Mmm carbs

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!

Sometimes simple is best



Dipped in lindt 85%

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



They are touching without squabbling!





Chuck a Choko in!

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!

More noodly lunch

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.

Tom Yum Soup, Fresh Rice Paper Rolls, and Vegan Panna Cotta!

I was home alone today since Nadine had to work (sadface) but it gave me the opportunity to spend all day pottering about in the kitchen!

I found a stalk of lemongrass in the fridge that I harvested last week sometime and I can't remember why, so I decided another Tom Yum Soup would be on the menu. This time I used some of that Vegetarian Oyster Sauce instead of soy sauce, to give it a 'fishy' taste. I couldn't taste any notable difference! (That oyster sauce, by the way, has over 1000mg of sodium per 15mL serve. I don't think I'll rush to buy it again!What it lacks in sugar it makes up with salt.)

In the morning I made up a couple of fresh rice paper rolls to go with it. Inside are: bean thread noodles, fried tofu, shredded purple cabbage and finely sliced carrot. Served with a mix of peanut butter and soy suace. I meant to put sesame oil in the sauce but I forgot about it :(

I was flicking through the Concious Cook to find something for dessert and the Vanilla Bean Panna Cotta with Orange Sauce jumped out at me and screamed 'MAKE ME MAKE ME'. So I did.

Before the sauce. Do you like my pretty plate? It's part of a vintage tea set from Czechoslovakia. I rescued it from Nadine's mum's giant chest of antiques she was getting rid of. I was going to sell it to the Antique center because I really don't have room...but it's so pretty I'm going to keep it.

Oh man. So delicious. The recipe made 6 serves so there's more for the next couple of days! The sauce is amazing - a plain caramel would be better with the vanilla, but I just made what was in the book. It's orange juice and zest, brown sugar and a bit of whiskey. Yum. I was supposed to strain it but I like chunky sauces (and soups, and gravies). The panna cotta itself is basically a cashew cream set with agar agar. It's a little tiem consuming to make (like most of the recipes I've tried in this book) but is completely worth it.

This is how we celebrated the Royal Wedding (which I totally watched. Shame!) Classy, no? Hello Kitty jammies, a hideous Marilyn Manson shirt and two bottles of red wine. I actually enjoyed the wedding very much, I thought it was lovely and romantic. Hahaha. I couldn't make it to the famous balcony pash because before that the stupid announcers started doing the 'fashion judging' which I can't freakin stand. And I thought they were very mean to Beatrice and Eugenie Ferguson.

We ended up taking poor Bob to the vet :( She had a very high temperature and hadn't eaten anything for days. The vet said she probably got into a fight with another cat (no surprise there!) and had an infection, so she gave her an antibiotic shot. We opted for the shot even though it cost more, because we value our arms and faces, and it lasts for two weeks and is less painful for everybody involved! Anyway, she perked right up within hours and has been running around and chowing down on her food and even went visiting with the neighbours! Hooray :)

Enchiladas + Lentil Loaf

We have been very busy doing nothing. On Sunday I made a big pot of chili (black bean and kidney bean and quinoa) and we've been eating that. Last night we turned it into a sort of enchilada thing:

We wrapped the chili mix up in flat bread things, topped it with tomato sauce/salsa (tin tomatoes, garlic, olives, onion, sliced fresh jalapeno) and grated a little bit of Cheezly cheddar on top with a heaping of nutritional yeast.

It tasted like pizza. Mmm. Cheezly white cheddar style is quite good.

Tonight Nadine made dinner: a Lentil and tofu loaf from Easy Vegan Cooking by Leah Leneman, with roasted potatoes and chunky mushroom gravy from Vegan on the Cheap. I steamed up some edamame to put on the side for something green on the plate. The loaf was pretty damn good (ingredients: red lentils, onion, tahini, miso paste).

(I've been slack in adding up serving prices! I really haven't bought much.)

Mum got me a new digital camera for my birthday! I've been playing with it. It's a sony Cybershot 14.1 mega pixel. I went and bought it myself - Myer had them really, really cheap. Really cheap.

Blurry Bob. Bob wasn't feeling well for a few days and enjoyed lots of scracthes. :) She usually stalks off or glares at the mention of a cuddle!

And grumpy Charlee doesn't like being picked up. Heh heh.

101st post!



DO NOT LEAVE MARMITE TOAST UNATTENDED



Vegan Chilli

Who needs another freakin vegan chilli recipe when there are 2340873259872395715 billion out there on the web already? Every vegan cookbook I own has a chilli recipe in it. But if you're like me, and try a new recipe every time you make it, just in case there is an even better one, then why not post another recipe, I say! Ha. Especially since this one was pretty delicious.

This one makes a huge pot. Halving it would work fine.

Three-Bean Chilli (or, Another Vegan Chilli)

Serves 9

Ingredients

4 garlic cloves, chopped

1 huge onion, sliced

200g carrots, diced

100g celery, diced

1.5 cups cooked kidney beans

1.5 cups cooked white (cannellini) beans

1.5 cups cooked black eye peas (or 1x400g can of each, or any kind of bean you like)

1 cup 'chicken' stock (I use Massel)

1 x 800g can tomatoes

2 bay leaves

1 tbsp dried oregano

1/2 tbsp ground cumin

1 tbsp hot chilli powder (more or less to taste)

First, fry (in oil or water) onion and garlic until soft. Add to the pan the carrots and celery and cook them til soft.

Chuck in the rest of the ingredients and bring to the boil. Once boiling turn down the heat and simmer until it's more 'saucy' and not watery. I think I did mine for about half an hour.

Serve on top of something - rice, quinoa, barley, pasta? Whatever you like! Easiest chilli ever. Actually they are all kind of easy.

This makes up for the expensive last post - About 70 cents per serve (not including the grain base if you use one, and there would be less serves if you didn't have a grain base.)

This was really pretty good for me just chucking things in the pot. I couldn't be bothered getting out a recipe book and I'm pretty sure chilli usually has cumin and oregano in it. Well it does now. The 1 tbsp of hot chilli was fine for us, but firey-toothed people may want to add more, (or less if you're chicken).

Charlee likes to sit in awkward places.

This is a very, very rare occurence. In fact they can barely stand being in the same room as each other. We don't mind fitting ourselves around the cat's comfort, especially if they BOTH want to sleep with us haha.

Ah, cats. Endless amusement you are. Except when you dig up my carrot and bean seeds. Gah.

Finally some sun

This weekend has been the first sunshiny weekend since I can remember so I took the oppurtunity to go and repair my tiny little garden and nearly walked into this lovely spider and a baby her teeny tiny man-friend It had created a huge web stretching from my hills hoist clothesline to my lemongrass, which reached my waist. So I left it there and went around (through our lawn which also almost reaches my waist) and weeded and planted some new butter beans.

Bob glared while we had iced soda water and lemon on the back stairs.

Speaking of lemongrass, it was growing over the footpath so I cut it back and am drying it on the back of our kitchen door. (We share the yard with neighbouring units). When it's completely dry, I chop it up in tiny pieces with some scissors, and put it in an empty spice container. 1 tsp makes a good cup of lemongrass tea. Grate some fresh ginger into the pot and it's the best lemongrass and ginger tea ever :) My lemongrass seems to be loving the Brisbane climate. Almost as soon as I planted it out from it's pot it took off. When I figure out how to harvest the stalks, I'll use it in cooking. Ha.

We had a delicious lunch after gallivanting around to shops to buy storage stuff. We now have a shoe rack. It's magnificent. Anyway I made Robin Robertson's 'Very Veggie Burger's from Vegan on the Cheap a while ago to have on sandwiches for work. I didn't really like it because they are too soft, but I thought maybe they'd be better freshly grilled and hot on a burger bun. They are definately better eaten right after cooking! Haha. We had it on wholegrain bread rolls with a spinach/kale salad mix, red capsicum, tomato, kalamata olives, basil pesto and tomato sauce. I also cooked up some potato chips on the side :) I sliced up 1 small potato with skin on each into chip shapes, steamed them until they could be pierced with a fork and then fried them til crispy in a bit of rice bran oil. Pretty damn good.

I am baking some bread right now. If turns out good I'll post it :) This is my third time attempting bread by hand. The last 2 times the bread tasted fantastic but was like a brick! We ate the whole lot at once. This time I'm attempting a sandwich loaf. If it works I'm going to be so excited haha.

Loaf!



Housewifery!

I baked some muffins today! these Carrot Spice Muffins from FatFreeVegan blog. They turned out perfectly! I had heaps of carrots in the fridge to use before they went bad (I bought a 2kg bag at the farmer's markets because we usually use carrots in everything! Haven't used them once. I resorted to taking carrot sticks to work.) Anyway really yummy muffins. Make them. They are tasty AND healthy.

I made this DELICIOUS loaf for dinner tonight. There aint nothing like a good vege loaf. I think I've found my Christmas dinner :) It is Beetloaf by The Stripey Cat. It held together really really well even though I cut it almost as soon as I got it out of the oven. We had it with steamed corn, brocolli, carrots and beans from the garden.

It's a little blurry but the loaf is bright pink and yummy.

And Bob looked too cute today, dozing (literally all day) on the spare bed. :)

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.  

Vege Patch

I am a very good procrastinator. I have a research project due tomorrow morning and what am I doing? Updating my blog.

I had already planned to plant some beans, peas and radishes yesterday, but not only did I do that, I re did my entire patch!

It doesn't look like much now, but it will soon :) I live in a block of units so I've made do with a tiny little patch of dirt that I've made a little bigger by pulling out some grass. I wonder if I'm allowed to do that? Oh well.

I relocated almost all of my plants that were already there except the cauliflower (center back) it's growing very very slowly because it hasn't had much sun this winter. The sun is moving across now though and in spring/summer it will be full sun. I don't think they'll ever cauli-flower though, but I'll give it until they die :)

I've got lots of little chilli plants that I'm trying to rejuvenate, a few basils (which aren't very nice at the moment :( ) various other herbs in pots and some flowers. I've planted purple king climbing beans at the back on the tall teepee (left) and soy beans on the other side. I'm not sure if they climb. Peas in front of the soy beans and butter beans in front of the purple :) And I planted some radish seeds in the very front. Apparently they are very simple to grow and can be grown all year round - why then are they so expensive to buy in the shop?

Anyway Bob (our cat) decided she would like to dig a hole right in the middle of it just after I took this photo. GARgahghdajfeni. Luckily she didn't dig up any seeds...besides, who could stay mad at this?

Or this?

Or this??

I can't :) I may have to put up some chicken-wire though...I would like some beans peas and radishes, personally :) We also have bush turkey problems too...