Meatless Monday - Vegetable and Mushroom Soup

Well, it's well and truly Winter now, so I thought I would make a nice creamy vegetable soup. The soup I made is completely vegan and the wonderful creamy texture comes from the vegetables themselves.

To me, the best part of vegetable soup is, you can put literally any vegetables in it. Even if you don't like some of them, when you blend it up, it will probably taste just fine. Generic soup taste!

To start, I like to get some onion and celery frying off in the bottom of the saucepan with a little vegetable oil. This time I used one brown onion, one red onion, and about four stems of celery. I put most of the leaves in as well, since my stems were a little thin, being home grown. Sometimes I'll pop about a teaspoon of minced garlic in at this stage as well, but honestly, I forgot...

You can leave the onion and celery (and garlic and carrot if you want to add those) to do their thing for a few minutes, and just come poke it with a wooden spoon every so often to make sure it's not sticking to the pot. When you're home, clothing, hopes and dreams start smelling of onion and it looks sort of like this:

It's time to move on to the next step. You can add either one litre of vegetable stock, or one litre of boiling water and a stock powder or vegetable soup base of your choice. I really like to add a sachet of spring vegetable simmer soup mix.

Give it a little stir through, then add literally any vegetables in the whole world. If you're going to blend it up and make it creamy, you'll need to use some pumpkin, sweet potato or potato. I used pumpkin and sweet potato in mine. When it comes back to the boil, turn the burner down to a simmer.

Gentle stirring should be enough to push all the pieces of vegetable under the water:

Now if you want to, you can add some flavour enhancements, such as herbs and spices. Since the base of my soup is pumpkin, I added some herbs from my garden that go well with pumpkin. I chose rosemary and curry plant leaf. I was going to add a little parsley as well, except I forgot.

Basically now, it's just waiting and occasionally stirring. I let mine simmer at this stage for about twenty minutes. It's ready for the next stage when the vegetables are soft.

I have a stick blender, so I stuck it in and got pulping while it was on the stove. If you have a jug blender, you may need to wait for the soup mix to cool down before you blend it.

Now, if you just want a smooth, creamy soup you can drink, you could put mushrooms in with the other vegetables. I wanted little chewy chunks, so I sliced my mushrooms up and dropped them into my warm pot of soup. 

Stick blender away, I brought the soup back to the boil then down to a simmer as I stirred the mushrooms through. I let it infuse together for another fifteen minutes before I got some for myself!

I never claimed to be a food blogger. I can't do the pictures. But here's some in a soup cup, on my lap, when I was wearing a onesie that looks like a fox.

I hope you have a wonderful, soupy adventure!

Happy Cooking!

Cassandra Louise.

I am linking up this week with Meatless Monday at Confessions of a Mother Runner and A Whisk and Two Wands.

Mocha Smoothie

This smoothie is an experiment. I'm making it for the first time as I write this post. I got myself a drink bottle blender from Kmart to try to trick myself into eating more healthy things. It's worked so far. I'm starting to get cocky... I mean creative. Let's get down to business!

Ingredients:

One Weet-Bix... Weet-Bik?? What's the singular of Weet-Bix? Anyway, pop one of those bad boys on in there.

Add about 200mL of unsweetened almond milk.

The idea is to make the Weet... thingy all soft.

Add five tablespoons of caramel yoghurt OR use natural yoghurt and half a teaspoon of brown sugar. I have caramel yoghurt because I made it, I'm not even sure if it's something you can get made-up already. Someone confirm/deny.

One slightly heaped teaspoon of cocoa powder (obviously any brand is fine, I have this one because the week I bought it I was pretending to be posh).

Roughly 100mL (half an adorable froggy cup) of coffee and all that's left is blending. I see no good reason why you can't use instant, filter, whatever. Even decaf if you can find one with a taste that doesn't make you cry.

Blend all that together in whatever blendage device you have handy and drink that sucker.

Well, I just had my first sip and basically what's happened is, I'm a genius. You're welcome.

Enjoy!

Cassandra Louise.

Beauty Tuesday: Sleek Faux Bob and Homemade Hairspray Recipe

In this post I will show you how to go from this:

to this:

in less than five minutes, with no heat, scissors or aerosols. I'll also share my homemade hairspray recipe. Let's start with the hairspray.

(Note: in some of these pictures I had ear buds in as I was on the phone, so that's what that black dangly thing is. I am so good at multi tasking!)

You will need:

Peppermint essence, orange essence or vodka

White table sugar

Spring water, filtered water or rain water

A clean, empty spray bottle

In a small saucepan, bring 1 cup of water to the boil, then turn down the heat and add 2 tablespoons of sugar to it. For a firmer hold, add more sugar (this is what I should have done to completely eliminate my fly aways, but I didn't).

Stir well. When the sugar is dissolved, add 1 teaspoonful of flavouring essence or vodka. The advantages of flavouring essence over vodka are: I had it in my kitchen already; flavouring essence contains glycerin, which draws moisture out of the air into your hair; you'll smell like peppermint/oranges. It really is up to you, though.

For the hairstyle, you will need:

Anything from two to infinite bobby pins or other hair pins. I used four of these Amish style ones, I would need eight regular bobby pins.

You'll also need your homemade hairspray.

First, lightly mist your hair all over with the spray, then (without using a hair tie) roll your hair into a loose, low bun.

Using both hands to keep it as even as possible, roll the bun under itself.

Spend some time adjusting the bun to make sure it will be sitting where you want it, then pin it in place from underneath.

Give the finished style another misting and smooth down any fluffy bits. My two tablespoons of sugar is no match for the humidity here today, but it's better than it would be without anything. Here's a shot of me swanning about, pretending to be in a Jane Austen story:

The Jane Austen reference has nothing to do with the hair, I just like to pretend I'm in one of her books sometimes.

If you have a natural beauty post you would like to share, you can link it to this one using the guidelines I included at the bottom of this post here.

Worlds of love, my lovelies!

Cassandra Louise.

Meatless Monday: Spaghetti and Meatless Balls

This Meatless Monday I'm sharing a recipe I only made for the first time last week, so rather than tell you exactly what to do I'll tell you what I did. This recipe uses Quorn Meat-Style Balls which are vegetarian but not vegan.

You will need:

One tin of diced tomato (mine had basil and oregano so I didn't have to add those as they're not in my garden at the moment)

Two medium - large tomatoes

One carrot (grated, even though this one clearly isn't)

One small - medium zucchini

Roughly 200g of sliced mushrooms

Minced or crushed garlic

Half an onion. This one is red, but I think a brown one would be more suitable

Spaghetti

One bag of Quorn Meat-Style Balls

One large-ish bunch of chopped parsley and cooking oil. which there are no pictures of because I'm slack

In a large pot, add the onion and 1 teaspoonful of garlic, along with a good splash of cooking oil

When everything starts to smell delicious and dinner-y, add the mushrooms and enough water to just cover them, and pop the lid on the pot.

Let that simmer (low heat) for about fifteen (15) minutes. You should have something like this, probably:

Add the grated carrot and chopped tomato and zucchini, along with the parsley and a little more water.

Stir, and cover for another ten - fifteen (10 - 15) minutes on low to medium heat. You now have the sauce:

Add the balls and turn the heat up slightly. Leave it uncovered for this bit. Check back and stir periodically.

This was taken at about twenty (20) minutes after adding the balls. I decided it was time to put the spaghetti on.

I took the rather controversial step of cooking the spaghetti in the sauce, because that's what my Nana always did when she made "Skeddi and rissoles" and that turned out fine.

I ended up with this very delicious meal. 

I was actually having an off day and I was surprised it turned out so well. By "well", I mean it was nice enough to make my whole day better. Yay! :-)

Happy Nibbling!

Cassandra Louise

Witchy Tea

I'm calling this "witchy" tea because it just came to me, like blam! and insisted on being made right away, so that's what I did; "witchy" just seems like the right word for that. Please excuse my not-so-good photos this time, I didn't want to put the kitchen light on and disturb the serenity.

You will need:

A sprig of rosemary

Two slices of lemon (or a tablespoon of lemon juice)

A green tea teabag

A camomile teabag

I don't like camomile tea, I have those teabags for my hair, so I was surprised when my body said that's what it wanted, but anyway...

Put everything in an infuser or a teapot

Add slightly-less-than-boiling water

And let it stand for at least three minutes.

I let mine sit for about five minutes before plunging and pouring.

And I stirred in about a teaspoonful of ground cinnamon, because I'm me.

I found this very pleasant. I wasn't sure about the camomile, but I tasted it before I added any cinnamon and my reaction was I don't hate it! I was surprised, I really was. I need to learn that good things happen when I trust my inklings and intuition.

Worlds of love,

Cassandra Louise.