Some Food We Ate This Week

I love food. I love thinking about food making food and eating food. I love having enough of a variety of stuff in my 'pantry' that I can come home and just throw some ingredients in a pot and call it a nutritional meal:

This is a pantry curry-like meal, it was so quick to make, neither of us knew what we felt like and this sort of thing is usually what I make in that sort of situation. Bonus points for having tins of tomatoes in the pantry and not having to go to the shops! I don't measure anything for this type of throw together but here are the ingredients: about 1 1/2 cups cooked chickpeas, 1 400g tin crushed or chopped tomatoes, most of a medium sized cauliflower, onion, carrot, the end of a bag of mung bean sprouts, spring onions, about half a block of soft tofu I found lurking in the fridge (it disintegrated), and a fair chunk of garam masala powder and some dried chilli flakes. I think I served it on brown rice. No garlic left, decided I didn't care. Oh, I also grated some fresh ginger in the last few minutes of cooking because ginger makes everything better.

Terrible photo, I was in a rush to eat it.

This meal I planned! All day at work I'd been thinking about how I haven't had eggplant for a while, so by the end of the day I wanted it pretty bad. I also felt like lentils for the same reason - they are so quick to cook and are delicious, why then don't I use them more often? So I picked up my copy of Appetite for Reduction and found Lentil & Eggplant Chilli Mole on page 242. Mmm cocoa powder in a non-sweet dish. It always freakes me out a little, I mean, it sounds gross. It really does. But I have made a mole before (I'm sure I would have posted about it, it being so weird to me and all but I can't find it), decided I like chocolate spicy things and this one had both eggplant AND lentils in it so it was a winner. I served it with the suggested Corn and Scallion Corn Bread from page 244 of the same book and it was delicious. I love corn bread. I should also make THAT more often! 

The supermarket didn't have any of the big eggplants left so I had to buy a kilo of the little lebanese ones. I swear there was like a hundred of them. Cutting up one big one is sooo much easier than slicing a million little ones. They were the same price though, so it was okay. I thought it wasn't all going to fit but it cooks down quite nicely. One thing I find confusing about US recipes - the amount of chilli powder called for. Often it'll say a few tbsp of the stuff! (I just read this recipe again and it specifies mild, there's my answer.) Australian chilli powder (I just buy the stuff from the fruit shop) must be like a bazillion times hotter than American, a tsp or two is usually plenty, and I like spicy heat.

Onto a breakfast! I can't remember when exactly I made this, probably Sunday. For a plethora of deliciously interesting pancake recipes, go to Chocolate Covered Katie's blog. These are the Apple Pie pancakes, but Nadine had stolen my apple I had my sights on so I used a grated pear instead. Just as delicious I am sure! I made the Vanilla Ice Milk too, sort of - I should have frozen it the night before but I didn't, so I was lazy and had semi frozen blended almond milk on top of my pancakes. The semi frozen almond milk was freakin delicious by the way - almond milk is probably going to be my ice cream milk of choice when I finally buy my ice cream maker. I have no patience for the freezing and stirring business.

I'm so glad I love to cook. I have no idea what else I'd be doing with my spare time!

Peanut Butter Pancakes

I am completely obsessed with peanut butter this week. I have made 3 batches since last Saturday, so that's pretty much 6 cups of peanuts gone in a week! (Between us both of course!) I thought it was about time for some more pancakes today and naturally peanut butter pancakes sounded the best. I based it on this recipe for snickerdoodle pancakes by Chocolate Covered Katie (I clicked on that one because I thought snickerdoodles had something to do with peanuts - they don't, and I still don't know what a snickerdoodle is! and the pancakes from Chocolate Covered Katie are always a winner.)

Peanut Butter Pancakes

Makes 4 small but fat pancakes (1 serve)

Ingredients:

1/2 cup wholemeal flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

pinch of salt

1/2 cup + 2 tbsp soy milk (or other non dairy milk)

1 tsp vanilla essence

Heaping tbsp smooth or crunchy peanut butter

Maple syrup, crushed peanuts and non-dairy butter as toppings

Method:

Combine dry ingredients in a bowl. In a measuring jug measure out the milk, then add the peanut butter and vanilla. Whisk until peanut butter is evenly distributed (mine sort of went to the bottom, but it wasn't in one big lump - this is ok).

Mix together wet and dry but don't overmix.

Cook pancakes as you normally would (I obviously don't know how since I always, ALWAYS burn them and end up using tons of oil) and serve hot/warm with the peanuts, syrup and non dairy butter.

These pretty much tasted just like really soft peanut butter cookies. If you added a little brown sugar into the batter they would taste even more like peanut butter cookies!

In mine I actually had a large tbsp of dessicated coconut, and was going to call them Peanut Butter Coconut Pancakes, but you could hardly taste it, if at all. Next time I might put way more in, and maybe use coconut milk as the liquid :) 

Saturday morning pancakes

I think Saturday is my favourite day of the week. I can sleep in and fart ass around all day if I feel like it - it doesn't matter since the next day is Sunday and I still don't have to go to work! I like to make a nice breakfast on Saturdays, because all week I've probabaly eaten the same thing, usually oats, and it's nice to have a fancy cooked brekkie when I'm not awake before sunrise. Sometimes it'll be scrambled tofu with baked beans, or I'll make my own hash browns (maybe I'll do that tomorrow! Nadine isn't working hooray!), a lot of the time it's pancakes, specifically, buckwheat because I've decided I love buckwheat flour, and besides, every time I've attempted vegan pancakes with regular flour it's failed miserably.

I know it's like the exact same picture as all my other pancakes I've posted on this here blog, but it's different because they are giant and have raspberries in them. I also used a different recipe since I don't have any bananas - at a million dollars a kilo, I'm sorry!

The recipe I used is 'Grandma's Buckwheat Pancakes' onVegWeb.com. They are delicious. I also ate the entire lot, I wish I hadn't because now I feel sick! I put a blob of nuttlex and tofutti cream cheese and some lemon juice on mine. I also made them with almond milk, and cut the oil down to 2 tbsp and had no issues. These pancakes also commemorate the first time my smoke detector hasn't gone off while making pancakes! Amazing. Last time it didn't stop. As in, when I took the batteries out it was still beeping.

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In other news, I had my first pilates class on Thursday! It was great. My abs STILL hurt (which is kind of annoying but it shows that they did some work!) my legs hurt my arms hurt my butt hurts.

Thursday couldn't possibly have been a better day to do it, either! We had been weeding while standing and bening ALL DAY at work so my back and legs and feet were just killing me. Wedding like that is like a constant lunge, and because I'm uncoordinated on my left side I always use my right leg so that hamstring wants to kill me. Also my right knee always hurts, so I think this class is really going to be helpful. Also I reckon a couple more goes and I might be able to touch my toes without struggle. Ha.

Speaking of exercise, our half marathon walk is next Sunday! Nadine wasn't working at the start of the week so everyday as soon as I got home we went for a quick walk up the street and back, (about 2.5km) which has been good since it stretches out my legs from work and it makes us exercise and thus spend more time together. This weekend we'll have to bust out a much longer walk - at least 10km. Tomorrow we have to pick up our kit from the city so I think we should walk there and back.

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My plans for the day include doing the laundry (the homemade detergent really does make it softer!), baking some more bread (I'm seeing how long I can go without buying a loaf from the shop! So far I've made one loaf.) and making some vegan pepperoni from Vegan on the Cheap to put on a pizza for dinner. I should also probabaly practise some of the pilates stuff I learnt - I'll see how sore I am and if I can toughen up and handle it :)

Dangerous Nuts Part 1: Bunya Nut Pikelets

Could you get any more Australian?

So why do I call them dangerous? Well, there is a few reasons.

1.If you sit under a bunya pine while it's in season, you may die. The cones are as big as your head (or bigger!) and can weigh upwards of 10kg. Don't try it. I noticed a tree in the Melbourne Botanic Gardens when I was there last that had a makeshift fence around to stop people having their picnics under it.

2.They can explode. Wear eye protection and stand back if you cook them on a bbq.

3.While trying to pry open a shell on a raw one with a hammer I nearly bashed my finger off.

4.While trying to cut open the shell on a soaked one I nearly chopped off a nipple with the handles of my secateurs. I don't know how, all I know is that it hurt like a motherf*cker. I hope I didn't do any lasting damage!

Okay, so bunya nuts are about as much of a pain in the ass to peel as chestnuts, but not quite. At least these ones stay whole. I looked up all sorts of ways to do it online, but they all sounded hard. One guy said to go outside and hit them with a mallet to crack the shells. I don't have an outside and I don't have a mallet. I could have boiled them whole and then peeled off the shells (with difficulty) afterwards but all my pots and pans were dirty and I couldn't be bothered. I could have roasted them, but I was afraid they'd explode and catch fire because I couldn't split them a little first.

So in the end I decided to soak them overnight in a bowl of cold water, figuring the shells would soften:

And in the morning the shells were indeed soft, so I could hit them a little bit gentler with a hammer than if they were raw-raw:

You can see the cracks in it. A bunya nut has a pointed end and a round end. At the pointed end there are 3 'seams'. Hit the hammer on one of them. The seams will crack and you can peel it.

I decided the hammer freaked me out too much as it was getting too close to my thumbs, so I dug out my secateurs (yes they are rusty and old and under-used and covered in WD-40 and potting mix but did I ever say my kitchen was sanitary?) and decided to just slice off the skins. Use them like a nut cracker first to split the seams (this was way easier than it was with the hammer) and then slice down toward the round end until you can force off the shell.

At this stage the nut can sort of be popped out. You don't have to struggle with pulling off the rest of the skin.

It may come out with a layer of brown stuff on it, like a shelled peanut:

I took it off. Dunno if you have to, I just did.

Now for the cooking. Once you have your desired amount of bunya nuts peeled, give them a bit of a rinse, especially if you used disgusting dirty tools like I did. Mmm WD-40, my favourite!

Then put them into a dry frying pan and cook, as if you were pan roasting cashews to make cashew butter:

Bits will go black and brown and they will smell nice. I had a lid over them for most of it because I didn't have a clean stirring spoon either (I know, I'm a slob) so I could just shake them around. I was also still scared of them exploding in my face (this is unlikely to happen!).

Once they are all browned like in the above picture, put them on a chopping board and use a sharp knife to finely chop like so:

You could just eat them whole too if you like, but this time I decided I wanted to put them in pikelets! Hence the chopping.

I ran a search on google for vegan pikelets as I have never made them before, and found this recipe on The Year of the Vegan which sounded perfect as I had some soft tofu in the fridge I needed to use before it turned yellow.

So I made the recipe exactly as it says except I used wholemeal flour, and didn't have any maple syrup so I used 1 tbsp of rice syrup instead. And at the end of all the whisking, I folded in half a cup of the chopped bunya nuts, and cooked as normal.

I spread vegan marg on them, sprinkled a few extra chopped nuts on top and drizzled them with a good amount of rice syrup. Yum.

(It took me so long to make them all they were cold by the time I got to eat them. But that's ok, they taste better cold and I'm pretty sure pikelets are meant to be eaten cold).

So to wrap up this god awful long entry, what do they taste like??

Well, like nuts, I guess. I want to say they taste like pine nuts (hur, hur!) but I'm not sure what they are like. They have also been compared to chestnuts, and I have to say that's probably the closest thing I can think of too. They have a different texture, quite soft (though that's probably because I soaked them) and were a nice addition to the humble pikelet. Now I have to think of what to do with the rest!! I bought a ½ kilo. Stay tuned for Dangerous Nuts Part 2 :)

Banana-Blueberry-Buckwheat Pancakes

Poor Nadine had to go to work this morning, so I was eating breakfast alone. On the weekend days we have off work together we usually cook up a fancy breakfast: tofu scramble, baked beans, mushies, homemade hash browns...

Anyway I'm pretty sure I was dreaming about pancakes last night because when I woke up I really wanted some. I can't remember the last time I had pancakes. Either way they weren't very good because we just put flour and soy milk in a bowl and mixed it all up. They weren't bad, but we probabaly should have used a recipe :)

I also had a heap of buckwheat flour that my sister's boyfriend's mum gave me. Apparently she bought it for something and only needed it once and when she heard I was vegan she just gave it to me haha. Apparently vegans eat all sorts of weird health food store products...yes I do. Anyway I was very grateful because I'd been wanting to start using buckwheat flour (I want to make my own soba noodles one day) but I couldn't be bothered going to buy some. Hooray!

I borrowed the idea from this recipe from Chocolate Covered Katie's blog.

Banana-Blueberry-Buckwheat Pancakes

Serves 1

Ingredients

1/6 cup whole meal flour

1/6 cup buckwheat flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/4 cup of soy milk

1/2 a mashed banana

Handful of blueberries

Pure maple syrup

Vegan margarine

Mix together the dry ingredients in one bowl.

Mash banana in another bowl then stir in milk and blueberries.

Combine the wet and dry ingredients. (You may need to add more milk if the mixture is too thick. I did but I didn't measure...it was an extra couple of tablespoons I think.)

Melt the margarine in a frying pan and blob in the batter. Cook each until bubbles form around the edges then flip over and cook for a bit more on the other side. (I managed to burn mine a tiny bit but it was fine).

Serve on a plate with the rest of the banana sliced up, some more blueberries and maple syrup.

This should make about 5 small pancakes :) 

Nadine was missing out! She's going to be very upset when she hears about it. If I had the time to make these every morning before work I would. They were so delicious! I reckon the best pancakes I've ever had.

I'll be making these for Nadine next weekend I think :) I'm pretty sure just doubling the recipe will be fine. I wonder what they would be like with 100% buckwheat flour?