Quick and Easy: Five Beans Chilli (Vegan)

Procrastination, as defined by Wikipedia is: "procrastination refers to the act of replacing high-priority actions with tasks of lower priority, or doing something from which one derives enjoyment, and thus putting off important tasks to a later time."

And I am definitely procrastinating.  I am currently in the process of job searching which is rather dull, and I HATE HATE HATE applying for jobs, and I hate interviews even more. I think today I have hit a brick wall.

So anyhoo, I thought I would share my recipe for Heinz Five Bean Chilli.

I've had a can of Heinz five beans which The Boy bought lurking in my cupboard for a while, I didn't know if this was an intended purchase or whether he mistook them for average baked beans.  Either way, they had been bothering me for a while.  Chilli just fit, and given the weather recently I needed a hearty warming meal that I could make ahead and just warm up, and spicy food always takes better the more it's reheated...

Ingredients (Serves 2)
1 can of Heinz five beans
1 tbsp sunflower or vegetable oil
1 onion, sliced
1 clove of garlic, crushed
1 green or red bell pepper, chopped (I used ASDA's frozen chopped mixed peppers)
1/2 tsp chilli powder (I used hot chilli powder)
1/2 tsp dried mixed herbs
1 tsp tomato puree
Salt and pepper to season
Plain rice to serve

1. Heat the oil in a pan, add the onions, garlic and pepper and fry until soft.
2. Add the beans and the rest of the ingredients (except the rice of course!) and cook for 10 minutes.
3. Serve

Simple and tasty, what more can you ask for.

Enjoy

I Heart Leicester Part 2: Mirch Masala

One thing I love about Leicester is it's multi-cultural, and a 2011 census revealed that 15% of Leicester's population are Hindu. This means that Leicester is quite accommodating to a vegetarian diet, as many Hindus are vegetarian (but not necessarily).

The Boy recommended we visited Mirch Masala, which is a vegetarian restaurant that not only offers Indian cuisine but also serves Indo-Chinese, Italian and Mexican (and also some more "British" options for the traditionalist ;-) ).  In addition, a lot of it's options are vegan or can be made vegan.

We started with Mogo Pili Pili, which are cassava chips in a spicy sauce, and nachos.

Cassava chips

I'd never had cassava before, but it tasted similar to potato, but with a firmer texture. I will be keeping an eye out for it at my local Asian supermarket and at the 'exotic fruit and veg' stall at my local market.

For mains, we ordered a meal each and shared them between the six of us. I went for chana (chickpea) masala and a masala naan.

Chana Masala

Masala naan

The chana masala was really nice, I'm usually not a fan of chickpea curries and only went for it because I was craving a masala, but I'm glad I took the chance.

We also had a curry platter, chilli paneer, vegetable hakka noodles and a magarita pizza- well, why not?

chilli paneer

curry platter

vegetable hakka noodles

pizza

Here is a picture of my plate of food:

Not a fake meat product in sight!

By the time we finished, we all felt like we wouldn't need to eat for a week!

If you're ever in Leicester, you should definitely give this place a go.

I Heart Leicester! Part 1

I really really do!

My love affair with Leicester all started in November 2010 when I first started dating The Boy, who is doing a medical degree at Leicester University.

I remember helping him move into his new digs and walking from Leicester station to Leicester Royal Infirmary at stupid o'clock on a cold November morning, laden with as many of his possessions as humanly possible. I then spent a week in Leicester,  entertaining myself most of the day whilst he was in lectures.

You'd think that walking round Leicester city centre every day for five days, would get boring, but it didn't because LEICESTER rules! Or maybe I just have a high boredom threshold/memory of a goldfish, but each to their own!

Leicester's New Walk area. A fully pedestrianised walkway, even cycling is forbidden!

I decided to do a dedicated post (or two) to the city, as The Boy is due to finish his studies this year, and we (me, and The Boy's parents) went to visit the Midlands last weekend and (apart from his graduation) this may be the last visit to Leicester for a long time *sob*

First thing, we arrive in Leicester around midday after a 3 hour(ish) drive, by this time I could eat a horse -unfortunately I am vegetarian, and also Findus has recalled it's lasagne so I had to settle for Muffin Break.  I went for the home made vegetable pasta bake (look at it, it's a work of art!) and a mango and passion fruit smoothie which was delicious, for once being healthy and resisting a chocolate milkshake paid off!

We then walked around the town centre for a while, where we all decided we should all pitch in some money and buy one of the giant £65 Easter eggs they were selling in John Lewis and I discovered Leicester's Fair Trade Shop and the shop that holds all my future Christmas and birthday presents!

Later on we went to The Dry Dock, which is a boat that has been converted into a pub, nothing much to tell here, but look how awesome it is!

COMING SOON, TO A PC NEAR YOU: I HEART LEICESTER PART 2 including Mirch Masala

Memories of Mallorca and home-made paella (Vegan)

We went to Mallorca last summer (third time) and whilst there I had my first ever paella.

Vegetarian food was pretty hard to come by where we were, although the fact that was 35-40C during the day meant that my appetite was non-existent (apart from ice-cream cravings!) so it wasn't too much of an issue.  It was so hot I couldn't even face the thought of eating any of the GIANT olives on the market stalls.

Despite this, we managed to find a handful of places with decent vegetarian options- one of them did vegetarian paella. This was probably the only Spanish thing I ate throughout the trip, the only other places that did decent meat free options were Italian (expensive restaurant with a great view of the sunset on the beach, but couldn't remove the stones from the olives on my pizza), a Chinese place and an Indian with cute and ingenious serving plates!

Anyway, during the Christmas holidays, The Boy decided to try and recreate our trip by making a paella, being using this recipe. The recipe says to use any rice, but he got paella rice anyway.  We added a squeeze of lemon juice to add to the flavour.

The recipe is pretty good so I made some more for tonight's tea, served with a ginger ale is a wine glass made from a recycled beer bottle!