Couscous Salad

Couscous salad is a quick and simple lunch, perfect for home or a lunchbox. You can vary the ingredients based on what you have in, and it’s very useful for using up leftovers or ingredient odds and ends – that last stub of cucumber or half a carrot. Whilst it can be packed with lots of fresh salad vegetables, the couscous base is filling, so the goodness of this lunch is not undone by a circa 3pm carb-crash that can only be addressed with half a pack of ginger-nuts.   

Continue reading

Cooking without Sulphites

A delicious and simple sulphite-free omelette. Also gluten-free and family-friendly!

I am no stranger to adjusting my cooking to avoid certain allergens. Milk protein, chickpeas, sesame, peas and nuts can all cause problems for various members of my family, potentially turning a nice meal into a panicked whirlwind of swelling, hives, wheezing and syringes of anti-histamine. However, when I needed to cook a meal suitable for someone with sulphite intolerance, I found I was completely unprepared. It seems there are sulphites in practically everything!

Continue reading

The Best Vegan Trifle That Wasn’t

 

IMG_0108

This was supposed to be a recipe for a vegan trifle. It was going to be easy, fast, and extremely delicious. It was going to be in honour of my mother, whose birthday would be this month, had she not passed away in 2007. I was going to use Alpro custard, coconut whipped cream, and some kind of shop-bought vegan cake. Unfortunately, this kind of cake appears not to exist in our area, or if it does, it was so hard to find that I lost the will to continue searching for it. Continue reading

Jacket Potato with Creamy Greens

Jacket potato in a bowl with a creamy sauce of peas, spinach and spring onion

It is National Student Money week, and so I find myself looking back on my student life and what constituted a ‘meal’ in those days. The thing about student money is that you usually have less than none of it, and there are many things that you want, or need, to spend this non-existent money on. An almost universal part of the student experience is therefore trying to feed yourself as cheaply as possible.

Continue reading