I had a much needed relaxing day at home.  I was supposed to plough my way through a stack of paperwork but instead began lazily with a lie in, catching up on iPlayer downloads from bed and a long leisurely bath.  I still wasn’t in the mood for tackling paperwork so I made some nourishing meals to have in the week instead.

Indian food is a wonderful source of meal ideas for vegans and vegetarians.  One of my favourite recipe books is Madhur Jaffies’ ‘Indian Cookery.’  It contains chapters on recipes for vegetables and pulses.  So I contendely chopped up veggies and munched on an apple as I went.   For lunch we had 2  curries; cauliflower with onion and tomato and carrots, peas and potatoes, flavoured with cumin.  I used yellow tomatoes, hence the final dish was very yellow!

 We ate the cauliflower curry with the carrots, peas and potatoes which was fantastic.  The cauliflower curry was ok but we much preferred the other so I will just share that recipe here.

Carrots, Peas and Potates, Flavoured with Cumin

Ingredients

175 g carrots

175 g potatoes

175 g onions

1 spring onion

3 tbsp mustard oil

1 and a 1/2 tsp whole cumin seeds

2 whole dried red chillies

175 g shelled peas ( I used broad beans from the garden)

1 tsp salt

1/4 tsp sugar

Method

1. Boil the potatoes until just cooked, drain and set aside
2. Peel the carrot and cut in to 1 cm dice
3. Peel the onion and cop coarsely
4. Cut the spring onion in to very thin slices
5. Heat the oil in a large frying pan.  When hot add the cumin seeds and let them sizzle for 4-5 seconds
6. Add the whole chillies and stir them around
7. Add the chopped onion and cook for about 5 minutes
8. Add the carrots and peas.  Cook for about 1 minutes, stirring to mix everything, then cover and leave for 5 minutes or until the carrot is tender
9. Cut the potato in to 1 cm dice
10. Add the potatoes, salt and sugar ( I didn’t add the sugar) and cook for 5 minutes
11. Add the spring onion and warm through

This was very easy and was delicious.  It went well with the cauliflower curry but would go,well with most things.  
     

While the curries were cooking I made a batch of granola, which is really easy.  I loosely followed the recipe in ‘ The China Study Cookbook’.  You put the dry ingredients in one large bowl :  4 and 1/2 cups of oats, 1 cup chopped nuts, 1 cup desiccated coconut and 1 cup of raisins.  You put the wet ingredients in a saucepan: 1 cup water, 1/2 cup brown sugar, 1/3 cup maple syrup, 2 tsp vanilla extract, 1/2 tsp cinnamon and 1/4 tsp nutmeg. Heat the wet ingredients for 2-3 minutes until the sugar is dissolved, mix well in to the dry ingredients and then spread out in 2 baking trays.  Place in a cool oven (140C) for 15 minutes, stir and cook for another 15 minutes, repeat once more then stir and leave in the oven but turn to oven off.

It is extremely easy to make and I used some of the mixture as a crumble topping later on in the day.  The rest is in a large glass jar, ready to be enjoyed for breakfast this week.   
    I also made a rhubarb and apple crumble, using more produce from the garden and some of the granola mixture as topping.    

To cut down on the added sugar I use dates which inthinkmgo particularly well with apples.   

That was all I had all day, but I should admit to having a huge bowlful of the crumble with soya milk custard!