Diamonds 'n' Pearls: The Vegetable Challenge: AO.com

I was recently challenged by the guys over at AO.com to spend a week eating 6 vegetable based main meals out of 7. Now I know this is a slight deviation from my usual posts on here but I really enjoy incorporating lifestyle bits and pieces on the blog because aside from wearing pretty dresses every now and then I do like to go and eat out, visit new places and try new things so this was a challenge I was completely up for taking on.

When I was asked to get involved with this I knew I would have no problem eating mainly veggie based meals as I'm not the biggest of meat eaters and I will regularly go for veggie options in my cooking and eating out anyway; however I thought the biggest part of this challenge would be time. I work Monday to Friday full time in an office and I usually don't arrive home after a long day until at least 6.15pm. The first thing I do when I walk through the door is flick the kettle on, kick my shoes off and stick my nose in the cupboards to source out the easiest and quickest thing to eat so the thought of getting in and then having to prepare veggies and read recipes was a real turn off,

For complete honesty I will admit that I only managed to cook and eat 5 meals out of the 7 that I was challenged to but in my defence it was purely because at weekends I'm very rarely ever at home to hang around cooking and I do spend a lot of time eating and going out with friends.

First up I made Spiced Vegetable Biriyani*, this was a perfect winter warmer meal which would be brilliant to serve a family or to batch cook and portion up to eat for lunches and meals throughout a week as it made so much! I ate it on it's own but if I wasn't being challenged to just eat veg I'd have probably made some sort of spicy chicken breast to accompany it.

Next up was my disaster meal a true nightmare of cooking but I gave it a go, I burnt things, I ate things that made me want to vomit but I tried it and I am giving myself a pat on the back for that alone. Tofu & Asparagus Pad Thai*, wow, what can I say, tofu is my enemy and I vow to never put it anywhere near my mouth ever again! I was intrigued by the stuff at first...

...however my intrigued turned to disgust very quikcly when I opened the carton and tipped it out. It was like a huge cube of tasteless, pale blancmange that even when fried off to try and make it 'golden' it still wobbled about in the pan. I really did try with it but in the end I had to throw the tofu away and swap in some yummy, juicy king prawns. It's safe to say that myself and tofu are never going to be the best of friends, but hey, we tried, no hard (or soft) feelings...

And lastly was my absolute favourite meal of the challenge. I wasn't expecting much from Five A Day Tagine* in fact, when I received the recipe card for this it was the one I was most underwhelmed by but once I had prepared it and sat down to eat it was the one that I was glad I had loads of left overs for because it was DE-LI-CIOUS!

I'm not much of a fan of sweet & sour type flavourings but this really worked. I added lots of extra chilli because I do like my food spicy, combined a heap of yummy cous cous and tucked in. WINNER!

AO have their very own Vegetable Cookbook on their website at the moment for you to check out and get inspired, tips on how to prepare your veggies and lots of yummy recipes for you to try!