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
Life as it happens to be 