Weekend Food

I always find the weekends particulary hard. Its difficult to think of what to eat for a quick Saturday lunch that's not a sandwich. We eat out a lot at weekends and its often a challenge. This weekend, however, we stayed in for dinner on friday and I made Greek style lentil burgers. I adapted the recipe from one found in 'Vegetarian Times' magazine. I used oats, baked in the oven for about 10 minutes instead of breadcrumbs. The burgers were really tasty and substantial enough to not miss having a bun with them. Had a radish and fennel salad to go with it, a la Jamie Oliver (food network website). Really tasty, and crunchy. Saturday lunch we had some of the leftover burgers. Then went to a BBQ saturday night. They served some lamb and lots of salad and veggies which was great. As I am not a 100% vegetarian, I did eat some lamb because it looked so tasty I couldn't resist, and veggy burgers turned out slightly cardboard like and were a lot less appetizing. I am still searching for a veggy burger or sausage which cooks well on a BBQ.

I have started making my own granola. Its dead easy. Oats, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, ground flax seeds, ground nuts. Bake it all in the oven till golden - about 15 minutes. Then warm up some maple syrup about 30 secs till it takes on a more runny texture. Pour it into the oat mixture. Then into a container and refrigerate. I add some raisins at this stage too. Its really tasty. The only problem with this is that you kind of have to have milk with it and I don't like to have that much dairy, so this is not really an everyday breakfast for me.

My usual breakfast consists of oatmeal - half a cup of oatmeal to one cup of liquid. The liquid I use is mostly water with a splash of milk - I find it quite bitter with just water. I add maple syrup, some ground flax seeds, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds and blueberries if I have them.
This is great in the fall and winter but not so appealing in the heat and humidity of a DC summer. So, in the summer what you can do is soak the oats overnight in apple or orange juice then top with whatever you like in the morning.