It snowed here again last week (in April!) so we’re still cooking wintery food and dreaming of fresh tomatoes and summer berries. On the stove are hearty soups like this one made of tomato, fennel, beans, leeks and wholewheat noodles providing a complete meal in a bowl.

There are two types of soup in the world, the sort that needs a good chunk of bread and the sort that is a complete meal in itself.  This soup is the latter type with at least 3 servings of veg per portion, wholegrain carbohydrate and plant-based protein from the cannellini beans.  As well as covering everything I look for in a balanced meal the combination of fibre, fluid and protein mean that the soup is really filling.

The recipe is completely inspired by a much loved ‘Chickpea and spinach soup’ from the 1st edition of An honest kitchen, a genius recipe which is much brightened by shoyu sauce and a handful of fresh mint.

It’s a very well though out recipe:

• minimal pans are used, the noodles are just cooked by pouring hot water over and leaving them
• shoyu sauce provides a complex salty note but with less sodium overall than adding salt
• all of the ingredients are ones that we usually have in
• You can swap in different fresh veg (I always try to include one from the allium family)

My version here keeps all of the cleverness of the original recipe but with ingredients well suited to a UK winter pantry, including parsley, the only soft herb to grow in my garden right the way through the Winter. Recipe étiquette is a tricky thing, but having just read Kathryn’s post on the Honest Kitchen blog on how much she enjoys seeing her and Lucy’s recipes tweaked and adapted, I think she will be more than happy to see her ideas put to good use.

You know my feelings about oats. They are far too modest to say so themselves, but how many other foods are wholegrain, low GI and more than usually endowed with cholesterol mopping soluble fibre?  And so versatile in the kitchen too.  I’m always pleased to find another excuse to include them in my week and hence my delight at having these spinach, cottage cheese and oat pancakes as a new savoury oaty option.

I know some people pooh-pooh cottage cheese but if you buy the normal stuff it’s actually rather nice and creamy. I think it was all the extra low fat cottage cheese (very watery and lumpy) and those strange additions like prawns and pineapple that did for its reputation. That, and all those flavour free, soul-destroying diets of the 1970s and 1980s.  But if you’re still sceptical about the merits of cottage cheese then give this Baked cottage cheese french toast with a courgette and corn salsa a whirl as a stepping stone to moving on to these pancakes (honestly, I dare you not to like them).

Those savoury oat, spinach and cottage cheese pancakes combine both of these ingredients and are literally a case of blitz and cook.  Credit where it’s due to the awesome Shauna for spotting the sheer simplicity of this recipe. We like these as brunch and making a savoury twist on the original fruity recipe makes it really easy to fit in some extra portions of fruit and veg alongside the pancakes (today a heap of salad leaves and some roast cherry tomatoes).

People with problems absorbing lactose be aware that cottage cheese has much more lactose in it than hard cheeses.

Many more ideas for including more oats in your diet over here, plus a whole host of cheese and egg recipes.

Broad beans are finally in season over here after bravely battling through an eternity of rainy days and plant-destroying gales.  I had what looked like a big paper bag full in my veg box a couple of weeks ago. Nik and I shelled them together the day before I cooked them, standing side by side in the kitchen.  Marvelling, as every year, at the thick protective cushioning in each pod.  So thick and tempting looking. But a little lavish perhaps on the bean to pod ratio – by the time we were done there were barely enough beans to fill a cup.

Starting out to make lunch for the two of us the the next day there were barely enough beans to feed one, never mind two.  I stuck to most of my original plan for the beans but padded them out with some leftover chickpeas.  This worked well so I thought I’d share the tip; chickpeas make a great substitution if you don’t have enough broad beans as the flavour and colour of the chickpeas don’t compete with the long-awaited broad beans and the texture is surprisingly similar.

There’s a very similar amount of protein in both broad beans and the chick peas (about 8g of protein per 100g) and just a little bit less fibre in the chickpeas (4g versus 6g per 100g) so they make a great nutritional substitution too.  The protein and fibre together make them a satisfying option for lunch.

I double podded my beans here. If they’re in a creamy sauce like this tagliatelle with broad beans, chicken, mustard and mint it doesn’t matter so much, but in a spread like this you want to see the splendid emerald of the inner bean, not the greyer outer casing.  Besides, by the time you’ve podded them once it’s not really so much of a stretch to do it again.

You can serve this on toast like I did (or anything else designed for spreading), or else eat it as a side dish or dip. I think it would be particularly lovely with fresh trout or salmon.

Becoming mindful teaches you that the nothing is the same twice.  Each breath we take is different and though it might seem the same each cup of tea that we drink is subtly different in multitude of tiny of ways.  Same for those regular meals that we cook week in, week out.  So what has this got to do with leftovers and frittata I hear you ask? The same is true for portion sizes also. Cooking and eating mindfully includes deciding how much is enough today. Not the amount that’s usually enough or what worked last week but what seems enough today, at this particular one-off mealtime.

With these two lovely new chickens taking us up to five girls in total, we’re regular frittata eaters in our house.  The recipe I’ve posted below is for the amount that I always make. It’s a variation on this ever adjusting Parsnip, Red Onion, Kale and Gouda frittata which in turn is from this basic frittata recipe. I am forever indebted to Kathryn Elliott for pointing out the simple beauty of a frittata for those days when you don’t have anything planned. So long as you have some eggs, an indiscriminate assortment of vegetables and a few scraps of cheese then you have dinner.

A 6 egg frittata isn’t the right portion for two people every time. Sometimes it’s just perfect, other times it’s a bit too much.  Which leaves the happy accident of leftovers for breakfast or lunch.  Sometimes enough for two people, sometimes enough for one and sometimes none at all.

This post is for Helen’s Breakfast Club Event, hosted by Monica at SmarterFitter.  As I’m a big fan of Monica, Helen, breakfast and leftovers I thought I’d join in!

For three years in a row I have tried to grow my own brussels sprout ‘rubine’, the beautiful crimson flecked cousin of the common green brussel, and for three years I have failed. Brussels sprouts need care, love and attention right from sowing the seeds in March, through planting out the baby brassicas in early summer (protecting them from our cheeky chickens and the slugs until they are strong enough to stand alone), and then onwards to the first frost for that all important flavour boost. After three years of failure  I thought that it was just not meant to be.

My humble thanks and admiration then go to Marks and Spencer for putting in a lot of effort themselves into figuring out how to grow these little beauties so that I could buy them. Apparently it has taken them a few years of practicing too.  Happily I can finally chuck out my sprout seeds and stick to the simpler but still exciting stuff like funny coloured courgettes and oddly shaped carrots.

The red sprouts don’t taste particularly different to the usual green varieties but unlike many purple veggies they do keep their colour when you cook them.  All brussels sprouts are a great source of Vitamin C for people eating and shopping sustainably through the British Winter and the purple colour of these particular sprouts is because they have a high anthocyanin content, a group of antioxidant molecules with potential anti-cancer properties (that old nutrition advice to eat a rainbow has some pretty sound science behind it).

I was so excited to finally get my hands on these little chaps that I thought this was time to make good the final stage of my brussels sprout acceptance journey from being a long-time sprout hater; eating a raw sprout. Long time readers will know that I was planning to reach this last sprouty frontier way back in 2008, but somehow it never quite happened.

Anyway, if you’ve been holding off trying them raw (like I have), then don’t. There’s nothing scary about them – they just taste like raw cabbage. That raw brassica tang is lovely with the sweet, nutty gruyere cheese and creamy almonds I used in my little salad, and I bet they would make a brilliant winter coleslaw with dried cranberries and a mayo and yogurt dressing. What’s stopping you?

p.s I keep forgetting to tell you that I’ve made Facebook page for Mostly Eating.  It’s another way of following the blog (links to all new posts appear on there) but in addition I’ve been posting a small selection of links to other recipes and nutrition articles on there.

Scrambled eggs are home-cooking at its most glorious. Quick, delicious, comforting, frugal, familiar.  And almost never nice when eaten out, with catering establishment incarnations ranging from watery through to bouncy. And then there are those diet police versions, throwing away yolks and with them a whole load of flavour, protein, Vitamin D, iron and beta carotene.

This meal is a regular in our house thanks to our girls. Cooking the eggs like this is a good way of enjoying your scrambled eggs while introducing a little healthy monounsatured oil and vegetable.  We use olive oil to cook the eggs and then a little knob of butter to finish them off with that silky texture. Zucchini are mild enough to let the taste of the eggs shine and cutting them into thin ribbons lets the vegetable meld into the soft scramble, rather than introducing unpleasant lumps.  I add the merest hint of a mint for a little whisper of freshness (any more and it will be overpowering).

Anyone who is a gardener has an abundance of courgettes this month.  Even I have one plant, despite drastically reduced home growing this summer in deference the aforementioned house move.  If I can recommend one piece of equipment to you it would be a julienne peeler – thin courgette strips have myriad of uses and a peeler is a doddle to use and clean, plus much less dangerous than a mandoline (I don’t think my cuisipro peeler is available any more, but you’re looking for something along these lines).

More ideas to use up zucchini / courgette

• Baked cottage cheese french toast with a courgette and corn salsa
• Ricotta, courgette, lemon and mint summer sandwich
• Chicken with courgette, halloumi and honey
• Spaghetti with courgette, lemon and goats cheese
• Aubergine, courgette and tomato stew with quinoa and feta

I don’t seem to be able to make up my mind what to call them. I’m starting to prefer using the word zucchini instead of courgette –  wonder if this is down to the hours spent hanging out in this multicultural space, or a nod to the fact courgette were probably my most hated vegetable as a child, whereas I really rather like them now. You’ll have to excuse me for the to-ing and fro-ing between the two for now.

Everybody knows too much cheese is bad for you and full of calories and saturated fat. Except that really this isn’t true at all – yes cheese is fairly high calorie but it’s also a good source of protein, calcium and above all JOY!  Eating well sometimes involves taking a bit of a step back and seeing the wood for the trees.  It’s actually fine to have a moderate portion of cheese now and again, especially if it helps you to eat more of the good stuff along side it.  I’m a firm believer in the salad splurges philosophy of eating:

Not cool – a block of cheese gradually nibbled away until you realise that you’ve eaten half of it in one sitting, probably with slice of plastic bread on the side

Not cool – a huge bowl of just salad for lunch – unadorned and protein free except with nothing but a drizzle of fat-free salad dressing

Cool – a little bit of cheese as part of a well planned meal that also includes a huge portion of lovely veggies and some of those good fats too, like nuts and olive oil

This salad tastes best when made with some lovely smooth mature stilton, not the standard factory offering with its astringent, tongue-burning properties (great use for any Christmas leftovers).

This wintery saute has been on regular rotation this autumn, in fact pretty much every week there’s been a good savoy cabbage available.  It’s ready in less than 15 minutes (including prep) and uses only one pan, a chopping board and knife. There’s plenty of plant based matter here and carbohydrate from the chestnuts and protein from the chickpeas.  And you don’t even need a pan of boiling water.

I’ve said before that you can make a stir-fry right from your store cupboard – pretty much all of the ingredients here in this saute are pantry friendly with the exception of the cabbage.  The end result isn’t at all fancy but it’s healthy and tasty and strikes the right balance of autumnal sweetness and spice without being overfilling.

Savoy cabbage, sweet chestnuts and the subtle lemony warmth of nutmeg are decidedly comfort food territory. The chickpeas (garbanzo) might not be the obvious pairing with chestnuts and cabbage but add substance, nutrients and texture to your meal without competing overpowering the other
flavours. We like this saute topped with a poached or fried egg to turn it into a more substantial meal.  I have mine with a drizzle of truffle oil and hubby likes his with a splash of soy sauce.  A dusting of grated parmesan might also work well.

Related recipes
Chestnut, parsnip and orange soup
Italian lentil and chestnut stew
Brussels sprout stir fry with egg, chilli, ginger and garlic
How to make a quick stir-fry from your store cupboard

In the snowy weeks at the start of the year there were a couple of days when I couldn’t get to work and I had the opportunity to really immerse myself in some reading. Springing off from Elaine’s excellent collection of links on How to build & maintain healthy bones on a plant-based diet I spent a happy couple of days reading up on bone health and found inspiration very close to home.

In Oxford (where I live and work) there is an ongoing research study called EPIC, the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition. EPIC is an impressive undertaking; it has been running since 1993 and has followed the diets of 65,000 Oxford residents since then, watching and waiting to see which patterns emerge between the food we eat and our health.  Because Oxford has such a lot of vegetarian folk, the study has provided excellent opportunities to look at the pros and cons of being vegetarian and vegan.

Are vegan diets (by definition dairy-free) good or bad for your bones is one such conundrum the researchers hope to answer.  So far in the EPIC group, the meat eaters, fish eaters and vegetarians all seem to have about the same overall risk of having a fractured bone.  The vegans in the group however had about a third more fractures than those other groups.  It’s a deceptive result this one though, and the true picture only emerged after the statisticians had a closer look at the numbers.  Those vegans who had enough calcium in their diet were no more likely to have a fracture than those following other styles of diet. It seems it’s not a vegan diet that is bad for your bones at all, just a badly balanced vegan diet without enough calcium in it.

As I see a lot of vegans in our bone health clinic, I’m always looking out for good vegan calcium sources, and it’s even better if several of these can be combined into a tasty calcium-rich meal. A chance mention on this guide to vegan calcium sources of the very Italian pairing of figs and white beans led to this calcium-rich spread recipe. There’s about 140 mg of calcium in a half serving of this recipe, plus a good amount of iron and fibre.  A batch of this in the fridge can be used as part of a main meal, spread on toast bruschetta-style or used as a dip with oatcakes or Lucy’s olive oil crackers.

There’s something about the mention of a frittata that brings to mind Summer, maybe because the word itself is so utterly Mediterranean?  Don’t let these temperate thoughts distract you though – a frittata is actually a perfect quick supper dish whatever the season and a great way to get in a couple of portions of vegetables in one dish.  So while just a few months ago we were cooking courgette, broad bean and feta frittatas, for the past few weeks the same basic recipe has taken on a much more wintery note with variations like this parsnip, kale and red onion frittata.

Potatoes are the traditional starchy addition to frittatas and tortilla but unless you have the pre-requisite “handful of leftover boiled potatoes” lingering in your fridge (we never do), including potatoes can add an unwanted extra stage to the cooking.  Parsnips are quicker to cook and much tastier than spuds and more importantly allow the frittata to keeps its allure as a one pan supper.

I’ve used Gouda which has a caramel sweetness that complements the parsnips and red onion beautifully but most types of cheese that you might have in your fridge would work.  All types of wintery leafy green can be substituted including chard, savoy cabbage or even thinly sliced brussels sprouts.

The quantities below provide a good sized meal for two people with no more than a green salad needed on the side. Smaller portions are ideal for a lighter meal and leftovers are very good indeed cold (perfect for a packed lunch). We’ve taken the leftovers with us for a long car journey before now, wrapped in baking parchment and with a thermos of pumpkin soup on the side (yes, the food at British motorway service stations really is that bad).

Other parsnip recipes on Mostly Eating
Chestnut, parsnip and orange soup
Spring chicken cottage pie (not strictly a parsnip recipe, but delicious with a half potato / half parsnip topping)
(raw) Parsnip, chickpea and goats cheese salad

Pan-friend parsnips with cottage cheese and seeds