Sausage Casserole Recipe

My housemate said something surprising to me last night. She's ready to lay off the meat substitutes :)

In slightly older news (a few days at least), I tossed the pumpkin flesh in olive oil, placed it in a large baking tray (I had loads of pumpkin), added a cup of water and baked it until the flesh was soft. As I did that, I pan cooked the seeds until they were beautifully golden. My housemate came downstairs (she'd been working nights) and said that the house smelled very 'eggy'. I didn't get that until I got home from work that night and walked in to 'burnt egg'. I have no idea if it's supposed to smell like that. It might have been because I prepared the pumpkin in stages. We'd brought the pumpkins about a week before Halloween but I'd left them sitting in a bag until Halloween night when I decided that I really must start them. And then once they were all cut up, I was so sick of the sight of pumpkin that I put the chopped flesh into a bowl, covered it in clingfilm and put it in the fridge. Then didn't deal with it until 2 days later.
Or maybe pumpkin seeds/flesh just smell like egg when they're cooking? Who knows? Google offers 'smelly feet' so maybe I should have cooked them immediately?

And I've spent the last week off the diet. I've gained about 4lbs, but then eating anything after being on a VLCD is bound to make you gain a little something. And those 4lbs will be off as soon as I've disciplined myself to get back on the diet.

I cooked another casserole last night. I decided that I was going to make a 'sausage’ casserole by adapting this Quorn sausage casserole recipe.
I didn’t use sweetcorn because my housemate hates it, and I didn’t bother with smoked paprika, mild chilli powder, sherry or tinned broad beans/cannellini beans either.

‘Sausage’ Casserole
6 quorn sausages, pan cooked, chopped
1 onion, chopped
1 pack chestnut mushrooms, chopped
1 red pepper, chopped
3 garlic cloves, crushed with Basil
1 tin chopped tomatoes
1 tin lentils, drained
1 litre vegetable stock

Nothing complicated. Just add all ingredients to a large casserole dish.

Herby dumplings
Vegetable suet
Basil, chopped
Self raising flour
1tsp Baking powder
Warm water

Combine ingredients until you have an elastic dough. Split into 6, roll into balls and add to the casserole.
I discovered that the basil leaves a slightly menthol aftertaste to the dumplings. The recipe I borrowed suggested I use parsley but, me being me, I ignored it because I love basil. I think I’ll trust the recipe suggestion next time, and it’s not as though it suggested thyme (which I loathe)

Cook on 200 until the housemate gets home from work and everything is slightly burned on top and the dumplings are mostly uneatable (unless you’re me and you love burnt and mostly uneatable food – years spent overcooking food has resulted in a love of charcoal).
There were just a few too many ingredients for the dish and it spilt over, so left a roasting dish underneath to catch the over flow. Maybe in the future I shouldn’t attempt to stuff everything into the dish.

Anyway, the liquid was soaked up so it wasn’t really a casserole (again), but it wasn’t a ratatouille either. And our taste buds have really opened up – it tasted beautifully subtle and you could taste everything.
Maybe next time I do this, it’ll be a fully vegan meal, with no meaty substitutes.

I'll try to remember to take a photograph next time. It wasn't really pretty enough for a picture anyway - the layer of charcoal kinda messed with it a little.

Planning ahead for Christmas recipes

I've made a decision about what I will be cooking for Christmas. Actually, I've made a decision about which recipes I will be using for Christmas. I will be making finger foods for the 21st, that I am planning on taking around to my sick grandmother.

Something to make now:
Christmas pudding
Mincemeat

Leading up to Christmas week that I'll be sharing w/neighbours:
Pumpkin spiced bread
Banana bread
Pumpkin Pie
Banana-maple oatmeal Cookies

Foods I am planning for the 21st are:
Individual Vegan toads in the hole
Vegan sausage rolls
Home made hummus with cheezley bread sticks
Individual pizzas
Roasted tomato and pepper soup w/flatbreads (no links, sorry, this is my own recipe)
Stuffed peppers w/cous cous
Baked paprika sweet potato crisps

Individual apple pies
Chocolate and coconut truffles
Vegan Milanos

Christmas eve:
Christmas cake
Chocolate tiffin
Gingerbread cookies
Mince pies
Chocolate cake

Christmas Day:
Quorn family roast (which will be the only non vegan item on the menu - I'll have a whole year to convince my housemate to allow me to try cooking a nut roast)
Swede and carrots
Vegan Cauliflower cheese
meat free bacon wrapped sausages


This Christmas, dinner will be brought to the Herbivore household courtesy of the following sites:
Fat Free Vegan Kitchen
Vegan Village
Parsley Soup
My Vegan Planet
Vegan Cupcakes
Razzle Dazzle Recipes
Cook Dannemann

My neighbours are going to love me this year! I hope some of this stuff will freeze ;)

Vegan Sites

I've been trawling the net looking for vegan suitable recipes for Christmas, and stumbled upon a spakly treasure trove of recipes to suit all occasions. I'll be honest, I walked into this diet thinking that it'll be 101 ways to cook chickpeas and lentils, and to be honest, there are a thousand ways to incorporate these into the foodie lifestyle, but there's so much more! You truly believe that you'll never eat another cheese scone or tiramisu dessert again, and I'm overjoyed to be shown how wrong I am!



Some of the sites thrilling me right now:

Veggie Love Planet

The Vegan Society

Vegan Village

BBC food

Veganfamily

Vegetarian Society

Parsley Soup

Veg family

Whole Foods Market

You may have noticed that a lot of the links are to the Yule section of the recipes. Enjoy and please feel free to suggest more :)

On the books front, my housemate ordered Skinny Bitch in the Kitch, which is just brilliant! I also received my copy the The Quorn Kitchen, which would have been perfect for when I turned Veggie back in June. I can still use it though - I just need to substitute lol.

I've also ordered my copy of Alicia Silverstones The Good Diet and Skinny Bitchin', which I'm anticipating imminently :)

Less than 100 sleeps

I usually spend Christmas alone. It's not a big deal: I'm Pagan and my family are Christian, so I celebrate Yule on the 21st and they all squash into my grandmothers tiny bungalow (they would be my maternal grandmother, my mother, stepdad, two uncles, my two sisters and their husbands).
The bungalow is far too small and I have issues with being 31 years old and forced to sit on the floor to eat dinner. My uncle, who lives with my nan and will be the man cooking up the sparingly dished out feast will not have the time to cook me a vegan meal. So I will avoid the family festivities as I always do.
Sadly, I am also single and thus am unable to snuggle up with anybody. It's a hard life.

My landlady/housemate will be spending the day with her own family and I will most likely spend the day in my dressing gown, watching Jason Statham, Timothy Olyphant, Ben Barnes (and various other types) play bad guys with either guns or weird paintings.
My housemate doesn't like typical Christmas fayre: cream covered pudding and mince pies, strange woman that she is, but I've decided that I may spend the day alone, but I'm still going to attempt making a pudding and mince pies so I can at least get into the spirit, surrounded by those that adore me: my cats and ferrets. And I may spend the next week eating pies and pudding and feeling thouroughly sick of them, but I  don't care.

I've found a recipe for a traditional Christmas pudding, a recipe for pastry and this recipe for the mincemeat filling for my mince pies from Delia Smith. I'm planning on an attempt to veganise everything!
If I suceed, I'll make it up to my housemate by making her a Chocolate Beer cake (see, I'm nice. And I love chocolate too).

Delia calls for a hell of a lot of shredded suet, pure butter and eggs. I'm going to see what I can do with vegetable suet, soya margarine and egg replacer. I have NO idea if it's going to work but I'm going to give it a go (I searched for vegan versions but they looked so lame! The mincemeat I found had half a dozen ingredients in it so I'm not going to bother with it)