Random Weekend Casserole

I like to collect squashes, or is it squashs..? Squashai? Anyway, they're cute, and make good decorations for my table, plus they have such good armor that they'll happily survive the entire year without going bad.



Still, if its between me and fixing hunger, a pretty gourd will definetly come second to a delicious bowl of squash casserole.

I didn't have a recipe, didn't even know what I was going to create, I just went for it, knife in hand. And it wasn't half bad, so I thought I'd record my experiment here, for the next time a pumpkin comes to visit.



Half a big squash, cubed (any kind will do)
1 carrot, roughly chopped
Half a bulb of fennel, sliced
1 cup of millet seeds
3 sundried tomatoes, chopped
3 bulbs of garlic
1 red chilli
Small handful of dried fruit, apricots or sultanas
Small handful of chopped nuts, eg walnuts, pecans and/or hazelnuts
1 can of tomatoes
2 tsp paprika
Pinch of safflower/saffron
3 cups of hot vegetable stock
1 tbsp nutritional yeast flakes

Pour some olive oil into a big lidded casserole dish, and throw in everything, season with salt and pepper, and finally drizzle over done more oil. Stick in the oven at 190c for an hour with the lid on, then stir, and give it another 20 mins without the lid. Chopped parsley/spring onions would make a good garnish once out if the oven.

The great thing about this kind of dish is you could basically stick in anything and it would still be nice! I used up a globe courgette in there too although I wouldn't recommend them in here for the fussy eaters: Mine came out a bit bitter, which I don't care about at all, but for the more delicate palette, stick to veggies that are tasty in their own right, like spinach, butternut squash, sweet potato, leek, cabbage. Avoid aubergine, courgette, tempeh, or anything that needs to be imbued with a different flavour.

I recently watched a film called The Ramen Girl, and you'll never guess what it inspired me to cook... Whilst I wouldn't particularly recommend the film, nothing beats a delicious bowl of noodles in a warming gingery miso broth.



Fried onions, chilli, garlic and ginger in my favourite cast iron skillet, spiced with shichimi http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shichimi and cooked with a few leaves of savoy cabbage, sweetheart cabbage, pak choi, and carrots. Soya sauce, mirin and rice vinegar for liquid flavouring. The broth was simply dried shitake, miso paste, and wakame and hot water, which I used to "clean" my pan out once I'd finished with it. Topped with pickled mustard greens, and nori flakes.

Blueberry Muffins

I think this is the easiest recipe I'll ever post! And damn they are tasty, I made a batch of 12, and am currently down to 9 as I write this, with still plenty of evening left for more to be demolished...

Lemon+Blueberry Muffins

Ingredients

1½ cups (180g) plain white flour

½ cups (70g) wholemeal flour

1 tbsp wheatgerm [optional]

½ tsp salt

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)

½ tsp baking powder

Zest of two lemons

1 tbsp poppy seeds [optional]

¾-1 cup (180g) sugar

1 cup (235ml) soya/oat milk

½ cup (78ml) sunflower oil

2 tsp (10ml) lemon juice

1 tsp (5ml) cider vinegar

1 tbsp ground linseeds

1½ cup frozen blueberries

Preheat the oven to 200ºC. Mix together all the liquids with the sugar and linseeds, until the sugar is dissolved. And the flour, baking soda/powder, salt and zest, and mix to incorporate (but don't overmix, just enough to wet the flour). Coat the blueberries in a teaspoon of flour, then add them to the batter, and fold in. Fill a greased muffin tray with the batter (should make about 12), and bake for 22-30 mins, until a wooden skewer comes out clean. Leave to cool for 5-10 minutes before attempting to turn out onto a wire rack.

Good luck saving them for your friends, and not devouring as soon as you get them out of the oven. Warning: Hot blueberries hurt.

All You Can Eat?

As always, the highlight of my travels is the food, and this time is certainly no different. Vegetalia is cute cafe tucked away in the back-waters of Fuengirola. Once through the labyrinth of alleys it revealed itself like an oasis in the desert. And if you manage to find it before the end of lunchtime, you'll be rewarded with an all-you-can-eat buffet, where almost everything was vegan. For the few things that weren't, the lady was happy to bring out a customized version especially for us.



Plate one of five. I walked away from this place delightfully stuffed with mounds of food. Much like one of the stuffed peppers we ate. Well you are what you eat, as they say...

Vegetalia
Santa Isabel 8
Fuengirola

Next in the agenda was the amusingly named Bombay To Goa, which we stumbled upon in La Cala. The guys here understood our request for no dairy, and happily bought us out a veg-friendly biryani, channa massala, aloo gobi and brinjal-something-or-other, and it was all delicious! Good indian cuisine seems harder to find in Spain, although I suppose the bar is set relatively high living around Birmingham.

Costa del sol

Its not even midday, but as they say,"when in rome". I'm sat on the balcony, overlooking a stunning panorama of the mediterranean, with a bowl of olives, monkey nuts and a glass of cool beer. This is the life!



Later we are heading to Vegetalia for an all you can eat buffet.

Where Megatron and Rapunzel Collide

Today I woke up in a bit of a daze, was it all a dream? Or did I really see Cinderella dancing with a Pokemon?



The top hat and goggles on my bedside table brings me back to the harsh reality that Ayacon has come to an end, and that for another year, I have to endure the monotony of the real world. Okay that was pretty bleak, but if you've ever spent an entire weekend at a cosplay convention, you'll probably know what I mean! I've been reliably informed that this glum feeling has a name: Post Con Blues.



Aya, where do I begin? Its a 3 day convention for the anime and manga fans. Its a weekend of comedy, informative lectures and dressing up. Its a party.

A three day party, from which I still haven't quite recovered.



Cosplay chess, watching karaoke, buying merchandise, getting my butt wooped at Bleach fighting game, watching hobbits play DDR, learning about steampunk, hearing about how to plan a trip to Japan, live bands, a violinist who played some of my favourite tunes whilst sat outside relaxing in an open-air amphitheatre... I could probably go on for a while!



But it wasn't perfect, not far from it, but I had set my expectations too high by time it came around to the final event, the Ball. I've never been to a ball, I missed graduation ceremony at uni, and wasn't around for the school proms either. So my idea of a ball had been mostly modelled by the picture painted in hollywood. I was hoping for that scene in FF8. I was hoping everyone would be dressed like Kayleigh in Firefly, and the dance floor would be full if people waltzing in big flowery ball gowns. I was hoping a beautiful princess would come and sweep me off my feet.



Well there was definitly no dancing, at least not by me, which maybe was a good thing in hindsight, as I've never waltzed before, and I was wearing big boots that might've trampled the unwary. And actually, there were a handful of impressive ball gowns being worn, and a few people were dancing to the slow romantic songs. And I did get talking to a lovely woman with the prettiest steampunk outfit. So some may wonder what I'm complaining about... To tell you the truth I'm not even sure, I'm guessing the post-con-blues is to blame.

Ladybird Challenge

All through summer I longed for an effective way of dealing with common garden pests. Slugs and snails have decimated my beans and courgettes, cats have defaced my soil, and ants have been teaming up with aphids in an attempt to ruin my tomatoes, chillis and herbs.



Whilst there's certainly no silver bullet (although these would definetly be effective against cats...) I certainly welcomed the arrival of these little guys.

How many can you spot?

Soft kitty, warm kitty

First off this post has nothing to do with cats, and secondly this is an experiment to see if blogging from a phone actually works, so forgive me for any predictive-text-related screwups!

I'm currently sat in bed, when I should be I work, drinking cups of tea and nursing a stinking cold. So I thought I'd share my getting-over-a-cold-quickly routine.

First in my toolbox, is a spoon if manuka honey... I know I know, not entirely vegan, but the bees will have to forgive me with this one, as I swear it works wonders. You can literally feel the tea tree antiseptic qualities burn the back of you throat as it cleanses its way down.



Next is tea, and lots of it. I like to boil up a batch of yogi tea, as you can make a couple of pints of the stuff in a saucepan, leaving more time to sit in bed.

And if this doesn't work, I don't know what will! Boiled potatoes, with garlic and ginger gravy, boiled cabbage, and wild rocket garnish.



Ingredients
6 medium potatoes, sliced thickly
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tsp flour
1 tsp smoked paprika
1 chilli, sliced thinly
4 cloves garlic, minced
2" piece of ginger, finely chopped
3 giant cabbage leaves sliced thinly
Chopped rocket to garnish

First get a saucepan half full of water up to boil (a bit of salt helps), and throw in the potatoes to boil, they'll take between 10-15 minutes to cook. Check then with a fork to bake sure, then drain the water, and put the lid back on to keep them hot.

Meanwhile, make the dressing. Heat the oil in a cast iron skillet, and add the flour. Cook for a few minutes, until the flour starts to brown, then add the paprika and chilli. Cook for another few minutes, then add the garlic, ginger and about two cups of water. Now is a good time to add other nice things to the gravy, like a dash of soya sauce, some mustard, or seasoning, but if you're not feeling 100% like me, then this will still do nicely! Simmer the gravy down to a nice consistency, around 3 mins should do, then pour onto the cooked potatoes.

Throw the cabbage leaves into the now-empty skillet, add some boiling water, cover and cook for 5 minutes.

Combine everything together, and garnish with the chopped rocket.

Minimal washing up afterwards, quick and easy, and made up of things you might already have in your cupboard, (especially if you have wild rocket growing in your garden like I do!)