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A few months ago I was pottering about on Tumblr when I came across a fantastic blog called Hipster Food (if your vegan you must check it out!) They had posted about a mixture of cooked lentils, oats and other ingredients that could be made ahead of time and kept in the fridge to be used in various meals throughout the week. I thought this was a brilliant idea and booked marked the details in my Evernote. I’ve always been a fan of cooking up big batches of food at the weekend to eat through the week to save time and this was right up my street. I’ve called this recipe Magic Mixture because it really does have so many uses and can be the base for lots of different flavour combinations.

The Magic Mixture Basic formula (adapted from idea on Hipster Food, vegan, makes about 5 cups):

• 4 cups of cooked beans mashed or blended (with a little water if needed – this would be about 2 tins if not cooking from scratch)
• 1 cup of ground oats
• 1/2 cup of ground nuts (raw or roasted depending on your preference)
• 2 tbsp of ground flax
• 2 tbsp of soy sauce
• 2 tbsp of oil of choice
• Seasonings of choice
• Fresh herbs (optional)

I decided to go with a bit of an Italian pesto flavour. This is what I used for this batch:

• 4 cups of cooked red lentils (2 cups dry lentils cooked in 4 cups of water – as red lentils breakdown in cooking I didn’t blend)
• 1 cup of ground oats (just regular oats processed)
• 1/2 cup of ground pine nuts
• 2 tbsp of ground flax
• 2 tbsp of soy sauce
• 2 tbsp of hemp oil
• 2 tbsp Italian seasoning
• 1 tbsp of garlic powder
• 1/4 cup nutritional yeast
• fresh basil

I started by grinding the oats and nuts in my food processor and setting aside while the lentils cooked…

…once the lentils had cooked and become quite thick I added them to a big bowl along with the oats and pine nuts…

…then I mixed together with all the other ingredients…

…added some chopped basil…

…and left to cool before refrigerating…

Once it has cooled you can keep it in the fridge all week and use it however you like! It firms up quite a bit as well. Here’s a few ideas for how you could use it:

• As a sandwich spread
• Wrap filling
• Baked or fried into a lentil / bean burger
• Baked or fried into ‘meat balls’ for pasta
• Baked into ‘falafel’ and stuffed into a pitta bread
• Crumbled into a salad
• As a topping for a baked potato
• As a dip for veggies
• Spread on crackers as a pate
• Transferred into a loaf pan and baked

I think I’m going to get 5 – 6 meals out of this mix. So far I’ve eaten it warmed up and piled on top of a baked sweet potato accompanied by roast asparagus:

As a pate spread on raw crackers, as pictured at the top of the post. I also baked some of it into balls (200c for 30 minutes) and served them on top of some salad for lunches:

This really is quite delicious, the mix of ingredients and flavours I used for this batch go together brilliantly!

The great thing about this recipe is that you can really play around with the flavours and ingredients. How about using nut butter to replace the ground nuts and oil? Or using chickpeas and adding ground cumin and coriander for a different twist? It is also very very cheap – beans and lentils are super affordable and if your looking for a cheap nut then I would try sunflower seeds or peanut butter, yum!

How would you enjoy the Magic Mixture?