Category: Vegetarian Friendly

Moroccan-inspired cous cous

Ah the make-ahead lunch, how I love thee. I’ve not stayed in the same place for more than 3 weeks at a time since March, which plays havoc with food shopping, so lunches you can prep in bulk and in advance have been instrumental in keeping me away from bacon and cheese paninis. It’s mostly worked. And when it hasn’t, well, I can comfort myself with the fact I’ve learnt to do pretty decent eyeliner flicks on a moving train and now know platform 4 of Lancaster station like the back of my hand.

The second important thing? Those lunches being made up of things that you can keep in a cupboard until you need them and won’t spoil.

Enter Moroccan-inspired cous cous. I actually tried this for the first time when I spotted a reduced portion in M&S and decided to recreate it at home. Slim risk of the ingredients spoiling, easy to make in bulk, and interesting enough in flavour that you won’t get bored after the first day. Job’s a good’un.

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A Dinner Bell guide to the best protein sources

Surprise! I can almost guarantee none of you were expecting a post like this – but there are only so many egg whites a person can eat.

 During the Idiot Challenge, with no days to recover from exercise, eating plenty of protein seemed important – but when you’re cutting down your meat consumption, this becomes alarmingly tricky. For a blog that started out being 90% cake, a run-down of protein sources sure is a departure from the norm, but here we are.

There’s this trend on the internet that for anything food-related, magazines love to present information in the least readable way possible, and often say things like “vegetables are high in protein!” but neglect to tell you that you’d need to eat a field of kale to get a decent quantity in grams. So I spent (what felt like) hours clicking through slideshows trying to find a range of high-protein foods that weren’t also high in fat, or stupidly calorific. Continue reading →

Panko jalapeño poppers with sriracha

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I’m unashamedly a feeder. Pretty much anyone who has visited our flat will attest to that. It’s a trait that I get from my mother, and which means that no-one escapes through those doors without having been fed at the very least a custard cream, because this is the level at which we like to keep our biscuit tin. Continue reading →

Sweet potato & feta salad with honey & cinnamon dressing

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I

t was the spring of 2012 and I was crying. Not the elegant kind you see in films, no quiet single tears rolling down a cheek: it was full on snotty, heaving, gasping crying. There was cold wood under my feet – the piece of wood between kitchen and living room where, if we got up early enough, we’d see slugs on their morning commute back to the garden – and a scrunched up Freddo packet on the counter of our pokey student kitchen.

I wasn’t crying about the slug wood.

For what felt like weeks – but was actually only about ten days – I’d been following the Dukan diet. You know, the one where you basically only eat chicken and yoghurt. There are photos of me tucking into, and, amazingly, finishing, an entire roast chicken, with a face of utter dejection. I lost weight, but also nearly lost both some friends and all of my marbles. Continue reading →

Squash, Stilton & sage soup

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What I’ve done there is create possibly the worst food for me. Not in terms of nutrition or  expenditure, but just because I have a bit of a lisp. And every time I take this into work, I’m forced to reply to queries as to what it is with a whole load of “th”s.

In every other way though, this soup is very, very good.

Squash, Stilton & sage soup | The Littlest BakehouseIt’s no surprise to anyone that I get a bit giddy with food, and that the gourd family is the prime object of my affections. So when I spotted that New Covent Garden’s soup of the month was pumpkin, Stilton, and sage, I snapped it up and greedily snaffled it before they’d even announced it on social media.

And then I wanted more. Due to being A) inquisitive, and B) not made of money, I worked out the ratios from the packet and went on to make the best soup ever. The first time I used part butternut and part harlequin, but the second time was pure butternut and it was every bit as tasty. In fact, I’ve gone on to buy 3 more butternut squashes so I need never run out of them. Yep, I got weird looks at the checkout. Squash panic-buying is totally a thing.

The sweetness of butternut, the savoury touch of sage, and pure cheesiness from the Stilton combine to make a soup that’s truly comforting. A hug from the inside. It also doubles up perfectly as a sauce for pasta.

Additionally, it’s pretty cheap. One batch will cost less than £4* and provides six servings, which really puts the price of supermarket tubs of soup into perspective. If you chop the vegetables smaller, it’ll require less cooking time and therefore less fuel, too. It’s happy to be frozen, so can be made in advance and defrosted when you get out of the rain and need something quick, comforting and delicious. (I recommend these soup and sauce bags from Lakeland, which can stack in the freezer and be washed and reused.)

*Probably far, far less than this – I’m going by estimations and Waitrose prices. Continue reading →

Cheddar & pesto stuffed tear ‘n’ share rolls

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Hands up if you feel like switching your oven on right now!

Tumbleweed, as expected. The nation’s bakers are on strike. Grass is the colour of sand, and people are the colour of lobsters. As we enter the third week of real summer, the country is wilting.

I’m already dreaming of jeans and jackets and pumpkin puree in everything. I’m planning what I’ll make when the temperatures dip below 20 again – hey, remember that? – and I’m not avoiding the oven for fear of melting away like a snowman. Continue reading →

Cheddar & mustard scones

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Throughout university, or at the very least towards the end of it, on those long nights of sitting in the library rather than going out like everyone else seems to be, the 9-5 life sounds pretty perfect. Evenings to yourself, not having to work over dinner, and long weekends with lie-ins, afternoons in beer gardens, and, well, freedom. You sort of forget about bills, washing up, and truly dull tasks like washing the shower curtain.

A lot of my friends are now finishing uni, terrified of the current climate for graduates and desperate to tackle adult life head on, away from the family home. Others have recently broken into the job market, having graduated last year (three cheers for the competitive nature of journalism!), while many more are still juggling internships and work experience with earning a living. Continue reading →

Roasted red pepper houmous

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HumousOne

As someone who was incredibly wary of most foods until about the age of 16, houmous was not a food that featured much as I was growing up, much less something that I ever saw myself making.

In England, our houmous flavours are pretty basic. We’re happy to eat lemon & coriander, sweet chilli, and plain houmous, but haven’t yet been adventurous enough to try the flavours seen in other countries, like peanut butter houmous and wasabi houmous. But that doesn’t mean we don’t love it. Sadly, a lot of people don’t realise how easy – and cheap – it is to make. Continue reading →

Carrot, orange & ginger soup

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As part of Operation Eat on a Slim Budget (catchy name for it, huh?) , I’ve been working carrots into a lot of my food – they surely win the prize for most versatile vegetable. Although I love them for being a super cheap way of bulking up other foods, right here they deserve to be the star of the show, kicked up a notch and nudged into the spotlight. Continue reading →