Brunch and lunch ideas

Hey guys, sorry for being bad bloggers. We might not blog every single day as we are busy students with lots of coursework, LCR nights and hangovers.... But we will (a couple of times a week maybe?) try do a little post to get you guys going on your cooking and hopefully inspire you to eat healthy and yummy food!! oh I am sorry if this blog post is poorly written as Charlotte is not here to help me out with spelling mistakes, grammar etc.... don't judge!

This post is basically about ideas for lunch and brunch!
This sunday we had a very simple brunch: toast, scrambled eggs and a fresh salsa on top made of tomatoes, avocado, cucumber, lime juice and salt and pepper! Simple, healthy and so damn good (like the LCR on tuesdays hah lol).

Another brunch we had, you could also have as dinner or lunch, was some roasted veggies with sunny side eggs on top. We used sweet potatoes, onions, courgette, brussels sprouts and tomatoes. Season with salt and pepper. SO YUM, especially when you cut the yolk and it kinda becomes a sauce over the veggies! mhmhmh (errrm no I'm not flashing my tattoo if that's what you're thinking.......)

The last thing I will write about in this post is this weeks bulk lunch! So we had the pasta salad last week which was so good. This week we made a tuna paste, and we made loads so it will definitely last for the entire week. This way we don't have to think about lunch everyday, it's just there!! in the fridge!!! We use it as a spread to put on toast, crackers or rice cakes, or if you have some salad leafs you could make a nice little salad of it, or if you feel extra hungry: a tuna sandwich!! We used flavoured tuna from aldi (black pepper and lemon), celery, sweet corn, grated carrots, some lime juice and light mayo!

Enjoy your lunches/brunches guys!! Lot of love from Marianna, the rice cake addict!

Asian Cod with Oven Baked Veggies

Okey I am writing from a PC and it is really confusing, I am used to a Mac and this thing doesn`t make sense, at all, AT ALL..... Anyway, anyhow, any who, any when, we made a really yum yum dinner today :) We had some cod in the freezer and decided to bake it with veggies and spice it up with some Asian flavours!

Ingredients:
We used cod, but you could use any type of white fish, or actually salmon would be great, but lets be honest, white fish from Aldi or Tesco is much cheaper than salmon from Scotland, and we are students (as you probably have figured out, or not, depends how look at it lol).
1 courgette
2 leeks
1 pepper
1 garlic clove
1 chilli
A bit of ginger
Juice from 2 limes
Soya sauce (lots of it!!)

£ 1.2 each !!!

Since the cod was frozen we baked it for 5 minutes by itself. After that you can throw your chopped up veggies in an oven dish (again throwing is our favourite thing to do hah). Then put the fish on top, drizzle the chopped chilli and ginger on top of the fish, squeeze some lime juice and add soya sauce.

Put some foil on top before baking this cute little dish, because you want to keep the fish moist and yummy. Oh you don`t need any salt because the soya sauce is already salty enough, but if you like it salty you could do, but that`s not good for your heart, and you need a heart to function and be a good student and save the world. Enough random talk from my side, sorry, I like to talk, even though I am not talking, I am actually writing if you haven`t figured that out yet. LOL.

Aaaaanyway, bake the fish and veggies for 30 minutes on 200 degrees and that`s about it  :)

Enjoy the dish with even more soya sauce because it is sooooo goooood!! The picture is from before baking everything and pouring soya sauce on top! :)

Smoked Salmon and Pulled Turkey Rolls

Yooooo people, long time no talk, yea? I am still in Norway, heading to Norwich tomorrow, fuuuun. Okey, soooo me and my mom are having a homemade veggie soup for dinner tonight. However, the fun part is the cute little side dish I prepped in literally, LITERALLY 5 minutes. The ideal would be to use norwegian potato flat bread, but you will unlikely find this at Aldi's or in Norwich for that matter, so you could either make savoury pancakes, or buy tortilla wraps (but it won't be the same, so I recommend you guys to take a little trip Norway and fill your suitcases with potato flat bread, oh and Toro brownies mix, but thats another story lol).

Ingredients:

Smoked salmon and pulled turkey (you get really nice and cheap Scottish smoked salmon from Aldi, but pulled turkey is a bit more tricky to find, you really don't need it, you could use parma ham, or just normal ham, or tuna, the flavoured ones from Aldi are really nice, especially the one with black pepper and lemon. You know what? Use whatever you fancy).
Cream cheese (this is kinda essential)
Spring onions I you feel like it
Parsley or any other herb (oh maybe not rosemary, don't know why, just not feeling rosemary).
You could shove in some arugula or spinach (I didn't use it this time).

Spread the cream cheese around the whole wrap/pancake/potato flat bread, put 2-3 slices of smoked salmon inside (depends on the size of your wrap/pancake/potato flat bread), sprinkle some herbs, spring onions, arugula or some green stuff on top of the salmon, and roll the wrap/pancake/potato flat bread. If you are feeling a bit Gordon-Ramsey-Jaime-Oliver-Nigella-Lawson today, garnish with some parsley or any other herb (not rosemary please), do a little mhhhm and aaah (like Nigella) and it should look like this ish :-)

Leftover Jalfrezi

Heeeey guys, Charlotte went home today, so I decided to make curry with Aideen and Chloe. I had some leftover curry from yesterdays dinner, soooo to expand it you can simply add some more veg (we added broccoli, lentils, pepper, courgette, green beans, onion and garlic), some more Jalfrezi sauce or any other curry sauce, boil some rice and you have a fancy leftover dinner (Chloe managed to boil rice for 5 people, which was waaaay to much, so make sure you boil for the amount of people who are gonna eat the curry). LOL.

I don't have any pictures because it kinda looks similar to yesterdays curry :-)

Never EVER throw away food!! Always appreciate leftovers, cus they usually taste better the next day, well not rice, but deffo a curry or some kind of a stew, soup etc.

Lot of love from a forever alone chef (miss you Charlotte) xxx

Tom Kha Gai

Soooo tonights dinner was a thai chicken soup with coconut milk, lots of veg and a spicy broth. Sooooo goooood, trust me, you will end up licking your soup bowl, or the pot, but thats a bit weird so make sure you are the only one left in the kitchen when doing so. Or just bring the pot to your room, and lick as much as you want. I am just saying, not that I know what I am talking about.......

Anyway, this is very simple to make. Remember that Tom Yam soup paste our flat mate Jerry brought to us from Hong Kong? Well, you are gonna use it again, but this time with coconut milk :D This reminds me of when I was backpacking in Thailand; hair gets lighter, skin gets darker, water gets warmer, drinks get colder, music gets louder, nights get longer, life gets better..... Yeye I didn't write this poem if you were all wondering, but it just describes the good summer feeling you get when you have a bowl of Tom Kha Gai. Okey lol this was so weird, I am getting all nostalgic....

Ingredients:

Tom Yam paste

Coconut milk

Chicken (that was already cooked and prepared)

Baby corn

Green beans

Mushrooms

Pepper

Rice

Prise per person (3 bowls each!!!): £1.50 ish 

Boil water in the kettle, mix the boiled water with the tom yam paste in a pot (obviously). lol. Mix in the coconut milk, mix mix mix. Mix in the vegetables, that you have already sliced in cubes or stars or hearts or triangles. Stir until the veg is soft, and then throw the chicken in the bowl. We like to throw stuff. While the veg is being cooked, you can start boiling the rice.

When the rice is done, and the soup is done, you can eat (logically enough). You can put some curry powder in the soup if u want to give it some more flavour. Eat eat eat. Yum yum yum. Enjoy!!!!!

February - Week Shopping List

Sunday, SUNDAY! This sunday is pretty boring as my purse was stolen last night, with my phone and everything, so I have been a bit depressed the whole day..... I wish there was a day between sunday and monday, how good would that be?? Charlotte managed to cheer me up a bit by taking me on a walk through the woods on the way back from Aldi, which was very nice. We hugged the trees, we made friends with a squirrel and enjoyed the sun glimpsing through the woods. It totally made my day.

Anyway, sunday is our weekly shopping day, including a lovely walk in the woods and all the way to Aldi. We just looove Aldi. Aldi4ever. Usually we try to plan what we are gonna make during the week, and then we make a shopping list on the basis of our meal plan (which we never stick to, cus we like to be crazy and adventorous yolo). We will try to post our shopping list every sunday and then how much it costed us. Oh and btw, the good thing with Aldi is that they have weekly offers on fruit, veg and meat.

Aldi shopping list

Apple, banana, orange, blueberries, spinach, babycorn, chick peas, green beans, salad, plum tomatoes, sweetcorn, peppers, onions, carrots, aubergine, courgettes, cucumber, avocado, lemos, broccoli, mushrooms, pasta, rice, coconut milk, curry sauce, sundries tomatoes, cream, cottage cheese, tea, tortilla wraps, hot cross buns, 12 pack egg, small whole chicken.

= 28.11 pounds for a whole week (lunch, snack and dinner) for two people.

Pretty good huh??

Banana Pancakes

So this is happening in our kitchen saturday morning after a night out: strong, black coffee, some Jack Johnson on the speaker and banana pancakes on the making! We are pretending that our view is a sandy beach, with some nice waves, palm trees and turtles; when the truth is the LCR, a laundry and a bike rack. We have a good imagination!

This is the easiest recipe ever, EVER, which is very convenient when you are hanging and don't have enough brain cells to think. All you need is one banana, 2 eggs, cinnamon and some butter.

A mixer will be very handy as you don't want any banana bits in the mix. Put the banana in the mixer, and let the banana almost become liquid (ouuuufff sounded a bit weird, but trust me, this will be good). Mix two eggs in and cinnamon. Mix mix mix! Add some butter in a preheated pan, on medium heat and start making pancakes;-) It was so so so yum, and so easy!!! We kinda burned ours because I (Marianna) was not patient enough to wait, so I put the pan on a very high heat, but realised I didn't want burned pancakes, I mean who does?? So I turned the heat down, and the pancakes turned out to be so much better!

The best thing to put on a banana pancake is Nutella, but we didn't have any left (ehem Charlotte), so lemon and sugar kinda worked as well! Enjoy guys!

Leftover lunch

It's the end of the week and the fridge is starting to get a bit empty so this is when we have to start being creative with the things we have left. We had some leftover risotto from yesterday's dinner, so we decided to make risotto cake for lunch. We also had a bag of salad, some veg and fruit and goats cheese to make a fresh and healthy salad on the side.

Ingredients:

Leftover risotto
1 egg
Salad, veg, fruit, whatever you have to make a side salad (we used mixed salad leafs, tomatoes, cucumber, blueberries and an orange).
Some left over cheese or meat to put in the salad (we used goats cheese)

Beat an egg in a bowl, stir in risotto. Add some olive/veg oil in a pan on medium heat, and kinda like spread out the risotto mix on the pan like showed in the picture. The picture is showing a finished product, but just for you to have an idea.....

Fry the risotto for 6-7 minutes, and then you can put the whole pan in a preheated grill just to "fry" on top as well (about 6-7 minutes). If you don't have a grill then just stick to the stove, but the result might not be the same. I mean, you could always try to flip it, but I wouldn't recommend that... And the timing on how long you should fry the risotto is kinda "by eye" so pay attention along the way. You probably don't have to season it, as it has been seasoned the day before when making dinner. 

Meanwhile you can prep the salad. Fruits in a salad is so yum and delicious and super healthy! You can literally put anything you want in a salad, and that is the beauty of it! Perfect for a leftover lunch. If you have some leftover chicken, cheddar cheese, mozzarella, dried fruits or nuts; shove it in the salad!! You can season with salt, pepper, balsamic vinegar, olive oil and lemon juice :)

The Amazon Rainforest Smoothie

So I got this really cool smoothie maker for christmas, and have been experimenting a bit. I have been trying to find the perfect recipe for the perfect green smoothie. As I was studying in the library, reading about the indigenous people in the Amazon rainforest, I had a realisation. I ran straight to the shop and back to my flat. When you sit and read about forests and plants, lots of green stuff is happening in your mind (not in that kinda way), and suddenly the perfect green smoothie recipe pops into your head. Never happened with you before? Well, that is why you are reading this blog right? So you can make the perfect green smoothie!

The thing is you kinda need a blender or a mixer of some sort, so if you don't have it, you can stop reading right now, or get a very cheap one from amazon, it is very handy trust me. If you have some fruit or veg leftovers you can just put it in the mixer, some left over cranberry juice you didn't manage to finish from saturday when you where making vodka-cranberry for predrinks (because you make it so strong...), make a smoothie/juice and bam you have something yum and healthy, but the best part: you didn't throw away any food.

Ingredients

Juice from half a lemon

One green apple

1 celery stick

1/5 of a cucumber ish

Slightly less than a handful of curly kale or spinach

Some fresh ginger

Juice (not cranberry in this case, cus you want it to be green, so it could be orange juice, pineapple juice, or like I did: a bit of pineapple, orange and lemon squash mixed with water).

Cut the apple, celery and the cucumber into cubes, grate the ginger, squeeze the lemon juice and shove this in the mixer with the rest and well, yea mix, surprisingly enough. 

Remember this before you mix: peel the strings of the celery as they can be a bit annoying to drink, watch out for lemon seeds and no kale sticks. 

I am enjoying mine right now, and it is so yum!! :D

Mobile gallery !!

So we have a mobile gallery with pictures (taken with our smartphones) of dishes we make for lunch or busy days when we don't have time to blog... Hope you enjoy that as well :-)

Click here for a link to the gallery, or just click on the side of the blog where it says mobile gallery, logically enough :-)

Tom Yam soup with rice

Monday, our not-so-favourite-day of the week, so we decided to spice the day up with some Tom Yam soup for dinner. Fuuun!! Tom Yam is a clear, spicy and sour soup, and it is a dish you will find in Thailand and Laos, but also in their neighbour countries such as Cambodia, Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia and Flat 1 Nelson Court, University of East Anglia, Norwich (lol). You will DEFINITELY need rice on the side, cus it's very spicy, like very spicy..... but so so yumm :-)

Ingredients:

Tom Yam paste (we didn't get this from Aldi, as if. Our lovely housemate Jerry who is from Hong Kong, brought back some Tom Yam paste for us when he was back home over christmas. I reckon you can find this at the market, if you are in Norwich, or at that Thai shop in Oslo at Brugata where the 13 tram stops ish, or just google it hah)

Lots of veg (we used mushrooms, baby corn, green beans and peppers)

Herbs (we used dried coriander, the best would of course be fresh coriander)

1 filet of white fish (such as cod. Or you could use salmon, which would almost ALMOST be like the Malaysian dish Laksa. King prawns is definitely the best ingredient but it is a bit expensive, anyway if you use king prawns the soup will be called Tom Yam Kung, and you could get if from Aldi for a bit less.)

Lime (we didn't have lime, we had lemon, but we kinda forgot to use it, and it wouldn't be the same).

Rice

Price per person: 1,30 pounds (without lime and herbs)

So, how do I make this soup then? It is so so simple, you won't believe it:

1) boil water in a kettle (if you don't have a kettle, just boil water in a pot) and add the boiled water into the pot, pretty easy so far? Then add the Tom Yam paste and stir a bit.

2) Cut the fish filet into medium sized pieces and throw them in to the pot (you don't have to throw if u don't want to, but listening to happy music while cooking makes u just wanna throw everything everywhere). 

3) Okey enough of my weird dance moves: while the fish is cooking, boil some more water in another pot and add enough rice for two. I reckon the rice needs a good 12-15 minutes,  I tasted it along the way to make sure it didn't get overcooked. Overcooked rice is so boring....

4) Add veg and herbs

5) When the rice is ready, the fish is cooked and veg is soft, but still a bit crunchy, you are ready to serve up. 

6) Take a soup bowl, serve the rice and then pour the soup over, add some fresh coriander on top and a squeeze of lime and you are ready to go!