Firstly, while I was having my coffee, I logged onto Amazon to buy a Christmas present for my mum. My payment was denied. My bank informed me that there had been some fraudulent activity on my card. They cancelled it, told me I should cut it up and wait for a new one.

Whilst this wasn’t a great start to the day, the issue was resolved easily enough. However, I then logged onto my online banking to discover I had been charged three times for the same subscription!

I called the company and was bounced around from person to person, department to department before being put on hold, at which point my computer notified me about a new software install. How exciting. As I was just waiting on the phone, I didn’t see the harm in installing the new software (you know… two birds, one stone and all that).

Well, it turns out it really wasn’t my day. Once my computer finally restarted, it wouldn’t let me log in! So, I hung up on the company I was still on hold to and called Apple. Sigh. Luckily, they were really helpful and the issue was resolved within 10 minutes. Two down, one to go. By this stage I couldn’t face the thought of being bounced around all over again and having to listen to some terrible hold music so I decided to ‘live chat’ the company in question instead.

By 18:27, I was offered a refund, even though no-one could explain why I was overcharged in the first place. But, hey, at that point, I was ready to take what I could get!

After that, I gave up on the idea of posting for the day.

Ha! Luckily today is a new day and, other than being woken up at 5a.m by a rogue alarm, it’s going okay so far… here’s to hoping the week will only get better!

Over the weekend I had some miso aubergine left over and, believe it or not, I had some pumpkin left too (I know, I’m impressed with my self control!). I decided to put them together and it worked out really well.

I love the sweetness that the peppers and miso aubergine contribute to the dish. The sesame, soya sauce and chilli flakes bring great flavours while the nuttiness of the grain mix adds to the texture.

There’s no reason you can’t make this from scratch, it’s really easy, just a little time consuming! If, however, you already have some miso aubergine made up, this is a delicious way to have it!

I hope you like it! Enjoy!

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Squashed Tower

Calories 248kcal

Ingredients

80 g uncooked brown rice
60 g uncooked quinoa
half a small pumpkin
1 large aubergine
1 large/2 medium red peppers
Few handfuls of fresh spinach leaves
For the Sesame mix
1 tbsp sesame seeds
1 tbsp Tamari
2 tsp chilli flakes
For the miso-glaze
1 tbsp cold pressed rapeseed oil plus some from brushing
1 tbsp Tamari
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar balso
2 tsp miso paste

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 175C
Cook the brown rice and quinoa as per manufacturers instructions
Wash and slice aubergines, lengthways, then bush with rapeseed oil
Cut the pumpkin in half, scoop out the seeds. Lay the cut side down on a baking tray and cook for 40 minutes.
Put the aubergines in the oven at the same time as the pumpkin.
While they’re cooking mix the aubergine miso-glaze and wash and slice the peppers
After 20 minutes take out the aubergines, cover them with miso-glaze (still in the oven dish) and return to the oven or a further 10 minutes.
At this point also put the pepper strips in the oven.
After 10 minutes take out and turn the aubergine slices, so they’re completely covered in glaze. Return them to the oven and bake for a further 10 minutes. You may want to shake the peppers at this stage too.
Total cooking time for pumpkin, and aubergine 40 minutes. For the peppers 20, if you want them a little softer cook for another 5
while everything is in the oven add the sesame seed mix ingredients to a saucepan and sauté for a couple of minutes
Combine the rice and quinoa, adding the sesame seed mixture
Steam your fresh spinach leaves, until wilting
Lay out a bed of spinach and assemble the rice and quinoa mix with the baked pumpkin puree, miso aubergine and char grilled pepper slices.
Enjoy!

Notes

If you have a round cookie cutter do you can use that to achieve the 'tower' shape. If not, you could use a small tin can, with both ends removed (which I did)! Or you can pile it all onto a plate… it’ll taste just as good!