Oh my, I haven’t written in ages. What happened? Well, among other things, my little girl started school. We’re still not recovered! Stricter routine, busier social life, emotional turmoil, in short, quite absorbing.
Anyway, so, here I am, back on my food blogging track.
Today, I thought I’d share with you the (quite obvious) tip that makes my life much easier these days, that is the lunch preping part of my life.
Ironically, I daily spend quite a bit of time making sure everybody gets out the door with a lovely lunchbox, but usually forget to prepare anything for myself. What happens then is, 30 minutes before school pick up, my belly starts grumbling and I desperately open the fridge door (hoping for the miraculous appearance of a good meal probably), and end up eating a raw carrot, leftover plain rice and a piece of cheese.
So I decided that was enough. That I deserved a good satisfying lunch as well. Especially with the winter cold creeping over us…
My solution ? Once a week I make a big batch of a dip of some kind, packed with taste, and then I use it in salads, on leftover veggies or grains, and that’s a tasty meal wrapped up in minutes. I know it sounds trivial but these dips keep for a few days, offer a starting point, and make sure that whatever you add to them, your taste buds get the kick they deserve. Of course they are also full of good nutritional foods, so that you’re also well prepared for the above mentioned winter cold.
One of the regular dips I make (along with houmouses and pestos of all kinds) is a beetroot and walnuts spread that I have first encountered in Clea‘s very thourough and creative recipe book “tout sans gluten”.
Today, playing with my lovely (but sharp) hand spiralizer, I mixed it with a freshly spiralized courgette (from the garden!!! the last one probably), a luscious black crimea tomato, some coriander leaves, a simple french vinaigrette (mustard – olive oil – apple cider vinegar) and various seeds for a little crunch. And that’s a happy mom who will be running to school in 2 minutes!
[I’ve resisted a long time to get a spiralizer because I did not really get the point and did not want to clutter my home with yet another gadget, but I was curious all the same -if everyone is raving about it there must be something special about these spirales- and coming across this tiny hand spiralizer got the best of me. I don’t regret it -though I almost lost part of my thumb to it, mind your fingers when using one- I find spiralized veg do have a special crunch and texture that is very nice – as anything that brings diversity and change…]
Beetroot spread (From Clea’s book “Tout sans gluten”) – makes 1 jar
- 1 medium cooked beetroot (~120g)
- 1 small handful shelled walnuts (~40g)
- 2 dates
- 2 scallions or 1 shallots or 1/2 red onion
- 2 tbsp olive oil (or even better walnut oil, if you’re lucky enough to have this in your pantry)
- pinch of salt
Roughly chop and blend everything until smooth.
Kitchen Rendez-Vous 