Happiness soup, yummy lentil burgers, and shelves!

This weekend my family came to visit, and as well as catching up and having fun there was lots of eating. Also my awesome dad put up some shelves for us in the kitchen, my cookery books no longer need to lie down on the dresser, they're now on display in a more useful way!

Woohoo!

To feed a family with two vegetarians, one peanut allergic, and one on a gluten-free diet can be tricksy, but on Sunday we happily munched on lentil, rice and nut burgers with guacamole, and fried eggs and homemade coleslaw (made by mum) on the side - yummy!

I invented the recipe a while back to use up some leftover rice and it goes something like this (be aware it makes a lot! you can always halve the quantities):-

200 g lentilles vertes (puy lentils would also work) - boiled.
1 portion cooked brown basmati (~150 g cooked)
1 medium onion
100 g cashew nuts
50 g sunflower seeds
2 eggs
3 cloves garlic
~5 mushrooms (optional)
EITHER mushroom ketchup or soy sauce
sage
thyme
chives
salt
pepper
soy flour to bind (optional)

Blend ingredients in food processor, fry a small bit of mixture and taste for seasoning, adjust to taste.
The first time I made these I used mushrooms, soy flour and mushroom ketchup, having toyed with various seasonings.  This time, I'd run out of mushrooms and mushroom ketchup and used soy sauce instead. With the mushrooms and mushroom ketchup the mixture was a bit wet, so I used soy flour to bind the mixture and add extra protein. With soy sauce the mixture was fine without the soy flour. 
Shallow fry the mixture as patties and enjoy! They're nice hot or cold, and with the nuts and lentils are nice and filling.

For Sunday dinner Chris and I decided to harvest some of our homegrown produce -

Yummy Yellow Courgette.

With our 450 g giant courgette we decided to make Happiness Soup, one of our favourite recipes from Nigella Lawson's Forever Summer. This soup really lives up to its name and made us feel summery and happy even though there was torrential rain outside.

We ate our fluorescent yellow soup with some freshly-baked bread.

Courgette soup for the soul.

To make the meal even more perfect we followed this up with apple crumble :-)

Happy days.