Homemade Falafels

Maybe you have a juicer and you don’t know what to

do with the pulp.

Here are some ideas:

If you’re into baking, you can put the berry- or fruit 

pulp into your cake dough or the veggie pulp into

your bun dough. But I’m not into baking…

So I decided to try homemade falafels, using my

recent left-over pulp (carrots, kale, and broccoli).

What you need

Chickpeas

Vegetable leftovers from juicer (not a must)

1-2 red onions

1 lime

1-2 red chilies

Garlic

Fresh parsley

Fresh cilantro

Flour

Turmeric

White pepper

Ground cumin

Cumin seeds

Sesame seeds

Salt

Vegetable oil

How to do it

Bath the chickpeas overnight (10-16 hrs)

Drain

Blend, add spices and lime juice

Add finely chopped chili, red onion, parsley, cilantro,

garlic and veggie leftovers. Add just enough flour to

get a workable dough

You can make two variations: Naturale 

Keep on frying until golden

Or make a seedy variation


- roll the falafels in sesame seeds

 ..and fry until golden

For the final serving fry cumin and sesame seeds in

vegetable oil until sesame seeds are brown and

the cumin seeds start to pop

Drain

Serve with pita bread

Or...

add any vegetables, yogurt sauce or Baba Ganoush

Baked oven eggs with asparagus, broccoli and squash

My cooker hood ventilator is broken. I broke it myself by cleaning too eagerly. One of the Feng Shui mishaps. 

Every week a local farm brings me eggs and as I don’t use a frying pan at all since breaking the ventilator, I have loads and loads of eggs.

Here’s what I decided to do to rid myself of them: Baked eggs with vegetables.

Just as I was starting the door bell rang. 

It was my friend and neighbour who brought me a lovely present: Truffle oil! And not just any truffle oil, but organic white truffle oil.

What you need

Garlic

Spring onions

(red) onions

Broccoli

Mushrooms

Asparagus

Squash

Many eggs 4, 8 or 12

Cream

Grated cheese

Fresh thyme and parsley

Chives

Black pepper

Turmeric powder (there are new benefits found!)

Salt

Olive oil

Organic white truffle oil from friend


How to do it

Use an oven-proof baking dish, or two. Sprinkle olive oil over crushed garlic and chopped onions and mushrooms. Place in 175 C oven and start chopping the squash and broccoli.

Once it looks like this:

Remove the baking dish, crack a few eggs in a big glass, add some cream and all spices. Mix, and pour on top of the warm mushrooms and onions. Then place the veggies elegantly / creatively on top of the egg-mix.

Put the baking dish/dishes back into the oven.

Now your kitchen may look like this (no photo-shopping):

But do not worry (and keep the left-over vegetable pieces for a nice next-day soup).

-------next day update:
For this version I used asparagus, broccoli, potatoes, one half-shrunk apple, onions and garlic. Some spice and left-over cream. Topped with asparagus tops and a squirt of lemon juice:

 ---- end of next day-update.

Remove dish from oven and crack more eggs directly in a sunny-side up fashion. A little before the eggs are of the consistence of your taste; add grated cheese, chopped spring onion stalks and thyme.

Decorate with cut fresh onion stalks, chives and parsley

Pour a minuscule amount of truffle oil on top and enjoy!

Tomorrow I will make a pancake with many eggs. And I will have smelly pee. And then more eggs are coming…phew!


Important PS. I don't feed my family with healthy vegetables only. Sometimes we revert to this:

..or we order pizza.

Snow Soup

The Snow Soup recipe is from a friend of mine, Sanna Zutter-Ilomäki. It's an excellent soup for kids.

What you need

2-4 potatoes

1 cauliflower

3-5 garlic cloves

salt & pepper

optional: nutmeg

..and to make sure the children agree to ingest these healthy ingredients; there are two secret weapons (please scroll down).

How to do it

Boil the potatoes (this time peeled potatoes, as the soup is supposed to be snow white), the cauliflower and the garlic in a modest amount of water.

The soup to the right is no-tossing mama's leftover soup (=the potato skins, the stem of the cauliflower, and garlic, parsnip, fresh ginger and kale).

Once everything is soft, perhaps an hour later, or longer -this is a soup that nearly makes itself - you blend and add the spices and now it's time take out the heavy artillery.

Wait! If you stop here (or only realize now that you didn't notice the secret ingredients); you are only a couple of tablespoons of butter away from a healthy version of mashed potatoes.

But let's get back to business; the secret weapons are:

Cream or cream cheese and cubes of bacon! 

Add the cream cheese, mix

Fry the bacon cubes -preferably in a cast iron pan as it's a kid's meal and add the cubes just before serving.

Tried and tested! 

Cauliflower benefits:

Cauliflower contains almost no calories but is packed with vitamins (most of the B-vitamins, vitamin K and C -but most is lost with the cooking), minerals (manganese, copper, iron, calcium and potassium).

Cauliflower also contains sulphur compounds believed to prevent cancer, a large variety of different antioxidants and detoxifying agents (that support the liver ridding the body of unwanted toxic compounds), dietary fiber, and omega-3-fatty acids.

Cauliflower is also high in choline, which is important for learning and memory.

Potato benefits:

Im am pro-potato, unfortunately potato has a bad name, even when boiled. 

Potatoes contain plenty of vitamins and minerals, just like any other vegetable. Potatoes are especially high in vitamin B6,  essential for good brain function.

And potatoes have some exotic compounds as well; one is a protein called "patatin" with antioxidant activity, and the others are the "kukoamines", that lower blood-pressure.

Now that you are highly motivated to ensure your kid will eat this, here is some more ammo. 

IF the weaponry above didn't do the trick, you can go for landmines:

These are cheese curls, not larvae.

The no-tossing mama's leftover soup turned out pretty OK, I added lemongrass powder, chili powder, oyster sauce and it tastes best as cold and with a squirt of lemon juice. 

A third soup can be made by mixing the two, works with or without lemon and gives an interesting colour:

The everything soup

A healthy and easy soup that allows to rid yourself of any left-over vegetables. The veggies can be a little off, the soup will be tasty even if you use wrinkly apples, sprouted carrots or softened broccoli.

3-4 potatoes

5-6 carrots

3 onions and/or 1 leak

3-4 garlic cloves

2-3 apples

2-3 tomatoes

kale or spinach or pak choi

1 broccoli

plus nearly any other vegetable you can think of or happen to have (celery, bell pepper, cauliflower, chili, chard, fennel, beans, peas, pumpkin, parsnip, fresh or dried herbs...)

1-2 vegetable bouillon cubes

black pepper

turmeric

a squirt of ketchup

secret weapon (scroll down)

Cut the potatoes and carrots (no need to peel off the vitamins and cause waste!), put to boil in some water. 

Keep chopping and adding the rest of the ingredients in above order. 

Do not add too much water, but allow the tomatoes, the kale and broccoli to soften in the steam. Keep the lid on and a low temperature, then you don't need to keep an eye on the cooking and you use less electricity / gas.

Once everything has softened blend it to a smooth puree, now you can add water up to  a wished consistency.  Add the spices.

The purpose of this soup is to ensure children (and lazy grown-ups) get enough healthy vegetables in their diet. You may choose to take to the secret weapon now so that the consummation of the soup is guaranteed:

Hot dogs!

Let the sausage pieces simmer in the soup for at least 20 minutes, then serve. The soup keeps at least 5 days when refrigerated, and you can easily deep freeze it for months (but it's highly unlikely you will need to -it will be gone in a couple of days).

Avocado salad for four days with limited food waste

I've gone through all the cupboards in my kitchen. 

It was a painful experience.

It's astonishing how food items pile up and go bad before one knows it. I only disposed of really very old stuff, as one shouldn't take "best before" dates too seriously. 

The "use by" and "best before" dates are referring to quality of the product such as taste, colour or consistence. 

The dates do not refer to safety. 

But despite applying this wisdom, this is how it all looked like:

Of course the waste ended up in the bio gas plant, but still the energy used to produce and ship these items is of a completely different magnitude than what can be regained.

After this kitchen Catharsis I made rules for myself: 

1. Buy only what you use

2. Use all you buy.

Sounds easy? We shall see.

Here is a simplified version of avocado salad that makes sure there will be no leftovers

4 eggs

2 avocados

4 small onions

1 cucumber, 1-2 bell peppers or other crunchy vegetable

1 lettuce head (green, red, any kind) or one chinese (napa) cabbage

Boil all 4 eggs, and put 3 of them after cooling in the fridge, use one each day.

Use 1/2 of an avocado (refrigerate the other half for the next day) -scoop the flesh out with a spoon and keep the skin if you have kids (ideas on how to amuse your children to follow).

Peel and cut one onion. 

Smash the avocado with a fork, add the onion cuts and some salt and pepper.

Add sliced cucumber/bell pepper and lettuce, top with sliced egg. Add turmeric powder.

Mix & Enjoy - and repeat for four days in a row.