Quorn medley and Quinoa

My daughter absolutely adores Quorn. She now has ballet followed by pointe class on the same evening, so needs an early dinner that isn't too heavy on the stomach, I have started to cook special meals for her and then eat a different meal later with my hubby.

I have a packet of frozen quorn chicken shaped pieces in the freezer, that way I can take out as many as I need for one meal.

This was an experiment that has proved extremely popular.

Ingredients
2 oz quinoa
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 small onion sliced
1/4 green or red pepper thinly sliced
a few small florets of broccoli (suitable to stir fry)
1 handful of frozen quorn pieces
a couple of mushrooms sliced
1/2 tin chopped tomatoes
1 heaped teaspoon of pesto
salt and pepper
worcester sauce to taste

Method

Pop the quinoa in a sieve and wash under the cold tap, you must stir it around the sieve with your hand to wash well. Pop in a pan cover with about 1/2 finger of water, add a pinch of salt. Bring to boil and then simmer until the quinoa shows it's spirals and looks a little translucent.

Whilst quinoa is cooking make the following.
In a frying pan, heat oil and fry onions for about 2 mins over a medium heat, add the pepper and broccoli, continue to stir fry, add the quorn and fry for another 3 mins. Pop in the mushrooms, cook further 1 min then add tomatoes.

Stir in 1 teaspoon of pesto, some salt and pepper and a couple of shakes of worcester sauce. Gently bubble for about 5 mins.

Drain quinoa and serve.

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Happy New Year

Happy New Year to everyone.

Medium box contents this week
Curly Kale
Potatoes
Onions
Carrots
Leeks
Green pepper
Red pepper
Cauliflower
Swede
Savoy cabbage

I roasted a lovely shoulder of lamb last night, studded it with garlic slivers and sat it on a bed of rosemary to permeate as it roasted, also seasoned with freshly ground black pepper and some maldon salt. It was scrummy.
Popped some of the potatoes in to bake, I scrub them, dry them, then rub them with olive oil. I tried Nigella's trick and put them onto a metal skewer to help the centres cook more quickly. They were really crispy and fluffy middles.
Steamed some carrots and savoy cabbage and braised some leeks with butter and water.

Simple food, but scrummy.


A few ramblings about food.

Another year when food is going to be even more important, I do worry about the things that are in our food that shouldn't be. I heard part of a broadcast on BBC radio 4 this week about flavourings and how they are used to provide tasty food for the poorer people, grrrrrr, no nutrients, all those chemicals, no regulation.

I believe there is a correlation between the foods our children eat and the special needs that appear. I currently teach a variety of students, but interestingly those that haven't achieved very well yet, majority have dyslexia or dyspraxia or ADHD, how come so many have these conditions. Look at low sugar diets, where sweeteners are used like aspartame (yuk look it up on google) I can identify if aspartame is in a product, it leaves a terrible taste in my mouth, many a time my DH has bought me a snack or drink whilst we are out, I take a sip or mouthful, get that horrid taste and go straight for the ingredients, sure enough out pops the name aspartame. I'm about to start the topic of healthy eating with 16-17 year old boys, that's going to be fun, trying to get them to try different things, seeing if they like it.

Apparently carrots are like sponges and absorb all the chemicals and pesticides that they are dosed with, we then happily chop them up and feed our children.

I am determined to get my parents veg plot productive this year. We have just bought 20 bags of mushroom compost, which will go on the garden to improve the very sandy soil. It needs some organic matter to hold onto the water and nutrients. The whole point of organic is to put the nutrients in the soil for the plants and they can take what they need. I'm going to use the seaweed nutrient too to help with germination and then improve the plants growth, tried it last year on a small scale and it was brilliant, really helped to grow strong plants.

We've got a few packets of seeds (Dad seems to think his pile of packets dated 2002 will still germinate, oh dear, he does waste his time and effort). We're concentrating on those that need to go in now on the windowsill, once germinated we can move them to Dad's greenhouse.

I'm cooking more from scratch and am much more fussy about what we are putting into our bodies.

What a shame that there is a whole generation who didn't get taught the basics of cooking, let's see a return to simple food, home cooked, it doesn't need to take an evening to make one meal, my slow cooker is my godsend.

Not only good food in, but good family exercise too. We've just discovered geocaching
it's fabulous fun, treasure hunting with a handheld GPS. We've reached 26 finds so far and love every minute of it. It really fits in well with the whole fit person idea.

I'm off to get a coffee.

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