Pizza night!

It's been a while since our last pizza night, so we felt the need to make it. This time I decided to add on a bit of fake meat for shits and giggles. I made the 'Big Stick Pepperoni' recipe from Vegan on the Cheap. Man, this stuff is great. The secret ingredient is definately fennel seed, and the flavour is very strong in it. Next time I might cut it down just a tad, it's a little overpowering. Now, I never liked salami, it always grossed me out (always knew what it was , especially after working in a deli and slicing it every day ugh), but since I know this stuff isn't wrapped in fat netting, and is actually cooked and NOT moldy, then it tastes delicious. The texture is odd, as disgusting as this sounds, but it's kind of like a (real) salami that hasn't dried to a hard lump quite yet. So it kind of grossed me out, so before I put it on the pizza I fried it up a tad and it's much better. 

Unfried big stick pepperoni



So on the pizza in order was: tomato paste, caramelised onion, potato, olives, jalapeno pepper, pepperoni and a sprinkling of nutritional yeast. It was just greasy enough from the onions, without having the atery clogging greasiness of cheese on it. We had it with a much needed salad of baby spinach leaves, red capsicum, red onion, capers, radish and apricot kernels with a lemon juice-olive oil and black pepper dressing.

I got apricot kernels at the farmer's market this morning, and they taste like almonds (same species I think) except sweeter and they are about half the size. An excellent addition to a salad. I love adding crunch like nuts and seeds to my salad. I usually go for sunflower seeds but I had these :)

Yum. I look forward to lunch at work tomorrow.

Picnic!

It was the perfect day for a picnic. Nice and sunny, no clouds, no wind....:) We went to the botanic gardens which I think is my favourite place. I didn't take many pictures of the food because, well, it didn't look that nice. But it all tasted just perfect :)

We made a bush turkey friend:

I wasn't sure if she would actually attack us or not so I had to keep chasing her away. Pretty sure she just wanted our picnic food haha.

The bean salad was probabaly the best part. Definately a good thing to take to barbeques or whereever. I cooked up about a cup of mixed beans - chickpeas, kidney beans and navy beans were used. I coated it in apple cider vinegar and lots and lots and lots of black pepper. I also put in a grated garlic clove and some dill (because that is the herb we have most of in the cupboard at the moment for some reason) and a little bit of cooked pasta.

Another favourite was the olive oil and bread. I went to the bakery across the road in the morning to get a french stick to have with this bottle of olive oil I bought when we were in Tuscany. Pretty sure it's the most amazing olive oil I've ever tasted. (We did a winery/olive grove tour in Italy and I picked it up there. The winery who made this oil also made a fantastic chianti red wine, too. We drank that while we were there).

For the rest of our picnic we had: homemade chickpea crackers, hummous, guacamole (I forgot tomato!), some kiwifruit and some olives. Nadine brought home the olives from work one day for free because they had no label on them. Unfortunately they were the yucky tasteless plain black olives, but I couldn't just throw them away because they were free! Olives! So I decided to marinate them to see if it would make them edible. It did. I put them in a container with red wine vinegar, garlic, black peppercorns, left over brine from a jar of kalamata olives we hada while back (I always keep it to cook with - can pretend your eating real olives) and mixed herbs. They are just fine :) The texture isn't very good, but I think that's one of the main reasons I don't like the black olives in the first place. We didn't eat many, but they will be good to cook in a tomato sauce or something. :)

So our picnic was a success. We sat for ages waiting for the turtles to come out of the water, but they only stuck their heads up :(

The other day I bought these chips on a whim:

Beetroot chips. Ahhh best thing ever. Expensive, though. So I think I'll be attempting them soon. I think beetroot may be in season now so they shouldn't be too expensive. I love beetroot, I think it has to be my favourite root vegetable. I can't eat the canned stuff anymore!

Today for lunch I made this pasta:

It turned out delicious but way too big! We seem to be eating bigger and bigger meals lately so we are trying to make an effort to eat human sized servings of everything. I blame the cold :)

In it is: mushrooms, onion, garlic, spinach, tofu, chili, a mushed up burger patty I found in the fridge and some basil and hummous on top. It was a good meal, but probabaly better to eat for dinner than lunch. Oh well.

I usually do 20min of yoga everyday along with a fair amount of weights work (usually just while I'm waiting for my computer to load each page - yes it's that slow) and I'm now trying to go for a walk daily too. On our picnic there was an incline and I nearly died trying to get up. Very sad. So walking it is. Today I lasted 10 minutes, it's so damn cold! my throat gets so dry within minutes. I drink water, but then I get a stitch! Lose either way haha. I'm sure it'll work out fine. Tomorrow I'll make a bigger effort. Hopefully it's sunnier.