Nostalgic Dinner

I hope you’re ready for another walk down memory lane cause today I incidentally threw something together for dinner that strongly reminded of my all time favourite childhood dinner.

I remember pleading with my mum to make it at least twice a week and as it happens I came across an old “friend book” lately (you know the ones you would hand out to all of your friend back in primary school to let them answer all kind of weird questions, or did this only happen in Belgium?) and I answered exactly that to the question “What’s your favourite food”:

Oven dish with potato mash, broccoli, minced meat in a cheesy sauce covered with grated cheese.

Here are the swaps I seemed to have made from my mum’s original recipe:

I swapped mashed potatoes with millet.
I swapped the cheesy sauce with a broth-hummus sauce.
I swapped the grated cheese with mozzarella.
The broccoli stayed as it always was and I didn’t use anything to replace the minced meat but you could always use vegetarian ‘mince’, lentils or minced meat for the carnivores among us. Just prepare it in a skillet and add it to the rest of the ingredients when you put it in the oven dish.

‘Millet and Broccoli Oven Dish’
serves 2

• one serving of millet ( a cup?)
• half a broccoli
• vegetable broth
• 2 T of hummus
• mozzarella

Cook the millet in vegetable broth (ratio 1:2.5) for 25 minutes. I don’t really know how much millet I’ve used, I used a little teacup at home to measure it out, not that this information is of much use to you. Just use what you think is the proper amount for 2 people to eat from.
Once done take it of the fire and let it sit for another 5 minutes.

Cook the broccoli until tender (about 5 minutes), prepare the sauce with about 100ml of vegetable broth, whisk in the two T of hummus.

Preheat oven to 200°C (390 F).
Layer the oven dish with the millet and broccoli, pour the sauce on top and top with about half of a mozzarella bowl. Put in the oven for about 20 minutes, make sure to turn on the grill for the last 5 minutes so the mozzarella will get some colour.

Eat from a bowl, because all classy people eat their dinner out of breakfast bowls!

Love, M.

Green

Can a person become addicted to broccoli?

If possible, I think I’m addicted to broccoli.
If not possible, I still think I am addicted to broccoli!

I’ve been eating broccoli with every meal except breakfast and even managed to sneak in some broccoli in my snacks, but I did not truly fall in love with broccoli until I ate today’s lunch.

 ‘Quinoa Broccoli Bowl’
serves 2 as a main dish, 4 as a side dish

• 6 T of quinoa
• 12 T of vegetable broth
• half a can of tinned lentils
• half a medium broccoli
• 1 T of hummus
• some lemon or lime juice

Cook the quinoa in the vegetable broth: add the quinoa when the broth boils and reduce it to a simmer, let it absorb all of the liquid (it takes about 20 minutes). Cook the broccoli in boiling water for about 5 minutes. Rinse the lentils

As soon as the quinoa is done, add 1 T of hummus and stir to combine. Add the lentils and the broccoli. Sprinkle with some lemon/lime juice right before serving.

This stuff is so incredibly creamy! It reminds me of when my mum used to make broccoli in cheese sauce.

Fruit for dessert: Melon + strawberries + cottage cheese + sunshine = one happy Maxime!

Happy Monday!
Love, M.

Portability

This week’s discovery:

Lentils!
Although it is probably a bit weird to be a vegetarian and never have eaten lentils before.

‘Wild Rice with Lentils and Mushrooms’

• 2 portions of wild rice
• lentils
• mushrooms ( 2 handfuls)
• 1/4 of an avocado
• olive oil
• optional: hummus

I didn’t really weigh or measure out anything, I just scooped together a couple of things and it turned out great, so sorry for the lack of measurements.
Boil the rice according to the directions on the package. Slice the mushrooms and fry them in a skillet in some olive oil. I used canned lentils so I didn’t have to do anything special with those. Dice the avocado and when everything is done just add it together in a bowl. Serve with some hummus.

I took the leftovers with me to class: nice, yummy, nutritious and portable.
I’ve been thinking a lot about portable lunches lately since there are two days each week I have to eat during class, so you’ll be seeing a lot of those in the time to come.

Love,M.

Girls Night In

With Daphne staying with my dad for the weekend, Friday night was the perfect time for me to prepare my ‘fancy’ couscous idea for my mum and me.
So we cracked open a bottle of red wine and I put together this amazing dinner, which as a bonus is also really easy and not time consuming at all!

‘Couscous Gusto Italia’
with mustard maple syrup dressing

• half a cup of couscous
• sun-dried tomatoes
• mushrooms (8 big ones)
• mozzarella
• olive oil
• oregano, basil
• for the dressing: 1 T of spicy mustard, 1 T of olive oil, a sprinkle of maple syrup, lemon zest

Place the couscous in a large bowl (I used half a cups for my mum and me, but still had leftovers the day after), pour boiling water on top of this (ratio 1:1) and let it sit for a couple of minutes.

Chop up the mushroom and sauté them in some olive oil in a skillet. Chop up the sun-dried tomatoes and the mozzarella.
Fluff the couscous with a fork and add the tomatoes, mushrooms and mozzarella. At this point you can also sprinkle some olive oil on top, or use some oil from the container of the sun-dried tomatoes you used to get some extra flavours in there. Don’t forget to season before you serve this.

My original plan was to serve the couscous with a dollop of hummus (which tasted amazing as well), but as a side for the couscous I prepared a spinach salad with a mustard maple syrup dressing and as soon as I tried this dressing with the couscous I was in heaven! Prepare the dressing by stirring together 1 T of very spicy mustard, 1 T of olive oil and a drizzle of maple syrup. Drizzle on top of the couscous, sprinkle with some lemon zest and prepare to be dazzled.

Love, M.

Chickpeas and Peanut Butter, Oatmeal and Hummus

Is there such a thing as a chickpea overdose??

Cause if there is, I’m sure I’ve almost passed the limit!
I discovered a super yum snack today,
I already had it twice before it was even 2pm, it was that great:

Now I am aware of the fact that this does not look all that appetising, but bear with me for a second, okay?

I got inspire by Oh She Glows’ chickpea and peanut butter spread, but I used a teaspoon of peanut butter and about 1/4 a teaspoon of honey and put this in the microwave for about a minute to coat these chickpeas with. Talking about an easy and smart snack.
(You should have known by now that I have a soft spot for melted peanut butter ;))

Sound weird, looks weird, tastes… like heaven in a bowl!

And apparently there’s something in the air which makes people crave weird combos, cause for lunch I wanted some oatmeal (not that weird) but I was craving it with hummus on top of it!
Now, that was an idea I didn’t totally trust so I made some plane oatmeal and tried a spoonful with some hummus on top…

it was glorious!

I just trashed the bowl with a couple of dollops of hummus and added some chopped nuts for extra crunch.

You should all go and try this, seriously you won’t regret it!
I really wanted to try adding some chocolate chips to the hummus oats but I didn’t want to push my luck, so that ‘ll be for next time 😉

Is any one else having strange cravings lately, or is that just me?
Love, M. 

Monday’s Tale

I woke up with a head full of cotton wool…

that, or a small rodent decided to build his nest in my nasal cavities and sinuses while I was asleep.

My tea stash, in combination with the café mocha I had from the coffee machine during American literature, really saved my life today.

Here’s what I ate:

Stove cooked oats with flax seeds and sauté apples with cinnamon sprinkles
I haven’t had sauté apples in ages! Just slice the apples and heat them in a skillet on medium heat with some olive oil, sprinkle with cinnamon. Super yummy as a snack and as an oatmeal topping. Nice and comforty too.

I’m proud to announce that avocado is back in my life!

Dear Avocado,
I don’t know how I’ve done without you all this time, I promise you, from now on, nothing can separate us  ever again!

Lovely grilled sandwich with: mashed avocado and black pepper, slices of tomato and courgette and some hummus.
If you thought melted hummus was great, you should really try the melted hummus and melted avocado combo.

Daphne’s soup for dinner, great to fight off the germs.
It has carrots in it, and tomato, and celery and a lot of other stuff but I forgot, I should ask her… I’ll post the recipe as soon as I’ve asked her !

Here’s what I did:

I went to my Latin linguistics class and had a meet up with my professor after that to talk about my bachelor paper, which will be on Macrobius’ view on Roman Religion (which probably doesn’t sound familiar let alone interesting to you guys, but I’m pretty excited about the research I’m going to do, I can’t wait to get started on it).

I did some groceries, tried to decipher my notes from the linguistics class (why do I always seem to write in some secret code?!)

After lunch we had our first class of American Literature, the previous years we only had English literature, and I must say it’s quite fatiguing to listen to an American accent when you’re used to taking notes to a British accent (okay, we had a semi-Irish lad once too, now that was hard work!).

One striking thing in this class was when the professor was talking about the establishment of a literary tradition and he said :
‘It’s usually small things that drive history’ ( something with beaver hats and why North America got discovered, I’m not going to bore you with the details ;)).

So from now on, I’m going to let the small things count as well, if small things can make history, they can just as well make my day, right?

My body is craving some yoga and a good night sleep,
so that’s what I’m going to give it.

Love, M.

On Ancient Toaster Ovens

My toaster is probably the most important (and most used) kitchen tool lying around in my tiny kitchen. It’s also by far the oldest piece of equipment I own (well technically it’s my parents’ but I took it with me to Leuven so now it’s mine).

It toasts bread (obviously ;)) which is brilliant cause I’m a real toast fiend! But it’s not enough for the bread to be toasted, it has to be still warm as well.
You can’t fool me with bread that was toasted half an hour ago, that’s just a ‘crunchy’ slice of bread, it has to be à la minute.

In addition to toasting bread, it can do more magical stuff as well…
it’s actually an oven in disguise.

It comes in handy to make some yummy “pizzas”: for lunch I had a slice of bread with hummus, topped with zucchini, tomatoes and all kind of herbs which I shoved under the oven thingy! Lunch made in heaven.

Delicious grilled zucchini, made in a toaster

‘Chickpea and Cherry Tomato Quinoa Salad’

You’ll need: 6 T of quinoa cooked in 12 T of vegetable broth, a can of chickpeas, a dozen of cherry tomatoes and some olive oil.

This is a super easy to assemble: just cook the quinoa until all the liquid is absorbed, add the veggies, drizzle with some olive oil and pop in the fridge to cool a bit, et voila!

I ate the quinoa salad with some canned tuna (don’t hate on canned tuna, it’s cheap, it’s easy and it’s delicious!).

On  the side I had a plate of grilled zucchini, some with aubergine salsa and some with hummus (I had some left of both in my fridge).
This was divine, especially the zucchini pieces with melted hummus on them!

Zucchini flower food art 😉

You might have noticed that I’m already ‘cheating’ a bit on my meal plan, but  it’s only a broad plan, no need to be strict about it.
It simply was too hot for a warm quinoa dish with veggies and grilled fish so I opted for the a cold dish a bit similar to the one that’s on the plan for Wednesday.

Now go grill some zucchini, kids!

Love, M.