A healthy chickpea salad dressed with sweet white balsamic and smoked paprika, diced avocado and aromatic coriander is a beautiful lunchtime treat that's bursting with mexican and middle eastern flavours. It's vegetarian and vegan to boot, a meatfree treat to have for lunch or dinner and tastes even better if you make it in advance!

Smoked Paprika Avocado Salad

Gavin Wren Recipes, Vegan, Vegetarian

Most of the writing on my blog is not about food, but life in general and how I cope with it or not, in some cases. On occasion I veer onto a food-related social or political bent, but it’s rare for me to write lovingly about the flavours and story behind a recipe. Today, I’ve been staring at my screen for 53 minutes and have only written the preceding sentence. The first 51 minutes and 13 seconds were spent typing then deleting, typing then deleting as I attempted to coax a story about smoked paprika onto the page.

Constructive Procrastination.

I also checked out the bulk price of Kalamata olives (c.£20 for 2kg on eBay, £16 on Amazon fresh) and appraised which size Really Useful Boxes I need for my cupboards (none, they’re not quite the right size), to round up the disparate bags of half… come and read more…

Here's a spicy, zingy Indian style sprouted bean salad which has been my default lunch option for a few weeks, because it ticks all my boxes for a great lunch. It's simple to make (once you've got the sprouts), it's ridiculously tasty with the combination of seeds, spices, lemon and chilli, plus it's got a big tick next to all the major nutrients we need. All this alongside it being completely vegan, it really couldn't be more versatile and all satisfying.

Indian Sprouted Bean Salad with Avocado

Gavin Wren Recipes, Salads, Vegan, Vegetarian

Here’s a spicy, Indian style sprouted bean salad which has been my default lunch option for the last few weeks, because it ticks all my ‘great lunch’ boxes. It’s simple to make (once you’ve got the sprouts), ridiculously tasty with the combination of seeds, spices, lemon and chilli, plus it’s got a big tick next to all the major nutrients we need. Alongside it being completely vegan, it really couldn’t be more versatile and all satisfying.

Social Sprouts

Sprouts say one thing to me. Brussels. I’m not talking about the cosmopolitan city, lying a mere 121 minutes away from London St Pancras, rather the bitter green orbs of distaste which I was deigned not to like well before one had ever crossed the threshold of my trap. Society seemed constructed for little children who Don’t Like Sprouts. Perhaps it’s their bitter flavour, or perhaps there’s an entire social… come and read more…

The divine pairing of butternut squash and cinnamon sit so beautifully together in the amazing plant based, vegetarian and vegan recipe, it would be easy to assume that God himself had blessed us with their co-operation. A tray of simple cinnamon roasted squash, mixed up with a mash of garlicky lentils, is incredibly simple and simply incredible. It creates the perfect foundation for a meat free meal or a simple vegetable side dish.

Cinnamon Roasted Squash with Lentils

Gavin Wren Recipes, Side dishes, Vegan, Vegetables, Vegetarian

The divine pairing of butternut squash and cinnamon sit so beautifully together, it would be easy to assume that God himself had blessed us with their co-operation. A tray of simple cinnamon roasted squash, mixed up with a mash of garlicky lentils, is incredibly simple and simply incredible. The discovery of this pairing hallowed a eureka moment for me, they sit so perfectly that this recipe needs no more than a hungry mouth and a willing fork to accompany it.

Discrete Divinity.

There are pairings in the world which fit together so perfectly, it were as if God or some other mystical being set them as a challenge for us in life, to see if we could discover these secret little puzzles. Like the easter eggs hidden by the developers in computer games, the little puzzles, rewards, cheats or shortcuts, buried within the fabric of the game… come and read more…

Once you've learned how to sprout mung beans you'll be converted to these incredibly nutritious legumes, being crammed with protein, carbohydrate, low fat and high in nutrients, vitamins and minerals. They're fantastic to have in salads and there's a lovely pleasure in seeing them grow as you sprout them over a few days!

How To Sprout Mung Beans

Gavin Wren Basic Ingredients, Recipes, Salads, Vegan

Over the last month I’ve become infatuated with creating hearty, delicious salads for my lunches, based on delightful sprouted mung beans. Salads needs to be wholesome and filling, I have little truck for a bowl of leaves and a dressing, I want something substantial. They need are a good base, a nutritionally sturdy underpinning, hence my love of legumes as the base for my salads this summer. Once I knew how to sprout mung beans, I became a convert to them!

Leguminous Lunch.

I began the summer using tins of chickpeas, kidney or black eyed beans, yet quickly became tired of the tinned burden when shopping, not to mention the space they take up on my shelf. I needed something fresh, healthy and less tinned.

I’ve been using Mung beans for years in curries and occasional salads, since being introduced to them via some Indian recipes and an… come and read more…

Ice cold and ready for summer, this dairy free banana milkshake with peanut butter is also vegan, perfect for a hot day and anyone's diet, it's a summer drink that will keep you cool and your tastebuds tantalised. Made with any non-dairy milk, frozen banana, a smattering of peanut butter and topped with crushed pecans, it's even more delicious than it looks.

Dairy Free Banana Milkshake with Peanut Butter, Shame and Sharing Life Experiences

Gavin Wren Dairy free baking, Drinks, Vegan

What’s more important in life? Honest, open connection to other people or a dairy free banana milkshake recipe mixed with peanut butter and topped with pecans? The answer lies in their similarities, as you’ll see…

I’m lost. Really, I don’t know what I’m doing. I hit two hundred blog posts just over a month ago, I’m about to hit three years of blogging and I’m reaching a creative hiatus. I promised myself at the beginning that blogging will be what I want it to be. I swore never to cling to a certain subject or style, simply because that’s what I did last week; it’s the creative freedom which brought me to blogging, so creative freedom is what I must defend if I’m to continue to thrive in my blogging.

To be frank, I enjoy writing about life the most. Food may feature, because there is something utterly compelling about… come and read more…

Clementine and fennel salad with a citrussy dill dressing, a light, sweet side salad with the zesty overtones of clementine and the uniquely aromatic flavour of dill, which pairs beautifully with citrus flavours. Anise-scented fennel is the ideal vegetable to base this salad upon, bumping it up to a full sized, slaw-esque side salad. Perfectly suited to light summer dinners, shared lunches, picnics or alongside fish. It’s vegetarian and vegan as well, plus dairy free so perfect for most diets.

Clementine and Fennel Salad with a Zesty Dill Dressing

Gavin Wren Recipes, Salads, Small Bites, Vegan, Vegetarian

Today’s recipe is a clementine and fennel salad with a citrussy dill dressing, a light, sweet side salad with the zesty overtones of clementine and the uniquely aromatic flavour of dill, which pairs beautifully with citrus flavours. Anise-scented fennel is the perfect vegetable to base this salad upon, bumping it up to a full sized, slaw-esque side salad.

Milestones in Blogging.

This is post number one hundred and ninety six in the history of le petit oeuf, meaning that the big two-hundred is fast approaching, a massively significant milestone in my blogging life. Those 196 posts comprise approximately 200,000 words and around 1,000 images. If that’s not enough words, I write another thousand every morning of every day, as part of my morning pages ritual. This practice is fast approaching it’s first anniversary on the 9th May, meaning I will have written nearly 365,000 painful