Food to Cuddle the Soul - Veggie Stroganoff.

This is one of my favourite evening meals to cook at the moment, it's creamy, smokey and because it is the colour of sunshine it will help you banish those winter blues. This food is also kind to your pocket as it will only set you back a healthy £1.25 a portion! Here's how you make it...

Enough for Two Portions.

250g Mushrooms                         -  79p

2 Courgettes                                 - 66.6p

2 Carrots (130g)                        - 10.8p

1 Small Onion (113g)                 - 5.5p

3 Cloves of Garlic - 7.5p

Butter (5g)                                 - 2p

1tbsp (30g) Dijon Mustard - 9.4p  

1tbsp (30g) Ketchup                  - 5.6p

3tbsp (90g) Creme Fraiche       - 33p

1tbsp Gluten Free Flour (15g)   - 2.4p

(Regular flour works also)

Stock Cube                              - 6.5p

1 tsp Smoked Paprika (2.3g) -  4p

100g Brown Rice                     - 17.8

(Prices from Asda last week) 

This Recipe takes around 30mins to cook. 

I came up with this recipe one weekday evening when we had some creme fraiche to use up. The vegetables in this stroganoff are the ones that I usually have lingering in the bottom of the fridge so it is the perfect recipe to use up veg that may have seen better days. The key to making this meal super yummy is the different textures that the vegetables provide, that is why I cut them up in different ways. 

Firstly chop the ends off your courgettes and cut the courgette in half (not lengthways)  then cut them into juliennes that are about 0.5cm thick, quarter the mushrooms and use a potato peeler to peel your carrots into thin slices. Put a pan on a high heat and add the courgettes, don't add any oil at this point, once the cougettes have a little colour on them, remove from the pan and add the mushrooms. Once these have colour remove these from the pan as well. Roughly chop an onion and 3 cloves of garlic and gently fry these in butter for about five minutes on a medium heat, until they are soft and starting to brown. It is important to use butter because it thickens the sauce, if you don't have butter you can thicken it with cornflour later. Next add a heaped tablespoon of flour and stir it around the pan so it absorbs the butter and sticks to the garlic and onions.

Pour 300ml of boiling water over a beef stock cube in a jug (if you are vegetarian you could swap this out with half a tablespoon of marmite... trust me it tastes awesome!). Pour the stock a little at a time over the floury onions over a high heat and stir. You should see the liquid start to thicken. Now add the mustard and the ketchup and stir until the sauce is smooth (this would be the point to add your cornflour if you needed to). Turn the heat to medium and add the courgettes, mushrooms and carrot slices and cook for 5 mins. Then add the creme fraiche and stir, cook this for 10-15mins until the vegetables are cooked but still have some bite. Then all there is to do is to add the smoked paprika and a pinch of salt. 

Serve up with some brown rice and chow down to restore yourself back to your usual sunny vigour.

Much Love
Kirst xXx

Planting Our Future Food.

Ed and I have been working hard at the allotment this weekend, I thought I would show you what we have been planting and what is growing. It is so exciting to see the first few plants poking their heads out of the soil. 

The garlic and the salad leaves have survived through the harsh weather. The salad seeds even had a heavy snow on them a couple of days after I planted them, so I was really surprised to see they were growing. I planted my sweetcorn in toilet roll tubes, sweetcorn gets very grumpy if you disturb the roots of young plants so by planting them in toilet roll tubes it means you can plant them straight into the ground when they have been hardened off. The pea shoots and mustard white are a chic edition to salads and they are so cheap to grow, you can even grow these on windowsills. (All the seeds shown were covered with compost after these photos were taken otherwise the seeds would not germinate.) I also planted a row of peas outside, some rocket, spinach, turnips and lettuce. Can't wait for us to have our first salad from our allotment!

Hope you have had a wicked weekend, we are off to a BBQ in a bit *yey*.

xkx