Vegan MoFo Day 28 - Jalapeno Cornbread

I had a few days off from posting because there's nothing more boring that a sick person babbling on about eating soup.  So yesterday I made some jalapeno & cheeze cornbread, it was pretty good warm out of the oven....

Even better when I made it into french toast and served with a scramble.  The scramble was really basic, all I put it in was a bit of turmeric for colour and then nooch and a bit of black salt, regular salt and some soya cream.  Yum.

Here's the recipe in case you fancy having a go too:

Jalapeno Cheddar Cornbread
Ingredients:
1 cup cornmeal
1 cup of plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp paprika
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup sweetcorn kernels
1 loose cup vegan cheese of your choice (I used Cheezly soy free cheddar)
1 cup almond milk
1 tsp vinegar
1/4 cup rapeseed (canola) oil
Chopped Jalapenos from a jar (I used 5 or 6 rings finely chopped, but adjust it to your taste)

Method:
Preheat Oven to 180C/350F.

Mix dry ingredients in a bowl. Mix wet ingredients together, pour into dry and mix until just combined.  Pour into a loaf tin and bake for 25-30 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean.

Cool on a wire rack until cool enough to slice.

Laterz
xXx

A whole heap of crap and I hate you blogger

So I just typed this muthafucka and then blogger deleted the whole. damn. thing! GARRR! So forgive me if it's less than informative! hahahaa.

Ooh I been busy lately from work to hen nights to planning a holiday to starting another blog!! More on that later though.

Onto the food. I got hold of some taifun tofu (which in my opinion kicks Cauldron's cack excuse for a new recipe's arse!!) and I sliced it up and brushed with a glaze of mustard, miso, rice syrup and a bit of olive oil. Then I sprinkled it with sesame seeds and baked it, brushing it again with loads more glaze half way through so it was good and sticky. It was delicious with steamed veg and herbed butter, well vitalite anyway.


Leftovers the next day - with some tabouleh.

Microwave cupcakes! I quartered the basic chocolate recipe in vegan cupcakes take over the world and split it between 4 silicone baking cases and nuked them for 1 min and 40 seconds in total. The glaze was a mix of heated cherry jam that I seived and then mixed with icing sugar.

This week's dinner with the girlies. I made us a sweet potato and butternut squash curry (which was awesome).....

With some raita (strained alpro yoghurt, lemon juice, cucumber and fresh mint) with a wee drizzle of olive oil on top.....

some mushroom rice (I made it foofy and fancy by dying a little bit yellow, a little bit red and mixing it in to look like takeaway rice)....

And homemade naan breads. As usual I was winging it, one day I'll remember to write down when I make up a recipe.

Dessert was ice cream - the easiest ice cream EVER. The flesh of a large mango, blended with 1 carton (250ml) of alpro fresh single soya cream and a tablespoon of rice syrup then put in the ice cream maker. Delish and easy peasy lemon squeezy.

Onto seitan. I finally got around to makng the red seitan from Viva Vegan and yes, it is as awesome as everyone says it is. It makes 4 logs and you get 2 servings from each log. So I froze 2 and here are a couple of the meals I made with the other 2:

I brushed it with barbecue sauce and baked it for 15 mins. Served it with a baked potato topped with coleslaw.

This was my favourite thing I did with it. I veganised Nigella's Moroccan Lamb & Cacik. Basically I took one log of seitan, just opened up the foil and poked holes in it then poured over and rubbed in a mixture of: 1.5tsp of ras-el hanou spice mixture, juice of 1/2 a lemon, 1 tbsp olive oil, 1 grated clove of garlic and a pinch of salt. Then I sealed the foil back up and baked it at 180C for 10 mins, then opened the foil and let it carry on cooking for another 10 minutes. I served it with bulgar wheat just cooked in veg stock and cacik (which is exactly the same as my raita above, but with a clove of garlic also grated in).

This is what the seitan looked like after baking, isn't it pretty with the rose petals from the ras-el hanout?

Here, I pressed the seitan into some ground peppercorns and dry fried it. Steamed veggies, mashed potatoes and stuffing with a tonne of gravy completed this awesome sunday roast!

I made spelt bread. It was awesome but I've not got the recipe exactly how I want it yet, will report back with the recipe when I've got it right.

I also made some cornbread for a chilli the other week. But I love it most with jam! YUM. This recipe is from La Dolce Vegan. It always works perfectly for me every time, great recipe.

Remember that hen night I mentioned, here's a jug of pimms royale: pimms, prosecco, lemonade and a crap tonne of fruit. YUM!!!!

And some of my contributions to the food: cupcakes, rock road cookies and peanut butter cups.

Close up of the cupcakes - it was a 90s weekend and we were doing a ravers theme - hence my aceeeeeed cupcakes!

I also mentioned another blog! Totally separate from this one, I'm still keeping this one!! My new one is my beauty blog - mainly about make up but really is my showcase for make up work which I'll be adding to the more weddings / occasion make up that I do. Head on over and have a look if you're curious: http://sjbeauty.wordpress.com/. Blogger deleting my posts is just one of many reasons I decided to put the new one on wordpress!

I'm off to Dallas on holiday in a few days and I can't WAIT. So this'll be the last post before then, see you next time with pics of Dallas foodz!

Laterz
xXx

I've got a big one for ya!!

haha did that sound dirty enough? Good.

So like I said, I have a tonne of pics for you because I've been a lazy/busy bint and haven't blogged in a month.

So I'm gonna start with a trip to Terre a Terre in Brighton with some PPKers last month. I had the smokey soul in a bowl - a jamaican inspired dish. It was good but way spicier than I thought. It was a corn cake filled with spinach. The absolute best thing about this was coconut spinach it was sitting on - SO good.


For dessert I had the fragipane tea & cake. It had amaretto ice cream (which is what sold this for me) and the cake was absolutely delicious. The glass was spicy fruity tea - weird but yummy.

Yesterday I went for vegan pizza (among other stuff) at fellow PPKer Kip's house with a couple of other PPKers including Holley and JoJo and her hubby. Kip brought some daiya cheese back from a recent trip to the states and can I just say - it's pretty freakin awesome!! It actually melts and tastes like proper cheese. These pizzas rocked, but I only took a pic of one. This one had garlic, frys chicken style burgers and vegan bacon on. Yum.

My plate: salad, pizza, dough ball, bean salad and a vol au vent.

Dough balls - so freaking good.


Fancy vol au vents. These had some cheesy stuff made with cashews (if I remember right), vegan bacon and a piece of apple. Kip is awesome! She also made this lavender lemonade which was so freakin amazing I can't tell you, but I forgot to take a pic!


So remember I said Kip was awesome - further proof as if needed, oreo ice cream.


And a crap tonne of home made cookies. They were all delicious.


And my contribution - chocolate pie with hob nob cookie base. It didn't turn out exactly how I wanted it to and was a bit too crumbly, but it was still pretty good. But my poor pie did feel a bit intimidated next to all the amazing stuff that Kip made!

So I've been onsite for a few days for work and was really looking forward to eating decent food when I got home, even though I did not too bad in the hotel for food.

I went to waitrose on my way home as I heard their iced buns were vegan and really fancied them. Only they didn't have any! Poo. So I thought I'd make my own. I'm not posting the recipe because I really didn't get them right. They were way too chewy, but I'm willing to work on them till they're right.

Dinner when I got back had to be something easy and quick. So I made a curry to use up the really overripe tomatoes in my fridge. I added a tonne of spinach, a tin of chickpeas, a small tin of new potatoes and some home made curry powder. Then added som soya yoghurt right at the end. It was yummy.

This was dinner before I went onsite for my friends and I - chili, that I made using the new Linda McCartney soya mince, which used to be Realeat apparently. I really REALLY like the new recipe (or old one if you were ever able to get hold of Realeat which I never have been!). There's a couple more pics featuring this mince.

To go with it, I made us some corn muffins, these were AWESOME. I've posted the recipe at the end of the post.

For pudding, I made us a low fat chocolate cake. I used this recipe off spark people - my mum uses this recipe a lot and it's really really good! I sandwiched it with some cherry jam and just dusted it with some icing sugar to make it purty! I took the leftovers onsite and myself and the safety manager polished it off when no one was looking! :-) I made a couple of changes, I used cider vinegar instead of balsamic and I only used half a cup of sugar insteadof a whole one and added in 6 tbps of splenda to make up the sweetness.

OK onto some random pics that were on my camera.

I wanted to make some coronation tofu but I did't have any mango chutney, so I just used yoghurt and curry powder. It was still pretty good. I used the new cauldro tofu, which is WAY soft and I don't really like it. But it was ok. I mixed the remainder of the sauce into some leftover cooked rice and some veggies.

I made some chickpea burgers when I wanted something quick one day. They were alright but nothing special. To go with though I had some broccoli that I steamed and then dressed with a tsp each of sesame oil, soy sauce and sesame seeds. YUM. And some butternut squash roasted with a bit of curry powder.

Dessert last Sunday, a quick crumble for one! I had a rather mangy looking apple in my fruit bowl and found some frozen peaches in my freezer so I mixed them with some lemon juice, spices and some dried cranberries. Then added a crumble topping and baked it. I had it with soya cream, well about half of it anyway. It was not bad.

A quick dinner one day, I had some coriander and mint in the fridge and some leftover rocket leaves so I whizzed them up with a small clove of grated garlic, some pine nuts, olive oil and nooch to make a pesto. Then I had it with some pasta with some peas mixed in. YUM.

I made spaghetti bolognaise with the linda mc mince for a friend and I a while back and I forgot to take a pic. But the next day I mixed the leftovers with some black beans and some tabasco to make a quick chilli and had it on top of a baked potato. Good stuff.

Oh look - more soya mince!! Old fashioned stylee. This is what got me to buy the stuff in the first place. My mum used to make the best mince ever when I was a kid. Obviously now I don't eat beef anymore so when I went over there a few weeks ago, she made me some with the Linda Mc mince, which I never would have bought because I hate most fake meats. She added bisto granules (GENIUS!) and some veggies and it was so freakin good I ran home and bought a bag myself to have a go. And here it was with tenderstem broccoli, green beans and potato/sweet potato mash - which by the way is a little piile of heaven. So delicious, low fat and proper comfort food!

Leftovers - some tofu that I just sprayed with braggs and dusted well with bacon salt and then baked. It really did taste bacony! It was yummy. I had some cooked rice leftover so I just mixed it with some veg and a vinaigrette.

Sunday lunch a few weeks ago, lentil & veggie soup and a toasted cheezly sammie.

These were some cupcakes I made a few weeks back. I saw Giada de Laurentiis make cupcakes out of brownie mix (cheater cheater compulsive eater!!) and they looked pretty good. But I don't know if any box mixes are vegan plus honestly, it's not that hard to make chocolate cakes!! But I stole the flavouring ideas. I added walnuts and chocolate chips to the batter and then topped them with cream cheese frosting and more choc chips. I used the new Pure cream cheese. It was not bad, not as good as tofutti though. Plus it's really sweet so no good for savoury stuff.

Oh and I bought some tiger bread one day and I had french toast for breakfast. With ketchup, the way it should be, none of this maple syrup crap. OK!

Oh and I forgot about this till I saw the pic but in the words of Janice.... OH. MY. GOD!! This was an african sweet potato / peanut stew and it was SO effing good, make it - make it NOW! I got the recipe off spark people again.

And as promised the corn muffin recipe, I did it all in cups - sorry UK people, I was too lazy to weigh.

Dry Ingredients:
3/4 cup plain flour
3/4 cup fine cornmeal
2 tbsp splenda
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp fine sea salt (if using table salt, use only 1/4 tsp)
5 or 6 sun-dried tomatoes, rehydrated in hot water
3 or 4 small spring onions (or 2 fatties)
A small (160g drained weight) tin of sweetcorn
Wet Ingredients:
3/4 cup unsweetened soy or other non-dairy milk
1/4 rapeseed (canola) oil
1 tsp vinegar or lemon juice

Method:
Mix together dry ingredients. Make sure the spring onions, s-d tomatoes and sweetcorn get a good coating of dry ingredients to stop them sinking to the bottom of the batter.

Whisk together the wet ingredients and then pour into the dry and mix until just combined.

Spray a muffin tin with oil and then divide the mixture between six holes. I filled them pretty much full to make 6 bigger muffins, but you could probably eek it out to 7 or 8 if you make them smaller.

Bake for 20 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean. Leave in the tin a few minutes until the muffins are cool enough to remove from the tins. Then put on a cooling rack to finish cooling.

Hello? Hey WAKE UP!! Told you it was a long one. Congrats if you're still awake!!

Laterz
xXx

Skip to the end.....

I'm starting at the end of the week's food instead of the beginning - Saturday! Saturday I got the train down to Brighton for the UK PPK Meet up. We had a picnic in the Pavilion Gardens. After a week or 2 of rain and black clouds, we had one day of glorious sunshine. It was so hot that I got sunburn (it's back to rain now though!), we were so lucky.

6 of us turned up in total; myself, Jojo, the_purple_peril, MessyVeggie, holylopez & interrobang?!.

It was great fun and there was so. much. food! Not sure if we even ate half of it, although luckily that meant leftovers for all! So here's a run down (christ it took forever to upload these, I HATE blogger!!)

Cranberry Walnut cookies that I made. I used Dreena Burton's recipe as my base and swapped light spelt flour for the wheat flour, took out the chocolate chips and added in a 1/4 cup each of broken up walnuts and dried cranberries. I also added about 1/4 tsp of allspice.

Peanut butter cupcakes. These were SO good!

I think my deer / reindeer (??) was a bit drunk!

Banana bread - we didn't actually eat this as we'd already had so much sugar!

Fruit! Pretty much the one healthy thing there.

Vegan Brunch broccoli quiche - this was soooo good, I definitely have to have a go at making this soon (so do you if you have the book, ok!).
Quinoa salad
Jojo's epic mint choc cake, with mint Newman O's and chocolate skulls. I'm kind of glad Newman O's are not available over here or I would eat them very often!

Jam donut cupcakes - mmmmmm!
Awesome brownies! I was too sugared out to eat one then & there, so I took mine home and ate it later, it rocked.

VCon Brooklyn Deli Macaroni Salad, this stuff is awesome.


Mezze inspired goodness, tabouleh, hummus and pittas and tempeh bacon. First time for me trying tempeh and I loved it. I was super excited to have a bit leftover to take home with me.


Seitan sausage and peanut noodle salad (my offerings, along with the cookies). Considering I just chucked peanut butter and other stuff in the mini-chop and whizzed until it tasted good, the noodles came out pretty well!


This cute pigeon was a fan of vegan cake!

This birdie preferred to eat the cake wrapper. He actually did eat the wrapper too!

OK back to normal food. This was dinner for me & my friends last week. I got the idea from La Dolce Vegan (I think!) - it was chilli with gluten free cornbread on top. I wasn't sure how it would come out, having only had very VERY limited experience with GF baking but it came out really well, I was so pleased. I forgot to bring my book to work with me - I was going to post the recipe. I'll try to next time, if I remember.

Served with guac - my avocado was not very ripe, even though I'd had it for over a week and it felt soft. Grrr, it was still pretty good though, just not as creamy as I'd have liked.

And another gluten free success. I tweaked my savoury muffins again. I replaced the wholewheat flour with brown rice flour and added 1 tsp of xantham gum. They worked really well, I was happy.

Lastly, I had a go last weekend at the Vegan Brunch omelet, as I got some black salt! They were really good and surprisingly easy to make. Mine isn't as pretty as Jeni's but it was tasty - I sauteed some mushrooms and spring onion in thyme and tamari for my filling. I halved the recipe and froze the other half of the batter, so I'm going to try defrosting it and cooking it up this week - will let you know how it does.

I dunno about anyone else - but the smell of the black salt - ERGH!! Gag me! It was gross, it wasn't too bad adding it to the mixture but when I turned on the blender I almost puked. The smell of it in my kitchen was making me feel sick. But it tasted good so it was worth it.

Laterz

xXx