Showing posts with label penne vodka. Show all posts
Showing posts with label penne vodka. Show all posts

Wednesday, 22 April 2009

Summery food

It's been so warm and sunny the past few days all I've been craving salady type foods, I made a really yummy salad platter today! A HUGE lunch! Mike didn't think I would manage it all but I did (with only a teeny bit of help from him hehe...didn't want any til he saw it!!). I love a plate of food which has lots of variety on it! This plate had spicy couscous (shop bought), penne vodka (from vcon, homemade minus the vodka), roast veg, mixed seasonal baby leaf salad, and tabouli, everything was homemade except the couscous.


Penne Vodka


Roast veg and baby leaf salad


Spicy couscous


Tabouli (recipe follows)


Tabouli
My tabouli recipe is based on the one my local vegetarian restaurant cooks and doesn't have mint or spring onion as other, perhaps more traditional recipes do but it is really yummy, Mike doesn't like tomatoes and he ate loads hehe
1 cup bulgar wheat
1 cup boiling water
1 scant Tbsp lemon juice
1 small red onion
3 smallish cloves of garlic
3 big vine tomatoes
big bunch of parsley
salt to taste

What you do!
Measure out a cup of bulgar wheat into a large mixing bowl, pour over the boiling water, a teaspoon of salt, crushed garlic and a few drops of lemon juice. Next finely chop your red onion and pour over the rest of the lemon juice, the acidity in the lemon juice will cook off the red onion a little bit and take the edge off. This step is not necessary but I don't like a strong onion flavour so I like to do it this way. Leave the bulgar mixture to soak up the water for about half an hour and the onion to cook down in the lemon juice if you are using this step. When all the water is absorbed and the mixture has cooled add in your chopped up vine tomatoes and parsley, check the seasoning and add more salt and lemon juice if necessary, enjoy!

Mango, Pineapple and Strawberries = yum!


Closeup!


It's competition time at Life, love violin's blog for a yummy bar and peanut butter giveaway so head over to enter and have a read of a fellow musicians blog!

Friday, 3 April 2009

Penne... vodka?

We had absolutely no idea what to have for tea tonight so I pulled out my copy of veganomicon and started flicking through, after several meal ideas we couldn't agree on we settled on trying the Penne Vodka. I've been wanting to try this for a while as I was interested to see how the almonds worked in the sauce. We only had one problem, no vodka... I've probably comitted some cooking blasphemy here but we went ahead anyway, it's unlikely I will ever have vodka in the house, neither of us like it or drink it so I figured it couldn't be bad without. It was really yummy! Since I'd already ignored the recipe and omitted the vodka we decided to ignore it a little more and add spinach and sweetcorn to get a bit more veg action into the tea! It was really good and reeeeaaally filling, we'll definately make this again!


This is the pasta we used, it's yummy and v. healthy!


I haven't done much baking lately :( I need some willing guinea pigs! I'm going to make Mike some truffles later that'll have to do for now!

I mentioned in my previous post about the 20 pull-up challenge and the 100 push up challenge, see links for more info. I'm starting the push ups tonight and I'm in week -2 of the pull-ups, the only thing I don't like about it is that it starts at -2, that's kind of annoying to have to start before week one! It would have been better to just add 2 weeks IMO, but that's just me being penickety! According to these websites I should be doing 100 push ups in 6 weeks and 20 pull-ups in 8!! I'll keep ya posted, I hope I get these results it does seem a bit optimistic but I'm gonna give it a go.

We've been having a back-off week this week to let our muscles recover, on Wednesday our workout consisted of 100 chair dips, 100 push ups (girly style on my knees!), 100 squats and 100 sit-ups.. doesn't sound too bad does it... it was!!! I'm still aching! I didn't even feel too bad when I'd finished but I woke up on Thursday sooo sore!

On Thursday I played badminton with Mike and my dad, they both always beat me but it's still fun, anyway this week I beat my dad, amazing lol I'm not sure if he was being kind though I told them not to let me win though, it's not so sweet that way hehe

Today, Friday I did the Randy Couture circuit I've mentioned before, I did it light and had 3.5 kg on each dumb bell as opposed to my usual 6kg so it gave me a light workout without stressing my muscles too much, my legs still hurt today and I'm hoping to go running tomorrow so I didn't want to burn out..