Vegan food for the hungry student

WIP Wednesday!

2012-02-08T17:56:00.000+10:00

I have sorta kinda maybe always wanted to do something like this but never bothered. Theresa over at the Tropical Vegan reminded me of it, and this time I actually have some works in progress! I'm hoping posting about them for give me the kick up the butt I need to finish some, and in turn more inspiration to start new ones too.

I am currently making some curtains for our bedroom. Some nice, bright, kind of ugly curtains to brighten up our doomy gloomy bedroom.

Doomy gloomy bedroom.

We went to Spotlight and spent friggin hours trying to find the perfect material. I found lots I liked but Nadine was 'meh' about everything, until we found this (kind of absurdly expensive) 70's retro style print. Burnt orange? Yes please! Will match our tablecloth :)

I am making simple tab curtains, but decided to make it hard for myself by turning them into blackout curtains. We are sooks and can't stand the slightest glint of light. We got the blackout stuff at Spotlight too, though I can't remember what it's actually called. You can get it in single thickness or triple though. We went for single because we are ~~broke~~ cheap.

So far I've made all the tabs for all 3 curtains (7 for each).

Just thought I'd take some crafty photos along the way.

I've also hemmed the top and bottom of one curtain and am currently attempting to join the blackout material to it somehow. I accidentally cut it too short for this one, but I shall remember it for next time!

Lunch: Quinoa Salad and Black Bean Dip

2012-02-05T18:05:00.000+10:00

I love quinoa in a salad. And I almost can't wait to go to work tomorrow so I can eat this one!

I found this reicipe: Green Goddess Salad (from Healthy. Happy. Life.) on Pinterest and thought it'd be a perfect portable, filling but light lunch to take to work.

My greens were peas, brocolli and english spinach shredded. I also chucked in a tomato I found in the fridge. I used quinoa instead of cous cous because it's what I had in the cupboard. Next weeks lunches might have to feature whole wheat cous cous! I used a chopped ruby red grapefruit instead of orange (really good idea! I love grapefruit.) The dressing I chose was the tahini option (see recipe) but I skipped the maple syrup because I don't have any at the moment.

Nadine and I shared a small bowl of this when she got home today as an afternoon snack. AKndnnewkjt34$%@.

I'm really liking this whole taking cold salads to work for lunch instead of leftovers thing. I don't have to wait for microwaves, it's always tasty, and it changes up the routine a bit. I also get to try many more dishes too! And all of the salads I've made so far can be made ahead, therefore I can do like 3 days of lunches for us at once and all I have to do is get the container out of the fridge in the morning, no fart arsing around.

I also usually make some sort of bean based dip to take for morning teas to eat with carrot/celery/other vegetable sticks. This week I've made Monumental Black Bean Dip from Eating Bird Food.

I usually make a simple hummus but this week I felt like a change. When I made this I added a half cup of extra black beans because I found it a bit thin. Also straight after making it the flavours were pretty mild, but Nadine took it to work today and said it was really good :) So the flavours must soak in a bit more overnight.

Attractive, isn't it? Hehehe.

Recipe: Vegan Beef and Stout Stew

2012-02-04T20:59:00.000+10:00

Stout beer. Mmm delicious. Pity most brands use isinglass in the fining process. Dang. BUT I looked and looked (it was hard, because I'm not too knowledgable on beer brands) and found that Coopers makes a vegan friendly stout beer! (Bonus points for being Aussie owned and made). And thus this stew was born. (Inspired by this recipe from Martha Stewart).

For the beef part I used this stuff. Found it in the freezer in an Asian supermarket. I'm not entirely sure of it's brand. There are words everywhere. I think it's essentially frozen rehydrated TVP chunks, and it pretty much has the same texture as the type of cow you'd buy to slow cook. Except you don't have to break your jaw chewing on it. (Ew.)

Vegan Beef and Stout Stew

Serves 6

Ingredients:

3 1/2 cups of beef style pieces, defrosted (or rehydrated beef style TVP slices)

2 tbsp wholemeal flour*

170g tomato paste

500g potatoes, diced in 2cm bits

1 large onion, diced

5 garlic cloves, sliced

1 carrot, diced

1 celery stalk, diced

400mL beef style stock (I use massel)

220mL vegan stout beer

2 cups frozen peas, defrosted

Salt and pepper to taste

Method:

Saute onion, garlic, carrot, celery and potatoes in some oil or water in a large stock pot for about 5 minutes. Add flour and stir until it starts to brown. Stir in stock, tomato paste and stout beer so no lumps form. It will thicken a bit. You may need to add extra water if it's too thick. I added about an extra cup. (*I used 3 tbsp flour and I think it was too much). Stir in defrosted beef chunks.

Bring to a boil and then turn down and simmer for about 15 minutes or until potatoes are tender. Add peas. Cook until heated through and sauce has thickened. Taste for seasoning.

I served mine on bowtie pasta because I like pasta with stews. But you could try quinoa, brown rice...anything else really :)

A stew is the ultimate comfort food and this one doesn't disappoint. The gravy is rich and thick and we wanted to eat the whole pot! I reckons the leftovers will make a GREAT pie. So that is what I'm going to do. If the gravy isn't pie-thickness I'll just reheat it on the stove with some cornflour or something, but I don't think it'll need it. Making leftovers into a pie with perhaps a steamed green thing on the side will stretch it out to at least 8 servings I think. Depends how much pie you can eat ;).

This reminds me a lot of something my mum used to make sometimes, except I remember disliking it immensely. Don't know why. I guess tastes change.

I would definately serve this to family, friends, anybody who enjoyed a good stew. If they didn't see me eating it I'm sure they would all think it was the 'real deal'. If you aren't a fan of fake meat, try using tofu, tempeh, muchrooms, or even a bean. I think mushrooms would be especially delicious (and much more accessible to everyone! I know not all of us live in a city with plentiful asian food marts.)

I've finally figured out how to roast potatoes properly.

2012-02-01T20:56:00.000+10:00

And the results are pretty damn delicious :)

Cut potatoes relatively small. Preheat oven to 210 degrees. Mix potatoes with about 1 tbsp of oil. Put in oven. Cook for about 45 minutes. Mmmm.

I had to perform that difficult procedure to make the 'White Beans and Lemon Potatoes with Olives and Tomatoes' from Vegan on the Cheap (pg 165). However, I change every recipe I cook from. I used about 3x as many olives, extra potatoes (because there were only a few left in the bag and the rest were squishy), kidney beans instead of white beans (and an extra cup at that), like 8 cloves of garlic left whole instead of 3 crushed, and fresh basil added at the end instead of parsley. Served it on twisty tricolour pasta. It was so delicious. Simplicity at it's best. Not many flavours compliment each other as well as olives and well, anything really.

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This was part of the meal plan I wrote for this week. Our budget is a little tight because of moving costs, and me not being able to work for a few days due to flooding (yay rain!) and I find a concrete plan makes things a lot easier to handle. And since I have a pantry, and the shops are a little further away than the top of our driveway, I can buy the whole weeks groceries at once. It helps that our local fruit shop is the cheapest fruit shop I've ever been to. And the produce lasts!

I'll be blogging a little more later about various other things we have been cooking. My camera cord was in a box somewhere so I have quite the backlog of pictures to go through :)

Busy busy

2012-01-10T10:49:00.000+10:00

So tonight is the last night we'll have to spend in our flat. This whole moving process seems to be taking forever! Probabaly because my little corolla is just that - little, and not all that much stuff fits inside it. Or maybe it's because not everything is in boxes, for example, today I'll be piling all our dresses into the backseat and hanging them up as soon as I get to the new house. Our coffee table books I put in the boot without a box because they make a box way too heavy, and I carried them in in smaller piles. And, it was a sweltering hot day yesterday and I thought I was going to collapse. Then I remembered the south's heat wave and realised it wasn't actually that hot, I'm just a wuss.

Regardless of my wussiness, I am so so glad I took this week as a holiday, rather than going to work and trying to move our copious amounts of crap at the same time. We need to do a big Lifeline run I think. I also need to not ever buy anything ever again. Except the thing is, most of the crap I've found that is mine I've been moving around since highschool.

So somewhere in amongst the cramped calves from running up and down stairs, to the blood blister on my finger from dropping a box of vintage crockery on it, and the brusies on my hips from whacking myself on our cast iron bed frame - I have to eat lunch. And in the interest of getting rid of as much perishable stuff in the freezer/fridge as is possible before I dig out our esky to clean which is currently under the stairs getting pooed on by geckos, I opened the freezer and pulled out the most empty packets I could find: edamame and those weird vegan prawn substitutes.

This was pretty tasty, actually, and really not that great for you. But who cares, I'm moving house.

Vegan prawn and edamame pasta
Serves 1

Ingredients:

100g spaghetti or other pasta shape that is hiding in your pantry
Margarine for frying
1 clove garlic, chopped
1/2 tsp dried chilli flakes
1 tsp dried dill
5 vegan prawns, chopped up
handful of frozen edamame, defrosted and shelled
black pepper
olive oil

Put pasta on to boil. When it's nearly done, melt the margarine in a small saucepan and fry the garlic and herbs for a minute. Add edamame and prawn pieces. Cook until prawn pieces are done, not long. When pasta is ready, drain, and stir through the prawn mixture. Drizzle olive oil over top and season with as much black pepper as you like.
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Nadine asked yesterday if I was even a little nostalgic about leaving the flat. We have been here for two years after all. I said no. Though I will miss the colour of the kitchen cupboards:

Excuse the messy picture. This was probably taken over a year ago when I first discovered my camera had a panorama function.

I won't, however, miss my pantry. Or my bench space. =D

'Chicken' with Orange Teriyaki

2012-01-03T13:28:00.056+10:00

Since it was my last day of holidays yesterday (sadface) I decided to make a fancy lunch. Because I can.

I found 'Seitan and Brocollini with Clementine Teriyaki sauce' on Vegan Yum Yum, thought it sounded fantastic and made it. I just used oranges instead of mandarins for the sauce because mandarins aren't in season at the moment :) The sauce is delicious and made heaps so I'm going to use it to make this again for Nadine for tea! It's a perfect balance of sweet and salty, and bonus points for making it at home - no more expensive bottled sauce. I only needed 2 dessertspoons of sauce to coat all my veg and soybean chicken bits, and it was a rather large meal. I used regular brocolli and some purple cabbage as my veges, and served it with brown rice.

I thought about making some seitan for it, but came to the conclusion that it was too much effort so I dug this soybean chicken out of the pantry. When I bought it I was intrigued and asked the guy at the counter what it was like. He said it was pretty good - and that it was apparently good enough for people to get angry at him when it was out of stock! Now, it is actually quite good, but since I prefer my protein to come mainly from unprocessed foods I don't think I'd abuse the store guy if it wasn't on the shelf!

It only costs $3.95 (where I got it) for a 200g packet, which has four servings in it. One serving is quite a lot, so you could probabaly stretch it to six or eight servings if you up the veges in your stir fry or whatever you're making.

What you do, is you boil the little dried pieces of whatever it is in some water until they are soft, then you drain and rinse with cold water. Proceed to use in any recipe you'd use actual chicken!

It comes out of the water looking disturbingly like cooked chicken pieces. Doesn't taste like it though, it's all about the sauce/flavorings with these things! The texture is pretty damn spot on ( I don't know how they do it!), and I wouldn't hesitate to reccomend this product to people wanting to give up chicken or those transitioning from eating meat to being vegetarian/vegan.

(I am not being paid to flog this product by the way.)

Lunch: Lemony Lentil Salad

2012-01-02T13:09:00.000+10:00

Lentils, capsicum, lemon juice, spring onions, olive oil, dijon mustard, black pepper

I decided this year I need to be more prepared with my work lunches - more salads and not so many leftovers. Only because I'm sick of waiting in line for the damn microwave! And someone almost always puts a fish and/or chicken dish in there before mine and the whole thing reeks.

Anyway I was on Pinterest this morning and came across this delicious sounding salad that would be easy to eat, doesn't require reheating and had minimal preparation. And it has lentils and I have nearly a whole kilo to use. And anything with mustard in the dressing is a winner.

I only made like one minor change to the ingredients - reduced the olive oil by 1 tablespoon. I don't mind eating it unheated, but I thought 3 sounded a bit much. I'd have put the third tablespoon in if there wasn't enough dressing to go round though. I also sliced the capsicums long and thin because that's how I like them.

I got three lunch sized servings out of the recipe.

A bit of a summery cocktail recipe

2012-01-01T09:47:00.000+10:00

Watermelon Champagne Cocktails

Makes 4 champagne flutes

Ingredients:

1 cup frozen watermelon chunks

1/2 cup ice cubes

2 tbsp lime juice

2 tbsp citrus (or plain) vodka

Sparkling white or rose of your choice

Lime to serve

Put first four ingredients in a blender and blend until it makes a slushy. Divide into four champagne flutes and top up with the sparkling wine of your choice. Or you could use real champagne (it's all supposed to be vegan). Decorate with lime slices and serve!

The wine I used was a very sweet low alcohol content sparkling wine called 'Zibibbo' by Brown Brothers (all vegan). I usually buy Yellowtail sparkling white but they didn't have any :( This wine is still lovely though, and very celebratory. I don't think you have to use a sparkling, though, still white wine would be very nice as well :)

Haven't washed my hair for a week. Hey I'm on holidays!

We were lazy again this new years; finished off the bottles of wine we bought, watched Back to the Future part 3 and hit the sack at about 9pm. There was an excuse! Nadine had to work this morning and I had to drive her and we didn't want to risk a bad breath test :P

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This year, instead of resolutions, I'm just going to write down a couple of goals for 2012. The word resolution annoys me! :P

1. I will run the Gold Coast Half Marathon this year. Already started training! I'm back to step one now after my break from the Bridge to Brisbane in...September. Lol.

2. I will change jobs.

Woohoo! Happy New Year everybody, thanks for reading my little blog :)

Fruit of the Month: Cherries!

2011-12-30T17:29:00.000+10:00

Who doesn't love cherries?? (My sister, apparently. Crazy!) I have been eating cherries like they were air this season. I have been buying cherries for $7.99/kg at my fruit shop for a couple of weeks now - they are the reject cherries marked down because no one would buy them at the normal price (15 or so dollars/kg) but I think they are still good, especially used in what I've been using them in!

Cherries are apparently an aid to sufferes of gout (and arthritis) - the flavonoids in the cherry juice help reduce uric acid levels in the blood stream. Doesn't work for everyone, but it does for many! They also taste good. For only 87 calories per 1 cup serve, they make an excellent snack choice for anyone. (Not that I care about the caloric content - I'd eat the whole kilo if I wouldn't feel sick!) That same one cup serving also has 3% of your daily iron needs, 16% of your vitamin C and 2% of your calcium. [Source: nutritiondata.com]

Now for some uses:

Freeze them for the long cold winter ahead of us. I've found this to come in handy. I've hardly bought any frozen berries lately (because my freezer is full of containers of cherries) and pitting all the cherries is quite relaxing. I just cut them in half, twist it apart and then pry out the pit with a knife. Don't cut yourself. Apparently if you freeze them whole they'll take on an almond flavour from the pit. I just put it all into plastic takeaway containers (or whatever container you want) and freeze. When I need to use them it only takes a second to pry them apart (once you get one the whole lot usually falls apart).

Use them in a tart or pie. (Top right obviously). This was our Christmas dessert table! I contributed the ~~Pear~~ Frangipane Tart from the Post Punk Kitchen. Everyone loved it. I've made it twice now. I'm sure the pear version is lovely, but I don't think pears are in season here right now. But when they are I'm totally making it. Again.

Put them in your breakfast smoothie. I have smoothies for breakfast quite often. Since my old food processor finally carked it (JUST when I was about to start making my christmas tart) and I bought myself a fancy pants new one with a blender attachment, smoothies will be much more regular. Here's one I had this morning:

Cherry-Almond Smoothie

I small frozen banana

1 cup frozen cherries

30g (1/3 cup) almond meal

30g (1/3 cup) rolled oats

1 tbsp chia seeds

1 1/2 cups slmond milk

Blend. Makes about 2 cups.

This smoothie provides: 17g protein, 28% daily calcium, 10% daily iron, 23g fat (only 2 of which are saturated). Not bad huh? I was pretty impressed. It also lasted me for like, 3 hours.

Bake them into a cake or muffins. I made Lemon cherry muffins by Vegan in Bellingham. I chose this recipe while searching 'vegan cherry muffins' on the net because I already had all the ingredients. And they are so good. I made them yesterday afternoon and there's only 3 left. Good thing they are relatively good for you :)

And last, but not least, ice cream! I was gifted with an ice cream maker for Christmas from my mum and HOOFUCKINGRAY! I tested the wodnerful machine out today with a basic vanilla ice cream with what was supposed to be blasamic cherry swirl, but it turned out a little more like cherry ice cream. I used the lazy vanilla ice cream from A Vegan Ice Cream Paradise blog, except instead of creamer I used a can and abit of coconut cream. Unfortunately the shop only had light in the cheap brand, but full fat would definately have been better. This ice cream still rocks my world though!

I cooked 2 cups of pitted cherries down with 2 tbsp balsamic vinegar. This would be good on top of plain vanilla ice cream too, but I wanted something fancy for my first time use of the Wonder Machine! I'd chop the cherries up into little bits next time because I had to mash them this time and one squirted me in the eye. I thought I'd go blind. I didn't, obviously. So anyway, I let the ice cream maker do it's job for 20 minutes, and then I blobbed in this sauce (and 1/4 cup cacao nibs) and let it swirl around for a few minutes. Oooh it's good. The balsamic adds just a touch of a different flavour as an aftertaste. yum. I've had to stop myself from eating the whole lot. it's not even frozen yet!

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Happy cherry eating! I hope they stay cheap for just a little while longer...I want to freeze more for when I hibernate.

Just juice

2011-12-27T20:39:00.000+10:00

I am busy packing and cleaning our flat at the moment and haven't had the energy to post :) (Did you know my kitchen door was painted cream? I sure didn't.) I shall return soon I'm sure. But here is an unintentionally festive juice: 2 carrots, 1 lg beetroot and 2 large leaves of a silverbeet. I got the star shaped ice cube tray as a fun gift from my dad and stepmum :) It's silicon and it pops out so easily! I'm already thinking chocolates or flavoured ice blocks...

Christmas mince pies

2011-12-18T18:56:00.000+10:00

For a few years now I've been meaning to make some fruit mince pies for Christmas day :) So this year I have.

Recipe for the fruit mince part:

Ingredients

1/4 cup currants

1/3 cup sultanas

2 tbsp mixed peel

1/4 cup sunflower seeds

1 apple, peeled and grated

1/4 cup dark brown sugar

1/4 tsp ground nutmeg

1/4 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp grated orange rind

1 tsp grated lemon rind

1 cup fresh cherries, pitted and quartered

1/2 cup red seedless grapes, quartered

1 overflowing tbsp scotch whiskey or brandy

Mix all ingredients in a bowl and store in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 5 days. You should use this pretty much as soon as possible because it's fresh fruit, and there isn't much alcohol in it to preserve :)

This is a terrible picture.

I made a basic sweet shortcrust pastry with wholemeal flour and used my mini muffin pan as a mould. Put about a teaspoon of fruit mince into each hole and put more pastry on top as a lid. Press around the edge with a fork. I stuck a hole in each pie with a skewer and then sprinkled raw castor sugar on the tops. Bake for 20-30 minutes at 200 degrees C.

The fruit mixture was enough for 10 full size muffin pan sized pies, and 14 mini muffins, or about 30 mini muffin pan sized pies.

And they are delicious.

'Beef' stroganoff

2011-12-12T20:44:00.000+10:00

A while ago I bought some of those Lamyong TVP beef slice things for some reason. They aren't that good, but they aren't terrible and they are good for a bit of a protein change. Before we move I'm trying to use up as much of my pantry food as possible so I don't have to move it all. Next on the list was the beef style thingamees so I decided on a take on a traditional beef stroganoff! This recipe is much better than the first one I posted. Much much better.

'Beef' stroganoff

Serves 4

Ingredients

1/2 a packet Lamyong Beef strips (75g)

2 tbsp wholemeal plain flour

1 large onion, thinly sliced

3 large cloves garlic, crushed

450g portobello or swiss brown mushrooms, sliced

1/2 cup white wine (I used sav blanc)

3/4 cup stock (I used chicken style but beef would be better)

3 tbsp tomato paste

1 tbsp mustard powder

1/4 tsp smoked paprika

1/2 cup silken tofu, blended smooth (important)

Pasta to serve

Method:

First, put the beef slices in a bowl and cover with freshly boiled water. Leave until it's soft. Use this water to make the stock.

Heat a little bit of oil in a stock pot and cook onions and garlic until they start to soften. Add mushrooms to pot and cook until they start to release the juice. Mix together the wine, stock and tomato paste in a jug or cup or something. Start water boiling to cook pasta.

Put the flour in the pot with the mushrooms and stir quickly. Once it has cooked for a minute, pour in the liquid and stir so no lumps form. Let simmer for a while, sauce should thicken. Add in softened beef slices, mustard and paprika. By now the water should be boiling. Continue cooking stroganoff until pasta is ready. A few minutes before serving, stir through the tofu. It's important that it's blended so it's smooth. As you can see in my photo mine wasn't, and therefore came out all lumpy!

Serve on pasta and enjoy.

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This is really good, even better the next day. however the tvp beef stuff does NOT freeze well. This would also be delicious with tofu chunks, tempeh, seitan, or some sort of bean, or double the mushrooms. For example, if I was serving to family I'd go for the beans or all mushroom version :)

Moving time!

2011-12-09T19:09:00.000+10:00

Nadine and I recently got approved to rent A REAL HOUSE. With like, a backyard (and a front yard!) and most importantly - A KITCHEN! With a PANTRY. You have no idea (or maybe you do!) at how much of a luxury a proper pantry is. I am very excited. My new garden will have room for vegetables and it has a garden shed in which I'll have to store a lawn mower.

So, to celebrate, instead of beans and rice (pretty much what we'll be living on as we move) I made a pot pie from Veganomicon. The 'Cauliflower and Mushroom Potpie with Black Olive Crust' which we have indeed made before, though I could not remember it. Since cauliflower is so expensive at the moment we changed the ingredients a little. We were going to use brocolli instead but the tiny lone stalk left at woolies was very sick looking, so I went for the sugarloaf cabbage instead. It was on special :) I like cabbage. And I used some nice portobello mushrooms which were reducted to clear.

And it was a delicious and fitting way to celebrate the arrival of a next home.

Red Velvet for you, Red Velvet for me..

2011-12-02T17:11:00.000+10:00

It seems to have turned into a tradition that I make Nadine something Red Velvet for her birthday since she told me that was her favourite when we first drunkenly met. The first cake I baked I stirred with a fork. It took hours and turned out shit and tasting like food colouring, but everyone ate it! The next I made red with beetroot, but it kind of baked brown...though I've read if you add lemon juice it retains it's colour. Anyone tried this?

So this lot of cupcakes I followed the recipe for Crimson velvet cupcakes in VCTOTW (I think that's what they are called), except I left out the almond extract for nut allergic eaters. I also only used about 1.5 tbsp of food colouring because two seemed like the WHOLE BOTTLE. It didn't seem to affect the recipe result. They turned out so red also because I used white flour. They'd still be red with wholemeal but not as brightly coloured.

WHICH WAS DELICIOUS! The cakey part itself isn't particularly stand-out (though still good), but to me a red velvet is all about the contrast between the cake and the cream cheese icing. My icing is just 1/4 cup each of margarine and vegan cream cheese, 2 cups of sifted pure icing sugar and 1 tsp of vanilla extract. Mmmm.

I really wanted to put those silver balls on them to make them all fancy and festive, but did you know those things have gelatin in them? Ew. They are rock solid balls of sugar, you wouldn't think they'd need it aye. Oh well, no silver balls for us :( (Nadine said she didn't like them anyway haha).

Anyway, yay cupcakes. Oh. and I know red food colouring is generally cochineal, but I looked up all the numbers in the ingredients list of Queen's Pillar Box Red (that you buy at Woolies) and none of them appeared in my handy little vegan additive food guide so I was pretty confident that it wasn't. However, I emailled Queen Fine Foods today to find out for sure so hopefully they get back to me soon :) The internet yielded no results.

We gave half of these to my sister and her boyfriend who were looking after the cats when we went away, so we didn't have to eat them all. Pretty sure they were much appreciated.

Progress :)

2011-12-01T16:12:00.000+10:00

So, QLD queers can be civilly unified legally!

Can you guess what I'm cooking in the picture?

Sangria, the best kind of summer cocktail

2011-11-24T21:00:00.000+10:00

There's a nectarine pictured that I didn't end up using but would be a good addition

I bought this lovely jug at Target like, years ago purely with the intention of making sangria in the summertime. It's been about a hundred summers and I still hadn't made any! (I also can't seem to write a grammatically correct sentence). Anyway, here is my recipe for a yummy sangria. I have no idea if it's in any way authentic, I'm just basically copying what I saw the Spanish bartenders pour into our glasses while in Spain. (Or what I think I remember seeing!)

I used an average wine glass for measuring since we were on holiday and there were no measuring cups

Sangria
Makes 6-7 cups worth

Ingredients
2 glasses red wine (I used cab sav)
1 glass vodka (I used citrus vodka but plain is also good. I wouldn't reccomend vanilla.)
2 glasses sparkling plain mineral water
1/2 an orange, thinly sliced in quarters
1/2 a ruby grapefruit, thinkly sliced in quarters
1 lemon, thinly sliced in rounds
Ice for serving

Method

It's pretty simple! Just mix together all the liquid ingredients and then add the fruit. Or you could put the fruit in first and pour the liquid on top. Either way.

Cover and put in the fridge for a few hours so the fruit can marinate. When ready to serve, pour into tall glasses with some of the fruit, add some ice cubes and some fresh cut lemon slices for garnish!

At first, the vodka is a little strong in this, but by the time I'd finished my first glass I couldn't tell! (maybe that's a hint). Use only half a glass of vodka if you aren't a fan. I also like a drier red wine, but to make it a little easier to drink use a sweet, or sparkling red (such as Lambrusco). I've had sangria in bars served with sugar in the bottom of the glass, too - I don't like to add sugar to things when I think it's unecessary, but a little bit of agave nectar or rice syrup wouldn't go astray! Or a good way to sweeten without cane sugar would be to nix the citrus, and use apple, pear, necatrine and peach slices instead. The possibilities are endless!

We spent all day Saturday drinking this (Nadine's was watered down with extra mineral water because of her head cold) and then we decided to mix up some more! I'm sorry, but there IS such a thing as too much sangria.

It's Rawesome! raw vegan restaurant

2011-11-22T20:22:00.001+10:00

This weekend just gone Nadine and I took a long weekend holiday on the Sunshine Coast! It was half a celebration of her birthday and half a celebration of her finishing her cert 3 in companion animal services. How exciting is that. The weather was perfect and we did pretty much nothing but lie on the beach getting sunburnt. Nadine was also quite sick so everything was just too hard...except lying on the sand. Haha.

Anyway I have a few posts, but this one first. I saw a review for this cafe called It's Rawesome! on Easy as vegan Pie and we decided we must eat there while we were up the coast (since it takes like 2 hours to get up there from my house lol).

I love going to raw food restaurants because I usually can't be bothered to do much at home myself. The drinks we had were the Pina Colada, which is pineapple, coconut water, lemongrass and ice (I couldn't taste the lemongrass, but it was still delicious) Nadine had a juice, the Betacarotene Booster which had carrot, ginger and apple. Also very nice.

When we buy meals out we always go halves so we don't have to miss out on anything (who knows when we'll get to go out again!) so we got:

California Burrito with avocado lime sauce, red pepper sauce and sour cream

and the Sun burger with apple mint relish.

We both liked the burger more than the burrito, but the burrito was still yummy. It was like a thin crepe wrap with fresh salad inside with a chipotle 'cheese' (all their cheeses are made from a cultured cashew nut mix [ I think, can't find it anywhere] and are so good).

The sun burger was worth it for the apple relish alone. And whatever the mushrooms are marinated in. And the mayonnaise was quite impressive.

We of course had a dessert which we forgot to take a picture of! It was a chai cheesecakey type deal though. Very rich but very delicious. Good thing we only got one dessert :)

---

Whenever we are up that way again I'll definately go back. It was actually quite busy for a little place out in the middle of nowhere (that's Rosemount, which is in the middle of Nambour, Bli Bli and Woombye). It's a good thing I like driving along random highways in woop woop aye! The only thing that irked me -and it's a really really tiny thing that shouldn't bother me - but the lady who was serving kept making sure I knew it was a vegan establishment and that the 'burger' wasn't a burger in the traditional sense rah rah rah. I don't know, little but annoying. I think that might turn people off - let them be pleasantly suprised by the delicious food they ordered!

Ps: lately I haven't been able to leave comments on blogs that have the comment form at the bottom of the post. Does anyone know how to fix that? It seems all the blogs I want to comment on have that form!

Beans beans the magical fruit

2011-11-15T20:08:00.000+10:00

This meal is so simple, yet turns out delicious. And it's so cheap! Inspired from a Chilean recipe in the Oxfam Vegetarian Cookbook.

Makes 6 servings

Ingredients:

500g dry red kidney beans (about 2.5 cups)

2 large onions, sliced

4 cloves garlic chopped

250g pumpkin

3 cups corn kernels (from 3 cobs, or frozen)

1 tsp oregano

1 tsp thyme

1 tsp chilli flakes

2 cups chicken style stock

Method:

Cook kidney beans (soak overnight, simmer for about 1 hour OR boil beans, let soak 1 hour, drain, and simmer in new water for about 1 hour) and set aside.

Fry onion and garlic in some oil (or water) until soft. Add pumpkin and corn kernels and cook until it starts to soften. Add beans, spices and stock, bring to boil and turn down to a simmer. Cook for 20 minutes and serve on rice! Or we used cracked wheat because I forgot to buy rice.

Sometimes it's nice..

2011-11-09T21:21:00.000+10:00

..not to have to cook!

Nadine's had a few days off so tonight she cooked tea so I could sit on my arse. She told me to pick a random number and the Fusilli Roasted Veggie Primavera from Appetite for Reduction was my choice. Vegetables are cheap at the moment - apparently the cherry tomatoes were reduced to clear, woot!

It's nice to have a giant plate of vegetables sometimes. Colllooouuursssss. I've been sick lately so I reckon as many veg as possible is the best thing to do. :)

2011-11-07T20:13:00.002+10:00

Fresh produce - a veg*n's best friend.

Perhaps a tad too soon...

2011-11-06T18:46:00.000+10:00

...but here is a delicious recipe in celebration of bananas being almost cheap enough to buy again. It was inspired from my copy of 'The 21st birthday Cookery Book of the Country Women's Association in Tasmania'. Most of the recipes for meals hold pretty much no interest for me (laden with various animal parts and by-products) but the desserts and confections can mostly be made suitable for us!

Baked Banana Pudding
Serves 4-6

Ingredients

115g margarine (I use nuttlex lite)
2 med-large bananas
2 tbsp chia seeds
1/2 cup cold water
zest and juice of one lemon
1 cup raw caster sugar (or regular sugar)
1 cup of wholemeal self raising flour

Make sure you use McAlpin's!

Method

Pre heat oven to 180 degrees Celcius.

Mix chia seeds into water and set aside to thicken. Mash bananas in a small bowl and set aside.

In a large mixing bowl, cream together the margarine and sugar. Add lemon juice and zest and beat to combine. Beat in chia seed goo and bananas until well combined. Sift in flour (don't forget to re add in the bran) and beat again until combined. You may need to add a little bit of milk...the batter should be thick but not dry at all.

Pour batter into a greased or lined baking tin (I used a small brownie pan). Bake for about 45 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the center comes out clean.

After baking

Serve with ice cream!
------

I served ours with half arsed frozen vanilla hazelnut iced milk cream mixture. Haha it was ok.

The pudding however was delicous! I'm kind of surprised it worked, but there isn't any reason it wouldn't have is there. It's soft and moist without being gooey and gross, it's not TOO sweet, though maybe next time I'll experiment with less sugar. It leaves room for any add ins - nuts, raisins, chocolate...And it''s really simple with few ingredients! If you don't want to see your chia seeds, try using a flax egg replacement for two eggs or you can buy white chia seeds. I don't care...they aren't noticeably crunchy in this either. If you don't like a lemony flavour, omit it and use vanilla essense. You'll probably need the milk at the end if you do that though.

I've bookmarked many many recipes in my book and I'm pretty excited about a few of them :)

Mexican inspired salad!

2011-11-01T20:03:00.000+10:00

I finally got a new camera charger in the mail today! Woohoo! I forgot how to use it. BUT it means I can now start taking pictures again, I was going a little crazy. I even have a recipe. As you may or may not know, the salads I like best include carbs and more carbs, and protein...they generally aren't greens based unless it's on the side of something.

Ingredients:

Serves 4-6

1 cup dry wheat berries, soaked overnight and then cooked (should make about 2 cups)

1 punnet cherry tomatoes, sliced in half long ways

Kernels from one cob of corn

1 cup cooked black beans

1 cup cooked pinto beans

1 spring onion, sliced thinly

As much spinach leaves as you like

Dressing -

3 tbsp red wine vinegar

2 tbsp jalapeno hot sauce (I use this stuff)

2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

Mix all the salad ingredients together. In another bowl whisk the dressing until combined. pour on salad, and mix that. Easy peasy! I am pretty excited about eating it for lunches this week.

Serve with some avocado to make it even more yummy.

The jalapeno sauce has coriander and mango in it - it's so so so good. And reasonbly priced (not that I can remember how much). I'm not sure how you'd substitute it, maybe a fresh chopped jalapeno, fresh mango and dried coriander...or fresh corinander but that tastes like soap. Let me know if you try it!

Working with leftovers

2011-10-24T21:34:00.000+10:00

Our old camera finally chucked in the towel, and I lost the charger for my new camera, so I haven't been able to take any pictures of any of the yummy stuff I've been making lately. I can barely remember what we had for tea last night. I am waiting for a new charger to come in the mail (it better be the right one darnit!) so until then I'm digging through stuff I haven't posted yet.

Last week sometime (or maybe the week before) I made up some mushroom stroganoff (recipe here) but couldn't bear just reheating it and eating it again. So I cooked up some bowtie pasta, mixed it through with some nutritional yeast and baked it in the oven for about 25 minutes. Two serves kind of turned into four, but we ate it all anyway. Everything is better baked in the oven.

Anyway, some things I have made but couldn't take pictures of that I'm very disappointed about:

This delicious Gluten Free Pumpkin pie - minus the praline because I'm lazy. It's so good. We're still getting through it so maybe I'll get a picture of it's amazingness soon.

Caramel slice - yes I bought a tin of condensed soy caramel purely to make this, and thankfully my stepmum was holding a morning tea for breast cancer research and asked me to bake something...so we only ate one piece instead of the whole pan! So good. I used lindt 70% dark choclate for the top.

And lastly, the frosted grapefruit icebox cookies from Vegan Cookies Invade your Cookie Jar (also for Margaret's morning tea). I will probabaly make these again. They are so different but so yummy. Remember to soften your copha enough, and yours will end up even better than mine!

A blast from the past

2011-10-18T21:30:00.000+10:00

I recently sold my old car, and after paying a fair chunk of it onto my credit card, I decided to go nuts and buy a heap of things I don't normally buy, and one of the things I got are those creepy frozen vegan prawns by Lamyong! (in the description of them on this page it says they contain gluten, soy and dairy. The packet says vegan on it though, and I bought them at the Green Edge, an all-vegan shop.) I know, right? Ew. They even had the pink bits on the back. I don't know how they do that. On the packet it says they have the texture of gnocchi. As unappealing as that sounds I still bought them just to try, because why not? Besides, I wanted to put them in Tom Yum soup (which I did, but my camera died so I couldn't take a good picture).

To test them out in all their fake prawny glory, I decided to make simple garlic butter prawns, a treat of mine I used to make back in the days when i worked at a fish n chip shop. I basically mixed together a lump of vegan margarine with a grated clove of garlic, and fried the frozen fake prawns in it until they were cooked. Didn't take long. I then tried to make my fake prawns swimming in garlic butter a little bit healthier by putting them in a bowl of baby spinach and a sliced avocado! Black pepper on top completed the lunchtime snack.

Okay, small review. These things made me feel sick they tasted so real. Gnocchi texture? Notsomuch. I'd say it was pretty damn close to a real prawn. If you are a vegan who has never eaten a prawn but may be curious, these are a pretty damn close substitute. I'm planning on making some sort of prawn salady thing with homemade cocktail sauce for Christmas lunch with these. We'll see how it goes.

Some Food We Ate This Week

2011-10-16T10:54:00.000+10:00

I love food. I love thinking about food making food and eating food. I love having enough of a variety of stuff in my 'pantry' that I can come home and just throw some ingredients in a pot and call it a nutritional meal:

This is a pantry curry-like meal, it was so quick to make, neither of us knew what we felt like and this sort of thing is usually what I make in that sort of situation. Bonus points for having tins of tomatoes in the pantry and not having to go to the shops! I don't measure anything for this type of throw together but here are the ingredients: about 1 1/2 cups cooked chickpeas, 1 400g tin crushed or chopped tomatoes, most of a medium sized cauliflower, onion, carrot, the end of a bag of mung bean sprouts, spring onions, about half a block of soft tofu I found lurking in the fridge (it disintegrated), and a fair chunk of garam masala powder and some dried chilli flakes. I think I served it on brown rice. No garlic left, decided I didn't care. Oh, I also grated some fresh ginger in the last few minutes of cooking because ginger makes everything better.

Terrible photo, I was in a rush to eat it.

This meal I planned! All day at work I'd been thinking about how I haven't had eggplant for a while, so by the end of the day I wanted it pretty bad. I also felt like lentils for the same reason - they are so quick to cook and are delicious, why then don't I use them more often? So I picked up my copy of Appetite for Reduction and found Lentil & Eggplant Chilli Mole on page 242. Mmm cocoa powder in a non-sweet dish. It always freakes me out a little, I mean, it sounds gross. It really does. But I have made a mole before (I'm sure I would have posted about it, it being so weird to me and all but I can't find it), decided I like chocolate spicy things and this one had both eggplant AND lentils in it so it was a winner. I served it with the suggested Corn and Scallion Corn Bread from page 244 of the same book and it was delicious. I love corn bread. I should also make THAT more often!

The supermarket didn't have any of the big eggplants left so I had to buy a kilo of the little lebanese ones. I swear there was like a hundred of them. Cutting up one big one is sooo much easier than slicing a million little ones. They were the same price though, so it was okay. I thought it wasn't all going to fit but it cooks down quite nicely. One thing I find confusing about US recipes - the amount of chilli powder called for. Often it'll say a few tbsp of the stuff! (I just read this recipe again and it specifies mild, there's my answer.) Australian chilli powder (I just buy the stuff from the fruit shop) must be like a bazillion times hotter than American, a tsp or two is usually plenty, and I like spicy heat.

Onto a breakfast! I can't remember when exactly I made this, probably Sunday. For a plethora of deliciously interesting pancake recipes, go to Chocolate Covered Katie's blog. These are the Apple Pie pancakes, but Nadine had stolen my apple I had my sights on so I used a grated pear instead. Just as delicious I am sure! I made the Vanilla Ice Milk too, sort of - I should have frozen it the night before but I didn't, so I was lazy and had semi frozen blended almond milk on top of my pancakes. The semi frozen almond milk was freakin delicious by the way - almond milk is probably going to be my ice cream milk of choice when I finally buy my ice cream maker. I have no patience for the freezing and stirring business.

I'm so glad I love to cook. I have no idea what else I'd be doing with my spare time!

Mmm carbs

2011-10-08T18:05:00.000+10:00

Best flavour combination. Nadine and I went out and drank a fair amount of wine last night and the results are always NEED CARBS NOW and this is usually my fall back hangover lunch.

Long pasta, cliced chilli and garlic (and optional sliced olives and sundried tomato). Plonk a knob of nuttlex on top and voila.

This is what Bob does when it's stormy, like this morning. It's so sad :(

And this is what Charlee does when it thunders! We woke up this morning and found her under the covers too!

Been baking up a cyclone lately.

2011-10-05T17:28:00.000+10:00

First, it was the bagels. (I also baked some carrot muffins on the same day as the bagels that I've posted about before).

And now I am foraying even further into the vast world of Bread.

With these pumpkin scrolls I found randomly somehow on veganbaking.net. Actually, they are called Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls but to me they are scrolls. I've always called this type of thing scrolls. I opted out of the rum icing, because I had no rum (and whiskey would not suffice this time) and I don't really like icing. *get's shot by fellow bloggers* Besides, this bread is so sweet and so moist and so delicious it doesn't need any. When I make these at Christmas I'll probably put some on, you know, for presentation.

These are surprisingly easy to make. I only made a few substitutions: wholemeal plain flour + 1 tbsp gluten flour for the All Purpose, and rice syrup for the barley malt syrup.

These turned out so soft and like something you'd buy at a bakery. It tastes and has a texture like it was made with soft white flour. They taste to me like a perfect hot cross bun - I might even use this recipe for my buns next Easter. No one will notice they are orange...or they could just be pumpkin hot cross buns! They are sticky - I don't know how I'm going to manage one at work tomorrow, but we shall see.

So this is what I do when I ~~chuck a sickie~~ have a mental health day. Tell ya what, this business of breadmaking is very relaxing.

Homemade bagels!

2011-10-04T20:41:00.000+10:00

You know, I don't know if I've ever eaten a storebought bagel before, but the idea of making my own has always been attractive...I'm just fairly lazy. I mean, they look like doughnuts but you put stuff like cream cheese on it. Or marmite. Mmm. All bagel recipes seem to be pretty much the same, but here is what I did.

Whole wheat bagels

Makes 8 smallish bagels

Ingredients

3 cups wholemeal plain flour (I use organic stoneground w/m plain flour, I buy it in bulk for $3.50/kg)

1 tbsp gluten flour

3 tbsp raw sugar

1 1/2 tsp dry yeast (instant)

1 tsp salt

1 cup warm water (I actually use a candy thermometer to check - 100 degrees F)

Method

Mix together flour, gluten, yeast and salt in a med-large mixing bowl. Stir 1 tbsp sugar into the cup of warm water. Add water to flour mixture and stir until a dough forms.

Turn out onto a floured surface and knead for about 10 minutes or until smooth. Put in an oiled bowl and let rise in a warm place for an hour. (I always turn my oven on for a few seconds, then turn it off and put it in there).

Meanwhile, fill a stock pot with water and stir in the remaining sugar. Bring to a boil when dough has risen.

Divide dough into 8 pieces, and knead lightly. Poke a hole through the middle and make into smooth bagel shape. Let rest in warm place for 15 minutes. Preheat oven to 200 degrees C.

Once water is boiling, drop bagels in about 3 at a time (or however many fit in your pot) and boil for 30 secs, flip, and boil for another 30 secs. Drain.

Once all bagels have been boiled, put on a baking tray lined with baking paper. Bake for about 10 minutes (check after this to make sure - my oven is gas powered and dodgy).

Remoe from oven and cool on a wire rack. I hope that all makes sense. I'm so tired I've lost my eyes.

Serve with whatever you like to eat on bagels! I first put peanut butter and rice syrup on mine, then tried one with plain ol' nuttlex. Both awesome. Next time I'm going to make at least a double batch so I can freeze them. or eat all of them at once. The flour I buy makes everything so smooth. I first found it at Mrs Flannery's (and it made me realise that the white wings wholemeal flour may be unbleached, but it isn't actually a whole grain...it's white with bran mixed through.) But found it at a local bulk food shop for much cheaper.

Bob is a laydee.

And I am very sad. I left the plate I used in the top photo on the arm of the couch...and Charlee broke it :(.

Wheat free chocolate chip cookies

2011-09-24T20:03:00.000+10:00

So last night we decided to be sociable (rare these days! utter laziness) and went to a free [vegan] wine and cheese night at my favourite all vegan cafe/shop. We walked there from our flat, as we knew the wine was free and well, you know. Alcoholic.

When we got to within a few meters of this place I suddenly got so nervous I felt ill, but I was brave and powered on! I am too shy to live, I think :P Luckily I didn't chicken out because I managed to meet some new people and have a damn good time. Also accidentally met the author of Kittens Gone Lentil (hooray a not-quite stranger!!) which was very lovely.

Anyway the wine was awesome (and free-flowing) and we got to taste all the different vegan cheeses you can get here in Brisbane (Sheese, Cheezly...that's all I can remember) and even a couple of faux meat things which totally creeped me out by the way.

They are apparently doing it monthly so maybe I'll make it a regular thing :)

Today I felt like baking some cookies - worst idea ever. I ate too much sugar and now I think I'm dying.

But anyhow, these are the Wheat free chocolate chip cookies from Veganomicon, and they pretty much didn't reaaallly work, but they are still pretty good. Very large and flat though :P I think I used about 2 tbsp per cookie instead of 1, and there wasn't enough room on the baking tray for all of the mix, and what was left would only make about 2 cookies so I just ate it. Bad bad bad.

Chocolate Chip Blondies

2011-09-19T20:25:00.000+10:00

Yum. I wanted to bake something to take to dad's for dessert on Sunday so I flicked through Chocolate Covered Katie's recipe page and clicked on the chocolate chip blondies first and I had everything for them so they were the one! Ha.

These things are made from chickpeas! Yeah. Well I used 1 cup of chickpeas and half a cup of white beans since I didn't have enough :) I also didn't have chocolate chips so I just chopped up some Lindt 85% dark choclate bar. I usually do that when a recipe calls for chips, it's a bit cheaper I think. None of our supermarket or supermarket avaliable brands appear to be vegan.

Yeah make these. They also make a great high protein snack for morning tea at work! But it is also very easy to eat all of them straight from the oven...

Sometimes you just gotta make dessert

2011-09-09T20:12:00.000+10:00

I love how this dessert makes it looks like I went all out and put in a heap of effort...but really it was a simple process of blending some stuff together and sticking it in the fridge.

I saw the recipe on Chococlate Covered Katie's blog and decided to make it then and there.

I made a basic sweet shortcrust pastry and blind baked it for about 20 minutes before pouring in the filling.

In the filling I used 2x100g blocks of Lindt 85% dark choclate, and 1 pkg and a bit of silken firm tofu. I also used about 1 tbsp maple syrup to sweeten just a tad as the choclate is quite bitter. Strawberries are still cheap (amazing this year!) so I cut a bunch in half and pressed them into the filling before I put it in the fridge. I left it the fridge all day and we ate it after dinner :) It was set perfectly - it still amazes me that I didn't have to bake it or use coconut oil or anything. I guess when the chocolate goes hard again...

This pie is so fine I have to force myself not to just go to the fridge and eat the lot. And it's good for you too! I think it'll be a great post-workout snack when you aren't quite ready for a meal yet. I might try that theory tomorrow ;)

Smoothie!

2011-09-08T17:29:00.000+10:00

It's what's for breakfast.

I find smoothie recipes to be a bit redundant, I mean, don't you just chuck in whatever you've got in the fruit bowl and hope for the best? This is essentially me doing just that but the result was so pleasent I wanted to share.

This is a good way to get some healthy avocado into your crazy avocado hating friends and family!

Ingredients (makes about 2 cups worth):

1 tiny banana (for real - mine was probably barely 100g, I buy teeny ones at the farmer's market for $8kg)

1/2 a ripe avocado (if you can't afford bananas yet, use the whole avocado)

1 cup frozen raspberries (or other frozen fruit)

1 tbsp chia seeds

1/2 tbsp pea protein isolate powder

1 cup non dairy milk (I used soy)

Put all ingredients in a blender or food processor and blend. (See? Redundant.)

The result is a smooth creamy smoothie that I very much enjoyed for my breakfast and am going to have again tomorrow it was so nice. If it's not sweet enough for you, add a tbsp or so of maple syrup, agave, or molasses or whatever liquid sweetener you like. I love the tartness of raspberries so for me it was perfect.

The chia seeds are crunchy in it - if you don't like that then I reccomend making a chia gel/pudding type thing before adding them into your smoothie. Apparently this goo lasts in the fridge for ages. I couldn't be arsed.

Also, to give it more staying power, I'd add some raw oats or wheat germ or something in it, otherwise it's really just a drink!

I've always been curious about trying a protein powder. Not for any particular reason - I doubt I actually NEED any more protein, but it's always fun to try new things. Whey protein is obviously out, soy protein (which you can get at Mrs Flannery's in bulk) sounds revolting and I really don't need any more soy in my life, the other main option seems to be this pea protein, which I've only seen in huge big buckets, but while at Mrs Flannery's the other week I saw it in little packets! Hooray!

It basically smells like guinea pig food, but once you get over that it's fine. I've been mixing it into my overnight oats that I have for breakfast before work. It has no noticeable taste (though I put lots of things into my oats so that could be covering it) but I've only been using quite a scant amount because as you can see, there is no serving size on the bag I got! And I don't really want/need that much. So a half tbsp is usually what I use.

Raw hummus

2011-09-06T19:58:00.000+10:00

I've always wondered what raw hummus would taste like so on the weekend I decided to make some :) There just happened to be a recipe on sproutpeople.org, which was handy, but it is essentially the exact same as making regular hummus - just use chickpea sprouts instead of cooked chickpeas.

I packed up some for lunch at work with carrot and kohl rabi to dip it in (the carrot tasted awful though - remind me not to buy organic stuff at woolies).

Anyway, it tastes pretty good, just like regular hummus, just sprout-y :P I will probably make it again, next time I sprout chickpeas.

I put the rest on warmed slices of pita bread, topped it with sprouted alfalfa (I buy in bulk at Mrs Flannery's for nothing - 2 tbsp of seeds made 3 cups of sprouts!) grated kohl rabi (I got one as big as my face at the markets for $1.50!) and baby spinach leaves. Tasted like the best salad sandwich in the universe.

I love alfalfa sprouts. They cost a fortune to buy at the shops but are so simple to make at home.

Peanut Butter Pancakes

2011-09-04T09:48:00.000+10:00

I am completely obsessed with peanut butter this week. I have made 3 batches since last Saturday, so that's pretty much 6 cups of peanuts gone in a week! (Between us both of course!) I thought it was about time for some more pancakes today and naturally peanut butter pancakes sounded the best. I based it on this recipe for snickerdoodle pancakes by Chocolate Covered Katie (I clicked on that one because I thought snickerdoodles had something to do with peanuts - they don't, and I still don't know what a snickerdoodle is! and the pancakes from Chocolate Covered Katie are always a winner.)

Peanut Butter Pancakes

Makes 4 small but fat pancakes (1 serve)

Ingredients:

1/2 cup wholemeal flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

pinch of salt

1/2 cup + 2 tbsp soy milk (or other non dairy milk)

1 tsp vanilla essence

Heaping tbsp smooth or crunchy peanut butter

Maple syrup, crushed peanuts and non-dairy butter as toppings

Method:

Combine dry ingredients in a bowl. In a measuring jug measure out the milk, then add the peanut butter and vanilla. Whisk until peanut butter is evenly distributed (mine sort of went to the bottom, but it wasn't in one big lump - this is ok).

Mix together wet and dry but don't overmix.

Cook pancakes as you normally would (I obviously don't know how since I always, ALWAYS burn them and end up using tons of oil) and serve hot/warm with the peanuts, syrup and non dairy butter.

These pretty much tasted just like really soft peanut butter cookies. If you added a little brown sugar into the batter they would taste even more like peanut butter cookies!

In mine I actually had a large tbsp of dessicated coconut, and was going to call them Peanut Butter Coconut Pancakes, but you could hardly taste it, if at all. Next time I might put way more in, and maybe use coconut milk as the liquid :)

Titles are hard to come by...

2011-09-01T20:28:00.000+10:00

I got my race card in the mail, finally! Check out that number. Apparently there's about 50,000 people doing this thing. Dude. Are there that many people in Australia? Far out. I've been keeping up with my training quite well. I can now ~~run~~ jog 4.5km without stopping, for which I am quite proud.

Nadine baked me some cupcakes (woohoo!) today. She chose the Dulce sin Leche cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. But for the icing, instead of what it said she just made a basic chocolate icing which was delicious. I want another one but apparently I have to make them last til Saturday. Bah.

I had a beer the other night and a friend decided to join me :) I nearly had a heart attack, but it wasn't nearly as bad as when the cane toad came flying out of the potting machine at me! It was still alive so we let him go. Poor thing must've been terrified going around and around. I also nearly stood on a water dragon - the animals are coming out now! Just in time for spring :)

Mmm peanut butter

2011-08-29T19:52:00.000+10:00

I make my own peanut butter once or twice a week, depending on how much we feel like eating. I usually buy raw peanuts with the skin on, dry roast them in a frying pan until little black spots appear and then blend blend blend! This takes about 10 minutes, sometimes longer, but the end result is always amazingly delicious. I ahven't bought any peanut butter from the shop in aggges. The homemade stuff does go very solid in the fridge though (no added oil). Which brings me to my next point.

I was given a kg bag of roasted unsalted peanuts by my stepmum (hooray! I was just about to go to the shop to buy more) so I decided to just make the peanut butter from these instead (I don't really like to eat peanuts by themselves).

I stuck two cups of the roasted unsalted peanuts in the blender, turned it on, and in no time at all I had a smooth butter. I didn't even have to scrape down the sides! Ahh and it tastes like the store bought stuff but better. I'm assuming it butterised so quickly because they are roasted with oil. It also doesn't solidify too much in the fridge.

Mmm, peanut butter.

Homemade peanut butter and homemade choko jam on home baked bread. Smug! Hahaha.

Fruit of the Month: Pineapple

2011-08-27T21:00:00.000+10:00

I figured it was about time to do another fruit of the month, since it's been, well, months! The last one I did was the humble avocado. This month I shall showcase the pineapple! Who doesn't love pineapple?

I noticed the other day that my little pineapple that I took from work had turned yellow all of a sudden! So I decided to cut it off and eat it that afternoon.

Here is a size comparison: a normal mug next to it, and a gigantic pineapple we had bought the same day we went strawberry picking!

We enjoyed it simply stuck on toothpicks with some of the straberry haul. It was quite sweet, if a bit pale.

----

A pineapple is actually a bromeliad, taking around 2-3 years to flower and fruit from planting. To grow a pineapple all you have to do is twist off the top and whack in the ground. Mine grew quite happily in a tiny 200mm pot.

I'm sure I took a picture of the flowers but I can't find it! Oh well, this will have to do.

1 cup of raw pineapple provides 2% RDI of vitamin A and Calcium, 131% of vitamin C and 3% iron (source).

We are still going through the giant pineapple from the strawberry farm, and I've been enjoying it at work in a fruit salad with orange, strawberries and kiwifruit. It's my sister's favourite fruit and she's been known to eat a whole one in a day! It hurts my mouth after a little bit so I haven't quite managed that yet :)

There are heaps of things you can do with pineapples. I prefer them as is, but you can always stick it on pizzas, on a kebab stick, in cakes, ice creams, salads, etc. Any ideas?

Basic necessities

2011-08-20T17:58:00.000+10:00

Chocolate coated strawberries and cream.

Cream: 2 parts vegan cream cheese, 2 parts vegan marg (beat until smooth), 1 capful of vanilla essence (beat) and 1 part rice syrup (beat until fluffy). Add more rice syrup to taste. Amazing. I ate too much of it and now I feel ill. Of course.

We went to a strawberry farm and picked our own. They are divine.

Before our strawberry farm adventure we went walking in the Glass house mountains. It was a perfect day for it. We started with a mountain view lookout...(and my mug).

Then went on a circuit walk around Mt. Tibrogargan.

For ages I've been saying 'we should go up north more often and do bushwalks and stuff' and the months tick by, so this weekend we got in the car and went. It was so nice. We didn't see any koalas though :( Nadine was very disappointed.

I did see these pretty flowers though (and a stupid woman who was trampling the bush and picking every single flower she saw - she took pretty much the whole bush of a little purple pea-style flower...the exact kind of flower I wanted to see blooming!) Does anyone know what it is? The leaves are very sharp/spiny.

Peanut Butter Coconut Cream Pie

2011-08-14T20:36:00.000+10:00

Otherwise known as a heart attack. And it was sooo worth it.

Peanut Butter Coconut Cream Pie

Serves 12

Ingredients:

1 pre baked chocolate tart case (I made an oatmeal-buckwheat flour base but didn't write down the ingredients...make your favourite, just add 1 tbsp cocoa powder.

Filling

1 cup peanut butter (I used homemade)

125g vegan cream cheese at room temperature

1/2 cup coconut cream (put a can of coconut cream in the fridge for a few hours. Take it out and open and carefully spoon the thick cream off the top)

Scant 1/2 cup dark brown sugar

2 tsp vanilla extract

Ganache Topping

100g 85% dark chocolate broken up

2 tbsp rice syrup

1/4 cup almond milk

1/4 cup coconut cream

toasted chopped peanuts

Method:

Prepare your crust. I put mine in a springform cake pan.

Put all filling ingredients in a food processor and process until combined. This will get really thick! Though I forgot to bring the cream cheese to room temperature first so that may have had an impact.

Pour into crust and put in the fridge for a few hours or until set.

Meanwhile, make the ganache topping!

Heat the two milks on the stove until boiling. Take off heat and stir in the rice syrup and chocolate. Stir until chocllate is melted - it'll go quite thick. Pour on top of set pie and sprinkle toasted chopped peanuts on top. Put back in the fridge until set.

Serve and enjoy. Every. Bite.

Bring it on! I'm going to try and make this deliciousness last all week. It's very very rich (as you'd expect) and quite high in fat so go easy on it!

I love to use this coconut cream. I probaably shouldn't, but I eat it from the can. Don't let me make curry hahaha. It just tastes so damn good!

Happy Sunday

2011-08-14T16:15:00.000+10:00

Today has been one of those days where you sit on the couch thinking about all the things you should be doing rather than browsing through millions of food blogs and drinking cups of tea. I think it's because we bought a brand new doona yesterday. Yes I am blaming my blankets now. It's so soft and cushy and (not wool, feather or down!) warm and comfortable I decided to not get out of bed for ages, which of course set me up for the rest of the day.

Though I did manage to attempt to do some sort of yoga before breakfast (which was porridge with banana and peanut butter), but only did about 3 different poses (including a few sun salutes) because I am getting increasingly annoyed with my lack of ability to touch my toes. Motivation for yoga has been hard to come by since I crashed my bike (funnily enough, so has cycling) even though my wrist is FINE and getting stronger everyday with all the heavy lifting we seem to be doing at work lately. I know I know, I just have to get off my ass and just do it. I know I'll like it! I bought a new yoga DVD yesterday in the hopes that it would motivate me but within the first 5 minutes it rubbed me up the wrong way so bad I turned it off and had a sook. Ah, hormones!

I made this delicious guacamole to have for a mid morning snack (instead of running! this would have been pefect for after a nice sweaty run). Mash 1 small avocado, stir in 5 chopped cherry tomatoes, a couple of tbsp of sour cream (I used the cashew sour cream from Addicted to Veggies - so good!), a dash of onion powder and black pepper. Stir and enjoy with corn chips or crudites or with a spoon.

I also managed to wash my car, which I've been meaning to do for a couple of weeks. I ended up getting a new (used) car by the way hooray! And it got so filthy from all the dust while parking at work (so dry). So I vaccumed out all the potting mix and put in some floor mats to protect the carpet from my scummy work boots. While I was cleaning the back seats out I discovered they could sort of fold out (i'm not sure of the purpose of this) and underneath was a lovely history of the previous owners (or their children). They went to the beach a lot, ate lots of chips and drank cans of something. Mmmm. I washed the outside using only four buckets of water, and of course a huge storm has now rolled in and the rain clouds looks dark and ominous. Oh well, I enjoyed looking at it's shiny-ness when I walked down the stairs before!

For lunch I had this amazing bowl of soba noodles. I made a similar sauce with sunflower butter and soy sauce, only I added in some chilli flakes. The veges are a grated carrot, 2 grated radishes and all the greens from one bunch of radishes. I also put a handful of rye berry sprouts on top. Yum.

I bought a lifetimes supply of various noodles while in the Valley yesterday. (I also had vegan 'fish' at a little vegan/vegetarian asian restaurant but I didn't take my camera :( It tasted disturbingly like real fish, though I could tell it wasn't because it had the chewy texture of gluten).

Yesterday for an afternoon snack I made up some of this cream from Addicted to Veggies (I may be a little obsessed!) It would be amazing on peaches like in the original recipe but unfortunately they are not in season in Australia at the moment. Strawberries are, however, and we dipped them in the cream and thought about how amazing it would be as a frozen dessert...

Tomorrow I shall jump back on my exercise wagon, stop sooking about my lack of flexibility, and see if I can still run 3.5km (or 26 minutes) without stopping like I did last week! That was pretty exciting. It gave me confidence knowing I can probably run this 5k in less than 45 minutes or whatever it said I had to. Ha.

Sprout sprout sprout!

2011-08-11T20:41:00.000+10:00

I love to sprout stuff. I've been sprouting stuff for ages, when I lived in a sharehouse I always had jars sprouting on the window sill and in the dish rack in everyones way. I stopped doing it for a while because I got lazy (it's not THAT much effort) and have just recently started again. The problem is I never know what to do with them, forget they're in the fridge and then they go bad! Sad sad times.

Then I found this recipe for Lentil sprout salad on Addicted to Veggies, and the dressing sounded so good, and I happened to have mung beans sprouting on the windowsill so I made it for lunch last weeked. Driiiibbble. I made the delicious delicious dressing as per the recipe (it is the shiz) and filled a bowl with mung bean sprouts, shredded red cabbage, avocado, shredded silverbeet leaves and yellow squash. Yum. I had the second half for lunch at work.

I had a fair bit more of the dressing left in the fridge and I didn't want that to go bad either (I really don't eat much salad, generally) so I made a salad to go on the side of tonights dinner. In it is: baby spinach, cherry tomatoes, radishes, avocado and rye sprouts. I've never sprouted rye before and man they are SO GOOD. I love the little tails :). Sproutpeople.org is a fantastic resource for how to's and supplies. I just use a large jar, the window sill and some sort of mesh.

Dinner was the Salsa rice from Vegan on the Cheap. There's nothing quite as satisfying as rice and beans.

Happy Saturday

2011-08-06T17:50:00.000+10:00

Today I intended to get up when I woke up (ha!), eat half a grapefruit, do some more Bridge to Brisbane training, and come home and eat breakfast. However we went and drank too much wine last night so I stayed in bed and got up when I was ravenous, ate an entire can of baked beans on toast (yummmm - I heated them up in the microwave and mixed through some liquid aminos and nutritional yeast) and proceeded to sit on the couch for a few hours, with laundry and dishes washing thrown in between.

Anyway I decided enough time had passed since my feast of a breakfast to go for a run without getting cramps or spewing, and I was getting hungry again. So I ate my half a grapefruit:

Look how bright it is! This is a ruby red grapefruit. They were really cheap at the fruit shop (something like $3/kg) and are awesome to eat in the morning to get things going.

I went for my run (I can now go for 11 minutes [for my slow jogging that's 1.6km] without stopping. That's a pretty big acheivement for me haha, the girl who walked off the 200m track in a huff in grade 7), and realised I always pick silly times to do it. Midday probably isn't the best idea in the blazing sun. I hate putting sunscreen on my arms and legs (but I did don't worry!) because it takes forever to scrub off. I use Natural Instinct Sunscreen, and it's apparently 4 hours water resistant. I tell you, this stuff does NOT come off! Which is a good thing in the harsh Australian sun.

Thankfully it's warm enough to run without a jumper on now. Goodbye cold.

When I got home I tried to do some yoga but I had the shakes - obviously didn't eat enough before hand, or perhaps I should have put some gatorade in my water or something. Tomorrow I'll be sure to do that. So I had lunch. I didn't feel like the soup we drunkenly made last night (though it's pretty good!) So I threw together this:

1 small zucchini, 1 yellow squash, 1 silverbeet leaf, 100g tempeh and 1 serve of gluten free pasta shells. It's in a satay-esque sauce I made from 1 tbsp sunflower seed butter, 1 tbsp soy sauce, 1/8 tsp onion powder and 1/8 garlic powder (yeah I got lazy). Damn it was good.

I bought this sunflower seed butter for my sister and her boyfriend to use (he's allergic to nuts) but it's pretty revolting. In fact it's awful. By itself that is. It's sickly sweet and salty at the same time (but smells pretty good!) I've basically just been using it in stir fry sauces. I bought some gluten free pasta the other day because I like it. Why do gf pasta packets always have 6 bazillion languages on it?

I may or may not try to make a baguette to have with our soup for tea tonight. Hmm.

Tasty tasty

2011-08-03T21:29:00.000+10:00

Been on a bit of a Veganomicon kick this week (spicy tempeh pasta) and the Asparagus and Lemongrass Risotto on page 198 was also freakin fantastic. It took forever to make (though I was making bread by hand at the same time so that may have held me up a tad) and I didn't have any basil or mint or peanut oil, ooor enough arborio rice but I don't know if I'll make risotto any other way again (jk). I used about 1 cup of arborio and half a cup of regular brown rice, skipped the basil/mint and did serve it with the suggested Tangerine Baked Tofu but used oranges and whiskey instead of tangerines and rum. Amazing. Served with lime zest, pan roasted cashew nuts and extra marinade from the tofu.

All the flavours worked really well together but I think next time I'll slice the tofu a little thinner and marinate for longer because it didn't pick up the flavour it could have.

Another one we've made is the 'Pumpkin Baked Ziti with Caramelised onion and Sage Crumb Topping' (phew long title!) on page 194. (I obviously didn't go further than the pasta and risotto chapter.) I used wholewheat spirals instead of the ziti and I'm pretty sure that's the only edit I made to it! I could eat the cashew ricotta with a spoon and the breadcrumbs on top were to die for (though I wish I'd used some wholemeal bread instead of the white baguette we got for 50c since it gave both of us a stomachache!) and the whole thing was quite moreish. It was better the next day for lunch too.

Now a non Vgeanomicon related thing - my breakfast for the past few days! I had a tiny bit of whole oat groats leftover in a jar that was annoying me by being there so I cooked it up in some soy milk with handful of chopped dates and chopped brazil nuts. I didn't measure the dry grain but I ended up with 2 cups of cooked oats. I divided it in two and stuck it in the fridge. In the morning I heated it up, added sliced strawberries (on special at Coles hooray!) some chia seeds and a drizzle of brown rice syrup. Yum. Filled me up for ages which is really good since I have to wait 4 hours since I eat breakfast before I get to eat again. I highly reccomend a whole grain for breakfast - brown rice, wheat, oats, spelt (omg yum), buckwheat, barley. Just cook it up the night before, or on Sunday cook enough for your whole work week, it should keep in the fridge.

Now I am going to sit and watch the Gruen Transfer with a cup of hot red clover tea. Apparently it helps reduce hot flashes (cuz I get those! haha), healp relieve rheumatic or gout pain, contains vitamin E and can help sore throats. [source] Good o :)

Spicy tempeh and Brocolli with Wholewheat spiral pasta

2011-08-01T20:58:00.000+10:00

I decided to get out a cookbook to make tea tonight and Nadine wanted pasta so I chose the 'Spicy Tempeh and Brocolli rabe with rotelle' from Veganomicon on page 190. I used a regular brocolli instead of rabe, used wholewheat spirals instead of regular rotelle and added half a punnet of cherry tomatoes sliced in half.

Dayum this was delicious. I ate seconds which of course turned out to be way too much but I wanted me some more of that tempeh. It was all sausagey (fennel seeds) and spicy and delicious. If you don't have tempeh, tofu would do, or try eggplant or some sort of bean. Yummm. I can't wait to eat this tomorrow for lunch at work.

Home sewn reusable sanitary pads

2011-07-27T20:01:00.000+10:00

Two items that I think are absolutely essential to my lifestyle, and save me a crap ton of money are my soy milk maker, and homemade reusable sanitary pads.

That's right! I've been using them since I was 17 and haven't looked back. Unfortunately for most of us, periods are unavoidable. But I decided I can prevent the bazillions of throw away pads I'd use each month (and the bazillions of dollars I'd spend on them) going into landfill and/or the ocean and waterways by using these ones I've made myself at home using a simple pattern and a sewing machine. These things last forever. I've still got and am still using the first one I bought at Woodford Folk Festival in 2006.

I make them from nice soft flannelette material that I've either got from op shops (I got 3 single bed sized sheets for $2) or found lurking in the cupboards. You could also recycle old flannel pyjamas you don't wear anymore, or any sort of other cotton clothing really, or even towels.

This website has the basic pattern I used, I just made mine square. At the bottom of the page are a few other resources for patterns/information too. Just type in 'homemade sanitary pads' into google.com and heaps of results will come up. I like these because they have a pouch like thing that I can put extra layers in on heavy days. I think people may be uncomfortable using these because they may think that the blood would just go right through - and this may be too much information - but I bleed like a banshee and have never had any leaking problems.

Omg! my nails are clean!

If you don't want to bother/can't sew/whatever, there are hundreds of different cloth pads on etsy.com (support artists!). You can even get g-string shaped ones if that's your style. There are also commercial companies that make them: Moon Pads (almost 100% sure this brand was the one I got at Woodford).

This is the insert layer, I usually make it from three layers of material and quilt it so it doesn't go out of shape.

Now, cleaning. The part that turns people off. I've tried many different ways of cleaning them. I started by just hand washing (since I lived at home and didn't want anybody else to touch them or think I was weirder than I already was!) which works, but stains will remain. Now I soak them in a bucket of cold water (hot water sets stains apparently) with salt . Vinegar and eucalyptus oil is good (stops any smells and helps remove or prevent staining). You can aslo try baking soda. If you have pets, it is perhaps a good idea to use a bucket with a lid (this is also handy for when visitors arrive unexpectedly). Keep it in your bathroom next to the loo. Apparently, the soaking water/blooood is good for plants (obviously make sure whatever you add is safe too! For instance, I wouldn't pour baking soda on my garden, or vinegar). Just drain the soaking water and throw them in with your normal laundry. We do laundry every second day anyway, but they'd be ok soaking all week if you want.

I can't really praise these enough. I go to work with these (I just have a plastic bag in my bag to put used ones in to wash when I get home - I intend on making a proper pouch for them though). Perk - I don't have to touch the rank sanitary bin that people always seem to get blood all over when disposing of their plastic ones. I run/yoga/pilates while wearing these and they don't go anywhere. They don't get in the way at all.

Not into pads? Give a cup a go. The Keeper is one kind, but I've seen others. I've always hated tampons anyway so I just go with the pads. I might try it one day when I have a million dollars. They are expensive but apparently they last over 5 years. That's a lot of laundry saved. I couldn't find anything on the keeper webpage but you could probably swim with the cup. I don't swim very often anyway/afraid of sharks eating me so I don't really care about being able to swim on my period.

I use these for a few reasons: to save money, to help the environment, and I believe they are healthier for my body. Commercial pads itch me like crazy and cause shafe (I think I'm just allergic to plastic), so these nice material ones fit the bill perfectly. Give them a go :)

Eat me a rainbow

2011-07-24T19:49:00.000+10:00

So I signed up for the Bridge to Brisbane 5km as a jogger! Ha! Started training again today, I managed 5km in 45 minutes, running for one minute then walking for two for most of the way. I'm loosely following the Couch-to-5k training program: here is the metric (for us Aussies!) version. I am condensing it a little bit to be ready by Sep 11 :)

Anyway after my sweaty run/walk, I did some awesome stretches and ate the rest of my brie cheeze on wholegrain rice crackers:

To tide me over while I made lunch:

Rice paper rolls filled with a farmer's market haul! Shredded kale, silverbeet, carrot and beetroot with thinly sliced kohl rabi, celery and tomato, with some chopped raw macadamias. I ate them with hummus. And it was damn tasty. obviously had a mandarin on the side - my supervisor at work has a tree and these are the third twenty billion kilo bag she's given me for free! So yummy. And they last for aggges.

Gluten free vegan chocolate cake :)

2011-07-21T13:24:00.000+10:00

I was asked to make a chocolatey cake for a baby shower/restaurant dinner that we went to last night. I decided I'd better make it gluten free as the friend of ours who organised may be gluten intolerant (and it's fun to make non-traditional things even more non-traditional!). I ended up make it twice - the dinner was supposed to be on the weekend but said friend got food poisoning so it was postponed. So I took the first cake (pictured above) to dads place for dessert and it was happily gobbled up.

I followed this recipe (Mexican chocolate Cake by Gluten-free goddess) almost exactly for the first cake, with a few minor edits: I used 100% buckwheat flour, dark brown sugar, No-egg instead of Ener-G, guar gum instead of xanthan [couldn't find it, guar worked fine], allspice instead of cinnamon, orange sweet potato, molasses and rice syrup instead of honey, coconut oil instead of shortening, apple cider vinegar instead of lemon juice, and only two tsp of vanilla extract. It also took quite a bit longer to bake than said - I'm pretty sure it's my unreliable oven.

For the icing I made a basic vegan buttercream from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, and used coconut oil instead of shortening, which worked but there were a few lumps of solid coconut oil in it once set.

This cake was friggin delicious! Buckwheat flour is very fine so it was really nice and soft, rather than clumpy. Best chocolate cake I've made, and I'm not really a fan of chocolate cake at all. I want to make gluten free brownies out of the batter, which I think would work really well, since it's that sort of dense texture, but a bit cakey. I shall experiment.

When I made it again for the baby celebrations, I decided to do a two level cake, so I baked two! I put a layer of choko jam on first as per Nadine's request (it worked really well!), smothered that in the same icing as I used before (except I didn't make enough so I had to make another batch).

Plonked the other cake on top and then more icing. As you can see I didn't put enough icing in the middle - I'd put it over the edge next time or level out the cake around the outside to make it a bit more presentable.

Since it was all about babies I drew this on top with black writing icing I got from Woolworths - vegan as far as we could tell (labelled gluten free as well). Tastes like poison but none of the ingredients were in our little vegan shoppers guide. Isn't it cute?

The retsuarant staff thought it was for a birthday so they put a candle in it and sang happy birthday! It was mortifying. But that's ok because the cake was fabulous!

With the second cake I didn't have enough buckwheat to make two cakes, so I mixed together 1:1 buckwheat and rice flour like suggested in the recipe. It worked, but 100% buckwheat was a fair bit nicer :) I also didn't have enough sweet potato puree so I put 1/4 cup in each cake and it didn't seem to affect the texture too much.

So hooray! Gluten free vegan chocolate cake success! Everyone at least seemed to enjoy it :)

I wonder what muffins made with buckwheat flour would be like?

It seems a sin to toast freshly baked bread..

2011-07-19T21:08:00.000+10:00

As you can see the cheeze doesn't really melt - it softened though. And the toastie tasted amazing.

After a second rising

I've discovered something that makes my bread less dense and rise a little more - blackstrap molasses. I always knew sugar feeds yeast but I was unwilling to put it in my bread, but then I thought, wouldn't molasses do the same thing? And at the same time my bread would get a little bit of added iron and calcium and other good things? Indeed.

Mmm.

Just follow the same recipe as my bread from before, just add 1.5 tablespoons of molasses to the water before you warm it up. (I just went and looked at my recipe, and discovered I haven't even been following it - I use 500g flour now for some reason. )

Seedy bread

Makes 1 loaf

Ingredients:

500g wholemeal flour

50g gluten flour

1/2 tsp salt

2.5 tsp instant yeast (you can buy this in a big tube at woolies - keep it in the freezer.)

1.5 tbsp blackstrap molasses

Seeds of choice (I usually use 2 tbsp each of: sesame, flax, poppy and sunflower. I also like adding pumpkin seeds.)

about 1 1/2 cups warm water

Method:

Mix together flour, gluten flour, salt, seeds and yeast. Make a well in the center and pour in the warm water and molasses mixture (start with one cup).

Mix the dough, adding more water until a firm elastic dough is achieved.

Turn onto a floured bench. Knead for 5 minutes or until smooth. Place in an oiled bowl and let rise for about an hour or until double in size.

Knead again lightly. Press out dough gently to about the length of your loaf tin and roll it up. Place the rolled up dough in the tin with the 'seam' side down. Let rise again until doubled.

Bake at 200 degrees C for 30-40 minutes or until brown and sounds hollow when tapped.

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I always grind my flaxseeds before doing anything with them - you can't digest them if they're whole, and therefore would not get all the nice nutrients from them! You know, like omega 3.

Anyway, this is about my sixth loaf of bread I have made at home since the last time I bought any at the shops. It's awesome. I'm getting quicker at just whipping it up when I get home from work if we've run out :) Though I usually do it on Sunday afternoons and make all the neighbours jealous at the smell of baking bread wafting through the air!

No cows were harmed in the making of this cheese toast

2011-07-16T20:23:00.000+10:00

I made some cheeses from the Ultimate Uncheese cookbook today :) The above is the brie, which kind of actually tasted like brie - it had the moldy aftertaste somehow. I may have been imagining it.

On the left is the colby cheese - pretty tasty, will be excellent on sandwiches and toasties, or even grated and melted on pizza. Right is the brie, and the one at the bottom is a raw macadamia cheese from Addicted to vegies. It's the best one! So easy to make (all of them are easy to make) but the raw macadamia one had the most flavour. I served them as a cheese platter with carrot sticks, celery sticks and chickpea crackers. I don't think I'll ever spend heinous amounts of money on storebought vegan cheese substitutes again, all three of these tasted better than any I've had, and I know exactly what ingredients are in it. I think I've had about a years worth of vitamin B12 today alone!

The two cheeses from the Ultimate Uncheese cookbook are both set with a fair amount of agar agar powder so it could get expensive, but that depends on where you buy it. I get mine in little packets from an Asian supermarket in the city for $2 each, so it's not going to break the bank for me.

Now, I don't miss real cheese at all. I also do not think substitutes are necessary for a vegan lifestyle or diet to work, but I reckon it's fun to make things like this every once in a while :) Just cuz I can.

A nice start to the weekend

2011-07-16T09:59:00.000+10:00

I made the desicion to get up this morning and do some exercise before breakfast rather than late afternoon when I normally do it, and I did! Hooray!

In my first group pilates class we used a stretchy band thing that I loved, so I went to a sports shop and got myself one! With it came a 40 min workout DVD utilising the band so I did that one this morning. It was pretty good, except I felt there weren't enough repetitions! You'd do three or four of each move instead of 8-10, but I can just learn the movements and do them myself as many times as I like (I hate listening to the instructors on DVD's yack anyway!). This isn't a paid product review by the way, it's just what I use at home and like.

Anyway, my band is gaiam brand, I got it at AMart Allsports, but gaiam also has a website. Unfortunately I couldn't find the band on it, but I can find the mat I use! When I bought the band I noticed Amart also had a million different kinds of yoga and pilates mats, so after I finished the half marathon I got myself a little present! This pilates mat by gaiam. It says it's thicker than most gym mats and has extra cushioning, both of which I reckon are untrue! It's as hard as a rock! I have to assume it softens up with more use. Other than that it's fine to use, and even with the lack of apparent cushioning it doesn't hurt. One thing it IS though, is sticky! Which is excellent because I often slide all over the place on our yoga mat we got from Target.

And also what I can't find on the site (I'm probably blind!) is that the mats are also free of the bad stuff in plastics (pthalates? I don't know how to spell it) I chucked out the (plastic! hahaha) wrapper on mine and I can't recall the exact kinds.

After my little bit of exercise I made some apple and cinnamon porridge for breakfast:

1/2 cup rolled oats, 1 cup soy milk, half a large apple grated and the other half cubed, and 1/2 tsp cinnamon. If you want the apple to be more cooked and mushy, precook it a little first. I didn't so I did it all at once.

Sprinkle some extra cinnamon on top (in this case I used allspice because I couldn't bothered opening the cinnamon packet again!) and enjoy. I discovered that if I set my camera to 'shoot waterside scene with rich blue colour' it picks up real colours in my food, instead of the usual greyish tone it all gets. Strange that the 'food' setting doesn't do it!

---

Yesterday I also recieved some good news from the bank which means I can now go and buy my new (used) car! I am very, very excited =D

A new kind of breakfast :)

2011-07-14T20:31:00.000+10:00

I'm quite a terrible photographer!

Raw buckwheat porridge!

I made half the recipe (in case I didn't like it) as per this blog entry by Oh She Glows. My choice of toppings were unsweetened apple sauce (not raw but who cares), currants and raw sunflower seeds. Peanut butter would have been good! Or you know, pretty colourful fruits like the photo in the original entry ;)

I made this up the night before and heated it up in the morning (I think it's better cold/room temp) before adding the applesauce, seeds and currants.

It didn't solidify in the fridge overnight like I thought it would (because of the chia seeds) which was good because I didn't need to add more milk to it.

And the best part is I already have tomorrow's breakfast ready! That's an extra five minutes in bed for me :)

Sometimes simple is best

2011-07-12T20:36:00.000+10:00

Dipped in lindt 85%

Nothing like a simple dessert and two cuddly kitties at the end of the day :)

They are touching without squabbling!

My take/attempt on a steamed pudding

2011-07-10T20:23:00.000+10:00

After reading my post where I mentioned the CWA of Tasmania's 21st birthday cookbook, my dad surprised me by buying me a copy of my own! Plus another one 'The Country Women's Association Cook Book - seventy years in the kitchen' which is the newer (newest? Published in 2009) by the NSW branch. Needless to say I was pretty excited. I could now bone and truss and de feather a fowl if I needed to. (Seriously. Everything is in here.)

So what to make? Steamed pudding sounded good - and there's almost a whole chapter dedicated to them. Some specifically without eggs, and when I actually read through them most of them didn't have eggs anyway, so I chose the Treacle Steamed Pudding to have a go at. I've added/substituted things so I'm going to post my version up here.

Ginger Molasses vegan Steamed Pudding

Serves 4

Ingredients:

1 cup wholemeal plain flour (white is ok)

1 tsp bicarb soda

1 tsp salt

1 heaping tsp ground ginger

2 tbsp raw sugar (white ok - any granulated kind)

2 tbsp vegan margarine

1 tbsp blackstrap molasses

1 cup non dairy milk of choice (I used homemade soy)

1/2 cup currants

First, sift your flour, bicarb, salt and ginger into a mixing bowl. Don't forget to add back in the germ/bran if using wholemeal! Stir in the sugar and rub in the margarine until it resembles fine breadcrumbs.

Add the molasses and stir until well combined. Pour in non dairy milk and stir gently, then fold in the currants.

Pour into a pudding basin with lid, or use a bowl and cover it with greaseproof paper tied with string like I did (which is where the trouble began!*)

Find a saucepan that fits your bowl and put it in. Fill with water til about halfway up the covered bowl, put the saucepan lid on and bring to the boil. Steam/boil for two hours.

When ready (I stuck a skewer in and it came out semi-clean) turn out onto a plate and serve with custard or ice cream!

*Onto the trouble! I stupidly forgot to keep an eye on the boiling water level in the saucepan and of course it boiled dry. I decided to boil the kettle and re fill it. Yeah don't do that - I heard a CRACK and thought oh no it's smashed! My bowl is about as big as the saucepan so I couldn't see - I just ran a spoon around the outside of the bowl and encountered no cracks (apparently) so I left it.

When it was ready I took off the paper and saw this lovely great big hole! Luckily it was a nice clean break and there was no glass in my pudding. I did burn it though. Observe:

I wouldn't call it a 'failure' as such, since it was still edible, but it's a warning for next time!

Is a glass bowl on a gas stove a bad idea? Would it even make a difference if the stove was electric? Do pudding basins even exist anymore? What about silicon? Any suggestions? Hahaha.

All the bowl smashing and burning aside, it's pretty damn good if I do say so myself. Which I do.

Lilly pilly flavoured alcohol? Bring it on!

2011-07-10T14:01:00.000+10:00

We bought this while holidaying in Tamborine - on our wine tour we also got to visit the Tamborine Mountain Distillery (where the rules were only 5 tastings, and all but one [vodka - veeerrryy nice] must be shared with another!).

We tried various things including: wattle toffee liqueur (uh-mazing), Lemon myrtle vodka (gonna try this one at home!) some sort of rum (or rum flavoured liqueur - I can't find it on the website), plain vodka and our choice was the Lilly Pilly gin (pictured above, and also not on the site!).

I bought a bottle of the wattle toffee for my dad, the gin for us, and fortunately for my bank account ran out of money so we had to stop there (had already bought 500000000 bottles of wine!)

While at the tasting we only had the gin by itself, so the other day I noticed we had soda water in the fridge (to make homemade mouthwash with) and half a lime (yes that yellow thing is a lime - I'm awful at photography it seems) so I decided to mix some up for myself. Nadine is participating in Dry July so she missed out this time :)

Anyway it was pretty delicious :) you could probably make a similar drink at home by making up a regular gin and tonic or soda, and crushing some lilly pilly berries in it as flavouring. For my lemon myrtle vodka I'm just going to stick some leaves into a bottle of plain vodka and hope for the best. I've done similar with a vanilla bean, and since it's now almost black I think it's ready!

A little bit of a foodie update...

2011-07-08T19:30:00.000+10:00

So I was craving dessert this week. I even bought ice cream.

I made an apple and pear tart/pie. I cooked up two medium apple and one medium pear (it was a different pear - got it from the farmer's market. Can't remember what it was called but it looked like an apple but pear shaped. It's skin was thick but cooked well) with some cinnamon, and put in my tart pan with a basic wholemeal pastry base. As you can see I went all out and made a proper lattice top! Pretty sure I did it the hard way. Is there an easy way?

It went perfectly with vanilla So Good ice cream and a bit of lindt 85% dark chocolate. I ate most of the rest cold for morning tea at work during the rest of the week.

Nadine hasn't been working much so she's been queen of the kitchen lately! This is a spinach and potato curry from appetite for reduction. Delicious. It is so fun to eat quinoa!

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Nadine has cooked a delicious looking dinner for me tonight! We are celebrating our third anniversary with Dvd's, a yummy dinner, and tomorrow we will spend the day bush walking and...car shopping. Guh!

We finished!

2011-07-04T16:08:00.000+10:00

From left: Nadine, Nadine's mum, Nadine's aunt and me!

Well, we didn't 'officially' finish, as in our time wasn't recorded but Nadine did it in 3 hours 7 minutes and 29 seconds, and I finished in 3 hours 7 minutes and 9 seconds. We can just see the time in our official photo they took as we stood on the finish line haha. Nadine's aunt officially finished in 2 hours 55 minutes. I want to be able to jog 21km when I'm 60.

The night before our carb-tastic meal was spaghetti and meatballs (this is an old photo) and they were delicious. Everyone had seconds. At 4am we got up and ate some toast with peanut butter, and after we finished we got breakfast out at a cafe - we both had baked beans, spinach, mushroom, tomato and avocado on gluten free toast (The only veg option was also gluten free and we just got them to take off the cheese ha).

I have never been in so much pain in my life! I can't walk. Why did we choose to do this again haha? Oh yeah, for the satisfaction! We're quite chuffed, considering the utter lack of training we did. My feet hurt, my upper thighs hurt, everything. I obviously didn't stretch enough afterward - oh well, lesson learned. Getting up stairs and in and out of my car is a mission though! When's the next half marathon?

Speaking of cars, I officially started looking for a new one today. Ugh.

Pizza night!

2011-06-26T20:39:00.000+10:00

It's been a while since our last pizza night, so we felt the need to make it. This time I decided to add on a bit of fake meat for shits and giggles. I made the 'Big Stick Pepperoni' recipe from Vegan on the Cheap. Man, this stuff is great. The secret ingredient is definately fennel seed, and the flavour is very strong in it. Next time I might cut it down just a tad, it's a little overpowering. Now, I never liked salami, it always grossed me out (always knew what it was , especially after working in a deli and slicing it every day ugh), but since I know this stuff isn't wrapped in fat netting, and is actually cooked and NOT moldy, then it tastes delicious. The texture is odd, as disgusting as this sounds, but it's kind of like a (real) salami that hasn't dried to a hard lump quite yet. So it kind of grossed me out, so before I put it on the pizza I fried it up a tad and it's much better.

Unfried big stick pepperoni

So on the pizza in order was: tomato paste, caramelised onion, potato, olives, jalapeno pepper, pepperoni and a sprinkling of nutritional yeast. It was just greasy enough from the onions, without having the atery clogging greasiness of cheese on it. We had it with a much needed salad of baby spinach leaves, red capsicum, red onion, capers, radish and apricot kernels with a lemon juice-olive oil and black pepper dressing.

I got apricot kernels at the farmer's market this morning, and they taste like almonds (same species I think) except sweeter and they are about half the size. An excellent addition to a salad. I love adding crunch like nuts and seeds to my salad. I usually go for sunflower seeds but I had these :)

Yum. I look forward to lunch at work tomorrow.

Saturday morning pancakes

2011-06-25T10:33:00.000+10:00

I think Saturday is my favourite day of the week. I can sleep in and fart ass around all day if I feel like it - it doesn't matter since the next day is Sunday and I still don't have to go to work! I like to make a nice breakfast on Saturdays, because all week I've probabaly eaten the same thing, usually oats, and it's nice to have a fancy cooked brekkie when I'm not awake before sunrise. Sometimes it'll be scrambled tofu with baked beans, or I'll make my own hash browns (maybe I'll do that tomorrow! Nadine isn't working hooray!), a lot of the time it's pancakes, specifically, buckwheat because I've decided I love buckwheat flour, and besides, every time I've attempted vegan pancakes with regular flour it's failed miserably.

I know it's like the exact same picture as all my other pancakes I've posted on this here blog, but it's different because they are giant and have raspberries in them. I also used a different recipe since I don't have any bananas - at a million dollars a kilo, I'm sorry!

The recipe I used is 'Grandma's Buckwheat Pancakes' onVegWeb.com. They are delicious. I also ate the entire lot, I wish I hadn't because now I feel sick! I put a blob of nuttlex and tofutti cream cheese and some lemon juice on mine. I also made them with almond milk, and cut the oil down to 2 tbsp and had no issues. These pancakes also commemorate the first time my smoke detector hasn't gone off while making pancakes! Amazing. Last time it didn't stop. As in, when I took the batteries out it was still beeping.

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In other news, I had my first pilates class on Thursday! It was great. My abs STILL hurt (which is kind of annoying but it shows that they did some work!) my legs hurt my arms hurt my butt hurts.

Thursday couldn't possibly have been a better day to do it, either! We had been weeding while standing and bening ALL DAY at work so my back and legs and feet were just killing me. Wedding like that is like a constant lunge, and because I'm uncoordinated on my left side I always use my right leg so that hamstring wants to kill me. Also my right knee always hurts, so I think this class is really going to be helpful. Also I reckon a couple more goes and I might be able to touch my toes without struggle. Ha.

Speaking of exercise, our half marathon walk is next Sunday! Nadine wasn't working at the start of the week so everyday as soon as I got home we went for a quick walk up the street and back, (about 2.5km) which has been good since it stretches out my legs from work and it makes us exercise and thus spend more time together. This weekend we'll have to bust out a much longer walk - at least 10km. Tomorrow we have to pick up our kit from the city so I think we should walk there and back.

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My plans for the day include doing the laundry (the homemade detergent really does make it softer!), baking some more bread (I'm seeing how long I can go without buying a loaf from the shop! So far I've made one loaf.) and making some vegan pepperoni from Vegan on the Cheap to put on a pizza for dinner. I should also probabaly practise some of the pilates stuff I learnt - I'll see how sore I am and if I can toughen up and handle it :)

Homemade steamed buns!

2011-06-19T20:02:00.000+10:00

As with a lot of things I make in my kitchen, I've been wanting to try my hand at making my own steamed buns for ages now. I've had about a cup of dried azuki beans in a jar for months. Everytime we go into an Asian supermarket (rarely) I buy a packet of the frozen red bean buns. They're always good, but you know, have numbers in the ingredient lists and way too much sugar!

Anyway so today I cooked up my cup of azuki beans, and when they were nice and mushy, drained off most of the water, added almost half a cup of dark brown sugar (all I had left - is enough) and mashed them all up into a paste. It was the perfect oppurtunity to make these buns as I had just the right amount of white self raising flour to use up before the weevils arrived. (By the way, I keep my flour unsealed in the original paper bags next to my stove/oven, and I haven't had a weevil infestation yet.)

I used this recipe I found while looking for one on google, and made only half of it. I also ignored the savoury filling recipe.

They were really very easy to make!

They were really tiny when uncooked and just twisted up, but during steaming expanded to at least twice as big (obviously because of the yeast and self raising flour). I was worried they wouldn't hold together but they were just fine. We had them with a cup of tea :)

Half the recipe makes 12, but I only cooked up four, opting to freeze the rest uncooked. I'll get back to you on how they turn out - I should imagine they'll be right. I also had an extra half cup of red bean paste and I froze that too, so I can whip some more up when I run out! I also bet custard buns would be good. I bought one by accident when I was at uni and didn't like it, I think because of the egg, but if I make my own custard they should be delicious!

I made jam!

2011-06-18T16:13:00.001+10:00

I took my food nerdiness to the next level this week when I made jam out of the giant chokoes I bought on our holiday at the roadside stall. I've wanted to try my hand at preserving for ages now. It's probably a good thing I have a kitchen the size of a postage stamp with zero cupboard space otherwise I'd be preserving up a storm. I didn't realise it was so easy to pasteurise the jars! I was always like, omg how do I make the button go in instead of pop out 23!#$%3 etc. Of course I kept forgetting to look it up. Nadine's mum gave us a set of preserving jars and a preserve recipe book for Christmas this year I think, and on the first page it has 3 easy steps to doing it. Doh. I only needed a stock pot.

As you can see, the two jams above are completely different colours. The reason for that is I totally burnt my first attempt. Can you guess which one? Haha. However I reckon it tastes like fruit mince, as in christmas mince pies, so I'm going to keep it until I make some this year and use it in the mix. I looked it up, I'm under the impression it's okay to eat burnt jam. They even sell it commercially: burnt fig jam by Maggie Beer. If anyone reckons otherwise please let me know before I poison my family!

They look a bit funny with the material. Maybe it's the width of the lids?

Anyway, I found the orginal recipe in 'The 21st Birthday Cookery Book of the Country Women's Association in Tasmania'. An awesome book, there's chapters dedicated to help make you the perfect housewife! Want to have a good day? Get up early and cook him breakfast! All that aside, it is a very handy book. I want a copy. It has recipes for everything, from lamingtons to endless jams, how to make the perfect ---, etcetera. I especially love the advertisements through it.

I edited the recipe a little bit to suit me, as I burnt the first lot and didn't have enough of everything to make a complete second batch, so here you go:

Choko Jam

Ingredients:

580g choko

zest and juice of one lemon (I got 1/2 tbsp zest and 100ml juice I think)

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

150mL water

580g raw sugar (white will do - any granulated kind. I tried to make it healthier)

100g crystal ginger, finely chopped

This recipe makes 600mL of jam, I had 3 little 200mL jars.

Method:

1. Peel your choko(es). I had one large one. Put it in a bowl of salted water while you prepare the rest.

2. Zest and juice the lemon, and put it into a large saucepan with the water and cinnamon.

3. Either cut your choko up into very small cubes or grate it. I cubed - grating it would make it cook faster, my cubes took forever! Put it with the lemon and water and turn to medium heat. Cook until soft. (This is important, it has to be soft because once you add the sugar it won't soften any further!)

4. While it's cooking you can sterilise your jars - I stuck mine in the oven on low until the jam was ready to go. Also, you can heat up the sugar if you like, to make it dissolve faster. Put it in a baking dish and heat it on low in the oven for 10 minutes. At this point, put a large stock pot deep enough for your jars full of water on low heat.

5. Once your mixture is sufficiently softened, pour in the sugar. Stir until it dissolves, then boil. A few minutes before it's ready, stir in the chopped crystal ginger. Mine took about 30 minutes to be ready, but I started testing at 15 minutes because I was paranoid it would burn again. I also stood there stirring it the whole time. Don't know if that was completely necessary. To test, have a plate in the freezer, and put a tsp of the jam mixture on it. Stick it back in a freezer for a few minutes and take it out - if it's got a skin and isn't drippy it's ready.

6. When it's ready, pour it into your jars. I put mine in a measuring jug to make it easier (the burnt batch went all over the palce. I learned.) Screw the lids on tight but not extremely tight and put into the (now probably simmering) pot of water. stick a lid on and bring to a boil. Turn it off and let stand until the water has cooled down. The buttons in the lids should be in, not out and you're done!

I'm sure there is an even easier way to seal the jars. I recall turning it upside down for a few minutes then right way up andleaving it until cool. I dunno. This way worked for me!

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I'm pretty excited about it. We just have to finish the jars of storebought jam in the fridge before I open one of these jars! It tasted good hot, haven't gotten as far as room temp yet.

The most annoying part was chopping up the crystal ginger, gah! I wonder what grated fresh ginger would be like?

My next project - beetroot relish? Yum. I had a brainwave of making my own sugar free applesauce. If only I had space. Guess what you'll be getting for Christmas this year people!

Also, random, but I had to throw out my bunya nuts - I'd sort of forgotten about them and though they were in the fridge I didn't really want to eat them after months of having them :( I'll have to buy some more!

Brief holiday post

2011-06-16T18:35:00.000+10:00

The both of us were going crazy at work so we decided to take a 2 week holiday :) Luckily I actually had enough holiday hours clocked up so I didn't have to miss out on any pay.

We were going to do an east-west train trip but alas we didn't have enough (any) money so we opted for a Bed n Breakfast a lot closer to home, in Tamborine Mountain (Gold Coast). Basically we spent a week drinking wine and bush walking. It was freezing. It was awesome.

We stayed at a place called Wallaby Ridge retreat - aptly named.

It was a self contained room, so I cooked most of our food. We had a couple of lunches out, but there isn't many options for us. I forgot to look places up before we left.

I made a pasta dish with the delicious mushrooms the BnB owner supplied us with every morning (she gave us mushrooms and tomatoes instead of eggs and bacon). It's just brocolli, mushrooms, chilli and tofu cooked in a white wine and chiken style broth with capers. (I did take our whole kitchen with us). On the side I stewed up one of the street stall chokoes with nuttlex, salt and pepper. Yum.

She also gave us fresh home baked bread nearly everyday! She must have thought we were such greedy gutses. It was so so good though.

Another dinner I cooked up - a chickpea vege curry type thing with a can of tomatoes and garam masala. I left out the rice because we were eating so much bread - didn't really need any more carbs!

Another pasta - I made this after a bottle of wine so I can't really remember what's in it. Sweet potato, black beans, corn, tin tomatoes and oregano I think. Our room ended up smelling of oregano - it's the only herb I took.

Now this looks revolting but it's the best idea I ever had. We took most of our lunches with us, picnic style on our many walks. This is a take on chicken salad - I sliced up some chickpea cutlets (from Veganomicon), mixed through some capers, grated carrot, red onion and homemade mayonaise. Amazing on a sandwich and with a spoon.

We decided to do a winery tour (be driven around to taste copious amounts of wine? yes please!)* and it included a lunch. We emailed ahead to make sure they could do vegan for us, and they gave us the vegetarian option with the cheese taken out. It was divine. A vegetable stack of grilled eggplant, sundried tomatoes, pumpkin, zucchini, sitting on top of a potato rosti which was on top of a giant lettuce leaf and little cubes of capsicum with balsamic vinegar. Unfortunately they forgot cheesecake and custard wasn't vegan so no dessert :( I can't for the life of me remember which winery we had lunch at, but I'll update later with the name.

It was such a nice trip, and I have a million photos of the wallbies to go through!

*Sadly, almost, if not all of the wine available was not vegan friendly. I won't be reviewing any of those. I think a couple of the wines we got had no mention of egg, fish or milk on their labels, but unfortunately you can't go by that as gelatin is not required to be written on the labels since it isn't considered an allergen.

Chuck a Choko in!

2011-06-15T21:11:00.000+10:00

We've been away for a whole week hooray for holidays! I'll write about that and the yummy food later, but for now here is Bob.

Look how far she bends for a neck scratch!

On our travels we saw a little vege stall on the side of the road with an honesty box - 5 chokoes for $1! They were as big as my head. So I got some. Tonight I made this apple pie for dessert. I've read that chokoes are often used in commercial apple pies (think the maccas apple hand pie thingee) instead of some of the apples so I thought I'd give it a go. I love me a choko so I figured it wouldn't hurt :) It didn't hurt, and it does taste like a storebought thing.

I basically chopped up two large pink lady apples and one small peeled choko and cooked them down to a mushy but still chunky consistency with a little water. I don't usually bother with sugar - they're apples!! Made up a basic wholemeal shortcrust (flour, margarine, water) and made them all up in my little pie press. In that it only takes 10 minutes, but I'm not sure about the oven.

This is a pretty good idea for those who have a choko vine and have a surplus of chokoes and have run out of ideas. :) One day I'll have a choko vine and never go hungry!

Beanballs!

2011-06-01T20:49:00.000+10:00

Dear Doofus Family in the new ad for Ambi Pur room spray;

If you hate the stench of your rotting dead fish supper cooking so much, why are you eating it? Make this instead:

Cajun Beanballs and Spaghetti from Appetite for Reduction

No need to spray your home with odour-crushing chemicals.

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Anyway, I've made 'meatballs' quite often and when I found these ones in Appetite for Reduction I decided to make 'em. The fact that I found tempeh at Coles and am completely obsessed with it lately helped me to make the decision. Black eye peas are also my favourite legume most of the time :)

We loved them, they held together really well (we did end up cooking them for lik 15min longer than it said to) and they were really easy to make. However, I still like the other ones I make better (so does Nadine). So I decided: if I really really want spaghetti and meatballs and I only have half an hour I'll make the beanballs, and if I have all day, I'll make the other ones.

Mmm fried bread

2011-05-30T19:36:00.000+10:00

I bought a 1/4 green cabbage at Woolies the other day because it was only 74c and I didn't quite know what to do with it until I saw this recipe for Spiced Cabbage Flatbreads on Allotment2Kitchen.

I didn't follow the recipe almost at all, but I was certainly inspired by it.

In mine, I put green cabbage, grated purple carrot and their greens, onion, minced garlic and minced ginger. Then I mixed up a peanut sauce out of peanut butter and soy sauce and mixed it through before making up the breads. I also had some tempeh (found it at Coles for about $4 yay!) so I made a sort of tempeh bacon with it (essentially soy sauce, malt vinegar, smoked paprika and cayenne pepper).

The filling was so good by itself without even the peanut sauce! I could eat it all day. The bread was surprisingly easy to make, and they didn't even fall apart like I thought it would. I was thinking next time I'll cook it in my sandwich press instead of frying in a pan - no oil and a time saver! I could do four at once, and cook both sides at the same time. Maybe it'll work! I also used wholemeal plain flour.

I divided the dough into 8, and we ate 3 each for dinner and one was leftover for lunch the next day. These are also pretty good cold! They would be perfect for an appetiser at a dinner party with friends, and could be made smaller again. Go nuts with the filling!

Beans beans the magical fruit

2011-05-29T09:33:00.000+10:00

We've been eating lots of bean based main meals and lunches lately, sort of a subconcious way of saving a bit of money - beans are so cheap, and I always have dried beans in jars or cooked beans in the freezer which also makes it a very easy fallback. The only thing is, we've hardly been eating any vegetables (other than beans and onion)! So I went to hang out with my mum in the city on Saturday I ordered the most vege-full thing I could. Bring on the brocolli!

The first thing that started us on the bean frenzy was this: Black Beans in a Red Velvet Mole, on page 134-135 of Appetite for Reduction, my new favourite cookbook. I picked this one night because I had a surplus of black beans in the freezer, and the ingredients sounded so weird and wrong together. Chocolate, tomatoes and chilli? Cinnamon and oregano? Why not! So I made it, it smelled like a cake when it was bubbling away, and at the end it was rather delicious. I don't know if I'll rush to make it again, but it certainly wasn't bad in the slightest! I served it with roasted sweet potato on the side. And I also think Australian chilli powder is way hotter than American - I only put 2 tsp in plus some red chilli flakes and it was just hot enough without burning my mouth out.

Next on the list was the Seitanic Red and White Bean Jambalaya on page 170-171 of Veganomicon. I obviously used black beans instead of white. I made this because I wanted to make risotto, but Nadine would be home late and risotto doesn't stay good for too long after you cook it. I'm sure Nadine wouldn't have minded, but that'll have to wait for another day! but anyway, this was so so good. I didn't have any tomato paste so I omitted it, I used brown rice and so had to cook it for a bit longer, and next time I make it (because I will) I'll put a bit more cayenne in it. I already doubled what it said in the recipe but it's still not much! This was really easy to eat, and was excellent for work lnuch the next day. Oh, and I didn't bake it - I don't think my casserole would be big enough, hahaha.

On Friday it was Nadine's turn in the kitchen - she made the Cincinatti Suburb Chilli on page 80 of Vegan on the Cheap. It was actually a bit similar to the Mole in that it also had cocoa powder in it! I love my bean chilli served on pasta so this was pretty damn good. We also added in some frozen corn kernels and a few cubes of frozen spinach because by this time I was getting a bit concerned about the lack of vegetable! The cheese sauce on top is from the same book, and I've made it a few times now.

No cows were harmed in the making of this toastie

This is a terrible picture, but there was leftover Cheese sauce so I had a cheese toastie in the morning for breakfast! I squeezed some yellow American mustard on it and some black pepper. This tasted like McDonalds - therefore would probably be amazing for a hangover breakfast! I'm going to have another one today but we have no bread so I'll need to run to the shops - I may also try to make some tempeh bacon to put in it. Could a toastie get any better??

So all in all, this week I'm pretty sure we've only needed to buy a million cans of diced tomatoes (we unfortunately have a smaller freezer now and I can't fit in any home cooked tomatoes :( ) and onions!

Homemade Laundry Detergent

2011-05-26T20:59:00.000+10:00

We make a lot of everyday things from scratch at home, instead of purchasing at a shop. Some I have posted here on this blog: lip balm, deodorant, milk, bread, nut butter, (I couldn't find the deodorant entry!). But there are many more things I make regularly that haven't quite made it on here yet, but that I intend on eventually posting :)

We do this for a number of reasons. It saves us a helluva lot of money, it's healthier for us and the environment (no harsh chemicals), and it's surprisingly easy. And of course fun, because I am a nerd.

I am very happy Nadine has started to embrace her inner homemade nerd-dom! She decided one day that it would be fun to make laundry detergent, and reap the benefit of the fact that it costs a fraction of the price of the stuff we usually buy (Earth Choice).

I'll write the recipe here - she found it online somewhere, and I reckon it's pretty generic, but if it's yours give us a yell and I'll take it down.

Laundry Detergent

Makes enough for 160 washes

Ingredients

1.5L water

1 bar of soap, grated (you can use any kind, just the average size)

1/2 cup washing soda*

1/2 cup borax**

Combine water and grated soap in a saucepan. Stir over a medium heat until soap is dissolved.

Add the washing soda and borax and stir until thickened.

Pour into a 10L bucket or container with lid and fill with hot tap water and stir.

You can add a few drops of essential oil for fragrance if you like :) We used eucalyptus.

Use 1/4 cup per wash, or less if you like! We keep it in a plastic storage container, and decant it into a recycled Earth choice detergent bottle.

*Washing soda is sodium carbonate. you can buy it in crystal form at Woolworths but I think you can also get it as a powder. (1kg for $5)

**I found borax at Bunnings once for 1kg = $6. Nadine has recently seen borax at Woolies though.

Nadine says this detergent has made our clothes particularly soft! I hate to say this but I don't know because I don't do the laundry very often!

Birthday cupcakes :)

2011-05-26T10:51:00.000+10:00

These are the cupcakes we made in replacement of the failed carrot cake cupcakes for my dad's birthday :) They are the chai latte cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World and are pretty amazing! I topped them with a vanilla cream cheese (I used King Land Soy Cream Cheese) icing with dusted cinnamon and grated 85% dark chocolate.

The recipe for the icing in the book makes a fair bit more than I needed for the actual cupcakes (which Nadine baked by the way) so I ate the rest out of the bowl. And felt sick. Also pretty sure my teeth will fall out.

Without icing

We figured out my carrot cake cupcakes didn't work because there was too much liquid in it (all the oil came out and dripped through the paper ugh). One of the ingredients is yoghurt and I used my homemade stuff which has a fair bit more water in it than store bought stuff. Ypghurt is also in the chai cupcakes but Nadine drained off the water and strained even more water out of the yoghurt and look! They turned out perfect.

Or maybe Nadine can just bake cupcakes and I can't!

Piping icing is messy. My piping bag is quite ancient and it sort of leaked out. I used a large star shaped nozzle.

Dammit now I want more.

Some interesting produce and souvlaki

2011-05-23T21:18:00.001+10:00

Nadine definately knows how to make me happy :) She got me these purple carrots from woolies as a present. Yes I don't get jewellery or chocolates, I get carrots. And it's awesome.

I am actually growing carrots like these (pictured under chicken wire in background) but they aren't ready yet, and only 3 have survived. And I think my ones are orange on the inside, but these from woolies are white on the inside. They also taste like parsnip. In a good way.

I unfortunately decided to use them in some carrot cake cupcakes. Unfortunate because the cupcakes failed miserably. They still taste good so we are going to turn them into a pudding which I'll post later if it's worth it!

The other night I really wanted souvlaki. I am unsure if I've ever actually eaten real souvlaki before but I wanted it anyway. Souvlaki is a greek dish made from lamb chicken or beef, on a skewer. But I obviously didn't use any of those meats, or put it on a skewer, I made up some seitan instead! I tried to make some seitan using okara but the whole thing fell to pieces in the saucepan, which sucked, so I went back to the recipe for 'simple simmered seitan' in Vegan on the Cheap which of course worked perfectly, since I've made it a million times.

So, I cooked up the seitan, and sliced half of the recipe into strips (the rest went in the freezer). In a container went half a cup of red wine, a few teaspoons of dried oregano, 1 tsp smoked paprika and some black pepper. I put in the seitan strips, and filled the container with some of the simmering broth to cover the pieces. Shook it up a bit and left it there til dinner, maybe 1 hour?

Meanwhile I made up tzatsiki sauce. 1 cup plain soy yoghurt, 1 small lebanese cucumber diced, zest from half a lemon and juice from half a lemon. There is supposed to be garlic in it but I ran out. Also, I squeezed the cucucmber bits in a paper towel because I didn't want runny tzatsiki. It worked.

I fried up the seitan slices until they were browned and a bit crisp on the outside and ate it all in a multigrain wrap with the tzatsiki and some diced tomato and red onion.

It was so so good.

The only thing is it made the wrap turn into mush (gonna go the skewer route next time) and I wanted to eat more. But if I consumed any more gluten I may have ended up with a stomach ache! There can be too much of a good thing.

Dangerous Nuts Part 1: Bunya Nut Pikelets

2011-05-22T11:09:00.000+10:00

Could you get any more Australian?

So why do I call them dangerous? Well, there is a few reasons.

1.If you sit under a bunya pine while it's in season, you may die. The cones are as big as your head (or bigger!) and can weigh upwards of 10kg. Don't try it. I noticed a tree in the Melbourne Botanic Gardens when I was there last that had a makeshift fence around to stop people having their picnics under it.

2.They can explode. Wear eye protection and stand back if you cook them on a bbq.

3.While trying to pry open a shell on a raw one with a hammer I nearly bashed my finger off.

4.While trying to cut open the shell on a soaked one I nearly chopped off a nipple with the handles of my secateurs. I don't know how, all I know is that it hurt like a motherf*cker. I hope I didn't do any lasting damage!

Okay, so bunya nuts are about as much of a pain in the ass to peel as chestnuts, but not quite. At least these ones stay whole. I looked up all sorts of ways to do it online, but they all sounded hard. One guy said to go outside and hit them with a mallet to crack the shells. I don't have an outside and I don't have a mallet. I could have boiled them whole and then peeled off the shells (with difficulty) afterwards but all my pots and pans were dirty and I couldn't be bothered. I could have roasted them, but I was afraid they'd explode and catch fire because I couldn't split them a little first.

So in the end I decided to soak them overnight in a bowl of cold water, figuring the shells would soften:

And in the morning the shells were indeed soft, so I could hit them a little bit gentler with a hammer than if they were raw-raw:

You can see the cracks in it. A bunya nut has a pointed end and a round end. At the pointed end there are 3 'seams'. Hit the hammer on one of them. The seams will crack and you can peel it.

I decided the hammer freaked me out too much as it was getting too close to my thumbs, so I dug out my secateurs (yes they are rusty and old and under-used and covered in WD-40 and potting mix but did I ever say my kitchen was sanitary?) and decided to just slice off the skins. Use them like a nut cracker first to split the seams (this was way easier than it was with the hammer) and then slice down toward the round end until you can force off the shell.

At this stage the nut can sort of be popped out. You don't have to struggle with pulling off the rest of the skin.

It may come out with a layer of brown stuff on it, like a shelled peanut:

I took it off. Dunno if you have to, I just did.

Now for the cooking. Once you have your desired amount of bunya nuts peeled, give them a bit of a rinse, especially if you used disgusting dirty tools like I did. Mmm WD-40, my favourite!

Then put them into a dry frying pan and cook, as if you were pan roasting cashews to make cashew butter:

Bits will go black and brown and they will smell nice. I had a lid over them for most of it because I didn't have a clean stirring spoon either (I know, I'm a slob) so I could just shake them around. I was also still scared of them exploding in my face (this is unlikely to happen!).

Once they are all browned like in the above picture, put them on a chopping board and use a sharp knife to finely chop like so:

You could just eat them whole too if you like, but this time I decided I wanted to put them in pikelets! Hence the chopping.

I ran a search on google for vegan pikelets as I have never made them before, and found this recipe on The Year of the Vegan which sounded perfect as I had some soft tofu in the fridge I needed to use before it turned yellow.

So I made the recipe exactly as it says except I used wholemeal flour, and didn't have any maple syrup so I used 1 tbsp of rice syrup instead. And at the end of all the whisking, I folded in half a cup of the chopped bunya nuts, and cooked as normal.

I spread vegan marg on them, sprinkled a few extra chopped nuts on top and drizzled them with a good amount of rice syrup. Yum.

(It took me so long to make them all they were cold by the time I got to eat them. But that's ok, they taste better cold and I'm pretty sure pikelets are meant to be eaten cold).

So to wrap up this god awful long entry, what do they taste like??

Well, like nuts, I guess. I want to say they taste like pine nuts (hur, hur!) but I'm not sure what they are like. They have also been compared to chestnuts, and I have to say that's probably the closest thing I can think of too. They have a different texture, quite soft (though that's probably because I soaked them) and were a nice addition to the humble pikelet. Now I have to think of what to do with the rest!! I bought a ½ kilo. Stay tuned for Dangerous Nuts Part 2 :)

Mmm Chocolate

2011-05-17T18:37:00.000+10:00

I bought myself some new cookbooks for my birthday (cuz I totally need more cookbooks...) and they arrived yesterday!

And today was more of the ming numbing sameness as it has been for the last month or so so I was really hankering for a sugary sweet treat when I got home and Nadine had made me cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World! these are the Mexican Hot Chocolate cupcakes, which she chose because it didn't have icing and she didn't need to make soymilk for it (we had run out). These are rich rich chocolately cupcakes with a hint of cayenne with cinnamon and cocoa sprinkled on top with icing sugar. It's made with coconut milk (hence the not needing to make more soy) which made it even richer.

Yum. Exactly what I wanted! She even put them in little paper cups :)

---

You Know You Hate Your Job When...You wish it was you who had the flat tyre on the way in, not your supervisor. Ha.

The cupcakes fixed it all though!

More wheat berries!

2011-05-15T07:00:00.000+10:00

(Excuse my scaly wrinkled finger print-less old lady hands! The camera kept shaking and I couldn't get a clear closeup! I suppose I could have cut it out. Oh well.)

Anyway, I love wheat berries, which is what that picture is of, obviously. I've only got about 1/4 cup left so I need to get some more! You know when you eat something and you feel like you've just done something good for your body? That's a wheat berry. (Except, obviously, if you're wheat or gluten intolerant. I'm sorry.)

Anyway, I made the Lightened Up Protein Power Goddess Bowl (whew!) from Oh She Glows, for dinner tonight since it sounded so good, and I needed an excuse to buy some more tahini. I had to make some substitutions: used wheat instead of spelt (barley would be awesome, too), used brussels sprouts instead of kale, and chickpeas instead of lentils. I also used garlic chives instead of parsley as my plant still isn't up to scratch.

Such a colourful happy dish!

It's really quite quick to throw together, once you have prepped the wheat and chickpeas. It'd be faster if you used a tin of chickpeas but I don't really like them, and the dried kind is cheaper by miles.

We both loved it (Nadine went back for seconds!) but I found that the tomatoes and lemon juice's acidity hurt my mouth quite a bit. But I am strong and chewed through it! It's very fresh tasting, and I hope it picks me up a little. I don't like being under the weather!

Pasta with Cream of Sweet Potato Sauce

2011-05-14T08:55:00.000+10:00

I am so, so glad this week is over. Work has been torture. We haven't stopped weeding for weeks now. I don't think we are a maitenance team any more. We are the zombie team who weeds. There are holes worn through all of our gloves (I even wear two pairs at a time because I'm allergic to the plastic in the outside pair!), none of us have any fingerprints left. I even wrote a poem, one day in the monotony!

Emma's fingers, cracked, and bleeding.
Too much weeding.
Too much weeding.

On the upside it's been glorious weather and sitting outside in the sun has been lovely. (Except I'm now permanently attached to a 45 litre bucket. There are two ways to sit: upturned, or on the rim. Upturned hurts my back. On the rim hurts my legs. If I tried to weed these monstrosities standing up, both my legs and back would hurt! Can't win! Haha.)

Anyway, now that the weeding has ceased for the weekend (right back to it on Monday!) I can relax and enjoy some gin with lime, and some nice soft couch sitting while watching the Eurovision Song Contest. Hell, yes.

To the food! Because that IS what this blog is about, not weeds.

Last night I made a simple pasta meal, adapted from the Complete Vegetarian Barbecue Cookbook by Susan Geishopf-Hadler. One day I will actually have a barbecue, and can barbecue things. But this time I just used a frying pan.

Pasta with cream of sweet potato sauce
Serves 6

Ingredients

1 tbsp coconut oil
3 garlic cloves, chopped
1 large onion, chopped
2 birdseye chillies, chopped
1 kg sweet potato, diced small
500mL soy milk

2 tbsp vegan margarine
2 tbsp wholemeal flour
pinch of nutmeg
black pepper
500g pasta of choice
Method:
Put garlic, onion, chilli and sweet potato in a frying pan with the coconut oil. Cook until sweet potato is soft. You may need to deglaze with water every now and then, unless you have a non stick pan.

Transfer to a food processor (unless your processor is as big as your kitchen sink, you'll need to do it in batches) and blend with ½ cup of the soy milk. Set aside in a bowl.

Start cooking pasta about here.

In a medium saucepan, melt the vegan margarine. Whisk in the flour, and then slowly stir in the remaining soy milk. Stir in the nutmeg and as much black pepper as you like. Cook until slightly thickened.

Stir in the sweet potato mixture. Add some water if it's too thick for you.

Serve on top of cooked pasta :) I fried up some red capsicum as a garnish. Something green would have been nice! Maybe some scattered chives? :)

This meal cost us $1.20 per serve.

It was pretty good, we always like a bit of sweet potato. I don't think I can eat this dish more than twice though, so I've kept the remainder of the sauce to make a lasagne today or tomorrow.

Somehow this meal created dishes up to the ceiling! (Pretty sure there was already some there though). So now I have to spend all day doing them in my postage stamp sized sink. Oh well! Later today I intend on doing some more training for the half marathon (I am already getting fitter! It's awesome), and digging up my lemon grass.

(As an afterthought, I find I edit my posts a lot. Typos, etc. Does that mean the entry comes up in your reading whatsit five million times? If so, sorry!!! I'm trying hard not to need to edit any more!)

Ginormous farmer's market vegetable stew

2011-05-08T20:21:00.001+10:00

I spent my Sunday listening to records and fiddling about the house. I love watching the needle touch down.

It was lovely until the neighbour decided to deafen me and everyone in Perth with her doof doof. Oh well, I played records all day yesterday too :)

This is today's farmer's markets haul. From bottom left clockwise: the best bananas in the world, 1/4 jap pumpkin, celery, kale, brazil nuts, bunya nuts (no idea of what to do with these yet!), parsnip, turnips and potato.

Almost all of the above turned into a gigantic stew!

BIG HONKING ROOT VEGETABLE STEW.

Serves 6 (big)

Ingredients:

400g turnips

700g potatoes

200g carrot

600g pumpkin

250g parsnip

250g celery (about 4 stalks), sliced

1 1/2 cups cooked kidney beans

500g brown onion, quartered

5 cloves garlic, roughly chopped

2 tbsp whole peppercorns, crushed or cracked

1 thyme stem left whole

2cm long stem of rosemary left whole

3 bay leaves

2 heaped tsp wholegrain mustard

8 cups weak chicken style stock (or water)

125g short pasta (any shape!)

The method is very simple, as with all stew/soup type dealies.

First, I peeled things that needed peeling (I peel parsnips because we find the skin bitter, and I peeled the larger turnip but left the skin on the smaller one as per the Internet's reccomendations).

Chop everything into large chunks, try to keep the size uniform.

Put everything into a large stock pot, except the pasta shapes and cooked kidney beans. (As you can see, mine was ALMOST too small. [5L] I could have used a smaller potato or something!)

Give it a gentle stir, so as not to overflow the pot, unless yours is ginormous.

Bring pot to a boil, then turn down and simmer for half an hour.

(At this point I turned it off and left it for about an hour while I went to pick Nadine up from work, so if you don't need to leave it just check to see if the vegetables are cooked.)

The pumpkin will be falling apart - this is good. If you want your pumpkin chunks to stay whole, don't put them in at the beginning.

I found that it was too watery still, so I thickened it with a bit of cornflour. This is optional.

Bring back to a boil and add the pasta and beans. Cook until pasta is ready (about as long as the packet says!) Cooking the pasta in it also helps to thicken the gravy!

Serve and enjoy! I served ours with some sauteed kale and silverbeet, but feel free to go for bread or something.

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This was so hearty and flavourful. If you aren't into spicy, cut down the pepper to half. It was very peppery, just how I like it! The herbs were light enough for us to be able to taste each different vegetable, which was good. I liked how the pumpkin turned into mush and spread through the whole thing, making it soupy.

For something that I just made up on the spot, I'm quite happy with the results! I think this is the first time I've had turnips cooked properly. Last time I tried they were pretty thick and raw haha. I like them. I'll probably buy more next week and do something different.

This would be awesome to chuck in a slow cooker to come home to after work! Unfortunately I don't have one. One day I will, when I have more storage!

More noodly lunch

2011-05-07T13:37:00.000+10:00

Today I was cruelly reminded of Saturday kiddie sports. I mapped out a seemingly simple 10km route using mapmyrun.com to get it nice and accurate, and at about 5km there is a sports field belonging to some college which is fine, EXCEPT the damn psycho parents were parked all along the footpath, road, and everywhere in between. So the screeching kids and screaming parents and whistles and HUGE GIGANTIC 4WD VEHICLES made me get lost and I ended up only doing just under 7km.

But oh well, it was still a fair chunk! And I finished in 1 hour 5 mins so I got faster at walking, hooray. I may yet fit 22km in 3 hours. Anyway, tomorrow I'm going to do 10km on my bike, on a different route! Do kids play sport on Sundays? Either way there's a nice steep hill in that route so I wouldn't be able to get my bike up it. I might go to the farmer's markets the long way. I haven't been there in ages.

The other night I accidentally intercepted Bob on the way to the loo and put her in a little tent Nadine got from her work for free. She disagreed. It's a bit funny that we were wathcing Shrek on telly at the time and that grey thing she's murdering? A donkey. Haha.

And now for a little bit of food!

In my previous entry, I mentioned a black bean and sweet potato salad I made. We ate in on Thursday night as a cold salad on the side of a pile of sauteed silverbeet in vegan margarine and some grileld tofu with a soy sauce and red wine vinegar marinade. I did end up buying a lime and squeezed some juice over it. It was pretty good, but the flavours seemed to dissipate as time went on. I had it for lunch the next day and had to fight to taste the garlic. Next time I'll make a proper sort of dressing.

Anyhow, I kept the marinade from the tofu and used it in this stir fry noodle bowl I made myself for lunch today, after my walk. It's basically a huge pile of noodles, 1 sliced carrot, a big handful of cashew nuts, a big handful of shredded red cabbage (is there any other kind?), sesame seeds, garlic, ginger and chilli.

Mmmm looking at that braised cabbage thing is making me want to make it again. Maybe red cabbage is in season and therefore will be cheap at the markets tomorrow. Hmm.

A day of cooking

2011-05-04T15:57:00.000+10:00

I couldn't go to work again today because my car is yes, still broken. And unfortunately my previous assessment of it not costing too much has changed.

So today I decided to cook up food for the week! Mostly as a way to relax, and also to try and make some food without buying anything. It worked :) I even cleaned my oven, organised the crockery cupboard and did all the dishes!

The above picture is tomorrow nights dinner and Friday's lunch. I was inspired to make it after seeing this recipe for Sweet Potato and Black Bean Salad on Oh She Glows. I changed it up a bit to suit what I had, and I sort of mated it with another salad on her blog.

I roasted together 1 diced small sweet potato, 1 large onion and a whole thing of garlic for about 1/2 an hour. I defrosted two can's worth of black beans that I cooked up last week. Meanwhile I was cooking 1 cup of dry wheat berries in 3 cups of water (this took about 40 mins). When it was all done I put the sweet potato, onion, black beans and wheat in a bowl and squeezed out the garlic cloves and mixed it together well.

It's really delicious just like that without any spices or dressing, but I might go with some lime juice tomorrow, and maybe some fresh herbs. I have all sorts in the garden right now. Wheat berries are awesome, by the way. I've never used them before, but now I may never cook rice again! Nah, kidding since rice doesn't take as long! But they are chewy and sort of pop in your mouth. And taste really really good.

I made up some whole wheat pastry on Monday, intending to make these little pies that afternoon but got distracted, so they had to wait until today. Last week I made a large pie with the same filling (red lentils, mushroom gravy, broad beans, peas, tofu) and I made too much filling so I froze it to use for little ones. I think these ones are better than my original 'family' pie! Maybe it's the pastry/filling ratio. I made 6, had two for lunch and froze the other 4 to have as emergency lunches in case I forget to make enough dinner for leftovers.

At the same time I made dinner for tonight and lunch for tomorrow! It's essentially a chana masala type dish. I threw together in my awesome red frypan rescued from mum's house: 1 sliced onion, 4 cloves garlic, 3cm ginger, 1 can's worth of frozen chickpeas, 1 pkt frozen tofu, 1 small carrot, 2 tbsp tomato paste, 400g can crushed tomatoes, 1 tbsp garam masala, 2 tsp coriander seed ground, 1 tsp chilli powder and black pepper.

And so now I'll be doing the dishes I made by cooking while waiting for the mechanic to tell me my stupid car is ready to be picked up.

On the upside, all I have to do all week now is turn on the microwave.

Unexpected day off work...

2011-05-03T15:15:00.001+10:00

...For a crappy reason - even though last week the thermostat was replaced, my car continues to overheat! Very sad. So I had to take it in to a mechanic today to get fixed. Which means I can't get to work (I looked up public transport - I'd have to get the bus at 4:15am. Ha.) Fortunately it isn't going to cost too much. I'll still be being extra thrifty for the next few weeks though! Not working today lost me a bit! Oh well. Hopefully this time it stays fixed.

Anyway so we had some out of state friends over for dinner last night. We had delicious delicious curry which I keep meaning to post but the pictures look crap, I've made it about 5 times it's so fabulous! Drank a few drinks - scotch and soda, and gin and water and lime. (We have to force ourselves to drink the bottle shop we already have before buying more wine!!) and afterwards we played trivial pursuit, and Nadine beat us all down with shame. She literally knows everything.

So since today I was off work, I could make whatever I wanted for lunch. I was reading this post at the tropical vegan, and thought the first one looked particularly delicious, so I made something similar! When I was in highschool, I used to come straight home from school and make some spicy 2 minute noodles and grate about two cows' worth of cheese into it so it all melted and turned into a gluggy noodle cake/soup mess.

Yes I was feral. This is a much better idea!

I had all the ingredients already (noodles leftover from the rice paper rolls I made the other day). I grated half a sweet potato, finely chopped half an onion, a clove of garlic and a fair few frozen peas into a frypan with a tiny bit of rice bran oil. Cooked until it all softens (smells really good) and I put the preared bean thread noodles into the pan and tossed it all with a sauce made from peanut butter, vegetarian oyster sauce and some water, and then served with some sesame oil. Yum. Served the both of us.

I was so stressed about my car dying again that I dreamed about the engine exploding, I actually slept-walked (got up and put on Nadines old doc martens thinking they were running shoes - I only woke up because they were the hard ones and felt funny.) Ugh. So I decided some biscuits were in order, and thought these shortbread on Tea and Simpatico sounded lovely. I followed the recipe exactly except used wholemeal flour and three tea bags of chai tea. They were sooooo good. We had them with a cup of vanilla green tea :)

By the way, it totally hailed this afternoon.

The Training Begins, Homemade Sausages and Scones!

2011-05-01T19:24:00.000+10:00

Nadine stretches woo!

We started training for our half marathon last week, really. We accidentally walked 10km! We thought the distance would be about 6km but it took us 2 hours to get there and back, so we looked it up and it was actually ten. No wonder our legs hurt. But today we did just a short one - 5km walking with sporadic jogging to break up the monotony. I just bought two cheapie pedometers, so hopefully it makes it a little easier to see exactly how far we are going. Google maps isn't really accurate enough for my liking!

Like my stretchy pants? I love them. About $10 at Target, they are SO COMFY and prevent chafing - important in a 21km walk. They come in all different lengths. I got one pair in full length and one in 3/4.

After lunch we wanted to go to have coffee somewhere but the place had closed up for the day so we came back home and I made some fluffy white scones and coffee! (~~To celebrate the royal nuptials hahahaha~~). I made them as traditional as I could - bought white self raising flour and everything! I used this recipe I found on the BBC. Unfortunately it barely makes 4 scones, but that's probably a good thing as scones don't really reheat well. We had them with jam and some cashew cream I had leftover from the Panna Cotta I made yesterday. I'm not too fussed on the cashew cream - I wanted to make the 'clotted cream' I found on this entry by Oh She Glows (which inspired me to make scones to celebrate the wedding in the first place) but I couldn't find Tofutti cream cheese (or any other vegan kind) at woolies (and the shop I would otherwise get it from was closed) so I couldn't. Next time.

I have a three level steamer! It certainly comes in handy.

I decided to make some sausages for dinner! I found the recipe yonks ago on Vegan Dad's blog and have always wanted to make them (but I am lazy and keep buying the sanitarium ones which are good). I doubled the recipe and made about 8 or 9 I think. I could have made them smaller, they were a bit giant!

I also didn't mash the beans enough (I used black beans) and I thought they would be ruined but they weren't at all. Though next time I am pureeing them in the food processor first. Yes it looks like a poo.

I also didn't put enough herbs in, but trial and error! They were still delicious. We made mashed sweet potatoes (with rosemary), and steamed brussels sprouts, carrots, peas and corn with lemon and pepper and garlic. Yum. I didn't think as far ahead as sauce though! Gravy would have been good.