Can’t Be Effed To Cook (CBETC) – Five Things To Do With A Can Of Chickpeas

Goooood morning readers!

I hope you’re all feeling fresh and perky – I am – I’ve finally got my hands on nut milk bags and have been making green veggie juices at home, sans juicer. They make me bounce! And not in the fat way!

Anyway, what I’m actually writing about today is food for when you don’t feel quite so fantastic. These are the things you throw together when you just can’t be f’ed to cook. Maybe you have had some long days at work. Maybe you haven’t done your grocery shopping and feel like there’s nothing to make for dinner. Maybe you’re just feeding yourself, and I know that when I’m on my own I often can’t be bothered. Whatever the reason, all I ask is for you to keep some tinned chickpeas in your pantry. Or any legume really. And then what I’m going to do is show you five simple things to do with that tin of chickpeas.

The Nudist Raw Foodist: gettin’ fresh with food

It struck me this morning as I sipped my green smoothie, that if I were a nudist, I would definitely become a raw foodist. Running around the jungle in your birthday suit just seems incongruous with the idea of sitting down to a roast dinner with a knife and fork, don’t you agree? In my mind it would be far more fitting to eat freshly picked fruit, while leaping from branch to branch and swinging on vines (hoo-hoo-hoo-ha-ha-ha).

While I’m not quite there yet with the whole nudist thing, or the raw foodist thing, I’m certainly partial to an excellent salad or refreshing raw soup.

Escaping to the Blue Mountains: two soups and a spicy curry

For the past few days we have been staying in an adorable cottage in the Blue Mountains. We’ll staying the entire week.

Reading a lot, writing a lot. And taking photos.

Today it’s about zero degrees (or so it feels to us, softies that we are), and drizzling rain.

We’ve been pottering around the house in flannelette shirts, red wine in hand, nibbling rum’n’raisin chocolate and playing rummy in front of the fireplace.

While confined to the house, I’ve had the luxury of simmering soup for hours, slow-cooking a curry, and generally appreciating all that is warm and comforting.

Today I’ll share with you the hot and sour soup I whipped up yesterday, a more traditional vegetable and bean soup that sat on the stove for a good two hours before making it’s way into our tummies at lunchtime, and a spicy, creamy, slow-cooked mushroom and eggplant vindaloo.

Cooking tom yummy soup from scratch

This post wouldn’t have been so overdue had WordPress not crashed and lost my post at 11pm last night. Here goes!

According to a meat-lover who isn’t too crazy about vegetables, this soup is really good. Ash and I loved it too, so I thought it would be worth sharing. Loaded with fresh vegetables, the broth is tasty with only just a touch of coconut milk, which gives it that moreish small-children-would-ask-for-seconds flavour.

Plus, it’s made without tom yum paste.

A simple mushroom soup

One of the lovely things about serving a salad with every meal, is that it leaves freedom to simplify the ‘main’. Although personally I’m starting to think the salad is the main dish. The other night I did just that, simmering a mix of shiitake and oyster mushrooms in a simple broth of stock and garlic, punctuated with ginger and chilli.

The sweet (vegan) life

In other words, La Dolce Vegan!

I’m very lucky, living across the road from not only one of my oldest, best friends, but also, she’s vegan! Recently she gave me this book, which I’ve now read cover-to-cover. And she is willing to jump around in front of my tv with me as I (we?) do the 30-day shred. She is wonderful.

Jabberwocky wombok soup

I love the word wombok. It’s just so much fun to say! It seems to me that it should be a made-up word from Lewis Carroll’s nonsense poem Jabberwocky. It’s fun replacing a word of a song with it, and it’s equally as fun to cook with.

Wombok is actually just Chinese cabbage. Delicate, crunchy, delicious cabbage, shredded finely into a curry and sweet corn soup.

Two cold days, two warming soups

Summer is properly over. These last two days have been freezing (by Sydney standards). Today I wore a jumper and a scarf – all day – even inside the office! What a happy coincidence that this week we’re doing soups.

The first one we had last night, and Ash summed it up in one word, “restorative”. It’s a deep red, richly flavoured, chunky soup, and it had us each going back for seconds.

Old Mother Hubbard went to the cupboard to get her poor doggie a bone…

Sometimes I feel like Old Mother Hubbard, when we haven’t done the grocery shopping for the weekend and the likelihood of getting it done is diminishing. I’ll have to scrounge around the kitchen in search of ingredients to fill a week’s worth of dinners.

Some say soup is for the soul, I’d rather it get in my belly

I think it’s no secret that I love soup. I honestly could eat it for every meal. I regularly will take any leftovers, pour in some hot veggie stock and call it lunch (which has lead to some interesting discoveries – such as the phenomenal baked kibbeh soup that I am yet to post). I’m eating soup right now. If there’s a good soup on a menu I’ll most likely order it. You might even call me a soup connoisseur. So when I say that this soup is one of the tastiest I’ve ever tried, trust me, I know my soups.