More vegetable stew

Meat Free Monday is a campaign to raise awareness of the environmental impact of meat production and consumption. It encourages everyone to go meat free for one day a week and is a JOLLY GOOD IDEA.

This week I actually remembered about it. I bought lunch in the work canteen; an egg mayo sandwich, Quavers, a banana and a slice of sponge cake.

And it was all yellow.

In the evening I volunteered to tackle the new surfeit of vegetables, and settled on a veg stew, because you can just bung everything in it, innit. That's the magic! The magic of stew! I used this as a foundation, but I didn't have some of those vegetables, or those beans, and ended up changing it a fair bit. Makes round about enough for four. I served it with brown rice.

 
1 medium onion, peeled and chopped
1 (big) clove garlic, peeled and chopped
2 medium carrots
1 kohlrabi
2 medium potatoes
1 beetroot
1 small courgette
A small pile of broad beans, removed from their pods, if pods is the right word
2 big tomatoes, chopped
1 tbsp olive oil
1 normal sized tin baked beans in tomato sauce
½ tsp thyme
1 tsp Marmite
2 tsp Bouillon powder or 1 vegetable stock cube
A big squeeze of tomato puree
salt and pepper to taste

• Pre-heat oven to 160°C
• Heat oil in a large casserole dish.
• Fry the onion and garlic together for 5-10 min on a low heat.
• Scrub and sandblast/peel all vegetables.
• Chop kohlrabi, potatoes and beetroot into 1cm cubes. In they go.
• Slice carrots and courgette. In they go.
• Add tomatoes, puree, thyme, marmite, broad beans and baked beans.
• Add stock/bouillon and enough water to cover, stir it about, lid on, oven, 45 min. I added too much water so finished off with 10 minutes' intense hob action and a little cornflour to thicken.

Vegetable stew

K made this and jolly nice it was too, but I'm just experimenting with uploading photos from my fancy-schmancy new phone.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.4.2

Dough

After an exhausting, fun and somewhat unusual day catwalk-modelling and lugging stuff about in the Arndale (for Bike Fabulous), I went for some eats with some Friends of the Earth. Initial plans had been to go to the Cedar Tree in the Northern Quarter (a delightful Lebanese restaurant containing a... questionably delightful grotto set into one of the walls) but the Cedar Tree was full (with no room even in the grotto) so we ended up nearby in Dough.

I'm not sure how long Dough has been there, because I'm not very observant and I'm not cool enough to be allowed in the Northern Quarter that often, although I vaguely recall it used to be an architect's office. It's an Italian chiefly specialising in pizza, quite large, yet still spacious and roomy, though the selection of 80s music played put me in mind of a singles bar frequented by middle-aged divorcees. They have a reasonable selection of lagers (some relatively exotic) but no proper beer, and there is wine, and a selection of expensive Bellinis, whatever a Bellinis are. The crossroads location and large picture windows make it ideal for watching the girls in their summer clothes pass you by, especially if you're Bruce Springsteen.

The menu covers all yer usual classics but there's some real odd stuff on there and I decided to 'go inauthentic' with the West Indies pizza, a dish that would surely have the inventor of the pizza, Julius Pizza, spinning in his mausoleum. It was topped with curried lamb, red onion and peppered banana, which is clearly wrong, but was no less delicious for it.

The Friends of the Earth all had lettuce pizzas. I don't know if they enjoyed them; they were too pale and weak to be able to tell me.

Afterwards we tried to take our drinks downstairs, but discovered that when the chairs are all up on tables, there's a reason for that, and were shooed next door into the adjoining bar, Apotheca, which had a fine selection of beers but was too noisy.

Very little

The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft agley. After a flurry of initial blog activity I have been busy, busy, busy, and generally too busy, and too gosh-darn hot, to cook properly, although I made a rhubarb clafoutis and have eaten SEVERAL sandwiches. This evening, feeling somewhat akin to a baked potato and in no mood to do anything at all, thank you very much, I succumbed to a takeaway from Globe. Globe is simultaneously the best and the worst takeaway in Manchester. More on that later, I daresay.