Words by Laura Keil
Growing up I was extremely lucky and was introduced to food with an amazing relationship on how to decipher between always foods and sometimes foods (regardless of the allergy bump at 6 months that restricted me to pear and rice for the first 2 years of my life. That was interesting haha). From this relationship with food, I found some were designed to make the soul happy. Those warm full of flavour dinners that would leave you with a stain around your mouth or some spilt on your clothes. This is what I like to call SOUL FOODS.
The queen of soul foods is probably Mum. She would create the most random dishes at dinner from whatever we had in the fridge (joys of being a bushie, kms away from a grocery store).
Some weeks she wouldn’t go to the shops once a week like she usually did and she would create this dish called ‘vege mince’.
Pretty much it is anything and everything you have in the fridge, like frozen veg, those wilted veges in the crisper that are holding onto dear life, maybe some fresh veges from the vege garden (definitely not this zucchini in the pic below), mince, curry powder and tomato sauce and of course her magic touch that Mums seem to have when cooking.
This dish became a pivotal meal in our household as it was also great leftovers and made everyone’s tummies happy, especially after a big day at school for my sister and I.
Sometimes you don’t realise how much Mums do until you have to do it yourself, like cook every night, wash your clothes make your bed, iron your clothes etc (something I quickly learnt during my teens years “You have to iron that Laura” haha).
So learning to make these soul foods soon shifted from a chore to something I absolutely LOVE doing.
So I hope when your cooking this dish it reminds you of the meals your Mum cooked when you were a child. They weren’t always complex and didn’t always include extremely fresh and organic foods, they were the ones that made your heart happy, tummy full and honestly when we were little to shut me up from talking for just about 10 minutes (keep the kids happy hey?).
On the weekends, especially a Sunday it was always a nice slow morning, during my teen years this is when I started my pilates and yoga flows, writing crazy movements on a white board with a whiteboard marker that was so old you could barely read what each movement said.
During this time again Mum would be creating something in the kitchen. This was usually lemon and blueberry cupcakes, a slice or some new weird creation that would sit on a beautiful cake stand for about a week and a half (sorry mum sometimes your made up recipes don’t really work).
The lemons in these cupcakes were honestly from a shop because our old ratty lemon tree would produce one lemon a year and the tree just didn’t grow, so store bought lemons were a must sadly.
Quick fun fact team: this pic is me our piggin’ haha
Ok getting to the point…..after finishing my little Pilates flows I would walk into the smell of freshly cooked pancakes. Mine usually had the fakest soy yogurt that they stopped making 5 years ago and it was just not it let me tell you. Covered in maple syrup and a crunchy birdseed mix or muesli.
From this nostalgic breakie and morning tea I thought why not blend these two and create a lemon and blueberry pancake. I tried and tested this recipe on Mother’s Day recently and oh my let me tell you they were a hit.
We all loved them…..except for Dad because he “didn’t hear” our conversation of “let’s have pancakes for Mother’s day tomorrow” the day before. Steering away from this sounding like a play, go make
yourself the classic curried mince or scoff down some delicious lemon and blueberry muffins.
HAPPY COOKING BABES
Now.. if you want to hook into these DELICIOUS home cooked, heart and tummy filling recipes, you can jump over to our insta or the Squad recipe sections and try them at home!
Thanks Laurz – we LOVE you!!
Big love. Em xx
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