Meals to Take Away On Holiday
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.
A thousand year old rehydrating breakfast dish to kickstart your day
We have just completed the fourth module of the chef and lifestyle training: Macrobiotic cooking, wholefoods and Italian wholefoods. Both Paul Pitchford of Healing with Wholefoods and George Oshawa who developed the macrobiotic diet suggest starting breakfast with something moist to help re hydrate the body after its rest in the night. Miso soup is perfect for that and it is so easy to adapt to suit what your body feels like eating and what is in season.
Ramen Noodle Soup The Easy and Delicious Way
A few weeks back a post on a vegan facebook site took my fancy. It was a recipe for Ramen noodle soup and it looked incredibly delicious. So I madly posted the recipe on my facebook pages and groups, and put it on my ‘to cook one day list.’ A few weeks later I decided to cook the soup for dinner and asked Mak if he could print out the recipe. He brought it to me saying ‘wow that looks like an awful lot of work.’ I couldn’t believe it when I saw the recipe. It was long and consisted of at least 7 different components. I thought I can’t make that, but had promised both myself and Mak, ramen noodle soup for dinner.
Zucchini Carrot Soup with Cashew Sour Cream
It was hot yesterday and guess what I felt the need to cook? Soup of course. This soup recipe does really taste good even on a hot summer’s day. Thin it with more water and add more salt for a lighter soup. It’s filled with iron (thyme and parsley), vitamin C (thyme, parsley and carrot) calcium (zucchini) and protein (cashews and zucchini). Sprinkle on some seeds to make a complete protein.
My fave soup at the moment- sunchoke and silverbeet
These little beauties go by the name of earth apple, sunchoke, Jerusalem artichoke just to name a few. They are tasty indeed, it is hard for me to get any of them in the soup pot because they taste great raw and I am known for my picking. They are a winter root veggie that are packed with vitamin C, A and E aswell as having a good source of minerals including our all time favourite, iron. Blended together with silverbeet and thickened with tofu makes for a very interesting flavour indeed.
How to Make a Perfect Soup Stock
I wonder how many of you out there shy away from making your own soup stock. Until a month or so ago, I was amongst you. I always made my soups with salt or Organic Aussie herb salt for flavouring. I vaguely remember making a stock once and couldn't understand why anyone would bother as it didn't taste all that good. However now I am completely addicted to making stock from scratch, it makes the soup so tasty.
Three easy things to do if you are starting to feel run down (and they work!!!)
Plenty of people seem to be catching colds as the cooler weather sets in. Determined to stay well and keep on doing what I love doing - working in the kitchen and teaching The Vegetarian Chef and Lifestyle Training- I will keep my immunity in tip top condition.
When I do start to feel like I am getting run down I do the following very easy things to keep me in good shape. Hope you find these three tips useful and please share if you feel they can help someone, especially those friends and family members who tend to catch whatever is going around.
Love is in the Air (what it takes to stay together for 49 years)
This blog post has been a work in progress, I started it when I was on the west coast of Australia a few weeks back and made a couple of attempts at sending it to you. Once I returned home I saw the blog post and ss I hadn't completed it I thought I would scrap it but read it again recently and thought to share it with you all. I Hope you enjoy my ramblings, the recipes are lovely too especially as this weather warms up and while peas are still fresh its best to make the most of them.
Carrot and Pumpkin Soup with Coconut and Kaffir Lime
It is very much feeling like soup time right now. Our weather is sometimes wonderfully hot still in the day but by the late afternoon it starts feel a little chilly and a saucepan of soup is what springs to mind to prepare for dinner on such nights. My favourite soups are in the 'Veet's Cuisine' delicious vegetarian recipes, Greek Lentil, Minestrone Verde, Laksa and Spinach and Pea.
Fennel Soup
Fennel Soup
As the weather changes so will the vegetables available at our local farmers markets, I am looking forward to seeing what is in season this spring. I have thoroughly enjoyed the winter vegetables this year, lots of brocoli, beans, snowpeas and silverbeet as well as one of my all time favourtie vegetables, fennel. The wonderful farmer who sells it at the Mullumbimby farmers market told me we only have a few weeks left of it, so I have been enjoying fennel in everything.
