Brrrrr it is getting cold! Time to prepare some filling, comforting and easy dinners :-).
Greg gave us a long pumpkin from his garden, I love it as you just need to slice it and peel it and you have a nice pumpkin medallion!
Roasted pumpkin medallions with pumpkin and sunflower seeds
Slice, peel and place onto an oven tray, drizzle with olive oil, salt, smoked paprika, garlic and crushed cumin seeds. Roast until tender. Toast a few pumpkin and sunflower seeds the oven and sprinkle on the pumpkin medallions before serving.
In addition I had the last zucchini in the garden, not quite a marrow but quite big, so I sliced it and baked it too:
Baked zucchini
Wash and slice lengthwise, drizzle with olive oil and salt, bake. That all!
To serve I added some basmati and lentils
Lemon basmati and lentils
Wash and cook the basmati with a small pinch of salt, open a can of lentils, drain from the water and pour the lentils on top of the rice during the last five minutes of cooking. Turn off the heat, add two tbsp of lemon juice and stir.
And to top some instant hummus with almond dukka:
Instant hummus
Open a can of chickpeas, drain and keep half of its water. Blend the chickpeas, water, two peeled garlic cloves and the juice of half a lemon until smooth. Add salt to taste and a little olive oil.
Almond dukka
Toast half a cup of almond, a few sunflower and pumpkin seeds and 1 tsp of cumin seeds. Add a little rock salt, a pinch of paprika or the spice of your choice. Grind and use to top the Hummus.
Well, that was easy, the kids loved it and got eaten in no time!
Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©
Marzapane with Amaretto
White button mushrooms are delicious raw, and they are vitamin rich, apparently they even have vitamin B12. These little savoury mushrooms 'macarons' make a tasty appetizer, and they look really fancy! All you need is mushrooms and some raw vegan nut cheese (recipe here). Remove the stalks from the mushrooms and peel off the top 'skin', the clean them well with a damp paper towel (do not wash). Fill with a little vegan nut cheese and close together like a macaron. 
Almost cake-pops because they look like cake-pops, but they are not made from cake! In fact these are Cape Gooseberries (therefore I am calling them Cape-pops :-)), dipped in dark chocolate. I left some plain, while I rolled the others in shredded coconut, ground pistachio nuts, and plum powder (my new discovery, I talked about it already in here). I let them set first at room temperature and then, because it was a warm day, in the fridge. These are gluten free too!
