Vegetable Soup -suitable for 5-2 diet

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Vegetable Soup

by Nayna Kanabar March-23-2015

A delicious vegetable soup made with courgettes, mushrooms and potato with baby soup pasta.

Ingredients:

• 1 Courgette finely diced
• 1 Small red onion finely diced
• 2 Medium Mushrooms finely diced
• 1 Small potato peeled and diced
• 6 Medium tomatoes finely chopped
• 1/2 teaspoon Salt
• 1/2 teaspoon Fresh ground pepper
• 1/2 tablespoon Olive oil
• 500 ml Water
• 30 g Baby Soup pasta

Method:

1. In a saucepan add the oil and saute the onions until they turn pink, add the diced courgettes, diced potato, diced mushrooms and saute the mixture for 3-4 minutes.2. Add the water and the tomatoes and simmer the soup for 7-8 minutes until the vegetables are cooked. 3. Transfer half the soup to a blender jug and blend it to a smooth consistency.4.To the remaining soup in the pan add the pasta and simmer the soup for another 5 minutes.5. Transfer the blended soup to the pan with the rest of the soup and season the soup with salt and pepper. Turn off heat and serve the soup hot.

Details

Prep time: 10 mins Cook time: 20 mins Total time: 30 mins Yield: 2 servings

Suitable for 5-2 diet
This calorie count does not include the bread.

Calories Per Serving	Carbs	Fat	Protein	Sodium	Sugar
208	36	4	11	664	12

Submitting to:
In my VEG BOX ~Courgettes event by citrusspiceuk and guest hosted by sliceoffme

Giveaway tickets to Foodies Festival Syon Park

Foodies Festival, the UK’s biggest celebration of food and drink, will transform Syon Park into a foodie heaven 23,24,25^th May as part of their 10^th anniversary celebrations with celebrity chefs, new tasting theatres and more street food. 

Highlights of the show:

• Chefs Theatre
• Wine and Champagne theatre
• Beer craft theatre
• Chocolate Master Class
• Cake bake theatre
• Street food theatre
• Kids master class
• 200 Exibitors in Artisan producers market

Tickets are on sale now at www.foodiesfestival.com or by calling 0844 995 1111

Friday adult day ticket £12.00 (£10.00 concession)

Saturday or Sunday adult day ticket £15.00 (£12.00 concession)

3-day adult ticket £25.00 (£18.00 concession)

Friday VIP ticket £45.00*

Saturday or Sunday VIP ticket £48.00*

*VIP tickets include a welcome glass of bubbly, access to the VIP tent with private bar and refreshments throughout the day, priority entry to food and drink masterclasses, a goody bag and a showguide.

All children aged 12 and under go free to all Foodies Festivals when accompanied by an adult.

Open times:

Saturday 23^rd May: 11am – 7pm

Sunday 24^th May: 11am – 7pm

Monday 25^th May: 11am – 7pm

Foodies Festival have kindly given simplyfood  three pairs of ticketsto give away to three lucky winners. 

How To Enter

·         Simply complete the Rafflecopter widget below to verify your entries

·         Entries can be via blog comment, Facebook, Twitter etc

·         Please read the rules they form the terms and conditions of this Giveaway

·         Closing date – 18th April 2015

How Rafflecopter works:

• You will need to complete the mandatory entry first – usually making a blog comment. You can do this by clicking on leave a comment at the bottom of the post and leaving your reply in the comment box. Please note your comment will not show immediately as it needs to be moderated however rest assured it will appear on the site, so carry on with rest of entries.
• Login to Rafflecopter – click to see what the question is. Make a comment answering the question on the blog.
•  Go back to Rafflecopter and click the green button to tell me you have made a comment, this will unlock all the other options. All entries are checked to see that the mandatory question is answered, if its not all bonus entries will become void. 
• Rafflecopter will tweet, like and follow on your behalf.
• For information on how to find the URL of your tweet click here. 
• For bonus entries you can return to this page and enter the daily bonus entries. 
• If you are still unsure as to how Rafflecopter works please do check out this short video.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Walkers Sunbites

I was recently sent a selection of Walkers Sunbites snack range to sample. In the Sunbites range avilable are crispy crackers, pitta bakes, crackers and dip and crispy snacks.
These bitesize snacks are simply delicious for nibbling on, perfect for lunch boxes or for that savory treat as they are 30 % less fat than ordinary crisps.They areavailable in most major supermarkets.

The crackers are available in cream cheese and chive, oven roasted onion, lightly salted and rosemary and sunripe sweet chilli flavour.

The oven roasted onion and rosemary crackers also come in individual packs with a pot of caremelised red onion chutney and sunripe sweet chilli flavour crackers come with roasted red pepper salsa.

I was sent a bag of cream cheese and chive crackers and an individual  pack of red pepper salsa and crackers. We really enjoyed the salta , it was delicicious with the crackers and had a lovely spicy kick.

The cream and chive crackers again were delicious, but we We did find that many of the crackers in the bag were broken so dipping them in the salsa to devour was a little difficult.I think this is due to the fact that they are very light and airy and despite good packaging they tended to break easily.





The Sunbites pitta bakes which come in 3 flavours Vintage cheddar and caremelised onion, roasted red pepper nad chilli flavour and oven roasted rosemary and onion flavour.

I was sent the Vintage cheddar and caremelised onion pitta bites which were moreish and delicious with perfectly balanced flavours. However the contents of the bag was very little and a lot of the pitta bites were broken. This did not deter us from enjoying them as I sprinkled the crumbs on top of asald to give it an added crunch.


We enjoyed the sunbite snacks very much and look forward to trying all the other flavours that are available in the range. We were sent these snacks to sample by Walkers, all the views and opinions in the post are true and unbiased.

Potato Hash~ Secret recipe challenge 16th March 2015

This is my assignment with the Secret Recipe Club.The aim of the club is that you are allocated a blog from which you have to select a recipe and try it and blog about it. For the month of March my assigned blog was The Heritage Cook written by Jane Bonacci. Jane describes herself as food and travel writer, recipe developer, editor and tester, event manager, passionate baker and cook. Looking through Janes blog, there were many delicious recipes, I liked that her focus is also on gluten free recipes. I settled for breakfast idea. I chose the Turkey Hash as my family love Sunday Brunch and this was perfect for it. I did make slight changes to the recipe to make it vegetarian. I omitted  the turkey and added some mushrooms instead.

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Potato Hash

by Nayna Kanabar March 16th-2015

Delicious and tasty potatoes cooked with onion, peppers and mushrooms for the perfect breakfast accompaniment.

Ingredients:

• 2 medium red potatoes peeled and coarsely grated
• 6 button mushrooms finely chopped
• 1 small red onion cut into very thin slices
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1/2 teaspoon cracked black pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 each green, red and yellow peppers finely diced

Method:

1.Preheat oven to 180 degrees C / 350 degrees F.2.Oil a deep baking dish and keep aside. 3.In a large bowl add the potatoes, onions, diced peppers, mushrooms, salt and pepper and the oil and toss every thing together. 4.Transfer the potato mixture to the oiled baking dish and pack the potato filling down with a spatula. 5.Bake in the preheated oven for 20-25 minutes until potatoes are cooked and slightly crispy on the edges. Remove from oven and cut into square slices and serve piping hot with baked beans and fried eggs.

Details

Prep time: 10 mins Baking  time: 25 mins Total time: 35 mins Yield: serves 4

An InLinkz Link-up

Mothersday Breakfast prepared with Love

A Mothers Love

Of all the special joys in life,

The big ones and the small,

A mother's love and tenderness

Is the greatest of them all.

anon

Mothersday a day for appreciating and pampering the one person who dedicates her whole life to her child.There is no better way to treat her than to surprise her with a delicious home cooked breakfast to start her day. 

For mothers day I am making a healthy and delicious smoothie, followed by a strawberry granola pots and a Spanish Frittata.

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Strawberry and Blueberry Smoothie

by Nayna Kanabar March-15-2015

A delicious blend of summer berries and coconut water makes this smoothie refreshing and delicious.

Ingredients:

• 8 Strawberries
• 60 g Blueberries
• 1 Apple braeburn
• 100ml Coconut Water

Method:

1.Place  the fruit in the OXO colander and wash all the fruit.2.Core the apple, leaving the skin on and cut into quarters, hull the strawberries and place into the Optimum 900 blender. Add the blueberries to the blender and blend together all the fruit for 1 minute. 3.Add the coconut water to the prepared smoothie and stir it in. 4.Pour the smoothie into chilled glasses and garnish with some blueberries.

Details

Prep time: 6 mins Cook time: None Total time: 5 mins Yield: 2 glasses

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Strawberry Granola Pots

by Nayna Kanabar March-15-2015

Layers of strawberry compote, Greek yoghurt and honey Granola , topped with fresh strawberries.

Ingredients

• 12 Strawberries
• 3 tablespoons Crunchy Nut Honey granola
• 6 tablespoons Greek Yoghurt
• 1 tablespoon Sugar

Instructions

1.Remove the stalks from 10 strawberries and chop them into small pieces. Add them with the sugar to a pan and cook for 5 minutes until strawberries start to break down but still hold shape. Remove from the heat and leave to cool.2. Take two glass jars or glasses and add a couple of tablespoons of strawberry compote in the bottom of each jar. Add a tablespoon of granola to each jar on top of the compote.3. In a bowl add the greek yoghurt and fold in the remaining strawberry compote to form a ripple effect.4. Spoon a layer of the yoghurt mixture on top of the granola in the jar.Repeat a layer of compote followed by the granola and finish with the yoghurt.5. Garnish with a whole strawberry.Serve chilled.

Details

Prep time: 10 mins Cook time:5 mins Total time: 15 mins Yield: 2 servings

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Spanish Frittata

by Nayna Kanabar March-15-2015

egg dish with vegetables and aspicy kick.

Ingredients

• 1 Large egg
• 1 Small Potato
• 1 Small Carrot
• 1 Small red Onion
• 1/4 Red pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon Salt
• 1/4 teaspoon Black Pepper
• 1 Green chilli
• 3 tablespoons Skimmed milk
• 1 tablespoon Frozen peas
• 1 tablespoon Olive Oil
• 1 tablespoon Sweet corn

Instructions

1.Peel and grate the potato using the OXO vegetable grater2.Peel and grate the carrot using the OXO vegetable grater3.Dice the red peppeer finely.4.Dice the red onion finely.5.Break the egg in the Oxo mixing bowl and add to it the salt, pepper and the milk and whisk it together.Keep aside.6.Heat a frying pan and add 1/2 tablespoon of olive oil and fry the onions until pink, add the grated potato, carrot, peppers, sweetcorn, green chilli and stir fry the vegetables for 7-8 minutes until they are cooked.7.In another frying pan add 1/2 tablespoon oil and heat it up. Place two rings in the frying pan and spoon half the vegetable mixture in each of the rings.Pour over the vegetable mixture the egg mixture.8.Turn the heat to low and cover the pan and cook the frittata for 7-8 minutes until egg mixture has set.9. Run a knife around the ring edge and lift off the metal ring.Using a spatula gently lift the frittata onto a serving plate.

Details

Prep time: 5 mins Cook time: 16 mins Total time: 21 mins Yield: 1 serving

I was able to create my mothersday recipes with the help of some lovely kitchen tools from OXO. I love the magnetic tin opener with a lining up window so you can line up the blade on the tin. it has a good gripping handle and the magnetic catch holds onto the can lid so that it does fall through into the can.

The three piece bowl and colander set comes with a lid that fits the bowl for storing food. The bowl has non slip surface and its is large enough for cooking for a family of 4. The colander has a lip that allows it to rest in the bowl but lifting it away from the base for easy drainage.The neat lid fits the bowl and all three items are stackable for easy storage.

Lastly the grate and slice is a neat little gadget with 4 colour co ordinated grating discs that shreads, grates, slices and juliennes. It has a good gripping handle with a storage compartment for storing the different blades for additional safety.






I was sent the OXO tools to use in my kitchen to create my recipes.I am sure any mum would love these in her kitchen too.

Submitting to:
Lets cook for mothersday event by simplyfood.

Cheesy Pasta Bake

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Cheesy Pasta Bake

by Nayna Kanabar March 5th 2015-2015

A delicious and comforting pasta dish thats is perfect served with aside salad.

Ingredients:

For White Sauce
• 250 ml skimmed milk
• 175 g low fat cheddar cheese grated
• 30 g plain flour
• 30 g butter
• Salt and Pepper to taste
• Pinch of nutmeg


• 200 g penne pasta
• 150 g low fat grated cheddar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• water for boiling pasta
• 1 teaspoon olive oil

Method:

1.In a large pan add the water and 1 teaspoon salt and bring to boil.Once its boiling add the pasta and cook it until its al dente. 2.Drain the pasta and return it to the pan. Add a teaspoon of olive oil to the cooked pasta and toss the pasta to stop it sticking together.3.In another saucepan, add the butter and flour and cook it for a few minutes until the rawness of the flour is gone.4.Add the milk gradually and keep whisking the sauce to ensure all the milk is incorporated into the flour and there are no lumps.5.Once all the milk is added keep whisking until sauce thickens, it should easily coat the back of a spoon.At this stage add half the cheese and whisk it in.Add the nutmeg, salt and pepper and stir it in.6.Take the sauce off the heat and pour the sauce over the cooked pasta and mix it all together.7.Preheat the grill to medium .8.Spoon the saucy pasta into an ovenproof baking dish and sprinkle the remaining cheese over it.Place the pasta dish under the grill and cook until the cheese melts and it starts to bubble and turn golden brown.9.Carefully remove the baked cheesy pasta from the grill. Serve hot with aside salad.

Details

Prep time: 5 mins  Cooking time: 20mins   Total time: 25 mins Yield: 4 servings

Submitting to :
Lets cook for Mothersday event by simplyfood.

Round Up Lets cook Valentine Special Dishes

Thankyou to everyone who linked up their recipes and took part in this event.We had some awesome entres for the Valentine event. Here is the awesome round up.

An InLinkz Link-up