Fettucine with Zucchini, lemon, tofu and almonds.

I borrowed this recipe from a lovely book my mum got me for Christmas (Stephanie Alexander's Kitchen Garden Companion). The original recipe is called 'Fettucine with Zucchini, Lemon, Ricotta and Fried Almonds' on page 716. I've just edited it to suit our vegan lifestyle :) Most recipes in the book are vegetarian, which is nice.

Ingredients:

Your choice of vegan margarine (I use Nuttelex Lite)

1/3 cup flaked almonds

Fettucine pasta (I used spinach)

2 large zucchini, diced

3 cloves garlic, thinly sliced

1 cup chicken style stock (I use Massel)

Juice and zest of one lemon

1/2 block of tofu, diced really tiny

2 tbsp chopped fresh parsley

Method:

Put pasta on to cook.

Fry the tofu until crispy in some margarine. Remove from pan and  drain on paper towel. Using the same pan (you may need to put more margarine in) lightly fry the almonds until light brown. (I burnt mine by accident but it was still good). Remove from pan and drain with tofu.

Put the rest of the ingredients except the parsley and half of the lemon zest into the pan. Bring to a simmer and let cook until pasta is ready, or until zucchini is tender. Stir in the tofu, almonds, parsley and remaining lemon zest and heat for a minute before serving.

This is a light and summery meal that qould have been perfect to eat outside with candles or something. However, it is STILL raining, and we don't have anywhere to eat outside anyway :)

Obviously the tofu cubes replace the ricotta cheese. I was going to go all out and make up an actual tofu ricotta (I always use the recipe from Skinny Bitch) but I couldn't be bothered getting out my blender. It would be fantastic with it though :)

It's been over a month since my last post!

Oh no, I appear to have forgotten I have a blog to update!

Haha, actually I've been busy settling in to my new job to really cook anything truly exciting. I've been cooking up big pots of curries and pasta and eating it for days, and it's mostly been all re runs. However, everything is all good now so I'll be able to cook nice things on the weekends and post :) Hooray.

For now I'll post about our Christmas food, and afterwards get back into it.

First up. On Christmas Eve we went and celebrated with my girlfriend's mum (she had to work on Christmas day). She likes to cook up a spread (even though there's usually only two or three people eating!). I contributed Beetloaf and she made various other bits including: Roasted potato, sweet potato and pumpkin, Roasted beetroot cubes with parsley and olive oil, pea and zucchini salad with spinach leaves and a garlic and olive oil dressing, cos leaf salad with fresh tomato and basil pesto dressing.

Yum.

And of course we had dessert! Strawberries and mulberries soaked in balsamic vinegar, a chocolate fruit cake, raw vegan cashew ice cream and some vegan meringues. (I may review these later). The berries particularly were to die for.

On Christmas day we trekked to my mum's house for breakfast. Everyone usually eats bacon and eggs and hasbrowns, so we just took some tofu to make scramble and some Sanitarium BBQ sausages to have while others ate their dead pig :) Also on the menu were barbecued hash browns, tomatoes and mushrooms. (Except they cooked the mushies with butter so I rescued the stems and put them in our scramble).

We saw a little frog in mum's pool (which I really wanted to swim in but it was freezing cold and raining, big surprise) and it couldn't get out so my sister rescued it and put it on a nice wet rock.

And finally, after hanging out at mum's for a while we drove up to dad's house for Christmas dinner! It was yummy Sanitarium vegie roast which we pretty much only ever eat at Christmas time so it's a bit of a treat, with roasted parsnip, carrot and potato, and steamed peas, brocolli and cauliflower and a shredded salad.

I didn't take a picture of my dessert because it looked like vomit! (Don't worry, I made it so I can say that).

This is it before we demolished it - vegan trifle! I don't really have a recipe. I use the sponge cake recipe from Easy Vegan Cooking by Leah Leneman, whatever brand of vegan jelly crystal packet the local health food stores are selling at the time, canned peaches in juice and I follow the recipe for custard on the custard powder packet except I use soy milk (and this time I used half soy and half coconut milk). Then layer as follows: sponge, peaches, custard, jelly - until you get to the top or run out of ingredients. Top with cream! (I made whipped coconut cream. Just refridgerate two cans of full fat coconut cream over night. In the morning carefully open each can and scoop out the cream part on top (it separates) add sugar and vanilla to taste and beat and beat til thick. I added a tablespoon or so of coconut oil so it remained solid in the fridge. Worked a treat and was divinely rich!)

We also had some chocolate crackles that my step mum made :) Mmmm. You can find that recipe on the side of any rice bubbles packet!

So Christmas was a success I think! Now to lay off the sugar and get back to being healthy.