Viva Uganda asked if we could love our hearts and go meat free…for just 7 days to start and i said Yes! Easy, right? Sort of.
The first thing I did was to stuff my fridge full of veggies to make the journey easy and delicious. So far I have tried 3 of the recipes in the recipe book and it is going well.
1. Rolex remixed
Naturally I started with the rolex recipe because I felt it would be the easiest (no eggs). It was also the perfect opportunity to use all of the veggies. Lettuce, peppers, cucumber, and of course, ovacado. I bought the chapati already made so all I had to do was prep the veggies.
While I thought this would just be a snack (the plan was to eat only a half), I ate the whole thing in one sitting so it turned out to be a full meal. The rolex was filling without making me feel stuffed.
As a bonus, I had prepped far too many veggies so I had some left over for a salad later on. I added fried gonja in there for some sweetness.
Gonja
Gonja is a great snack and a good swap for cake and sweets when you have a craving. As I said in the previous article, we tend to eat what is available. If I had cake, I would have eaten cake but the only sweet thing I had was gonja, so that’s what I made. The one in the picture is roasted but I made i opted for a fried one. Extra juicy. No need for cake. Trust me.
2. Matooke and G. nuts Katogo
This is one of my favourite dishes to make ever. I feel like I am taking care of myself when I make katogo. It is easy to make but does takes a bit of time, what with the matooke peeling and groundnut cooking. Normally I combine the matooke and the g nuts sauce in the pan but I skipped this because I wanted to add greens to the sauce.
I added spinach to the ground nuts instead of bugga and this made the sauce heavier and more chewy. I prefer it with the bugga.
As I had shopped enough ovacado, all my meals had some and I was full in a few bites. I kept the other half of the meal for dinner and I was done with day 2.
3. Mushroom curry with rice
Believe it or not I found this to be the easiest and most enjoyable meal to make. Even easier than the rolex! I think it was because I had assumed it was going to be hard to pull off. Ultimately it was just boiled rice and some veggies and mushrooms
I skipped the cashew nuts and went for coconut milk instead. This is the beauty of these recipes, skip what you don’t like, add what you like, the meal will not be ruined.
The whole meal ended up being much more filling than I had anticipated. The mushrooms swelled with water, coconut, oil and were so fun to chew. The turmeric and pepper made the sauce divine. I would highly recommend this when you want a fast and yet fancy meal.
Chips and salad
By day 4 I was tired of cooking and I was really missing junk food. This is when I ordered a chips plain. It was tempting to add chicken, no one would know, but I persisted. Instead I had a large salad, lettuce, avocado of course and some peppers. I enjoyed it immensely.
4 days down, 3 to go and I am looking forward to cooking a bean dish.
Did you try the H7 love your heart challenge? I would love to know how it went.