Friyay!

Short introduction: really sorry for the decreasing quality of pictures - but my phone died (not as in "battery needs to be charged", but completely DEAD). Hence I need to take pictures with my laptop, which pretty much sucks, until I get a new one.

I know I'm a tad early with this friyay post. However, I've had a week with two Monday mornings up until now, so allow me my disorientation. As if it wasn't bad enough to go through Monday morning when it was actually Monday morning, we had a bank holiday yesterday so I had another Monday morning today. Sidenote: I hate Monday mornings. Good thing Monday morning was immediately followed by Thursday evening cause that means time for wine (and cheese)!



Now enough with the blab, today's post is about homemade spinach falafel and weekend plans. First things first, I feel as if I have a great weekend coming up (knock on wood). Tomorrow I have dinner with the ladies. The ladies are my uni friends who I never get to see anymore. We work for the same company so once in a while, we surprise each other with work visits at the office during which the coffee breaks take longer than the actual working. On Saturday morning it's time for the parents, and after that I'm doing a baking workshop with a well-known bakery here in Ghent (has anyone ever heard about Bloch bakery?). Meeting up with a friend after. On Sunday morning I'm going out for brunch with a friend and in the afternoon there's some kind of food festival I'm going to. You see: a lot of food and friends on the planning.

Now over to the second part: spinach falafel. I was at the office this morning, contemplating what to have for dinner - as usual. I've been having huge chickpea cravings lately, hence the hummus recipe a couple of days ago. And you know what else contains chickpeas? That's right: falafel. Whenever I say falafel, I think of L'as du Falafel in Paris - go there. However, today I thought of spinach as well. And pumpkin, unfortunately didn't have any left. So scratch pumpkin - spinach falafel, and in with plain, simple but oh so yummy spinach falafel. Honestly you gotta try this, it's so easy, so healthy and so delicious!

Ingredients
Falafel
1 can of chickpeas
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 tablespoon of ground cumin
1 tablespoon of ground cilantro
1 teaspoon of ground paprika
2 small hands of baby spinach
Rolled oats
1 eschalot (chopped)
1 clove of garlic (chopped)
Freshly ground black pepper
Sea salt

Dressing
2 tablespoons of Greek yogurt
1 tablespoon of olive oil
1 tablespooon lemon juice
1 clove of garlic (chopped)
1 tablespoon of ground cilantro
Fresh cilantro
Freshly ground black pepper
Sea salt

Side
Veggies - I had cucumber and avocado
Some type of grain, couscous... I used spelt
Black sesame seeds

Recipe

Falafel

1. Preheat oven to 180°C.
2. Add everything besides rolled oats in blender. Add spices to taste.
3. When it's all mixed up, add rolled oats (don't blend, mix, pulse or anything - FOLD it in) until the consistency is in between dry and wet, but more dry than wet. Just make sure it's not crumbly and that it all sticks together. Add more olive oil or lemon juice if it's too dry.
4. Cover a baking tray with baking paper. Put olive oil on top of baking paper. 
5. Make patties out of the falafel dough, of about 2 X 3 cm. Put them on the baking paper.
6. Put in the oven for about 20 min, turn patties around and keep in oven for 10 more min.

Dressing

1. Combine everything in a bowl, besides the fresh cilantro. Give it a good stir.
2. Top with cilantro.

Sides

1. Prepare the grains according to package.
2. Cut the cucumber with a spiralizer. Chop up the avocado.

Combine everything on a plate, top with black sesame seeds and some more cilantro - DONE! Bon'ap!

Are you just as crazy about falafel as I am? And what are your plans for the weekend? Keep me posted!

Love,

Julie