Guess who's back ... back again...

....Shady's back, tell a friend...... hee hee

HELLOOOOOOO! It's been ages hasn't it, I'm bad! Honestly I just haven't felt like blogging lately, a few crap things happened at the beginning of the month but I won't bore you with that because life is starting to look a bit better now. So managed to finally kick myself into blogging mode! Which means I got a lot a pics for you!

Starting with a dinner this week - roasted veg an polenta. I think this is my new favourite thing to do with veg - hit them with balsamic vinegar after they've roasted. Last night I made more and they were even better but I didn't take a pic. Last night I mixed courgettes, sweet potato, mushrooms, butternut squash, red peppers and red onions with a little bit of olive oil, some dried herbs and chopped garlic. Then roasted them at 180C/350F for about 45 mins. Once done, I poured over 2 tbsp of balsamic vinegar and a handful of chopped parsley and mixed. They were awesome!




Cookies! I know I know, I've blogged these before, but they are so damn delicious. They are the rocky roads from Vegan Cookies.... These were a present for a friend's birthday.



Pacakes!! Chocolate blueberry pancakes, they weren't great but they hit the spot with a good glug of golden syrup on (maple syrup is about £5 a bottle at the moment, so I had to cheap it!!)

This was a cake I made my friends and I for dessert a few weekends ago, it had big chunks of raspberry and mango in and a sugary, crunchy coconut crumb topping. It was lovely and I'm going to work on the recipe a bit before I post it.

Dinner that day was pie! I made a simple pie crust from 1.5 cups of flour, 3 tbsp of vitalite and 3 tbsp of shortening, a bit of salt and then cold water until it came together. The filling was linda mccartney mince, mushrooms, peas, onions, a bit of red wine and some stock with some bisto powder added. Delish! I just did some plain new potatoes and sugar snaps to go with. It was such a nice day that we ate this on the balcony in the sun! Where oh where did that sun go??

This was inspired by the news that my town is getting a wagamamas soon! YAY! I had a go at making something like one of their soups that i love - the name of it escapes me. But it has fried mushrooms, tofu, pak choi, beansprouts (which I didn't have) and other veg in a lovely broth with noodles. Mine wasn't as good as theirs but it was pretty freakin delicious.

Last month I went to the Sonisphere festival and we had quite a lot of tent-side barbecues. Most of the food was not really blog-worthy but there was a veggie food stand that did the best burgers ever..... In the words of Samuel L Jackson in Pulp Fiction "MMMM HMMM, that's a tasty burger!"

Here's some muffins I made. This pic is so old, I can't even remember what flavour they were, but I have a sneaking suspicion they had spices and walnuts in.

Man, this pic is OLD! I made a lasagne, using Linda Mc mince and lovely white sauce. I topped it with a bit of nooch. The dough balls were awesome, I was winging it but I really wish I'd written down the recipe!! Next time I will I promise.

Close of the dough balls after baking and brushing with melted vitalite.

I tried making the crash hot potatoes that were all the rage on blogs a while ago. They were good but....

I dropped them getting them out the oven and lost a couple! :-(

And here is pics from a PPK meet up back in early July - look at all that food, it was awesome. There were sausage rolls, calzones, pasta salads, falafels, cheezly straws, cupcakes, cookies ..... and a baby! We didn't eat him though - he was too cute!

My contribution was the east coast coffee cake from vegan brunch - the jam swirl variation. I also made carrot falafels again, but didn't take a pic. They are in my last post though if you want to see them.

That's about it for now.

Laterz
xXx

Oops! I did it again.....

... I left it too long between posts! Bad Sal!

Well I'm making up for it with lots of pics. Starting with pictures from a recent PPK meet up. I was in Brighton to see Ash playing at Concorde 2 that night (they were freaking awesome by the way) and all the food in the day made this one brilliant weekend.

It was supposed to be in the park but the weather was decidedly dodgy, so JoJo graciously hosted for us. But, as if you didn't already know, I'm a bad blogger and I forgot my camera, so I took a pic of my (first!) plate with my phone. I've totally forgotten who made what so here's a vague outline. Cheesey feet crackers! hehe they were awesome, carrot tart which was delicious, salad with pasta / seitan sausages and rocket, sausage rolls, potato wedges with barbecue sauce, rice salad, spanakopita (sp?) and home made bread. All delicious. The potato wedges, barbecue sauce and rice were my contributions.


Then the important stuff - the dessert plate - Clockwise: Kip's fortune cookie (with added snarky defensive omnivore / vegan sayings inside - brilliant!!), Helen's rocky road cookies, Jojo's rocky road brownies, Holley's vegan jaffa cakes (AWESOME!) and my apple / custard mini pies.

Those rocky road cookies were so good - you're gonna see them again in a couple of pics' time!

A close up of my rice salad that I took just after I made it. Sauteed peppers, onions, mushrooms, redwoods bacon style rashers, sweetcorn and peas with brown basmati rice.

And my pies. Totally cheated on these - I cooked up some granny smith apples with sugar and spices and then rolled out shop bought shortcrust pastry and cut them out and put them in muffin tins. A spoonful of alpro soya custard and apple mixture with a cute heart of pastry on top and a sprinkle of sugar and they were ready for the oven.

I had som pastry left and I love pastry so hate to waste it, so I made a turnover with the leftover apples and custar. It came out weird looking but yummy.

The next morning, my friend and I were planning to go to Wai Kika Moo Kau for a veg brekkie but as my bro and his girlfriend came with us, we went across the road to Bubble Kitschen. They serve a vegan breakfast alongside their vegetarian and omni versions. It was MASSIVE and the coffee was pretty bad but the breakfast was pretty damn good!


Onto some randomness. Dinner the other night. I saw Levi Roots make pumpkin rice the other night and thought it looked pretty good. And I had a butternut squish (hehe) in the fridge already so I made my own version. I also had some orange pepper and sweetcorn leftover in the fridge so I chucked them in too. It was good but I think I need to play around with the spices before I post the recipe. I just had it with some steamed tenderstem broccoli.

I made some seitan sausages on Sunday and for a quick dinner I blitzed up some tomatoes and mixed them with wholewheat penne, sugar snaps, asparagus (HURRAH for UK asparagus season being in swing!!), cannellini beans and some herbs and spices. Oh and one of my sausages - pretty good for a quick dinner.

I made the sausages because I fancied sausage and mash. So that's what I had sunday, with onion gravy. YUM.

Remember those rocky road cookies I mentioned before - well I dreamed about them for a week after having them in Brighton. So I dug out Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar and made a batch. Me and my friends ate some when they were round for dinner and I made them take a load home so I didn't eat the whole batch myself. I froze some because I was in danger of eating them all. They are SO good! My friend's hubby who I sent some home with my friend for, said they're my best baked good yet, so thanks Isa & Terry!! I made sure to only cook them the minimum time so they were fudgy and soft. If you have this book you gotta make them!!

Here's the dough, I had to seriously restrain myself from just eating all the dough straight out the bowl.

When I was in Brighton I went into Infinity to buy some Tempeh and all they had was the one with sea vegetables in. Boo, but I bought one anyway! And thought I'd make the chesapeake tempeh cakes from Vegan Brunch. The only complaint I had with these is not to do with Isa's recipe - it's my own fault - I added some old bay seasoning because I found it in the American shop near where I live. And so they pretty much just tasted of celery - and I don't like celery! Dummy. So I'm going to try making them again without the old bay and I think they are going to be awesome.

I made a potato waffle to go with them. I haven't got these quite right yet but I'm working on it and I will post the recipe as soon as I have it right!

This was a quinoa pudding that I got the recipe for from the GI Vegetarian cookbook. It was spectacularly underwhelming. But I like the idea of it - so I'm going to play with it and report back next time!

Simple dinner of rice salad and some tempeh that I baked with a bit of all purpose seasoning sprinkled on it and had in a big floury roll with barbecue sauce. yummy.

This was a recipe I got off sparkpeople for tempeh carrot salad. It had ginger and orzo pasta in in. I changed it a bit by adding some lime juice and adding shredded cabbage and sugar snaps. It was really really good but I think it needed more tempeh. I'd make it again definitely.

And finally, a quick dinner of spaghetti bolognaise - made with linda mccartney mince and sprinkled with nooch. Yum.

I will try not to leave it so long next time.

Laterz
xXx

Vegan MoFo: Brighton up your day!

haha Brighton Pier - I stole your 'genius' catchphrase!

Can't believe it's Monday already - where are the weeks going??

Yesterday, my friend and I headed down to Brighton for another PPK meet up. We went to the George, which is a veggie pub and has plenty of vegan options on the menu. I went for the chicken style burger with vegan cheese & bacon. Normally I am not a lover of fake meats (especially bacon) or cheese but this burger was really really good. And the cheese tasted scarily real.

We asked what brand they used and they said it was redwoods. Now we just have to work out which variety!

Here's my burger, with fries.

Close up of the burger!


We walked around and went to a few shops and then got cake from the Infinity Cafe to take down and eat on the beach. I got a slice of the banana chocolate chip cake and have to admit, I was disappointed. It was really dense and seemed a bit undercooked. And they were really stingy with the frosting. A bit more would have made it much better.

It was a really fun day and I love Brighton all over again.

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