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: 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
xXx

These aren't the droids you're looking for!

EDIT: I've just realised that on the 5th of March this blog was 2 years old! Thank you thank you everyone who reads. I love yous.

I finally have an excuse to use that post title - I got a new phone – it’s an android phone (similar to iPhones but cooler!! Hahah). I’m very excited about it and not just cuz it’s pink....

It's actually that light pink colour, the hot pink surround is a skin I bought for it to protect it when I drop it, which will happen - I'm clumsy.



I thought I’d start off with a pic that I took on the phone – this was brunch on Sunday, not bad for a camera phone. I went down to visit my brother and his girlfriend in their new flat in Hove. Sunday morning we caught the bus into Brighton, which is awesome because it’s so vegan friendly. We went to Wai Kika Moo Kau – I’ve wanted to go there for ages because I love the name of it! It’s a vegetarian cafe with vegan options as well. I had the full vegan English breakfast: sausages, marinated tofu, oven baked butter beans (instead of tinned baked beans which are the devil’s work), tomatoes with pesto sauce and a yummy hash brown. It was awesome and I had a soya latte with it. My bro and his girlfriend had the veggie breakfast, he wasn’t getting bacon or ‘proper’ sausages so he needed eggs - I think tofu would have finished him off!


They haven’t lived in their flat very long so I made them a little housewarming present – cookies. These had white chocolate, cranberries and walnuts in and they were super yum. I played with Dreena Burton’s recipe again and I think I changed it up enough so I’ll put the recipe at the end of the post. Dreena’s original chocolate chip recipe is online here though (and it’s AWESOME and really adaptable).

Mum and Dad came over for dinner last week and I made us some nice chunky soup for dinner. It was lovely and I made a massive pot so I could live off leftovers for lunches for a few days. It had butternut squash, turnip, onions, parsnips, red lentils, celeriac and a teeny pinch of chilli flakes.

Random dinner last week. I bought this tomato in waitrose that you're meant to eat while it's still green. But as you can see I left it in the fridge a wee bit too long. It was pretty though I thought. I roasted half of it (the other half went into the aforementioned soup!). I had it with some firm polenta with sweetcorn in and some roasted brussels and celeriac.

These were a birthday present for my friend last weekend. Coconut cupcakes with raspberries. I poked a hole in them and put some mushed raspberry & cointreau in, then piped coconut buttercream on before decorating with a fresh razza. They were yummy but fell apart a bit, probably because of the extra liquid from the raspberries. I'm working on this recipe, they'll be awesome one day!

This was last friday's dinner. Rachael Ray made these german style potato wedges which looked great, aside from being cooked in bacon fat. Blech. So for mine, I doused the potatoes in cider vinegar and sprinkled on some sugar and bacon salt! I found bacon salt in the american sweet shop not far from where I live. The plain one has milk in but the one with pepper is vegan. So it took care of the bacon flavour, salt and pepper! Triple threat!! They were pretty good, maybe I should have sprinkled some bacos in after they'd done cooking, or then maybe that would be gross??? The burger on the side is a Frys Chicken Style burger, my new favourite thing - and that comes from a hater of most fake meats!

Another random dinner. Remember the tempeh stuffing balls from last time? I had some leftover tempeh and decided to try my hand at a white chilli. It was good but not quite right, so I need to work on it before I post the recipe.

And as promised, the cookie recipe:

Cranberry, Walnut & White Chocolate Cookies

Dry Ingredients:
150g (1 cup) plain flour (I often sub this for white spelt flour and it works perfectly)
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
4 tbsp (1/4 cup) granulated sugar
1/4 tsp ground allspice (optional, but yummy)
1/4 tsp sea salt (if using table salt, half that)
4 tbsp (1/4 cup) dried cranberries
4 tbsp chopped walnuts
50g vegan white chocolate buttons or chips (about 1/3 cup if I had to guess - I used 2 bags of the dairy free white choc buttons they now sell in the free-from sections in tesco & sainsburys!!)
Wet Ingredients:
4 tbsp (1/4 cup) malt extract
20 ml (ie make the malt extract up to 1/3 cup) golden syrup
1 tsp vanilla extract
4 tbsp (1/4 cup) rapeseed (canola) oil
1/4 tsp blackstrap molasses

Method:
Preheat the oven to 190C/about 360F.

Whisk together the dry ingredients (I always sieve the baking powder and soda through a little tea strainer as you can get lumps of soda otherwise in your cookie). Add the cranberries and walnuts. Smash up the buttons a bit, but don't make them too small - some big pieces are good! Add to the dry ingredients and give it all a good mix.

Whisk together the wet ingredients (be patient, it'll happen!) and then pour into the dry. Mix with a fork till you can't anymore then get your hand in and mix it till it comes together in a ball of dough.

Pull off pieces about a rounded tbsp (walnut sort of size) and roll into a ball. Space them apart on a cookie sheet lined with parchment. Then wet a fork and press it lightly one way then another, for cross-hatches! Bake for 5-6 minutes for a chewy cookie, 7-8 for crispier. (dreena's recipe says 10 or 11 but that's for bigger cookies). Leave them 5 minutes on the sheet to firm up then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

That's all folks.

Laterz
xXx

Camera clearance and a crap tonne of tofu!

This time tomorrow - I'll be in Malta!! WOOO! Mummy Alien and Me are flying out tomorrow for 4 nights in a gorgeous hotel and I'm SOOOO excited. Here's hoping it doesn't rain.

So I had to clear out my camera and found a tonne of old pics but most were so boring, I deleted them. So here are the ones that made the cut.

My new favourite thing to do with polenta - tomato polenta! So easy and quick (recipe at end although a monkey could probably work it out really it's so easy!). Firstly with black bean/sweetcorn/cucumber salsa and roasted butternut squash.

Is it me or does it look kinda like Jabba the Hut??


So good I had it again the next night. And the squash (just toss it in oil and curry powder and bake at 200C for 20 mins - delish!). With spinach and smoked tofu. There's a lot of pics with that tofu (Taifun smoked tofu with almonds and sesame seeds) in this post! Now they sell it at waitrose, I have it a lot. It's sooo good.

Tofu again! With giant wholewheat couscous that I just cooked in veggie stock. The beany thing is my take on pepperonata that I saw Rachael Ray making on TV. I used onions, peppers and tomato puree, garlic and a good dose of chipotles in adobo sauce. I had some butter beans in the fridge to use up so I added those too. Spicy yum.

A rarity - salad! I don't really have salad that often as I find it so boring but this was good. I had some cabbage left so I made some coleslaw. Cabbage, carrot - no onion. Also I only used 1 tsp of plamil mayo and about 2 tbsp of soya yoghurt to make it a bit lighter. I also added some mustard, it rocked. buried under it are butter beans, yellow pepper, cucumber and baby spinach. Oh and there's that tofu again!

This is what most of my Sunday dinners have looked like lately - I love me some TVP chunks!! Cooked on a low oven (150C) slow (about 1.5-2 hrs) with stock, veggies and red wine. I put it in the oven before I go to the gym and it's ready after body pump and SO good. With lots of mash and a flatbread (I had dough in the freezer from the flatbreads I made in the last post).

This was brunch last weekend. I made these TVP sausage patties (I actually only ate 1 in the end they were pretty filling). I've been working on making these without using vital wheat gluten and so far I haven't got it quite right! They taste awesome but still are a bit too soft. ah well, here they are with tofu scramble and a coffee chip muffin (recipe from Vegan Brunch - awesome!!!) and coffee. I love weekends!

Oh and big shocker - there's that tofu again!! hahaha, with rice that I cooked in stock and herbs and threw some roasted squash into, with a side of broccoli.

That's it until I'm back from Malta, when I will also catch up with everyone's blogs (I been bad at that lately :( - sorry!!).

Oh right, except that polenta recipe right....

Per person:
1 cup (250ml) veggie stock (mine looks dark in the pic cuz I use Vecon, which makes it dark)
1/4 cup (40g) polenta
1 plum tomato, deseeded and chopped fine
1 tsp vegan butter
1 tbsp nutritional yeast flakes
salt & pepper to taste

Method:
Bring the stock to the boil and then turn down slightly and add the polenta in a slow steady stream, whisking all the time. Keep whisking for a minute or so until most of the lumps are gone (a few are ok).

Turn the heat down to medium and throw in the chopped tomato. Cook, whisking occasionally, for 3-5 minutes or until cooked. The tomato will mostly break down which is awesome!

After the 3 mins are up, turn of the heat, add the butter, nooch and season to taste. Eat asap before it starts setting up on ya!


See ya next time, with pictures of (probably really dodgy) vegan airplane food - if they get it right!!

Laterz
xXx

28 Days Later......

So Sunday was day 28 of my 4 week cleansey diety thing. It's now over and I’m happy everyone – HAPPY!!! WHY? Because it’s over you’re thinking, right right?? No! it’s because I weighed in as I said I would and I lost 9 pounds. WOOP!! I lost 2 inches off my waist and one off my hips.

I’ve still got a fair way to go but eating healthier and keeping up with the gym has definitely made me feel better about myself.

I alread avoid refined sugar where I can but I won’t stay gluten-free, as it doesn’t seem to make a whole lot of difference to the way I feel. When it comes to wheat, I'll use it still but only occasionally (like today!). I usually use spelt flour for baking now anyway as I like the fact you can still get fluffy cakes / muffins etc even if you use the wholemeal version.

My favourite change I made is cutting out my usual toast & vegemite for breakfast and having juice and a smoothie instead. I find this holds me over way better. I'll probably also stick to having salads for lunch most days, unless I have leftovers!

But back onto the food and my last couple of days of G-free etc.... I made soup on Sunday night. It was minestrone with gluten free pasta in it. I can't honestly say it was all that great, but the roasted asparagus and hummus I had with it was pretty damn good!


Friday night and I looked forward to this all day at work. Pizza!! I bought some Dove's Farm Gluten Free bread flour to make the crust (I've just seen on their website they do a brown bread flour, I've never seen that in shops but would definitely buy it if I did). I used 1.5 cups, added a sachet of instant yeast, some herbs, onion powder and salt & pepper, then added about 1.25 cups of warm water mixed with a tsp each of agave and olive oil. It was a pretty sticky dough, I added enough flour to be able to pick it up. But instead of trying to roll it and pick it up, I rolled it straight onto the pizza stone.

Instead of tomato sauce, I used red pepper hummus and topped it with fresh tomato, sweetcorn, spring onion, mushrooms & asparagus. Then sprinkled it with oregano, black pepper and nooch! It was really good. I wouldn't say it was the greatest crust ever but still .... good.

Saturday night I went to visit my friend in Banbury but between the gym and travelling I only really had time to cook something quick for lunch. I made baked polenta fries! They were sooooo good, but a bit too soft. I'm working on them so recipe coming soon.

Today I had a wheat-ified meal. Wholewheat noodles and a lazy spin on my Alien on Pasta. I used coriander pesto (didn't have any basil) and half a tin of tomatoes instead of fresh. I also added in a pinch of red chilli flakes for a bit of heat. The other changes I made was leaving out the yellow pepper, tomato puree and nooch (I put some in the pesto and sprinkled some on top as well instead) and used a finely sliced onion instead of the shallot. Good!!

I tried to get a decent pic of my smoothie this morning because it was so damn ugleh! But pretty damn tasty - banana, soymilk, agave, allspice, peanut butter and hemp protein powder. Protein powder makes everything ugly!

Laterz

xXx

Bank holiday comes with a six pack of beer ....

...... then it's back to work.... A-G.... A-I-N!! ooh that's made we want to dig out ma Blur albums!!

You know what I love about May? TWO bank holidays! So bank holiday number 1 was this weekend and it was nice to have an extra day off - even though I had to work for some of it.

This was yesterday's lunch. I had some cooked quinoa in the freezer leftover from the last time I cooked it and made too much. I just chipped some off and poured boiling water over it and it was ready to go. I mixed it with julienned carrots, cucumber, spring onions, salad leaves, sweetcorn and the tahini yoghurt dressing from this post. Topped off with crunchy pumpkin seeds and brocco-shoots (Sainsburys has started selling different types of sprouts - I'm loving them!). It was pretty good for a salad.

Dinner on friday night I wanted some trash! I made something approximating the country fried tofu from hot damn & hell yeah (I couldn't be bothered to get out the book so was wingin it a bit!!) and had some mashed taters and mushy peas with it. I love this tofu recipe - it's so good although not all that healthy. I try to use as little oil as possible though and to make it extra good I double dipped the tofu in the soymilk/seasoned cornflour.

I made some muffins yesterday. They were just my basic muffin recipe with a banana and some peanut butter thrown in.

Last Sunday I really enjoyed my soup & sarnie for dinner, so I think I might make it a regular thing. This week my sandwich was a portabella mushroom that I got from the farmers' market shop in town (so excited to have found that place!!!), reggae reggae ketchup and salad.

The soup was creamy cauliflower soup. It was reallllllllly good. The recipe is at the end of the post. I surfed for a few recipes and found this one by gordon ramsay. As you can see it's pretty veg-unfriendly (a bit like the man himself). I took out the animal yuk and replaced it with light soymilk and soya yoghurt. I kind of liked the idea of the wild mushrooms on top (which is what gave me the idea for the sarnie).

Today's dinner was some wholewheat spaghetti and I had some leftover sauce from the balls (hee hee!) from my last post that I froze, so I just put that in and added some fresh basil and toasty pine nuts. I made some garlic knots to go with (recipe also at end of post) which where really really yummy. I made them with 50/50 wholemeal & white bread flours, as I've only made them with all white before. Next time I might try them with all wholemeal as I've pretty much cut out using white flour where I can.

HURRAH - it's UK strawberry season! I bought some strawberries as they were on special and they were amazing. Sweet and delicious. I ate a bowl of them plain yesterday and today I was going to do something fancy pants with the other half of the punnet. but then I realised I had a massive ripe mango and a ripe cantaloupe to use up so I just made a simple fruit salad and it was freakin rad!

This was dinner one night last week. Polenta with tomatoes, spring onions and sweet corn added then left to set for 5 minutes or so with steamed mange tout with nooch on and some roasty butternut squash. Yum.

And lastly, I have a new obsession - raw snack bars. I found the Trek & nakd bars in my local health food store and then found the 4 pack of mini nakd bars in Sainsburys along with... Larabars! YAY! I didn't think you could buy them over here and I must say they're pretty good.

The nakd ones are nice, although the chocolate ones are not the best. My favourite so far are the peanut & oat Trek bars. They rule.

And here are the recipes I promised.....

Creamy Cauliflower Soup
1 small onion (I used 4 fat spring onions)
1 tsp olive oil
1 fat clove garlic
1 x 300g bag of cauliflower florets
1 medium potato (about 150g)
2 cups (500ml) veggie stock
1/2 cup (125ml) unsweetened non dairy milk
1/2 cup (125ml) soya yoghurt
Salt & pepper to taste

Method:
Sweat the onion in the olive oil for about 5 minutes, until starting to get transluscent. Add the garlic and cook for only about a minute.

Add the cauliflower (chop it up a bit) and the potato, mix around and then add the stock. Bring to the boil, then turn down and cover.

Leave to simmer for 20 minutes (or until potatoes are tender). Pour into a blender and blend well (be careful, it's hot), then add the milk and yoghurt and blend again until smooth and frothy.
Then season to taste and serve with a few snipped chives if you like.

Garlic Knots (makes 6)
3/4 cup (120g) strong wholemeal bread flour
3/4 cup (120g) strong white bread flour
1 sachet (7g) fast action yeast
1 scant tsp garlic granules
1/2 tsp dried oregano
1/4 tsp dried thyme
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1 tbsp olive oil
1 cup (250ml) warm water
To finish
1/4 cup (4 tbsp) vegan margarine
1/2 tsp garlic salt

Method:
Mix together all the dry ingredients. Mix together oil and water and add about half into the dry and mix unti a dough forms, adding more liquid if needed.

Knead in the bowl lightly and then leave aside.

Preheat the oven to 210°C/410°F. While it's coming up to temp, split the dough into 6 pieces and roll them into a sausage. Then tie into a knot shape and place on a baking sheet. Spray the knots with olive oil and bake for 15 minutes, or until they are just starting to brown and sound just hollow when you tap the bottom.

Take them out and put onto a wire rack. Melt the margarine and mix in the garlic salt. Then brush it over the knots. I froze half the dough, as otherwise I would have eaten 6 garlic knots for dinner!!

Hope you all had a great bank holiday!!

Well hellooooo

It's been a while but I am now all moved in, settled and almost completely unpacked!! I just have a few more bits (and a craptonne of bill-shredding) to do! The flat is looking gorgeous and I'm so happy with it! I haven't taken photos yet as it's not all ready but hopefully by next time I'll have some to share.

Also, I had my shoddy tattoo fixed on Friday and it now looks lovely, so once that heals I'll post a pic of that too - YAY!

It's great to have my own kitchen again and I've been really enjoying myself, thinking up menus and cooking. On my second day in the flat, I felt the need to make bread. I had some soup in the fridge and wanted some lovely rolls to go with, so I made some.

They were lovely and crusty but once cold, they were a little too dense so next time, I'll make 8 out of the dough instead of six. I sprayed them with a teeny bit of light olive oil and sprinkled some sesame seeds on them before I baked them.



Last monday, I made Jessy's butterbean burgers, I used yellow pepper and added in some fresh parsley because I had some in the fridge. These are soooo freakin good!



For lunch the next day, I had another patty of the beanburgers left and to make it a bit lighter for lunch, I didn't bother to cook it up, I just mashed half of it with some soya yoghurt to make a sandwich spread. YUM!!!!!! Seriously yum. I did the same with the other half the next day.



I had this big old bag of basil in the fridge becuase it was on special so I bought it and only used a little bit in the soup I made, more on that in a minute. So I thought I'd make some pesto and I had it mixed with some soya yoghurt and some fresh, shelled edamame that I bought in watroise, served over wholewheat rotilli. Nice but the beans were a bit, erm crunchy, despite following the cooking instructions like a good girl!!!


Speaking of soup, this is it. I really struggled to get a good picture of it, as you can see! I roasted up some plum tomatoes and garlic cloves, then added them to my new blender with veggie stock, salt & pepper and a handful of cashews. It was good but my blender really couldn't cope with blending the cashews properly - my trusty old stick blender may have done a better job. It tasted rad though.

I made some VCON chickpea cutlets in the week too. I didn't have any breadcrumbs so I subbed in medium cornmeal. I had to double the water but I really like the flavour of this. It gave them a lovely crunchy edge as well. I always bake my cutlets, as I prefer them this way and I also halved the oil called for in the recipe.

The stir-fry was so good though, that it didn't even really need the cutlet. It was loads of veggies, cooked spelt wheat and some teriyaki sauce. MMM.

This is the spelt wheat - I saw it in Waitrose and had to give it a try - good stuff!!

And this was another Jessy recipe!! Jalapeno polenta with spicy black beans. I added some mushrooms into the black beans and also some fresh parsley as I still had some kicking around. This was gorgeous. I had the polenta cold for lunch the next day and it was just as rad. And the black beans were delicious - definitely a winner!

And shocker - no baked goods (aside from the bread)! I've been really trying to be good, as we have now picked our bridesmaids dresses for October and so I only have 6 months to drop some poundage!! I wonder how long that'll last!!