Not Quite Veg Everday - but trying: Refried bean Foldovers

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I feel like I have crossed some kind of watershed in my bid to drag us towards Hugh’s vision of eating less meat as a family. Friday night – end of a busy week. The Husband back from a whirlwind trip to California - holding it together but totally jetlagged, Pink in almost constant meltdown about any number of things, Blue just being 8. I was tempted to scrap the menu and serve up fish and chips for dinner, but as I’d already gone off piste earlier in the week, going even  further in the total meltdown of my system (and frankly, where would it end?)

After a brief internal tussle. I managed to pursue the path of righteousness (good job I hadn’t indulged in my first Friday night G&T at that point), so Refried Bean foldovers from Veg Everyday (as planned) it was. Hugh has this great ‘magic bread dough’ in VE which he uses for pizza, flat breads, bread sticks, pittas, and in the same section of the book, he provides a few ideas for meals incorporating the flatbreads. The refried bean one uses the flat breads as more substantial wraps to fill with a dead-easy warm bean filling.

The bean recipe was for 3 people, so I doubled up, and as I didn’t have the cannellini beans specified, I used a can of blackeye beans and a can of butter beans. In deference to the kids once again, no chilli, so I added my usual fajita spices – a teaspoon each of ground cumin and coriander to the onion as it was cooking. Hugh champions a rather odd way of dealing with tomatoes – grating them in to the pan. I was sceptical, but indeed it worked, pulp in with the onions, skin for chicken scraps. After cooking the onions up, simply add in the beans and mash up. Simples.

The flatbreads are very straightforward – you have to make sure that you get the dough underway a couple of hours or so before you want them – although I got away with just over an hour last night – and they cook on a griddle or in a dry frying pan. Pink calls this ‘squidgy bread’ and even though it’s best fresh, it’s OK the next day – Pink took it the one remaining flatbreads with her in her packed lunch to a Rainbows ‘Quest’ day today.

We had the flatbreads and beans along with grated cheese and sour cream and a straightforward sliced spring onion and cherry tomato salsa. If I’d thought about it I would have also done some guacamole, but we had some salad so that did for greens.

All eaten – no complaints. No wondering if we’re vegetarians now (No we’re not, we’re just eating less meat and more vegetable). No ‘why can’t we have some more meat’ (Because there isn’t any this evening). No “What are we having tomorrow, mummy?” (Food. OK). As I said, a watershed.