The Simple Bare Necessities feat. Gratitude & Recipes

Greying_Pilgrim

Aw, poor Chef Mrrtandon - I'm starting to feel some sympathy, this plant-based food is all very well, but........ Hope 1/2 an ox is sizzling nicely on the barbie as I type

The Happy Pear recipe that made me think of you, rtandon, is a kind of 'buddha bowl'. I'm going to make a version of it (using tofu instead of tempeh) sometime this week. And it has quinoa in it, and you can use any type of greens, but spinach, broccoli, or collards were specified. I expect it would work perfectly well with chicken too...........

Today seems to have been a long day and I've not started cooking our tea yet - still, mustn't complain, it'll only be 30 mins or so.

Today I am grateful for these 3 things;

a vehicle to take us places

planning that made me look at YS'd things in a logical light

for the long life of 'L', well lived and loved, may they now rest in peace.

Thank You for popping in, reading and joining in. I appreciate it, and value our differences (;):D:kisses3:).

Greying X

Greying_Pilgrim

Good Evening :hello:

rtandon - yer fella might want to look away now. We had us a bit of a plant-based tea tonight.......

I had to pay 'stoopid tax' today - on account of how I'd let 2 library books go overdue. No excuses, and as you can renew online, I'm blaming no-one but myself. So the non-grocery budget is down another £1.50

I picked up a YS'd red grapefruit for 25p in mrW as I thought it would go well with the dish that I was planning. It was lovely and juicy and ripe, so good call

I've had a bit of a shufty around with the menu-planner on account of making the best use of YS'd stuff. So we in fact had a 'buddha bowl' tonight, instead of Thursday. I only made it on account of how I had some of the ingredients at my disposal and i *loved* the name of the dish. I got it out of the 'Happy Pear' book, and it is called 'Anto's Beast Bowl'.... miaow! :rotfl:I'm afraid that I substituted and made it mine own, but it was none the worse for it i don't think. I have looked, but unfortunately, there is no link to it on the web. However, in place of Tempeh, I used tofu, and marinated it in ginger, garlic, sesame oil, balsamic (not soy/tamari as per recipe) and honey rather than maple syrup/agave. I made up the 80g of Quinoa that I had remaining, and cooked the red onion, garlic and turmeric in a separate saucepan and then combined them. I wilted spinach (YS'd) and forked that through the quinoa mix. I then fried up some sweet potatoes (not in the recipe) and segmented a ruby grapefruit (not in the recipe) and then made up some Date Vinagrette. (not in the recipe) Plated it up, poured the vinagrette over and scattered sunflower seeds, caraway seeds and red pepper flakes over. Picture here;



I'd definitely make that again


Today I am grateful for these 3 things;

Library books - take you any place you want to go...

confirmation of a meet-up with my friend the learned lady of letters :j

that DH is such a caring, committed and fair-minded soul

Thank you for popping by and reading. Appreciated.

Greying X

Cheery_Daff

Mmm, your tea looks lovely :j I had a couple of veggie sausages, last night's leftover pasta, and some mushroom and cabbage fried up in a bit of tomato puree and leftover tahini sauce from last night with a bit of chese on the top. Bit of a hoth potch and I wouldnt have served it to guests, but there was only me and it was exactly to my taste

I do sympathise with the library book fines. I do hate them In my case more because they make me feel like a morally dreadful person I do have guilt about the most ridiculous things - mainly library fines and not looking after my teeth properly

I try to console myself by thinking of fines as basocally a donation to the excellent work of my local library, which makes me feel marginally better But it's most annoying when it must come from your ever diminishing food budget, most vexing!

Going to join in with your gratitude list if thats ok Greying tonight I'm grateful for..

* a day of being able to reassure some anxious people amd make them feel better
* excellent work being done by people I work with and being appreciated by outside folks
* a 3 day work event I'm going on tomorrow - I know not everyone considers such things a treat (and I don't always) but I wanted desperately to go to this and work said yes :j amd I get a couple of nights in a hotel, and chance to meet up with some friends too. Hooray!

Sleep well cheerful Greying (and hope BG does too..)

Greying_Pilgrim

Good Morning :hello:

Thanks Cheery -the trouble is with fines is that, like interest, it racks up so quickly. 25p a day x 2 is a little steep. But as I say, no-one to blame but myself.

We've got a visitor coming today. We enjoy their company immensely, so that is something to look forward to.

Tea this evening will be soup. I'm going to try something out with something I bought YS'd - this could go all horribly wrong Watch this space...... :rotfl:

I've a couple of necessary bits and pieces to get today from the High street, so a quick dash up there later.

Can't think of anything else MS, and I have a wriggly BG on my lap, so perhaps time to vamoose.

Ta for popping by, reading and reflecting on gratitude. All good.

Greying X

EssexHebridean

Looking forward to hearing about the soup adventures Greying! Your buddha bowl looks amazing! I really must get around to trying tofu at some stage.

Fines are the reason I really don't use the library any more. It's not that I object to paying them, but more that I pretty much ALWAYS lose track of the renewal dates so I always end up with them. I realised a few years ago that I was better to buy 50p paperbacks from the charity shop than keep shelling out for library fines! The CS books then go to Mum so they serve double value, and she does the same with hers, then we donate them back to the charity again afterwards! :rotfl:

greenbee

I get emails from the library reminding me when my books are due so I can hurry up and read them and take them back... I've been off sick for a month, and the £2 in reservation fees for 4 books they didn't have has saved a fortune (I've had over 30 books out over 4 weeks and read some stuff I wouldn't normally bother with).

Greying_Pilgrim

Good Evening :hello:

greenbee - I'm sorry to learn that you have been unwell. Hopefully you are recovering? I hope there has been support for you, as you are always there for others.

EH - I actually think that your approach to reading material is perfectly good - it never ceases to amaze me when I walk past the 0xfamin3 book shop the (cookery book) titles that are in the window that were 'this year's must buys' at Christmas etc and yet they are now a fraction of their cover price - even at the rather steep prices that particular charity charge.



Did you have a wonderful sunset tonight? We did. Lovely colours, all peaches, oranges and pinks sort of blending into each other. Just lovely.

Well, we got our few bits and bobs up the high street, including the TV guide.

I think that tea tonight can be described as being time intensive - now it was time that I didn't mind investing and I was able to do the most time-consuming bit under the watchful gaze of BG, so that was OK. However, it turned out quite successfully, and I would certainly do it again. My starting point was a pouch of Thai green curry sauce that I got YS'd in M&$ on Sunday, for 35p. I figured that if you were making a soup with those ingredients, by the time you had bought the coconut milk, and the coriander, lemongrass and ginger... you'd be up to quite an expensive soup. So I figured, if a sauce was thinned out a bit and then served with rice in it, you might have a nice soup. And then I was thinking about the protein, and my first thought was to add in cubes of paneer, but then I kept on thinking about lentil dumplings. I had no idea if such things existed, but I kept on thinking about them, so I consulted goggle. And it turns out there are such things and that you can steam them to cook them - which is something that I have never done before. I used THIS recipe for inspiration, but as ever, made it my own with what I had available. So I used green speckled lentils, breadcrumbs, red onion, garlic, turmeric, coriander and cumin, salt and pepper. I also chopped up some carrot, really finely and threw that in the mix. I pulsed it in the food processor, but left some of the lentils whole. I cooked my lentils first. I then formed the lentils into 'spheres' and put them in the fridge to firm up. I did all this, this morning, and I'd say it was the most time-consuming bit, but a process I enjoyed.

Tonight, I boiled up some basmati rice and let it steam. Then I cooked up some onion garlic and fresh turmeric (a gift from my friend - how wonderful) and diced up some sweet potato very finely and stirred it in. I had put the lentil 'spheres' on to steam. I added stock to the veg mix and let the sweet potatoes cook for 5 minutes or so. I then added lime zest and the sauce pouch contents to the stock mix and let it simmer gently for another 5 minutes or so. I took that off the heat and added the lime juice. I guess the 'spheres' steamed for 20 mins or so and they did puff up slightly from their original size.

To serve, I did my usual one trick pony thing of putting the rice in a mould and unmoulding it. I then poured the 'soup' mix around the outside and placed the spheres around. I scattered sesame and nigella seeds over. Chopped coriander would have completed it, but I didn't have any and used parsley instead. Picture here;



I could have got away with adding less stock to the sauce mix (DH's plate was nearly overflowing) and it still would have tasted good. Fresh coriander would definitely have completed it though. I would make it again, definitely. The problem being, is it a soup, a stew, or a curry???????? :rotfl:

But for 35p plus store-cupboard ingredients, I think it was a pretty spiffy tea - I had visions of lumps of lentil 'dumplings sinking to the bottom of the bowl and it looking (more) like a dog's dinner than mine own....... :rotfl:

Today I am grateful for these 3 things;

superb conversation

kind and thoughtful gifts

that an experiment worked - better, if truth be told, than I thought it would

Thanks for popping in, reading and joining in the conversation. I do appreciate it.

Greying X

EssexHebridean

Definitely no dog's dinner there Greying (in fact, can you IMAGINE the result of feeding something along those lines to your average dog? Pheeeeeew!). The lentil dumplings look and sound brilliant - I'm now wondering if there is ANY earthly way I can swing those past MrEH....reluctantly I have to assume probably not, though.

Greying_Pilgrim

Good Afternoon :hello:

Well, today has been a bit different to that which I anticipated. I was going to meet up with a mum chum, but we've decided to choose another date.

So I got my act together and wandered over to the community hub to hand over our donation to the FB. Didn't see the lovely, friendly receptionist, which was a shame. The person I did see was the teeniest bit brusque, which makes me think it's no wonder people are put off contributing. Whilst it was a different person today, it's the second time I've encountered that attitude at that organisation. Something as simple as 'ooooh ta' goes an awfully long way.........

We did pick up a couple of bits on the high street. HB has the coffee we buy back in stock, but I'm not in the least bit surprised that it is back on the shelves with a 10% price hike. Wot inflation? I did get some lemons from the overpriced market stall, they were market equivalent of YS'd so I got 4 for pand (£1), and given that m&$ have put their lemons and limes up by 4p each to 39p, I thought these a good buy. The ones I had t'other week were nice, on the sweeter side of lemons too.

Tea will be 'something' biriyani-like featuring paneer. I've not really thought that far ahead, but changed what we were going to have, due to using up YS'd things on Monday and last night.

At least lunch was 'free'. My friend left some delicious 'picky-bits', so they were munched whilst soaking up a few rays of sunshine that decided to poke through.

Right, best get to organising tea.

Ta for popping in and reading - prepares a steamed lentil dumpling *care package* for EH .

An appreciative Greying X

EssexHebridean

Ooh ta Greying! All donations gratefully received!