WIAW - Chocolate and leftovers

Welcome to What-I-Ate-Wednesday!

Today's Wednesday was leftovers for me! 
I had not been quite so organised as last week and had prepared nothing in advance! That is when I realise how much I love my freezer!

I enjoyed a chocolate smoothie for breakfast:

 
You truly feel like you can face anything the day throws at you when it's started like this!!!


Morning tea was my caffeinated beverage and 4 dried apricots!

For lunch I had leftover tofu stir-fry:

For afternoon snack I had a banana.
For my trip home I had a Macro Raw Food Bar - they are soooooooooo delicious.

For dinner I had more leftover - red lentil stew with brown rice & steamed zucchini:

Join in WIAW at the Peas and Crayons blog.

Chickpea & Veg Medley

Here's another of my quick & easy meals that takes less time than ordering take-away!
It makes for a great meal by itself, compliments a basic mash or salad, or can be served as a side. Makes a great salad topping the next day and can be warmed up later to use as leftovers!
Very practical recipe!
Enjoy!

You'll need:
1 can chickpeas
1 small onion
1 small red capsicum (or half large)
1 small head broccoli
4 button mushrooms
1 carrot
1 zucchini
2 garlic cloves
1/2 teaspoon veggie salt
1 Tablespoon tamari
juice of half a small lemon


Chop all the veggies into rough chunky pieces.

Put the chopped veggies, crushed garlic & salt into a frying pan, add enough water to just cover the bottom of the pan.
Cover the pan with a lid and allow to steam the veggies for 7-10 minutes until veggies are tender.


Add the drained chickpeas and the tamari and lemon. Saute for 2 minutes whilst stirring to allow all the veggies to be coated with the sauces and to allow the chickpeas to warm through.

 Serve.

This is the veggie salt I use:

It makes for a great stock replacement. Often stock powder contains maltodextrin, and sugar - both of which are not overly desirable for me! This product just has salt & veggies with mineral rock calcium phosphate as an anti-caking agent. I personally can't taste the difference and really enjoy using this!

Week 7 Unprocessed

I haven't taken as many photos this week. I'm repeating a lot of meals & have had a lot of leftovers! Enjoying the challenge whilst at the same time feeling a little frustrated by it! I don't want anything majorly bad, I just want to have some rice crackers or convenient nibbles here and there..... but I plough on!

Here's some meals from the past week:

Polenta with bean and eggplant loaf.

Cinnamon, raisin soaked oats

Leftover bean & eggplant loaf with salad

Chickpea & veg medley with potato mash & mushroom gravy

Banana & tofu mousse with strawberries

Chocolate smoothie (full of greens and fruit of course!)

Pizza potatoes (recipe from The Starch Solution book)

Leftover sauce from the pizza potatoes put onto a baked sweet potato!

Tofu bacon with sprouts & roasted capsicum on a wholemeal bun

Polenta with spinach & mushroom

I enjoyed a gingerbread house making morning this week also! Wish I'd taken pictures prior to wrapping it! This is going to be the centrepiece on our family Christmas table & then the kids can devour it!

We enjoyed a weekend away camping! Down in this valley:

Making potatoes, camping style ;-)

Something so beautiful and peaceful about just getting away and having a chance to enjoy nature!

Reading in front of our campfire = So relaxing!

Sooooooo nice to just sit in front of the fire & watch it! It is incredibly relaxing! One thing that I can do that can turn my mind off and just 'be'.

The visitor we had in the morning!

Question of the day:
Is there something that you do that just turns your mind off and relaxes you?

Bean & Eggplant Loaf

This makes a great substitute for meatloaf.
Easy to prepare as just a bit of chopping and mixing and then the oven will do the rest of the work for you! Makes a big loaf that can be frozen and used as leftovers.


You'll need:
2 cups cooked adzuki beans
1 small eggplant
1 Tablespoon Italian herbs
2 garlic cloves
1/4 cup besan flour
1/2 cup tomato cooking sauce

Mash the beans, not til they are completely mushy, leave a few whole pieces.

Chop the eggplant into small pieces.

It always amazes me that an eggplant can look so small and yet when you chop it up there is soooo much volumne to it!
In a bowl combine the eggplant with the beans & the herbs & the crushed garlic. Stir until combined. Add the besan flour and the tomato sauce. The mixture will hold together.

Press the mixture into a lined baking loaf tin & press down with the back of a spoon.

Bake at 180C for 45 minutes.

Remove from baking tin, peel away baking paper and slice.

So many ways to serve this!
On mash, with salad, in a sandwich..... You pick your favourite!

Shown here over polenta:

Since this is healthy... and it's Friday - I'm going to submit this recipe across at "Healthy Vegan Friday" hosted by the veggie nook blog!

Check out the blog to submit your own recipe :-)

Mushroom Gravy

Happy Thanksgiving Day to all my American friends :-)

Here in Australia we don't celebrate Thanksgiving day & to be honest I'm not really sure what its about!
But I thought I'd share a recipe with you all anyway! 
I see so many pictures of 'roasts' everywhere as a way of celebrating Thanksgiving so I thought that gravy seems to perfectly compliment a roast! Not that I'm encouraging the consumption of any animals as roast!!!

I love this gravy over mashed potatoes... and well, anything really! :-)

You'll need:
10 button mushrooms
1/4 one small onion
1 Tablespoon soy sauce
1 Tablespoon cornflour
1 cup cold water
1/2 teaspoon sage
sprinkle of cracked black pepper



Chop the mushrooms and onion as small as you can, or put in a mini chopped so that all the hard work is done for you ;-)

Saute the mushrooms and onion in a pot until the mushrooms have decreased in size and the onion are brown. You may need to add a tablespoon of water to stop them from sticking to the bottom of the pot.

In a measuring jug combine the cornflour and the cold water. Mix until the cornflour has dissolved.


Pour the cornflour/water mixture into the pot, add the soysauce, sage & pepper (as much as desired). Stir well to combine & leave to simmer for 15 minutes until the sauce thickens.

Pour into a gravy boat for serving.

WIAW - Week 7 Unprocessed

I spent a lot of time in the kitchen last night preparing my meals for today.
I put them all in the fridge overnight to make my traveling day so much easier! 

Breakfast, lunch & dinner - all set!

Breakfast - mango soaked oats

Lunch - Salad with leftover chickpea and veg medley (recipe will be posted by the end of the week!)

And a treat at work that I like to call "spinach thing". I buy this from a pizza shop but its not really a pizza - just pizza dough wrapped around cooked spinach & onion & pepper. Soooooooooo tasty! 

Dinner - Slow cooker potato pizzas (recipe from John McDougall's lastest book - The-Starch-Solution).

What did you eat this Wednesday?
Join in the WIAW fun at the peas and crayons blog.

5 weeks til Christmas and some craft!

Can you believe that its just 5 weeks til Christmas day??? 
Where has this year gone?

Have you got any Christmas decorations up yet?
I have only put up one decoration so far. A magnet!
One of my favourites!!! ;-)

Our pile of wrapped presents is gradually growing! I am all but finished Christmas shopping! I just need to work out what to get my hubbie! Men can be really hard to buy for - would you agree???!!!

Do you have a specific day that you put your Christmas tree up on each year? We put ours up on 1st December. I'm really looking forward to it! I LOVE decorating the Christmas tree!

I know that sending Christmas cards seems to be a bit of a dying tradition. However, I still like to send them.

I rummaged through our Christmas craft box and came across these fantastic cards which I have been making with my daughter this last week. 
They are great for kids to use because there isn't anything too hard involved!
She had a wonderful time picking out which background she would put into which colour card.

These pre-cut cards easily fold into three sections that can then have a contrasting piece of paper put in. If you have some Christmas punches you can easily re-create cards like this in your own style!

Here's a collection of our finished cards:

Question of the day:
Do you still send Christmas cards?.