Spinach Omelette

I love eggs.

I’m not the type of person who eats the same thing everyday, or, for that matter, eat the same thing each week.  I like diversity and I get bored easily. Having said that, I’ve eaten this omelette everyday for the past 7 days, so I figure I’d blog it. I started working from home in January, and I’ve consequently gained 15 lbs. I started watching what I eat 9 days ago, and this omelette fills me up, is fast and easy to make, and is versatile.

Ingredients

1 large egg

3 large egg whites (1/4 cup liquid egg whites)

1/2 tsp salt

2 tsp olive oil

3 cup spinach

 

Directions

1. Mix egg, egg whites and salt in a medium-sized bowl.

2. Heat non-stick pan with oil on high until the oil is hot.

3. Turn heat down to medium and add eggs all at once

4. Spread spinach over the egg mixture. (Yes, put the spinach in a layer over the uncooked eggs.)

5. Fold 1/4th of the eggs gently over the spinach, then fold your omelette again over 1/4. Gently pull the omelette towards the middle of the pan and fold again.  Press out the uncooked eggs. This will give you some extra room for another fold, and squish the spinach so it’s nice and snug between the layers of egg. Fold one or two more times until can’t anymore!

 

This is not my picture. I took it from http://www.busogsarap.com/2011/03/plain-rolled-omelette.html
I forgot to take the folding picture this morning. I’ll post one tomorrow 🙂

The above picture is of a plain omelette. Your folds won’t be as thin. The important step is to get the first fold done,

 

I know this is pretty simple, but when my husband saw me making my omelette he said something like, “folding that omelette takes a bit of skill doesn’t it?” I didn’t realize it, but yeah, it kinda takes some practice. So, I thought I’d post it.

MMM, mmm, good.

 

 

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Chili Garlic Vinegar Sauce

 

I don’t know what else to call this, but it goes so well with fried foods. Lately, I’ve been eating it with Dhal Puri. Don’t eat this before you go out in public 🙂

Ingredients:

8 garlic segments

2 thai chili

1/4 cup white vinegar

2 Tbsp lemon juice (optional)

2 Tbsp salt (I like mine salty, use less if want)

pinch of sugar

NOTE: You can substitute the vinegar with lemon juice.

 

Method:

Combine all the ingredients into a food processor and pulse until you get a fine dice.

The sauce gets better with time, so it’s best to make it a day in advance if you can. It lasts 2 weeks in the fridge or 3 days out of the fridge. It may last longer out of the fridge but I wouldn’t risk it. I left some out of the fridge for a few days and the garlic turned blue. I don’t eat blue garlic.

 

 

 

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Dhal Puri

Chickpea Puri with green beans and heirloom tomatoes.

I love Dhal Puri.  My mom used to buy it from an Indian store when I was younger and I always loved it with curry. It was one of those special foods that you only got when we had parties or when my parents felt like eating it. We infrequently ate it, but I really enjoyed it. Since I began eating a plant-based diet (all of a week ago), I’ve been brainstorming things I could eat. Then I remembered Dhal Puri. It`s amazingly easy, and will definitely be a staple in our house from now on.  I`ll be posting my first version here but will update later with different, more “healthy” versions. I tried to stick as close to the original recipe as I could without modifications just to see if I could do it, but since I’m me, I modified it just a little.  Next time I make this,  I’m going to try substitutions such as; white flour with whole wheat and flax seed flour, or the dhal for hemp seed, or chia seeds. We’ll see how it goes 🙂

Chickpea/Garbanzo Bean Puri Recipe:

Filling Ingredients

1/2 cup dry chickpeas (soaked over night)

1/4 tsp turmeric powder

salt to taste

1/2 tsp roasted ground cumin

1/2 tsp roasted ground coriander seeds (I put this in because I love coriander seeds. It’s not in the original recipe.)

Puri Ingredients

250 g white flour

1/4 tsp salt

1 tbsp olive oil

1/2 cup water (the original recipe didn’t have an amount for water and I didn’t measure how much water I used. I’ll measure it out next time and update this recipe.)

2 tbsp canola oil for the skillet/non stick pan

Method:

1. Boil the chickpeas in salted water with the turmeric until the outsides are cooked but the center is still al dente.

2. While the chickpeas are cooking, make the Puri.

3. Put the white flour in a medium-sized mixing bowl or stand up mixer. Make a well in the white flour.

4. Add salt and olive oil to the well.

The dough is soft and a bit sticky. Put flour on your hands before you pull a chunk off of it!

5 . Put your mixer on medium and begin adding water slowly to the flour. You want a soft but workable dough. Do not over mix otherwise your dough will get very sticky. If you’re mixing by hand (which is what I did so I could feel the texture my first time around), place a wet cloth under your mixing bowl so it doesn’t move so much. Then, with one hand use your index and middle fingers to gently swirl the olive oil in a circular motion bringing the flour into the center. With the other hand, slowly pour in the water into the well while continuing to mix with the other hand. Remember, you want a soft pliable dough.  All of this took me about 7 minutes.

6. Let the dough rest for at least 20 min.

7. The chickpeas should be cooked by now. Drain them and grind them. I used my magic bullet (with the 4 blades not the 2 blade), but a food processor would work just fine here too. You could also use a mortar and pestle if you have a lot of time on your hands 🙂

Chickpea mixture with ground cumin and coriander seed. I made a lot. It freezes well.

8. Add the ground cumin and coriander to the chickpeas. Taste and add salt if necessary.

9. Pinch a 3 inch ball of dough and flatten it a bit with your hands.  Spoon about a 1/2 tsp of the chickpea mixture into the center of the dough. Take the sides of the dough disc and bring them together. You should have a closed ball.

10. Flour your work surface and the top of the ball. Roll out the ball to about a 1/4 of a cm. Some recipes say that you should be very gentle, but I wasn’t and none of my puri’s ripped or broke.

11. Heat a non-stick skillet with 1/2 tsp of oil. When the pan is hot, add the puri.  Cook for about 1- 1.5 minutes and then flip. Cook for another minute and take off the heat. Repeat this process until your dough is finished.

Great way to get hummus, beans and cucumber into a toddler all in one go!

My little girl is a camera diva 🙂

I ate my chickpea puri with green beans, hummus, cucumber, and a vinegar garlic sauce that my mom used to make when I was at home. She probably still makes it, but I didn’t eat it very much until I started to eat Vegan.

I got these green beans from Costco. I steam two whole bags in one go, and then cut them up and stick them in the fridge so they’re ready at any time.

My mom’s chili, garlic, vinegar sauce. I make a whole batch of it on Sundays and eat it all week long!

YUM!

Cheryl

Update: I made a double batch of the Dhal Puri again with Dhal this time.  It didn’t taste any better or worse than the chickpeas. The only difference is that I didn’t have to soak the dhal (yellow split peas), which means I didn’t have to plan to make the filling.

I also substituted:

1/4 cup of flour for whole wheat flour

1/4 cup of white flour for a mix of ground flax and chia seeds

Dhal Puri dough with ground flax/chia seed and whole wheat flour.

My conclusion: Not bad but nothing beats the flavour and soft chewy texture of white flour. The Puri turned out a lot more dense and was almost crispy. The day after I made a double batch of the white flour dough so I could alternate healthier, whole wheat, ground flax/chia seed puri, for oh so good white flour puri 🙂 I can’t get enough of this stuff!

I ate them with cucumbers and hummus 🙂

Oh, and I had cucumbers on the side with chili and salt. Mmmmmmm spicy salt.

 Yum 🙂

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Bacon and Mint wrapped Asparagus

There’s not much to be said about this one. I have too much mint in our garden, I love bacon, and my daughter wont fight me when I place asparagus in front of her…so naturally, I made these bacon and mint wrapped asparagus!

Ingredients:

bacon

asparagus

large mint leaves

I’m not putting in amounts here because they’ll depend on the amount of asparagus you have.

If you have 10 asparagus, you’ll need 5 slices of bacon (and then you’ll cut those slices in half) and 10 pieces of mint. Cradle the asparagus in the mint leaf, then wrap them together with the bacon.

Sprinkle salt/pepper to taste, stick them on a baking sheet lined with tin foil, and bake in a 425 degree oven for 15 – 20 minutes. Take out of oven, place asparagus on paper towels to drain fat.  YUM.

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