Vegan dinner: grey pea burgers with roots and avocado mayonaise

I'm so sorry that I dont have a photo of the soo delicious dinner we ate yesterday. It was too dark for taking good photos and I have already digged in on the plate before I realized I had a good recipe to share. Really embarrassing... I will post a photo nex time, because I'm sure I will make this recipe again.

Grey peas is a very old crop that the vikings grew as one of the daily grocery staples. It is filled with proteins and minerals. The pea is smaller than the usual pea and is patterned like a birds egg, very beautiful.

Grey pea burgers
 serve 4
3,5 dl grey peas or green lentils.
0,5 dl small dried tomatoes, soaked in warm water
fresh basil leaves ca 7
1 garlic clove
1 small onion
1,5 tsp vegetal buillon powder
1,5 b- yeast powder
salt and pepper

Baked vegetables
Swedes, parsnip, potatoes, carrots in the amount for 4
0,5 dl small dried tomatoes

Avocado mayonaise
2 ripe avocados
0,5 dl rapeseed oil
stenches of tabasco choose your own amount
1 pressed lime
salt and pepper

Soak the peas (or lentils) in plenty of water over the night. Boil the peas on low heat for 15 minutes.
Peel the roots and chop in big chunks and bake them in the owen for 40 minutes in 200 degr C, with some ground pepper and rapeseed oil. Peel and chop the garlic and onion finely fry in a pan with a little oil on low heat. Strain the boiled peas pour in the mixer with the other ingredients and mix.
Heat a frying pan with vegetable oil (rapeseed oil). Spoon up some pea mix and roll burgers and fry. Fry the burgers in quite a high temperature for a minute per side. If you fry too long the burger will be soft and falls very easily apart. Set the burgers aside on a serving plate and keep them warm.

Throw in the soaked dried tomatoes in the owen on top of the roots the remaining 6 minutes.

I didn't rinse the mixer from rests of pea mix, because I thought it just added some extra filling and spared me some time. Mix all the engredients for the mayonaise except the oil. Pour slowly the oil during mixing in the blender.

Hopefully the roots are baked and ready to be served with the burgers and the mayo.
The burgers and the mayo can also be served like a hamburger between breads with some fresh salad. Hm, thats what I'll do next time and post a photo of it.
I hope you'll try this recipe. My fellow who can be a bit picky with vegetables and loves meat, he loved this dish (the best dinner I have eaten for ages, he said).

I use cold pressed rapeseed oil because of it's perfect balance of fatty acids and it adds a mild nutty taste to the dishes.

Below is a photo of the flower of grey peas. It has a lovely two toned purple that changes colour after one day.

Vegan and gluten free cookies

This is a nice treat made of almond pulp and yellow pea flour. 

350 ml almond pulp

150 ml pea flour

1 tsp baking powder

mix these ingredients toghether in a bowl

carefully melt

100 gr coconut oil

add a large tbsp of honey to the melted coconut oil. And pour the mixture in the bowl and blend thouroughly to a soft dough. Add some chopped dried apricots. 

Take a tbsp of dough and roll balls, put them on parchment paper and press them down. Bake the cookies in a owen preheated to 175 degrees C for 15 minutes. If the cookies feels moist. Lower the temperature and let them dry for another 15-20  minutes.

Breakfast smoothie

This is my breakfast for today. A banana chokolate smoothie.

2 dl homemade youghurt

1tsp cacao powder

3 dried apricots (eco)

1 peeled banana

 Mix everything in the blender and drink. As I didn't put the apricot in water first there were some chunks left after mixing, but that gives just the smoothie another dimension.

The youghurt is homemade from milk with added bacteria from fit line. This batch were made just by taking 50 ml from the first batch added to the next. If you buy youghurt with living bacteria in the store you can do the same with that.

Juicing

We didn't get a single apple last summer, it was so rainy and cold. This summer, on the other hand has been so sunny and warm and my appletrees are almost breaking of the weight of apples. A good thing is that the apples of my 3 trees doen't get ripen at the same time. I have three different sorts and they have different purposes.

I can highly recommend to juice the apples and store it in the freezer to get good summer vitamins during the whole winter.

It is important to rinse the apples first to get rid of bug and eventual dirt. Another note; I pick my apples from the trees, not the ground.

The apples doesn't need peeling, cut them in chunks and remove kernels and the little twig.

When juicing, you get a foam on top and sediment at the bottom of the can. Skim the juice and try to avoid the sediment when pouring up in bottles for the freezer. 

For serving, you can add a third of water. I have to add a little sugar as well to get the children to drink.

My juicing machine looks like this, the brand is OBH Nordica. Waste comes out to the left and the juice in the can to the right. It is a bit limited when using. For example you need to stop adding apples and rinse the clogged strainer/separator every other minute.

If you don't own a juicer or can afford one, at least here in Sweden, there are farms that have juice presses where you can leave your apples to get juice in return for a fair price.
I'ts a huge problem here (well for me) were people don't bother to take care of all the fruit but they buy their juice and jam in the store instead, weird or what?

Todays Green smoothie

Todays green smoothie comes entirely from the garden. The apples are ripen and the rest, sallad, kale and sugarsnaps has been harvested for a while.

The ingredients on the tray gives two small bottles of green smoothie

Here's a little snapshot of the next years crop. Broad beans, blue peas, sugar snaps and grey peas. It is very easy to harvest and save peas and beans to sow.

Grow your own "bamboo" sticks

Ok, it's not exactly bamboo sticks. It's rather the function of them I describe. The candy smelling, white blooming bush; schersmin. I have one in my garden and every spring, a few stems are dead (while new ones sprouting). These dead ones are perfekt as growing support, straight, sturdy and long lasting. 

This is how my borlotto lingua beans looks with the stems as support. During the winter they are stored outdoors leaning against a wall and holds the next growingseasons without breaking.

 Picture of the lunch, squash, salad, leaves from celeriak, radish, onion tops and pesto of dill.

Different containers for growing seeds

It's time for growing vegetables. As many vegetables are sensible for the frost nights of the north they need to start the season indoors or in a green house. If you have a large vegetable garden you need lots of pots for the seeds. But with a bit of fantasy these pots can be almost for free. 

With a pot maker you can make pots out of news paper. These are perfect for plants that you don't need new pots along the indoor growing. Here are some pots with sweet corn. The paper pots stands on a plastic tray for minced meat.

A tray for lego bits, actually Legos Christmas calendar with 24 boxes is another clever solution. I grow suedes in this tray . 

All my kaleplants have problems with earth bugs. They are completely invisible so it took time until I realised why all my seedlings died. To protect the kale plants, you need a moist air. Plastic containers for baby tomatoes are perfect little green houses. They will keep the air moist.

This is how it looks under the lid.

To be continued ;)