Food that comes with useful stuff (Part 2)

This time, I have turned my small bottle of olive oil into a vase for an abandoned flower I found on the pavement. It was quite difficult to get the labels off, but I eventually succeeded with the same combination that saved my only dress from being defaced by chewing gum: washing-up liquid and salt – combined with some very hot water!

Veggie Sausage Casserole & Cold Baked Apples

Believe it or not – I’m still living from February’s party leftovers! Last weekend, I made some pizza with some remaining veg and last night, the remaining cream went into some delicious mash. Today, the final vegetables united to form a veggie sausage casserole. Basically, I needed to use up some peppers, carrots, mushrooms and veggie sausages. Also, I discovered a bag of brown lentils in the cupboard. The resulting recipe reads as follows:

2 onions
4 cloves of garlic
2 peppers
4 carrots
mushrooms
lentils
2 vegetable stock cubes, 1 pints of water
salt, pepper
majoram

Gently fry chopped vegetables for a bit. Add any brown or green lentils and at least 1 pint of vegetable stock. Leave to simmer. If the pot contents are getting dry, top up with vegetable stock.
When the casserole is done (when the lentils are soft), fry or grill at least

chopped quorn (or other veggie) sausages.

You can also make a lentil soup out of the ingredients and place the sausages in it whole.

Because the meal was so filling, I had to wait a little with my dessert. I found that cold baked apples actually taste very nice and don’t need any custard.

If I ever buy apples that don’t taste very nice raw I bake them with some butter, sugar and cinnamon. Sometimes I put almonds or sultanas with them if I happen to have leftovers from baking!

Cress of London

My mum sent me some garden cress seeds. I put half of them onto some cotton wool like we used to do at kindergarten, and within a few days, I could do my first harvest!

Clockwise: Rye bread with garlic cream cheese, toasted sunflower seeds and cress; carrot sticks; yoghurt with pineapple and pineapple juice from tin.

Cashew and Mushroom Burgers

Another burger experiment. Am still using up party leftovers & decided to throw the following ingredients into my housemate’s food processor to make some burgers:

1 onion
2 cloves of garlic
2 handfuls of salted cashew nuts
8 small mushrooms
1 tbsp of sesame seeds
about 1/2 tsp of hot Caribbean curry powder
2 slices of dry rye bread
1 tbsp of oats
1 large egg
some flour
pepper

Form patties and fry them until they appear to be cooked Burgers will also be great without the mushrooms – they will have a less spongy texture. You can also make them with different spices. There seem to be many nice cashew/nut burgers on the web!