PUDDING!!! VEGAN PUDDING!

But I forgot to take a photo.

As I write, I feel like a well-wrung-out floor rag. Not the fault of the diet though, that's for sure! VERY busy Thursday (as they all are), compounded by the fact that I carried my laptop and projector all over Viterbo :-)

Menu: Lunch, standard wholemeal pasta with carrots and broccoli (I was at work, after all).

Dinner: Total panic on way home - next time I say "I'm going to do this week without a menu plan and see what happens" could someone please remind me of today's post?

I called my mother-in-law from Viterbo, and asked her to put a big pot of water on to boil. Then I planned the meal around that ;-) It was boiling when I arrived. A quick glance at the five (FIVE!!!!???!!!!!) different kinds of brown/wholegrain rice we have in the cupboard showed me that the GANGES River Brown was going to cook the fastest (35 minutes as opposed to 45 or even 55 for one type!), so I rinsed 300gr of it and threw it into the pot with a bit of salt. After 20 minutes I added two handfuls of frozen peas, then after another five minutes, two chopped carrots.

In a pan, I sautéed a small red onion, a couple of garlic cloves (not chopped, so that I could find them and make sure they didn't end up on the children's plates), then some ground cumin, ground corriander, garam masala, and ground cardamom (thanks, Heather Mc!), toasted that, added half a cup of red wine (remember, I was just grabbing wildly for anything I had...), then threw in some borlotti beans. Probably not the best type of bean for Indian spices, but we had black beans last night, and cannellini a few days ago, and I want to use chickpeas tomorrow (yes, I DO have a plan for tomorrow!). I just let them simmer away, and they got all mushy and toasty and spicy and surprisingly, very, very tasty.

And because, my female readers will understand, it is a time which requires, no, DEMANDS chocolate, I invented Vegan Chocolate Custard! 2 spoons potato flour, 1 spoon cocoa powder, 100ml agave syrup, some cinnamon and nutmeg, a pinch of salt, a little vanilla essence, and 2 cups of (homemade) soy milk. Whisked it all up, then stirred it over low heat. It was pudding, all right! Next time, I think I'd use less potato flour, as it was a stick-to-your-ribs kind of density. If you wanted more of a pouring custard, you'd need either less flour or more milk. And you could use cornflour instead of potato flour, but I don't have any right now. So a gluten-free, low-fat, vegan dessert, which everyone really enjoyed!

I've just noticed that this is a post which seemingly requires many, many exclamation marks. I'll put that down to the fact that I've been non-stop busy-bee since my feet hit the ground at 6 a.m. this morning...and I can't stop yet.

Now I'm off to create a Wikispace for my high school students to check in to for a copy of today's Mimio lesson. Embracing the teaching technology....