Awesome Vegetarian Recipes Online

Today you can call me a 'vegan taff', I won't mind.  Taff is a slang word that was often used to describe a person from Wales. There are a few different explanations to its origins, some say it refers to the River Taff (which sounds more likely) and others claim its is derived from the Welsh name David pronounced Dafydd in Wales.  I remember being called Taffy quite clearly when I was small, especially whenever I would visit distant relatives in England, their neighbours would hear our accent and shout out 'taffy's' here.   Anyway, today's prompt is ' make or eat a traditional local dish' and tomorrow's is 'h onour a human (or non-human) that inspires yours veganism' .   So I thought I would take the opportunity to share a post that I shared last year for Vegan Mofo,  as this touches on both: it is filled with lots of Welsh vegan goodness, some traditional and some original and its respectfully acknowledges St David, the patron Sai...

Yes its all about the tomatoes and this week I have mostly been eating tomatoes for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Here is a Orzo Pasta Salad with tomatoes and runner beans.  I made a big batch that was good for three working day lunches. My work lunches are often home-made as buying from eateries adds up over the week.  So here are some other lunches from the past.  Barley Salad Pot with grated carrots, pumpkin, sunflower seeds and raisins.  Portion of spicy nuts,  I don't do breakfast during the working week, so a banana or apple in the morning is what stops my tummy from rumbling.  And this time some Nakd cocoa delights, I actually like these very much, but would be happy to give the Nakd bars a miss.  A wholemeal bread sandwich right at the back and a muffins and flapjacks now and again, but as I said sometimes its nice to have a sneaky treat.    A different Pasta Salad, yes with tomatoes again, but also black  ol...

Because of my South Asian features and heritage, a lot of people who don't know me stereotypically assume I just specialise in food from the Indian Sub-Continent.  And yes, although I can make a mean killer Chickpea Curry and Creamy Lentil Dal ,  I have always branched out and made other worldly vegetarian cuisines.    I don't and have never wanted to be put into an 'ethnic' box. I have always avoided tokenism at work where people have used their ethnicity to progress; or permitted employers to use their photograph in promotional materials, when in reality the organisation was doing very little in relation to workplace diversity and addressing inequality, and I am sad to say such tokenism occurs somewhat in cooking too. I refuse to play that game and be a stereotype. I have and will always continue to remain true to myself.  I am diverse person and love cooking ethnically diverse world wide cuisine.   Saying all this, I am very aware and proud of my root...

The same neighbour that gave us some cherries a little while back, knocked on our door and handed us over a bag of the reddest apples I have ever seen in my life.  He is growing them for home brewing -  cider production.  They are good eaters and I have been taking some into work to munch on, but I will do some baking with them too.     We repayed the compliment, this time not with plums but with a mixed bag of tomatoes.  The tomatoes have certainly been rewarding us this year.  As well as tomatoes, I harvested the last of the runner beans and purple beans.   Sadly I don't think I will be getting any Rainbow Swiss chard from the garden, but I did get a handful of black Tuscan kale.   Some Cherry tomatoes had fallen to the ground in the greenhouse, D brought them in and placed them in the windowsill to ripen.  And finally these are the last of the plums.   Here is a Cinnamon Plum and Almond Galette that I made. ...

I do struggle to  know what to do with runner beans in the culinary sense, but I do like growing them in my garden. So with the prompt being 'use all seasonal produce',  I was excited as it gave me the opportunity to use  some of the runner beans  as well as some of the cherry tomatoes tumbling from the greenhouse.  Oh I must not forget the last of the purple french beans too, that turn green on cooking.    I made a recipe called Harissa Runner Beans that I saw in the cookbook  Veggiestan . The only thing that I did differently was use Blodyn Aur  Lemon Infused Rapeseed Oil, hence the Lemon Harissa Runner Beans.   The recipe reminded me of a lot of Sri Lankan  Ceylonese Runner Beans  that I made many years ago, as well as some  cooked in paprika. We had these simply with Jacket Potatoes.  I have also made some Green Chilli or Verdi Chilli to sound more interesting with runner beans and green beans, but I will s...

I am not a lazy person when it comes to making pastry from scratch . I make pies all the time, but I wanted to make a different style of pastry this time, both easier and perhaps lighter. I've been enjoying making sweet Galettes with homegrown fruit , so a savoury one was just waiting to be eagerly made. Its my first time baking with spelt flour, and I thought it would be a lot more sturdy to hold the filling,, but the recipe I followed from a blog that I hadn't previously used a recipe from, sadly the pastry just collapsed and crumbled.  Despite the spelt pastry falling apart, the pastry was crisp and biscuity in texture and this balanced well with the sweetness coming from the roasted sweet potatoes. As I had really enjoyed  VPud 'Black Pudding' last time , I was very keen to get my hands on some more to make this particular galette as I have been imagining this combo would work well together. And it did, the vegan Black Pudding surprising spice  kick offsets...