Tomato, lentil and vegetable pasta - a syn free, dairy free, vegan recipe

These days my diet is best summarised as 'nearly vegan'. Health wise, I've not noticed any particular benefits, although I'm sure my weight loss is connected. The main focus of my diet is that it's sensitive to Harry's allergies and whilst there is plenty of processed food that is allergy friendly, I mainly focus on whole foods, cooking and eating a wide variety of beans, vegetables, lentils, fruit. That's not to say I'm perfect by a long shot - vegan cake is a food group as far as I'm concerned.

Making filling, healthy food that appeals to a toddler's burgeoning taste buds and my husband's carnivorous tendencies whilst being allergy friendly is not easy. I was over the moon at the reception this pasta dish got - Harry inhaled his, M did similarly(and he didn't even suggest it could have been improved with chorizo or bacon) This is based on a recipe I've used on Brownie holiday - so for the Guiders out there, it scales up to feed large quantities easily and, topped with grated cheese is a favourite with our girls. 

Tomato, lentil and vegetable pasta
Dairy free, vegan recipe. Syn free
Serves 8

Fry light/ olive oil
2 red onions
3 cloves of garlic
2 sticks of celery
4 small-medium carrots
3 peppers - I only use red & yellow as a personal preference
2-3 small to medium courgettes
150g mushrooms
1 cup of frozen peas
1 cup of frozen sweetcorn
1 cup of red lentils
2 tins chopped tomatoes
1 400g carton of passata
large splodge of tomato puree
1 tsp dried oregano
Salt and pepper
Handful basil, shredded


I prep all the veggies for this in the food processor - but if you're not, then finely dice everything aside from the carrots, and grate those.
Liberally spray a pan with Fry light (or add a good glug of olive oil) and when warm add the onions and garlic and cook over a medium heat until softened
Add the celery and carrots and continue to cook for another 5 minutes of so
Add the rest of the veggies and cook down for another 5 minutes
Add the tinned tomatoes, passata and tomato puree and stir well.
Bring to a gentle simmer, and add the lentils, oregano, salt and pepper

The next two steps are purely optional - for me I do this for the Brownies, but don't bother at home - 
Cook down well for about 30 minutes or so
Take off the heat and allow to cool before blitzing with a stick blender

Add a good handful of fresh basil, before stirring into pasta

Butternut squash & tomato pasta: A dairy free, soya free CMPA weaning recipe

Butternut squash & tomato is a lovely combination for weaning, sweet and flavourful and one of Harry's favourites. I make this in batches, usually while he naps, and freeze it in portion pots for quick and easy lunches along the line.

This is also the sauce I use on his 'cheesy' polenta chips, and I also use it with chicken meatballs I make him. Harry seems to prefer his food to be a bit wet so this is a great moist-maker (to quote Ross Geller) 

I also make an adult version of this with salt, pepper, a pinch of chilli and lots of crispy bacon: Dairy free Butternut squash and bacon pasta

Butternut squash & tomato pasta

Dairy free, soya free - suitable for CMPA

Weaning recipe
Makes 20 baby portions

1 Tbsp Olive oil

1 red onion finely diced

2 cloves garlic diced or crushed

1/2 tsp dried thyme 

1 small butternut squash, peeled and chopped into a 2cm or so dice

1 tin chopped tomatoes

1 carton passata

1tsp tomato puree

Oatly cream

Violife cheese - I use 2 slices of the Mozzarella style, finely chopped

In a large pan, warm the oil and add the onion, garlic, butternut squash and dried thyme - cook gently over a medium heat for 10 minutes, until the onion starts to go translucent

Add the tin of tomatoes, pasta and tomato puree. Fill the tomato tin half full of water and add that to the pan too

Bring to a gentle simmer, pop a lid on the pan and cook for 30 minutes

Remove from the heat - and add 2 tablespoons of Oatly cream and stir through the sauce

Add the Violife cheese and stir through.

If you are doing purees as your weaning method, then let this cool down before blitzing. If you're doing baby led weaning then you can serve it as is.

I make up a batch of this, leave it to cool, portion it off and then freeze so it's ready to go for a quick lunch or supper. I use this from Nuby as initially one, now 2 of these is a perfect Harry sized portion.

If you find prepping butternut squash a faff - you have a couple of options. Tesco and Waitrose/ Ocado both sell it frozen. Or, have a look at this post for my super easy way to prep it. 

Butternut Squash & Bacon pasta - dairy free, syn free

 

Butternut squash and bacon pasta is a current favourite pasta sauce - dairy free, and low syn or even syn free. I often have it on brocolli instead of pasta if I'm feeling in need of a lighter supper, or on pasta it's great comfort food. I vary it for Harry too, and will pop that down below.

First off butternut squash is an evil vegetable - I used to but the prepared, frozen one from Tesco or Waitrose, but now we shop at Aldi I've found a way to prepare it avoiding the dreaded chopping and peeling.

Preheat the oven to 160 degrees 
Cut your squash in half, and put it cut side down on a baking sheet
Roast in the oven for 45 minutes
Remove from the oven and allow to cool for 10 minutes
The skin should peel straight off - with very little effort on your part

If you're worried about the squash sticking to your baking sheet then I use non-stick Bacofoil and a little Fry light on the cut side of the squash

Butternut Squash and Bacon pasta - serves 4

1 Butternut squash (about 500g) prepped as above
1 red onion, finely diced
2 cloves garlic, crushed
200g smoked bacon lardons or 200g lean bacon - grilled until slightly crispy
1 tin chopped tomatoes
1 carton (500g) passata
Large splodge tomato puree
1 tsp dried thyme (1 tablespoon of fresh)
Spray Fry light or olive oil
Pepper

Spray your pan with Fry light, and cook the onion, garlic, and thyme for 5 minutes until slightly softened
Add the tomatoes, passata and tomato puree and bring to a gentle boil
Stir in the butternut squash and bacon
Cook down for 15 minutes or until a thick, pulpy sauce
Taste and season with pepper - I don't add salt as the bacon is salty

 Serve either with pasta, or a bowlful of steamed brocolli

Slimming world maths - if you're using lean back bacon it's syn free. This does 4 generous portions - which works out at 4 syns per portion. 

If I'm making this for Harry, I use olive oil, omit the bacon and add Violife cheese and Oatly cream. The butternut squash is soft enough cooked this way for it to be easy for him to eat.

I'm entering this into Pasta please, which is Jacqueline of Tinned Tomatoes challenge, being hosted by Jen's Food this month

Remembrance sleepover, batch cooked bolognaise

This weekend heralds Fourth Friern Barnet Guides annual Remembrance Sunday sleepover, seventeen girls and all 4 leaders will be parading on Sunday as part of the local Remembrance service. As I type I imagine (hope) neckers and t-shirts are being ironed, extra layers for under uniform being packed, school shoes being cleaned. And that's just me. 

As the girls are willingly giving up their Sunday to participate in something important, we have a sleepover the night before - we're combining our Confectioners badge with giant jenga, the chocolate game, and making poppy brooches. 

Tomorrow we'll be bag packing in our local Tesco to raise some much needed funds for the unit - we're in desperately in need of our own, lightweight Patrol tents, and other things like new baking equipment, sewing kits and some camp uniform as well as subsiding tickets for Wellies and Wristbands next year. We're hoping that bag packing will help us towards those targets, and we'll also be using the day as as opportunity to raise awareness of Guiding in the local area and with any luck, recruit some new Adult leaders. 

If you've got people being that busy then obviously you're going to need to feed them. We had a Guide chat with the girls on Tuesday and pasta seemed to be the general consensus - most are having it with a traditional bolognaise, some with a vegetarian version of the same, and a couple will have theirs with cheese and butter, but supplement that with carrot & cucumber sticks and cherry tomatoes. 

This meant, that while running a temperature and fighting off a fluey bug I found myself in Asda this afternoon with a list, a trolley and a single minded ambition to get the food for the sleepover sorted. 

In case you're wondering, to make Spaghetti sauces for twenty one people, your shopping list looks like this:

8 tins chopped tomatoes
8 cloves garlic
4 onions
1 large box (750g) mushrooms
12 peppers
12 carrots
Half a butternut squash
1 parsnip
Tomato puree
Oregano
Marmite
2 kg lean minced beef

Vegetarian Bolognaise

Dice 4 carrots, half a butternut squash, parsnip, 4 peppers and about 250g of mushrooms
Blitz 1 onion, 2 sticks of celery and 2 cloves of garlic in a food processor
Add oil to a large pan and heat up gently
Add the onion, celery and garlic and cook gently for about 15 minutes
Add the carrots, butternut squash and parsnip with a splash of water
Put a lid on the pan and let the veggies steam for about 10 minutes
Add the rest of the veggies, stir in and let cook down for 5 - 10 minutes (until the mushrooms start to colour)
Add 2 tins of tomatoes a large sprinkling of dried oregano, a tablespoon of tomato puree and a tsp of marmite
Leave over a low heat for about half an hour until most of the liquid has reduced

After this, I've put the sauce in a large foil tray, let it cool and will reheat in the oven tomorrow. I wouldn't usually use root veg in a bolognaise type sauce, but courgettes and aubergine are out of season and we work on a budget of £5 per head per day for food. The sauce I made today works out at £0.88 per head £18.49 in total. If you add the cost of the pasta in, it's £1.02 per head.

Bolognaise

Split the mince into 4 portions - for each portion, use the following quantities

Blitz 1 onion, 2 sticks of celery, 2 cloves of garlic, 2 peppers, 2 carrots and 100g of mushrooms
Cook down until softened
Add mince and cook through until browned
Add 2 tins of tomatoes, a large splodge of tomato puree and a teaspoon of marmite
Add a large sprinkle of oregano
Cook down until the sauce is thickened and the liquid reduced - for about half an hour or so

I did this 4 times, and working on the basis that one portion of that does 4-6 adult portions, I figure that we should easily accommodate 17 hungry guides and 4 hungry leaders. Please god let it, as there's now nothing else in my cupboards! 

And after all that... what did I end up having for my supper? You've guessed it

And if you've ever wanted to know what the shopping for 21 people for a 24 hour sleepover looks like...

Meal Planning Wednesday? Really?

I love my meal plan, really I do - it helps me to budget, to manage what I eat (and sometimes to remind me to eat full stop) and also to think about where I am and what M and I are doing each week. This week, however has been my first week back in the classroom full time since the dreaded migraine of doom that started on Christmas day. Luckily that seems to be a thing of the past, icky injections in my head keeping them at bay *touch wood* It was an important and natural step to get back to what I'm ultimately employed to do, and I've enjoyed it. What I had managed to forget, sidelined by my glee at being well enough to train, was how much I hate staying away from home. At the sadness inspired by the Beefeater menu.

This week was hampered further by the dramatic return of my dairy intolerance this weekend. Recognising the symptoms from a few years ago, I removed dairy from my diet almost immediately and within 24 hours saw my symptoms ease. It's not an easy change to make to your diet - Premier Inn don't provide any breakfast options within their Continental that are dairy free (at least, not when the fruit doesn't appear to have arrived), I don't particularly like soya milk (although Alpro chocolate pudding is another matter) but nothing, all spreads for toast etc contained dairy - fortunately the lovely Alex in response to my plaintive request for any dairy free options managed to sort me out with a cooked breakfast, and poached eggs and bacon it was. Not particularly healthy, but something at least.

Tomorrow I'm back onto salad for lunch with vegetable sticks and some carefully selected houmous. Breakfast will be fruit and more poached eggs as I couldn't remember if live yoghurt was OK or not so decided not to take the change.

Dinners this week are deliberately simple. My tastebuds, stunted by the options available at the Beefeater, once again are craving vegetables and fresh flavours.

So tonight (Wednesday) we had pasta with a (fridge bottom) tomato based sauce, including some slightly elderly asparagus and a courgette. It had an incredibly tasty garlic, anchovy and onion base which may prove to be a no no. But for now I'm fine.

Thursday - a return to Brownies for me, and Welsh for M means I only have to cater for myself. At the moment that feels like it will entail much looking wistfully into the fridge at the cheese. In reality it's likely to be freezer surprise.

Friday - M and I are out, but if we get back at a reasonable hour, then I think sausage sandwiches (Sainsbury's Taste the Difference sausages are brilliant when I'm being intolerant and generally icky)

Saturday - we're off for the weekend for a Christening where I'm to be Godmother. To say I'm excited is possibly the understatement of the century as no one's ever asked me to be Godmother before. Food wise, it's going to require some careful choices, and I'm going to tweet asking for recommendations for restaurants that would either adapt dishes or provide easy dairy free options.

And Monday will hopefully mean normal service is resumed. Until then, I'll be consuming Alpro chocolate pudding whilst making puppy dog eyes at my Easter eggs.

Hopefully meal planning and blogging won't be too bland over the coming weeks. I don't think I'm going to need a full exclusion diet as I know my triggers, but expect a distinct lack of cheese from here on in.

Even though it's Wednesday - be sure to pop over to At Home with Mrs M for Meal Planning Monday

Also - quick reminder, the blog competition to win an Asda Extra Special Hamper closes this time next week - if you've not entered yet, be sure to! And if you have, it would be lovely if you would share the post here to allow your friends to enter too.

Baked tomato pasta

I've talked before about how tomato pasta was my first bought recipe that I tried out. Good Housekeeping gave me my point in that direction. This version is a grown up version of that same recipe. 


Much like where you started using a handbag at 16, it's just a rucksack really but it's your handbag - housing (in my case) a Body Shop cherry lipbalm, emergency bar of chocolate, purse and front door keys, and a copy of the Musicals magazine that had the tape of that month's musical on the front. I was a classy teen. Please note the absence of a mobile phone. Yes, I'm that old. These days, in amongst the detritus of scrumpled receipts, business cards and the odd Guide badge are still keys and a purse, a tube of Lanolips 101 balm, my iPhone, Kindle, packet of tissues, lipstick, rescue remedy, migraine stick, hand cream and medications. The musicals are now uploaded to the iPhone. Some things never change. 


Much the same as the contents of my handbag have grown up with me, so have some of my recipes. This is one such example.


Baked Tomato Pasta 


Olive Oil
2-3 cloves of garlic, whole, unpeeled
2 tins of tomatoes (a good Italian brand)
500ml good red wine - something you would enjoy drinking. You're going to intensify the flavour so it needs to start off well
Oregano - fresh if it's the summer, dried in the winter
Mozzarella - this can be basics range as you're going to bake it


Pasta - I bake this normally with penne, but used conchigle this week as that's what I had


You'll also need a casserole dish with a lid


Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C
Start by putting your casserole dish on the hob on a medium heat 
Pour a good few tablespoons of Olive oil into your casserole and add your garlic
Open the tins of tomatoes and using a sieve drain the water from them as much as possible
Add the tomatoes to the casserole, and then add in the wine
If you're using dried oregano add it now
Put the lid on the casserole as the ingredients just start to bubble and put it in the oven. Leave it for an hour


After an hour, take the casserole out, and fish out each clove of garlic. Squish out the now soft garlic which will have cooked to an amazingly sweet sludge(I cant think of another word) and stir those into the sauce
Put the lid back on and put the casserole back in for about half an hour
Chop the mozzarella roughly into a large dice
Cook your pasta for about half the stated time, then drain it and take your sauce out, add the pasta, stirring the sauce in so it's well coated. Add the mozarella, keeping about half to one side. If you're using fresh oregano add it now.
Don't put the lid back on, but put the casserole back in the oven for another half an hour
Sprinkle with the rest of the mozzarella and serve, if you're feeling it, garlic bread is in equal measures trashy and fabulous here. 
You should probably serve this with the rest of the wine. I'm not a big red wine drinker so I don't, I freeze the leftover red wine to add to my next casserole. Just call me Miss thrifty.


This is an amazing, beautifully slow cooked dish. Perfect for a chilly Sunday in February, warming and hearty. Yet for some reason with the fragrant fresh oregano, and the mozzarella all stirred in at the last minute, served in the garden on a summer's evening with a crisp glass of white wine it doesn't feel at all unseasonal. Perhaps this is a trans-seasonal recipe? Is there such a thing?

Take me to the world: Jess blogs me!

Not a recipe in this post, but some news and updates on life in my teeny flat of wondrousness. I've finally managed to book a veg box delivery, for next week from Riverford Organics I wanted to know where my veg and fruit were coming from and also felt slightly distanced by the big business feel of the veg box scheme I had been using, combined with getting damaged produce every week. Riverford seems a little more expensive at first glance, but I'll blog next week and let you know what I got and if it inspires me to do or try anything new.

In other news, Jess of Dreaming Wide Awake decided to try out my posh pasta sauce - the one with all the wine. And very kindly she blogged it. I had thought about asking her to do it as a guest post, but she beat me to it, her linky is here I will master every pasta till it's right.

Jess is my go to person in times of need for wine advice, working as she does for Olly Smith. The wine he recommended for the pasta sauce was a Tesco one, Tesco Finest Nero D'Avola so if you're thinking of trying out the deep winey (it's a word) deliciousness of that pasta sauce then now is a good time to do so with  an expert recommended wine.

As I'm still without a starter, I'm bread baking with yeast at the moment, and am hoping to get a loaf on for a nice slow rise tonight so M has some fresh for his sandwiches tomorrow. I think I'll also defrost some of that fridge bottom pasta sauce I turned into pizza topping a couple of weeks back, let it down with some vegetable stock and blitz it so I have soup for lunch.

And finally a bit of a teaser for you... this week will feature my first every giveaway! Make sure you're a follower for a heads up!