Raw courgetti spaghetti

This quick thrown together supper just saved us from ordering a Chinese takeaway!  That may not sound like a good thing, but it is.  A Chinese really would do me no favours right now.

It was another case of fridge gazing to see what happened. And what did happen was really rather wonderful!

I grabbed:
1 courgette
1 carrot
about 1 cup of pre-cooked quinoa left over from the weekend
1 large lemon wedge
1 small pot humus
handful fresh parsley
pinch seasalt
very small handful blanched almonds
small handful parmesan shavings
A hand blender
A spiraliser

Then I spiralised the courgette and the carrot on the narrowest spaghetti sized blade and threw it in a big bowl with the leftover quinoa (it only takes 15 mins or so to make fresh quinoa or you can actually buy it ready cooked too).

Then I finely chopped the parsley in the hand blender and added that in, along with nearly a full little tub of humus, the juice from the lemon wedge and the sea salt.

Finally I crunched up the almonds a little bit in the blender and stirred them in too with the parmesan.

It served two of us with some left over for lunch and was totes delish.  Very satisfying but light, tasty thanks to the humus and parmesan, full of wholesome goodness and tangy thanks to the lemon and carrot. We had it with a wholemeal pitta but would have done without to be honest!

I'm really happy with this recipe and will definitely be making it and version of it again. Yum,

Brussels and pancetta pasta

I've written about my love of Brussel sprouts before and here I am doing it again.  Tonight they were supposed to go into a salad but the carb monster paid a visit after yoga and so they found their way into a bowl of pasta instead.  You'll note this is not exactly a vegetarian or fat free recipe, but it was delicious.

It went like this:

Small packet brussel sprouts, trimmed and sliced up
packet pancetta bits
lemon wedge
few flakes parmesan
Some kind of brown pasta (I used brown rice pasta, it's lovely.)
garlic infused olive oil because I was also trying to watch Broadchurch and didn't want to faff about chopping garlic in the break!

It  was easy peasy.

Cook pasta as per packet and while that's doing fry the pancetta.  As they start to brown, add the sliced sprouts and drizzle over some of the garlic olive oil - if you're actually using real garlic just chop that up and add it with the pancetta.

When the sprouts have softened and everything is all mingling together nicely and the pasta has cooked, drain the pasta and add it to the bacony sprouty pan (not the other way round or you lose all the lovely flavours and stuff).

Squeeze over the juice from one wedge of lemon, crack over some black pepper, crumble on some parmesan and enjoy!

A super yum way to get your sprouts!