Caaaaarbs

Fettucine with tomato-garlic-olive sauce, Cheezly white cheddar and a basil leaf fresh from the garden.

Just a simple olive and tomato sauce on pasta for dinner these past few nights. I was going to make up some pumpkin gnocchi today to have with it instead of fettucine again but I couldn't be bothered! It shall have to wait until tomorrow - but this was the last of the sauce so I'll make and freeze it for another time!

Anyway, it turns out dad may be able to fix my poor little overheating car tomorrow evening, and today rang around Super Cheap Autos and the like to see if they were open and had any thermostats suitable for my car. And strangely enough the one up the road from my house was open and had what I needed so I jumped on a bike (Nadine's, because my tires were flat) and raced to the store before they closed! A bit of an unexpected cardio workout. It's only a 6 km round trip but the speed coupled with the fact that Nadine is short and her bike seat is very low, the fronts of my thighs burned!

I didn't die though. :)

I had already gone for a walk this morning (up and down our nice little hilly area) to test out my new shoes, and they are lovely! I say it's worth spending a little extra to get good shoes. I wore my last pair twice before they stretched and became too loose for me to even walk in comfortably. These ones are bouncy and hug my feet. Yay! (By the way, I got them at a marked-down price at A Mart All Sports. They are an Adidas womens running shoe - all synthetic materials!)

Tomorrow Nadine and I start training together. This is a terrifying thought. I am a very solitary person and while I love Nadine very much I hate exercising with other people! Ugh. Last time we attempted it I got so cranky we ended up having a silly fight! Oh well - time to toughen up I reckon, considering we'll be stuck exercising together for 21.1km!

I love council pickup

Look at what I found!

I can't believe it I am so excited!

In Brisbane once a year the council does this 'council pickup' thing where people can put any of their old crap on the street (from fridges to old beds to mattresses to cardboard boxes) and the council will come and pick it up and dispose of it. This year they are encouraging the public to go round and get stuff they think they can recycle which is brilliant. (Apparently in past years we weren't supposed to...oops. Last year I found a Wedgwood teapot in perfect condition).

I collect teapots and tea sets.

ANYWAY! The bike! I bought a mauve coloured vintage traveller bike a while ago on eBay for a fair chunk of change. I love it. It's worth every penny. I've been wanting to get Nadine a bike too so we can go on some of the nice bikeways Brisbane has to offer (riding by myself is a bit boring, unless I'm going somewhere specific). But we've been so broke lately so it just wasn't an option for a while!

And today after work I went for a quick walk and saw this beauty (the maroon one).

It's in tip top condition, brakes work, gears look fine, it needs new inner tubes and tires. But the paint isn't even scratched, there is no rust that I could find in my quick inspection, the seat is untainted AND it's the perfect size for Nadine!

And it was free!

This totally made my week. Thank you people who can't be bothered selling such a gem for lots of money.

Eggplant Cacciatore

I decided to get up at the crack of dawn (actually it was still dark) to ride my bicycle to the local organic farmer's market which I only just found out about...yesterday. It was a lovely bike ride (I left once the sun had come up) I saw 2 ducks and their ducklings (no picture cuz I didn't take a camera...next Sunday I definately am) it was FREEZING and riding through the slight breeze made my ears ache - next time I'm wrapping a scarf around my head. But it certainly woke me up!

Anyway, I got this nice little eggplant and some other goodies (including dandelion greens - not much of an idea of what to do with them other than salad!) and so decided to make Eggplant Cacciatore tonight for tea.

This is adapted from a recipe in Vegan Italiano by Donna Klein.

Eggplant Cacciatore

1 med eggplant diced (you can peel if you want, I don't)

1 large onion diced

3 or more cloves garlic, chopped

1 green capsicum, chopped (or red, or yellow)

1/2 recipe of this marinara sauce from OrganicallyMe*

1 tsp dried oregano

1 tsp dried thyme

Handful of kalamata olives

Freshly ground black pepper to taste

Cooked pasta of choice (I used spaghetti)

Make the marinara sauce (or you could use pre made - I hate when recipe books call for pre packaged ingredients!)

In another pot (large stockpot) lightly fry onion, garlic and capsicum on med-low heat. Add the eggplant and herbs and cook for a few minutes until eggplant starts to soften a little. Stir in sauce and let simmer until eggplant is tender.

Serve over pasta!

It's quite tasty and pretty easy to make. You don't really have to pay much attention to it while it's cooking, unless the water boils out and it burns!

We had ours with Oxford Landing Shiraz - a nice, easy to drink vegan wine that is very, very cheap at $6 a bottle! The company who makes/owns this is in the process of changing most, if not all, their wines to vegan friendly. Very excited :)

 *With the marinara sauce, I used tomatoes that I had cooked a while ago and froze. I just eyeballed the amount - I figured it to look like one can of tomatoes would look like! I also left out the onion because there was already one in the other part of the recipe.

Macaroni Cheese, Tamale pie, red curry

Recipe from FatFreeVegan kitchen blog. I have tried other nutritional yeast based 'cheese' sauces and been dissapointed. This one, however, was exactly what I wanted :) I added some mushrooms, used fresh onion and garlic, and added some thin slices of vegan sausage. I also baked it in the oven, because that's what grandad used to do. I could eat this all day.

Tamale pie from Easy Vegan Cooking by Leah Leneman. We will be making this if ever we have company :) it's really delicious and easy to eat. Basically your favourite bean chilli recipe in a polenta pie. Mmm polenta. 

I made a thai red curry from the Organically me blog. I made twice the amount so we could have leftovers, used cauliflower instead of eggplant because that's what I had in the fridge. Adding the lime juice and zest was really different (I don't normally do that) and overall it was a very delicious and cheap to make. I had tofu in the freezer so I used that - I've never used it frozen before and the experience was quite odd - in a good way. It was kind of spongy and chewy.

I made a split pea and cauliflower soup for tea tonight but I forgot to take a picture :( It kind of looked like vomit anyway! But tasty :) I've never cooked split peas before.

Riding a bike is terrifying on the road. I took it for a practise run today. Just got to remember to look beore going around parked cars! My bum bones hurt (it has been years since I rode a bike properly! I did a day bike tour in Europe last year but that was different :P) but I'll get used to it. There isn't much suspension in a bike from yesteryear :D