Roasted pumpkin soup

Roasted Pumpkin Soup

Serves 7 as a starter

Ingredients:

650g butternut pumpkin (weighed without skin)

350g kent pumpkin (weighed without skin)

1 whole head of garlic

2 small onions

2 cups chicken style stock (or veg stock)

coconut cream and reserved pumpkin seeds for garnish

Method:

 Preheat oven to 220 degrees C.

Chop pumpkin into 2 inch chunks. Cut onions into quarters. Put into a bowl with the pumpkin and mix in a bit of sea salt and cracked pepper, and two teaspoons of any neutral cooking oil (I use rice bran). Spread in a single layer on a baking tray. Cut the top off the garlic and peel off the papery part of the skin. Wrap it up in tin foil and stick on the tray with pumpkin. Bake for about 40 minutes or until pumpkin and garlic are soft.

Once cooled a little, put into a food processor (if yours is gigantic you could do it all at once but I had to do mine in batches) with the stock and blend until smooth. Pour into a saucepan.

For the pumpkin seeds you could leave raw or wash all the pumpkin pulp off them and dry fry them in a pan until toasted and then chop into pieces.

Heat soup just before serving. If you want it thinner add more water or stock. Garnish with pumpkin seed pieces and a tablespoon of coconut cream :)

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 We had this as an entree last night at dinner. My garlic wasn't quite roasted enough so it was very garlicky. Perhaps put the garlic in the oven for 5-10 minutes before the pumpkin. Also my coconut cream was pretty much milk by the time I spooned it on. I'd suggest putting a can of coconut cream in the fridge overnight and using just the thick cream from the top of the can :)

The beauty of pumpkin soup is that it can be a started to pretty much anything and you can add any other seasonings you want (curry powder, italian herbs, etc). I find it quite filling so I try to make sure my main course (especially if dessert is a third course!) a fair bit smaller than usual so as my stomach doesn't explode.

I did have a dessert third course: Chocolate and vanilla ice cream sandwiches! Best idea ever by the way. I made the homemade vanilla ice cream from Veganomicon, and baked the Mocha Mama cookies from Vegan Cookies etc.

I bought the wrong kind of tofu for the ice cream but I just blended it a bit longer and it worked perfectly fine. I am so glad I only made enough ice cream sandwiches for everyone because I'd have eaten any leftovers all at once =D

One tip...make sure your cookies are pretty cold before putting the ice cream on them. Refrigerating would have been a good idea! As you can see it melted a bit. Still good though.

Wheat free chocolate chip cookies

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 cookies + new kitty :)

I tried to make choclate chip cookies today :)

As you can see they are really more like choclate chip cakes! Delicious, but not cookies! It might be the applesauce I used instead of half the oil...here is the recipe anyway :)

Chocolate chip cookies cakes

Makes about 26

Ingredients

1 cup flour (I used wholemeal)

1/2 cup wheat germ

3/4 cup oat bran

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

1/2 cup oil (I used grapeseed)

1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce (Woolworths home brand is the only one I can find with no added sugar)

3/4 cup dextrose (or 3/4 cup sugar, I just have dextrose to use at the moment)

3/4 cup dextrose + 1 tbsp molasses (or 3/4 cup brown sugar)

Seeds of one vanilla bean

2 tbsp flaxeeds, ground and mixed with 4 - 6 tbsp hot water

1 cup chocolate chips of choice (I used 150g packet of Sweet William milk chocolate chips)

First, grind your flaxseeds and mix them with the water. I use a mortar and pestle, good arm work out! Haha. Set aside to thicken.

Mix flour, oat bran, wheat germ, baking soda and salt in a bowl. In another bowl beat together the oil, applesauce, sugars and vanilla bean seeds. Add in flax egg.

Gradually beat in the flour mixture into the oil mixture. Once combine stir through your chocolate chips.

Set oven to 200 degrees celcius. Drop tablespoon sized blobs of cookie dough on a baking tray that is either greased or has baking paper on it. Flatten them down with your fingers or a fork (fingers works better). Bake for 15 minutes, or until golden brown on top. Let cool on the tray for a while, then transfer them to a wire cooking rack or plate to finish. If you try to move them while they're still hot, a) you'll burn yourself and b) they'll fall apart!

While not exactly what I wanted, they still taste damn good :) I've eaten about 6 already and now I feel sick. Surprise surprise! I really shouldn't bake when I am at home alone :)

We got our second cat a couple of weeks ago! She's so tiny, but apparently she is 3 years old. Her name is Charlee (that was her name from her previous owners, who I think had to surrender her because they could no longer look after her). She loves to play with catnip filled toys and toys in general, and likes to sleep on our bellies at night.

She and Bob have had their fair share of tiffs so far (I came home one day to find Charlee had missing chunks of fur on the back of her neck!) but they are getting used to each other. There's a bit of hissing but it's lessening haha. They even both sat on our bed this morning at the same time!

Bob likes to get in my way. She's getting a bit fat. We'd feed her less but she eats Charlee's food as well :S

Charlee likes to watch me update my blog :)

It's extremely windy today. Beautiful clear blue skies and lots of sun, but very very windy. The neighbours tree snapped just before. It's pretty tall and thin. It's some type of melaleuca. I should go get my washing in before it ends up in Perth.