Lentil soups are one of my favourites this time of year and this one is packed with vegetables and spices that warm you from the inside in these freezing temperatures. If you are looking for a delicious, healthy and quick to make lunch or dinner recipe high in protein, then this is it! This recipe is vegan and gluten free and perfect for meal prep!

Here's what you'll need:
(this makes 4 portions)

In a big pot heat the olive oil and fry the onoin, carrot, celery, potato, garlic and ginger, then add all the spices as well as some salt. Make sure to chop your veggies quite finely and similar in size. Stir well and let the aromas of the spices unfold. If needed, deglaze the pot with some water every once in a while. 

Once your vegetables start to soften, add both types of lentils and a litre of vegetable stock to your pot, as well as a heaped tablespoon of tomato puree. Stir well until combined and let simmer for about 15 to 20 minutes or until the lentils are cooked all the way through. Now add the coconut milk and the baby spinach and stir until the spinach has wilted into the soup. Season your soup to taste with salt, pepper and lemon juice.

Serve with some plant based yoghurt, some parsley and maybe another squeeze of lemon or lime.

And there you have it, one super healthy and delicious winter warmer soup :) If you make this recipe let me know in the comments below and tag me in your photos on instagram at jessinretrospect :)

Winter is well and truly upon us now so if you're anything like me, you'll want all the hearty and warming foods to stay cosy in these temperatures. If so you should absolutely give this roasted couscous skillet recipe a go! It's packed full of seasonal vegetables but made a little more exciting by adding the couscous and loads of oriental spices as well as my favourite for adding a special touch: pomegranate seeds.

Here's what you'll need:

Preheat your oven to 200°C.

Cook your couscous in the vegetable stock according to package instructions.

Chop all the vegetables and place in a bowl, add about a tablespoon of olive oil as well as all the spices to taste. Stir well until all the vegetables are covered in the spice mixture then place in your skillet or other ovenproof dish and roast in the oven for about 20 minutes or until the carrots and parsnips can be easily pierced with a fork.

Once your couscous is ready, fluff it up with a fork, then add a teaspoon of harissa paste and stir well until it's evenly coated. 

Add the couscous to the skillet and roast for another 5 to 10 minutes.

Serve with a sprinkling of pomegranate seeds and some parsley.

This is a super quick and easy to make autumn/winter dinner that's not only delicious but also packed full of healthy ingredients to fight off any colds and flus!

If you like this recipe leave me a comment and share the recipe with all your friends :)

Happy Halloween! It's the spookiest night of all tonight and I feel like we're properly starting into the cold, dark months from tomorrow. So what we really need is a nice sweet treat! Here in Germany you can usually get sugar roasted almonds and other nuts at Christmas markets and similar markets and fairs. With covid cancelling quite a few of these over the last couple of years, I had to find out how to make these at home. To give them a more autumnal touch, I decided to use pumpkin seeds instead of the classic almonds. This literally uses like 5 basic ingredients and all the equipment you need is a pan and a stove :)

Here's the ingredients you need:

Add the water, sugar and spices into your pan and heat until the sugar has completely dissolved.

Now add the pumpkin seeds to the sugar water and cook on high heat, stirring occasionally. You will notice the syrup thickening with time.

Meanwhile, prepare a baking tray with greaseproof paper. You will leave your roasted pumpkin seeds to cool and set on this.

After about 10 to 15 minutes, the syrup will have thickened considerably. At this point it's important you keep stirring the seeds continiously so they don't stick to the pan and burn or build one big lump. Your kitchen will already be smelling divine at this point! :)

Once the sugar starts to properly coat the pumpkin seeds and starts to set and get crumbly, your pumpkin seeds are ready to come out of the pan. Pour them onto the baking sheet and spread them out evenly to cool down and set completely.

Be sure to wait for the seeds to cool down before tasting as the hot sugar mixture is really just that - painfully hot! ;)

These also make for a perfect little foodie christmas gift for friends and family or a lovely little winter snack for when you have some friends over. Have you tried making your own sugar roasted nuts or seeds? How did you get on? Leave me a comment if you try this recipe and enjoy :)

Add all the ingredients except the chocolate into a blender until you've got a nice little pumpkin/oat batter. Add the batter to an oven proof dish (lightly grease in advance) and add a piece of dark chocolate to the middle of your ramekin. If you're not feeling chocolatey, top your oats with blueberries or apples to taste :)

Bake in the preheated oven for about 20 - 25 minutes and dig in straight away!

Autumn arrived full force a couple of weeks ago with lots of rain and surprisingly cold temperatures. And with the cold weather comes a craving for warm and comforting meals like soups and stews! And is there anything more comforting than snuggling up with a big bowl of creamy pumpkin soup? So last week, I put my wellies on and went to the local farmshop that sells a wide variety of pumpkins and squashes and also offers a little pumpkin patch to pick Halloween pumpkins! I loved it and came back with a few little pumpkins and the hokkaido pumpkin needed for this recipe :) Hokkaido is perfect, as you don't have to peel it - just give it a good wash and it's ready to go!

To make this pumpkin soup super creamy we'll use coconut milk, which also gives it a bit of an exotic taste. I also love using roasted pumpkin as that really enhances the taste of it! With all the amazing spices used, another plus of this recipe is, that you can easily prep this soup a day in advance as the flavours only get stronger. So definitely keep those leftovers in the fridge for an amazingly tasty quick lunch the next day :)

Preheat your oven to 200°C.

Wash and half your pumpkin. Spoon out all of the seeds, then chop into same sized chunks. Place the pumpkin chunks on a baking tray and roast for about 30 minutes or until it's softened and browned on the outside.

In a big soup pot, melt the coconut oil then add the finely chopped onions and garlic and fry until the onions start to become translucent. Grate in the ginger and fry for another minute or two.

Into your pot, add the roasted pumpkin, all the spices as well as the stock and coconut milk. Bring the whole thing to a boil, then reduce the heat and let simmer for about 10-15 minutes. Your kitchen will be smelling amazing by this point :)

Take the pot off the heat and blend it until it's smooth and creamy. If needed, add a bit more stock.

To serve, add some toppings to your bowls such as pumpkin seeds, balsamic, some swirls of soy yoghurt some chopped parsley - whatever floats your boat :)

Now there's only one thing left to do: get cozy and tuck in! :)

Let me know how you like this recipe! What are your favourite autumn/winter warmer recipes and comfort meals? Leave me a comment and let me know :)

The perfect summer breakfast surely is a nice, big smoothie bowl. It's like ice cream for breakfast, it's so so good! There's about a million and one ways to make a smoothie bowl but I'm currently obsessed with this red cherry version. Not only does it look cool it also tastes amazing - like summer in a bowl :)

toppings I used:

In a high speed blender add your frozen ingredients and your yoghurt and blend until you get a smooth, creamy consistency. Keep adding soy milk as needed to help the mixture blend well and adjust how thick or liquidy your smoothie bowl is going to be.

Add the mixture to your bowls and decorate with toppings of your choice. I enjoy adding some more fruits on top and some crunch from nuts, seeds or granola is also always a good idea. I used some edible flowers here mainly because I feel they look nice sprinkled on top of literally anything, but they are obviously completely optional! You do you with the toppings :)

That's all there is to it: a quickly prepared breakfast, that's healthy, filling and pretty to look at! Let me know if you decide to make this and what toppings you chose to add :)

I recently made this super fluffy, perfectly delicious lemon and pistachio cake as a post hike treat and I loooove how green it turned out! :) This cake is naturally coloured by pistachios and spinach, so works completely without any food colourings etc. - and don't worry, you won't be able to taste the spinach :)

Here's what you'll need:

For the icing:

Defrost the spinach and mix with apple cider vinegar, plant milk, maple syrup and pistachios. Puree the mixture until it looks like a green smoothie :)

In a seperate bowl mix together the dry ingredients: flour, sugar, baking powder salt and bicarbonate of soda.

Into the dry mixture, poor your "smoothie" as well as the lemon peel and melted margarine. Mix until it forms a creamy, greeny batter.

Grease a cake tin well (mine is 21x11cm) and add your batter to it. Alternatively you can line your cake tin with greaseproof paper. Pour in the batter and bake in a preheated oven for 50 - 60m minutes.

Leave to cool in the tin, before turning and decorating the cake with your icing and pistachio topping :)

There you go! This is obviously a sweet treat but pistachios are also good protein sources so let's call this a healthy-ish sweet treat? :) Let me know if you make this at home and tell me how you liked it :)

I have a super quick and easy four ingredients cookie recipe for you guys today! These are soft and chewy healthy oatmeal cookies with no added sugars but lots of natural sweetness. The perfect snack for when you're craving something sweet :)

Here's what you'll need for about 12 - 15 cookies:

Preheat the oven to 180°C and cover a baking tray with parchment paper.

In a large mixing bowl, whisk together all your ingredients. Add nut butter for a bit more creaminess if you prefer, but they turn out fine without it.

Once all your ingredients are well combined, use a spoon to portion the dough into equal amounts, which you then roll into little balls with your hands. Place them on your baking tray and press them into a cookie shape. Lightly dust your cookies with more cinnamon before placing in the oven for about 15 minutes ot until slightly browned.

Remove and allow to cool completely.

These cookies are naturally gluten-free, vegan and free from refined sugars. Let me know if you give this recipe a try and how you liked the cookies.

If you are lazy about breakfast like I am, overnight oats might be the breakfast food for you! It's easy to prep in bigger batches and just keep in the fridge for breakfast or dessert any day of the week! Also seeing as we're still in the middle of a heat wave this chilled but filling breakfast is just the right thing to keep you going in these temperatures (no oven required - yay!)

For an extra summery touch I added peaches. They are full of zinc and magnesium which together with their high niacin levels help reduce stress, so not only are they super delicious they also aid your general wellbeing! :) To make it more filling still (and because I'm on a quest to introduce more iron to my diet - here's your reminder to get regular blood tests to check for possible deficiencies) I added loads of other seeds into this, this is completely up to you though :)

For 2 portions you'll need:

In a bowl mix together the oats and seeds, add the cinnamon and cover with your plant milk. Stir well, then cover your bowl and leave to soak in the fridge overnight or for at least 4 hours.

For the peach puree, half your peaches, take out the stone then cube the peaches and add them to a pot. Add the juice of one orange to the pot and bring the mixture to a boil. Leave to simmer for about ten minutes until the peaches are all soft. Blend the mixture and keep in a jar in the fridge, ready to use as a topping for your oats.

And that is literally all there is to it! When you're ready to eat, layer your oats and peach puree in a glas, add fresh fruit or more nuts/seeds on top and dig in. If you have more of a sweet tooth, add a drizzle of honey or agave syrup in top :)

Let me know if you try this recipe and how you liked it! What are your favourite summery breakfast foods. Leave me a comment and let me know :)

Happy June you guys!! I've really been enjoying the warm weather we've been having by going on hikes, picnicking by the lake and absolutely making the most of the balcony. Ah, I missed you summer! I'm also trying to incorporate some new favourites into my meal plans each week as I felt in quite a rut with the food I've been eating recently. As work is super busy at the moment one of the main requirements to my dinners is that it has to be reasonably quick or else I won't make it and resort back to "my usuals" or even some ready meals. So for this reason I used some "short cut" ingredients in this recipe and maybe that helps you a bit as well :) I also noticed it creates a bit less food waste, which is always a plus. But I'm rambling, let's get to the recipe :)

Ingredients:

for the dip:

To prep the vegetables I simply used a peeler to make little carrot ribbons. I thinly sliced the avocado, defrosted the edamame beans in some hot water and cut the spring onion into thin rings. Wash the baby spinach and dry thoroughly. Cut you tofu into cubes and fry in a pan until crispy (I used marinated tofu but plain works just as well or of course you can marinate it the way you prefer beforehand, but like I said I wanted to keep this recipe super simple and quick to make :) )

By using canned red cabbage I'm saving some time on chopping. I'm also more likely to eat all of it than I would be if I bought an entire red cabbage. If you prefer the crunch of fresh cabbage, go for it though :)

Soak your rice paper in warm water according to package instruction then lay them out one after the other on a wet dish towel to fill and roll. The wet towel is so important, because that stuff sticks to dry surfaces like you wouldn't believe! :)

Add all the vegetables as well as the tofu into the middle of the paper, garnish with the parsley, then roll. You best fold up the bottom bit over the vegetables, then pull the left side over the veggies to the right, fold the top in, then roll until you've got a perfekt little summer roll :) It does take some practise :)

For the dip, I wanted to make something different to your usual kind of heavy peanut sauce and decided to go for a tangy soy sauce based one. For this, in a bowl mix soy sauce, sesame oil, rice vinegar, maple syrup, chili flakes and sesame seeds. Grate in a bit of ginger and finally add some slices of spring onion, mix well and leave to infuse for a while if you've got the time.

I love to make these! I'm also getting faster at making them the more I add them to my meal plans so I'm sure I'll be having quite a lot of them over the summer! 

Do you like summer rolls? What's your favourite dip to serve them with? Leave me a comment and let me know :)

Lots of Love,
Jess xx

For these warmer, almost summery days we're having right now we all want lighter meals, that are quick and easy to prepare yet still filling. This Asian inspired glasnoodle salad is just that! You can easily adjust spice levels in this dish to your taste, prepare it the day before for an even quicker lunch the next day or even serve it as a side dish at your next BBQ.  The following recipe serves two.

You'll need:

Cook the noodles according to package instructions in some salt water.

Drain and wash the canned vegetables. Cut your spring onions into little rings using the white and the green parts. Chop the pepper into thin stripes and julienne the carrots.

In a big salad bowl, mix together the noodles and the vegetables.

In a separate bowl, prepare the dressing by combining soy sauce, spices, lemon juice and sambal oelek. Once well combined, pour over your salad and leave to infuse for about 20 minutes - or longer if you have the time - before serving. Sprinkle some sesame seeds on top for extra crunch!

And there you have it! The most delicious summer meal! :)

Are you gonna give this recipe a go? Leave me a comment to let me know how you got on :) 

What are your favourite meals for the hotter months?