Round Up ~ Pasta Please~Peppers

Thankyou to everyone who participated and sent in all their lovely entries, here is the round up.

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The Art of good taste at Fruit Towers -Innocent Drinks.

I recently attended an evening learning about the art of good taste hosted by Innocent Drinks at their offices at Fruit Towers. Fruit Towers is an amazing venue with lots of open plan places for the staff to think, eat, drink and work and get their creative juices flowing.

On arrival we were greeted and treated with lots of canapes and presented with our own uniquely created mocktail. We also had the opportunity to explore the amazing fruit towers with its open spaces, staff areas, kitchens, lego wall and interactive room. Its an amazing place to work.

After our tour we split up into groups and did some taste and smell challenges using our five senses; sight,smell,taste,touch and hearing. We tried different foods whilst taking note of the impact they have on our senses.

We each tried the Ishihara colour recognition test to test our colour vision as colour is very important part of food . After this we took part in a sensory training course, where we were presented with  five different samples and had to identify them  by describing the samples as either, sweet. sour ,salt, bitter and umami, Those who identified the samples correctly were awarded an innocent sensory training certificate.

The highlight of the evening was an interactive talk and hands on tasting session by the authors of The Flavour Bible Karen Page and Andrew Dornenberg. We learnt about vegetarian trends in the US and how combining different foods with different spices give amazingly different results on your tastebuds.

Finally we were able to go into the Innocent kitchens and make our own fruit and veg smoothies in a smoothie making challenge. We were able to cycle our blenders to pulse our juices!! Very hard work indeed and not many of us realise the  process that goes into making a smoothie from sourcing the best ingredients to creating a perfectly balanced and eye appealing smoothie.

Did you know that innocent is celebrating the unique stories of devotion necessary to ensure only the best tasting fruit goes in to an innocent juice.

The farmers turn their mangoes by hand, every day for seven days, to make sure they are perfectly ripe and exceptionally juicy

By protecting their pears with a wall of icicles in winter, innocent can make sure the pears don’t frost overnight and grow big and juicy, ready to be blended in their apple, peach & pear juice.

Innocent takes the calyx off every single strawberry that they use in their innocent juices. (The calyx is the leafy green stalk that lots of other people just leave in.)

Innocent builds their pineapples a water bed so they don’t get bumped around or bruised. Bashed up pineapples don’t taste as fresh or pineappley, so it’s important to keep them comfy

AND FINALLY .......An innocent drink tastes good (crammed full of all that delicious fruit) which in turn does you some good. And the good keeps going: because innocent gives 10% of profits to charity, people around the world lead better lives as a result

Lemony Cabbage and Brocolli coleslaw ~ Secret recipe club 18th Aug 2014

This is my assignment with the Secret Recipe Club.The aim of the club is that you are allocated a blog from which you have to select a recipe and try it and blog about it. My assigned blog was Bobbi's Kozy Kitchen.  The blog is written by Bobbi who discovered her passion for preparing food after having a gastric bypass surgery.Her story is truly inspirational. I looked around Bobbi's blog for a veggie friendly recipe when I came across the lemony broccoli slaw recipe which incidentally was perfect for my barbecue I was having. I didn't really need to change anything in the recipe except for the quantities and I made my own coleslaw mix by shredding fresh cabbage, carrots and broccoli rather than purchasing a ready packet from the supermarketas used in Bobbi's recipe.You can see the original recipe here.

Refreshing and healthy lemony cabbage and broccoli coleslaw.

Ingredients:

100 g grated carrots
200 g shredded white cabbage
100 g broccoli shredded
Juice of 1/2 a lemon
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground coarse black pepper
2 tablespoons low fat mayonnaise
2 tablespoons low fat natural Greek yoghurt

Method:

1. In a large bowl add the carrots, cabbage and broccoli and mix together.
2. Add the salt, pepper, yogurt, lemon juice and mayonnaise and whisk together. Add the dressing to the vegetables and combine together.
3. Transfer the coleslaw to a serving bowl and chill for 30 minutes before serving.

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Tomato and Vegetable Pasta Sauce

Spicy tomato sauce cooked  with Mediterranean vegetables.

Ingredients:

 480g / 16oz passatta (sieved tomatoes)
1 green capsicum finely chopped
1 medium courgette finely chopped
60g / 2oz precooked sweet corn
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 medium red onion finely chopped
1 clove garlic finely minced
1/2 teaspoon white pepper
1/2 teaspoon red chilli powder
1 teaspoon sugar.
1 teaspoon dried oregano
 Boiled pasta of choice for serving

 Method:

 1.In a pan heat the oil, when it is hot sauté the garlic and onions until translucent.
2. Add the vegetables and sauté for 3-4 minutes until they soften.
3. Add the passatta, salt, pepper, chilli powder and sugar and simmer the sauce for 10 minutes until sauce is thick and vegetables are cooked.
4. Place the pasta in a serving dish and spoon over the pasta sauce.

Submitting to:
Pasta please ~ Peppers event by Jac of tinned tomatoes hosted by simplyfood

Announcing event -Pasta Please~Peppers

This month I am guest hosting the event Pasta Please by Jacqueline of Tinned tomatoes. The event is all about creating a vegetarian pasta dish and the ingredient I would like to add to it is peppers. I am inviting all my foodie friends to create any vegetarian pasta dish but you must include in the topping amongst your ingredients any type of peppers, capsicums, sweet peppers, chilli peppers or Jalepenos.

To Participate:

1. Prepare any vegetarian pasta dish hot or cold with peppers as one of the ingredient  in it.  Please link your post using the linky below by entering your Dish Name and Post URL
2. Please link this event announcement with your entry AND  also Jacquelines blog http://tinnedtomatoes.com/  this is mandatory. (Any entries sent with out the mandatory link will be disqualified.)
3.Use of logo is mandatory.

4.Only one entry per blog please, archived are only allowed if reposted and updated with this event link.

4. In the event of problem using linky you can email me the entry at simplysensationalfood@gmail.com

Please use this format:

Your Name: Recipe
Name Recipe URL
Image no larger than 300 pixels.
Event Ends 28th Aug 2014

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Round Up ~Lets Cook with Strawberries

Thankyou to everyone who participated in this wonderful event. Here is the round up of all the lovely entries:

An InLinkz Link-up