What I Ate This Week #18

A fairly mixed bag this week, look, barely any pasta for once! Lots of veg though, I'll be making the mushroom biryani again, it's always nice to discover new recipes that are easy.

Nothing wrong with eating up leftovers is there? I always seem to be eating up butternut squash curry!

Corr this blog is glamorous isn't it? I mean check out this beautifully arranged vegetable lasagna on my dressing gown, phew, get Vogue on the phone ASAP, this needs to go in their next issue.

Raw tomato pasta sauce, bit of a strange one as it was hot pasta mixed with cold mashed up skinned tomatoes with basil and chilli. I skipped the capers which were in the recipe as I hate very salty foods (olives are vile to me). This sauce was a little bland if i'm honest.

The Frankie & Benny's Mediterranean vegetable burger. Not too bad at all but the relish is far too sweet. The fries were darn tootin' tasty though. (I took off the gherkins, urgh.)

Lunch at my favourite cafe Topaz. Halloumi pitta with salad, cous cous and hummus. The Cawston Press cloudy apple is my absolute fave soft drink.

This mushroom biryani recipe was in The Telegraph and was super simple so thought i'd give it a go. I didn't use as much oil as the recipe said and ended up putting quite a bit more of the spices in but it was really tasty! Definitely easy to scale up or down too depending on who wants to eat it.

Half a cauliflower cheese grill, half a nut cutlet (that tasted like ash), broad beans, peas, slices of crispy potato with onion and carrots. Desperately need to get some new veggie grills!

What I Ate This Week #17

A pasta heavy week (it's a good job I don't give a monkeys about carbs!)

Wholewheat pasta with pepper, tomato and basil sauce.

Butternut squash and red lentil curry. We have this with mini poppadoms and I can get through a whole bag rather too easily. Yum.

 

A quick dinner of wholewheat pasta and this Loyd Grossman sauce. (Sorry for the steamy picture!)

Quite a disappointing Nandos experience, I had a tonne of salad and barely any halloumi or mushroom. My boyfriends meal was cold and look at that garlic bread, barely been grilled! Boo hiss.

This pasta took 18 minutes to cook! The longest I've ever known a pasta to cook. It's like spaghetti hoops but for macaroni peas!

Baked potato, coleslaw, carrots, broad beans, green beans, (hidden) parsnips and broccoli. 

What I Ate This Week #15

This weeks meals only confirmed quite how much rice I eat! I love the stuff! Brown, white and arborio. Not exactly a varied week, meal wise but it was nice to eat at an organic restaurant and a new pub.

A hefty family meal of butternut squash curry with mini poppadoms and naan bread. 

Great food photography there Cressida, beans sticking out all over the place! A mushroom, pepper, bean, garlic and smokey paprika risotto.

Took my brother to Aberystwyth so it was a long journey in the car. Decided to have a big lunch to keep us going. This was a veggie burger with wedges and salad from The Treehouse. The veggie burger must have had beetroot in it because it was pink! It had garlic mayo too, yum. The Treehouse is a small organic restaurant and health food shop with some lovely vegetarian options, my Mum and brother had Welsh Ploughmans.

Finishing up the butternut squash curry with some brown rice. Barely any food gets thrown away in this house! We compost anything we can too. 

I admit this doesn't look like much for dinner but it's my Mums tiny portion! Chilli penne (new obsession) pasta bake and peas. Deeeeelish. Seriously get some chilli pasta in your life. You can thank me at dinner time.

This was the result of the great 'argh what shall we have for dinner?!' debacle. Found a stir fry sauce in the cupboard and bunged in some onions, beans, peppers and carrots. Turned in to a half decent meal!

Went out to the Junction Inn for my Dad's Birthday lunch. Not a vast amount of vegetarian choice but the cheese and onion pie was really tasty, as were the chunky chips. (Got to have chunky chips at a pub.)

What I Ate This Week #11

Hello! Starting WIATW back up again as I think it's good to show that vegetarians don't just eat salad, they eat tonnes of different things (my diet does admittedly contain a lot of rice and pasta, pretty samey but nevermind).

Started off the week at my favourite vegetarian cafe, Topaz. I have never once been disappointed there, the food is amazing quality, lots of herbs and veg is grown in their own allotment, it supports a local charity, it is reasonably priced (you get a hefty portion for your money) and it is SO TASTY! I had a lentil curry with raita, rice and a freshly made chapati. 

I love the colour of butternut squash curry, such a beautiful orange! I was obviously feeling the love for lentils at the start of this week. Butternut squash curry is a staple in my house, we have it with naan bread and padadums. 

Smoked paprika, tomato and pepper sauce with chilli penne pasta. I've never had chilli pasta before (this one is from Sainsbury's). It had a subtle chilli taste and was something a bit different, it enhanced the sauce and was pretty tasty!

So this was meant to be roasted butternut squash and garlic risotto with cannellini beans but I didn't have those in so I used black eyed beans instead. Bit strange but it was alright. This risotto is rather time consuming roasting all the veg and having to cook it for a while but it is worth it. I could have roasted the squash for longer to blacken it a little but it was nice and soft as it was. It contains a fair amount of garlic and I definitely would have warded off any vampires the next day!

I love homemade mixed bean enchiladas. So easy, filling and yummy. This is kinda a lazy meal but my boyfriend and I love it, usually I can eat a bigger portion than him of this stuff! We had it with potato wedges and onion rings, naughty.

Well would you take a look at those Yorkshire puddings! Er HELLO, best thing ever! My Mum made them using this Brian Turner recipe (minus the beef dripping). Carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, mash and a Quorn cheese and broccoli grill. 

What I Ate This Week #10

A week of eating up bits and bobs, nothing new or fancy, just tasty food! Was disappointed with the vegetarian carvery as it was just generally naff. I used to eat carverys at Toby Carvey when I was at University for a treat and they offer a few vegetarian options instead of meat which is nice.

Ate up the rest of the butternut squash curry from last week. Yum.

 Veggie chilli with rice. I love that it is packed with tasty veg, it's so nice to know exactly what's in your meal isn't it? You can find the recipe here.

Eating up the chilli, this time with pasta. You could eat it with a baked potato too, whatever takes your fancy.

My boyfriend made me veggie fajitas, from an Old El Paso kit. He used Quorn chicken style pieces, peppers and onions. We had them with plenty of sour cream and chive dip, grated cheddar and tomato salsa.

My Dad made me this, a cheese and tomato thin base pizza with added mushrooms and tomatoes. It all got a bit soggy with the tomatoes and there was black pepper on there and I'll let you in to a secret - I hate black pepper.

Goats cheese and onion tart, carrots, new potatoes, peas and cauliflower.

On the way back from a long journey, decided to stop for something to eat. Went to the Lock Keeper in Worksop, I had a vegetarian carvery and it was nothing to shout about. The pastry on the cheese and onion tart was soggy, the roast potatoes tasted suspect even though I asked what they were cooked in (vegetable oil).