My year 2023

 

 

Hello everyone! It has been a while, but I’m still here. I still live in Copenhagen and I still cook vegetarian food even though not so imaginatively this year. If you are on Instagram you can see my food posts there almost daily. I have just been too lazy to blog. In any case I wanted to share some of my foods and other things from this year and just say hi and wish everyone a nice festive season and end of year.

I have been cooking my usual food and of course summer veggie barbecues had to be part of it. I got these excellent new potatoes in the farmers market and I really loved to grill them over the summer. Visiting different farmers markets has been one of my favourite pastimes also this year and I found some nice local produce there.

 

Over the year I made many Finnish dishes like the Karelian pies and cheesy oven sausages. Those dishes are full of memories for me. In the summer I had a delightful visit to Finland, as we detected that there were three hoglets roaming in my mum’s garden. My nephew was also very fond of them and wanted to make a warning sign for drivers to take care. It was so much fun observing those tiny hoglets and my mum’s garden is a real haven for them. 

 

As you might know, I’m quite fond of pasta and often eat it. Some of my this year’s pasta innovations were a cheese fondue sauce with white wine, smooth roasted pumpkin sauce with roasted chestnuts and a butter bean based carbonara sauce with facon. 

 

Earlier this year I got a Moroccan tagine and have been experimenting with it. It takes a long time to cook with it, but doesn’t actually require that much work so you can do other things while the veg is cooking and you can put pretty much any vegetable in there. I especially enjoyed some squash tagines in the autumn.

 

I didn’t do much balcony gardening this year, but the berry bushes are still there and we got a new fig tree, which is quite fun. Magpies liked to visit the balcony and the plant pots in the spring. 

 

Now I would like to wish you all a nice and cosy Christmas time and a happy and healthy New Year! 

 

 

Your VegHog

The VegHog’s Cheap Eats Cooking Challenge 2022 – Round up

 

Earlier in January I called for my Cheap Eats Cooking Challenge 2022 and now is the time to end it. It wasn’t a huge audience success for the participation (actually no other recipes shared than my own), but I got lot of nice comments on social media so I’m happy about it. It would’ve been nicer for this post to have some other contributions as well, but I will share some of my dishes instead.

I cooked loads of affordable dishes during the past four weeks and I have posted all of them on Instagram, so you might also want to have a look at #theveghogscheapeats to catch them all.

I selected my German Spätzle noodles with onions, white wine and cheese recipe as my main contribution for the challenge. It is a very comforting dish, where a basic dough for the noodles or mini dumplings really goes a long way. My Spätzle dough recipe is vegan, but many people also make them with eggs. You could veganise this whole dish by using vegan cheese. You can find my recipe here.

Pasta

Pasta is a true staple of cheap eats and student cuisine. I have made a lot of pasta myself recently as my homemade vegan pasta dough is very cheap and making pasta from scratch keeps you occupied for a while so that you have less time for snacking in between. Of course I also cooked many dishes with ready made pasta, it’s not just affordable, but also very convenient on busy weekdays.

Rice & couscous

Rice and couscous dishes also tend to be on the cheaper side and they can be a nice change from all that pasta. All you need to add is some veggies and maybe tofu and you’re good to go.

Soups

A good hearty soup is so lovely every now and again and even from the most basic ingredients you can make a nice soup or broth. I made these tomato-based soups and also my own vegetable broth. I added homemade dumplings into one of the soups making it even more filling.

Potatoes

The good old potatoes also make nice economical dishes, which can be very comforting and filling. They are best friends with onions and cheese, so only sky is the limit with what else to add!

Baking

If you bake bread yourself, you can save a bit of money and as a benefit have nice fresh bread at home. I usually just make some breakfast rolls and pizzas, because they are easy, but I would like to be a better bread baker.

Mexican food

I find that there are many good cheap recipe alternatives in the Mexican cooking. Once you have some basic spices and pulses at home, you can make a lot of different things like quesadillas, tacos and Mexican rice.

Indian food

Vegan curries with pulses are excellent Cheap Eats. You can make a huge dish with just some spices, pulses and veggies and don’t have to break the bank.

This was my small contribution towards cheap eating and the dishes were all very nice. I even saved some money and will now treat myself with something nice.

Have further a nice week!

Your VegHog

 

In my kitchen in February

Welcome to have a peek to my kitchen this month! It's hard to believe that the long month of January is over and we are moving fast towards spring! I’ve been working on my Cheap Eats event cooking a lot of frugal recipes and it has indeed been good saving a little bit of money. If you want to know what the event is all about, have a look here. I would love to see your economical vegan and vegetarian recipes.

There was an absolute sadness last weekend when the storm Malik destroyed our both greenhouses on the balcony. We had tried to secure them, but the storm was just too strong and blew them across the balcony against the railings causing irreparable damages to the aluminium structures. I guess we are still lucky that they didn’t come through the windows or flew on a person. Also that was the only damage we had. This only means, we need a new arrangement for this year’s urban gardening, but luckily there is still some time to plan.

Otherwise I will show you some foods and snacks from my kitchen. This one liter wine box truly is for the frugal ones, it costs 29 DKK (about 3,90 €) only and it’s of decent quality. I especially like the name “Tread gently” and the plantbased carton.

 

I got myself a pizza cutter, because the old ones were either lost or blunt or both. It really is much nicer to cut pizza with a proper sharp cutter. This one is Danish design by Normann. And that pizza in the background will first bake to a crispy crust and then I will cut into it!

 

This vegan bearnaise sauce is really tasty and a life-saver when you don’t feel like making a sauce. It’s brilliant with roast potatoes, but I’ve even had it with pasta and it was good.

 

Last weekend I made vegan sausage rolls and they were really good.

 

I brought this fermented broad bean bits with basil from Finland. Again, it’s a great brand name “Bean better”.

 

I also got these mini rye crackers with sour cream and onion flavour in Finland. They are such good and filling snacks.

 

Talking about snacks, these plantbased truffles by Cocohagen are also excellent.

 

Here are dinosaur corn crisps – ultimately cute!

 

And these are fruity gelatine free Finnish sweets.

 

So, this is pretty much how my month is going. As usual I’m sharing this post with Sherry from Sherry’s Pickings and the In My Kitchen event.

 

Have a nice weekend everyone!

Your VegHog