Sangria, the best kind of summer cocktail



There's a nectarine pictured that I didn't end up using but would be a good addition

 I bought this lovely jug at Target like, years ago purely with the intention of making sangria in the summertime. It's been about a hundred summers and I still hadn't made any! (I also can't seem to write a grammatically correct sentence). Anyway, here is my recipe for a yummy sangria. I have no idea if it's in any way authentic, I'm just basically copying what I saw the Spanish bartenders pour into our glasses while in Spain. (Or what I think I remember seeing!)

I used an average wine glass for measuring since we were on holiday and there were no measuring cups

Sangria
Makes 6-7 cups worth

Ingredients
2 glasses red wine (I used cab sav)
1 glass vodka (I used citrus vodka but plain is also good. I wouldn't reccomend vanilla.)
2 glasses sparkling plain mineral water
1/2 an orange, thinly sliced in quarters
1/2 a ruby grapefruit, thinkly sliced in quarters
1 lemon, thinly sliced in rounds
Ice for serving

Method

It's pretty simple! Just mix together all the liquid ingredients and then add the fruit. Or you could put the fruit in first and pour the liquid on top. Either way.

Cover and put in the fridge for a few hours so the fruit can marinate. When ready to serve, pour into tall glasses with some of the fruit, add some ice cubes and some fresh cut lemon slices for garnish!

 At first, the vodka is a little strong in this, but by the time I'd finished my first glass I couldn't tell! (maybe that's a hint). Use only half a glass of vodka if you aren't a fan. I also like a drier red wine, but to make it a little easier to drink use a sweet, or sparkling red (such as Lambrusco). I've had sangria in bars served with sugar in the bottom of the glass, too - I don't like to add sugar to things when I think it's unecessary, but a little bit of agave nectar or rice syrup wouldn't go astray! Or a good way to sweeten without cane sugar would be to nix the citrus, and use apple, pear, necatrine and peach slices instead. The possibilities are endless!

We spent all day Saturday drinking this (Nadine's was watered down with extra mineral water because of her head cold) and then we decided to mix up some more! I'm sorry, but there IS such a thing as too much sangria.

Wheat free chocolate chip cookies

So last night we decided to be sociable (rare these days! utter laziness) and went to a free [vegan] wine and cheese night at my favourite all vegan cafe/shop. We walked there from our flat, as we knew the wine was free and well, you know. Alcoholic.

When we got to within a few meters of this place I suddenly got so nervous I felt ill, but I was brave and powered on! I am too shy to live, I think :P Luckily I didn't chicken out because I managed to meet some new people and have a damn good time. Also accidentally met the author of Kittens Gone Lentil (hooray a not-quite stranger!!) which was very lovely.

Anyway the wine was awesome (and free-flowing) and we got to taste all the different vegan cheeses you can get here in Brisbane (Sheese, Cheezly...that's all I can remember) and even a couple of faux meat things which totally creeped me out by the way.

They are apparently doing it monthly so maybe I'll make it a regular thing :)

Today I felt like baking some cookies - worst idea ever. I ate too much sugar and now I think I'm dying.

But anyhow, these are the Wheat free chocolate chip cookies from Veganomicon, and they pretty much didn't reaaallly work, but they are still pretty good. Very large and flat though :P I think I used about 2 tbsp per cookie instead of 1, and there wasn't enough room on the baking tray for all of the mix, and what was left would only make about 2 cookies so I just ate it. Bad bad bad.

Some interesting produce and souvlaki

Nadine definately knows how to make me happy :) She got me these purple carrots from woolies as a present. Yes I don't get jewellery or chocolates, I get carrots. And it's awesome.

I am actually growing carrots like these (pictured under chicken wire in background) but they aren't ready yet, and only 3 have survived. And I think my ones are orange on the inside, but these from woolies are white on the inside. They also taste like parsnip. In a good way.

I unfortunately decided to use them in some carrot cake cupcakes. Unfortunate because the cupcakes failed miserably. They still taste good so we are going to turn them into a pudding which I'll post later if it's worth it!

The other night I really wanted souvlaki. I am unsure if I've ever actually eaten real souvlaki before but I wanted it anyway. Souvlaki is a greek dish made from lamb chicken or beef, on a skewer. But I obviously didn't  use any of those meats, or put it on a skewer, I made up some seitan instead! I tried to make some seitan using okara but the whole thing fell to pieces in the saucepan, which sucked, so I went back to the recipe for 'simple simmered seitan' in Vegan on the Cheap which of course worked perfectly, since I've made  it a million times.

So, I cooked up the seitan, and sliced half of the recipe into strips (the rest went in the freezer). In a container went half a cup of red wine, a few teaspoons of dried oregano, 1 tsp smoked paprika and some black pepper. I put in the seitan strips, and filled the container with some of the simmering broth to cover the pieces. Shook it up a bit and left it there til dinner, maybe 1 hour?

Meanwhile I made up tzatsiki sauce. 1 cup plain soy yoghurt, 1 small lebanese cucumber diced, zest from half a lemon and juice from half a lemon. There is supposed to be garlic in it but I ran out. Also, I squeezed the cucucmber bits in a paper towel because I didn't want runny tzatsiki. It worked.

I fried up the seitan slices until they were browned and a bit crisp on the outside and ate it all in a multigrain wrap with the tzatsiki and some diced tomato and red onion.

It was so so good.

The only thing is it made the wrap turn into mush (gonna go the skewer route next time) and I wanted to eat more. But if I consumed any more gluten I may have ended up with a stomach ache! There can be too much of a good thing.

Kebab sticks with peanut sauce

This is one of the best meals I have made lately. Basically kebab sticks with eggplant, button mushrooms, asparagus and tempeh. Serve it on top of rice with peanut sauce! We also drank a glass of rose wine with it too. Instead of actual tempeh, I bought this tofu-tempeh which was 80% tofu and 20% tempeh. We don't realllly like tempeh (hate it haha, It's revolting) so I thought this would be nice as a transition to help get used to it. It's not too tempeh-y but still has some of the health benefits that tofu alone doesn't have.

Eggplant Cacciatore

I decided to get up at the crack of dawn (actually it was still dark) to ride my bicycle to the local organic farmer's market which I only just found out about...yesterday. It was a lovely bike ride (I left once the sun had come up) I saw 2 ducks and their ducklings (no picture cuz I didn't take a camera...next Sunday I definately am) it was FREEZING and riding through the slight breeze made my ears ache - next time I'm wrapping a scarf around my head. But it certainly woke me up!

Anyway, I got this nice little eggplant and some other goodies (including dandelion greens - not much of an idea of what to do with them other than salad!) and so decided to make Eggplant Cacciatore tonight for tea.

This is adapted from a recipe in Vegan Italiano by Donna Klein.

Eggplant Cacciatore

1 med eggplant diced (you can peel if you want, I don't)

1 large onion diced

3 or more cloves garlic, chopped

1 green capsicum, chopped (or red, or yellow)

1/2 recipe of this marinara sauce from OrganicallyMe*

1 tsp dried oregano

1 tsp dried thyme

Handful of kalamata olives

Freshly ground black pepper to taste

Cooked pasta of choice (I used spaghetti)

Make the marinara sauce (or you could use pre made - I hate when recipe books call for pre packaged ingredients!)

In another pot (large stockpot) lightly fry onion, garlic and capsicum on med-low heat. Add the eggplant and herbs and cook for a few minutes until eggplant starts to soften a little. Stir in sauce and let simmer until eggplant is tender.

Serve over pasta!

It's quite tasty and pretty easy to make. You don't really have to pay much attention to it while it's cooking, unless the water boils out and it burns!

We had ours with Oxford Landing Shiraz - a nice, easy to drink vegan wine that is very, very cheap at $6 a bottle! The company who makes/owns this is in the process of changing most, if not all, their wines to vegan friendly. Very excited :)

 *With the marinara sauce, I used tomatoes that I had cooked a while ago and froze. I just eyeballed the amount - I figured it to look like one can of tomatoes would look like! I also left out the onion because there was already one in the other part of the recipe.

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.