Happy Sunday

Today has been one of those days where you sit on the couch thinking about all the things you should be doing rather than browsing through millions of food blogs and drinking cups of tea. I think it's because we bought a brand new doona yesterday. Yes I am blaming my blankets now. It's so soft and cushy and (not wool, feather or down!) warm and comfortable I decided to not get out of bed for ages, which of course set me up for the rest of the day.

Though I did manage to attempt to do some sort of yoga before breakfast (which was porridge with banana and peanut butter), but only did about 3 different poses (including a few sun salutes) because I am getting increasingly annoyed with my lack of ability to touch my toes. Motivation for yoga has been hard to come by since I crashed my bike (funnily enough, so has cycling) even though my wrist is FINE and getting stronger everyday with all the heavy lifting we seem to be doing at work lately. I know I know, I just have to get off my ass and just do it. I know I'll like it! I bought a new yoga DVD yesterday in the hopes that it would motivate me but within the first 5 minutes it rubbed me up the wrong way so bad I turned it off and had a sook. Ah, hormones!

I made this delicious guacamole to have for a mid morning snack (instead of running! this would have been pefect for after a nice sweaty run). Mash 1 small avocado, stir in 5 chopped cherry tomatoes, a couple of tbsp of sour cream (I used the cashew sour cream from Addicted to Veggies - so good!), a dash of onion powder and black pepper. Stir and enjoy with corn chips or crudites or with a spoon.

I also managed to wash my car, which I've been meaning to do for a couple of weeks. I ended up getting a new  (used) car by the way hooray! And it got so filthy from all the dust while parking at work (so dry). So I vaccumed out all the potting mix and put in some floor mats to protect the carpet from my scummy work boots. While I was cleaning the back seats out I discovered they could sort of fold out (i'm not sure of the purpose of this) and underneath was a lovely history of the previous owners (or their children). They went to the beach a lot, ate lots of chips and drank cans of something. Mmmm. I washed the outside using only four buckets of water, and of course a huge storm has now rolled in and the rain clouds looks dark and ominous. Oh well, I enjoyed looking at it's shiny-ness when I walked down the stairs before!

For lunch I had this amazing bowl of soba noodles. I made a similar sauce with sunflower butter and soy sauce, only I added in some chilli flakes. The veges are a grated carrot, 2 grated radishes and all the greens from one bunch of radishes. I also put a handful of rye berry sprouts on top. Yum.

I bought a lifetimes supply of various noodles while in the Valley yesterday. (I also had vegan 'fish' at a little vegan/vegetarian asian restaurant but I didn't take my camera :( It tasted disturbingly like real fish, though I could tell it wasn't because it had the chewy texture of gluten).

Yesterday for an afternoon snack I made up some of this cream from Addicted to Veggies (I may be a little obsessed!) It would be amazing on peaches like in the original recipe but unfortunately they are not in season in Australia at the moment. Strawberries are, however, and we dipped them in the cream and thought about how amazing it would be as a frozen dessert...

Tomorrow I shall jump back on my exercise wagon, stop sooking about my lack of flexibility, and see if I can still run 3.5km (or 26 minutes) without stopping like I did last week! That was pretty exciting. It gave me confidence knowing I can probably run this 5k in less than 45 minutes or whatever it said I had to. Ha.

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.

Unexpected day off work...

...For a crappy reason - even though last week the thermostat was replaced, my car continues to overheat! Very sad. So I had to take it in to a mechanic today to get fixed. Which means I can't get to work (I looked up public transport - I'd have to get the bus at 4:15am. Ha.) Fortunately it isn't going to cost too much. I'll still be being extra thrifty for the next few weeks though! Not working today lost me a bit! Oh well. Hopefully this time it stays fixed.

Anyway so we had some out of state friends over for dinner last night. We had delicious delicious curry which I keep meaning to post but the pictures look crap, I've made it about 5 times it's so fabulous! Drank a few drinks - scotch and soda, and gin and water and lime. (We have to force ourselves to drink the bottle shop we already have before buying more wine!!) and afterwards we played trivial pursuit, and Nadine beat us all down with shame. She literally knows everything.

So since today I was off work, I could make whatever I wanted for lunch. I was reading this post at the tropical vegan, and thought the first one looked particularly delicious, so I made something similar! When I was in highschool, I used to come straight home from school and make some spicy 2 minute noodles and grate about two cows' worth of cheese into it so it all melted and turned into a gluggy noodle cake/soup mess.

Yes I was feral. This is a much better idea!

I had all the ingredients already (noodles leftover from the rice paper rolls I made the other day). I grated half a sweet potato, finely chopped half an onion, a clove of garlic and a fair few frozen peas into a frypan with a tiny bit of rice bran oil. Cooked until it all softens (smells really good) and I put the preared bean thread noodles into the pan and tossed it all with a sauce made from peanut butter, vegetarian oyster sauce and some water, and then served with some sesame oil. Yum. Served the both of us.

I was so stressed about my car dying again that I dreamed about the engine exploding, I actually slept-walked (got up and put on Nadines old doc martens thinking they were running shoes - I only woke up because they were the hard ones and felt funny.) Ugh. So I decided some biscuits were in order, and thought these shortbread on Tea and Simpatico sounded lovely. I followed the recipe exactly except used wholemeal flour and three tea bags of chai tea. They were sooooo good. We had them with a cup of vanilla green tea :)

By the way, it totally hailed this afternoon.

Curry soup

The other night we made a red curry coconut noodle soup :) I can't remember exactly what I did as I usually just eyeball ingredients for this sort of thing. I wrote a recipe for my sister, but failed to keep a copy for myself but oh well. I'll just give an outline. Curry soup is really to taste.

Red Curry Coconut Noodle Soup
Serves about 8 or 10 depending on how big your stomach is and how many veges you decide on

Ingredients:
Tin of red curry paste (I use Maesri brand - you can buy it at Woolworths, sometimes at Coles. It's the only brand I've found so far with no shrimp paste or other animal products in it. They also do a Mussaman paste and a yellow curry paste. Both delicious.)
2 cans of coconut cream (or milk) I use woolworths home brand light coconut cream
1 large onion
Garlic cloves (to taste, I usually use about 4 big ones)
Assorted veges - this time I had brocolli, cauliflower, carrots, eggplant, bean sprouts, bok choy, sweet potato, spring onions (scallions), snow peas
About 500mL 'chicken' stock (or whatever you have in the cupboard - mushroom would work nicely too but chicken flavoured is really best)
300g packet of tofu
1 400g tin of baby corn
1 400g tin of chickpeas

Noodles of choice

..I think that's about it.

Method:

Start off by lightly frying the onion, tofu and garlic together. Then add the tin of curry paste and stir for a little while. Try not to burn it. You can use oil, or a bit of the prepared chicken stock if you like. If using eggplant or sweet potato add in here. I didn't peel, or salt my eggplant, it sits in the curry long enough to no longer be bitter anyway. But you can if you wish.

Add in all the vegetables (including tin chickpeas and corn) and a can of coconut cream. (I usually use cream but milk would probabaly work better - next time I think I'll use 1 cream and 1 milk.) Stir it until combined. Add about half the stock and the rest of the coconut milk or cream. Cook until vegetables are tender.

It's supposed to be a soup, so if it's not liquidy enough add the rest of the stock or add some water. This time mine was rather thick because I used way more veges than usual - I needed a bigger pot! Another way that would work is if I served up the noodles and curry, then added some stock in at the end to make it soupy.

Serve in a soup bowl with noodles.

(The burnt mess on top the bowl there is a slice of eggplant I tried to grill. I forgot to put oil on it, so my partner tried to add oil about half way through, but it was spray oil and we have a gas oven, so it caught fire. No damage though - eggplant slice was chewy, but the cat liked it!)