Meat-Free, Gluten-Free BBQ

Well, for me anyway! This afternoon we went to a BBQ at my Mum’s partner, Colin’s house, for his birthday.

I was in charge of preparing vegetarian dishes. There was one other vegetarian, but inevitably I prepared way too much food…luckily, as is usually the case, the meat-eaters ate some too!

I made marinated mushrooms from How Sweet It Is…



and halloumi kebabs with peppers, courgette and red onion (which I brushed with a lemony oil mix)…



I served the mushrooms with mozzarella melted into them, and I had mine in a gluten-free ciabatta roll (which was actually pretty good!) with avocado, and then covered the other half of the roll in houmous to eat with the kebab. Plus some coleslaw, boiled egg and beetroot…this was a really yummy plate!



People kept asking me if I missed eating meat, and I was able to answer completely honestly, no. However the one thing I did miss not being able to eat was the homemade chocolate cherry trifle…



Made by Colin, I know from previous tastings that this is delicious. However, the first week into eating gluten-free, my willpower was strong enough to resist, so I stuck to fresh strawberries & raspberries with some double cream for my pud. I wish I'd found time to make Katie's Chocolate Chip Blondies, they would've been perfect! Next time!



Yum. I was so full from my main plate that I didn’t really need anything else anyway. At the time I thought that I hadn’t eaten that much, but actually, it was more than 600 calories in my BBQ plate, not counting the apple juice, fruit & cream, cups of tea etc. No wonder I’m still feeling full now! We didn’t eat until 2.30pm anyway which is really late for us, and we’re off out for a friend’s birthday drinks tonight, so I may well end up having Pimms & lemonade as my “dinner” I think!!

We all had a really good time this afternoon…thanks to everyone involved! Baby especially was overjoyed as Colin’s daughter and her husband had brought along their dog Woody. Children + animals = lots of fun!





I’m not really much of an animal person, but even I think these photos are cute! The children had such a
great time with him...he provided them with much more entertainment than the "boring adults"!!

Right, off to go get ready for this evening – Liam’s Mum is due to be arriving in 10 minutes to babysit. Time has flown by today!

Hope everyone else is enjoying the long weekend! Anyone else been having BBQs? What are your favourite BBQ foods? My Mum had done the usual burgers, sausages and chicken kebabs, but I loved my mushroom burger! The halloumi was really good too, I’d never had it before but it went really well with all the BBQ veggies. Yum!