Home grown vegetables and Bean Burgers

At the start of the summer I put together 2 vegetable beds. We got 2 vegetable large square shape beds. At the start of the summer it looked like this.

Also have a potatoe patch thing.

Planted in it was lettuce, onions, cabbage, rocket, parsley, thyme. A lot of the cabbage and Lettuce got destroyed by slugs though. I didn't wanna use slug pellets but ended up using them anyway because they ate EVERYTHING!

So I got lazy and pretty much abandoned it up until today. After cutting the horrible amount of grass I have, I was in a gardening mood. So I took all the weeds out of the vegetable patch, pulled out any dead shit and pulled up all the onions because they were ready. My mum freaked though because we are not gonna have to use all of them when we coulda just pulled one out when we actually need it, ah well.

There is quite a lot of onions. They're more red onions still to be picked.

The onions grew some pretty nice flowers too!

There is also a tomatoe plant and a rubarb plant that are still growing. A few green tomatoes on it there! Seeing an actual vegetable like that growing is very class.

There is some sweet pea growing on the deck, which I love. The flowers are so pretty. I made a DIY climbing system for it using string and bamboo. It grew pretty quick.

Now onto some food.

Today I made Bean burgers for dinner. I followed a recipe from a vegetarian cookbook I have but I flavored it in my own way.

It was very easy to make. It involved, chopping an onion finely and frying it. Add a tablespoon each of coriander and cumin. Adding garlic. Then adding this to a bowl of Kidney beans. I used 1 1 tin and a half. It made about 5 burgers.

The recipe was just that plus mushrooms but I had none. I added a lot more stuff to it to make it tastyier!

I added-

• Pine nuts
• cashew nuts
• dried cranberries
• Chilli
• Honey
• Parsley
• Salt, pepper
• And the most important ingredient- Sun dried tomato paste

This stuff is THE BEST.

You then mash it altogether with a potato masher and mould them into burgers, dust with a bit of flower and brush with a little oil and pop them under the grill. They have no egg or anything in them so they don't hold that well but pretty well.

I ate mine in a pitta bread with salad and salad cream. I should of put cheese on too.

I also used some nandos hot sauce and left over cous cous I made earlier.

It was very tasty and was made to be eaten with salad cream. Will be making again!

all sorts

Well first of all I got a baking dream. A freestanding mixer, I love it! I can make icing real well now with it. Saves a lot of time too. Why I didn't have one before, I do not know.

I went to town with my Mum and Sister on Tuesday to get some Lunch. We were going to go to Govindas, a Vegetarian Indian restaurant but we got lazy and stayed southside. So we went to Fresh, A vegetarian restaurant in Powerscourt (http://www.cafe-fresh.com/) . I had eaten there a couple years ago and I remember it being really good.
They had a delish looking Potato and Carrot curry that my Mum and Sister got.

I tried some and it was lovely! The rice that came with it was so good and fluffy. I went up and asked the chef what it was. He told me it was short grain brown rice, So I will be getting some of that. He was a really nice Indian chef. Indians are the masters of curry so of course the curry was delish.
I was way to hot at the time for curry so I got a falafel wrap thing. I was so indecisive in what to get. I should of gotten something different than falafel because I always have falafel. It was disappointing. Was not into. I couldn't tell the falafel from the hummus. Ah well. Next time something different. Came with 2 salads too.

They has real nice desserts too. Vegan cakes and the likes but I was way to stuffed!

I met Rachel after and got shakes and we sat in Trinity. I went for the buttons one avec Peanut butter. It was GOOOD!Love peanut butter. Toast with raspberry jam and Peanut butter never fails.
Trinity buildings are extremely nice and Trinity hangouts are also nice. I wish my college had grass to chill on.


And because peanut butter is the best, I made Peanut butter cookies for a Picnic on Bray head. I made half of them just plain cookies but added peanut butter to the rest of the cookie dough. I'd love to know how to make REEEEALY good cookies. Like chewy, fudgey ones instead of cakey type ones.


A few weeks back I baked for a Disney movie marathon Jesse, Susan, Ruth and I had.
I made raspberry and white chocolate Brownies and just raspberry cupcakes as per usual.
Jesse bought sugar letters so she could write rude things on the cupcakes haha.



It's true :)

Just some avoca salad apreesh. If I could make shit like this I'd be very happy. The cookbook lies, I'm telling you. They have secret ingredients!

Lemon cupcakes!

Lemon cake with some failure icing.

Homemade pizza!

Fun cupcakes! I always wanted to put mini smarties on cupcakes. More failure icing too.

FOOOOD

The past few days have been bore central. When I get bored I usually cook or bake. So I did that.

First up. Maryland cookie cupcakes along with Maryland icing.
I got lazy and wasn't arsed using an icing bag to ice them. So ignore the bad presentation.


I decided to give a couple of Cornucopia recipes a go.

This involved making a sundried tomato dressing thing. The recipe said to use extra virgin olive oil, which is gross. I still used it anyway so it kinda taste and smelt on oil. Vom. These recipes were a bit of a letdown.

Whopper salads!

Last night I decided to make sugar cookies, I believe they're called. I fucked up the dough a bit but they still came out yum.

Next time I need to make proper icing though. This was all made very half arsed.

Dawgs

My blog is called walking dogs and writing blogs but has nothing to do with that really anymore.
So here is a dog filled post. What more could you ask for.

So, I was down in Cork last week visiting my aunt. She lives in an area surrounded by farms and fields of cattle. It's pretty nice. I love going on walks there.
On my walks I would always find lots of dogs.

On the first day I was up around the corner checking some calves out when I turned around and this german shepard was staring at me. I got such a fright. Then his 2 mates came around the corner. They were all really friendly and came on a walk with me.





There is a dog in pretty much every house on the road.
The best dog was Laila though.
She lives a few doors up along with Kit, an old springer Spaniel and a friendly tabby cat.
She is extremely friendly and real wiggly and gets real hyper. She is one of those dogs that you can tell is smiling.
Well she came on a walk with me and we hung out for a bit. Then she became very attached to me and wouldn't leave from my aunt's front door, like at all. Turned out her owner was away for 2 weeks. So she must of been lonely. She wouldn't leave so she stayed the night haha.

Next morning we went off and she went home but she appeared back on the doorstep again. I went on a walk with her and hung out for a bit. She came back that night and ended up staying the night again.
She loved hugs and sitting on your lap even though she is huge.
The day after I left she was back up at the house looking for me. I wanted to take her home so bad!





And then there's Charlie! Charlie is lovely. He is my cousin's dog.


And there is Sue! Sue is My cousin's wife's family dog. I was asked to take photos of her :)


Currently Minding Towzer. He lives up the road. He belongs to my mum's friend. He often comes to my house and hangs out for a while.
He has decided to stick by me. He follows me around the house and goes wherever I go. If I am in my rooms he comes to my room and lys on the bed.


Walking Towzer, Lola and Bella.


Lola hates Towzer, Towzer hates Bella and Bella loves Lola.

This post is kinda weird. I'm not THAT obsessed with dogs!