Vegan MoFo: The last one of MoFo!

I hadn't planned on blogging today but then I realised it was the last day of MoFo and thought I gotta!

Yesterday's dinner - I got my hands on some Taifun tofu (10 million times better than the skanky new cauldron crap) and decided to make a scramble. I haven't had tofu scramble in AGES and this one was pretty amazing. It had mushrooms, tomatoes, pak choi, sweetcorn and fresh basil in, along with cumin, paprika, coriander and turmeric for the spices and nooch of course. I had it with some roasty potatoes that I added some thyme to before I roasted them.


Today's dinner and I used more of the tofu in my thai green curry. I used shop bought paste, light coconut milk, veggie stock, sugar snaps, potatoes and baby corns. I added some frozen peas right at the end and served it over basmati rice.


I also made some quick spelt/cornbread muffins. I know they're really meant to go with chilli but I love them with curry too.

I've found myself a bit uninspired this MoFo, as you could probably tell by my posts, but it has been good to have a kick up the bum to post a bit more. So I'll try and go back to once a week and not slip back to once a month. But hey, I'm not promising anything!

Tomorrow starts Christmas month! WOoT!

Laterz
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Vegan MoFo: Wagamamas

This weekend I stayed at my parents' house. After a cold trip out looking at a potential new car for my dad, we went for lunch at Wagamama's. I've been really excited about the fact that one has opened up in my town and couldn't wait to go.

Normally I have the Saien Soba, which is noodles in a vegetable soup with tofu and just swap the egg noodles for rice noodles or udon. But I decided to try something new this time, so I got the Cha Han, minus the egg.

Fried rice, tofu and sweetcorn, with a side of miso soup. I really liked that miso soup.

Up close!

You also get a side of pickles - which are really unusual and tasty.

The three of us shared a side of edamame beans, with chilli & garlic salt - my favourite side!

Overall, I prefer the Saien Soba, but as I'm going back on Weds for dinner and will be having it then, I'm glad I picked something different to try and it was really good!

I made it to 20 MoFo posts! Woot!

Laterz
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Vegan MoFo: Lazy Pasta

I was being mega lazy with dinner tonight, in fact I figured it would be moderately crap so wasn't planning to blog it but you know what....? It was a surprise hit!

I tossed some cooked brown rice pasta with some raw, sliced mushrooms, a tsp of sun dried tomato paste, a tbsp of margarine and a tbsp of nooch. Then I added black pepper and a little bit of lemon zest. So easy and really delicious!

I guess sometimes, lazy is good!

Laterz
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Vegan MoFo: My stupid stomach!

I know I've mentioned it before, but I suffer with acid reflux. After my doc's latest messing around with my medication, I had about 3 weeks where I was having pain every night. So as the medication didn't seem to be kicking in, I decided to try just eating really healthily and eating less wheat and cutting out sugary stuff, which seems to set it off. So far this week, I've been good and fingers crossed it stays that way.

So I haven't given up wheat, but I've been eating spelt or gluten free products instead of wheat where I can and am laying off the sugary things and not baking for a week or so (weekend away next weekend so I'll be baking then! :0) )

Today's dinner, I roasted up some brussels, some asparagus and some sugar snap peas to go with some polenta. It was just 1/4 cup polenta, cooked in 1 cup of hot water, 1/2 tsp of vegan stock paste, about a tsp of sun dried tomato paste and 2 sun dried tomatoes chopped nice and fine. It was awesome!


Yesterday I made a stir fry with asparagus, pak choi, baby corn, mushrooms, tempeh, spring onions and cooked rice noodles. The sauce was just tamari, lemon juice, chilli flakes and 5 spice powder. Simple but really tasty.

I didn't bother posting the pic of the soup I made today - I think this blog is souped out for a bit!

Laterz
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Vegan MoFo: Roasted Veggie Pasta

Last night I went to see Jimmy Eat World at Brixton - they were freaking AWESOME but that's beside the point. I had to have a quick tea as we had to get a train at 6.30.

So earlier in the day I roasted up some cherry tomatoes, half a courgette, a couple of shallots, a clove of garlic and a yellow pepper. Then I processed it with a tbsp of tomato puree until it was still a bit chunky and mixed it with some of the pasta water and salt & pepper before mixing in the pasta. I used Doves Farm's gluten free brown rice pasta which is really delicious. MUCH nicer than any other gluten free pasta I've tried.

Laterz
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Vegan MoFo: Soup.... again!

I have been making lots of soup lately. Today I made some for lunch out of a sweet potato, an onion, a red pepper, a clove of garlic, some veggie stock and a couple of teaspoons of garam masala.

It wasn't the greatest soup I've ever eaten but it was tasty and I had one of my soda bread rolls with it! :-)

I love soup because it's easy and quick to make and it is a great way of using up whatever veggies are leftover in your fridge/vegetable drawer! What's your favourite soup?

Laterz
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Vegan MoFo: Soda Bread Rolls

I was going to blog yesterday with the food I ate at my friend Kip's house. But being crap as usual, I forgot my camera and ended up taking some on my camera phone. The pics were so terrible I decided not to blog them.

So instead, head over to Kip's site and see some proper pics!! Amongst other things, she made:

Tapioca balls in coconut milk. Balls! pffthahahaa!
Sweet sticky black & white rice
Lemongrass stuffed tofu

She also made an awesome coconut curry and a couple of salads. All of it was ace.

My dinner today was fairly uneventful, but I did make some spelt soda bread rolls, so here's a pic of one with jam on it! Recipe is underneath the pic.

Ingredients:
1.5 cups wholegrain spelt flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup unsweetened soymilk
1/2 tsp vinegar
2 tbsp water

Method:
Mix the dry ingredients together. Mix the wet together and pour into the dry then mix into a sticky dough.

Split into 4 and blob them onto a baking tray you've sprayed lightly with cooking spray then bake at 180C/350F for 20 minutes.

(I only wanted to make a small amount but for a loaf, I usually double the recipe and bake it for at least 30 mins or until it sounds hollow when you rap the bottom.)

Laterz
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Vegan MoFo: A crappy pic of a tasty butternut casserole

I have to apologise for this crap picture of what was a very tasty meal! It's crap because it is just a pic of the leftovers, as I forgot to take one last night.

It was a butternut squash casserole, the recipe for which I got (and changed a little bit) from Cook Vegetarian Magazine, the halloween one so it's a month or two old.

Basically you roast up a whole butternut squash, cut into chunks with shallots and a few garlic cloves (they didn't roast their garlic but I felt like it!), then you add some wine and flour and transfer to a casserole dish, add beans* veg stock, sun dried tomato paste, seasoning and some sage leaves and cook it for 30 minutes.

(*I used cannelinni beans instead of the butterbeans used in the original recipe, as my friend doesn't like butter beans.)

After the 30 mins is up, you're meant to add dumplings, but I left them out as I didn't want to tempt my stomach acid to rise up due to the stodge! So I just cooked it 45 minutes instead.

It was really tasty and my friends really liked it. I served it with couscous cooked in veggie stock and a big salad with a lemon vinaigrette. And a glass of wine!

Laterz
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Vegan MoFo: Muffins!

These muffins are tonight's pudding for me and my friends. They are super easy and I'm posting the recipe below. I added a chocolately drizzle to be a bit fancy pants, but feel free to leave that off!

Banana, Peanut Butter, Choc Chip Muffins:
Ingredients:
1 ripe banana
6 tbsp soymilk
2 tbsp rapeseed or sunflower oil
2 heaped tbsp chunky peanut butter
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp vinegar
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup plain flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
dash allspice (optional)
1/2 cup chocolate chips

Method:
Preheat oven to 180C/350F and line a muffin tin with 6 or 7 paper cases (I got 7 out of this mixture).

Mash the banana in a bowl and add the rest of the wet ingredients and the sugar and mix well. Place a seive over the bowl and put the choc chips in it. Then put the dry ingredients in and seive them through into the bowl over the chips. Toss in the chips and fold it all together until just mixed.

Divide between 6 or 7 muffin cups, fill them about 1/2 - 3/4 full and then bake for 22 mins or until a skewer comes out clean. Remove from oven and leave to cool a few mins before transferring to a wire rack to finish cooling.

For the glaze, I had about half a pack of chocolate chips left (about 1/2 cup) so I microwaved them for about a minute on 50% power and then added soymilk slowly, mixing well, till it was dropping consistency. Then drizzled it over the muffins. This made waaaayy too much for my 7 muffins, so I just poured the leftovers into a muffin tin and put it in the fridge to scoff later.

Tonight's dinner will feature tomorrow, hopefully it's a hit!!

Laterz
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Vegan MoFo: Stuffed Peppers

I really REAAAALLY enjoyed my dinner today. Stereotypical veggie dish right? - Stuffed peppers. But I shook it up a little.

I soaked half a cup of bulgar wheat in hot veggie stock, covered, for half an hour. Then I cut a pepper in half, sprayed it with cooking spray and cooked it cut side down for about 10 mins while I did the filling.

I sauteed a handful of chestnut mushrooms, a couple of small shallots, half a courgette and a fat glove of garlic. Then added a tsp of paprika, 1/2 tsp of thyme, 1/2 tsp rosemary and half a tsp of rasel hanout spice mixture. I added a bit of water to cook out the spices and then added the bulgar. Flipped and filled the peppers and baked another 20 mins.

There was a tonne of stuffing left, so I'll be having that for lunch tomorrow!

I'm excited about tomorrow's dinner and hope it turns out well. It's a recipe I got out of Cook Vegetarian magazine! I'll report back tomorrow!

Laterz
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Vegan MoFo: Punk Rock Lentil Gravy!

I decided tonight to make the punk rock chickpea gravy for dinner, from VWAV. Only I forgot I didn't actually buy that can of chickpeas when I was in the supermarket, as I thought I'd cook up some dried ones instead. But as I forgot that too, I cooked some lentils and put those in instead.
Good choice, it was awesome. With sweet potato fries, roasted brussels and steamed sugar snaps.

Laterz
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Vegan MoFo: Birthday Cupcakes

So I promised baking pics and here they are!

Today is Daddy Alien's 60th birthday! And we are having a big fancy dress party tonight to celebrate and I spent all of this morning decorating the 48 cupcakes I baked yesterday! (There are 3 boxes in total but I only took pics of two as it still shows all the flavours). All recipes from or tweaked versions of recipes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World.

Rosewater & Pistachio & 'Elvis'

Basic chocolate filled with cherry pie filling, vanilla buttercream, a glace cherry and chocolate sprinkles on top and basic chocolate with mint buttercream and a mint fondant chocolate.

Up close & personal shots:

Mint choc

Chocolate cherry (black forest)

Pistachio rosewater

Elvis (banana, with pb frosting)

Gotta go - I got a hotel to decorate!

Laterz
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Vegan MoFo: African Sweet Potato Stew

Last night for dinner I made this stew of awesomeness. I've made (and I think blogged) this before and it's so good, I know I'll be making it again. Sweet potatoes, chick peas, tomatoes, peanut butter... It's rad. I served it with brown rice.

I have been baking baking baking, look out for those pics on Sunday!

Laterz
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Vegan MoFo: Moroccan Inspired goodies

I made more effort tonight!! :-)

I took some tempeh (that I boiled for 10 minutes first) and spread it with a mixture of lemon juice, rasul-hanout spice mix, olive oil, paprika, a teeny pinch of allspice, grated ginger and grated garlic. Then I baked it for 20 minutes @ 200C. It was tasty!! I served it with some bulgar wheat just soaked for 30 minutes in veggie stock and an awesome salad.

My salad consited of canellinni beans, rehydrated sun dried tomatoess, rocket, alfalfa sprouts, cucumber and fresh mint & coriander. The dressing was more lemon juice, tahini, extra virgin olive oil, rasul hanout (a teeny bit), paprika, salt & pepper. Delish!

Laterz
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Vegan MoFo: A little better than yesterday.... but not much!

So today I think I did a little better than today, although it's hardly earth shattering stuff. I made mashed swede & carrots, anya potatoes, sweetcorn and a frys chicken burger! hahaha - I couldn't be bothered to conjure up a healthy bean based burger after I got back from the gym.

Tomorrow I'll think of something less lame. Promise!!


Laterz
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Vegan MoFo: Lack of inspiration strikes!

This is what happens when you haven't been shopping and can't be arsed to cook! hahaha mushrooms, canned beans, jarred dolmio sauce and spaghetti. Dull as arse but good enough for a crappy wet Monday.

My acid reflux has been playing up lately and it's kind of dulling my appetite and my will to cook! But as this is MoFo, I should probably kick myself up the butt - now that'd be a feat!!

Maybe tomorrow, I'll come up with something less crap!

Laterz
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Vegan MoFo: Sunday Roast

I like a good roast dinner on a Sunday.

That is all.

Laterz
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Vegan MoFo: Enchiladas Baby!

I suck at MoFo, I was meant to blog this Thursday!! OK well better late than never.

Enchiladas!! I made these on Thursday for my friend and I, along with a mega fail of a cake that I'm not blogging. Normally I don't make them saucy, just filling and then baking. But I tried them the traditional way this time and they were amazing!

The filling was tofu, yellow & orange peppers, onions, mushrooms and sweetcorn all spiced up with cumin, coriander, paprika, chilli powder and oregano. Then I made a sauce out of passata and the sames spices / herbs as the filling, plus a pinch of sugar. I added about 1/2 a cup of the sauce into the filling before filling 6 flour tortillas and rolling them up. Then I poured most of the sauce over them and scattered a tonne of daiya mozzarella and cheddar on top. They are baked @ 180C for 30 minutes, covered with foil, then off comes the foil and they bake a further 5 minutes.

I made sure to leave some of the enchilads un-sauced, as I like where the tortillas go all crispy. They were awesome.

There was some sauce left so I added water and cooked my rice in there to give it some extra flavour.

Laterz
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Vegan MoFo: Soup & my fancy, but not schmancy, new piece of equipment

Afternoon all, just a short and sweet one from me today. Well short and savoury actually!

I finally bought myself a food processor, I've wanted one forever and have been holding off because I wanted a fancy schmancy one. In the end I just went for a moderately fancy - no schmancy! It's a kenwood though so it's a good make and should do the job pretty well.

The first thing I did with it, was shred up a tonne of carrots, swede, onion and garlic to make this awesome soup! Soup is one of my favourite things to make any time of the year but especially at this time of year, when it's starting to get really cold.

This one was a pretty simple affair: onions, garlic, carrots, swede, barley, red lentils, yellow split peas, dried herbs and veggie stock. Simple but delicious!

I'm looking forward to thinking up more things to do with my new machine. Also, I haven't named him yet - any suggestions??

That's all for today, see you tomorrow MoFos!

Laterz
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Vegan MoFo: Wedding Foodz Part 2

If you're wondering where part 1 is - that was last year during MoFo when my other friend got married!

So Saturday was my friend's wedding. Those of you who are friends with me on facebook will have already seen the pics and look out in few weeks for the make up pics over on my beauty blog! But back to the important stuff - the food!

The hotel my friend got married in apparently had a chef who boasts a michelin star. Having said that, the vegan food wasn't especially exciting or inventive - but then from chefs it tends not to be. However it was pretty tasty.

For a starter, I got onion soup (it needed salt!)


The main was really good though, it was a squash with loads of roasted veg and marinated tofu, with potatoes and carrots.

The dessert was predictably a fruit salad. Not very creative but tasty nonetheless!

The next morning in the hotel, everyone had full english brekkies. But although they had soymilk, there wasn't a right lot of choice for me. I had cereal and toast and jam. So when I got home I made myself a vegan full english for brunch. Birdseye potato waffles, fried mushrooms, realeat facon, linda mccartney sausages and spaghetti hoops. Oh and HP sauce! It was pretty freakin rad I must say.

Laterz
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Vegan MoFo: Howdy Y'all

Hello everyone! Firstly, happy World Vegan Day. WVD also marks the start of MoFo - hurrah!


I'm going to start MoFo by blogging all the food from my recent trip to sunny Dallas. Looking through my photos, I had hardly any of my friend and I, they were mostly food. Haha. So here we go:

The pics of kind of in reverse order, just the way they came off the camera. Here is one of the last meals we ate, at Spiral Diner in Forth Worth. Spiral is an all vegan place and it's awesome! I found Daiya there and ended up coming home with 6 bags of it. I had said to my friend that I wanted to go there for their Sunday brunch and we actually ended up going there for dinner twice as well. This is the Meatballs and Sketti, which was really delicious. With lots of pine nuts, pesto and garlicky herby toast.

My friend had their burger, with a nut patty and lots of guacamole. She said it was good, it definitely looked it.

We were too full for pudding so we took it home for late dessert / brekkie the next morning. My friend got 2 chocolate chip cookies and I got a snickerdoodle and a brownie. Both of which were amazing, but that brownie knocked my socks off.

On our last proper night out (ie, where we could drink without having to worry about being hungover on a plane the next day), we went to the Sundance Square area of Fort Worth, to a restaurant called the Uno Chicago Grill, which had loads of pizzas on the menu, including this vegetarian one. It had a base of salsa and a tonne of veggies and I just had them leave off the cheese. It was spicy and delicious.

One night we decided on a night in, as we were going out early the next day. So we ordered in chinese takeout. I got a tofu dish with lots of veggies, that was really good.

We also got a rice noodle dish, plain rice and fried mushrooms.

The next day, we went to Six Flags, to scare ourselves shitless on the rollercoasters. It's slim pickings for vegans I'm afraid and not much better for vegetarians. I ended up having fries and onions rings. They were good fries but the onion rings were a bit pants!

On the Sunday night, we were going to go to an Italian restaurant that was a short walk from Spiral Diner we'd seen. But it was shut, as was pretty much everything on that street, except for a Mexican restaurant. We'd eaten a fair amount of tex-mex and were a bit sick of it, but not having much choice we went in. There were not a lot of veggie options on the menu so I talked to the waitress and they came up with this cheeseless green enchilada for me. It was lovely but my god it was hot! I had to scrape off most of the green sauce in the end because my mouth was on fire. Then I tried their home made pico de gallo and I thought my head was going to assplode! Jeebus, it was the hottest thing I've ever eaten, and that counts the whole chilli I ate in a thai restaurant once as a dare. My mouth was seriously burning for about half an hour afterwards. But I digress, the enchilada came with rice and refried beans.

Sunday brunch @ Spiral Diner. Heaven! I had the Lumberjack breakfast which was biscuits and gravy (something I've always wanted to try), sausage and scrambled tofu. It was awesome. All of it, I loved it.

My friend had the Viva Las Migas, which was scrambled tofu with avocado, salsa and corn chips. Which she said was really good, it looked lovely.

On our first trip to Spiral, I had the meatball sub, which was deliciously cheezy and amazing. And massive. I picked potato salad as my side, and it was completely different to any potato salad I've ever had. It was more like mashed potato with loads of flavourings like gherkins and mustard. It was awesome, I need to try and recreate it soon!

My friend had the crispy spring wrap, which I guess is a veggie take on the hoisin duck wrap. It was the first time my friend had tried seitan as well. She liked it, but I think it took her a few bites to get used to the seitan. I was the same though the first time I tried it, I think it's a bit of an aquired taste.


Dessert - oh my god dessert!! We both had the hot cookie sundae. A warm gooey choc chip cookie, with vanilla ice cream, soy whipped cream and chocolate sauce. If I could marry a dessert - it would be this one! It was so freaking good I cannot tell you. Their ice cream is the best ice cream I've ever had - vegan or not!!


And even though I was pretty damn full - I knew it would be a crime to leave any in the bowl ....

I also had a chocolate almond milk to drink which was yummy too.

On a shopping trip to Hulen Mall, I got a falafel / salad meal with curly fries on the side. It was pretty good and it was nice to actually get some salad.

I used the leftover pitta and curly fries to make an awesome chip butty - I'm thinking curly fries and pitta may be the ultimate chip butty??

There was only really one night that had a bit too much booze and that was a night out in Fort Worth's Stockyards. Loads of bars / saloons selling things like these: Texas Tea! One of these + a beer the size of my face and hello drunkeness! It was like a long island iced tea but with less coke in, if that's possible!

For food, we shared some fries which also had fried onions and jalapenos. Whoever thought to fry jalapenos is a freakin genius!! We also got these fried corn things you can see in the background but I ate one and was dubious of their veganess so stuck with the fries.

The end of our first full day in Dallas, we found a lovely italian restaurant. I'd had a couple of drinks in TGIs by this point, so I forgot take a pic until I was half way through - hence this horrendous picture! It was a pasta dish, sans the cheese with broccoli and other veggies in and it was pretty damn good for something so simple.

And helping me along to forget to take pics, bellinis! (I have no idea what's going on with my friend's face in the background though, hehe!)

So that's it from Dallas. I hope everyone is enjoying MoFo so far and I'll be back tomorrow with the food from my friend's wedding this past weekend.

Laterz
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