What We Ate Wednesday

Hello friends! I am trying to get myself into the habit of regular blogging in the new year and I thought I'd get a head start. My friend Miranda kindly printed off every single recipe from the blog, put them in a binder and posted them to me as birthday gift. How kind! But it was also a wee bit of a friendly nudge to get back to talking about food. I haven't done a recipe in ages, so I thought I would try to start doing What We Ate Wednesday. 

This is just going to be a quick one. Just some little treats you might want to do over the holiday. Both are kid friendly--one could be done independently and the other with adult supervision.

Yesterday, I had two of my favourite vegan munchkins over for some Christmas shenanigans. I love it when people let me have a play date with their kids! We made Christmas crackers, clove studded oranges, reindeer treats and then watched the Rankin/Bass stop motion animation Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer  from 1964 (more about this film tomorrow!)

Reindeer Treats are easy to do and a fairly healthy snack. I used frozen black cherries that had been defrosted for Rudolph's nose, but we all agreed glace cherries would have been ever better as they are redder and sweeter. But I didn't want to buy cherries when I already had cherries in my freezer (because I am cheap like that).

This activity could be done independently by a child. Because I am a teacher who loves to make things, I made a handy step by step poster to follow.

 Here is the finished product:

If it looks like a child made these, that's because they did! 

The other thing we made today was Munchy Seeds. 

These delicious savoury seeds will run you about £7.99 for 475g. I can make a 400g knock off version for a little over £2. I buy a 200g packet of sunflower seeds from Poundland for £1 and a 200g packet of pumpkin seeds from Lidl for £1. Then mix them together.

I usually make just 200g at a time for us so we don't eat it all in one go. But the 2 packets of seeds will make 2 smaller batches or one larger batch. This recipe is for the smaller 200g batch.

The kiddos really love this and it can be a child friendly activity with supervision if you let them help you add the ingredients and stir.

Munchy Seeds
Preheat your oven to 175C/350F

1.Put 200g seeds in a metal roasting pan.

2. Bake for 5 minutes, then remove the pan and stir. 

3. Add 2 Tablespoons tamari or soy sauce and 1 teaspoon chilli powder and stir well to coat.

4. Bake 5 more minutes, then remove from the oven and stir again. 

5. Turn the oven off and put the pan in for 3-5 more minutes or until the seeds are crisp and dry. Check at 3 minutes--if they still seem damp to you then let them go 2 more minutes.

6. Let cool and eat. If you happen to have some leftover, then store in an airtight container.

These are incredibly moreish and feel like  posh, sophisticated nibbles for a Christmas party. Plus the kids can take ownership and tell everyone they helped.

So these are the nibbles I shared with my young friends. I will hopefully start blogging regularly on a Wednesday about what we ate (and it won't be just nibbles) because I want to really show how you can eat real food, delicious healthy vegan food, on a super slim budget.

Thanks Miranda for giving me the nudge I needed to get back to food blogging!