Yesterday was Thursday, Thursday. Today is Friday, Friday!!

It's fri-ee-day fri-ee-day - that damn Rebecca Black and her stupid catchy annoying song!!  Dang.  Ah well, it is Friday - HURRAH.  So here's some stuff I've eaten this week.

As I said I was gonna in my last post, I made the lentil burgers from Hot Damn & Hell Yeah.  I really love these burgers!  I change them up a bit by adding a few extra spices in but the basic recipe is still the same.  I had it on toasted ciabatta (I had no rolls) with some steamed sugar snaps and broccoli and some sweetcorn and kidney beans straight outta the tin with a bit of vinegar and tabasco on - yum.

Later on in the week I wanted something fast, so I chopped up a couple of pieces of leftover AFR chilli / lime tofu from my last post and cooked it with a chopped tomato, some sweetcorn, kidney beans (what was left in the cans after the meal above), some cooked brown rice (out of a packet - tskk naughty Sal!) and some soy sauce and tabasco.  Then I shoved it on top of a tortilla with some lettuce on and a dollop of Tesco's soya yoghurt, which may I just say - kick's Alpro plain yoghurt's dirty sugary ass!!  It made way more than you see below, after I took the pick I just piled it all on the plate! hehe.

Then as it's Friday and I don't feel the need to be so strict with my diet on a Friday I made some muffins.  They are chocolate chunk, coconut and cherry and they rock.  Recipe is below the pic.

Cherry, Coconut & Chocolate Chunk Muffins
Dry Ingredients:
- 1.5 cups plain flour
- 1 cup oats
- 1/2 cup dessicated coconut
- 1/2 cup dried sour cherries
- 1/2 cup vegan chocolate chunks or chips
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 cup granulated sugar

Wet Ingredients:
- 1 cup Kara coconut milk (or you can use lite coconut milk or other non-dairy milk of your choice)
- 1/4 cup rapeseed (canola) oil
- 1 tsp light vinegar
- 1 tsp vanilla extract

Method:
Preheat oven to 180C/350F.

Mix together dry ingredients, breaking up any cherries that have stuck together.  Whisk together wet ingredients and then pour into dry.  Mix well and then divide between muffin tins.

Bake for 25-30 mins, until a skewer comes out clean.

I got 10 out of this, but my muffin cases were quite big, you might be able to eek out 12!

Have a fab weekend everyone.

Laterz
xXx

It's been a long time... we should'nt a left you....

...without a dope beat to step to....*

Well helloooo there!  I decided to wait til MoFo was over before posting these pics.  And also, today is World Vegan Day - Happy WVD to all the vegans out there!! :-)

I'm starting off with the food from Saturday night.  My awesome friend Jojo had a party and made a crap tonne of ace food.  When looking for inspiration, I of course headed straight to the queen of Halloweegan's blog - Wing it Vegan and found these awesome peppers.  As you can see, my carving skills are not as great as River's! ....

This one ended up with a snaggle toof!!  hehe

I also made cornbread, as my other friend Kip made chili, which I forgot to take a pic of! DOH.

Onto the stuff Jojo made (head over to Jojo's blog for more info and also for pictures of the gingerbread house shw made that was pretty awesome!). She made sugar cookies: 

Cupcakes:

Jelly - with eyeballs in! oooooh scary.

Mummy dogs - sausages wrapped in pastry = genius!

oh and me, dressed as a zombie, shovelling a cake into ma gob!

The next morning, we got up and went to Iydea Cafe.  We all had the same thing, the vegan breakfast bap and a side of hash browns.  The baps was like a lentil burger with tomatoes and avocado on top, it was pretty rad.  And the hash browns were perfectly greasy but not too greasy!

On to yesterday. I finally dug some cookbooks out of storage and headed straight for this recipe from Appetite for Reduction: Arabian Lentil & Rice Soup.  It's AWESOME. I've made it before, but last time I didn't have a lemon, so left that out.  I'm really glad I had it this time though, it really makes a difference.

And a couple more recipes from AFR, the soft broccoli polenta and chilli lime rubbed tofu.  I wasn't crazy about the tofu, but that was more a texture thing that the flavour, I like the flavour, I should have pressed the tofu though.  The polenta was good, but once I added nooch it was amazing. I wish I'd made a more exciting veggie to go with this though, those were just plain, steamed green beans and they were underwhelming!

Tonight I think I'm gonna dig out Hot Damn & Hell Yeah and make my favourite lentil burgers.  What are you guys making for World Vegan Day??

Laterz
xXx

*post title is from this song that I will now be singing all day!

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
xXx

Tell me, Von Dahl-ing, what was it won you over?

"Don't give me that, matey. I know your game. Tell me, "Von Darling", what was it won you over? Was it the pumpernickel or the thought of hanging around with a lot of men in leather shorts?"

"I'll have you court martialed for this, Blackadder."

"What, for obeying the General's orders? That might be how you do things in Munich — or should I say München - but not here, Werner. You're a filthy Hun spy, aren't you? Baldrick - the cocker spaniel, please!!" **

Ahem, sorry. But sometimes I forget how awesome Blackadder was, until I go searching for a random quote with the word ‘darling’ in it so that I can make it into a bad pun for my post title. Le sigh. And that is one of my favourite ever episodes.

Get to the point Sal, I hear you cry! Well, I had Tarka Dahl for dinner yesterday and today and it was bloody spankingly loverly! I always order it in indian restaurants as a side dish but have never made it myself, but it was so easy!

I looked forward to it all day and it didn’t disappoint. I used THIS recipe, but used olive oil instead of butter and halved the recipe. It made a tonne, enough for 3 portions really rather than 2. I had it with brown basmati rice that I cooked in veggie stock then stirred some rocket leaves and a load of herbs (parsley and mint) through. YUM YUM YUM YUM YUM YUM YUM! So effing good.


I made some savoury muffins t'other day. They were cornmeal, spelt flour, courgette, sweetcorn and some spices. Pretty good but nothing to write home about. Once I make them awesome I'll post the recipe.

I thought this was pretty but it looks a bit of a mess in this pic. It was a one-pot wonder though! Tempeh, veggies, cooked spelt and spicy peanut sauce. YUM.

Sunday night's dinner, pizza! This wasn't my best effort I must admit. I bough some cheezly super melting edam style. YUK! I will stick to the mozarella from now on. This pizza was average at best, I didn't eat much of it.

Saturday night I had a couple of friends round for dinner and a couple of apple martinis! I made us a brown rice salad with a tonne of veggies and some homemade tofu thrown in. I roasted up a chilli too and minced that up and threw it in. The batch was pretty mild but this was one spicy mama!! It was yummy. I made some roasted veg and some Eat Drink & Be Vegan Cumin Lime Tofu to go with but forgot to take a pic, doh!

I also made us a choccy cake. A healthy one though, of sorts! hee hee. I used wholegrain spelt flour, replaced most of the oil with apple sauce and half the sugar with splenda. But then I put some chocolate ganache on top. I also put some desiccated coconut in the batter and some flaked coconut on top. Pretty yum. My friend ate most of it over the course of the night / breakfast and then took the leftovers home so I didn't have to worry about eating it all myself and ruining my diet! Score.

For snacks, I made us some dips. To go with I toasted up some pittas....

This was seriously the best hummus I've ever made, so good! I sprinkled some paprika and pine nuts on top to make it pretty.

I also made baba ganoush. I've never made it before so I was winging it, it was pretty good! One aubergine, that I roasted until it was soft. I roasted some garlic along with it and threw that in, with some tahini, lemon juice, a pinch of cumin and salt & pepper. Yum.

This was one tasty bad boy of a dinner last week - tempeh hash! I saw that episode of barefoot contessa where she makes chicken hash again! Last time I saw that I made veggie hash. This time I added in tempeh, pretty sure I stole that idea from Jessy! Served witha side of steamed broccoli.

This was such a random mish mash of stuff I threw together as I hadn't been shopping! haha, it was good though. A grilled portabello, steamed cabbage, mustardy firm polenta, black beans with salt, pepper & hot sauce and steamed broccoli. I dressed the broccoli with a tsp each of sesame oil and soy sauce and added some sesame seeds on top - it was sooooo good. The broccoli and polenta were battling each other fiercely for the title of star of this plate - it was too close to call.

Lastly about my PIF post, it was a bit of a fail, only 2 people responded!! So no randomator needed! So - River & Vivacious Vegan - email me your details (click top right) and some homemade goodies will be winging their way to you at some point in the near future (it may take a while as my supplies are low and I need to do a bit of ordering!!)

Have a great weekend peeps.

Laterz
xXx

**I couldn't find a clip of the episode that line is from but this is another of my favourite scenes. Brilliant! I must buy the DVDs!!

It's frickin freezing in here, Mr Bigglesworth

It's officially winter! It's cold, rainy and dark at 6 o'clock! Today I went to my friend's beautiful little girl's christening and then my friends came over for a little Supernatural catch up. By the time they went home I really was hungry and wanted something quick. But instead I took my time and made an AWESOME soup.

I won't lie, I totally stole this idea from the Barefoot contessa - it's a lentil soup with smokey sausage! Recipe is below the pic.

Lentil & Sausage Soup (approximates as I didn't weigh)
1/2 cup lentils
1 tbsp olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
2 carrots
1 medium potato
2 medium tomatoes
2 cloves of garlic, grated on a microplane or chopped finely
1 veggie stock cube
about 3 cups of water*
2 bay leaves
1/2 tsp thyme
1/2 tsp sage
Good squeeze (tbsp or so) tomato puree
4 spicy/smokey vegan sausages (see below)
Salt & pepper to taste

Method:
Pour boiling water over the lentils and set aside while you prepare the rest of the veg.

Chop the onions, potato and carrots into rough dice. Saute the onion in the olive oil and a pinch of salt for 5 minutes.

Add the garlic, tomatoes, carrots and potato and stir well and cook for a few minutes. Add boiling water from the kettle *enough to almost cover the veg (I also added a bit more as the soup was cooking so I added about 3 cups in total). Add the stock cube, tomato puree and the drained lentils and a pinch of salt & pepper. Don't go overboard on the salt if your stock cube has added salt. Add the herbs and bring to the boil, then cover with a lid and turn down to a simmer and cook for 20-25 minutes until the veggies are cooked.

Turn off the heat and add the sausage if still warm. If the sausage is cold, cook it for a minute or so after you add the sausage.

Check seasoning and serve with crusty bread.

Onto the sausages I used in the soup. I used the Everyday dish recipe, but I halved it and took out all the garlic & seasonings and replaced it with 1 tbsp of smoked paprika, 1 tsp regular paprika and 1 tsp liquid smoke.


To go with the soup, I made some focaccia. I didn't save the link to the recipe but I just googled focaccia and the one I used was ace.


I used my soymilk maker!! Exciting it was too, except that I was watching TV and the blade kicked in and scared the bejesus out of me several times!

This was brekkie today; it may look like a common old tofu scramble but the addition of a tablespoon or so of leftover VCON mustard sauce transported this scramble into a parallel dimension of radness!

Lastly, but definitely not leastly, I baked yesterday. I woke up hungover at my friend's house (Halloween was a boozy one) then went home, baked cupcakes and went back to my friend's house again to watch horrors. Bad ones.

My friends requested chocolate CCs with peanut butter frosting and that is what they got!

Cooking (the soup) to: Supernatural Season 2