Loaf!



Housewifery!

I baked some muffins today! these Carrot Spice Muffins from FatFreeVegan blog. They turned out perfectly! I had heaps of carrots in the fridge to use before they went bad (I bought a 2kg bag at the farmer's markets because we usually use carrots in everything! Haven't used them once. I resorted to taking carrot sticks to work.) Anyway really yummy muffins. Make them. They are tasty AND healthy.

I made this DELICIOUS loaf for dinner tonight. There aint nothing like a good vege loaf. I think I've found my Christmas dinner :) It is Beetloaf by The Stripey Cat. It held together really really well even though I cut it almost as soon as I got it out of the oven. We had it with steamed corn, brocolli, carrots and beans from the garden.

It's a little blurry but the loaf is bright pink and yummy.

And Bob looked too cute today, dozing (literally all day) on the spare bed. :)

Cleaning

Excuse me while I take a break from cleaning my disgusting unit and drink my coffee and tell you how much I love bicarb soda!

It made the top of my stove white again. You know, you spill red sauce on it once and are too lazy to wipe it straight away then weeks later you have an orange baked on mess around every single gas element? Yum!

I tried using un diluted eucalyptus oil first because I didn't really want to scratch off the top of my stove with the bicarb (I don't feel like paying for a replacement when we decide to rent elsewhere) and it worked to an extent. It got most of the actual stains off but it was still a mess so I sprayed the hell out of it with a white vinegar/water/eucalyptus/tea tree oil mix (we use this for general surface cleaning) and sprinkled on liberal amounts of the magical white powder, left it there for about half an hour while I scrubbed the grime off the sink and then came at it with a dish cloth.

Shiny! And not scratched. Good selling point. Not scratched that I can see.

Disclaimer: our house isn't THAT disgusting. Well it's not 'how clean is your house?' feral...but it's getting there (joking! ha). We clean once a week, but within seconds our cats tuft bits of fur all over the place and we are back where we started. :)

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.

:)

Fruit of the Month - Tamarillo

Tamarillo! I have had one of these before, ages ago, probably in New Zealand, but I couldn't remember what it tasted like. Though I did remember that I liked it, which was the main thing. (Then again, I remember liking corned beef but I doubt I'll ever pick some up in the supermarket just to recap ;)).

I wasn't sure how to eat it. Do I just bite into it like an apple? Hmm. I eventually decided to just cut it in half and eat it like a kiwifruit.

Yuuuuuuuummmm. I just scopped out the inside bits with a teaspoon and ate it. You just sort of swallow it (lots of seeds) rather than chew. It's a lot like a passionfruit. It even tastes a bit like a passionfruit. The one I bought was still a little bitter, but I don't mind. It's part of the Solanacae family, ie, the same family as tomatoes so it does have a little bit of characteristic tartness.

First I started just eating the seeds then decided to just eat the whole lot. Not sure if the skin is edible but I think it is gathering from just the introduction on this website. If only I could afford more of them! I'd love to try it in muffins. Unfortunately they cost $1.94 each at the moment, and I'm pretty sure I can't justify buying a whole heap. Damn.

More homemade ravioli

A week or so ago I cooked up some pumpkin and spinach (I think I used silverbeet) mush to put inside ravioli and promptly froze it. I finally decided to make the actual ravioli the other day, and since I still had some of those beetroot left from the farmers market I juiced it and used the juice in place of water in Bryanna Clark Grogan's homemade pasta recipe. It totally worked =D I've been wanting to make bright purple pasta since forever, so this was the perfect oppurtunity.

Also, I made the pasta out of whole meal flour, but I think next time I'll go 70% whole meal/30% white or half and half - it didn't hold together quite as well as usual. Though that also could have been influenced by the chopped herbs I added to the dough - I think I didn't chop them small enough.

Anyway, the beetroot did add a slight beetroot taste to it but not enough to not match the rest of the dish. I was worried it wouldn't 'go' with the tomato sauce or even the pumpkin filling, but it was fine.

Because it was all whole meal flour it took a fair bit longer to cook than normal too. But that's ok :)

We just had it with herbed bread and a basic tomato sauce. Pretty much the same one I always make except I used tinned tomatoes because my wirst was still hurting yesterday! Unfortunately it feels better so I think I'll be going to work this weekend ;)

I still have almost a litre of the pumpkin/silverbeet mixture so I think I'll make some more ravioli soon. Maybe green? or orange? I have heaps of carrots to use...

Monster Salad and cake

I don't tend to like salads very much. I love potato salad and pasta salads though, nice big bowls of carby goodness! When I go out to a restaurant for dinner, I usually assume that a salad will be the only vegan option - usually even salads aren't a vegan option, they are either covered in eggy milky mayonaise, creamy dressings, cheese, or pieces of decomposing cows, chickens, pigs and or ducks! Who puts meat in a freaking salad? Don't even get me started on the other vegetarian options so loaded with cheese you'll have a heart attack just looking at it...!

ANYWAY, today I was planting some beetroot seeds in the garden (I planted some a few weeks ago just before the rains came so I think they rotted before they sprouted) and I noticed 1 radish was ready to be eaten, and that I had millions more butter beans since yesterday! So I harvested it all and wanted to eat it. There's no better way to eat freshly picked radishes and beans than raw, so I decided to make it into a salad.

And damn was it GOOD!

The massive bowl full includes: kale, a large handful of butter beans, 1 sliced spring onion, 1 cob of fresh corn stripped of it's kernels (best way to eat corn!), the 1 tiny radish, 1 tomato, the leaves of the radish, 1 tbsp avocado oil, 2 tsp balsamic vinegar and a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil, and some black pepper.

Argh I just remembered I was going to put some fresh parsley and basil leaves in it too but I forgot. It was still delicious without them though! The avocado oil and corn mix really well.

I was struggling to finish it by the end, but I managed :)

Since it'll be summer soon, I'm going to try and eat raw at least once a week, or every lunch or something like that. There's nothing quite as refreshing (except perhaps a mojito in Spain) and if I keep getting beans, this type of salad will come up often :)

Yesterday I had a bit of an accident while riding to tafe on my bike! I thought I would make it over this tiny little gutter (actually I knew I wouldn't make it but went anyway) and I hit it at the wrong angle and completely stacked it on the concrete! I've ended up with a twisted wrist, bruised shoulder bones, bleeding knee and bruised swollen ankle. What a freakin pain the the ass!

I still made it to school and all the way home on my bike though which is good. Apart from the falling, it felt really good to ride all the way. I've been trying to ride to school a few times lately, but it's mostly failed. The first time I tried I nearly fainted and died (time of month = very low iron levels), the next time I got too hot and ended up with a little bit of heat stroke...so on and so forth. But this time I just kept going! (There's a huge big hill, but once you get over it it's all downhill from there!) So falling and hurting myself has ruined my endeavour to ride to school every day this week. I'll have to start again next Tuesday. Argh!

SO I decided to stay home from school today (I think driving would hurt my shoulder) and I baked myself a big ass banana cake.

I have used this recipe maybe 4 or 5 times now and it's still amazingly good. Everyone I've served it to loves it. I don't even like cake! Or bananas! I found it somewhere on the internet. It's a pretty basic recipe that I have tweaked a tiny bit.

Vegan Banana Cake

Serves 8 (or 2 pigs like us!)

Ingredients

2 cups whole meal flour

1 1/2 teaspoons of baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup raw sugar (this time I used about 1/2 cup raw vanilla sugar* and filled the rest up with dextrose**)

1/3 cup unrefined coconut oil (this is the type that tastes like coconut)

3 ripe bananas

1/4 cup water

1 teaspoon vanilla essense

Method

In one bowl, stir together the flour, salt and baking soda.

In another bowl, whisk or beat the sugar and oil together. Mash in the bananas and add the water and vanilla. Stir well.

Plonk the dry ingredients into the wet ones and stir until combined. (Mixture may be quite thick - every time I've made this I've used a different type of oil. This one is the best so far.) Pour into a lightly greased springform cake pan and bake for 45 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean, in an oven at 180 degrees C.

Let cool for minute and serve!

Sometimes I make up a 'cream cheese' icing using tofutti better than cream cheese, or simply sprinkle icing sugar (powdered sugar) on top. It doesn't need any topping at all unless you feel like it :) The cream cheese one is the nicest, though, but my local supermarket stopped carrying tofutti, which is probabaly a good thing...

*When I buy vanilla beans to use the seeds I just put the pods in a jar of sugar. It will taste of vanilla almost instantly!

**I'm trying to use up the last of my dextrose because I want to use real sugar again...or stevia or something. Dextrose is a bit too processed for my liking. I'll have to research it a bit more I think!

I had this a little while after my monster salad with a cup of freshly brewed Italian plunger coffee with a glob of So Good Vanilla Bliss ice cream in it :) I'm not a big coffee drinker, but I like it with cakes and muffins and cookies etc. I also usually drink it black with no sugar but my lovely Nadine bought me the ice cream last night when I was in my invalid state :) Aawww <3

A pictorial update of my garden - busy busy :)



Sweet basil - is very very healthy and happy right now :)



Soy bean flowers! Aren't they adorable?



Most amazing thing I've ever seen - huge angry wasp diving straight for a huge caterpillar on my soybeans that I didn't even see. It laid it's eggs in it. That is a beneficial.



First beans of a season :) They were tasty.



First purple climbing beans will be ready soon.