Calamari & Risotto

My friend bought me some vegan calamari from Blackvalentine and I decided to make it last night.  I Googled recipes involving rice and mixed them together, thought about what I had available and came up with this.  To be honest, it's delicious but I'm not sure risotto and calamari really go together.

This is the recipe from memory.

Ingredients:

• 1.5 cups aborio rice
• 3 cubes vegetable stock
• 1-2 spring onion, chopped up
• 1 cup peas and corn
• 1/3 cup nutritional yeast
• 1 packet of Lamyong calamari (600g)
• lemon juice
• salt and pepper

Method:

1. I cooked up the rice with the stock cubes and added water when I needed to, kept stirring it so that it didn't stick to the bottom.
2. After the rice was cooked, I added the spring onion (aka scallion), peas and corn and the nooch (aka nutritional yeast, savoury yeast flakes).
3. Then I fried up the calamari in a pan with a bit of salt and pepper and about 2 tbsp of lemon juice.  The calamari comes as frozen rolled up tubes sort of thing so you have to slice it up and let it defrost.
4. Once I served the calamari on the rice, I drizzled a little bit more lemon juice on it.

If you're looking for the calamari, try Blackvalentine, Vegan Online, or a local Chinese supermarket.  I was lucky enough to get them on special, but they seem to normally average about $13, so you might want to cook up even more rice to make it last longer, or only use 1/2 the packet.

Current Obsession: Plants

I have a tendency to get really into one thing at a time, or a few things at a time.  At the moment the major one seems to be plants.

I've wanted plants to be a major part of my life for a while now.  They are amazing.  They clean the air that we dirty, they get rid of the hazardous chemicals that we disperse into the air and they are constantly growing and looking great.

There are plants that just clean the air, there are others that feed the soil, birds, bees, butterflies and other insects, while yet others create food that I can eat.  Isn't that just amazing?

Moving into this house has been great because I can finally bring nature into my room and help nature and the earth out a little bit by revamping the empty (full of weeds and useless gorram plants) backyard.

My room currently has one peace lily, one fern salvaged from outside, one spider plant salvaged from outside and one snake plant (well this is on its way).  Three of these are known to be good for purifying air.

The backyard is filled with weeds and useless introduced plants.  I've pulled out a lot of them, pruned, removed what I've been told I can...  So now I have a whole bunch of native seeds in pots, slowly growing as I water them lightly every morning.  These will be caterpillar and butterfly food.

I also have a native vine coming in the mail to cover this huge dead tree trunk with (to the left in the photo).

The back patio is pretty empty, but I'm going to fill it with some native Pig Face vines spilling down one side (various coloured flowers; red, orange, pink and purple). There are pots coming in the mail, which I'm going to put on the highest ledge and tie on with wire for added security.

I've planted mondo grass around one rock and transplanted a random plant from the garden into a pot on top of it.

I also found a Crown of Thorns in a pot in the garden.  It's a little worse for wear but I'm sure it'll be fine, eventually.

Oh and there's catnip, given to me by a friend who is going overseas.  So far the cat hasn't cared about it at all though haha.

I'm also trying to grow some herbs and veggies, and I've yet to get started on the front garden and make it butterfly and bird friendly, but I'll post more about it all later, when things are more established, not just seedlings haha.

Are you passionate about plants?  Tell me about it! :)