Creamy salmon filled vegetable bucket

Before you go straight to the recipe, I have two questions...

Do you care about what you feed yourself?
Do you hate that you always need recipes when you try cooking?

If you answered yes, then read this first!

There is no exact recipe for this dish. And if even if there was, I probably wouldn't give it to you! Not because I'm on some kind of premenstrual high, but because I think these days we might not be learning as much as we could about the art of cooking. 

You see if we want to accomplish something, we first need to feel empowered. To feel empowered we first need to learn. To learn, we first need to be inspired.

How do we become empowered to cook if we're just quickly reading instructions off a page???

We're not. All this does is give our eyes a workout. I believe we should be creating and eating food that you we are proud of and enjoy. Food that has heart. That has a piece of ‘you’ inside. Well not literally. That's just gross.

Chef’s don't use recipes every time they cook because they have learned to create them. Note the word 'create'. Recipes are created once we learn how to cook. Chef's create recipes because they have an appreciation for the food that we are blessed with. My concern is that we don't have that appreciation. And we should appreciate it because we are lucky to have it.

I am definitely not saying we should boycott reading recipes and all become chefs. That's crazy talk. Recipes can be a great way to start. I just prefer my recipes to be more of a ‘matrix’ allowing you to  make your own choices and develop your own tastes. So you can learn through 'doing'. You will start to become familiar with works and what doesn’t so that you won't be a slave to recipe books. Who has time for that every day??

I believe that by learning to create food, it helps grow a healthy connection with our food again. So we can begin to realise what ‘actual’ food is and to break away from the modern way of heating and serving packaged food. Because that isn’t cooking. That's just heating.....and serving. No skill required. Which is totally cool if you just want to put fake food in your mouth, chew and swallow it. However this completely defeats the purpose of eating. 

Remember.......just because it's edible, doesn't mean it's food!!! 

Ok, I'm done now. How about we cook food now?!

So here, this is today’s matrix!

• 1 Large zucchini, eggplant, capsicum or pumpkin

For the filling:

• 1 small can of tuna or salmon. Or any shredded meat or chicken. 
• Steamed or raw diced vegetable of choice (broccoli, cauliflower, capsicum, cucumber, celery)
• 1 tablespoon of diced spring onion or red onion
• ½ avocado
• 1 tbsp tahini
• 1 tbsp tomato paste
• 1 tsp crushed ginger
• Juice of ½ a small lemon or lime
• 1/8 tsp of cayenne, chilli flakes or freshly diced chilli

1. Cut open your vegetable of choice (you just need something big enough to hollow out for your stuffing)
2. Place it on a baking tray and bake at 180 degrees until slightly softened (times will differ depending on the vegetable. 
3. While your vegetable is baking mix everything for the filling together except for your vegetables and protein of choice.
4. Once combined and you have a creamy dip, add in the rest of your ingredients
5. Remove your baked vegetable from the oven and cool for 5 mins
6. Fill with your stuffing and eat.