Something to make: a weekly veggie menu

Plus, my ode to Race Across the World

I’m not a meal-prep kind of person for the most part, with the exception of when I read Ultra-Processed People and started sending Andy a weekly menu and making my own hot-sauce from scratch. (This is an excellent book I definitely recommend, but giving up Sriracha and instant ramen proved short lived.)

I only stopped meal prepping because I could, to be honest: I work from home, we have no kids, we live about 10 steps from a Sainsbury’s and my life revolves around what we should have for dinner. This life of relative flexibility and leisure allows for very little planning ahead, and also means we regularly eat at 9:30pm, and God Help Andy if I see him sneaking a snack before the homemade sushi I’m making for the first time on a Thursday is ready.

But when I have meal prepped, or simply cooked for friends who are snowed under by hard life stuff, I stand by a few simple rules. Making the whole shebang should only take a couple hours, the recipes should be adaptable and use repeatable ingredients, and it should be based around dishes that will actually taste good for the next 3-5 days after you’ve made it. One of my other core beliefs is also that Meals For Hard or Busy Times should be packed with greens, fruit, nuts and beans, because when things are tough or intense, it helps if your body doesn’t feel like flaming garbage, and for that to happen . . . I’m sorry, I have to say it. You’re going to need to be able to poop. You simply do not want to add constipation to your problems.

This is the menu I make for myself or my friends (in whole or in part!) when I really want to get on top of things. It is all veggie, all delicious (I have been making each of these recipes for years) and each recipe, on its own, is extraordinarily easy. The biggest challenge is the reliance on the oven, so the beans are good in a slow-cooker if you have one, but if not, I would put the beans in first and the muffins in last, using what pantry strays (nuts, seeds, chocolate) you have leftover from the other recipes.

My menu for the week:

• Easy greens pie, adapted from Georgina Hayden’s recipe.
  I always include feta and use pre-rolled puff pastry, and like to complement with a homemade tzatziki but will also just use hot sauce. If you have extra wilted spinach and feta, keep in a jar in the fridge to add to the tandoori chickpeas, or use for a near-instant shakshuka or spanakopita fritters.

• Ottolenghi’s hands-off tandoori chickpeas with lots of tomatoes; stir it onto pasta, hot or cold, or have as shakshuka or on toast. Cannellini beans work just as well.

• Bon Appetit’s just keeps getting better kale salad, with spiced nuts. I often use chickpeas instead of lentils¹, switch up the nuts or seeds, whatever I’ve got.
  Use the rest of the nuts in granola and add any extra softened kale to the pie or to the tandoori chickpeas. This salad does genuinely keep for several days, which makes it a unicorn.

• Homemade granola (I like Sami Tamimi’s sesame oat crumble, with some tweaks²), and a near-instant fruit compote: just cook down frozen blueberries or raspberries with the zest of a lemon and a little dash of sugar, then keep in the fridge in a jar. These can easily be layered up in a mason jar for you to take with you.

• And if I have time, I like to make muffins from whatever leftover fruit, nuts and yogurt/dairy I have. Just accept it: you’re going to want a sweet little treat to keep you going!!! So try and stuff some good shit in there. My favourite base recipes are always from Cornersmith: here are their nutty muffins (usually I make with carrot) and here are the fruity ones. (I also love a savoury muffin as a breakfast option. I can’t find a link for their cheesy eggy muffins online, but there’s plenty of comparable recipes.)³

• If I don’t have time for muffins, or indeed on top of the muffins, it’s good to incorporate some decent treats. I swear I do not come naturally to Healthy Eating, so my passion for this snack plate, which is what I like to eat when I’m writing, is based on it being delicious and texturally satisfying: almonds, pitted dates (which I like to stuff the almonds into), slices of apple, and dark chocolate.
  

Shopping List:

I’ve resisted the urge to tell you exactly how you should make this, since it’s adaptable and I’m actually pretty chaotic when I cook. But if it’s helpful, here’s a shopping list for the above. This is based on two people (plus a toddler if needed) eating this for most of the week. This shopping list is based around apple fruity muffins, for carrot/pumpkin ones you might have to add a few things.

Dairy and fridge:
1 pack shop-bought puff pastry (for the pie)
2 packs feta (for the pie and the salad, you could also swap with halloumi)
6 pack eggs (1 egg for the granola, 1 for the muffins, the rest for shakshuka or to bind bits for spanakopita fritters)
At least 1 large container of Greek yogurt, full fat! (for topping beans, serving with pie, for breakfast — if you really like this for breakfast maybe you want 2 containers)
250ml full-fat milk (for muffins, you could also buy extra yogurt and thin it out a little)

Fruit & veg:
Large bag of spinach, 200-300g (for the pie)
Large pack of kale, Tuscan or curly (for the salad)
3 lemons (for salad, pie and compote)
A bag of apples, or preferred snacky fruit (for muffins and snacking)
1 bag frozen berries or other compote fruit (for compote)
Pack of mild fresh chillies (for tandoori chickpeas)
2 cloves of garlic (for beans and salad)
1 pack of ginger (for salad, option)
400g tomatoes, ideally cherry or datterini (for the beans)
1 red onion (for salad)
1 pack of green olives (for salad — optional)

Pantry:
1 tin or bag of lentils, or equivalent dried (for salad, or swap for more chickpeas)
2 cans of chickpeas or other white beans (for beans)
1 tube tomato paste (for beans)
Honey (for pie and for granola, feel free to supplement with maple syrup or date syrup)
Around 200g almonds, walnuts or your preferred nuts (for salad, granola, and adding to muffins if you’d like.)
Around 100g sesame seeds, white, black or a mix (for granola, get a larger quantity if you also want to add to the salad or even to muffins)
150g oats (for granola)
380g self-raising flour (minimum for muffins, get extra flour to bind spanakopita fritters if necessary)
230g caster sugar (minimum for muffins, buy more for pickled red onions and easy compote)
Jar of peanut butter or tahini, as you like (for granola)
Dates & Dark Chocolate (chop up some dark choc and add to muffins if you want)
Neutral oil & olive oil (just make sure you have plenty of both)

Carb pantry:
Pasta, for eating with beans, equally some hardy sourdough

Herbs and spices (raid your pantry for spices and adapt):
Fresh herbs, dill, parsley and basil all work well (for topping beans or adding to pie)
Rose water, optional (for the granola.)
Cumin seeds, fennel seeds, coriander seeds, ground tumeric, chilli flakes, nigella seeds (if you don’t have one of these in stock, just swap with something comparable you do have.)

---

Hear me out: Race Across the World

• My mini “hear me out” is about Race Across the World, a TV show I think is much deeper than it seems, and offers that rare thing in television and reality TV in particular: genuine character growth. Seeing people change their perspective, and their relationships, over the course of 6 or so weeks is very moving. And they do so because they get out of their comfort zones, they see something beyond themselves, they build up respect for different cultures and ways of life, they have hard conversations with people close to them, and they learn they can repeatedly bounce back from failure and discomfort.

• I’m not a big TV person in general, a statement which is not a brag—if you’ve ever watched anything with me, you’ll know the real issue is I find TV almost unbearably emotionally intense and I ugly sob at John Lewis Christmas adverts and those montages of triumph and disaster during the Olympics. (Another thing about me: I’m not into sports, with the sole exception of the Olympics, which I LOVE⁴.) But I love Race Across the World. I love the truly amazing places they visit, I love seeing people grapple with recurring transit nightmares (all my life I have had recurring public transit based nightmares, that’s another thing about me), I love the people, who are radiantly normal individuals looking to experience something totally new and prove something to themselves.

• True to form, I loved every pair in this last race, which went from Shanghai down to the southern tip of India, barring a quick flight over the Himalayas. (It made me want to go to rural India, especially the south, so badly.) My favourites were arguably Brian and Melvyn, two 60-something English brothers whose not-very-nice parents sent them on different trajectories in life and weakened their close childhood relationship. Watching them grow closer, including reckoning with the ways their childhoods had shaped them, was deeply moving. In other hands, it could have been reality TV-style childhood trauma porn, but because Brian and Melvyn are the kind of unshowy, undemonstrative, typical Englishmen who would never, ever have gone on any other reality TV show, the deepening of their relationship unfolded slowly, thoughtfully, and very Englishly. (They often talked, very tellingly, around their early lives.)

• But often my favourite pairs are the parents with their adult children. Race Across the World includes both truly exceptional parents (Caroline’s trajectory this year, from loving but frustrated stay at home mom to adventurous go-getter who loves Indian train travel, was delightful), and parents who could use, in the most charitable sense, a bit of improvement: often because they struggled to truly listen to their own children, and to see them as individuals who might not fit precisely into their old ideas of who they were. In the same breath, some of the kids started the journey recalcitrant or babied, slipping back into old roles. One of the most rewarding things was watching those relationships shift, often as the kids gained real confidence. And though I’m not a parent (let alone of an unemployed 19 year old), I feel like Race Across the World contains an important lesson about remaining curious and open-minded about who your child (or your parent) truly is, and being willing to let each other evolve.

• For personal reasons, I really love the Canadian season. You may think going cross-country across Canada is much easier than travelling down the whole length of India, but I think you will find it is not, because Canada is very expensive and has almost no public transport, and yet the route takes them to the Arctic twice.

1. This recipe is no longer possible to get even as a trial, so I suggest following a loose idea—you only need to use a “recipe” once to get the idea. Get a large bag or bunch of kale. Strip the leaves from the stems. If it’s tuscan, roll the leaves into cigars and slice them thin, if it’s curly, just run a knife through it a few times. Put it in a bowl, season it with a good pinch of salt, and massage it until it softens and turns darker. Meanwhile, thinly slice a red onion, and put in a bowl with the juice of half a lemon, a pinch of salt and a pinch of sugar to quick pickle. Stir and leave to combine. Leave the kale leaves to soften some more (you’ll need to check they are pleasantly edible and keep massaging/waiting until they are), and while that’s happening, warm up a good glug of oil in a pan (they say about 1/2 a cup) and roughly chop a handful or two of almonds or another nut, and slice off a few strips of lemon zest and thinly slice 4 garlic cloves. Sautée the nuts, zest and garlic all in the oil until they are golden, then add in chilli flakes and either 1 tbsp cumin or fennel seeds to your preference. Almost immediately strain the oil and keep it, and lay the nuts and spices out on a plate to crisp up, seasoning again with salt. Add to the kale: a block of crumbled feta, a handful or two of sliced olives if you like them (plump fat green ones), and a can or sachet’s worth of black or green lentils (or boil your own.) Toss with the other half of the lemon’s juice, the infused oil, the pickled red onions, and the crumbled nuts and spices, eating around the lemon zest. Enjoy!

2. I use tahini instead of peanut butter if I have it, often leave out the rose water, and I use maple syrup or honey instead of date syrup, unless I have it on hand. I would also buy regular almonds and slice.

3. If you’re feeling ambitious and want to use anything up, Cornersmith is your first stop for sauces and pickles you can keep in the fridge. Here’s their pickles page; but both their books are amazing and incredibly useful: Use it All and The Food Savers A-Z. If you have extra chilis from the tandoori chickpeas, you may want to make a quick hot sauce.

4. My pitch for Goalhanger, where Andy works, is “The Rest is Sports.” This is a show that would cover drama, comebacks, rivalries and corruption scandals across the Olympic sports: shooting, cross-country, rafting, taekwondo, gymnastics, you name it. I don’t want to only get this high drama content every two years! I want to know what’s happening in snowboarding right now! (For example, I am now a committed fan of Yared Nuguse, the epically adorable American bronze medallist in the 1500m, now publicly out and with a mega-cute boyfriend but still committed to being a post-running career orthodontist.)