on holiday? Or are you like me and the sheer thought of going out to eat when away fills you with dread? As I love to eat good quality organic food, eating out doesn’t always interest me, then the whole vegan thing and possibly having my food cooked in the same pans as meat thrills me even less. So I usually do the majority of the cooking when I go away.

This year’s holiday I had to make all the food as we were on a yacht for seven days and needed camping food for the drive up and back to the Whitsundays.

I got smart and in the month before froze portions of meals I cooked which I love. Some people have asked me to share with them what I made and took so here I am, doing just that.

I took the following prepared meals

• Curry
• Greek lentil soup (recipe in my cook book)
• Dhal
• Kidgeree
• Iranian soup with noodles (recipe below)
• Pasta sauce (recipe in my cook book)
• Cheesy bake (recipe in my cook book)
• Thai sweet corn cakes  (recipe coming in a blog soon - I promise)
• Mini tofu frittatas (recipe in my cook book)

We put the frozen meals in our esky with ice bricks and a layer of newspaper on top. After two days of travelling, the meals were still completely frozen. The first night camping we took a delicious soup and a loaf of bread and that was a very nourishing meal after ten hours of driving..

These meals weren’t enough for the whole holiday as we needed lunch and dinner and we had 12 nights away in total.

So I took the following staples

2 cups basmati rice
1 packet rice noodles
1 packet rice crackers
1 packet pasta
1 small bottle tamari
1 small bottle olive oil
1 block tempeh
salt
gomasio
pecannoosh (our home made vegan parmesan)
home made fermented cashew chesese (http://www.veets.com.au/blog/how-fermented-nut-cheese-has-changed-my-life)
home made coriander pesto  

then bought

2 lettuces
100g sprouts
2 heads broccoli
3 zucchini
2 potatoes
1 large sweet potato
1 silverbeet
1 parsley
¼ red cabbage
2 carrots
6 tomatoes
8 lemons
3 avocados

With the supplies I made a pasta dish with the frozen tomato sauce, fried rice and tempeh, stir fried veggies with noodles and pesto, boiled potatoes with coleslaw and pecanoosh (Mak had a can of organic baked beans). Sweet potato with fermented cheese. We had salad at lunch time with crackers and fermented cheese and tempeh. On other days we had  Thai sweet corn cakes or tofu frittata with salad.  

We feasted in the manner we are accustomed to on good organic fare.

It did take a little bit of organising but for us it was so worth it as the alternative was pretty grim and I wasn’t prepared to put my digestion through that even for 12 days. Just not worth it.  I did a menu plan a month before so I knew how many meals I needed and had time to get this together without feeling rushed or stressed in the days before leaving.

Here is the recipe for the Iranian soup we took with us. It's more like a meal or stew and really worth making especially if inviting people over as the novelty of noodles and lots of extras in a soup always impresses people.

Iranian Style Noodle Soup

200g dried puy lentils
150 g dried mung dhal
4 large Spanish onions cut in half then sliced
6 large heads garlic
Lots of olive oil
4 beetroot diced very small
1 bunches silverbeet
200g broad beans or green beans
70 g parsley (finely chopped)
70 grams coriander (finely chopped)
70 grams dill (finely Chopped) plus a few sprigs for garnish
3 litres of vegetable stock (may need less)
2 avocados
1 serving of cashew sour cream
300g mushrooms cut in 4 to 8 pieces (wedges) depending on the size)
1 wedge of lemon or lime per bowl of soup
1 pkts of brown rice noodles (or basmati rice if you are sick of noodles)
pepper
 
Serves 8

Cook the puy lentils until well cooked. Rinse the moong dhal well.  
Sautee the onions in a generous amount of olive oil and 1 tsp salt and cook until they caramalise a little.
 
Take out half of the onions and then add the garlic and cook for a few minutes, add the herbs and cook for a further two minutes. Add the beetroot and moong dhal cover with water and bring to the boil. Let simmer for 10 minutes then add the broad beans or green beans, silverbeet and cooked puy lentils. Simmer the soup until all the veggies and moong dhal is cooked through. Check for salt and add the pepper.
 
While the soup is simmering fry the mushrooms and cook the brown rice noodles. I soak the noodles in boiling water for 2 to 5 minutes.
 
Serve the soup with in a shallow bowl with the noodles to the side, then the soup to the side of the noodles. Add a few teaspoons of cashew sour cream and a portion of mushrooms, some avocado slices and a lemon wedge.

This recipe was inspired by one I saw in Otelenghi’s cook book Plenty

Learn how to adapt meat dishes into delicious vegan dishes

The Iranian noodle soup recipe was actually a meat dish and I easily turned it into a vegan recipe. Adapting meat and vegetarian dishes into vegan recipes is one of the many things you learn in the three day foundation cooking course. I still have three places left in the September 28th to 30th course and am opening up two more courses for 2017.
 
The dates are
 
19th to 21st October
 7th to 9th of December.
Hope you can join me for one of these courses.

Have a great week

With love Veet

Categories:Soups Mains

Tags:lentils soups beans avocado Dill coriander Parsley

Share This Post:

Related Posts