Sluttishly Vegetarian: Buddha Bowl

It's officially autumn, which has triggered a seasonal urge to eat All The Things. Most evenings see me grazing through the kitchen cupboards, eating a meal I call "cheese, crisps and yesterday's leftovers in a bun, followed by a biscuit". It isn't the greatest meal of all time, to be honest. But - I have stumbled across a healthy variation of All The Things, called a Buddha bowl.

Buddha bowls are essentially vegetarian scrap bowls. You can build your own with:

• a healthy carb - think cous cous, brown rice or sweet potatoes rather than Mighty White
• protein - chickpeas, beans, tofu
• vegetables - sweet peppers, grated carrot, sugar snap peas, whatever's about to go off in your fridge
• a healthy fat - like avocado or nuts and seeds
• some dressing - olive oil and vinegar to bring it all together.

And boom, there you go - all the healthy things, looking beautiful, in a bowl. Here's what I put in mine.

Buddha bowl (serves 1)

You will need:

• 100g dried cous cous
• Vegetable stock cube
• Half a tin of chickpeas
• Small carrot, grated
• Handful of sugar snap peas
• Smaller handful of pine nuts
• 1 tbsp olive oil and balsamic vinegar

Make it!

1. Put the cous cous in a bowl and make up the stock. Pour the boiling stock over the cous cous, covering it by 1cm. Cover, leave for 5 minutes, then fluff with a fork.
2. Prepare your vegetables and drain your chickpeas, then mix them into the cous cous with the pine nuts. Drizzle over the oil and vinegar dressing, and you're done.

Now all you need to do is track down an actual buddha bowl - the first UK shop to stock these glorious, comforting bowls has my custom forever.