RECIPE: VEGAN CARBONARA SAUCE

I was never a big Carbonara sauce eater, so I didn't really miss it too much once I went vegan. Some days however, especially those days after a long night out dancing, I get cravings for a creamy, savoury pasta dish. Today was one of those days, so I decided to try making a vegan Carbonara sauce and it took me less than 15 minutes to whip this up! It turned out so well (my brother loved it, too), that I just have to share it with you. Ready for some creamy, rich deliciousness?



Ingredients (serves 2):

• spaghetti
• 200 ml soy cream
• 150 gr smoked tofu
• 1 small onion
• yeast flakes, salt, pepper, basil and lemon juice to taste
• (if you have kalanamak salt, use that too - it adds a bit of an egg-y flavour to the sauce)

Directions:

1. Bring water to a boil in a big pot to cook your pasta in. Meanwhile, chop the tofu into small cubes and dice the onion.
2. Fry the onion in a bit of water (or oil - whatever you prefer), then add the tofu and fry it for a little while - when it starts browning a little bit, set aside the tofu.
3. Add the cream to the onions still in the pan, season with salt, pepper, basil (or mixed herbs), yeast flake and lemon juice. Bring everything to a slight boil, then let the sauce simmer and thicken.
4. When your pasta is almost ready, add the tofu cubes to the sauce and mix everything.
5. Serve the pasta with lots of sauce, extra pepper and yeast flakes - enjoy!

Quick & Easy: Vegan Burrito Bowl

Ever since I had my first burrito a few years ago, it's been one of those foods that I loved but only ever ate when I encountered a restaurant or food chain where I could get them. However, especially since going vegan, my love for beans - black beans in particular - has been growing. While I'm still on the lookout for those perfect, thin tortilla wraps (the ones I find are always too thick to roll a proper burrito with that won't open after 0.3 seconds?!) I've worked on my burrito bowls, which can be just as delicious and even simpler to make. The recipe for this burrito bowl is very basic and can be changed according to your tastebuds, I sometimes add nutritional yeast for a bit of a cheesy flavour or sprinkle fresh coriander over my bowl, but you can even go ahead and add some corn or grilled tofu! But first of all, let's go back to the basics...

Easy, healthy and oh-so-tasty: Smoothie Bowls

If you're active on any kind of social media - Instagram and Tumblr in particular, you've most likely seen smoothie bowls appearing on all your news feeds and dashboards. I myself didn't get the hype around these bowls at first - I always liked smoothies (who doesn't, anyway?) but I never saw the appeal of... well, spooning a smoothie out of a bowl. Really, smoothie bowls are blended fruit topped with more fruit, it's basically a liquid fruit salad? But oh was I wrong, I didn't know what I was missing out on until I finally made my first smoothie bowl for breakfast one day. What's so lovely about them is that you can make the simplest base (the smoothie itself) and then go cray cray with toppings! Since I've been eating them almost every morning over the last couple of weeks, I thought I'd share my current favourite smoothie bowl with you today.

Recipe: Homemade Apple Sauce

Everyone has a friend who doesn't like a certain fruit - for some it's bananas, for others mangoes or even strawberries and for me it's apples. Since I was little, I never enjoyed eating raw apples and if I ate any apples at all, it always came down to a few slices and then I was fed up. My dad always shakes his head at me, saying that I have to like apples because I'm such a fruits and vegetables junkie in general but I just... don't? 

However, I do like apples when they're "processed" (by which I don't mean that they need to be loaded with unnecessary sugars and oils by the way) and especially when they're warm! I find it very funny that I really don't enjoy eating apples raw, but you know what I looove? Apple sauce! My dad makes the best apple sauce ever and I always end up scraping the rest of it out of the pot, so I decided to make some myself today and share the recipe with you! It can obviously be eaten when hot or cold (hint: it's so much better when hot though) and if you're a cinnamon lover like me, don't be shy with adding it into the sauce!

Vegan Lentil and Strawberry Salad with Roasted Sweet Potatoes

Since I got quite a bit of good feedback on the recipe I recently posted, I thought that I might try to share recipes with you more often! Especially as I'm mainly at home, doing Uni work at the moment, I don't have a big amount of inspiration when it comes to blogging, so recipes are always a good alternative for me to write about, as I do cook at least once a day! When I bought brown lentils a little while ago, I wasn't too sure what to do with them (mainly because I wanted to try something new), but when (as you might've seen on my Instagram) the market at my Uni had strawberries on offer, I went a liiiittle bit crazy and bought five punnets of strawberries, haha! I remembered seeing lentil-strawberry-salads before, so I decided to try it for myself and I love it so much! To me, it tastes very summery whilst still being satisfying and filling. The first time I made it, I actually even added two blood oranges, so you really can play around with different variations of this salad. Enough rambling around for now - let's get to the recipe!

Disclaimer: I like my portions big, which is why I ate the entire serving I made, so if you're not as big of an eater, then you might have some leftovers - but that's never a bad thing, is it?

VEGAN PASTA RECIPE | Pasta with Lentil & Zucchini Curry

A couple of days ago, I posted a picture of my lunch on Instagram and Facebook and asked if any of you would be interested in the recipe for it. I got a few "yes!" answers, so I cooked it again, took a prettier picture (duh) and I can now share this tasty recipe with you! Bear in mind that lentils are super filling, so you might have to experiment with how much pasta you want to make, as I once made too little and once made too much pasta, haha! Enough blabbering now, let's make some food...

Warming & comforting lentil potato dish

Happy first of November! On the occasion of the new month starting and also the fact that it's World Vegan Day today, I finally got around taking some pictures of a recipe I'd been meaning to share with you for a while now. When it comes to Autumn or even Winter, one of the most important things for me is to have warm food, especially in the evening. In my opinion, there's nothing cosier than eating a big bowl of soup or curry on a cold Autumn night. As I love cooking and experimenting, I let myself get inspired by the numerous recipe videos I watch and threw together a poatato-lentil-pea-soup/stew/curry/whatever you want to call it! It's really easy to make, doesn't require big cooking skills and can easily be adjusted with extra veggies, etc. I decided to make this a 'read more' post, so if you're interested in finding out how to make one of my currently favourite hot, comforting meals, then go ahead and click the button! Do let me know if you tried making it :)

Quick & tasty vegan pizza!

I feel like this 'recipe' is almost too obvious to post on the blog, but since I really really love this meal and I've already made it for the second time within a couple of days, I thought it would still be nice to share this very basic but very delicious meal!

To make pizza for 2 people, you need: 2 or 3 pita breads (depending on how hungry you are and also I use whole wheat pita bread to make it a bit healthier), 1/4 to 1/2 onion, 1 to 2 garlic cloves, half a can of chopped tomatoes, dried and fresh basil, toppings of your choice (in this case I used mushrooms, bell pepper, cherry tomatoes and black olives), salt, pepper and olive oil (which is not in the picture). Oregano would be a great spice to add to the recipe, but that's something I yet have to buy. Depending on your taste, you can also add some chili or dried tomatoes.

This is as easy as it gets: spread the chopped tomatoes on the pita breads, then mix the chopped garlic, onion and olives with olive oil, salt, pepper and spices of your choice in a cup before adding the mix onto the pita. garnish everything with your toppings (apart from the dried tomatoes and fresh basil, they might burn!) and put it in the oven. I tend to preheat the oven at the maximum heat (usually around 250°C) as this comes pretty close to the heat of the traditional italian pizza ovens. 10 to 12 minutes should be enough for your pita bread to start getting crispy on the edges and for the vegetables to be cooked through without getting burned.

All you need to do when you've taken out your pizzas out of the oven is to add the fresh basil and your chopped dried tomatoes! If you're a big cheese lover (even though I am, I skip this step because this is already incredibly tasty the way it is), you can chop or blend cashew nuts to get a 'parmesan' replacement!

Would you like me to post more vegan recipes? I've got meals like zucchini pasta or falafel that I could easily show you how to make if anyone's interested :)

Thai Chicken Coconut Soup

When I stayed home the entire day last Tuesday, I couldn't sleep anymore at some point, and felt like cooking something for lunch. I made myself wok with chicken, rice noodles and vegetables, and since I didn't want to eat all the chicken at once, I looked for recipes on how to use cold chicken in other dishes. I googled "cold chicken meal" and one of the recipes that popped up was this great Thai Chicken Coconut Soup! On wednesday, I tried it out and I decided that it's just too good to keep it to myself! You can find the recipe here, but you don't have to make it exactly how it's written there.
I'm definitely making this soup again, it's easy, tasty and really fills you up! Let me know if you try it out! xo

PS: I wanted to change my header to something more simple, but no matter what I do, it always turns out to have a very light grey background (even though the background is clear white!) - do any of you know how I can change that?

Chewy sweet cookies

Since I haven't been motivated enough to do any studying and only did some philosophy so far, I spontaneously decided to bake chocolate chip cookies and they're so sweet and soft, yum! You can find the recipe here. I also made myself a raspberry-banana-milkshake, using soy milk, so I didn't have to add any sugar :)

Oh and by the way, I think I managed to fix the problem with blogger leading you to the wrong website!