Singin' in the Rain

Helloooo,

Can you believe it's already August? You wouldn't think it if you looked out the window though, the Great British Summer - gotta love it, eh! Although yesterday it was actually pretty sunny, but I was ill so spent most of my day on the couch watching episodes of Huff and Jeremy Kyle! haha.

Well I am in the final week of my diet. I'm not calling it a cleanse because I've been rubbish at eating raw stuff, aside from juice & smoothies for brekkie with salad for lunch. I am gonna weight and measure myself friday to see if I've lost any weight (cross your fingers people!!). So here are some eats from the last week....

Dinner on Sunday for me and my friends. I made lasagna, got it all ready then finished it off and stuck it in the oven when we got back from the gym. I used gluten free (corn) lasagne sheets, sauteed up some veggies, made a tomato sauce and a tofu layer. I was gonna make tofu ricotta but I was way too lazy to dig out Veganomicon. So I just threw a packet of thawed cauldron plain tofu (250g) into the blender, along with the water it came in, added 1/3 cup of cashews, a couple of tbsp of soymilk and a pinch of salt & pepper and blended it super smooth. So it wasn't really like tofu ricotta, just a lovely smooth creamy sauce. It rocked.

The top was a sauce I made out of 1 cup (250ml) of soymilk, mixed with 3 level tbsp of cornflour, a tsp of paprika and a pinch of salt & pepper. Then I boiled it stirring constantly until it went really thick and then added a tbsp of tahini and 2 tbsp of nooch and checked seasoning. It made a perfect cheezy topping. The whole thing then got baked for 30 minutes and went with some steamed greens and a True Blood marathon! :)

I also had my best friends round last Thursday (and again tonight!) and I made the chickpea sensation patties from ED&BV, but I didn't get a photo! They were not bad but did fall apart a wee bit. Maybe because I subbed gluten free breadcrumbs for the oats, to keep them gluten free? But anyway, I cooked WAY too much brown rice for these so had loads leftover. Some went into....

Rice salad, just rice, veggies lemon juice and an avocado and some salt & pepper. Easy but yummy.

This was breakfast on Sunday. I really was craving porridge, but as oats aren't gluten free, I decided to use up the leftover brown rice. I just cooked 3/4 cup of cooked brown rice in 1 cup of soymilk, with a tsp of arrowroot for 15 minutes (arrowroot added last 5 minutes) until thick. Then I added some agave and some Dark Chocolate Dreams (gluten free and no refined sugar - woop!!). This was SO good. I got some of the White Chocolate Wonderful in my swap and I found the Dark Chocolate Dreams in Sainsburys (I did a massive SQUEEEEE when I saw it and had to stop myself buying 6 jars of it!). I just wish they sold more flavours in the UK!! Get on it PB&Co!!

As well as brown rice leftover from the patties, I had leftover chickpeas. YAY - this means Punk Rock Chickpea Gravey from VWAV. I had it with mashed butternut squash/sweet potato, peas and some awesome tofu. I just dipped it in cornflour, then (gluten free / low sodium) soy sauce, then in Orgran's Gluten Free crumbs (these have come in really handy lately!). Then I baked them at 200C for about 20 minutes. Yum.

One night I really couldn't think of what to have for dinner. I haven't had many tofu scrambles lately, I used to always have them on a Saturday but it's rare that I fancy them lately. But I had this for dinner one night and it was awesome. Baked sweet potatoes with a scramble - I threw all the the veggies in right at the end (except the onion) so they were crunchy and awesome! Topped with an avocado tossed in lemon juice and a dollop of low fat hummus. Tasty good.

I got this idea from Jessy's eggplant parm! I just dipped two pieces of aubergine in cornflour, then soymilk then the Orgran crumbs mixed with some nooch. Then fried it in a little cooking spray. To go with, I made a rice mixture with veggies and some more nooch and tahini. I stuff this into a big fat tomato and baked it for 20 minutes at 180C/350F. Delicious!! SOOOOO delicious.

That's it for the food - but something I'm excited to share.... my newest ink!! I have been dying to post this since the 6th of June when I got it done, but I only had a bloody, just taken pic and kept forgetting to get my friend to take a better one.

This was my 30th birthday present from my best friends. I wanted a fairy sitting on a sunflower. I wanted the sunflower to represent the vegan society logo, but I wanted it prettier than that logo (which is a bit boring), I wanted it to be a realistic sunflower. When I discussed it with my artist, we agreed the stem would be too long if she was sitting on top of it, so this is what she came up with. I just showed her 2 pics of fairies, one of the sort of style I liked and one with the wings I liked. For colours, I just said greens and blonde hair please. I was in love with her sketch but the finished article was even more awesome than I hoped for.

A close-up. I wish I could get you a better close-up because the detail's she's put in the face is awesome. She has green eyeshadow and pink lipstick - she is one hot (vegan) fairy!! Plus these pics do not do the colours justice but you get the idea!

Laterz

xXx

Healthy crap and ... erm cake!

Sorry UK, I think I jinxed us. Ever since my last post, the weather has sucked!! So yeah the weather sucks!!! Sucks sucks sucks! (maybe this'll bring back the sun?????)

Bright side? I don't have to water the tomatoes.

So I know I've mentioned before I'm gonna be a bridesmaid in October and me & my friend and fellow bridesmaid, Maz, have been going to the gym for a couple of months now and doing pretty well at not quitting it too. But I need shake something up in my diet. I've been feeling pretty tired lately and instead of getting easier, some workouts seem harder! The doc put me on omeprazole for my acid reflux a while back and it turns out that heartburn remedies deplete B12 stores! Something us vegans need to be mindful of, so I’ve started taking a Vit. B supplement.

Also, Jessy's ACT posts really inspired me to try a cleanse and shake my diet up. I’m not following ACT, but for 28 days I am cutting out everything on the NO list – so no coffee, alcohol, gluten, processed foods (except tofu!) …. etc. I’ve been having smoothies for breakfast for a while so I’ll keep that up (I’ve ordered some protein powder, as I’m not sure I’m getting enough protein either!)

I started the diet on Monday but before I go onto that, I have a couple of pics of the last bit of baking I did before I started!! Check out the gloriousness of the Vegan Brunch East Coast Coffee Cake, yes I finally got this book and it's awesome. I did the jam swirl variation, with blueberry jam and also sprinkled some coconut over the jam and put some into the topping too. However, I should have added the extra canola oil the recipe said you might have to, as the topping was really a little too sandy and crumbly. It still tasted awesome though! Before the topping…..


Crumbly goodness, after cutting.

I had to try the green juice, so that's what I kicked off my cleanse with (I bought a juicer). It had a golden delicious apple, some watermelon, a piece of cucumber and a big old handful of spinach. I thought this was gonna be disgusting! Honestly I thought I’d be making this face when I tried it - but it was bloody lovely. The rest of the week I've been having a carrot in my juice instead of watermelon, which is much better, not as sweet.


Then my smoothie was strawberries, soymilk, almond butter, squeeze of agave and cinnamon. yum. It's been pretty much the same all week but today I ran out of strawberries so I switched to mango and ginger instead.


Dinner the first night, I took inspiration from a recipe I saw on sparkpeople for a quinoa chilli. It had quinoa (duh), sweet potato, onion, garlic, sweetcorn, mushrooms and the usual herbs & spices I throw into chillis. I cooked most of it for 25 minutes, then threw in some yellow pepper, courgette and spinach for the last minute so it was still crunchy.

I found these lovely purple radishes in the supermarket - I've only seen pink ones before!

They've been going into my lunchtime salads...... this was today's - leftover avocado, romaine lettuce, tomato, radish, alfalfa sprouts, spinach and wasabi edamames for crunch. YUM.

You know I said leftover avocado? It was leftover from dinner last night. A massive salad with rice noodles, tofu, avo, tomatoes, sweetcorn, lettuce and lime vinaigrette.

This was dinner on tuesday night. Gluten free pasta with a sauce based on the vegan yum yum recipe, only I didn't have any basil or cashews so I used almonds and parsley - still good! I chucked some broccoli and tofu in too.


Tonight I had planned to make bean burgers so I put some pinto beans in the crockpot last night. But I didn't fancy them in the end. So I decided to make Sarah Kramer's bodacious bean & barley soup but make it cleanse-friendly. I replaced the barley with brown rice and used the pintos instead of the chickpeas. It was yummy.

I have tried to find gluten free bread, but I can't find one that doesn't have egg or honey in! Dammit. So I had a go at making GF soda bread. It didn't quite work - texture was ok but the taste was off; I'll work on it!

After dinner we were supposed to do urban rebounding but I couldn't face it - my legs were still hurting from body pump last night because we've been doing more gym sessions this week. So we did water workout instead. It turned out to be pretty entertaining, because as well as getting yelled at by Frau Farbissiner (the instructor) they also played eye of the tiger. This probably would only amuse you if you're a Supernatural fan.

I've been having a larabar when I get back from the gym this week to make up my calories for the day, but I ran out. So I had a bit of my stanky soda bread with some almond butter on instead.

I felt a bit headachy and hungry the first day but I feel ok now and less hungry between meals that I was on Monday & Tuesday. I've dragged out all my cookbooks and am looking forward to trying out some new recipes!! :-)

Laterz

xXx

Birthday Foodz - part 2 of 3

The second celebration for my birthday was just me and my two best friends. I had the day off so I started it as I did last year.... with french toast and ketchup. And a cup of earl grey (I found decaf earl gray! YAY!)

The most important thing in the post? The birthday cake. I made a really great vanillary cake with orange icing, flavoured with orange zest, orange juice and orange liqueur! It was awesome and once I've perfected the recipes I'll post them.

Close up! I grated some orange chocolate on top with a microplane, to make it extra sexy.

Inside shot....

This glass was a pressie off my friend Maz. Here it is filled with sparkly rosé.


Tuesday was a gloriously sunny day (which is unusual as I don't remember a year when it hasn't rained on my birthday!!) so I made a rad playlist of mid 90s dance and 80s music and we sat out on the balcony. I bought a disposable barbecue and made some ace food to go on it. It was awesome and just soooo freakin hot. We all got a bit of a tan line! :)

The food I did was the last of my jersey royal potatoes, cooked till tender. Then splashed with olive oil, some fresh rosemary and thyme from my garden, lots of sea salt and 3 or 4 smashed garlic cloves. Then you wrap them up in foil and either chuck 'em on the barbie for half an hour or in the oven at 200C/400F for about 35 mins (which is what I did). This is Jamie Oliver's method that I saw on TV about 5 years ago and it rocks so hard, I used to make them all time.

I wanted the food to be awesome, but didn't really want to spend the whole of my birthday morning in the kitchen. So I took 2 packets of cauldron tofu and sliced them up into big triangles. Then I poured a jar of reggae reggae cooking sauce over them and left it to marinate. I love Reggae Reggae Sauce and the new jars of cooking sauces (which I can't seem to find on the website) are on special at Sainsbury's this week - £1 a jar!! I bought two and this was reallly good! I just chucked them on the barbie until it was starting to char.

To go with - garlic bread and that is a sauce I made out of soya yoghurt, fresh mint, a squeeze of lime and some salt & pepper, just because the tofu was really spicy and needed something cooling on the side. I forgot to get a pic but I also roasted some asparagus on the barbie too and it was delicious.

I made some simple veggie kebabs with mushrooms, peppers & red onions.

This salad looks like a right old mess but it was delicious!! I soaked some finely chopped red onion (a couple tbsp, just what was left after making the kebabs) in the juice of a lime. Then I added a small avocado, chopped and mashed it so there were just a few chunks left in it. then I added some orange pepper (what was left after making kebabs), some fresh mint and coriander and a bag of salad leaves (rocket and baby chard). Then I added butter beans and a lemon vinaigrette. Simple but it was really REALLY tasty!

Maddie (my friend's pup) was happy too, she got to spend the afternoon soaking up the sun and swapping between different laps!! She likes those cushions!!


OK and yesterday's dinner. I got home and was really not in the mood to cook much but I threw brown rice on to cook while I cleaned up the kitchen. I made Jessy's cilantro / lime rice (awesome stuff!!) and some guacamole. I got some canned sweetcorn and dressed it with a bit of chilli sauce and white wine vinegar and then cooked the rest of the butterbeans with some red pepper, tomato puree, onion and some spices. It was pretty good for something I chucked together.

Really yesterday I was craving nachos, as I'd picked up some Nacho Cheezly at the weekend but I didn't have any tortilla chips. So I bought some today and made nachos. I used up the leftover rice from yesterday and threw in some onion, red pepper, tomato puree, spices and tomatoes. I used up the leftover guac and some sour supreme that I bought when I got the cheezly. They were good but I was a total pig and made 2 layers - It was way too much for one, I only ate about half.

I actually enjoyed the Cheezly. Normally I don't really like vegan cheeze but the nacho stuff is pretty tolerable and went really well with the nachos.


The 3rd celebration is a meal out on saturday so I'll post the pics of that next week!

Let there be Rock!

I was looking through my camera last night and saw that I had a crapload of food pix on there and now I see why - it's been almost two weeks since my last blog post. So strap yourself in - i've got a lot of pics for ya!!

Starting off with last night's dinner. I really could not get inspired last night and couldn't decide what I wanted and somehow it struck me that soup & a sarnie would be a good dinner. And it was. The soup was just a roasted yellow pepper, an onion, some potatoes and veggie stock cooked up and blended with a little soya cream. It was really good!


The sarnie was some tofu that I marinated with some miso, maple syrup and some other stuff that I forget and then baked. With cucumber, tomato, alfalfa sprouts and vegan mayo. YUM!

The inside of the sammie....

This one was brunch yesterday. I had a 'great' idea to try and make individual frittatas. Yeah it didn't really work. It was more like baked tofu scramble. It tasted good though but I need to work on the recipe!


Mum & Dad came round for lunch on Saturday and Dad had made tomato & basil soup and brought it with them. It was tomato with some other stuff chucked in and it was awesome.


I made us some lower fat carrot cake muffins, with an orange glaze one. I ALMOST forgot to take a pic, I was just about to scarf the last one when I remember. Hence the messy pic!

Last week we resurrected our tradition of my girlies coming round in the week for dinner. I made balls! (Hee hee!). That's VCON's beanballs to the less childish of us. The recipe said it made 12-15 balls (hee hee!) but I got 23 out of it! Obviously I don't know what a walnut should look like!

On top of spaghetti ... all covered in..... tomato sauce! YUM. I had read reviews saying the balls (hee hee!) were mushy. I agree, they were a little, but not enough to bother me as they tasted really good.

I also made us some garlic bread to go with.

We're all trying to be good and avoid cake so I made a Lychee & Lime Sorbet. It was ok but I went a bit overboard with the ginger! I will work on it.


This was a stir-fry I did last week. I was knackered and had to get food shopping on the way home so I just picked up a pack of stir-fry veg, a sachet of sauce, a pack of marinated tofu pieces and a pack of crispy seaweed, then just served it with some udon noodles. It was ok, the sauce was a bit bland so I had to jazz it up with some spices.

The next two were variations on a theme. I saw a recipe for a great looking salad in a book I bought a while back called the Low GI Vegetarian Cookbook. It's a pretty good book - it has lots of recipes that if they are not vegan, are mostly easy to veganise. It also has suggestions for both veggie & vegan meal plans. But anyway, back to the salad. I didn't have everything they called for so I decided to wing it.

Udon noodles, marinated tofu pieces, avocado, salad leaves, toasted cashews and I made a dressing with the juice of a lime, a tbsp of mirin, a tsp of rice vinegar and a tbsp of soy sauce. I finished it off with lots of chopped fresh mint and coriander. It was really light and zingly. YUM.

The next day, I still had half an avocado so I went with some more cold udon noodles, julienned carrot, avocado, tofu, spring onions and a similar dressing as before but with a bit of chilli and some peanut butter mixed in. Really good!!

A meal last week - I made a pilaff using barley instead of rice and lots of cumin and paprika. And I served it with the Cumin Lime Tofu from Eat Drink & Be Vegan. I love that stuff - soooo good!

Lastly, a couple of experimental low fat baked goods - both of which need work! Firstly some cookies - they had cashews and sultanas in and oats. They were nice but not quite right.

Secondly, some muffins. These also had sultanas in and some spices and other stuff that I forget. Again, they need work.

OK and non-food related. My mum bought me a Hetty!! Which is the female Henry Vacuum cleaner. Not only are these little things cute, they are more environmentally friendly as they use less energy and they are powerful little suckers too. Plus they take up less closet space so there is more room for shoes! Win-win!


It even came with a pink canvas bag to encourage you to use less plastic bags when you do your shopping.


And lastly, it was pointed out to me last time that I hadn't yet posted a pic of my tattoo. Sorry, it totally slipped my mind. I have struggled to get a decent pic and this is where it's still a bit scabby but you get the gist.... My two best friends have the same* tattoo as well.

(* Well it was supposed to be the same but the guy who did it messed them all up so they are all slighly different.)


Cooking to: Mostly this week - AC/DC (went to see them thursday and they were freakin amazing!!)