Hello everyone ! Welcome back ! As you may remember, Lent time means for me, no meat at meals. So I have to adapt myself and find new recipes without any meat (eggs and dairy products are still allowed in my case) but still tasty, healthy and nutrious. To avoid getting into the situation where I would do the same again and again, I had a look on Pinterest of existing recipes and it helped me quite a lot actually. I haven’t been able to try all the recipes I saved on my board, but it gave me some ideas, inspiration.
Today, I would like to share with you the different recipes I came up with over the last days. Bear in mind that they’re suitable for vegetarian diets, not vegan diets, since dairy products (cheese, milk and cream) and eggs aren’t excluded from my meals. Everyone can feel free to adjust these recipes to their own needs or even add meat to them. Here, I just want to give out some ideas, in case other people would be like me, without any inspiration in front of the stove and fridge.
Let’s get started !
-Multiple Cheeses Pasta
This one is so easy to make and sooo good ! All you have to do is to cook some pasta and add different cheeses after dewatering the pasta. I personally usually go for goat cheese, some Cantal, Camembert and others. It’s very easy to prepare and you can make so many different versions.
-Multiple Cheeses Rice
Here, it’s quite the same as with pasta, it’s just that you replace pasta with rice. Perfect as a gluten free meal.
-Rice with steamed vegetables
Definitevely the healthiest of all I think. It’s also anothe rvery easy to prepare one. You just cook some rice in a rice cooker and add some veggies in the steaming basket. This way your veggies cook in the same time as the rice and keep all their nutrients and flavours. Here, I made some cabbage, with carrots and red pepper, but you can have any veggie you like, such as potatoes, leeks and so on. I perosnnaly like the carrots the most since they have a sweet flavour, probably reinforced by the steaming process.
Who said eating healthy was hard ? As this recipe shows, it certainly isn’t.
–Avocado-Red Pepper and Lettuce Salad
Seriously, this one is soo delicious. You need an avocado, a red pepper and half of a sucrine lettuce heart. Add some seasoning and you’re good to go, or should I say eat a healthy and nutrious salad. The combination of flavours, topped with the seasoning is so good ! And also very aesthetically pleasing. 😉
-Greek Salad Maki
You’ll need some cucumber, red pepper and feta cheese. Cut the cucumber into strips using a peeler knife. Spread some crushed feta on the cucumber and add some small pieces of red pepper. Roll it over and here you are with some delicious little Greek salad makis ! 🙂
-Spring Rolls
You’ll need some rice paper, some carrot, some mushroom and some cucumber. Soak the rice paper into water and set aside. Meanwhile, cut the cucumber and mushroom into small sticks and grate the carrot.
On a plate, place a piece of rice paper, in the middle, place some cucumber and mushroom sticks, add some grated carrot, then sticks again. Wrap the bottom , then the sides and finally the top part.
You can eat them with a seasoning, since the veggies inside are raw, personally I prefer them without any.
-Veggies Gratin
Steam cook some veggies, here I cooked some leek, pepper and carrots. Then, spread them evenly into a dish with layers of cheese. As a final touch, sparkle some grated cheese on top and bake it in the oven for a few minutes, until the cheese completely melts.
-Soup
May it be the mixed veggies version or the veggies boiled in a bouillon version, a good soup is always an easy and healthy option when following a vegetarian diet, especially when the first days of Lent are still in Winter and cold.
-Cheese-Pepper Mini Pies
All you need is some pie crust, some cheese and pepper. Here is my pie crust recipe if you want. Split the crust into multiple small molds, previously buttered. Fill them with cheese and pepper pieces. Make sure to create a small mountain with the ingredients inside the mold, since it would melt down and reduce in volume during the baking process. This way it’ll look very full. Bake it in a preheated oven at 180°C until the crust gets golden.
-Multiple Salad
There’re soo many different options when it comes to this kind of salad. You can add whatever you like and whatever you have laying in your kitchen. The more ingredients, the better, the tastier ! Here is one of these many options, the one I usually do at home.
Mix together lettuce, endive, mushrooms, sweet corn and pepper. Add some olive oil, some balsamic vinegar and some fried onions and you’re good to go !
-Greek Rice Noodles
All you need is some rice transparent noodles, some fresh basil leaves, some feta cubes and a few olives, and you’re good to go !!
-Wok Olive and Pepper Wheat / Prepared Wheat
This one is very simple, you just have to cook into boiling water some wheat, while you roast some pepper into the wok. When the wheat is cooked, dewater it and add it to the wok with some spices and olives. Roast for a few seconds the mixing and it’s ready !
Here I’ve been using the olive-pepper combo, but any ingredient is worth the use. There’s no set recipes for this kind of dish. The main rule is to use what you already have in your kitchen. That’s why it’s so useful when it comes to leftovers. It drastically reduces food waste !
-Prepared Rice
This is the same process as with the wheat, except that you replace the wheat with rice. Perfect for gluten-intolerant people. 😉
-Prepared Quinoa
And finally another grain option for this dish, the quinoa allowing something unusual and different from the very usual wheat and rice.
-Cheese Croissants
For this one, you’ll need some puff pastry, mine is an already made from the grocery store, as I’m too lazy and unsure about making it myself (One day I’ll try to do it, I promise), and some cheese.
Cut your pastry into triangles. Cut the cheese into sticks. Place some cheese sticks on the pastry triangle and roll it over. Let it rest in warm spot until it rises a bit. Finally spread some egg wash on top of your croissants and bake them at 210°C until they get golden.
-Greek Pasta Salad
The original recipe uses small tomatoes, but I didn’t have any and replace them with some red pepper, which works as well. The base is a portion of pasta, you simply add some green olives, some feta cheese cubes, your red pepper pieces/ small tomatoes, some basil leaves and some olive oil on top. Mix well and voilà !
-Salad Wraps
This one is also a very healthy one, quite easdy to make and fast. For 4 quite big wraps, you’ll need 4 large tortilla breads, 1 sucrine heart, 1/2 cucumber, some feta cheese and 1 endive. Cut all your ingredients, place them in the center of the tortilla. Then, wrap each going clock-wise. A little hack so that your wrap will stay in place when you eat it, is to store the wrap a few minutes in the fridge, on the plate, so that the cold will set the whole thing. This way when eating, you’re not dealingg with a falling apart wrap ! 😉
I like this one very much, even without any seasoning inside. The saltiness of the feta cheese and the sweetness of the tortilla bread soften the rawness of the lettuce and endive, creating a perfect combo of flavours !
-Hot Wraps
On a tortilla bread, spread a layer of avocado, then some cheese. In a pan cook some leek, mushroom and pepper with some spices and sweet chili sauce. Spread that veggies mix onto the avocado-cheese, wrap and voila !!
-String beans with tomatoe sauce
This one can easily be prepared with some meatballs, for those who aren’t following a no-meat diet. when I prepared this one, I first cooked the vegetarian base, aka the beans with the sauce, then I saved a portion for me aside and I added the meatballs to the beans for my brother and father dinner. You see ? No need to have multiples pans and dishes everywhere when you have to prepare for two different eating diets. Just prepare in the right order.
The key with this kind of dish is all about spices and condiments. After cooking the beans alone with some oil in the pan, I then added the tomatoe sauce, some fried onions, paprika and other spices I like. The best way to give a basic dish more flavours is simply to add some spices. You don’t need to use that much and it’s very effective.
That’ll be all for today’s post, I hope you like it and find it useful. For those of you who make Lent the way I do or another way, keep going, don’t give up, you’ll succeed and you get stronger out this holy time.
Thank you for passing by and reading my blog, it means a lot for me.
I’ll talk to you soon in a next post,
Until then, take care of yourself ❤
Ady ❤
Little House of Ady 