Snow is fallin' all around me....

.... OK the snowing stopped, but you gotta love a bit of Shaky at Chrimbo!

It's Christmas Eve - YAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!! I love Christmas and I'm in the process of making the food for tonight and getting the flat ready for my friends to come round before we go out!

So onto the food pics. I dug out my battered old breville sandwich toaster the other day to make this awesome sarnie, I called it pizza toasted sarnie, because it really was pizza-y! That's mozarella cheezly, tomatoes, black pepper and dried oregano. YUMMO.


Gooey cheezly - the only way I can eat vegan cheese - melted to oblivion!

I believe I mentioned cupcakes last time.... here they are. My best friend's husband turned 30 this week so I made these to celebrate. VCTOtW Golden Vanilla cupcakes that I added some chocolate chips and a bit of mint extract to. The icing is just a basic chocolate buttercream that I also added mint extract to.

And here - more cheezly. This was disgustingly trashy and freakin awesome. I made mac & noochy cheeze sauce then put some breadcrumbs on top and put it under the grill a few minutes. Then I added some bacos and cheezly and gave a couple more minutes under the grill. Trashy comfort food at it's best.

This was gonna be dinner for me and my friends on monday but they both got stuck in those ridiculous traffic jams coming home from work and didn't get to mine at all, so I had leftovers the next day. It was these nuggets that I made from black eyed beans and barley then coated in cornmeal and fried (probably what gave me acid reflux attack - haha oops!). I'm working on the recipe still and I'm going to bake them next time to be safe, but they were almost there.

The next day was pretty miserable because of the afore-mentioned acid reflux pain. All I could face cooking and eating was soup, so I chunked up an onion, a big parsnip and about 5 big carrots, the stalks of a bunch of coriander leaves and cooked them in stock for 20 mins. Then I added some soymilk and the leaves of the coriander and blended. It was yummy.

And a sneak peak of tonight's xmas eve foodz - peanut butter krispie balls (hee hee). There's tonnes of recipes out there and someone put some they'd made on their blog last week (I've forgotten who and didn't bookmark it so whoever you are - sorry!) and they looked so good I knew I had to have a go. So I mixed up peanut butter, rice krispies and some other stuff and rolled into balls (hee hee) then put a big old blob of melted choccie on top. I'll post the recipe next time.

I've also got some fudge in the fridge that doesn't appear to be setting up, even though I followed the recipe to a T! if it hasn't set in the next hour I'm going to have to try and salvage it - will report back next time!!

So as Shaky says "ooooh ooooooooh oooooh ooooh oooh oooooohh - shooby dooby dooby doo wop....!" Wait no sorry, "I mean Merry Christmas Everyone!!" and I'll see ya in 2010!

Laterz
xXx

When the Snowman brings the snow, well he just might like to know.....

HE PUT A GREAT BIG SMILE ON SOMEBODY'S FAAAAACCEE!!

Woo it's almost Christmas AND I woke up this morning to a lovely layer of snow over my balcony! GREAT BIG SMILE MR SNOWMAN!! I'm choosing to ignore the horrible 2 minute car journey to the gym this morning, yes I am!

Thought I'd start off the food pics with a pretty one - cookies!! I knew I wanted to make some cookies for me & my friends for after dinner last night because I've been dying to make something from Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar. I settled on the Ginger & Macadamia drop cookies because I had all the ingredients in the cupboard - but only because for some unknown reason, the other day when I was in the supermarket I bought macadamias on an impulse!

These were so good and my friends loved them too. It's a good thing I only made a half batch because we ate too many! hee hee.


Here's dinner the other day. I mixed together some soy sauce, maple syrup, spices, lime juice and a bit of olive oil and cooked a piece of tempeh in it. It was yum! I had it with some corn/cucumber salsa, avocado chunks, some peppers and onions cooked up with spices and some tomato puree and some basmati rice.

I struggled to get a good pic of this - miso soup that I threw together for lunch one day when I just needed something light. Miso, veggie stock, spring onions, coriander leaves, yellow pepper and tofu. yum & quick!

Ooh now these were really good! Giada de Laurentis made these stuffed portabellas on TV the other day and I decided to do something similar. I crumbled up some tempeh and sauteed it with an onion and some sausagey spices and herbs. Then I mixed together some fresh thyme, parsley and breadcrumbs. Grilled the mushroom for 5 mins on each side then filled it with the tempeh and then breadcrumb mix. Then topped with cheezly mozarella. YUM. I just had some steamed grean & edamame beans on the side.

This is a recipe I'm working on. I have the icing perfect and the spices but I need to work on a few bits with cupcakes. Stay tuned...!

The view from my flat this morning! :-)

My balcony....

And my christmas tree! I even managed to get the pic when it was snowing outside! I should have taken one at night really though, cuz it looks prettier in the dark.

I promise one more post before chrimbo and next time - there will be cupcakes!

Laterz
xXx

Malta Foodz

Hi all, I'm back. Ok you got me I been back since Sunday, but better late than never eh? Malta was awesome, we had beauty treatments, walked by the sea, took an open top bus tour and ate lots of foodz.

Starting with the plane journey there. I was pleasantly surprised with the vegan meal - as gross as it looked, it was actually not so bad! It was veggies in a tomato sauce with rice, fruit salad and a roll. The fruit salad was really good, sometimes they're dry but it wasn't at all.


The first night we'd planned to go to the restaurant in the hotel but it was shut for a private function. So we walked (in the rain!) till we found a restaurant. We settled for an italian place, because almost every restaurant in Malta is Italian! They had a vegan option though anyway, a veggie pizza, so that's what I had.


The second night we made it to the restaurant in the hotel but I forgot my camera. Don't worry though, we went back, it was that good! So there are some pics in a bit.

Night 3 and we went to a tex mex place and were disappointed. We both had the veggie burrito and it was kinda bland and a bit sickly. The rice was good though and my mojito was awesome.


On the friday we had our beauty treatments and cuz the weather sucked, we ordered a film and went to the local supermarket to buy stuff for a bed picnic. The local supermarket was pretty good, I managed to get soymilk, soy yoghurts, alpro chocolate desserts and vegan butter!

One of the things we got for our picnic was this Bigilla. It's a bean pate made with Tic Beans - something I've never heard of before. It was really tasty, I have no idea what herbs & spices were in it though.


The spread - wholewheat crostinis, local hummus, Bigilla, Kinnie (the Maltese local drink, which I grew to love), sherbet fountain and Crix which are pb flavoured crisps! Basically they're peanut butter & cornmeal, fried. Good stuff but sickly so I could only eat a few.

And lastly, the meal on our last night at the hotel restaurant. It's an awesome restaurant and if you ever go to malta, I would recommend paying a visit to the Palace Hotel in Sliema and going to the TemptAsian. It has all different Asian cuisines on the menu and I just ordered a bunch of vegan stuff for me & mum. We got:

Miso Soup

Yaki Soba Noodles

Vietnemese style sushi (rice paper rolls with veggies and tofu)

Tempura veggies (SO good)

f
And schzezuan aubergin - this stuff was seriously so yummy! We had it both times we went there.

I didn't get a pic of the plane meal on the way home, it was pretty boring pasta in tomato sauce!

Anyway, I think my muffins are about down so I'm off now - pix next time.

Laterz
xXx