I got my juicer out of hiding

Want a drink so potent it'll make your eyes water?

The last few days I've been feeling a little lethargic and gacky in the throat. Uhh, nuh uh. No way am I getting sick - haven't been sick for years and don't intend on starting now.

Potent Juice of Doom

Juice together, in order:

2 cm chunk of ginger

1 large garlic clove

1/2 a small onion

1 red sweet chilli or a chunk of capsicum (red or yellow)

2 med-large carrots

1 lemon or 1 small orange

Drink up! It's pretty spicy from the ginger, I liked the version with the orange better, it took the edge off a bit, but both were delicious. I'm going to keep this up for a couple more days and I'm pretty sure I'll never ever get sick again.

Don't want Allium spp. breath?

Chew a fresh sprig of parsley! I got no complaints from my girlfriend ;)



Creten stew (red wine, seitan, onion and orange stew)

This screamed at me to cook it the other night. I love red wine, I love tofu how could I say no? (From what the hell does a vegan eat anyway? blog)

I was going to make it in my tagine...but I exploded it. Stupid me decided to pour some cold water on it when the oil ran out for frying tofu in. Big crack, thought I was going to die. But it's okay, no shrapnel actually flew at me. Heh. I was extremely pissed off though, I shall have to buy a replacement. It was a gift that I only got to use once! SO I made it in a large stock pot with a tight fitting lid on the stove top.

I couldn't find small white pearl onions so I used brown pickling onions instead, and cut them in half because they were quite big. Ideally I'd have liked to leave them whole, but oh well. I also used tofu, because I've never seen seitan here, or vital wheat gluten to make it. Yet. I'm getting there.

As you can see from the top picture I used Yalumba Y Series Merlot to cook this with. It's a medium bodied wine which I love - but it was probabaly too strong for this dish. However, as I said - I love red wine! So to me, it was perfect. If I was to cook this for family I might use half wine/half stock.

While this was cooking, the whole house smelled of...sangria! The orange/wine combination was definately dominating. Deliciously dominating. I can't wait until spring, or just a warm day when I can make up some sangria! We bought a nice glass jug (which accidentally turned out to be made in Spain, har har) months ago specifically to make said sangria, but it got cold. :( I make a gooooood sangria. When I do make it, I'll be sure to post a recipe.

We served the stew on top of penne pasta, because that's what I have. It would be good on any shape of pasta, or some other grain. I think pasta would be best though.