Life Update + Deconstructed hummus pasta

I have been fairly lazy blog-wise lately. I've been busy setting up house, reorganising what I've done to set up house, working, running and crafting. This year is turning into The Year of Doing Things I Always Wanted to But Didn't Because I am Too Lazy or Otherwise Unmotivated. (breath).

I've signed up for my first 5k race of the year (I intend on doing more than one) - The RACQ International Women's Day Fun Run/Walk, and I've been running pretty much every second morning to get ready for it. I'm lucky to live in an area that is FULL OF HILLS which is excellent for running training. I also figure that if I run for 15 mins up and down (steep ish) hills, it'd be like running for half an hour on dead flat ground. =P I actually enjoy this whole running business now. I've managed to get up at five am to fit it in before work and I've found on those days that I do run I have a lot more energy at work. I of course practically fall asleep by 7pm that night but that's ok :)

I have 3 craft projects going on at once at the moment (including my curtains which I have only finished one of so far) and I'll be trying hard to update about them if any progress has been made every Wednesday.

My house is coming together and I just bought a lawn mower (just in time too, the lawn is getting loooonnngg). It is a battery powdered one and I may review it once I've used it.

Now onto some food that of which this blog is about.

Ever had the best intentions of making hummus to eat but finding that the food processor is dirty turns you off?

Deconstructed Hummus Pasta

One Giant Serve.

Ingredients:

Pasta for one

2/3 cups cooked chickpeas

1 tbsp tahini

1 tsp extra virgin olive oil

1/4 tsp ground cumin

1 clove garlic, grated/minced

1 wedge of lemon, squeezed

Black pepper

Cook pasta. Put the rest of ingredients into a bowl and stir to combine. Add pasta to bowl and stir again. Enjoy!

I added about 5 cherry tomatoes that I found in the fridge to give it some colour. If I make it again I'd also probably add a little bit of water to thin the tahini a bit. It got quite thick :) 

This whole recipe provides you with 24% of your daily iron needs, 14g of protein, 13% calicum, 9% vitamin C, and only 21g sodium. (According to nutritiondata.com) I'm particularly impressed with the first three.

Or if you HAVE hummus, just cook some pasta and whack maybe half a cup of it on top. Yum.

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On other nonrelated news, this year I have signed up for the World's Greatest Shave for leukaemia! This is another thing I've been wanting to do forever.

I'll be shaving off what we like to refer to as 'The Bieber'. I'll miss him a little. :)

If you would like to sponsor me, please click here and follow the instructions :) Any amount is appreciated!

Recipe: Vegan Beef and Stout Stew

Stout beer. Mmm delicious. Pity most brands use isinglass in the fining process. Dang. BUT I looked and looked (it was hard, because I'm not too knowledgable on beer brands) and found that Coopers makes a vegan friendly stout beer! (Bonus points for being Aussie owned and made). And thus this stew was born. (Inspired by this recipe from Martha Stewart).

For the beef part I used this stuff. Found it in the freezer in an Asian supermarket. I'm not entirely sure of it's brand. There are words everywhere. I think it's essentially frozen rehydrated TVP chunks, and it pretty much has the same texture as the type of cow you'd buy to slow cook. Except you don't have to break your jaw chewing on it. (Ew.)

Vegan Beef and Stout Stew

Serves 6

Ingredients:

3 1/2 cups of beef style pieces, defrosted (or rehydrated beef style TVP slices)

2 tbsp wholemeal flour*

170g tomato paste

500g potatoes, diced in 2cm bits

1 large onion, diced

5 garlic cloves, sliced

1 carrot, diced

1 celery stalk, diced

400mL beef style stock (I use massel)

220mL vegan stout beer

2 cups frozen peas, defrosted

Salt and pepper to taste

Method:

Saute onion, garlic, carrot, celery and potatoes in some oil or water in a large stock pot for about 5 minutes. Add flour and stir until it starts to brown. Stir in stock, tomato paste and stout beer so no lumps form. It will thicken a bit. You may need to add extra water if it's too thick. I added about an extra cup. (*I used 3 tbsp flour and I think it was too much). Stir in defrosted beef chunks.

Bring to a boil and then turn down and simmer for about 15 minutes or until potatoes are tender. Add peas. Cook until heated through and sauce has thickened. Taste for seasoning.

I served mine on bowtie pasta because I like pasta with stews. But you could try quinoa, brown rice...anything else really :)

A stew is the ultimate comfort food and this one doesn't disappoint. The gravy is rich and thick and we wanted to eat the whole pot! I reckons the leftovers will make a GREAT pie. So that is what I'm going to do. If the gravy isn't pie-thickness I'll just reheat it on the stove with some cornflour or something, but I don't think it'll need it. Making leftovers into a pie with perhaps a steamed green thing on the side will stretch it out to at least 8 servings I think. Depends how much pie you can eat ;). 

This reminds me a lot of something my mum used to make sometimes, except I remember disliking it immensely. Don't know why. I guess tastes change.

I would definately serve this to family, friends, anybody who enjoyed a good stew. If they didn't see me eating it I'm sure they would all think it was the 'real deal'. If you aren't a fan of fake meat, try using tofu, tempeh, muchrooms, or even a bean. I think mushrooms would be especially delicious (and much more accessible to everyone! I know not all of us live in a city with plentiful asian food marts.)  

I've finally figured out how to roast potatoes properly.

And the results are pretty damn delicious :)

Cut potatoes relatively small. Preheat oven to 210 degrees. Mix potatoes with about 1 tbsp of oil. Put in oven. Cook for about 45 minutes. Mmmm.

I had to perform that difficult procedure to make the 'White Beans and Lemon Potatoes with Olives and Tomatoes' from Vegan on the Cheap (pg 165). However, I change every recipe I cook from. I used about 3x as many olives, extra potatoes (because there were only a few left in the bag and the rest were squishy), kidney beans instead of white beans (and an extra cup at that), like 8 cloves of garlic left whole instead of 3 crushed, and fresh basil added at the end instead of parsley. Served it on twisty tricolour pasta. It was so delicious. Simplicity at it's best. Not many flavours compliment each other as well as olives and well, anything really.

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This was part of the meal plan I wrote for this week. Our budget is a little tight because of moving costs, and me not being able to work for a few days due to flooding (yay rain!) and I find a concrete plan makes things a lot easier to handle. And since I have a pantry, and the shops are a little further away than the top of our driveway, I can buy the whole weeks groceries at once. It helps that our local fruit shop is the cheapest fruit shop I've ever been to. And the produce lasts!

I'll be blogging a little more later about various other things we have been cooking. My camera cord was in a box somewhere so I have quite the backlog of pictures to go through :)

Busy busy

So tonight is the last night we'll have to spend in our flat. This whole moving process seems to be taking forever! Probabaly because my little corolla is just that - little, and not all that much stuff fits inside it. Or maybe it's because not everything is in boxes, for example, today I'll be piling all our dresses into the backseat and hanging them up as soon as I get to the new house. Our coffee table books I put in the boot without a box because they make a box way too heavy, and I carried them in in smaller piles. And, it was a sweltering hot day yesterday and I thought I was going to collapse. Then I remembered the south's heat wave and realised it wasn't actually that hot, I'm just a wuss.

Regardless of my wussiness, I am so so glad I took this week as a holiday, rather than going to work and trying to move our copious amounts of crap at the same time. We need to do a big Lifeline run I think. I also need to not ever buy anything ever again. Except the thing is, most of the crap I've found that is mine I've been moving around since highschool.

So somewhere in amongst the cramped calves from running up and down stairs, to the blood blister on my finger from dropping a box of vintage crockery on it, and the brusies on my hips from whacking myself on our cast iron bed frame - I have to eat lunch. And in the interest of getting rid of as much perishable stuff in the freezer/fridge as is possible before I dig out our esky to clean which is currently under the stairs getting pooed on by geckos, I opened the freezer and pulled out the most empty packets I could find: edamame and those weird vegan prawn substitutes.

This was pretty tasty, actually, and really not that great for you. But who cares, I'm moving house.

Vegan prawn and edamame pasta
Serves 1

Ingredients:

100g spaghetti or other pasta shape that is hiding in your pantry
Margarine for frying
1 clove garlic, chopped
1/2 tsp dried chilli flakes
1 tsp dried dill
5 vegan prawns, chopped up
handful of frozen edamame, defrosted and shelled
black pepper
olive oil

Put pasta on to boil. When it's nearly done, melt the margarine in a small saucepan and fry the garlic and herbs for a minute. Add edamame and prawn pieces. Cook until prawn pieces are done, not long. When pasta is ready, drain, and stir through the prawn mixture. Drizzle olive oil over top and season with as much black pepper as you like.
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Nadine asked yesterday if I was even a little nostalgic about leaving the flat. We have been here for two years after all. I said no. Though I will miss the colour of the kitchen cupboards:


Excuse the messy picture. This was probably taken over a year ago when I first discovered my camera had a panorama function.

 I won't, however, miss my pantry. Or my bench space. =D

'Beef' stroganoff

A while ago I bought some of those Lamyong TVP beef slice things for some reason. They aren't that good, but they aren't terrible and they are good for a bit of a protein change. Before we move I'm trying to use up as much of my pantry food as possible so I don't have to move it all. Next on the list was the beef style thingamees so I decided on a take on a traditional beef stroganoff! This recipe is much better than the first one I posted. Much much better.

'Beef' stroganoff

Serves 4

Ingredients

1/2 a packet Lamyong Beef strips (75g)

2 tbsp wholemeal plain flour

1 large onion, thinly sliced

3 large cloves garlic, crushed

450g portobello or swiss brown mushrooms, sliced

1/2 cup white wine (I used sav blanc)

3/4 cup stock (I used chicken style but beef would be better)

3 tbsp tomato paste

1 tbsp mustard powder

1/4 tsp smoked paprika

1/2 cup silken tofu, blended smooth (important)

Pasta to serve

Method:

First, put the beef slices in a bowl and cover with freshly boiled water. Leave until it's soft. Use this water to make the stock.

Heat a little bit of oil in a stock pot and cook onions and garlic until they start to soften. Add mushrooms to pot and cook until they start to release the juice. Mix together the wine, stock and tomato paste in a jug or cup or something. Start water boiling to cook pasta.

Put the flour in the pot with the mushrooms and stir quickly. Once it has cooked for a minute, pour in the liquid and stir so no lumps form. Let simmer for a while, sauce should thicken. Add in softened beef slices, mustard and paprika. By now the water should be boiling. Continue cooking stroganoff until pasta is ready. A few minutes before serving, stir through the tofu. It's important that it's blended so it's smooth. As you can see in my photo mine wasn't, and therefore came out all lumpy!

Serve on pasta and enjoy.

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This is really good, even better the next day. however the tvp beef stuff does NOT freeze well. This would also be delicious with tofu chunks, tempeh, seitan, or some sort of bean, or double the mushrooms. For example, if I was serving to family I'd go for the beans or all mushroom version :)

Sometimes it's nice..

..not to have to cook!

Nadine's had a few days off so tonight she cooked tea so I could sit on my arse. She told me to pick a random number and the Fusilli Roasted Veggie Primavera from Appetite for Reduction was my choice. Vegetables are cheap at the moment - apparently the cherry tomatoes were reduced to clear, woot!

It's nice to have a giant plate of vegetables sometimes. Colllooouuursssss. I've been sick lately so I reckon as many veg as possible is the best thing to do. :)

Working with leftovers

Our old camera finally chucked in the towel, and I lost the charger for my new camera, so I haven't been able to take any pictures of any of the yummy stuff I've been making lately. I can barely remember what we had for tea last night. I am waiting for a new charger to come in the mail (it better be the right one darnit!) so until then I'm digging through stuff I haven't posted yet.

Last week sometime (or maybe the week before) I made up some mushroom stroganoff (recipe here) but couldn't bear just reheating it and eating it again. So I cooked up some bowtie pasta, mixed it through with some nutritional yeast and baked it in the oven for about 25 minutes. Two serves kind of turned into four, but we ate it all anyway. Everything is better baked in the oven.

Anyway, some things I have made but couldn't take pictures of that I'm very disappointed about:

This delicious Gluten Free Pumpkin pie - minus the praline because I'm lazy. It's so good. We're still getting through it so maybe I'll get a picture of it's amazingness soon.

Caramel slice - yes I bought a tin of condensed soy caramel purely to make this, and thankfully my stepmum was holding a morning tea for breast cancer research and asked me to bake something...so we only ate one piece instead of the whole pan! So good. I used lindt 70% dark choclate for the top.

And lastly, the frosted grapefruit icebox cookies from Vegan Cookies Invade your Cookie Jar (also for Margaret's morning tea). I will probabaly make these again. They are so different but so yummy. Remember to soften your copha enough, and yours will end up even better than mine!

Mmm carbs

Best flavour combination. Nadine and I went out and drank a fair amount of wine last night and the results are always NEED CARBS NOW and this is usually my fall back hangover lunch.

Long pasta, cliced chilli and garlic (and optional sliced olives and sundried tomato). Plonk a knob of nuttlex on top and voila.

This is what Bob does when it's stormy, like this morning. It's so sad :(

And this is what Charlee does when it thunders! We woke up this morning and found her under the covers too!

Happy Saturday

Today I intended to get up when I woke up (ha!), eat half a grapefruit, do some more Bridge to Brisbane training, and come home and eat breakfast. However we went and drank too much wine last night so I stayed in bed and got up when I was ravenous, ate an entire can of baked beans on toast (yummmm - I heated them up in the microwave and mixed through some liquid aminos and nutritional yeast) and proceeded to sit on the couch for a few hours, with laundry and dishes washing thrown in between.

Anyway I decided enough time had passed since my feast of a breakfast to go for a run without getting cramps or spewing, and I was getting hungry again. So I ate my half a grapefruit:

Look how bright it is! This is a ruby red grapefruit. They were really cheap at the fruit shop (something like $3/kg) and are awesome to eat in the morning to get things going.

I went for my run (I can now go for 11 minutes [for my slow jogging that's 1.6km] without stopping. That's a pretty big acheivement for me haha, the girl who walked off the 200m track in a huff in grade 7), and realised I always pick silly times to do it. Midday probably isn't the best idea in the blazing sun. I hate putting sunscreen on my arms and legs (but I did don't worry!) because it takes forever to scrub off. I use Natural Instinct Sunscreen, and it's apparently 4 hours water resistant. I tell you, this stuff does NOT come off! Which is a good thing in the harsh Australian sun.

Thankfully it's warm enough to run without a jumper on now. Goodbye cold.

When I got home I tried to do some yoga but I had the shakes - obviously didn't eat enough before hand, or perhaps I should have put some gatorade in my water or something. Tomorrow I'll be sure to do that. So I had lunch. I didn't feel like the soup we drunkenly made last night (though it's pretty good!) So I threw together this:

1 small zucchini, 1 yellow squash, 1 silverbeet leaf, 100g tempeh and 1 serve of gluten free pasta shells. It's in a satay-esque sauce I made from 1 tbsp sunflower seed butter, 1 tbsp soy sauce, 1/8 tsp onion powder and 1/8 garlic powder (yeah I got lazy). Damn it was good.

I bought this sunflower seed butter for my sister and her boyfriend to use (he's allergic to nuts) but it's pretty revolting. In fact it's awful. By itself that is. It's sickly sweet and salty at the same time (but smells pretty good!) I've basically just been using it in stir fry sauces. I bought some gluten free pasta the other day because I like it. Why do gf pasta packets always have 6 bazillion languages on it?

I may or may not try to make a baguette to have with our soup for tea tonight. Hmm.

Tasty tasty

Been on a bit of a Veganomicon kick this week (spicy tempeh pasta) and the Asparagus and Lemongrass Risotto on page 198 was also freakin fantastic. It took forever to make (though I was making bread by hand at the same time so that may have held me up a tad) and I didn't have any basil or mint or peanut oil, ooor enough arborio rice but I don't know if I'll make risotto any other way again (jk). I used about 1 cup of arborio and half a cup of regular brown rice, skipped the basil/mint and did serve it with the suggested Tangerine Baked Tofu but used oranges and whiskey instead of tangerines and rum. Amazing. Served with lime zest, pan roasted cashew nuts and extra marinade from the tofu.

All the flavours worked really well together but I think next time I'll slice the tofu a little thinner and marinate for longer because it didn't pick up the flavour it could have.

Another one we've made is the 'Pumpkin Baked Ziti with Caramelised onion and Sage Crumb Topping'  (phew long title!) on page 194. (I obviously didn't go further than the pasta and risotto chapter.) I used wholewheat spirals instead of the ziti and I'm pretty sure that's the only edit I made to it! I could eat the cashew ricotta with a spoon and the breadcrumbs on top were to die for (though I wish I'd used some wholemeal bread instead of the white baguette we got for 50c since it gave both of us a stomachache!) and the whole thing was quite moreish. It was better the next day for lunch too.

Now a non Vgeanomicon related thing - my breakfast for the past few days! I had a tiny bit of whole oat groats leftover in a jar that was annoying me by being there so I cooked it up in some soy milk with handful of chopped dates and chopped brazil nuts. I didn't measure the dry grain but I ended up with 2 cups of cooked oats. I divided it in two and stuck it in the fridge. In the morning I heated it up, added sliced strawberries (on special at Coles hooray!) some chia seeds and a drizzle of brown rice syrup. Yum. Filled me up for ages which is really good since I have to wait 4 hours since I eat breakfast before I get to eat again. I highly reccomend a whole grain for breakfast - brown rice, wheat, oats, spelt (omg yum), buckwheat, barley. Just cook it up the night before, or on Sunday cook enough for your whole work week, it should keep in the fridge.

Now I am going to sit and watch the Gruen Transfer with a cup of hot red clover tea. Apparently it helps reduce hot flashes (cuz I get those! haha), healp relieve rheumatic or gout pain, contains vitamin E and can help sore throats. [source] Good o :)

Spicy tempeh and Brocolli with Wholewheat spiral pasta

I decided to get out a cookbook to make tea tonight and Nadine wanted pasta so I chose the 'Spicy Tempeh and Brocolli rabe with rotelle' from Veganomicon on page 190. I used a regular brocolli instead of rabe, used wholewheat spirals instead of regular rotelle and added half a punnet of cherry tomatoes sliced in half.

Dayum this was delicious. I ate seconds which of course turned out to be way too much but I wanted me some more of that tempeh. It was all sausagey (fennel seeds) and spicy and delicious. If you don't have tempeh, tofu would do, or try eggplant or some sort of bean. Yummm. I can't wait to eat this tomorrow for lunch at work.

Beanballs!

Dear Doofus Family in the new ad for Ambi Pur room spray;

If you hate the stench of your rotting dead fish supper cooking so much, why are you eating it? Make this instead:

Cajun Beanballs and Spaghetti from Appetite for Reduction

No need to spray your home with odour-crushing chemicals.

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Anyway, I've made 'meatballs' quite often and when I found these ones in Appetite for Reduction I decided to make 'em. The fact that I found tempeh at Coles and am completely obsessed with it lately helped me to make the decision. Black eye peas are also my favourite legume most of the time :)

We loved them, they held together really well (we did end up cooking them for lik 15min longer than it said to) and they were really easy to make. However, I still like the other ones I make better (so does Nadine). So I decided: if I really really want spaghetti and meatballs and I only have half an hour I'll make the beanballs, and if I have all day, I'll make the other ones.

Pasta with Cream of Sweet Potato Sauce

I am so, so glad this week is over. Work has been torture. We haven't stopped weeding for weeks now. I don't think we are a maitenance team any more. We are the zombie team who weeds. There are holes worn through all of our gloves (I even wear two pairs at a time because I'm allergic to the plastic in the outside pair!), none of us have any fingerprints left. I even wrote a poem, one day in the monotony!

Emma's fingers, cracked, and bleeding.
Too much weeding.
Too much weeding.

On the upside it's been glorious weather and sitting outside in the sun has been lovely. (Except I'm now permanently attached to a 45 litre bucket. There are two ways to sit: upturned, or on the rim. Upturned hurts my back. On the rim hurts my legs. If I tried to weed these monstrosities standing up, both my legs and back would hurt! Can't win! Haha.)

Anyway, now that the weeding has ceased for the weekend (right back to it on Monday!) I can relax and enjoy some gin with lime, and some nice soft couch sitting while watching the Eurovision Song Contest. Hell, yes.

To the food! Because that IS what this blog is about, not weeds.

Last night I made a simple pasta meal, adapted from the Complete Vegetarian Barbecue Cookbook by Susan Geishopf-Hadler. One day I will actually have a barbecue, and can barbecue things. But this time I just used a frying pan.

Pasta with cream of sweet potato sauce
Serves 6

Ingredients

1 tbsp coconut oil
3 garlic cloves, chopped
1 large onion, chopped
2 birdseye chillies, chopped
1 kg sweet potato, diced small
500mL soy milk

2 tbsp vegan margarine
2 tbsp wholemeal flour
pinch of nutmeg
black pepper
500g pasta of choice
Method:
Put garlic, onion, chilli and sweet potato in a frying pan with the coconut oil. Cook until sweet potato is soft. You may need to deglaze with water every now and then, unless you have a non stick pan.

Transfer to a food processor (unless your processor is as big as your kitchen sink, you'll need to do it in batches) and blend with ½ cup of the soy milk. Set aside in a bowl.

Start cooking pasta about here.

In a medium saucepan, melt the vegan margarine. Whisk in the flour, and then slowly stir in the remaining soy milk. Stir in the nutmeg and as much black pepper as you like. Cook until slightly thickened.

Stir in the sweet potato mixture. Add some water if it's too thick for you.

Serve on top of cooked pasta :) I fried up some red capsicum as a garnish. Something green would have been nice! Maybe some scattered chives? :)

 

This meal cost us $1.20 per serve.

 

It was pretty good, we always like a bit of sweet potato. I don't think I can eat this dish more than twice though, so I've kept the remainder of the sauce to make a lasagne today or tomorrow.

 

Somehow this meal created dishes up to the ceiling! (Pretty sure there was already some there though). So now I have to spend all day doing them in my postage stamp sized sink. Oh well! Later today I intend on doing some more training for the half marathon (I am already getting fitter! It's awesome), and digging up my lemon grass.

 

(As an afterthought, I find I edit my posts a lot. Typos, etc. Does that mean the entry comes up in your reading whatsit five million times? If so, sorry!!! I'm trying hard not to need to edit any more!)

Ginormous farmer's market vegetable stew

I spent my Sunday listening to records and fiddling about the house. I love watching the needle touch down.

It was lovely until the neighbour decided to deafen me and everyone in Perth with her doof doof. Oh well, I played records all day yesterday too :)

This is today's farmer's markets haul. From bottom left clockwise: the best bananas in the world, 1/4 jap pumpkin, celery, kale, brazil nuts, bunya nuts (no idea of what to do with these yet!), parsnip, turnips and potato.

Almost all of the above turned into a gigantic stew!

BIG HONKING ROOT VEGETABLE STEW.

Serves 6 (big)

Ingredients:

400g turnips

700g potatoes

200g carrot

600g pumpkin

250g parsnip

250g celery (about 4 stalks), sliced

1 1/2 cups cooked kidney beans

500g brown onion, quartered

5 cloves garlic, roughly chopped

2 tbsp whole peppercorns, crushed or cracked

1 thyme stem left whole

2cm long stem of rosemary left whole

3 bay leaves

2 heaped tsp wholegrain mustard

8 cups weak chicken style stock (or water)

125g short pasta (any shape!)

The method is very simple, as with all stew/soup type dealies.

First, I peeled things that needed peeling (I peel parsnips because we find the skin bitter, and I peeled the larger turnip but left the skin on the smaller one as per the Internet's reccomendations).

Chop everything into large chunks, try to keep the size uniform.

Put everything into a large stock pot, except the pasta shapes and cooked kidney beans. (As you can see, mine was ALMOST too small. [5L] I could have used a smaller potato or something!)

Give it a gentle stir, so as not to overflow the pot, unless yours is ginormous.

Bring pot to a boil, then turn down and simmer for half an hour.

(At this point I turned it off and left it for about an hour while I went to pick Nadine up from work, so if you don't need to leave it just check to see if the vegetables are cooked.)

The pumpkin will be falling apart - this is good. If you want your pumpkin chunks to stay whole, don't put them in at the beginning.

I found that it was too watery still, so I thickened it with a bit of cornflour. This is optional.

Bring back to a boil and add the pasta and beans. Cook until pasta is ready (about as long as the packet says!) Cooking the pasta in it also helps to thicken the gravy!

Serve and enjoy! I served ours with some sauteed kale and silverbeet, but feel free to go for bread or something.

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This was so hearty and flavourful. If you aren't into spicy, cut down the pepper to half. It was very peppery, just how I like it! The herbs were light enough for us to be able to taste each different vegetable, which was good. I liked how the pumpkin turned into mush and spread through the whole thing, making it soupy. 

For something that I just made up on the spot, I'm quite happy with the results! I think this is the first time I've had turnips cooked properly. Last time I tried they were pretty thick and raw haha. I like them. I'll probably buy more next week and do something different.

This would be awesome to chuck in a slow cooker to come home to after work! Unfortunately I don't have one. One day I will, when I have more storage!

Creamy pasta sauce

Yesterday my sister was talking about how she was going to make carbonara for dinner that night. It made me really want carbonara for dinner. My thought pattern went straight to an alfredo sauce recipe I have made before, and I would just add some thinly sliced seitan (I use the Vegan on the Cheap recipe) into it to sub for the bacon, or pancetta or whatever it is that you use in carbonara. I thought I had everything for the recipe at home, so I didn't go get anything at the shops.

Of course I didn't have everything (I was missing the tofu, duh) so I just threw together this mess:

It actually worked out really well. It was in no way a carbonara (I couldn't even be bothered defrosting my seitan) but it is a creamy proteiny pasta sauce and it satisfied the craving. It's a good way to use up any okara you have leftover from soymilk making, I also chucked in some almond meal/pulp leftover from my almond milk making. It works, trust me. Next time I will use all soy/almond milk, but I had some coconut cream leftover in my fridge that I didn't want to waste.

Pasta with Cream Sauce (inventive, I know)
Serves 3-4

Ingredients
200ml light coconut cream
50ml soy milk (I just topped it up to 1 cup)
3 garlic cloves, crushed or grated
1/2 cup nutritional yeast (1/4 cup provides 400% reccomended daily value of B12 did you know?)
170g okara (what I had leftover from making milk with 100g dry soy beans)
1/4 cup almond pulp
1 cup 'chicken' stock
1 tbsp tahini
black pepper
1 tsp mixed herbs
1 tsp chilli powder
3 tbsp flour*

1 cup frozen green peas
1 cup cooked white beans

375g cooked pasta

Method

Put the first block of ingredients into a food processor and blend until smooth.

Put pasta on to cook, when almost done put mixture from the blender into a medium sauce pan on high heat. Stir until very thick. This won't take long. Stir through your beans and peas.

When pasta is done, drain it and return it to it's pot. Pour in the sauce and toss to combine.

Divide among plates and serve! We got three servings, but they were a little bit too big, so dividing it into four would probably be perfect.

So much of the okara I get from making soy milk gets wasted, which annoys me. I always have one lot in the freezer but never use it so I don't want to just keep freezing it all. However we have been using it lately! Such as in the above recipe, and the other week Nadine made an awesome lasagne and I told her to mix it into the plain tomato sauce. It made it quite meaty and cheesy tasting which we were pleased about. I'll use that trick again.

This ended up costing me $1 per serve (4).

*Next time I'll use only 2 tbsp flour.

Hangover food

Drank waaaayy too much last night? Never fear, Macca's deep fried hash browns need not be an option any longer.

My absolute favourite thing to eat when I've drank too much is pasta. Nothing else quite cuts it in the carb department. Plain tomato pasta sauce with heaps of chilli powder is pretty good, but the utimate is just chilli, garlic, olive oil and basil. B-vitamins are important in recovering from a hangover, so adding a spoonful of nutritional yeast or marmite to this would have been a good idea.

Still feel disgusting by dinner and about ready to crawl under the bed and die?

Noodle soup! I use any kind of noodles I happen to feel like/have, 'chicken' stock powder (I use Massel), garlic, chilli, and a green vegetable. This time I used a brocolli, but beans are good, zucchini, spinach, whatever. Brocolli is best though. Sometimes I put tofu in but it was too hard to open the packet. Heaps of garlic is good and can top up your immune system which the alcohol would have knocked down a bit.

Tasty, easy, healthy and didn't make me want to vomit when I looked at it.

Also always remember, you can prevent a hangover by drinking water while consuming alcohol at a 1:1 ratio (ie. one glass of water for every glass of wine), I also usually try to drink a heap of water before going to bed -or- I mix up some gatorade powder in cold water and chug that. It prevents dehydration which causes the headache and dry mouth of doom. I use gatorade at work so I don't get headaches on hot days. Sometimes water isn't good enough. (I haven't researched it's vegan-ness yet, please don't judge me if it isn't. I'll get to it.)

Or the ultimate hangover-preventative-measure?

Don't drink alcohol!

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. :)

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.



Cleaning out the Pantry

This week I have been so broke I am cleaning out my cupboards and my fridge and my freezer before I buy any more groceries. (My car was almost a year over due for a service and the bill showed it!!! Oh well, now it isn't going to explode.)

Anyway, the above picture is a salad I made on Sunday to take to work for lunches. I based it on something out of Concious Cooking. It's basically: quinoa, red onion, half a cucumber, 1 grated carrot, spinach leaves, orange and spring onions. The dressing is made from rice bran oil, orange juice and red wine vinegar. It was delicious. All the flavours worked very well together and I enjoyed my lunches immensely.

We are having more leftovers of this one tonight. It's also from Concious Cooking and I was a bit wary of it because I decided a little while ago that I did not like fennel (as in the fresh bulb, not the dried seed or herb). I bought it to juice fresh and it ruined the flavour of everything.  However, to my taste buds surprise, fennel tastes completely different when cooked! Thank god. The recipe is called 'Whole Wheat Penne with san Marzano tomatoes'. I just used a tin of Australian tomatoes, kalamata olives instead of stuffed green, red wine instead of white wine, and skipped the tarragon. It was a delicious meal and I am glad we have more to eat tonight. I'll be throwing in a can's worth of white beans to stretch it out a bit. (I cook dried beans and freeze them in zip lock bags in 1 1/2 cup amounts).

I think this weekend I'll be busting out a lentil and black eyed pea curry that'll feed an army.

Tomorrow we are having friends over so we're making nachos and having beer. Hopefully Nadine buys the beer! Apparently white beans and green peas make a good substitute guacamole (according to Robin Robertson's Vegan on the Cheap) so I'll just buy 1 avo instead of two and try that! I'll let you know how it passes with the friends. There is also a recipe for vegan sour cream in that book, so I'm going to give that a go. I already make my own mayo, why not sour cream!?

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.