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

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).