Vegan pub food?

Bring it on.

Now I am aware that the last time I updated this it was December, and now it is May. I might be able to remember what we id in Melbourne last year but I won't hold my breath. I do have the photos of the food though so it'll hopefully jog my memory =D

There was beer. This was the Cornish Arms I believe. Walking distance from our friend's place. Score.

What's that? Vegan chicken parmagiana!? Ahahaha, it was pretty good. I can't compare it to a nonvegan parma because I've never had one.

Vegan steak and bacon sandwich. And more beer.

There's a vegan burrito as big as my head behind the vegan steak and bacon sandwich. It came with vegan sour cream and guacamole and it was pretty damn good. It had the usual bean chili filling but also chunks of gluteny fake meat goodness.

I remember a vegan chicken burger thing too but my photo is mighty blurry, and it was essentially the parma in a burger bun.

So much gluten. So much fake meat products. I feel the need to mention I don't usually eat faux meat products like this, partly because they are made of gluten and partly because they are expensive. And also, I don't feel the need to constantly recreate the meat I used to eat in the vegetables I eat now. Every now and then it's fun but it can get a little creepy. Like the vegan burger I tried to eat in Spain...it was too real. However while I prefer to eat naturally vegan foods like vegetables and beans and tofu, it's also excellent fun to go down to that place in the Valley and eat ALL the faux meat things!

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.

It seems a sin to toast freshly baked bread..

As you can see the cheeze doesn't really melt - it softened though. And the toastie tasted amazing.



After a second rising

I've discovered something that makes my bread less dense and rise a little more - blackstrap molasses. I always knew sugar feeds yeast but I was unwilling to put it in my bread, but then I thought, wouldn't molasses do the same thing? And at the same time my bread would get a little bit of added iron and calcium and other good things? Indeed.



Mmm.

Just follow the same recipe as my bread from before, just add 1.5 tablespoons of molasses to the water before you warm it up. (I just went and looked at my recipe, and discovered I haven't even been following it - I use 500g flour now for some reason. )

Seedy bread

Makes 1 loaf

Ingredients:

500g wholemeal flour

50g gluten flour

1/2 tsp salt

2.5 tsp instant yeast (you can buy this in a big tube at woolies - keep it in the freezer.)

1.5 tbsp blackstrap molasses

Seeds of choice (I usually use 2 tbsp each of: sesame, flax, poppy and sunflower. I also like adding pumpkin seeds.)

about 1 1/2 cups warm water

Method:

Mix together flour, gluten flour, salt, seeds and yeast. Make a well in the center and pour in the warm water and molasses mixture (start with one cup).

Mix the dough, adding more water until a firm elastic dough is achieved.

Turn onto a floured bench. Knead for 5 minutes or until smooth. Place in an oiled bowl and let rise for about an hour or until double in size.

Knead again lightly. Press out dough gently to about the length of your loaf tin and roll it up. Place the rolled up dough in the tin with the 'seam' side down. Let rise again until doubled.

Bake at 200 degrees C for 30-40 minutes or until brown and sounds hollow when tapped.

----

I always grind my flaxseeds before doing anything with them - you can't digest them if they're whole, and therefore would not get all the nice nutrients from them! You know, like omega 3.

Anyway, this is about my sixth loaf of bread I have made at home since the last time I bought any at the shops. It's awesome. I'm getting quicker at just whipping it up when I get home from work if we've run out :) Though I usually do it on Sunday afternoons and make all the neighbours jealous at the smell of baking bread wafting through the air!

No cows were harmed in the making of this cheese toast

I made some cheeses from the Ultimate Uncheese cookbook today :) The above is the brie, which kind of actually tasted like brie - it had the moldy aftertaste somehow. I may have been imagining it.

On the left is the colby cheese - pretty tasty, will be excellent on sandwiches and toasties, or even grated and melted on pizza. Right is the brie, and the one at the bottom is a raw macadamia cheese from Addicted to vegies. It's the best one! So easy to make (all of them are easy to make) but the raw macadamia one had the most flavour. I served them as a cheese platter with carrot sticks, celery sticks and chickpea crackers. I don't think I'll ever spend heinous amounts of money on storebought vegan cheese substitutes again, all three of these tasted better than any I've had, and I know exactly what ingredients are in it. I think I've had about a years worth of vitamin B12 today alone!

The two cheeses from the Ultimate Uncheese cookbook are both set with a fair amount of agar agar powder so it could get expensive, but that depends on where you buy it. I get mine in little packets from an Asian supermarket in the city for $2 each, so it's not going to break the bank for me.

Now, I don't miss real cheese at all. I also do not think substitutes are necessary for a vegan lifestyle or diet to work, but I reckon it's fun to make things like this every once in a while :) Just cuz I can.

Beans beans the magical fruit

We've been eating lots of bean based main meals and lunches lately, sort of a subconcious way of saving a bit of money - beans are so cheap, and I always have dried beans in jars or cooked beans in the freezer which also makes it a very easy fallback. The only thing is, we've hardly been eating any vegetables (other than beans and onion)! So I went to hang out with my mum in the city on Saturday I ordered the most vege-full thing I could. Bring on the brocolli!

The first thing that started us on the bean frenzy was this: Black Beans in a Red Velvet Mole, on page 134-135 of Appetite for Reduction, my new favourite cookbook. I picked this one night because I had a surplus of black beans in the freezer, and the ingredients sounded so weird and wrong together. Chocolate, tomatoes and chilli? Cinnamon and oregano? Why not! So I made it, it smelled like a cake when it was bubbling away, and at the end it was rather delicious. I don't know if I'll rush to make it again, but it certainly wasn't bad in the slightest! I served it with roasted sweet potato on the side. And I also think Australian chilli powder is way hotter than American - I only put 2 tsp in plus some red chilli flakes and it was just hot enough without burning my mouth out.

Next on the list was the Seitanic Red and White Bean Jambalaya on page 170-171 of Veganomicon. I obviously used black beans instead of white. I made this because I wanted to make risotto, but Nadine would be home late and risotto doesn't stay good for too long after you cook it. I'm sure Nadine wouldn't have minded, but that'll have to wait for another day! but anyway, this was so so good. I didn't have any tomato paste so I omitted it, I used brown rice and so had to cook it for a bit longer, and next time I make it (because I will) I'll put a bit more cayenne in it. I already doubled what it said in the recipe but it's still not much! This was really easy to eat, and was excellent for work lnuch the next day. Oh, and I didn't bake it - I don't think my casserole would be big enough, hahaha.

On Friday it was Nadine's turn in the kitchen - she made the Cincinatti Suburb Chilli on page 80 of Vegan on the Cheap. It was actually a bit similar to the Mole in that it also had cocoa powder in it! I love my bean chilli served on pasta so this was pretty damn good. We also added in some frozen corn kernels and a few cubes of frozen spinach because by this time I was getting a bit concerned about the lack of vegetable! The cheese sauce on top is from the same book, and I've made it a few times now.

No cows were harmed in the making of this toastie

This is a terrible picture, but there was leftover Cheese sauce so I had a cheese toastie in the morning for breakfast! I squeezed some yellow American mustard on it and some black pepper. This tasted like McDonalds - therefore would probably be amazing for a hangover breakfast! I'm going to have another one today but we have no bread so I'll need to run to the shops - I may also try to make some tempeh bacon to put in it. Could a toastie get any better??

So all in all, this week I'm pretty sure we've only needed to buy a million cans of diced tomatoes (we unfortunately have a smaller freezer now and I can't fit in any home cooked tomatoes :( ) and onions!

Birthday cupcakes :)

These are the cupcakes we made in replacement of the failed carrot cake cupcakes for my dad's birthday :) They are the chai latte cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World and are pretty amazing! I topped them with a vanilla cream cheese (I used King Land Soy Cream Cheese) icing with dusted cinnamon and grated 85% dark chocolate.

The recipe for the icing in the book makes a fair bit more than I needed for the actual cupcakes (which Nadine baked by the way) so I ate the rest out of the bowl. And felt sick. Also pretty sure my teeth will fall out.

Without icing



We figured out my carrot cake cupcakes didn't work because there was too much liquid in it (all the oil came out and dripped through the paper ugh). One of the ingredients is yoghurt and I used my homemade stuff which has a fair bit more water in it than store bought stuff. Ypghurt is also in the chai cupcakes but Nadine drained off the water and strained even more water out of the yoghurt and look! They turned out perfect.

Or maybe Nadine can just bake cupcakes and I can't!

Piping icing is messy. My piping bag is quite ancient and it sort of leaked out. I used a large star shaped nozzle.

Dammit now I want more.



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.

Caprese bites/appetisers

Very simple: a thin sliver of Teese Mozzarella (I buy mine at the Green Edge, when I buy it. It costs about $11 for 10 ounces, which is very expensive. But sometimes I want it.) , a slice of fresh tomato (mine are tiny), a sprinkle of black pepper and a fresh basil leaf. Eat!

So simple and so yummy. It needs a rice craker or piece of toaste underneath it, but I was lazy and just wanted a little snack.

Todays harvest: teeny yellow capsicum, even teenier tomato (supposed to be a regular sized one not cherry!) and a tiny strawberry.

The capsicum had gotten eaten a little bit. The tomato was divine (and the last one off all my tomato plants - I only ended up with about 6 tomatoes from 5 plants haha), and the strawberry was so sweet and delicious. I wish my plant would grow more than 1 every so often!

Passionfruit Baked Cheesecake

I've just been cooking reruns lately and throwing stuff together from my stash of leftovers in the freezer, so I'm posting other stuff I just haven't got aroud to yet. Like this delicious cheesecake :)

Passionfruit Baked Cheesecake
Serves 8 - 10

Ingredients
Cheesecake
125g vegan cream cheese (I used Tofutti but another brand will work too)
300g firm silken tofu
1/2 cup raw sugar
2 tbsp rice syrup or maple syrup
2 tbsp corn flour
1 tsp vanilla extract

Passionfruit glaze
1/4 cup passionfruit  pulp (from about 6 small fruit)
1 tsp agar agar flakes, soaking in some water
1/4 cup additional water

(Plus your favourite cheesecake crust recipe - mine wasn't very good! I sort of made an oatmeal shortcrust pastry)

 Put the first 6 ingredients in a food processor and blend until very smooth.

Like so. Try not to eat it all. It is pretty good.

Pour into your prepared crust and bake in a 180 degree oven for about an hour. Mine took a little bit more. It should be firm around the outside and almost set in the middle. Set aside to cool while you make the passionfruit glaze to put on top.

Combine the passionfruit pulp, drained soaked agar agar, and 1/4 cup water in a small sauce pan. Cook on a low heat until reduced to about 1/4 cup. Pour mixture over the cheesecake (it doesn't have to be cold) and put it in the fridge at least 3 hours before slicing and eating!

I used a springform cake pan to make mine. I just find it easier to take out and slice then.

The passionfruit seeds got a little crunchy. You can just pour the pulp over the top without cooking it at all if you can't be bothered. I won't bother next time! The glaze part was mainly just an experiment.

This cheesecake is so awesome. We ate it all in about 2 days (gluttons!!).

I will refine the recipe and next time I make it I'll post it again including the crust, if I actually make a good one. Mine always seem to turn out like tough pastry! Which I like, but Nadine likes biscuit crumb bases :)

Homemade Wholemeal Orecchiette

Homemade Wholemeal Orecchiette with Brocolli
Serves 4 (small)

This is adapted from the Kitchen Garden Companion recipe by Stephanie Alexander called Orecchiette and Brocolli on page 180.
Ingredients

For the Pasta:

50g (about ½ cup) chickpea flour
200g (1 cup) wholemeal plain flour
½ tsp salt
100g (½ cup) tofu ricotta
Almost half a cup of water

For the Brocolli:

500g brocolli, cut into even sized pieces
4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
3 tsp capers
2 fresh red chillies, finely chopped
vegan margarine (I use Nuttelex Lite) optional
2 tbsp Nutritional Yeast

Method:

First, make the pasta. If you can live without it, trim the thumb nail on whichever hand you use most real short.

In a small bowl mix together the flour, chickpea flour and salt. If you want you can sift it all (I'm too lazy to do this!), but make sure you add the bran back in afterwards otherwise it isn't really wholemeal any more!

Stir in the Tofu Ricotta until it starts to clump together in lumps of dough. Add water a little bit at a time (I started with ¼ cup) until dough comes together cohesively. I ended up using almost a ½ cup. This depends on how moist your 'ricotta' is.

Turn out onto a floured bench and knead for about 5 minutes. Wrap up in cling wrap or a plastic bag and leave at room temperature for 15 minutes.

After that (I ended up leaving mine for more like half an hour because I got distracted) take dough out of the plastic wrap (keep it!) and knead again on a floured surface until very smooth and supple. Break away a small lump (about the size of an egg) and re-wrap the remaining dough in plastic (so it doesn't dry out). Roll out the dough into a long snake shape, about 1cm thick. You should do this in a bit of flour so it doesn't stick to the knife too much in the next step.

Get a sharp knife and slice little bits of dough off the snake at about 3mm intervals. This is like making tiny gnocchi! Once you've done that, pick up a bit of dough and press with your (trimmed nail) thumb into the palm of your other hand and twist slightly. Put your first orecchiette on a baking tray lined with baking paper and continue repeating until all your dough has become little pasta shapes. (I'd have taken a photo of how to do this step, but I'm home alone and no one really wants to see my hands anyway! Maybe there is something on google.)

Now, either let your fresh pasta dry out, or freeze it until you need it for the meal. Or you can cook it straight away in boiling water. It shouldn't take too long fresh – about 5 minutes. Just keep tasting until it's ready for you :) They should float when done, like gnocchi does.

Put a large pot of water on to boil for cooking the pasta.

Then in a frying pan, start to fry your finely chopped garlic and thinly sliced red chilli in a fair amount of oil on med-low heat until the garlic is softened.

If the water is not yet boiling, take garlic and chilli off the heat until it is.

Once water is boiling, add your chopped brocolli pieces to the frying pan and return to the heat. Put your orecchiette into the boiling water and give it a stir. Don't forget about it! Mushy pasta isn't really fun. Especially since you just spent a fair bit of time making it!

Cook your brocolli on a higher heat until it turns bright green and starts to soften. Add in your 3 tsp of capers and let cook until the pasta is done.

Drain pasta and serve out equally into four bowls. (We had our two bowls then some containers for lunch the next day). Stir through the brocolli 2 tbsp of nutritional yeast and stir until it dissolves/goes soft. Divide evenly between bowls, top with a little blob of vegan margarine (if you want) and stir through pasta.

These seem to be really small serves so we had a bit of garlic toast with it. A salad would be better as the pasta is actually pretty filling!

I believe the tofu 'ricotta' really made a difference to the pasta. It resulted in a chewy texture and the herbs in it added a little bit of flavour. I was worried I'd put too much chickpea flour in because that's all I could smell when I was kneading it but it was perfect :) I'll definitely be making pasta like this again. The process didn't actually take that long, once I got the hang of twisting the little shapes. It probably took me an hour to make them all, not including kneading and sitting time. :)

Tofu Ricotta

Just a basic staple recipe I like to make every now and then. I actually made it today for use in a recipe I'm making for dinner, but the recipe only uses half a cup, so I had plenty left to eat as a snack!

Ingredients:

300g firm tofu (I use Nutrisoy and did not press it)

1.5 tbsp rice bran oil
1 garlic clove, crushed
half tsp dried oregano
Freshly ground salt to taste

Put it all into a blender/food processor. Crumble the tofu up a bit.

Blend until thick and smooth!

Store in an airtight container in the fridge for about a week. I doubt it'll last that long, this stuff is just that damn tasty!

I couldn't resist it being in the fridge so I cut up a small carrot, celery stick and a tiny little granny smith apple and used it as a dip. I ate it outside in the nice cool breeze with a cup of coffee :)



Pasta with Alfredo Sauce

I've come to the conclusion that it would be a good idea to post how much my recipes actually cost to make, per serve, in my entries. Otherwise what's the point of having a food blog that claims to be student-budget friendly! (Most of the time.) So, starting with this entry I am going to start doing that. I'll have to guess the prices of spices and things like pepper and salt.

These recipes may also not cost the exact same for you to make at home. It all depends on what specials are on at the stores, where you get stuff from etc yadda. Just to put it out there, I buy most of my general groceries at Woolworths (pasta, rice, spices, flour, cereal, tofu etc), specialty items at health food stores such as Mrs Flannery's or the Green Edge (gluten flour, dried beans and nuts, nutritional yeast, vegan cheese, agar etc) and fruit and veg usually at the fruit shop, or if I'm energetic I'll go to the farmer's market on my bike on a Sunday. The fruit shop is cheaper and better quality than Woolies, and the farmer's market is cheaper and better quality than the fruit shop, depending on what you buy. I also always try to buy in season. The market is good for this. (Though banana's are like $7 or $8 a kilo now and I bought some gah). Also, in any recipe that calls for milk, please remember I make my own for less than 40c a litre. This is a helluva lot less than store bought milk so keep it in mind :)

Anyway, to the food I made the other night!

I made Instant Vegan Alfredo from the Happy Herbivore. Does that look like a cheesy sauce to you?? It does to me!  The flavour reminded me of those Continental 'side dishes' pasta in a packet with cheese powder things I lived off when I went to uni. Only better. I followed Happy Herbivore's recipe pretty much exactly, but I used 2 cloves of fresh garlic instead of powder and a small onion instead of powder. I also added half a small brocolli and a carrot to up the vegetable content.

It made 4 servings and cost about $1.95 per serving.



Pizza night

We decided yesterday that it was about time for another pizza night.

This time the toppngs were: avocado, corn kernels, kidney beans, capers, kalamata olives, jarred jalapeno chillis, and the base sauce was made from cooked cherry tomatoes, onion, garlic and red wine. Mm it was very good haha. The bread was a little doughy because we got impatient while it was cooking, but it wasn't THAT doughy (like the first time I ever made pizza, in grade 8 in Home Ec class. MMMM raw flour.)

We also decided to splurge and put some vegan mozzarella on top. I had to buy Cheezly brand this time as my favourite little vegan store didn't have any teese mozzarella in :( we hadn't had the Cheezly mozz before (I think) and it was pretty much as nasty as we thought. It's ok cooked, but we could just eat the teese stuff! Oh well. It's also supposed to be 'super melting' but the pizza says otherwise. However, I had a toasted sandwich with copious amounts of Cheezly and some hash browns today and it melted all over the place. Maybe the pizza will need to be stuck under the grill for a little bit next time?

And holy crap it's so unbearably hot. Well obviously I'm bearing it because I'm still in the country and alive. But this morning I thought it a good idea to fix up my garden and plant more stuff, and it was a great idea until sweat starting pouring down my legs and into my eyes. I got most of what I wanted done, except sowing my mint seeds, but I can do that this afternoon when the sun goes away.

I bought two 40L bags of organic garden soil at Bunnings for $8.50 each because my soil is crap and so far I've dug one bag in. So as of this moment in my garden I have:

Herbs - basil, rosemary, thyme, parsley, lemongrass, garlic chives and regular chives, mint

Vegetables: hot chilli, sweet chilli, eggplant, tomatoes, purple carrots, purple climbing beans, butter beans, radishes, ginger.

I've put chicken wire over my beans to hopefully deter my cats from digging around in the nice new dirt they love. I am reaaallly looking forward to my carrots! I have put them in a nice deep window-box like planter box thing with potting mix with no lumps so in theory they should grow. Unless the cat digs it all up. Maybe I should chicken wire that too.

I'll take some pictures when it all starts sprouting. At the moment it's just a big black expanse of dirt with some wire and some stakes. :)



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.

Nadine's birthday food :)

I decided to make a recipe from The Complete Vegetarian Barbecue Book by Susan Geiskopf-Hadler. However, I forgot to buy mushrooms! So I used eggplant instead. And regular white potatoes because there weren't any red potatoes at the farmer's market on Sunday. (The recipe was 'Red Potato and Mushroom Skewers' by the way.)

So I cooked up some pasta (I was hungover and bought like 6 packets of different kinds of pasta for $1 each!) with some homemade basil pesto . This time I used my own homegrown basil and parsley as they are going nuts in this heat right now, and I also used pine nuts as we had some from a recipe we made ages ago. Then I mixed the pesto through the pasta with a little bit of the cooking water and topped with skewers that had the potato, eggplant and some kohl rabi on it. I had marinated the eggplant in some red wine vinegar and soy sauce for about 10 minutes before I made them. The eggplant soaked it up straight away.

The whole combination was rather delicious :)

And of course I had to make a birthday cake! This is a red velvet cake dyed with beetroot pulp and juice, with vegan cream cheese icing. I made a red velvet cake because the last time I attempted one (also Nadine's birthday) I didn't own an electric blender and it turned out an utter failure (I made 4 cakes stirred with a fork! Long story.). And tasted of food colouring. People at the party demolished it though! Ah, alcohol.

The picture came out way darker than it actually is! The cake was really a deep red/purple colour. Our cocoa powder also seems really dark so I used half the amount the recipe called for but it didn't seem to make a difference.

Anyhow it was still a rather good cake (and I really hate chocolate cake). I was going to cut the cake in half and put icing in the middle but the whole thing deflated to about half it's size! I am not sure why. Maybe because the recipe was for muffins. I just doubled it and stuck in a cake tin and baked it for ages. :)

I used this recipe from BitterSweet blog. The icing is just a basic cream cheese icing (¼ cup vegan cream cheese, ¼ cup vegan margarine, 2 cups icing sugar). Delicious but so sweet. I apologise to my teeth. I made double that because I thought I was going to ice the middle, so now we have leftover icing in the fridge. We almost managed a whole piece! Nadine liked it which is the main thing! Don't get me wrong I liked it too, but I'm not going to rush to make another one :)

 We ate it with this coffee substitute my step mum Margaret got us on to. Well she has Caro at home but this stuff was half the price for twice as much and had the same ingredients. It tastes a bit like coffee to me. I really like it, it's something a little bit different.

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