Autumn is kicking in

Our favourite afternoon snack since regular, reasonably priced bread is out of the question temporarily: Baked sweet potato fries and decaf coffee. I just cut a sweet potato into large fry-like pieces, coat them in a few tsp of rice bran oil (depending on how much I'm making), liberally apply fresh cracked sea salt and bake in the oven at 220 degrees C for about 45 minutes. I like to make the edges a little bit burnt so I sometimes just leave it in til the coffee has finished brewing or something. At (still!) 49c a kilo, this is one cheap snack, that's much better for us than our toast with margarine and jam :)

--

Now, about the gluten thang.

Nadine decided she wanted to the Quantum Wellness Cleanse (a book by Kathy Freston, find it here on FishPond) so naturally I would do it with her (makes food prep easier and all that) which is basically going without sugar, alcohol, gluten, caffiene and animal products for 3 weeks. Why not? I'm sure my body could do without those for a while, particularly the caffiene. We weren't going to do the gluten part in the first place, but then I heard from a coworker that someone she knew (who wasn't a celiac, OR intolerant OR allergic to gluten/wheat) decided to try going gluten free to fix up her skin which was dry and excema-y. And of course it worked very well and her skin cleared up really quickly. So I thought, hmm. My hands and forearms are covered in dermatitis. And it hurts. And it's really gross. Maybe gluten could be the problem.

So there you have it, I'm seeing if gluten is aggravating the dermatitis. After the three weeks if it has cleared up (I am starting an indoors job soon so that should help too) I will start eating gluteny things again and if it flares up, well, then I'll know. It'll suck, but it's a small price. Who knows, it could be soy, or sugar, or some random unlikely fruit or vegetable. (I could just go to the doctor and get tested, but I don't want to, and they tend to just prescribe cortisone - been there done that, don't want to have to use that again.)

So anyway, today's lunch was just delicious. I made the curried pumpkin soup I found on Scandi Foodie and splurged on some gluten free bread to eat it with.

I was going to make my own bread but I got a bit lazy.

You have to spend a little bit more to buy gluten free bread that is also vegan. A lot of gluten free bread uses eggs and milk - I believe it helps with binding and rising. I say pish posh to your eggs and milk. Unecessary.

This loaf is pretty good, and the ingredients are nice excpet one - palm oil. I mean, really? That'll be my motivation to bake my own when this loaf runs out ( I predict tomorrow). It toasted up really well, though I tried to defrost one piece just to eat as bread and it kind of went all squishy in the microwave. Maybe if I just leave it out until it's ready...



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!)

Unexpected day off work...

...For a crappy reason - even though last week the thermostat was replaced, my car continues to overheat! Very sad. So I had to take it in to a mechanic today to get fixed. Which means I can't get to work (I looked up public transport - I'd have to get the bus at 4:15am. Ha.) Fortunately it isn't going to cost too much. I'll still be being extra thrifty for the next few weeks though! Not working today lost me a bit! Oh well. Hopefully this time it stays fixed.

Anyway so we had some out of state friends over for dinner last night. We had delicious delicious curry which I keep meaning to post but the pictures look crap, I've made it about 5 times it's so fabulous! Drank a few drinks - scotch and soda, and gin and water and lime. (We have to force ourselves to drink the bottle shop we already have before buying more wine!!) and afterwards we played trivial pursuit, and Nadine beat us all down with shame. She literally knows everything.

So since today I was off work, I could make whatever I wanted for lunch. I was reading this post at the tropical vegan, and thought the first one looked particularly delicious, so I made something similar! When I was in highschool, I used to come straight home from school and make some spicy 2 minute noodles and grate about two cows' worth of cheese into it so it all melted and turned into a gluggy noodle cake/soup mess.

Yes I was feral. This is a much better idea!

I had all the ingredients already (noodles leftover from the rice paper rolls I made the other day). I grated half a sweet potato, finely chopped half an onion, a clove of garlic and a fair few frozen peas into a frypan with a tiny bit of rice bran oil. Cooked until it all softens (smells really good) and I put the preared bean thread noodles into the pan and tossed it all with a sauce made from peanut butter, vegetarian oyster sauce and some water, and then served with some sesame oil. Yum. Served the both of us.

I was so stressed about my car dying again that I dreamed about the engine exploding, I actually slept-walked (got up and put on Nadines old doc martens thinking they were running shoes - I only woke up because they were the hard ones and felt funny.) Ugh. So I decided some biscuits were in order, and thought these shortbread on Tea and Simpatico sounded lovely. I followed the recipe exactly except used wholemeal flour and three tea bags of chai tea. They were sooooo good. We had them with a cup of vanilla green tea :)

By the way, it totally hailed this afternoon.

Agave-lime grilled tofu with asian slaw and mashed sweet potatoes

From the conscious cook by Tal Ronnen

Yuuummm.

I mixed parsnip with the sweet potatoes, used purple cabbage instead of napa, used rice syrup instead of agave and sprinkled the zest of lime on top of it all as I don't know when the next time limes will be $40 a kilo again :)

Carribean Curry - Black eyed peas and sweet potato

I have been so broke this week because I spent all my money on Christmas presents (I got in early this year) and a few...quite a lot rather, new things for me! I shouldn't be allowed to spend money. But I now have enough vintage dresses to last me my whole life! Almost.

Anyway very very cheap meals have been on the menu. I don't really ever make expensive meals, this IS a cheap food blog for students such as myself after all, but you really can't get any cheaper than lentils and rice.  Last night I made a dal type thing which was quite yummy, though looked like vomit so I won't post the picture. Only thing is I keep forgetting to put carrot in my cooking, which is annoying because I have almost 2kg in the fridge going soft. I might just make a carrot cake.

Tonight I made this Carribean Curry with black eyed peas and plaintains from Post Punk Kitchen.

Black eyed peas are pretty much my new favourite legume. I don't know what a plaintain is, and I've never seen one so I used sweet potato which I think was suggested as an option. Though if I do see one I'll probably buy it - it does look rather intriguing.

Anyway! This recipe was pretty damn good - fluro yellow, from the curry powder I bought - but very delicious.

:)

Pumpkin, Potato and Kidney Bean Stew

I got this potato from the farmers markets. It was called a red-something...only $3 a kilo! I was hoping it would be red inside (I've seen purple ones in seed catalogues) but unfortunately it was white. It tasted like a regular potato but with an earthier skin (I never peel mine).

So I decided to put it in a stew - I adapted this recipe, and changed most of it to suit me, I think.

Pumpkin, Potato and Kidney Bean Stew

Serves 8 with grain base or 10 without

Ingredients

4 cups cooked kidney beans (about 2 cups dried)

1 cup stock (I used Massel Chicken Style)

Oil for frying

4 cups roughly diced onion

4 cups mixed diced: pumpkin, sweet potato, regular potato

1 cup chopped carrot (about 2 medium)

1 chopped jalapeno chili*

2 tsp dried sage

1 tsp dried thyme

1 tsp smoked paprika

3 cups cooked tomatoes (about 1 800g can)

Method

1. Put some oil in a large stock pot and add onions, carrot, chilli and pumpkin/potatoes until onion starts to soften - about ten minutes.

2. Add beans to this mixture. Add sage, thyme, and paprika and then tomatoes and some of the stock. Add more later if it starts to dry out a little. Stir well and bring to a boil.

3. Cover and reduce heat to a simmer. Simmer until vegetables are tender.

*It could have done with 2 or more!

I served ours with a mixture of unpearled barley and brown rice. I did 2 parts rice to one part barley.

It also would have a little tastier with just sweet potato or pumpkin - or a few extra herbs. I also forgot to put pepper in.

Unpearled barley is whole barley. It takes a LONG time to cook (about 1.5 hours) but I think it's worth it. I cook in the same way as dried beans: Put barley and water to cover in saucepan, bring to boil. Turn off heat and let stand for a few hours (at least 1). Drain barley and put new water in. Bring to boil again then turn down and simmer until tender (this really does take about 1.5 hours - maybe 2!). I just like making life difficult for myself :) It took a few forkfuls to get used to - just remember to chew it well, and not breathe in the husk. We really like the taste and texture, actually. I love regular pearled barley but this adds a little more.

I'm actually trying to gain some weight (only 4-5kg or so) and I figure I should eat more carbs than I burn. Unpearled barley, brown rice, lots of bread etc. They are cheaper for me to buy than good fats such as avocado, peanut butter, other nuts. 1kg of this unpearled barley only cost me $2.60! I'll still be eating my nuts etc occasionally when I can afford it too though.