Wintery veg delights

Ooooh, I do love my veggies, and in the summer will eat raw veg just about every day, and a lot of cooked veg too. But what about the colder months when a simple salad somehow doesn't seem quite so appealing? It can quickly get expensive when many of the ingredients are out of season and it simply doesn't 'warm the cockles' of you.

I may, quite by accident, have happened upon an answer! Yes, turning the veg into a nice healthy soup is one solution (if you'll pardon the pun), but cooking inevitably reduces the nutritional content a little bit, and eating it with a big hunk of crusty bread just gets oooh sooo tempting sometimes.

So there I was, stumbling about half asleep this morning, getting my cherry tomatoes out of the fridge and cutting up winter veg crudites (carrots, cauliflower, broccoli stalks, celery) to have for lunch with my usual dip of Greek yoghurt and Marmite, without a huge amount of enthusiasm, when I noticed the pot of chipotle chilli paste. Hmmm, now that looks like it'd give me a dose of heat, but maybe not with the yoghurt.

So, a spoonful of leftover houmous (leftover because it was store-bought and terminally b-l-a-n-d!) was mixed with a good healthy dollop of chipotle paste and some chopped coriander for a quick and dirty dip. Wheeee, I can tell you one thing for sure... it IS warming! And it makes my winter veg crudites taste fabulous.