Purple rice

Tea tonight

Some mixed veg and rice with sausages.

I had some courgette, onion and red cabbage to cook so I added in a handful of rice into a pan of boiling water. I let that simmer while the sausages cooked in my air fryer. I knew that red cabbage releases colour into the water but I wasn’t quite expecting purple/blue to dye the rice.

It was a little bland but I added some brown sauce to liven things up a bit! Tasty

Winter stew

I just made a vegetarian stew for dinner. I could have made Staffordshire Lobby which is a beef based stew, lobbing all sorts of things into the pot. But I used a meat substitute, Quorn pieces.

Basically I put two small chopped potatoes, two small sliced carrots and half a sweet potato, peeled and sliced, into a pan and covered them in boiling water. I let them simmer for a few minutes, then chopped up a small red onion, chopped some slices off a cabbage (about a sixth of it) and two sticks of celery sliced up. Then I added half a pack of Quorn and a couple of teaspoons of Lazy Garlic. I let everything simmer for about twenty minutes. Then I added a couple of vegetable stock cubes. Let it cook for a few more minutes before serving with a hunk of brown bread and vegetable spread. I didn’t add salt, but if you do add it on top of the stew when you serve, that way it sits on the food and doesn’t get absorbed into it. That means you don’t eat too much salt. You can also add pepper at the end.

Prawn and Quorn curry

A quick curry using vegetables and a small amount of Quorn pieces and prawns.

Ingredients.

One jar of curry sauce, chose your favourite. I got tikka massala. One onion, one sweet pepper, a handful of button mushrooms, a big handful of washed baby spinach, about a quarter of a bag of Quorn pieces and a small packet of kingprawns (or small prawns). A packet of microwaveable rice.

Method.

Defrost the Quorn in the microwave if you have one. Peel and chop the onion. Put in a frying pan in oil and start to fry. Roughly chop the pepper and add to the pan. Chop the mushrooms and add. Put the Quorn and prawns in. Finally stir in the baby spinach, add the packet of rice and pour the curry sauce over the mix. Cook on a low heat with a lid on for about twenty minutes. Make sure the curry is thoroughly cooked before serving.

Serves two or three as a main meal.

Tasty beans?

I like baked beans but I’ve started eating sugar free ones and I wanted to spice them up a bit.

I heated a bit of oil in a saucepan then added a small amount of medium curry powder and turmeric powder and heated it gently.

I had chopped up a small onion into medium sized pieces. I microwaved it for a minute to soften it slightly, then added the heated onion to the pan and cooked it gently for a few more minutes to soften and brown the onion (sweated?).

Then I added the sugar free baked beans into the pan and increased the heat slightly. I simmered the mixture for a few minutes until it was thoroughly heated.

We had the beans with some vegetarian sausages and some reduced fat oven chips. Tasty! No photo of the meal as its already been eaten!

I don’t put salt in because it dissolves and gets absorbed into the food. I put it on if needed when I serve food. Its on the surface and you can taste it more.

Second hand curry

Well not second hand, but with left-over ingredients. I made this using curry powder and turmeric. I diced up some courgette, onion, broccoli, and aubergine. I then added a tin of tomatoes. I added water to it to stop it burning on and to add moisture. I also added a few lentils. The fish was bought today. It doesn’t really matter what sort, but a white fish isn’t too strongly flavoured. I’d added it later as you don’t need to overcook fish. It flaked nicely as I cooked and turned a nice golden brown. Much nicer than using a jar of curry sauce.

Tortilla pockets with quorn mince.

Serves two.

Ingredients

Fajhita seasoning, four tortilla pouches, small packet of quorn mince, a small onion, a few spears of asparagus, a few baby corn, half a jar of harissa paste, a small amount of cheese (you could use a vegan substitute) olive oil. Salsa sauce.

Method, break up the frozen quorn mince and fry in a frying pan with a small amount of olive oil, slice the baby corn into small rounds, keep the heat low, add the fajhita spice and continue to cook. Slice up the onion and add to the mix, then chop up the asparagus and add it to the mix. Add some water to the pan to stop the mixture drying out. Add the harissa paste and stir well. Let the mixture simmer for ten minutes. Add the salsa sauce (or if you want to add at the end). Microwave a couple of tortilla pockets then spoon the mix into them. Top with grated cheese. Any left over mixture can be served with the pockets on the plates.

Serve as a tasty meal for two…

Salad dressing idea

Just made a salad dressing with an eighth of a teaspoon of easy Chilli, a level tablespoon full of oil (sunflower) and the same of brown sauce plus a twist of rock salt Mixed up together then added to shredded lettuce, diced onion and tomato, grated celery and cucumber.

I grate the cucumber and celery to make it easier to mix into the salad, it means everything is evenly coated with the dressing. It was nice and tasty and not too hot. I think the word is piquant.

Turkey curry from leftovers.

I used up the leftover turkey tonight.

Ingredients :

An onion

Half a tin of tomatoes

Half a butternut squash

Chopped leftover turkey

Half a jar of Rogan josh curry sauce.

Method:

I just fried off a large onion, then added half a can of tomatoes. I put half a butternut squash (deseeded and peeled) in the microwave for a few minutes. Then I chopped it into chunks and added it to the pan. Finally I chopped the leftover turkey into it and poured over half a jar of rogan josh curry sauce. I then cooked everything on a low heat for twenty minutes to make sure everything was piping hot. Result. A tasty meal.

Tonight’s tea

Cornish pasty and salad

Tea, (early evening meal). Cornish pasty. Mixed salad of lettuce, tomato, cucumber, onion, sliced mushroom, baby bell peppers and a bit of dijon mustard and light mayonnaise. On a Portmeirion dinner plate. I think it was a good balance of food groups. Trying to cut down on carbohydrates and fats a bit. Colour on a plate.

Using up sprouts

I had a bag of sprouts in the fridge, they needed using up. What to do? I took a mixture of leftovers and cooked something ‘not bad but interesting’ according to my hubby.

First I used up half a small onion. I chopped it up and cooked it in a small amount of butter and olive oil. I added some garlic granuals, dried chives, and dried basil.

I then added sprouts that I had cut the base off, took off the outer leaves and then cut them into quarters. I added some water to the mixture up to the level of the sprouts in the pan and let it gently simmer.

I cut up two large tomatoes that were getting wrinkly and were just past their best before date.

I carried on simmering it to soften the vegetables.

While I was doing this I put on a small amount of penne pasta in some boiling water. I cooked that until it was Al dente (still slightly firm)

As the sprouts were softening I added half a jar of tomato pasta sauce that I’d saved from last night.

If you want to leave it there you can. That would be a vegetarian option. But I had some mini frankfurters to use up, so I cut them into small pieces and added them to the mix. Once they had heated through I tasted the food. It was quite ‘sprouty’ so I took a small piece of cheddar cheese, about a thumb sized piece for each of us and melted it into the mixture. I added a little salt to taste and then drained the pasta and added it to the mix.

Cooking time, about twenty minutes in total.

Don’t know the cost, but not much.

Ingredients

Half a small onion.                              About two big handfuls of sprouts.    Two large tomatoes.                              Half a jar of tomato pasta sauce.              A handful of mini frankfurters.               A small amount of mild cheddar cheese.                                                           A couple of handfuls of pasta.

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