Veggie Sausages

These are lovely veggie sausages and tasted really yummy. The recipe is for 8 sausages and takes about 45 minutes - taken from Annabel Karmels wesite here.  I was impressed how easy they were.

Ingredients:

• 175g sliced white bread
• 25g butter
• 1 medium onion, finely chopped
• 175g courgette, grated
• 150g Cheddar cheese, grated
• 1 egg, separated
• a little salt and pepper
• vegetable oil for frying
• flour for your hands

Method:

Tear the bread into small pieces and shred them in a food processor or with a blending stick in the little "herb blender" until they become fluffy bread crumbs. Try and squeeze as much liquid out of the grated courgette as possible (it will make the courgette look rather squashed). 

Melt the butter in a frying pan and saute the onion until soft. Add the grated courgette and cook for roughly 3 minutes or until soft.

Add the graded cheese and 3/4 of the bread crumbs and mix the egg yolk and salt and pepper under. 

The mix will be quite hot so you may need to wait a little bit until you can shape it into 8 sausages. Best way to do it is flour your hands before trying to shape them. Either dip them into the whipped white of the egg or use a brush to coat the sausages in the lightly beaten egg. 

Roll each sausage into the bread crumbs (I had to really press them on, they wouldn't just stick). Fry in a frying pan until nice and golden. 

According to Annabel Karmel's recipe these only take 7 minutes to prep and 17 to make. However, I found that unless you're master chef quick with grating cheese, courgette and whipping all the ingredients out of the cupboard in no time, it takes closer to 45 minutes by the time you'll be serving them.

Our sausages vs Annabel Karmel sausages. I need a little more practice but think I did ok

We all enjoyed the vegetarian sausages as a family meal and I will definitely cook them again. If I were to change anything I would use less cheese (although the cheese binds the ingredients as much as the egg), and even add more little bits like sweet corn or tiny bits of red pepper. Time to experiment!

Veggie Rissoles

by Anna
cooked by Anna and Jaime

Boy these were yummy little things! Highly recommended.

Another recipe  taken from The complete Baby and Toddler Meal Planner. 

These were great. Not only did they actually turn out like the recipe suggested, they were also a fab finger food for the wee vegetarian. It actually kills me not posting the recipe....

On her website I found a veggie burger recipe which isn't all too different from the rissoles. I will try it next week.

Rissoles with salad

Chewy

Two course breakfast

For breakfast our veggie baby got served his first "real" oats. As in, not baby rice type oats. But grown up oats. Soaked in hot water, a spoon of formula powder and some blended mango. The monkey surprisingly enough didn't mind the chewing too much and had a good amount of the porridge.

After the porridge we gave him a portion of white bread with almond nut butter.

White bread – Yes, it is refined, but apparently too much fiber isn't good. I intend to add making my own white bread to my already busy day but haven't yet found the right flour, believe it or not where we live there is just one type.

Nut butter – Nut butters are safe from six months onwards (unless there is a family history of allergies). We waited a little longer into the weaning stage and a few weeks ago we started with almond butter. It's full of good stuff: healthy fat, magnesium and manganese. Nuts are also a good source of protein.

Rolled oats – Source of selenium and manganese

Mango –  Vitamin B6, A & D

Bead with nut butter and mango oats porridge

Farmer's market and local veg shopping

A new week ahead, a new lot of veggies needed. First a trip to the farmer's market (we've already shown you photos of what it looks like in an earlier post) and then a trip to a local "fruteria".

The farmer's market was lovely as always: busy, full of colours and lovely smells, old and young locals selling their fresh and mostly organic produce. The monkey was slightly fidgety and suspected that he could do with a snack. I picked a nice juicy not too big tomato for him and went to pay for it. The lady looked at the tomato, at me, then at the monkey and didn't want payment. In fact she reached over to a box of black tomatoes and gave us two: "Try these, they are a different variety". I had a smile on my face for the rest of the day.

So, off we went, the monkey tucking into his red tomato and we finished our shopping. Next thing you know the tomato was gone. Nope, it hadn't fallen down, or got mushed into the baby carrier. It had gotten eaten in its entity. Nice one, veggie baby!

Today for lunch it was the risotto again and as a warm up the monkey got his first black tomato. Like the tomato the other week, this one was devoured in one messy sitting. Onto a winner.

Fresh produce and messy black tomato munching