Pancakes and Pasta Bake!!

Sunday, Sunday, how I crave thee!

I seriously feel as though the one day of the week where I get a super-super large amount of sleep would be Saturday night- Sunday morning. I generally get a good 8 hours sleep every other night, however as I've labelled myself the teenage baby (need lots of sleep, attention, love and... food!) Sundays offer me around 10+ hours of restful bliss!

I don't even sleep in too much (sleeping in has never, ever been something I could do, no matter how late I stayed up- I was up and moving at the crack of dawn) However my usual wake up time is around 5:00am... so sleeping in until 6:45am-7:00am, really is a sleep-in for me. And boy, do I feel good!

So in short (because that intro seemed to be ridiculously long!) I love Sundays.

In case you didn't know.

Now you do.

:)

Something else you might not have known- I used to hate... hate pasta bake. Both my parents and my sister seemed to think it was one of the best things ever, but my naive, young taste buds just couldn't fathom their appreciation of the cheesey, pasta-y blob of food. (Why do I not write meal descriptions?)

Like everything else I used to hate, now love (avocados, mushrooms etc.) Pasta bake has grown on me. This became evident to me last night when I simply craved it! Enter dinner:

Of course I wasn't really craving the overly cheese-y and sauce-y stuff of my past, I was craving those flavours at the same time not wanting my stomach to explode from the large amount of wheat/dairy/sugar in the original dish.

So how did I do it?
1. Cooked up some quinoa pasta
2. Steamed some pumpkin and broccoli until really soft
3. Stirred together the cooked pasta, steamed/ slightly mashed pumpkin and broccoli, 125g reduced salt baked beans, 2 tablespoons hommus, 1 tablespoon nutritional yeast and 1 tablespoon chopped brown onion
4. Poured into small baking dish and baked at 180 degrees celsius for 30 mins
5. Cooled for 15 mins
6. EATEN!!

Yep, I managed to pull of a vegan, wheat free, ultra cheese-y and flavoursome pasta-bake with hidden veggies and natural sweetness from the pumpkin. In short (again) it was awesome!

Serious comfort food that doesn't leave your tummy crying. Happiness on my fork :)

Served with two poached eggs over some sliced avocado because I am a hungry eating machine!

Other things Sunday offers me besides sleep? Long, luxurious time to make breakfast!
And what a breakfast!

For the pancakes (extremely necessary as it is pancake Sunday) I used this recipe, minus the banana and then stirred up a little chocolate concoction to drizzle on top while the pancakes were cooking:

1 teaspoon raw cacao+ 1 teaspoon choc protein powder+ 2 tablespoons milk( I used oat milk)- stirred until smooth.
So I poured the batter onto a pre-warmed fry pan with some olive oil and then after a minute drizzled on some of the choc sauce:

After another minute on medium heat, flip:

Cook for another minute or so, check other side to see if cooked:

(It's seriously like a brownie layer on top!)

Flip onto some paper towel and top with whatever you like! I chose to go the coconut butter route- because coconut butter is amazing!

I also made  ice cream. Because... why not!

1 chopped frozen banana + 1 chopped frozen plum and that's it!

Whazzed until smooth! (You may need to scrape down the sides of the food processor once or twice)

Pancakes:

Plum ice cream:

Happy days!

Sunday, I love you.

What about you?
Do you love Sundays?
Do you like pasta bake?
Favourite thing about the weekend? In all honesty my favoruite aspect of the weekend is having the time to catch up on everything I couldn't get done during the week. The more productive I am the happier I am!

I hope you all have a fabulous Sunday- make something delicious for whatever meal is coming up next! See ya later! :D