Shawarma with Falafel and Garlic Sauce

Hello! I hope you are all having lovely summers so far. I posted a picture on Instagram the other day with the caption "Summer has been so good to me so far" because I've recently just been basking in the little moments that are so uniquely summer. Last weekend, I went for a bike ride and hit up seven different festivals along the way! This weekend, I watched the sunset at the beach while sipping wine on a blanket, went to an outdoor concert, ran in the hot rain, picked strawberries with my mom, and drove up to the country to eat baked goods with freshly picked lavender. See what I mean? Summer summer summer. And although I am totally a die hard fall lover, summer is slowly inching its way into my heart. 

If you are wondering about my no-dessert challenge, it's been going well! I have been doing lots of cooking and baking because I feel like being in contact with sweets is kind of, sort of the same as eating them, right?? On Father's day, I wanted to make a meal that my whole family could not only eat but enjoy, which is harder than it sounds with two vegetarians, one meat lover, and two eat-anythings. I landed on shawarma with homemade garlic sauce and falafel and they were oh-so delicious! Even my dad was happy with his meal. Gasp!! 

My friend Kelly requested a blog post for these beauties, so ask and you shall receive said the Lord food blogger.

Shawarma with Falafel and Garlic Sauce

For the garlic sauce, I was looking for a recipe that was very very close to the sauce they serve at all the shawarma places in Ottawa. You know the type I mean, thick, garlicky, and the best part of the pita. After a lot  of googling and searching on Pinterest, I found a recipe that didn't require a whole cup of garlic and seemed fairly fail proof. I'm just going to link the recipe here because there are more steps than the Eiffel Tower...

Garlic Sauce

Be warned though that this is a little difficult to get just right and add the oil VERY slowly, like a couple drops at a time or else your sauce will separate. It might take you a little bit of time too,  but don't give up because everyone in my family agreed that this was key to the whole meal!

Falafel

This recipe, that I adapted from one I found on Pinterest, is the BOMB. So so so easy and good either in a pita with toppings, in a salad, or by itself. 

Ingredients

✿ Two cans of chickpeas (500g x 2)

✿ ½ cup fresh parsley, chopped

✿ ½ cup fresh cilantro, chopped

✿ 1 carrot, grated

✿ 1 onion, chopped

✿ 6 cloves of garlic, minced

✿ 4 Tbsp flour

✿ 1 tsp paprika

✿ 1 tsp rosemary

✿ ¼ tsp chili powder

✿ 1 tsp cumin

(or if you don't have a stacked spice rack just throw in a couple shakes of whatever to give it a little flavour... my version of "cooking")

✿ salt and pepper to taste

✿ 2 Tbsp tahini

Instructions

- Use a food processor to blend chickpeas

- Then add the chickpea paste to a large bowl and mix in the rest of the ingredients.

- Heat some oil in a frying pan

- Make the patties (about 2-3 Tbsp per patty)

- Fry them on each side for a minute, then bake them at 350ºF for 10 minutes on each side.

- Add the falafels to a pita with the garlic sauce, hummus, lettuce, tomato, and pickled turnip. 

- Enjoy!

xox

Gaby

Crostini with Mango Salsa

Hello! It seems that in the past little while I have taken the time to blog only when it is a way of procrastinating. Clean my room or write a post? Go for a run or write a post? Work on my research study or write a post? I am living the latter right now because talking about salsa and desserts (or lack thereof) is way more fun than reading approximately the five hundredth article on organizational trust, so here we are!!

First things first, I want to tell you just HOW GOOD making your own salsa is! I recently had a bunch of fruits and vegetables that needed to be eaten up so I got chopping and made my very own mango salsa. Yum yum yum!

Side note: Forgive me for the vagueness of these ingredient measurements, I made this roughly a month ago.

Crostini with Mango Salsa & Goat Cheese

Ingredients:
Salsa:
✿ 2 tomatoes, chopped
✿ 1 mango, chopped
✿ 1 sweet potato, chopped and roasted
✿ ½ red onion, chopped
✿ 1 red pepper, chopped
✿ 1 cup of cilantro, chopped
✿ a couple squeezes of lime juice

Crostini:
✿ Baguette
✿ Goat cheese, softened
✿ Olive Oil
✿ Avocado, sliced

Directions:
1. Before anything else, heat the oven to 375ºF to roast the sweet potato. Now you don't need to add sweet potato to this salsa, but I put sweet potatoes in almost everything!

2. If you opt in to adding sweet potatoes, chop them up, mix them with some olive oil and them plop them in the oven on a baking sheet. Take them out once they get soft and golden (about 25-30 minutes).

3. Next, chop up all the fruits and veggies and mix them together with the lime juice to taste. Add a bit of salt and pepper if you're feeling it needs a little something something.

4. This is a pivotal point in this recipe, you can either dig into the salsa with a spoon OR slice the baguette, spread some goat cheese onto the pieces, drizzles said pieces with olive oil, and bake in the oven for a couple of minutes till the edge are just crispy (5-10 minutes). 

5. Then, you can slice up some avocado, add it to the crostini that just came out of the oven, and then top with your delicious mango salsa! VOILA!

Okay, now I guess that was the good news first, now I have a confession to make...

I am not eating desserts for 50 days #fiftydaysofgrey (inspired by this blog). You heard right. CRAZY, I know. 50 days without desserts is a lot of days and especially for me (a.k.a. the cookie monster incarnate). BUT I think it will be good to take a step back and see all the sugar I eat. Since starting on June 1st, it has been insane to see how many times I am confronted with sweets. There are desserts popping up EVERYWHERE and I'm like helllllo where were these when I could actually eat them????

Along with me, my mom, my sister and my cousin aren't eating desserts either which makes it more fun because we can text each other live updates about how we aren't indulging.
Conversations go something like this:
"Look at this double chocolate oreo cheesecake I DIDN'T eat today *includes pictures of cake*"
"Oh yeah, well I didn't eat a four layer brownie/cookie salted caramel thingy at work" and so on...

What I won't look like for fifty days :'(

It was so bad the other day that I stopped in at a bakery just to look. How sad is that? Low point in my life, I know. Okay maybe I'm being a bit dramatic, it's actually kind of nice to eat healthier and who knows maybe I'll actually learn something from doing this. Maybe.

I'll keep you posted!!

xox
G