Yearly Archives: 2012

Forty days without meat : day 8

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Breakfast:

  • Musli with milk (surprise!)
  • Orange juice

Lunch:

  • Chervil soup (I’d never thought you could make soup out of something akin to parsley – live and learn, they love it in Belgium!)
  • The usual three half sandwiches (spread cheese, sliced cheese, veggie salami – Delhaize brand)

Dinner:

  • Rice with spinach, raisins & pine nuts
  • Quorn cordon bleu

Snacks:

  • Apple
  • Fresh cheese
  • Cookie

 

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Bonus recipe:

Rice with spinach, raisins & pine nuts

 Ingredients:

  • 125 gr whole grain rice
  • 400 ml water
  • 300 gr frozen spinach, thawed in the microwave, liquid removed but not squeezed dry
  • 1 shallot, chopped
  • 1/2 tsp garlic powder
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 2-3 tbsp raisins
  • 1 tsp olive oil
  • 2-3 tbsp pine nuts

Make it:

  1. In the bowl of a rice cooker (or a stove top pot) put all ingredients except pine nuts. Cook until all liquid has been absorbed.
  2. Before serving, heat a pan until very hot and dry roast the pine nuts for a minute or two, shaking often, being careful that they don’t burn.
  3. Mix pine nuts into rice, serve warm

Makes two side servings.

Forty days without meat: day 6

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The menu of the day:

Breakfast: (yes I am that boring)

  • Orange juice
  • Musli with half skimmed milk

Lunch:

  • Broccoli soup
  • Bread with spread cheese, veggie “ham” & nutella (3 half sandwiches)

Dinner:

  • Roasted root vegetable soup (it is a lot tastier the day after!)
  • Spinach filled tortellini with spicy tomato sauce & some grated cheese

Snacks:

  • Cuppa tea
  • Soyjoy bar – got it for free, won’t buy it for myself
  • Apple

Forty days without meat: 4 & 5

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Still at it!

Breakfasts:

  • Musli with milk
  • Orange juice

Lunch:

  • Open faced sammiches on day 4
  • Tomato based curry, with random veggies & quorn, and tandoori spices, on day 5 (bonus recipe)

Dinner:

  • Salad: pasta, sun dried tomatoes, lettuce mix,  apples, cherry tomatoes, walnut pieces and goat cheese, honey dressing (day 4)
  • Open faced sammiches (day 5)

Snacks:

  • Coffee, tea
  • Waffle
  • Chips (crisps)
  • Fruit
  • ….

Tomato tandoori curry

Ingredients:

  • 500 gr assorted sauteed veggies (I cook a big pot and portion it. It contains a mix of: garlic, onion, carrot, bell pepper, aubergine & courgette).
  • 300 gr quorn pieces (it could also be made with lentils or beans)
  • 2 heaping tsp tandoori spice mix (or to taste)
  • 70 gr tomato puree (one small tin)
  • 500 gr tomato pieces (from a tin)
  • 1 dl water
  • 165 ml coconut milk (one small tin)
  • 1 tbsp  + 1 tsp olive oil, divided
  • 240 gr basmati rice
  • 600 ml water
  • 1 flat tsp salt

Multitask:

  1. In a 3l pot, heat up 1 tbsp olive oil. Once it’s hot, add the quorn pieces and cook until slightly brown. Then add the vegetables and cook for a couple of minutes. Add the tandoori spices and stir through. Cook for a couple of minutes on medium heat.
  2. Add the tomato paste and stir through. Cook it for a couple of minutes before adding the tomato pieces & 1 dl water. Bring to a boil. Add the coconut milk, stir and lower heat so that the curry simmers. Simmer for at least 15 minutes.
  3. While the curry simmers, cook the rice. Put 1 tsp olive oil, 1 tsp salt, rice and 600 ml water in a 2l pot. Bring to a boil, lower heat so it just simmers, and let simmer, covered, until all water has been absorbed, about 10 minutes. Turn off the heat and let rest for 5 minutes before fluffing up with a fork.
  4. Serve curry over rice.

Makes four servings. Curry freezes well on it’s own (no rice).

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Extra bonus recipe:

Roasted root vegetable soup

 Ingredients:

  • 1 onion, chopped
  • 2 cloves garlic, peeled, whole
  • 2 turnips, peeled, chopped
  • 2 parsnips, peeled, chopped
  • 2 carrots, peeled, chopped
  • 1 yellow bell pepper, clean, chopped (remove the inner white nerves)
  • 1 medium potato, peeled, chopped
  • 3 tbsp olive oil
  • salt & pepper to taste
  • 1,5-2 l vegetable broth
  • 1 tbsp lemon juice

Make it:

  1. Preheat oven to 200°C / 400F.
  2. In an oven proof dish, mix all the vegetables with the olive oil, some salt and pepper. Roast in the oven for 45 mins, stirring half way through.
  3. Once veggies are roasted, transfer to a big enough pot. Add 1,5l broth and simmer for 10 minutes. Blend soup until smooth (you might need to add more broth). Add lemon juice and adjust seasoning.
  4. Serve hot!

Makes 6-8 servings.

Forty days without meat: 3

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Yup, still veggie here. Today I discovered that there is a campaign to make all the restaurants at Gent’s university serve only meat on Fridays. I would start by making more veggie options, and healthier at that, available. A typical day menu has three dishes with fish or meat, and one vegetarian, plus one soup that is not always veggie (chicken cream soup). I would aim to make the menu: one meat dish, one fish dish, two different veggie dishes, and either make all soup veggie, or serve a second veggie soup on the days the chicken soup is served.

Breakfast:

  • Usual musli with milk
  • Orange juice

Lunch:

  • Tomato soup
  • Sammich with cheese & veggie “meat”loaf
  • Mini sammich with nutella

Dinner:

  • Veggie spaghetti bolognese

Snacks:

  • Apple
  • Mandarin
  • Coffee & tea
  • Speculoos cookie

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Forty days without meat: day two

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Eating vegetarian for a day reduces your ecological footprint by 11m². Doing this for 40 days means 440m² less on your footprint. Which is a small amount considering the average person living in Belgium has an ecological footprint of 8ha (or 80.000m²!) per year, (see the trend here). So let’s keep the veggie up. Today’s menu:

Breakfast:

  • Musli with half skim milk
  • Orange juice

Lunch:

  • Slice of bread with cheese
  • Slice of bread with vegetarian “meatloaf” slice
  • Slice of bread with carrot pate (vegetarian martino)

Dinner:

  • Curried cauliflower & tatters
  • Veggie burger

Snacks:

  • Apple
  • Tea
  • Mandarin
  • Bread pudding

Forty days without meat

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Forty days without meat (40 dagen zonder vlees) is a campaign of a student in Maastricht. She proposes to eat vegetarian for Lent (the forty days between Ash Wednesday -today- and Easter Monday). Another interesting campaign in Belgium is Donderdag Veggiedag, where people are encouraged to eat vegetarian one day a week (Thursdays).

I am not taking part because I am already vegetarian, and the point is convincing people that eating less meat (and fish) can be healthier for them and for the planet, as well as tasty.

What I do want to do (hopefully) is during these forty days tell you (and perhaps show you if I remember to take pictures) what I eat as a vegetarian. So, without more blabla:

Forty vegetarian days – Day 1:

Breakfast:

  • Glass of orange juice
  • Musli with milk

Lunch:

  • Bread with quorn slice (vegetarian cold cut), cheese, and nutella (not all on the same slice!)

Dinner:

  • Pasta with mushroom sauce and quorn pieces

Snacks:

  • Apple
  • Tea
  • Mandarins
  • A cookie

And as a bonus point, the recipe for the pasta dish:

Pasta with mushroom sauce and quorn pieces

Ingredients:

  •  olive oil, salt & pepper
  • 500 grams mushrooms, clean, sliced
  • 1 shallot, chopped
  • 3 garlic cloves, minced
  • 150 gr quorn pieces
  • 1/2 tsp dried thyme
  • 1 tsp marmite
  • 1/2 glass white wine
  • 1/2 glass water
  • 1 tsp maizena
  • 2-3 tbsp light cream (7%)
  • 125 gr whole wheat pasta

Multitask:

  1. Put a pot of salted water to boil to cook the pasta. When it starts boiling, cook pasta according to package instructions. I like my pasta al dente so I tend to boil it for a couple minutes less.
  2. In a wide bottomed pot, heat two tablespoons of oil. Sautee the quorn so it has some nice color and remove it from the pot. In the same pot, add another tablespoon of oil, and sautee garlic & shallot until golden, about 5 minutes. Add the sliced mushrooms and let them cook until they have more than halved their volume. You can help them along with a sprinkle of salt. If the pan seems dry, wet it with a tablespoon or two of water. Add the thyme.
  3. Once the mushrooms are cooked, add the wine and boil for a few minutes. Add the marmite and stir. Dissolve the maizena in the rest of the water and add it to the pot to thicken the sauce. Boil for two-three minutes. Add the cream and the quorn pieces, and heat through.
  4. By now the pasta should be ready. Drain it and add it to the mushrooms. Stir to combine.
  5. Serve with a sprinkle of cheese if desired.

Makes two servings.

Pasta with mushrooms and quorn

Non-Resolutions

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So, first of January and all that. You say “Happy New Year!” (Happy New Year!), you kiss and hug, you smile, and then you make an unreasonable list of new years resolutions like going to the gym five times a week, eating seven servings of fruit & veggies and clean the house from top to bottom every month.

I am not going to make resolutions. Because we all know that most resolutions are not kept anyway. But I do want to put here things I’d like to do this year. In no order of importance, small or big, doesn’t matter. I’m not even going to call them goals, like other bloggers are doing this year. Because having a goal (or a resolution) will most likely set me up for failure. So this is just a list of things I want do do!

Here we go:

  • Getting my bachelor’s! Yes, halleluja. Moving to Belgium and finishing my studies here was the smartest move ever I think. Right now I am one exam period and one semester (with its own exam period) away from this. I still can’t believe it!
  • Sewing more, and drafting some more patterns. I want to try a t-shirt and some trousers.
  • Knit more. I am enjoying knitting my first cardigan, so I might jump in and make a second.
  • Crochet more. I’m still taking toddler (not any more baby, I’d say) steps in crocheting. I prefer knitting, but there are some things that are more suited to being crocheted.
  • Keep reading. Brain candy! Something to let my brain rest after studying in Dutch.
  • Cooking. I want to try new recipes, adapt some Belgian classics so they’re vegetarian.
  • Blog more. I wrote a whopping 5 posts last year :(
  • Getting acquainted with our Nikon D7000. Maybe even read the manual gasp
  • Be happy!

And there is probably more to it. But that covers the basics. Enjoy the year, and don’t be hard on yourself. Who’s going to love you if you don’t?