Beetroot chips, Sweet Millet soup, and Tofu sausages!

I decided today was the day I would try to make my beetroot chips :) Yesterday I bought a little pack of discounted baby beetroot for $1.50, it's perfectly fresh. We've mainly been having it steamed with potatoes as a side dish.

So I sliced the beetroot as thinly as possible (I thought I got it quite thin but apparently not thin enough) and lay them out on a piece of baking paper on the glass dish inside the microwave, ground a little bit of salt on it and zapped it on high for about 2 minutes before it started to smoke so I turned it off for a few minutes. Then zapped it again, and turned it off...flipped over the slices and repeated. If I zapped it for longer they probabaly would have been perfect, but I think little sections of beetroot caught fire...well I didn't see fire but when I got them out there were little circles of burnt =D

They tasted fine though, they tasted almost raw (good thing I like raw beetroot), but chewy instead of crunchy. It was odd, and I will try again another day. I think I'll put them under the grill instead of the microwave next time! I had them with a banana smoothie (pink from the extra bits of beetroot I chucked in) with wheat germ and whole oats. Tasty :)

For tonight I decided to make a 2 course meal with a light soup as a starter. I made Sweet Millet Soup from Karma Cookbook by Boy George and Dragana G. Brown. Yeah Boy George wrote a macrobiotic vegan cookbook! Who knew? I didn't, until I saw it when I was scouring through the cookbook section in one of those cheap cheap book sale stores, hoping to stumble upon a gem...I did. This book is great! I got it for $3!

 Anyway, the soup is just millet, pumpkin, parsnip, carrot and onion boiled in water until vegetables are soft and millet cooked properly. Sprinkle some green onions on top and you have yourself a tasty soup! Apparently it helps any digestive problems you may have. It's very light and naturally sweet. The only 'flavouring' is a sprinkle of salt. Perfect starter.

As soon as I saw this recipe for tofu sausages, I knew I wanted to make them. So I did :) I blended the tofu to make it as smooth as possible (it feels like a sticky dough!) and cooked the cracked wheat (recipe didn't specify but I didn't want to break my teeth :P). I used almonds instead of walnuts because I don't like walnuts,but almonds worked fine. While they were cooking they smelled like peanut butter for some reason!

We had them with steamed brocolli, Steamed-and-then-grilled potato and beetroot (this makes the potato taste like a baked potato!), hummus, and this amazing beetroot and orange relish Nadine picked up for $1 at her work (discount rack, yerrrr!).

The sausages held together very well (I refrigerated them for about an hour before cooking too, only because I made them earlier. I don't think it would make too much of a difference.) I made them quite a bit larger than the recipe says, too. I made 12 out of the mix. 3 would have been enough for one person :) As you cut into them they do crumble but that's fine. You gotta like tofu to like these! I wouldn't give them to someone who didn't really, like my dad :) We loved them. I will make them again.

Picnic!

It was the perfect day for a picnic. Nice and sunny, no clouds, no wind....:) We went to the botanic gardens which I think is my favourite place. I didn't take many pictures of the food because, well, it didn't look that nice. But it all tasted just perfect :)

We made a bush turkey friend:

I wasn't sure if she would actually attack us or not so I had to keep chasing her away. Pretty sure she just wanted our picnic food haha.

The bean salad was probabaly the best part. Definately a good thing to take to barbeques or whereever. I cooked up about a cup of mixed beans - chickpeas, kidney beans and navy beans were used. I coated it in apple cider vinegar and lots and lots and lots of black pepper. I also put in a grated garlic clove and some dill (because that is the herb we have most of in the cupboard at the moment for some reason) and a little bit of cooked pasta.

Another favourite was the olive oil and bread. I went to the bakery across the road in the morning to get a french stick to have with this bottle of olive oil I bought when we were in Tuscany. Pretty sure it's the most amazing olive oil I've ever tasted. (We did a winery/olive grove tour in Italy and I picked it up there. The winery who made this oil also made a fantastic chianti red wine, too. We drank that while we were there).

For the rest of our picnic we had: homemade chickpea crackers, hummous, guacamole (I forgot tomato!), some kiwifruit and some olives. Nadine brought home the olives from work one day for free because they had no label on them. Unfortunately they were the yucky tasteless plain black olives, but I couldn't just throw them away because they were free! Olives! So I decided to marinate them to see if it would make them edible. It did. I put them in a container with red wine vinegar, garlic, black peppercorns, left over brine from a jar of kalamata olives we hada while back (I always keep it to cook with - can pretend your eating real olives) and mixed herbs. They are just fine :) The texture isn't very good, but I think that's one of the main reasons I don't like the black olives in the first place. We didn't eat many, but they will be good to cook in a tomato sauce or something. :)

So our picnic was a success. We sat for ages waiting for the turtles to come out of the water, but they only stuck their heads up :(

The other day I bought these chips on a whim:

Beetroot chips. Ahhh best thing ever. Expensive, though. So I think I'll be attempting them soon. I think beetroot may be in season now so they shouldn't be too expensive. I love beetroot, I think it has to be my favourite root vegetable. I can't eat the canned stuff anymore!

Today for lunch I made this pasta:

It turned out delicious but way too big! We seem to be eating bigger and bigger meals lately so we are trying to make an effort to eat human sized servings of everything. I blame the cold :)

In it is: mushrooms, onion, garlic, spinach, tofu, chili, a mushed up burger patty I found in the fridge and some basil and hummous on top. It was a good meal, but probabaly better to eat for dinner than lunch. Oh well.

I usually do 20min of yoga everyday along with a fair amount of weights work (usually just while I'm waiting for my computer to load each page - yes it's that slow) and I'm now trying to go for a walk daily too. On our picnic there was an incline and I nearly died trying to get up. Very sad. So walking it is. Today I lasted 10 minutes, it's so damn cold! my throat gets so dry within minutes. I drink water, but then I get a stitch! Lose either way haha. I'm sure it'll work out fine. Tomorrow I'll make a bigger effort. Hopefully it's sunnier.