Easy. Homely. Thrifty. Satisfying.

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Food painting artwork

25 x 30cm 190?gsm watercolour paper collage. Inspired by the texture of the pudding itself, we have triangles of bread and pieces of dried fruit, all made from paper and overlayed with a semi transparent sheet of paper hand lettered in coloured pencil with the actual recipe in a bold and magazine-layout influenced style.

This piece is one of the original artworks from the first incarnation of the recipe book from around 10 years ago. The original concept was the same as the current one, with one important difference. Originally the entire book was going to be hand lettered and the artwork for each recipe was going to include the text as part of the design as you can see here. Clearly I didn't realise what a tremendous amount of painstaking work that was going to be. The project was abandoned. It's only now with a gentle shove from hubby and the more sensible separation of text and images that the cookbook is back and humming along.

By the way, all the food painting artwork is available to own in the Official Art Store.

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The meatless meals recipe

This is our family bread and butter pudding. It's a traditional English recipe that I remember both my mother and grandmother making. Most memorable comment from a recipe tester guinea pig went something like, 'Fabbo. Cannot be beaten. Not even with a stick.'

6-8 slices (stale) bread

1 egg

1 1/2 cups dried fruit (and nuts and seeds - currants, raisins, sultanas, sunflower seeds, almonds)

1 teaspoon mixed spice (ground ginger, cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, nutmeg)

1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

1 teaspoon baking powder ( this can be left out if you don't mind the pudding being a bit flatter than it would otherwise)

2 tablespoons (brown) sugar

1 tablespoon butter

4-5 cups milk

Heat oven to 350-400 F

Grease a basin to cook the pudding in (approx 20x20x5cm)

Break the egg into a flat bottomed container/bowl and beat with 1-2 cups milk (the more bread slices used the more milk you'll need here).  Soak half the bread slices in this, squeezing the liquid in.  Cover the bottom of the basin with these slices. 

Top with the fruit/nuts/seeds.  Sprinkle the spices and baking powder on evenly all over. 

Soak and squeeze the remaining bread and use to cover the fruit.  Tip any excess egg & milk mix in too.  Top evenly with butter and sugar.  Fill the basin to the top of the bread with milk. 

Bake in the oven for 30-40 minutes until the top has browned and no running liquid is left.

Serves 4

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More vegetarian cookbook goodies

Need help with conversions? Download this handy dandy pdf of cooking conversion charts for every cooking measuring system I could find. It should make your life easier.

Want to check out more vegetarian dinner recipes? They're all in the Table of Contents.

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