QUICK & EASY HEALTHY VEGAN RECIPE # 8

Vegan ‘tortilla pizza’ – ready in ten to fifteen minutes!

This, my healthy culinary friends, is one of my all time favourite quick, easy, healthy vegan meals. I call it the ‘tortilla pizza’. I made this this evening, and I don’t know about where you live, but where I am many takeaways do a ‘Two for Tuesdays’ deal on pizzas. And yes, tonight is Tuesday! Have you ever felt like a pizza, but either didn’t want to eat something unhealthy, spend money on a takeaway or just stick a frozen pizza in the oven? Have you ever felt that you just can’t find a shop bought pizza with the toppings of your choice, or without cheese?! Well, this may just be the healthy, quick, cheap and yet surprisingly delicious alternative that you have been craving! 🙂

Once again, with all my recipes, they are just a starting point and springboard for your own culinary creativity so by all means experiment with toppings, sauces, and techniques.

I’ll walk you through my method to kick-start a few of your own ideas.

Firstly, I washed, chopped and gently fried some mushrooms in sunflower cooking spray.

After this, I drained the excess liquid from the mushrooms and put them to one side in a bowl.

I then stir fried a generous amount of fresh spinach leaves, and a handful of sliced cherry tomatoes and chopped white onions, adding seasoning to taste. In this case I used herb salt, cracked black pepper and mixed herbs. Lastly, I added back in the mushrooms and gave everything a quick stir together. I took this off the heat and in a pan, lightly heated a flour tortilla, and once slightly crisp, I spread some shop bought pasta sauce over it as a pizza topping. As the vegetables I used have a reasonably high water content, I was careful to drain them off before adding them to the tortilla base using the handy little holey metal spatula contraption that you can see in the picture! 🙂

Et voila, in 10 to 15 minutes you have a delicious meal or snack that you can eat either as a pizza or roll it up for a wrap, fold it over as a calzone, or add another tortilla on top and crisp them up on the pan, cut into slices and eat as a quesadilla!! 🙂

I hope you enjoy trying this one out, it truly was delicious and I have saved some of the toppings to take into work tomorrow so that I can have a yummy ‘pizza wrap’ for lunch 🙂 Enjoy!

 

 

 

 

 

QUICK & EASY HEALTHY VEGAN RECIPE # 7

This is another very easy and quick meal – perfect for dinner after a long day at work, and so delicious!

Very simply, just boil some pasta, and if you like add a little salt to the water. I added spinach and cherry tomatoes into the pan once the pasta was almost ready. Next, I simply drained the water, stirred through some green pesto, added pepper, and topped it off with a little bit of sliced red onion. This was great with pesto, however you can add any sauce you prefer, sprinkle on some pine nuts or chia seeds or other nuts or seeds of your choice, and add any other seasoning or vegetables to your own taste.

Super simple, and yet both healthy and delicious, and ready in less than 15 minutes! 🙂

QUICK & EASY HEALTHY VEGAN RECIPE # 6

Baked potato in a bed of stir fry veg with pesto and humous.

This is another very quick, easy and tasty baked potato recipe. Slice and bake the potato (once again I cooked this in the microwave for around 6 to 7 mins, but times will vary).

Using sunflower cooking spray, I stir fried some veg and added seasoning to taste, and topped it all off with some green pesto and red pepper humous. Delicious! And the possibilities are endless – try experimenting with your veg, sauces, and seasoning, add beans or sprinkle some sunflower or chia seeds on top – quick, easy, tasty and healthy! Enjoy! 🙂

QUICK & EASY HEALTHY VEGAN RECIPE # 5

Nothing quite beats a good ole’ baked potato for some healthy comforting food. I work a full time job, and by the time I got home this particular evening, having juggled my various ‘to dos’, I was hungry and at a bit of a loss for what to eat, and I really did just want something quick, easy and healthy.

And so this humble spud saved the day.

You know how it works: slice the potato, I put mine in the microwave for around 7 to 8 minutes, however you can vary the times according to your make and model, or bake it in the oven, or wrap it in tin foil and bake it over an open fire! 🙂 Afterwards, I popped it under the grill to crisp it up a bit, and then ate it with some salad with dressing, red pepper humous and guacamole. I would recommend having something additional such as pinto / kidney / baked beans, etc for protein, but I was far too hungry and tired that particular day, yet this quick and easy meal did just the trick!

QUICK & EASY HEALTHY VEGAN RECIPE # 4

For anyone joining this series, I am an amateur home cook, and for most of my life I have been vegetarian, however, more lately, I have been moving towards more of a vegan / plant-based diet. Therefore, this has taken me on a journey of experimentation, to create my own quick, easy, healthy vegan recipes from the healthy ingredients I have been incorporating into my lifestyle. Of course, I’m sure many others who know more about cooking can do it better, however, I hope that some of you find these ideas helpful, healthy, creative and nutritious ~ all that to say, if I can do it, I’m sure you can too! 🙂 Happy cooking! xx

For this dish, I boiled white rice with green beans and added in some spinach leaves that I needed to use up. I think the process took around 15 to 20 minutes.

I oven roasted frozen sweet potato cubes for around 20 minutes with some seasoning.

You can add your preferred seasoning to taste, however, at various points in the cooking process, I used salt, pepper, lemon juice, mixed herbs, a sprinkle of red chilli flakes and some sunflower oil spray when oven cooking the sweet potatoes, but you can be as inventive as you like according to your own taste buds and for whoever you are cooking for.

The sauce is from a ‘free from’ range of supermarket sauces, and is vegan. It is a ‘korma’ sauce that I mixed in towards the end.

Freshened up with a side of cucumber sticks and red pepper humous, this made a tasty yet simple meal, with both fresh and slightly spicy flavours, balanced by the lemon juice and light seasoning.

I am very new to seasoning, as you may be able to tell, and I tend to just experiment with what I have, however, any advice from more ‘seasoned’ cooks 😉 will be heartily welcomed!

As a side note, I made quite a lot of rice, and therefore I only mixed in the sauce with the portion that I ate as shown in the picture. This means that I can use the rice for my next meal, or even eat it the next day, and change it up a bit, perhaps by adding some spring onions, or other sauces or flavouring to keep it interesting. With the sweet potatoes, as well as having them as a side, you can also add them into your dish if you prefer.

Hope you enjoy, & happy cooking. 🙂 xx

 

QUICK & EASY HEALTHY VEGAN RECIPE # 3

 

Potatoes – 4 ways.

This is also an experimental recipe that worked out quite well. 

Ingredients:

Baby potatoes.

Spinach leaves.

Cherry tomatoes.

Vegan BBQ Sauce.

Seasoning to taste (I used cracked black pepper, herb ‘salt’, sunflower spray, chilli flakes, lemon juice and reduced-fat red pepper humous).

Method:

This is very simple, and yet is also an elegant and tasty dish. I washed the baby potatoes and cut them, cooked them on full power in the microwave for around 8 minutes (settings will vary depending on the make and model of your m/w). After which I stir fried a portion of the potatoes with some spinach leaves using sunflower spray, lemon juice, black pepper, & herb ‘salt’, and added in cherry tomato halves towards the end.

I used another small portion of potatoes to make potato ‘stacks’, layered with the vegan Memphis BBQ sauce. I mashed the rest of the potatoes, and from the mash I made a potato round, which was seasoned through with pepper and a few chilli flakes. The last bit of potato I served as mash mixed with seasoning, and with a little of the BBQ sauce through it.

Garnished with the baby spinach leaves, and some sauce, with a side of humous. Not bad for an amateur cook, and very tasty – why don’t you try it, you might like it if you’re in the mood for potatoes 🙂 !

 

 

QUICK & EASY HEALTHY VEGAN RECIPE # 2

If you work in a 9 to 5 (or 10 to 6 in my case) job, do you ever get home and feel too tired to cook or eat properly? I know that many times I have felt that way, and have just needed some instant energy. Unfortunately, living in a world of ‘convenience’ and heavily processed foods, this often means that reaching for something quick and easy to eat can too often take the form of grabbing that bag of crisps (or ‘chips’ ), snacking on chocolate or biscuits / bars before dinner, ordering in takeaway or having a quick microwave meal. 

While that’s ok from time to time, in the longer term we need to make sure our bodies are fuelled with food that is beneficial to us. So for another quick, easy and healthy solution, here is another experimental recipe that once again I pulled together after work with the ingredients I had at home. Stocking up on healthy staples means that it is a lot easier to feed our bodies well when we’re too hungry or tired to spend much time in the kitchen. 

Ingredients:

• Fresh spinach leaves
• Sunflower cooking spray
• Cracked black pepper
• Herb ‘salt’
• Lemon juice
• Baby potatoes washed and sliced
• Cherry tomatoes
• Vegan ‘sour cream’
• Vegan / ‘free from’ range of ‘Memphis BBQ sauce’.

This is pretty easy to make, and involves a few simple steps.

Lightly stir fry fresh and washed spinach leaves (I used half a packet), adding seasoning to taste.

Arrange the spinach in circular fashion around your dish.

Having boiled the potatoes, I then stir fried them in the vegan BBQ sauce which is delicious having a sweet, smoky, slightly spicy and tangy flavour – highly recommended for happy taste-buds! As I am not a cook as such, but simply someone who experiments in the kitchen, I then put the potatoes in an oven safe dish and put them in a pre-heated oven for a few minutes – for those cooks among us, feel free to share or advise on cooking techniques, as my technique is quite simply to experiment and make it up as I go along! 🙂

Arrange a portion of the potatoes in the centre of the bowl or plate, once again adding seasoning to taste.

Drizzle with vegan ‘sour cream’, and finish off with some cherry tomatoes.

And the verdict….?

This may seem like a very light salad like meal, however I made more potatoes than can be seen in the picture and had to put some away for the next day, as this dish is surprisingly filling. Taste wise the BBQ flavour offset with the fresh taste of lemon drizzled spinach and seasoning was a lovely and tasty balance – just make sure you get the right balance for your taste and don’t over do it with the lemon juice and / or BBQ sauce. The cherry tomatoes perfectly complemented the other flavours and textures. Sometimes keeping things simple and classic is the best way to go, and this is a quick and healthy alternative to ‘fast’ or convenience food and really doesn’t take long to make. 

The vegan Memphis sauce was so delicious, and as I stir fried the potatoes lightly in the sauce, it was just right and had me going for seconds! However, after eating a bowl full of potato slices I did feel quite sleepy, and had a quite restful (and hopefully restorative, with the nutrients that I fuelled my body with) sleep. x

 

Quick & Easy Healthy Vegan Recipe # 1

Firstly, my apologies for not blogging for a while ~ I have been keeping very busy and productive with my ‘Big Spring Clean’, decluttering and house renovation (not to mention a full time job!) ~ I am pleased to say that I have accomplished a lot of my household goals for February and March, which was no easy feat, and I will shortly continue writing my series that I began at the start of this year on home & lifestyle and will update you all with some lovely before & after pictures!

However, now that the cosy season of hibernation has passed, and the task of preparing my home for the year ahead is about 80% accomplished, I suppose it is a natural progression to turn the focus towards maintaining a healthy lifestyle. 

So now that hopefully we are back in the swing of things, and keeping motivated to make the best of the year ahead, here is a simple, healthy, cost effective and very tasty vegan or plant-based recipe for you to enjoy! 🙂 x

Ingredients:

• 2 slices of Burgen soya & linseed seeded vegan bread (lightly toasted & cut into cute triangles 😉 ).
• Fresh cherry tomatoes.
• Sliced cucumber.
• Reduced fat red pepper humous.
• Mexican beans (canned) lightly cooked / stir fried in sunflower cooking spray, with lemon juice, cracked black pepper, herb ‘salt’, and red chilli flakes (add to taste depending on preferred hotness – after finishing making this dish I accidentally spilled *a lot* of flakes into my bowl – I don’t usually like very spicy food, but mixed this in, ate it all, enjoyed it, and actually felt good afterwards, despite a few more glasses of juice than intended 😉 . Remember to check out the health benefits of chilli and add a little to your diet every now and then).
• Topping of green pitted olives.
• Drizzled with vegan ‘sour cream’.
• Pressed apple juice (not from concentrate).

I made this as an experiment using a few of the ingredients I had at home. It was quick to make, very filling, tasty, and surprisingly I noticed that I felt very good afterwards – I’m not sure why, as I had been struggling with my mood that day – perhaps the addition of chilli flakes (even for someone who usually tends to avoid spicy food as I do) perked me up a little, who knows  – but one thing is sure, healthy can be comforting, tasty and a real boost to your sense of wellbeing. xx