Melbourne food post #1...Vegie Bar.

Well it has certainly been an age since I typed anything in here. Last time I did I believe it was freezing cold. Now it's practically Christmas, which is a scary thought in itself.

Anyway, Nadine and I went on holiday a couple of months back to Melbourne. We often go to Melbourne (well this is the second time together, and I'm sure there'll be many more trips there in the future). I love Melbourne for the food, the cute little old houses and the fact that it is as flat as a pancake. (Likewise I love Brisbane for the cute big old houses and it's hills). We spent almost our entire holiday budget for Melbourne on food and alcohol. Almost, because on the first day there we had to buy warm jumpers because we were idiots and took cardigans that didn't even have full sleeves. We also hired a car to drive out to Hanging Rock where we drank nice wine and had a picnic.

Anyway onto some food. Vegie Bar is always a winner because it is so cheap, the meals are huge and it's always delicious. We went a couple of times this trip.

Nadine had the burrito. Barely managed to finish it.

I had the nachos, which were indeed the biggest plate of nachos I have ever eaten. They don't really skimp on anything, this Vegie Bar place.

We also had a carafe of sangria this time too, since we were eaten Mexican food. It was good sangria but not as nice as my own recipe. That might be because of the amount of vodka I pour into it.

We went to vegie Bar again just before the end of our trip, since we were running out of money and I didn't have anywhere to access the internet to look up other vegan friendly establishments...And I was so desperate for food this time because I'd just gotten a new tattoo and on the tram trip up the road there it hit me that I'd just had needles scraping my wrist and therefore felt a little faint.

Our starter was the dumplings. I love dumplings. I should make my own again one day soon. Can you get gluten free dumpling wrappers? Or does anyone know a good recipe for me to make my own? These ones were filled with some sort of vegetable/mushroom/tvp(?) mixture and had a soy sauce dip.

Nadine ordered the faux duck stir fry, which was delicious and spicy and oily, but I avoided too much of it since by this point in the trip I'd eaten so much gluten my intestines were about to wrench themselves out of my gut to put themselves out of their misery.

I ordered...I can't remember really, also can't remember if it was technically gluten free, but it was thick rice noodles with lots of different types of mushrooms (and as far as I can recall, no fake meat things). It was delicious. Savoured every last bite.

So that was our Vegie Bar experience this time. No desserts were sampled because there is no way we would have fit them in! Maybe next time. I would also like to try them for breakfast - we wanted to this time but the day we chose they were closed.

Next installment will be pub food! Yes, pubs in Melbourne have vegan stuff. I was floored. Vegan parma? Bring it on.

Chia, it's what's for breakfast.

2 tbsp chia seeds, 1 cup non-dairy milk, 1 heaped tsp cocoa powder unsweetened, vanilla essense, banana, coconut and molasses. Mix together and leave overnight in the fridge or just until all the liquid is absorbed.

After one gets used to the texture this stuff is pretty good :) Slimy tapioca.

2 tablespoons of chia seed has 8g protein, about 9000mg of omega-3, 3500mg omega-6, 20g fiber, and almost 40% of your daily calcium. Sounds good.

Pesto

White beans, basil and miso paste make one damn tasty pesto.

From Quick Fix Vegan. Instead of pasta we found some rice noodles which were just the right width to use instead. Gluten free pasta is essentially rice flour anyway, this just costs a fraction of the price.

Some eats and new stuff

We found cous cous made from corn at the supermarket. It costs about the same as regular wheat cous cous (which makes my stomach hurt like a mofo) and you cook it the same way. It's nice, but itsn't much like actual cous cous. I think it tastes like as if I had got a bit of frozen corn, defrosted it and blended it til it was chopped up. Nadine thinks it tastes like the crumbs on the outside of nuggets. It's a good quick standby grain but I won't be running to the shops to buy more...

Speaking of corn I've mostly been eating polenta porridge for breakfast. Cheaper than the quinoa stuff. This one is just polenta, strawberries, banana and lots of homemade applesauce.

At $6 for 300g of pasta this is Not Cheap. In fact, it's even MORE expensive because even though it says it serves 4 on the packet, I think it'd be stretching to serve 2. However it is damn delicious, chewy like gluteny pasta, and doesn't go mushy. It was divine. Special Treat Only I think.

I'm going to stick to my regular gluten free pasta I buy at woolies. Can't remember the brand but it's in a green bag and costs about $3.50 for 500g. In this picture I just roasted some potato, brussels sprouts, capsicum, onion and garlic in a little oil, and just before they were done I mixed in some lemon juice and a crap ton of black pepper. Served on GF pasta. It was pretty damn good.

Microwave self saucing pudding certainly self sauced here! Next time I make it I'll write it all down and take a better picture to share. It's so good and makes a nice quick dessert when you want something just that little bit extra after tea.

We went over to my sister's new house to have tea and she made us this delicious Japanese curry with potatoes, peas, carrot and chickpeas. I wanted to eat seconds but she had a apple and raspberry crumble in the oven. Which was pretty amazing too =D

Well there will be lots of cheap bean-and-rice type meals over here in the near future since apparently I have to get the clutch in my car replaced soon. Ah the joys of modern living. Good thing I really like rice and beans =D A good eat cheap tip I always liked was to eat in season. For example cauliflower is not in season in the summertime, so why spend $5 on one tiny cauli? At the moment it's about $1.50, since it's in season. And they are rather large. Buy in season.

Hello July!

It is, indeed, July already. People are already buying Christmas presents, either doing their tax returns or throwing it in the too hard basket, and shivering under MANY MANY BLANKETS AND/OR DOONAS.

BECAUSE IT IS SO COLD. Actually it's not so bad right now because it is raining, foggy and humid. Our cats have the right idea - Charlee finds the hot water bottle and sits on that part of the bed. Hogger.

It was BLOODY FREEZING when we got up for the half marathon. A lot of people wear jumpers they don't want while they warm up them throw them to the side of the road when done with them. They get collected for the red cross or some other charity I think. Pretty sure I'll do that next year. This year we palmed ours off to Nadine's mother who gallantly got up with us at 4am for support!

I managed to run 15 of the 21.1km (in hindsight this probably wasn't the greatest idea I've ever had, considering the lack of training) and managed to finish in 2:48:34 - 15 mins faster than last year. And it took only a couple of days for my legs to start working properly rather than the week it took last year. I was quite chuffed =D

This Sunday coming we are running the 5k Jetty to Jetty in Redcliffe, hopefully the rain ceases...

In other things, I was nominated by Theresa at the Tropical Vegan for the Food Stories blog award which asks that we share a random fact about ourselves and then pass it along to 5 other bloggers.

Yay! Thank you :) I like to get awards. I dunno about my story telling though, it's mostly just babbling...

So here is my random fact:

I miss my long hair (longer than this picture, I could sit on it but I couldn't find a photo), and the red, and my eyebrow piercing. I've still got the ponytail I hacked off just before my yr 12 formal (considering selling it - how does one go about that?) Can't really get another eyebrow thing cuz there is scar tissue on both and it'll hurt like hell, besides, one got infected and the other...I walked into a door and that was the end of that. I'm going to try dying my hair more naturally with red henna because bleach is just Not Good. I may even keep growing it - we'll see how long it gets before I crack the shits and get the clippers out.

Now for the 5 other bloggers: I nominate anyone who reads my blog to go ahead and do it if you want :)

I promise there will be food in the next post! I found gluten free cous cous! Nadine has been cooking yummy things this week! My sister had us over for a delicious Japanese curry with apple and raspberry crumble for dessert!

Gluten, gluten, oh how I love thee...

Hey y'all! I haven't really been up to date in blog land for a while. There's been a lack of motivation and busy-ness and all that jazz :)

Brain food: Laksa stir fry with lots of colours.

This is what my life tends to look like evenings after work. I've enrolled in college! Yay! Back to school again for Emma. I'm doing an Advanced Diploma of Nutrtional Medicine and so far it's pretty interesting. I'm doing 3 classes at the moment because I still need to work full time to pay rent and feed the cats and all. I haven't actually got up to the nutrition part yet. So far I've started Anatomy and Physiology 1 and Chemistry...I thought chemistry would be a lot more daunting but as it turns out the elements are the same in the garden as they are in our bodies so I already recognise a lot of the themes. I'm also doing a communication class to get it over and done with...already had a panic attack and burst into tears at the thought of doing roleplays so we'll see how it goes! I do that class in the evenings on Tuesdays on campus. The others I'm doing online which is nice...free textbooks and I can take a long as I need to.

Well that's that, other news is that I am (oh joy) gluten intolerant! Fun times lay ahead. It's not too bad. I am currently trial-and-erroring what gluten I can and can't handle...unfortunately oats, as in porridge, make me feel and look pregnant. I eat ate oats pretty much every day!! Oh well.

I decided I'd try some quinoa flakes instead of oats to make a porridge like meal for breakfast.

Following the directions on the packet, however, turns it into a textureless watery mess (though tasty). So I experimented a little bit and found that if I mixed equal parts of liquid and the flakes in a bowl and zapped it in the microwave for one minute it made an almost porridge texture (I eat mine really thick). So quinoa will do as a substitute - it's a bit expensive though. I might try rice flakes and see if they do the same thing. I'm also going to try rolled spelt and see if it upsets my stomach (I may also try rolled rye).

Apparently the gluten in each grain is slightly different and it all depends on your body as to whether you can handle it or not. Some things are easier to substitute than others (I've found a good bread mix to make in my breadmaker, and I've been eating gluten free pasta for ages).

Pastry was a hard thing...but I found a good recipe online that I liked the results of. You can find it here.



It rolled out nicely like a regular gluteny crust and baked up nice and soft like a proper shortcrust. (Rice flour based pastry goes rock solid). The strips I used in the lattice were a bit fragile but they did the job! It tasted good and texture was delicious, though a teensy bit dry. I didn't measure my margarine so that may have been the reason. I reccommend this recipe if you want to try your hand at a gluten free crust :)

When we cut the pie it fell apart a little...cutting it straight out of the fridge the next day had far better results :P oh well, was still delicious. It's just a raspberry and apple pie by the way, with a bit of homemde vanilla ice cream from the Veganomicon cookbook. I like that ice cream better than store bought soy stuff but it tastes  little tofu-y to someone not used to the taste. I'm wondering if steaming the tofu before making the ice cream would do anything?

It's good to be back in blog land. Unfortunately my unmotivation stretched into my half marathon training so I definately won't be running the whole thing in two weeks time. I'll run as far as I can though! I'll pick it up again for the Bridge to Brisbane methinks.

Ginger

I grew it myself :)