Random eats :)

The pecan crusted french toast from Skinny Bitch in the Kitch. Delicious. Don't think I'll bother with the whole sticking the chopped nuts to the bread next time - too fiddly and they burnt before the bread cooked properly - but wow. I've never had french toast before this and we both reckon it may turn into a weekend breakfast staple. I'd reccomend going for two pieces of bread for each person (if using heavy wholegrain bread like I did) because we couldn't quite finish it.

Barley and Cashew nut casserole from Easy Vegan Cooking. The only thing I don't like about this book is the apparent lack of flavour - so I just add some to the recipes when I make them. This one I cooked the barley with some beef style stock and a bay leaf, and added garlic. This is one that's better the next day (though still quite delicious the first day!) Meals like this are so easy to make and eat and are also filling and healthy. Good good.

A lunch the other weekend. Went perfectly with a bit of light reading and whipper snippering (lol.)

Fresh rice paper rolls with cos lettuce, grated carrot and some mashed chickpeas mixed with vegan mayo. Dipping sauce was sweet chilli and soy sauce. Sounds a little odd but totally worked :)

Life Update + Deconstructed hummus pasta

I have been fairly lazy blog-wise lately. I've been busy setting up house, reorganising what I've done to set up house, working, running and crafting. This year is turning into The Year of Doing Things I Always Wanted to But Didn't Because I am Too Lazy or Otherwise Unmotivated. (breath).

I've signed up for my first 5k race of the year (I intend on doing more than one) - The RACQ International Women's Day Fun Run/Walk, and I've been running pretty much every second morning to get ready for it. I'm lucky to live in an area that is FULL OF HILLS which is excellent for running training. I also figure that if I run for 15 mins up and down (steep ish) hills, it'd be like running for half an hour on dead flat ground. =P I actually enjoy this whole running business now. I've managed to get up at five am to fit it in before work and I've found on those days that I do run I have a lot more energy at work. I of course practically fall asleep by 7pm that night but that's ok :)

I have 3 craft projects going on at once at the moment (including my curtains which I have only finished one of so far) and I'll be trying hard to update about them if any progress has been made every Wednesday.

My house is coming together and I just bought a lawn mower (just in time too, the lawn is getting loooonnngg). It is a battery powdered one and I may review it once I've used it.

Now onto some food that of which this blog is about.

Ever had the best intentions of making hummus to eat but finding that the food processor is dirty turns you off?

Deconstructed Hummus Pasta

One Giant Serve.

Ingredients:

Pasta for one

2/3 cups cooked chickpeas

1 tbsp tahini

1 tsp extra virgin olive oil

1/4 tsp ground cumin

1 clove garlic, grated/minced

1 wedge of lemon, squeezed

Black pepper

Cook pasta. Put the rest of ingredients into a bowl and stir to combine. Add pasta to bowl and stir again. Enjoy!

I added about 5 cherry tomatoes that I found in the fridge to give it some colour. If I make it again I'd also probably add a little bit of water to thin the tahini a bit. It got quite thick :) 

This whole recipe provides you with 24% of your daily iron needs, 14g of protein, 13% calicum, 9% vitamin C, and only 21g sodium. (According to nutritiondata.com) I'm particularly impressed with the first three.

Or if you HAVE hummus, just cook some pasta and whack maybe half a cup of it on top. Yum.

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On other nonrelated news, this year I have signed up for the World's Greatest Shave for leukaemia! This is another thing I've been wanting to do forever.

I'll be shaving off what we like to refer to as 'The Bieber'. I'll miss him a little. :)

If you would like to sponsor me, please click here and follow the instructions :) Any amount is appreciated!

Some Food We Ate This Week

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!

Raw hummus

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.

Sprout sprout sprout!

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. 

More wheat berries!

(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!

A day of cooking

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.

Hot Cross Buns recipe and a little catchup on some mending

So I took another sick day at work. Hopefully I have enough hours to get paid for it! Anyway, I ended up making a lovely spicy chickpea dish from Stephanie Alexander's Kitchen Garden Companion called 'Chickpea and Tomato Curry' for dinner last night. I won't post the recipe because I followed it pretty much exactly, but it was basically chickpeas, tomato, onion, garlic, ginger and a delicious spice mix made from whole peppercorns, cardamom, garam masala, cinnamon, chilli powder and tumeric. So good, yet simple and fairly quick to make (if you don't count the hours it takes to cook dried chickpeas!)

I had just a small bit which took me ages to eat, with some brown rice. For some reason 2/3 cup uncooked rice made enough for 3! I usually do 1/2 cup each. Odd. We figured out I had a light fever so I opted then to stay home from work today whether I felt fine or not.

So in order not to waste my day, I randomly decided to start my mending! (I have a huge list). The first thing I picked up was my favourite winter hat (I don't know what it's made from; I got it years ago from a friend). As you can see it has a big...gap? tear? what would you call that? that needs fixing. It's been like that since I got it, pretty sure.

So I got out a crochet hook and fixed it! You can hardly tell, no? Since it's getting cooler now I should really start crocheting things again. I haven't done any for ages and I do enjoy it. I still have a half finished bolero I was making for Nadine about 3 years ago!

On to the Hot Cross Buns! As you can see, the crosses melted into the bread. Oh well. But anyway they turned out really soft! I was quite surprised.  I made a half batch so only 8, but I've been sitting around all day in my fat pants (so comfy) eating toast and these buns with heaps of margarine, so for next week I'll make at least double.

Hot Cross Buns

Makes 8

Ingredients

1 sachet of instant dried yeast

1/6 cup caster sugar

1/2 cup warm soy milk

1/2 cup warm water

2 cups plain wholemeal flour

1/2 tsp allspice

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp salt

heaping tbsp vegan margarine

1/2 cup currants

1 tbsp chia seeds mixed with 1/4 cup of water

1 tbsp caster sugar and 1/4 cup water for the glaze

Method

Mix together all dry ingredients. Add margarine and rub in with fingers. Stir through chia goo and slowly add in warm milk/water until a soft dough is formed.

Turn out onto a floured surface and knead until dough comes back when pressed.

Put into an oiled bowl in a warm place for 1 hour or until doubled in size.*

knoack back dough gently and divide into 8 even balls, and set out on a baking tray. (I used my pizza pan.) Let stand in a warm place until double again (doesn't matter if they touch). Turn oven to 200 degrees Celcius.

Bake for 15-20 minutes or until buns sound hollow when tapped.

Make a glaze by boiling the sugar and water until sugar dissolves. Brush onto warm/hot buns.

Eat when cooled down a little!

I, of course, had a few when they were fresh from the oven, but today I toasted them under the grill.

They were sweet and a little sticky from the glaze, just like they should be. I didn't bother with buying any fruit peel because I never use it all. I only just through out the rest of the bag from last year! I won't bother with the crosses next time, maybe. They worked last year (I did it differently) but maybe I just can't be bothered. Ha.

*I turn on my oven for a few seconds then turn it off. Perfect breeding ground for yeast!

Orzo Pilaf with Tofu Feta

Orzo Pilaf with Tofu Feta
(I used risoni pasta, a packet of frozen spinach, canned chickpeas and fresh herbs.)

I love pasta. I could eat it every day. So when I was looking for something that I hadn't already cooked 3000 times that was cheap, simple and quick to make for a mid week meal (ah, working life) this jumped out at me from guess which book? I'm almost embarassed to be using one book so much.

I plan my meals a week in advance so I don't have to think about it. Doing this also seems to cut down my grocery bill a fair bit :) I made up the Tofu Feta the day before I planned to make this to let the flavours develop overnight. Every day after it just tasted better and better :)

The only problems I had with this meal were that my stupid frozen spinach was what they call 'finely chopped' otherwise known as minced, and turned the whole thing kind of brown; and my olives tasted disgusting. I bought a different brand than I usually buy because they had a good special. If it ain't broke, don't fix it! Now I have a whole jar of gross olives to finish. Damn.

Other than that it was delicious, even better as leftovers, and made 6 servings instead of 4 as said in the book, and we were eating the tofu feta for days.

'Vegan on the Cheap'

Bought myself a new cookbook because I felt like it! Vegan on the Cheap by Robin Robertson. It's a great book! It's full of heaps of awesome tips about living cheaply but well. It's very handy :)

Tonight was Nadine's turn to cook so she decided to make 'Dan Dan-Style Linguine' on page 124. Basically a spicy peanut and tahini sauce with mixed veg and crumbled tofu on pasta. Delicious :) Very simple and very filling.

Last night was my turn and I chose something with chickpeas because I'd just cooked up a whole heap. I picked Moroccan Chickpeas and Couscous. I had every ingredient I needed except a can of tomatoes and raisins, but they only set me back about $2. I'm pretty sure I'll be making this, often. Very yummy :)

So the book was a good investment I reckon.

I also splurged on a soy milk maker! I am honestly sick of buying carton after carton at the supermarket (we buy at least 4 a week) and then just chucking the damn thing out. As much as we love our Sanitarium So Good Lite, I love the trees the cartons are made from more.

So today I trialled a batch :) I bought 2 glass bottles from the supermarker to store it all in, in the fridge. Mmm...it was OK. It smelled good, which is a good start. It tastes just fine which is also great. It's a little bit watery but that is easily fixed in the next batch.  However it had a bit of pulp in it, which we could get used to but I'd rather just not have it there.

Trial and error! I am very excited to try to make rice milk. I used to buy it when I went off soy milk for a while, but the commercial brand all have SO MUCH sugar in it (and some even seem to have corn syrup) so I refuse to buy it. But if I make my own plain rice milk, it'll be just fine.

The only thing is, our Santiarium stuff was fortified with B12 and calcium - so we're going to have to up the ante on other aspects of our diet to incorporate it. Lots of brocolli, I think. We haven't eaten that for a while. :)

I made a couple of recipes from the PPK :)

I stumbled upon this recipe for 'Chesapeake Tempeh Cakes' on the Post Punk Kitchen blog and had to try it. I'm always on the look out for ways to eat tempeh that isn't disgusting. This is definately one of them.

Look how disgusting tempeh looks! It's like congealed set vomit with lumpy bits, and not cooked properly that's kinda what it tastes like. This one was actually the cheapest one in the store - I got it at $4.75 for 125g. I chose it because it had chilli bits in it as you can see, and I thought that'd probably make it taste better again. Another thing wrong with tempeh is that it's so damn expensive. Last time I used a tofu-tempeh mixed block which was a good stepping stone (and cheaper at about the same price for twice as much), this time we were ready for the real stuff.

Man these cake things were good. As you can see from the top picture I served it with steamed mixed veges (carrot, home grown beans, farmer's market white radish, a very sweet yellow squash and some asparagus) and some steamed-then-grilled potatoes. Oh, and a chunk of extremely delicious organic avocado I couldn't resist picking up at the same store I got the tempeh from.

The little patties were very easy to form (I think they would make a good burger pattie or sausage if rolled into the right shape). I made mine smaller than the recipe did because I made 14 instead of 10. We had enough to eat for lunch today :) I also made heaps of the veges and reheated them today as well.

Yum. Pretty sure that I'll be using this recipe quite a bit as I start to be able to afford tempeh a little more often :)

This is another thing I made from the Post Punk Kitchen blog - Chickpea Picatta. It's a very simple dish of chickpeas (duh), garlic, onion, capers and white wine. I was so excited at finding a recipe with chickpeas that WASN'T a curry that I couldn't wait to make it and it didn't dissapoint. Though the greens I chose to serve it on (I bought some chicory at the farmer's market as I'd never had it before) were a little too bitter for the dish it was still really delicious overall. Nadine didn't mind the bitter though. I also decided to serve it on mashed potatoes as the recipe suggests - but since I don't like mashed potatoes I mashed in a parsnip with it, and it worked.

Unless you can find a really cheap vegan white wine to use in this recipe, it's not THAT cheap to make (well, compared to other recipes I make) but we just drank the rest of the bottle with dinner so there was no wastage! Well I had beer, someone else finished all the wine ;)

I cooked up a massive batch of chickpeas (they take so damn LONG) and have frozen the rest to use later. I'm using some tonight as a matter of fact, in a recipe from a cookbook I just bought myself, I am very excited about trying a recipe.

Mock tuna salad!

This is what some of my lunches have been this week...Mock Tuna Salad from here. I obviously had it with sliced raw vegetables...it's been hot this week here. In there I had: kohl rabi, carrot, cucumber and celery, all from the farmers market. The Mock Tuna Salad was awesome, I'll definately make it again. Texture-wise it was quite tuna-y, but not too much in taste which is good because I always thought tuna was icky. I could have made it more fishy by using more seaweed (I finely chopped up some nori for sushi), but this was fine for me!

Speaking of sushi, this salad would be really good inside it! 

Kohl rabi is amazing by the way. Every week at the market I buy one thing that looks interesting or that I really like. Kohl rabi has always intrigued me but I could never afford it! But this one was only $2.70. I didn't take a photo of it because I forgot. But it was bright purple. It tasted like radish, but without the spicy! Yum.

Nyah to those people who think I MUST be anaemic and calcium deficient purely because I don't eat animal products. This is what I choose to snack on a fair bit. It's may favourite way to eat kale. Very lightly sautee it in vegan margarine until it turns bright green. Grind some black pepper on top. Then eat! This time I added the greens from the kohl rabi. Pretty good - they tasted a lot like regular spinach. I find a lot of people think kale is bitter or tough, I don't think so...I also try not to cook it to death. But that's just me :)

Make your own hummous! Hummus? Hommous? chick-pea spread!

Why? Because it's cheaper than buying a tiny little container of it at the supermarket. And it tastes better.

Hummous

Makes a fair bit

Ingredients:

2 cans chickpeas, drained (reserve one can's liquid)

3 tablespoons tahini

2 tablespoons lemon juice

1 large garlic clove, crushed

Black pepper

Parsley

Put the chickpeas (minus liquid), tahini, lemon juice, crushed garlic, and some black pepper in blender. Blend. Add small amounts of reserved chickpea liquid until desired texture is reached.

I like mine really thick. Add more pepper if you want, and quickly blend in the chopped parsley at the end. You don't really have to have parsley, but it does taste nice. Put it in a air tight container in the fridge. You can probably keep it up to two weeks, if you can make it last that long :) I can't.

I usually put on sandwiches or toast, or I buy rice crackers...but that's bad because I usually eat the whole packet. Use it as a dip with raw vegetables like carrot, celery, brocolli, cucucumber, zuchini, anything really.