Eat Your Greens welcoming February recipes

Hello everyone and welcome to the first Eat Your Greens challenge in 2018! We've had a little break from the challenge in the busy holiday season, but now Shaheen and I are back with hosting. I also hope that you are full of ideas for green recipes and ready to share them with us! February can still be gloomy, especially in the Nordic countries, but I hope for an energy boost through greens.

For those of you, who might not know the rules of Eat Your Greens, have a closer look via this link. It's very simple though, just post a vegan or vegetarian dish containing green vegetables on your blog during February, and share the link to the post in the comment section of this post. The recipe will be featured in the round up at the end of the month.

I hope that we'll get many recipes to have a nice collection of recipes for the first Eat Your Greens challenge in 2018!

Your VegHog

Homemade veggie sausages

I find that there can never be enough veggie sausage experiments, and therefore today's recipe is again for vegetarian sausages.

I've been cooking with some Finnish protein products again. This time with Härkis, the one made from broad beans. It's really versatile, but this time I wanted to make some homemade veggie sausages from it. This mix stuck very firmly together, probably better than any of my previous veggie sausage attempts. I think that you can substitute this product with some soya or wheat gluten products.

Have a look at my recipe here!

Homemade veggie sausages

Ingredients

250 g Härkis (protein product made from broad beans)

200 g potatoes

1 onion

2 black garlic cloves

1 tsp salt

1 tsp smoked paprika

1 tsp vegetable stock powder

2 tbsp tomato purée

1 egg

Vegetable oil for frying

Method

Peel and boil the potatoes and mash them.

Chop the onion and garlic finely and cook them in oil until soft.

Mix all ingredients together and shape sausages from the mix.

Fry the sausages in a pan until they have a crispy outside layer.

Serve with for example potato mash and cabbage mix on the side like I did.

Enjoy!

Your VegHog

Deconstructed hummus with pasta

It's been quite a cloudy weekend, but now the sun came out, so we are heading out soon for a Sunday afternoon walk. There is a lovely star fort close to our home, and we like to do little walks there. It's also very close to Copenhagen's most famous landmark, the Little Mermaid.

This is called a deconstructed hummus only because I haven't bought a new blender to make my own hummus, and assembled it from the different components. So in this pasta I used whole chickpeas, tahini, garlic, olive oil and lemon. I also added some fried red onions to the pasta. I should buy some sort of a blender soon though, as we can't make any smooth soups either.

Those garlic and beetroot sprouts just looked so tempting that I basically wanted to build a dish around them. I thought that they would go nicely with falafel, and they did indeed. This was a nice little weekday dish, and I would make it again, if I happen to have the same ingredients.

Have a nice Sunday!

Your VegHog

Open mini tortillas

It's Friday night, finally! How has your week been, and what plans do you have for the weekend? I'm just glad to be at home now, although I'm still working a bit from home. I have some nice plans for tomorrow anyway, like a new local beer release party, and before that I will also go and vote in the Finnish presidential election at the embassy. It will be such an exciting day, I'm sure. It could also snow tonight, but the forecasts aren't fully agreeing on that. It should be a fairly chilly winter's day anyway.

Tonight we'll have a lentil curry night, which my partner is currently starting off by frying the onions, and I will soon continue cooking. But I wanted to share this dish briefly that I recently made: open mini tortillas with pinto beans, sweetcorn, bell pepper, tomato sauce, cheese and coriander. That's pretty much it, just add some warming spices like ground cumin, ground coriander, smoked paprika, chilli etc. to the sauce, and it's all good. I love this sort of dishes, and I was quite keen trying those cute mini tortillas from our local shop. They were good, very bouncy.

I hope that I'll manage to post something else this weekend as well, but we'll see. Have a good weekend everyone!

Your VegHog

Facon muffins

We have kept sampling the Astrid och Aporna veggie products, and this morning it was the fejkon's turn. I made English muffins with potato rostis, cheese and facon, and they were quite excellent for breakfast. I'm sure that these sandwiches will keep us going for a while.

How has your weekend started? I just want to mainly relax this weekend, as there is a busy week ahead, and also after the whole festive season, it's just nice to be at home. I think we'll go to a museum this afternoon and for a little stroll. It's a bit chilly and cloudy today, but should be nice to go out a bit.

Enjoy your weekend!

Your VegHog

In My Kitchen in January

This is it, a new year... also in the kitchen. Last year I got a new kitchen by moving countries, so I'm excited to see what this year brings. I hope you've all had a good start into 2018.

I've been eating out and at friends' places way too much lately, and therefore my own kitchen has been quiet. Here are still some new items that I'm quite happy about.

We can buy some of these vegan Astrid och Aporna products in our local supermarkets, but we made a trip to Sweden just before New Year's Eve, and visited their own supermarket in Malmö. It was truly a vegetarian's paradise, there was so much good stuff and even reasonably priced. I also love the animal characters on the packaging. I will go back there hogging soon and I'm sure that you will be seeing a lot of these products on my blog! Actually the Not Dogs were already made with the Astrid och Aporna vegan chorizo.

 

Smoky vegan cheese and facon - a good breakfast coming up soon!

 These sausages are really very nice quality.

I want to try all their different burgers.

Dried soya beef - this should be interesting.

Vegan "chicken" bits that look nice and chunky.

I got this Meyers Grøn Mad vegetarian cookbook for Christmas, and I can't wait to explore it more. Meyers have a few bakeries and delis in Copenhagen, and now they have collected some of their favourite veggie recipes to this book. 

 

Here are some of the dishes that I've cooked at home lately, but I haven't been eating so healthily. There have been cheesy game chips with veggie Schnitzel, vegetarian lasagne and homemade pizzas, all very comforting!

I will share this post with Sherry from Sherry's Pickings, who is hosting the In My Kitchen challenge.

Have a nice week everyone!

Your VegHog

Not Dogs

Happy New Year everyone! I hope you had a really nice festive season and have been able to start the new year well. I've been slowly back to the normal routine, but the whole end of year felt very busy. At least I got to go to Finland briefly to celebrate Christmas, and then we had some of my partner's family members for a visit over the New Year. I'm actually quite happy to be back to normality, cooking some normal food again and just chilling at home in the evenings. I have no health resolutions for the new year, but I'm trying to make economical food at least in January. What about you? Are you having a vegan or an alcohol free month etc. to start the year off?

It was also my 5^th blog anniversary on Sunday, but due to some internet problems I wasn't able to post this then. I can't believe that it has already been five years! Thank you so much for reading my blog over all these years! It has been such a nice time and I have made some really good blogging friends.

I made these Not Dogs, vegan hot dogs, with the tastiest vegan chorizo sausages by Astrid och Aporna. Hot dogs of course are an important street food in Denmark, and actually it isn't too hard to find a veggie option. I however prefer making my own ones. 

 

Not Dogs with an optional mac'n'cheese on the side

Serves 4

Ingredients

4 vegan chorizo sausages

4 hot dog buns

1 red onion

1 red pepper

1 garlic clove

1 tbsp rapeseed oil

½ tsp salt

½ tsp ground black pepper

Handful of mixed shredded cabbage and kale

Method

Prep the fillings first. Cut the pepper into small cubes and the onion into rings and cook them in oil until soft. Press in the garlic. Cook for a while and season with salt and pepper. Briefly also add the cabbage and kale to the pan. However I prefer keeping these fresh and crisp, but you can also cook them a bit, if you like.

Fry the vegetarian sausages and heat the buns. Fill the buns with the sausages and other fillings and serve. Enjoy!

Your VegHog