Yes, my winter classic, Broccoli and Stilton Soup (find my recipe here x). My mum got some reduced Stilton and a massive head of broccoli and this was the most obvious outcome. It also gave me an opportunity to try out my mums new toy.
The Bamix - a stupidly expensive but oh so worth it, hand blender and more. I think I'm going to give it a post all of it's in the future so keep checking back for that, suffice to say though it's unbelievably amazing!
I also made my Nutty Bean Burger recipe but I had a little fiddle with the recipe and made it with chick peas instead of mixed beans. The end result was really tasty but I had real problems when it came to cooking them, the burgers just kept falling apart. I came to the conclusion that I'd probably made them too big, never mind I served them with Slimming World Chips and salad.
Usually I would just make burgers with the left over mixture but this time I decided to have a little play. Using the chick peas made me think of falafels, okay the seasonings etc. would be different but the mix worked in exactly the same way. I rolled the mixture into rough, gold fall sized, balls, then I sprayed them and an oven try with Fry Light, and popped them into a hot oven for about 15 minutes until they were crispy on the outside. It was a revelation and I definitely think that I'll cook them this way again. I served them with a sort of Greek / Middle Easter type salad, with lettuce, grated carrot, cucumber, tomatoes, red onion, black olive and feta cheese, and I served it on a gluten free wrap with homemade yogurt and mint sauce. It was sooo yummy and so filling, and the sauce was gorgeous and only a fraction of the calories of mayonnaise.
Speaking of wraps, I've tried a few different gluten free wraps over the last month or so and I've actually been pretty impressed. My Asda often does the B Free ones which are fabulous calorie wise but they don't don't always seem to be in stock so I tried something that I hadn't tried for a while - the Warburtons Newburn Bakehouse White Wraps. I really like these, you can't tell that their wheat and gluten free at all. Okay I lie you can tell, they £3.10 for 3 wraps which is way more than the normal ones. Why is gluten and wheat free food so expensive? Anyways I've played with them before using them instead of lasagna sheets and of course as wraps but this time I decided to use them to make wrap pizzas :)
All I did was spread the wraps with some tomato puree, before covering them in some sauteed vegetables, and some cheese, and them I popped them in the oven for about 10 minutes - Voila a perfect thin and crispy pizza in minutes :)
Something that I've fallen in love with over the last few months has been Diet Coke Quorn. This is seriously one of the yummiest things I've had in a long time. So I made it again only this time I added a bit of chilli to give it a bit of a kick, and to hopefully help kill off the chest infection that I had :) I'm not sure it worked but we both enjoyed it, I served the first lot with pasta, and the second lot with rice and cauliflower.
The majority of my foodie highlights from April though came from a long weekend and a few days either side of it. I'm talking about Easter of course! I was going to try and be a bit restrained and whilst I didn't go crazy and eat everything at once I did over indulge a bit.
Hot Cross Buns, something that I hated as a child but something as an adult that I can't get enough of. My mum normally makes gluten free ones for me but this year we bought them instead these were from the Tesco Free From range and they were gorgeous warmed in the microwave, with just a tiny scraping of real butter mmmmm.
It wouldn't be Easter without an egg and these were the paste eggs that me and my mum made. Isn't the colour amazing ! All you do is add loads and loads of onion skins to the water when your boiling them, and they go the most amazing reddy, brown colour.
Obviously when the eggs were boiled we ate them, this is just boiled egg mashed up with low fat salad cream, tomato, spring onion and lots of salt and pepper all on top of a gluten free white roll.
Alongside our egg sandwiches it's traditional on Easter Sunday in LouLouLand to eat cake, and this year my mum made a gluten free chocolate cake, covered with buttercream, mini eggs and chocolate buttons, which was supposed to resemble a nest haha.
Yeah, I'm no sure if that's what I'm seeing but by gum it tasted god. Originally it was supposed to have buttercream in the middle but being gluten free it refused to cooperate and crumbled so if in doubt cover the lot in icing and chocolate yum.
It wouldn't be Easter without a chocolate egg or three and I think you'll agree that mine and Mummy Lou's haul was quite impressive.
We didn't eat everything a once but it's safe to say that I was well and truly chocolated out!
Well nearly chocolated out :) I did manage to make a batch of Creme Egg Brownies with - some left over chocolate and creme eggs. This is probably the easiest recipe ever and it's something that I'll share with you soon x
A lot of families have a full on Easter Sunday but we decided to have ours on the Easter Monday instead. My mum roasted a nice chicken for her and the cats and I had a Quorn Roast, served with roasted veg that my mum cooked with fry light - sometimes the simple things are the nicest.
Afterwards we had a homemade gluten free apple pie and cream - naughty but nice!
So they were my April foodie highlights, a mixture of experimentation, sugar rushes and comfort food. I have lots of new foodie posts in the pipeline including my Bamix review, some recipes and a couple of reviews of local places to eat and drink, so I hope you'll stick around x Happy Eating x
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