Chickpea and sweet corn bolognese; gluten-free, vegan

I have a very strict budget currently.  Not only do I have to make every meal at home but I'm also forced to resorting to cheaper recipes.  This was a excellent solution to both while remaining allergen friendly.  It is high in protein and high in nutritional content.  It's simple, tasty and very filling.

Ingredients:

Tinned tomatoes; 400g
Onion; 1, small, diced
Garlic cloves; 5, peeled and diced
Tarragon; 1 teaspoon
Sage; 1 teaspoon
Sweet-corn; 330g; drained
Mushrooms; 3 medium sized, diced
Tinned Chickpeas; 400g, rinsed and drained
Gluten free pasta; Cooked

Directions:

On medium heat, gently cook the onion.  Add the tinned tomatoes, juice and all. Add the herbs, garlic, sweet-corn, chickpeas, mushrooms. Simmer over low heat for 20 minutes.  Stir through warm, cooked pasta and serve.

Jacket potatoes

Jacket potatoes are a very easy option.  You can have any combination of topping that appeals to you and they tend to be very filling while remaining easy on the stomach.  Best yet, for the base as you need is a large potato, oil and salt!

Directions:

Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Place oven in a baking tray.  Pour some oil over it and sprinkle with salt. Roll the potato around so that it's completely covered in the salty oil.  Pop in oven until it is cooked all the way through.   (Depending on the size of the potato and the quality of the oven this can take 1-3 hours).  The potato will be cooked when a knife can be shoved through without resistance.  Internally the potato will be soft enough for mash.  Add a dollop or margarine for texture.

Suggested topping:

Minced chickpea and herbs.

Tuna

Bake beans

Egg mayo

Potatoes

Potatoes are often quite cheap.  They can easily bought in bulk and can be stored at room temperature in most conditions.  They are one of the most useful vegetable you can keep in your kitchen.  They can be used in soups, stews, pies, side dishes such as mashed potato, chips, wedges and on their own and roast potatoes.  Cooked potato can last quite awhile in the fridge.  So you can cook up a batch of roast potatoes, for example, and store them for a lunches and dinners later in the week.

Potatoes are a good way to bulk out your diet when trying to avoid wheat products as most food places will have a friendly potato option on the menu such as chips or jacket potatoes.  They might even have nice potato salads. They only thing top be wary of is that oil that is used to fry things like chips.  Quite often every fried food in the shop with be cooked in the same vat, meaning that the oil will contain traces of gluten.  Most places are quite happy to cook it separately if asked.

Strawberries and chocolate sauce; dairy free, gluten free

This is a perfect example of why you shouldn't blog while very hungry because you've cut all junk foods out of your diet.  I am sitting here trying to think of something that is edible but doesn't contain to much sugar or fat.  This is extremely hard when all I currently want is fatty, sugary foods.  Like, mmm donuts.  Or fresh strawberries with chocolate sauce... yummy.

Although I refuse to believe this option is anything but healthy.  It has fruit! You don' have to have a lot of sauce, really.  The preparation for this is in two parts




Ingrediants:

Strawberries:

A punnet of fresh strawberries
Lemon juice.






Sauce:
A block of Dark chocolate (Vegan/raw); 100g
soy milk or preferred alternative; 1/4 cup
sugar; 1/4 cup
corn flour; 1-2 teaspoons




Directions:

The directions for this comes in two parts as, obviously strawberries and sauce are prepared separately.  It is recommended you prepare the strawberries first as by you have prepared then the sauce would have cooled.

Strawberries:

Wash the strawberries and remove the leaves.  Slice in half and place them all in a bowl.  Drizzle the lemon juice over them and stir around so that the lemon juice has covered the strawberries completely. Cover and place in the fridge while you prepare the sauce.  The lemon juice will prevent the strawberries browning in the mean time.

Chocolate sauce:

For the sauce you will a pot and a heat-proof bowl, the bowl must be able to rest in the pot.  Half fill the pot with water and place on the stove.  Place the bowl in the pot and turn to med-high.  Break up the  block and drop into the bowl. Pour the milk and sugar in and stir until the chocolate is melted.  If the mixture is to runny add the cornflour to thicken it up.  Remove the sauce from the heat and serve with the strawberries.

Ecover review.

Ecover is quickly becoming the most well known eco-friendly brand, and overall this is well deserved.  All the cleaning product they make are fully biodegradable.  The only niggle I have is that while the plastic they use for packaging is fully recyclable I can't seem to find any information on whether they accepted they packaging back for further use.  This seems to defeat the purpose of the three R's: Reduce, Re-use and Then Recycle.  Not only do they not seem to reduce consumption by making bulk packaging more available but they don't seem to Reuse the packaging they produce in the first place.  Of course, this is not to say you can't reuse they packaging at home your self, but the only information on refill comes in a new bottle for old trigger sprays.  So while they produce products that don't impact on the environment the packaging it comes in only serves to further consumption of an unsustainable product i.e. the production and further use of plastic.

Having raised this problem I did some further investigation into is.  Ecover sells to shops in bulk with the idea that these shops will sell refills, therefore reusing packaging.  However this relies on other companies selling the cleansing products at an affordable price per litre, which very rarely seems to be the case.  More to the point Ecover website advertises that that these refills are done from 25ltr containers.  I have yet to see this in any shop nearby and would very much like to know where one is because the closest shops that do refills only re-fill from 5ltr containers, which I can by myself.  While this option is nice in theory, it would be better is the company offered the option of taking back packaging for reuse.