Apple, Red Quinoa, Walnut & Feta Salad - Bakemas Day 5

Just because it’s December doesn’t mean you can go crazy, actually it kind of does but the one thing I’ve been craving recently is quinoa, well, that and chocolate but that’s a given.

10 Minute Jacket Sweet Potatoes with Curried Tuna and Feta

Lazy food is something I’ve been loving recently. I’m very good at putting off eating a meal because I’m so indecisive eventually I just end up hangry and need to eat. Even if you don’t do that I’m sure you’ve been in that situation where you’re too lazy to cook but you want to eat something relatively healthy. At the moment my answer is jacket sweet potatoes, they’re so simple and I can guarantee if you’re making for one you can have this on the table in 10 minutes, or on your lap on the sofa, whatever floats your boat.

Grilled Pineapple, Lime and Chilli Quinoa Salad

I’ve had a pineapple sitting in the kitchen for a while now, don’t worry not too long it’s only just ripe. The pineapple originally was for a recipe that I just cannot for the life of me get right, it tastes amazing like addictively amazing but it always looks completely horrible so I figured I should take a step back for a few weeks and tackle it again some other time, it will be revisited though and it’ll definitely be worth the wait.

I was looking through last year’s diary writing down all the ideas I ended up skipping because they weren’t fully formed or I wasn’t in the mood to make so I could have them all in one place and came across spiced pineapple salad, yep, not fully formed, I get easily distracted. Anyway, I’ve been on a bit of a chilli kick recently, got a lot of those in the fridge too also involving another recipe I won’t be posting yet because I might look a little bit obsessed with chocolate cookies which side note: I kind of am.

Anyway back to chillies; I don’t dislike spicy food, I just sometimes don’t see the point in it but ever since I went to Devon and pretty much everything vegetarian I picked up involved chillies, especially this chickpea roll from some nice lady in a little market in Dartmouth, this market basically sold honey, meat, rugs, pastries and fish, I have had dreams about it ever since and definitely need to try and re-create it, but I’ve kind of been converted to adding a little spice to my food so there is no better time to make a “spiced pineapple salad”.

With the time change, lighter evenings and the random bouts of sun in England my brain has definitely been tricked into thinking it feels like spring outside so I’ve already started craving green leaves and all things salad related. I seriously love a good quinoa salad, I feel like I make more quinoa salads than I do other mains but that’s probably not true, I probably just think about quinoa salads more than anything else.

This quinoa salad is sweet and spicy and tangy and I’m not sure what more you could ask for. The pineapple was the perfect ripeness it almost didn’t make it in the salad because I was picking at it while I was shooting, although that would have been a pretty sad pineapple salad minus the pineapple. I refrained and finally grilled it which just made it even more delicious and add the tangy lime and spicy chilli dressing on top while still hot and I could probably just eat a bowl of the pineapple on it's own as dessert. Dessert-like elements in salad can't really be a negative.

Beetroot, Goats Cheese & Spinach Pancakes/Crêpes with Chutney

I think this might be one of my favourite things I’ve made for this blog so far, even though this revelation will probably cause my chutney supplies to deplete drastically faster than I’d anticipated and in a few months probably leave me wishing I’d made at least double the amount I did, I guess the four jars I have left after giving away two to my sister and brother in law and two to my granddad and his wife for Christmas will have to suffice.
It’s actually quite shocking that up until now I’d only entertained the idea of sweet pancakes, sadly that’s a lot of wasted time I’ve accumulated without savoury pancakes in my life but I’m sure I’ll have made up for that soon.

One of the best things about this is how simple this is, if you know how to make pancakes the rest is a doddle and as I sat down to dinner after the string of “damn this is good” comments I felt like I was trying something new in a nice little restaurant. So simple but so delicious; it's definitely worth more than the little effort it takes to make.

Cranberry & Clementine Quinoa Salad

Christmas is over and I feel like I was so busy this year I didn’t have time to enjoy it. Mental note for next year: be more organised! Maybe I should start making Christmas cards now, that’s something I always run out of time to do; I’m sure that’s very idealistic thinking I can’t imagine I’ll actually start doing that. So after 24 days straight I took three whole days off and in those three days I spent entirely too much time thinking about this blog, whoops, there goes my "time off"! It took me a long time to get round to making this, I’m pretty sure I’ve had this idea stacked away in the back of my brain for about 3 months and I think the only reason it took me so long is because I wasn’t sure I was going to like it. I know that sounds crazy, why come up with the idea if you don’t think you’ll like it (I seem to be good at that) but for some reason I always think I don’t like Clementine’s but whenever I eat them I really enjoy them. As a kid I wasn’t a fan of the texture so the idea puts me off, my sister and I used to suck the juice out and leave the rest. I also really dislike going about my daily life and someone peeling a Clementine in the near vicinity of me, the smell really bothers me, not that I don’t like the smell it just bothers me a little. Is this making any sense? Anyway Clementine’s in salads are my new favourite thing, just staring at these pictures makes me want to go make a quinoa salad with Clementine’s in. I'm glad a friend told me that it sounds good because I found this ridiculously delicious, way more than I could have ever expected. This wasn’t actually the plan when I came up with this but after eating this I realised it’s the perfect salad for leftover meat, the mix of the cranberry and clementine would go to well with turkey or ham. It would also be a good serving salad for a party, cranberry sauce on the side. If you don't want to add meat and you want a little protein sunflower seeds are tasty with this (I forgot to photograph that bit I was too busy eating).

Strawberry, Bacon and Grilled Goats Cheese Salad with Balsamic Vinegar

I'm a big salad lover, a big dressing-less salad lover. I'm not talking a bit of salad on the side of my plate, I mean a full on, all the trimmings, big meaty salad (although meat is not compulsory). I just mean I like my salads big, with a lot of spinach and literally any vegetable that's in the house. I'm trying to branch out a little bit this summer and be more selective with what I put in them, well, at least once a week, I think I'll always enjoy adding all the veg in my salad bowl. There's just so many salads to make and not enough summers days to make them in; it's already past summer solstice which honestly baffles me how it starts getting darker and summer has barely started in England. I still think official summer is mid july to the beginning of august because that's when the school holidays are, but I have a feeling that'll most likely be ingrained in my head forever.