Time for new pans

[Image: Flickr]

Last night I stocked up the freezer with leek and potato soup made from my granny's home grown leeks. The fresh, crisp leeks tasted delicious raw. I felt sad cooking them but I knew I'd get better use out of them in soup. When I use store-bought leeks, the soup ends up a pale creamy colour with a slight green hue, but yesterday the soup was a vibrant pea green! I was quite worried my husband wouldn't eat it as it looked so unusual. It just goes to show that home grown vegetables have concentrated goodness in them.

One day, if/when I have a bigger kitchen, I'd love a whole collection of nice pots and pans. I think it would make cooking much more fun.

Quick Christmas Dinner

Last night we prepared a "Fast Food" version of a Christmas dinner. It was so tasty that we've decided to continue eating Christmas dinner throughout the year.

Ingredients:

McCains chunky chips (they're HUGE and taste almost as good as roast potatoes!)
Paxo Sage & Onion stuffing with apple
Frozen brussell sprouts
Sainsbury's vegetable gravy

Instructions:

Bake chunky chips & stuffing mix for 30 minutes. Microwave sprouts for 4 minutes. Add boiling water to gravy granuels and stir.

Very simple but very tasty :)

Almost a white Christmas

Luckily the snow had cleared by Christmas Day which meant we were able to drive to visit family. It was a day filled with lots of delicious food: yummy nut roast and homemade vegan chocolate treats, board games and crackers with terrible jokes :)

Vegan Cookies

I made a double batch of cookies last week. The sort with a crisp outer shell and a soft, crumbly centre... mmm my favourite. I originally found this recipe on Parsley Soup a couple of years ago. They require very little oven-time, so they're ideal emergency cookies. I doubled these quantities and made a chocolate chip batch, and then added cocoa powder into the second half of the mixture for double chocolate chip.

Ingredients

100g (4oz) soft vegetable margarine (I use Pure soya spread)
100g (4oz) caster sugar
150g (6 oz) self-raising flour (plain flour makes much flatter, denser cookies)
1 tsp vanilla extract
100g (4oz) dark chocolate chopped into little pieces
1 tbsp cocoa powder

Instructions

Beat the margarine and sugar until fluffy. Then add vanilla extract, chocolate chips and cocoa powder for double-choc cookies, then stir in flour to make dough. If the mixture won't form a dough, add a little soya milk. Shape the mixture into 16 balls and flatten slightly (or 8 balls for larger cookies). Place on baking tray lined with grease-proof paper and bake for about 8 minutes at 200˚C/400˚F (slightly longer for larger cookies). Leave to cool slightly before transferring onto a cooling rack.

Top Tip: For a delicious dessert, crumble cookies over vanilla Swedish Glace ice cream :)