Meal planning Monday - frying falafel is a fine art!

Copyright kudumomo 2007 under Creative Commons Licence

On the plus side of today we had a successful trip to the dentist, (almost 3 year old happily let dentist poke around in her mouth), collected parcels from post office, (more of that later), did two lots of washing, made mince pies + jam tarts and bought loads of yummy veg from the greengrocer for some pre-Christmas batch cooking.

On the downside, the first day of our carefully meal planned week was a complete disaster!  As per a previous post I am trying to expand the range of meals that my little veg-loathing, carnivore will share with the vegetarians in the house without me having to cook two meals and today was meant to be the great launch of the new order!

The big idea behind the plan was to build on what she likes and to look for more things into which veg could be hidden.  So some new things we are due to try out this week are:

• Falafel - littl'un loves houmous & I thought various veg could be smuggled in
• Chickpea & pumpkin with cous cous - again building on chickpeas, can be blended quite thickly so acceptable to all parties & introduces cous cous as alternative to pasta, pasta, pasta!
• Peanut sauce noodles - again whole range of veg & flavour can be blended into smooth peanut sauce and the noodles another alternative to pasta

Today was meant to be falafel. Note meant to be!

I blame the stupid trip to the post office myself.  Two times last week we got cards saying we weren't in when had not left the house and so had to trek a couple of miles there and back on the bus to pick up parcels.  Inevitably this made us late so we didn't get the shopping done before the dentist and then the only way of getting the shopping done without almost 3 year old collapsing in heap was to offer snacks, which obviously could NOT  have been offered pre-dentist!  

Litt'un of course didn't want her lunch and then we were late making the mince pies - which we were too lazy to do yesterday - and so by the time we started on the blinking falafel it was already late.  I don't know why I decided to follow the recipe I did when I have an absolutely brilliant middle eastern cookbook but heh!  

It didn't start well - my stand up blender absolutely refused to blend the ingredients, (there was no liquid!), so had to scoop everything back out and then do it with my hand blender which took ages.  Recipe was then vaguer than vague about actually cooking them.  The incredibly precise instructions that I discovered afterwards in my middle eastern cookbook made it clear that falafel frying is a fine art akin to the very best in chip making.  The amount of oil and temperature is essential.

Having battled with the blenders, it was already incredibly late by the time I started frying them and poor littl'un chose this moment to have a complete "I've eaten nothing but a biscuit all day" melt down. So to win myself time at the pan I resorted to an "hors d'oeuvres" of crackers and ham.  In the moments I was away from the pan the first batch of falafel turned into a curious mixture of burnt slop which had to be thrown away. 

The second batch stayed in one piece but bore no resemblance to any falafel seen this side of school dinners - basically hot houmous with a rather nasty crispy outside.  The adults bravely ventured through them and filled up on mince pies.  Littl'un happily ate crackers, ham, a fruit smoothie, a jam tart and a digestive.  The dentist would have been so impressed!

Wish me luck for the rest of the week :-(

N.B. The picture at the top is illustrative only and bears no relation to the slop I served!

This post has been shared on I'm An Organising Junkie, At Home with Mrs M and My Sweet and Savory