Quick and Easy Pasta

I had great plans for getting on here over the past few weeks with recipes to share, honest I did.  However, as life sometimes goes, nothing really panned out how it should.  The recipes either went slightly wrong or the end effect was not quite as delicious as the picture had you believe.

Enjoying the garden in lieu of jobs I should be doing!

Aside from that life took over again as we celebrated our youngest’s birthday, celebrated our youngest great nephew’s birthday, caught up with family and remembered my mum on the first anniversary of her death.  It has been a whirlwind of activities and emotions which has seen me tend to coast through each day rather than set a plan. Trying out new recipes wasn’t really high on the priority list though with an upcoming Infant Massage Course in Nov I was happy for the distract ….. and the tasting opportunities 🙂

So I thought that I would at least share something with you … a very quick and easy pasta salad dish which himself stole and copied from some restaurant many years ago.  It has transformed over the years as our eating habits have changed which is just the kind of recipes I love.  Now instead of regular pasta and feta we have plonked in GF pasta and tofu along with whatever mixture of veg, olives and tomatoes take our fancy.  It really is an easy one to do and great if you have to prepare a meal ahead of time as you can have it cold or warm and as everything is pretty much optional you can be creative and make it just how you and yours like.

Ready to serve

Stolen Pasta Delight

• Packet of Fusilli – GF or regular
• Red onion
• Capiscum
• Tofu (can replace with feta and add in last)
• Fresh tomatoes  (chopped into large cubes)
• Olives
• Olive oil (for cooking in and drizzling on afterwards if you wish)
• Zucchini (chopped)
• Mushrooms
• Anything else you want to pop in 🙂
• Fresh basil leaves
• Dried Italian Herb Mix

-Boil the pasta until it is el dente, strain and leave to cool

-Fry up the onion, mushrooms, capsicum and zucchini until they are close to being s

-Add in the  fresh tomatoes and tofu with a little bit of Dried Italian Herb mix and continue to fry off until you can see the tomato is cooked.

-Remove from the heat and blend gently with the pasta and other ingredients (olives, sun dried tomatoes, feta etc).

-Sprinkle with fresh chopped basil leaves and drizzle a bit more oil on if you wish.

-Enjoy

Hope this find you happy, healthy and enjoying each day as it comes.

Arohanui

Y

www.becominghealthy.co.nz

Vegan Pizza

Here I am … back again in NZ and in the bus blogging about food.  We have just spent a wonderful 2.5 weeks away in Thailand immersing ourselves the culture, food and heat.  It took us a while to get used to a new rhythm of eating out for each meal, not having to do dishes, seeing amazing sights, getting our chores done for us and relaxing however not really that hard to adjust to. 😉  Being able to see the food being cooked and going through the markets was a real eye-opener for themselves and one I’m sure they will remember for a while to come.

One of our eating spots in Bangkok

With the heat there tends to be more liquids comsumed and the appetitie just doesn’t seem as big. Now that we are back though the body is definitely feeling different and the difference in diet ….. going from lots of rice and noodle soups to our usual (and a bit stodgy) fare has left it feeling more than a little ‘blah’.  In addition to this it was our boy’s birthday over the weekend so there appeared all the treats that he had requested and missed by him while in Thailand.

Aside from some Vegan baking there was also a request for vegan pizza which I have recently been making with a damper base.  This damper base super quick and easy to make and much more obliging to be stretched or rolled into shape than my usual pizza base.  So it is my number one go to base at the moment ;).  While himself didn’t want anything much on his … as the photo bears witness …. this is delicious with more veg (grated root vegies, sprouts, mushrooms and fresh herbs) or with some refined beans, avocado, cornchips and salsa for a different twist.  For those of you non-Vegan (to which I am assured are the majority, by himself) a bit of cheese and/or sour cream on top finishes it all off.

A little sparse but just as requested by our boy.

Vegan Damper/Pizza base

makes one large pizza or 2 small (22x27cm)

• 1.5 cups white flour
• 1/4 cup wholemeal flour
• 1 tsp Baking powder
• 1 tsp olive oil
• 3/4 cup cold water
• Pinch/grid of salt
• your selection of dried herbs (basil, sage and thyme are nice)

– Pre-heat the oven to around 180-200 Celsius

– Combine all the ingredients into a bowl and mix until they form a dough.  There is no need to knead however you may want to stick the dough together a bit with your hands.

– Divide into half if you are making two pizzas or leave in one lump then stretch and roll out the dough onto a baking paper lined tray.

– Apply topping as you wish and bake for around 10 mins or until cooked.  I gauged this by the base rising up a little in ‘bubbles’ or by the cheese melting on non vegan ones.

– Enjoy!

Until the next blog (whenever that may be) I hope this finds you happy, healthy and enjoying life to the full.

Arohanui

Y

www.becominghealthy.co.nz