I was a little miserable this week, I'm hoping that it's my body adjusting to my new regime, but I'm not sure. I'm sticking with this new lifestyle anyway for a while longer in the hopes that I wake up one morning feeling marvelous and full of energy! To cheer myself up at the weekend though I had a pizza night, using the cheeses I'm still allowed to have and I think it really helped ;-)
Breakfast:
1. For breakfast I made these oatmeal cupcakes this week:
http://chocolatecoveredkatie.com/2013/01/08/breakfast-oatmeal-cupcakes-to-go/ I substituted cocoa powder for the chocolate chips as I haven't been able to find vegan chips and cacao chips are much more expensive (I know they're much healthier, but my bank balance is refusing to let me invest in them). I think the chips would have been a bit nicer, and added texture but they were very handy, healthy and tasty.
Lunch:
For lunch I made a big bowl of red lentil and sweet potato dip which lasted a couple of days.
1. http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/
2. I also made burrito wraps based on http://vegetarian.about.com/od/rawfoodsrecipes/r/rawburritos.htm
but I swapped the corn for some heated pinto beans. I also added some cumin and chilli powder to the beans to make them more interesting. This was surprisingly filling. I love that avocados are becoming both cheaper and more flavourful this time of year :D
Dinners:
1. I made a simple tomato-based lentil, courgette, rosemary and thyme bake with a garlic potato topping. This was perfect comfort food when I was miserable, like a vegan shephard's pie!
2. I also had a very simple 'fish and two veg' dinner of a salmon fillet with boiled new potatoes and broccoli with a garlic and parsley white sauce. More comfort food!
3. To break out of my potato rut I made a tofu based curry with whatever veg I had lying around. This curry is very versatile and requires very little work once the vegetables are chopped: http://www.
4. I bought a beautiful basil plant and decided to make some fresh vegan pesto before I inevitably kill it through neglect or overwatering! Vegan pesto tastes practically the same as regular pesto - I've never really noticed any cheese flavour from it anyway. And as pine nuts are so expensive these days I did a little investigating online to see if sunflower seeds could be substituted for them, and my hunch was correct. This recipe came out really well, and is freezable to, I call it 'Peasant Pesto' as it's so cheap to make. Just use a good quality extra virgin olive oil if you can.
5. And for my most indulgent dinner of the week, I bought two Biona gluten-free pizza bases and made a simple tomato based pizza sauce.
I topped one pizza with aldi goats cheese with herbs, spinach and sundried tomatoes,
and the other with courgette, Buffalo mozzarella, red peppers, olives and my homemade pesto.
I served them with home-made sweet potato fries. Both pizzas were delicious but because Buffalo Mozzarella is so expensive, it will be a rare treat. Yes, I'm obsessed with the price of food at the moment! (I also had company eating them, I don't think I'd be able to manage two pizzas plus fries in one sitting, but I would have tried :D)
Snacks:
I only made one snack this week, here's a new dish I discovered that I think would make a good snack or side dish:
Roasted cauliflower tastes fabulous - much better than boiling it, and if you google it you will find a ton of toppings or dips to accompany them.
Time to start looking for some new healthy yet indulgent recipes to cheer myself up!
Here are the two pizzas, they're not particularly pretty, but we didn't care:
Here are the two pizzas, they're not particularly pretty, but we didn't care:
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