Recipe - A Vegan Christmas - Lentil Loaf

This month our recipe of the month featured an ideal Christmas Dinner for a vegetarian.  But if you have a Vegan coming to dinner don't panic!  Organic Yum-Yum is here to help with this delicious and easy to make lentil loaf.

Ingredients

A handful of mixed seeds 
250g green or brown lentils
hot vegetable stock 
2 bay leaves
1 clove of garlic crushed
1 tsp ground sea salt
4 shallots finely chopped
2 thick slices of bread made into breadcrumbs
1/2 a tin of tomatoes blended until smooth
2 tbsp mixed fresh herbs
A handful of mixed seeds
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper. 


Method

Pre heat the oven at 180C, 350F or Gas Mark 4


Line a loaf tin with parchment paper and grease with vegan margarine.

Sprinkle the base of the tin with the mixed seeds until it is covered. 

Wash the lentils and then place in a saucepan with the bay leaves and garlic, cover with hot vegetable stock and simmer until tender.  This can take between 20 and 30 minutes. A few minutes before the end of the cooking time add the salt.

Drain the lentils and mix in the remainder of the ingredients.  If the mixture is too moist add more breadcrumbs, if it is too dry add more tomatoes. Season to taste.

Press the mixture into the loaf tin and bake in the oven for an hour. 

Allow to cool for 15 minutes and turn out onto a serving dish. 

Organic Yum-Yum will be back in January.  


From all of us at Feelgood Organic Hampers have a great Christmas and New Year.

5 step guide to a greener Christmas - Step 3 - Dinner

Eating has become the thing that I look forward to the most on Christmas Day. But in the midst of all the gluttony it is possible to be a bit greener. 

Firstly, try not to buy too much food. I know myself that it is a hard to resist the mountains of food in the supermarkets at this time of year, but wasted food is a disaster for the environment. The population of the UK throw away about a third of the food they buy, I haven't been able to find a statistic for Ireland but I would imagine that it would be quite similar. The problem is that a lot of our food waste ends up in landfill and produces methane as it decays. As we are now all aware thanks to the belching cow phenomenon, methane is a powerful greenhouse gas. The more worrying and less obvious consequence, according to WRAP (Waste & Resources Action Programme) Is the "embedded energy used to produce, package, transport and deliver the food to our homes which produces the equivalent of at least 15 million tonnes of carbon dioxide every year." 

If you are a meat eater I am sure that turkey and ham is a must. Try and source organic meat if possible, if you can't source organic try and buy locally to cut down on the food miles. 

For vegetarians, again try and source local and organic produce. A lot of the ingredients for my own veggie feast can be found at Farmers Markets and health food stores. By shopping here as well as having the best variety of organic and local foods you can also avoid all the packaging that often comes with supermarket vegatables.

If you have a garden it's worth investing in a good compost bin so that you can compost your peelings to help your garden grow in the new year.