Heartburntastic!

Happy humpday people!

So earlier this month I went on a trip to Amsterdam with some friends. Really the main point of the trip was to see Maroon 5, which we did on the last night, but we made it into a weekend.

Unfortunately I don't have much good stuff for you because we mainly ate at classy establishments like this....

My travelling companions weren't really into actual food apparently! haha.  We did get falafels from Maoz one day for lunch but I forgot to take a pic - doh! Also I forgot to take a pic of dinner on the first night, but it was a risotto, nice but fairly unspectacular.

This was breakfast on our second day there. No vegan food at all in the little cafe we found, but we were all a bit hungover so I let them get their full English and I asked for mushrooms on toast, no butter (as I'm a baked bean hater). He looked very confused but in the end I got a mushroom toasty!  Weird, but surprisingly not that bad with some ketchup.  They put the mushrooms in raw so they were partially cooked, which I have to say I kind of liked.

But after a weekend of crappy food I happycow'd somewhere to get a decent breakfast on the last day and this ended up being my favourite thing that I ate during the whole trip. The place was a short walk from our hotel and was called Le Pain Quotidien (it's a chain, but not one I've ever heard of) and they serve local, organic food. It's not a veggie place but all the vegetarian and vegan options are clearly marked on the menu with a little symbol.

The breakfast menu had a few items, but nothing that stood out, so I was glad when they said I could order off both sides of the menu.  I got the black bean hummus tartine, which is basically an open faced sandwich. It had really really good hummus on, plus some harrissa and herby dressing and beans and chickpeas. Plus a lovely crunchy salad. Not the type of thing I'd normally have for breakfast but I just cooked some black beans up so I'm remedying that tomorrow - it was so good!  Plus they had soymilk, yay! So I got a soya latte to go with and I thought their coffee was also really really good.

On our last night, we went to see Maroon 5 at the Ziggodome and they were awesome as always. But the food there sucked! Apparently the omni food was also shite, so not just the lack of veggie options.  There was basically one food place and the veggie options were tortilla chips & salsa and a fruit cup. I had both because it was dinner.  The fruit was pretty good and tortilla chips is tortilla chips but that salsa - DAYUM, it was rank! BLAAARRGH.  Had a really funky taste that stayed with me all through the concert and all the way home. Grim.

OK home and a couple of recent pics off my camera.  This first one was a recipe from Anjum Anand's book, Anjum's Indian Vegetarian Feast. I've mentioned before that Anjum is the shizzle! So yeah, I got the book for Christmas and as I'm a massive lover of Indian food, I couldn't wait to try something out.  So I made the Creamy Pistachio Curry, as we had all the ingredients, with just a couple of subs - I used sweet potato instead of butternut squash, which the recipe says is ok to do and I left out the cloves as we only had ground ones and also my mum's not a fan.  It was really good, but I would've liked it a bit spicier. In this recipe you put the chillis in whole and then discard them, I'd probably just chop one up and put that in next time.  It is mean to be mild though and I loved the addition of chopped and blended pistachios. 

If you're wondering whether this book is worth buying as a vegan, I'd say YES most definitely. There's loads of recipes in and nowadays it's so easy to replace yoghurt and cream, which are the main non-vegan offenders.  There's a few things with egg and I'm sure some of them could be veganised.

This was a meal last week when I didn't have much time and it was basically leftover sauce from the roasty soba bowl that I LOVE from Isa Does It mixed into soba noodles and some veg.  Then I just drained a tin of Granose mock duck and baked it at 200C for about 15 mins, then tossed it hoisin sauce to serve on top. Really good and easy.

And did I mention that I love that sauce from the soba bowl? Yeah I know I know, I'm addicted. It's a problem. But my new favourite thing is roasted veg with awesome sauce on, which is basically that sauce but with a shittonne of Franks hot sauce and nooch mixed in.  I had this for dinner the last 2 nights because it was SO good.  I also put some Taifun basil tofu in with the veg when I roasted them for a bit of protein.

That last pic is from my new camera phone - the others all from my old one!  I think it's WAYYY better - whaddya you guys say? 

OK I should probably go do something productive now, so have a good rest of the week everyone. 

And I promise that favourites post is coming, but it's gonna be a 'current favourites' rather than 2013 favourites, because it's now almost February. MADNESS!

Laterz

xXx

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

Vegan MoFo: Roasted Veggie Pasta

Last night I went to see Jimmy Eat World at Brixton - they were freaking AWESOME but that's beside the point. I had to have a quick tea as we had to get a train at 6.30.

So earlier in the day I roasted up some cherry tomatoes, half a courgette, a couple of shallots, a clove of garlic and a yellow pepper. Then I processed it with a tbsp of tomato puree until it was still a bit chunky and mixed it with some of the pasta water and salt & pepper before mixing in the pasta. I used Doves Farm's gluten free brown rice pasta which is really delicious. MUCH nicer than any other gluten free pasta I've tried.

Laterz
xXx

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

So much cuter, with something in your mouth.....

I have no real reason for that title, except that I couldn't think of a name for this post and I went to see Nickelback last week and they were awesome as ever! I even had a pretty great view for most of it and being a short-arse, that's rare!

Also I disovered a new band through them - Daughtry!! They were the support band and they were great, I've downloaded both their albums and listened to them to death since them. I know you're probably thinking - they've been around ages, Sal - catch up!! But I don't watch American Idol so I'd never heard of them!

OK so back to reality. I haven’t blogged for a bit because I didn’t think I had many pics to share but I actually had a fair few on there! Although lately, I haven't been taking pics every day because my dinners have been looking all very similar – like this.... roasted veg with some sort of grain on the side! Kind of boring but tasty!!

This was roasted veg with bulgar wheat that I cooked in veg stock and spices and threw some chickpeas and frozen peas into.


I wasn't going to post this one, it was kind of ugly but I had a mini disaster with it! when I was making the nooch sauce for the macaroni, I open the big side instead of the shaker on the onion powder, shook hard and ended up putting in abou 3 tbsp of onion powder! ARGH!! luckily it clumped up and I managed to get most of it out and not wreck my sauce! hahaha phew!

This was yummy though. I saw the barefoot contessa make this zucchini gratin on her show and it looked awesome but loaded with cheese. As me and my friends are dieting I decided to try and hack the calories down as well as veganise it and it worked out really well (recipe is at the end). I love Ina, but her recipes do usually start with 3 sticks of butter and bottle of cream!!

But anyway, I always plug my recipes into sparkrecipes.com as I count calories and I plugged in the original recipe too out of interest! Depending on how many you split it between, hers weighed in at 433 cals per serving with 33.5g of fat (20.3g of saturated fat!!) GROSS! Mine was 124 per serving! Although we actually split it 3 ways not 4 so it was more like 164 but that’s still pretty good!!

Last weekend I went up to the midlands to see family. I haven’t seen my dad’s side in more than 3 years (bad Sal!!). My 3 aunties and uncles and my Granddad, plus me and my mum and dad all went out for dinner. We went to a pub/restaurant so I wasn’t sure what the food would be like for me and I couldn’t get hold of anyone by phone to ask. But I was really lucky – there were a couple of veggie options that could be easily veganised by taking off the cheese and the waiter also told me that they didn’t use butter on their veggies, it was a substitute approved by the vegan society!! Happy day!! I had a roasted aubergine filled with lots of other veggies, plus carrots and cabbage and green beans on the side. Oh and the best chips ever! I didn’t get a pic though!

But for putting me up, I made these as a gift for my Auntie & Uncle. They got the omni seal of approval as I got an email from my auntie saying they were the best cakes she, my uncle and my cousin had ever tasted and could she have the recipe!! This is a big compliment because my Auntie's an ace cook!

They were the basic chocolate cupcakes from vegan cupcakes take over the world. I tweaked it a bit to replace some of the soymilk with amaretto liqueur and upped the almond extract a bit. The icing recipe I struggled to give her because I always wing the icing! It was a bit of pure soya margarine, some tofutti cream cheese and icing sugar, then I just added almond extract, amaretto and a bit of soymilk to it.

Last week in the supermarket, I saw this cauldron curry. I'm not a lover of ready meals but sometimes when I get back from the gym I'm not always in the mood to cook and so I thought I'd give this a go and was pleasantly surprised. It wasn't at all bad!


Needed a bit of salt, but then I think that about most things! :-)

I found this on my camera, forget when it was from (probably Sunday) but it was a pretty yummy roast dinner of baked tofu, sage & onion stuffing, roasted potatoes and parsnips and green beans & peas. Oh and lots of bisto of course!

oh and here’s that recipe as promised.....

Courgette/Zucchini Gratin:
Ingredients:
1 tbsp olive oil (divided)
1 medium onion
2 courgettes / zucchini (about 500g)
2 tbsp cornflour (15g)
250ml/1 cup light unsweetened soy milk
1 tsp tahini
1 tsp Dijon mustard
2 tbsp nutritional yeast flakes
¼ tsp fresh grated nutmeg
½ tsp paprika
¼ tsp onion powder
Salt & pepper to taste
25g breadcrumbs (optional)

Method:
Slice the courgettes about 1 cm / ½ inch thick and throw in a large bowl. Pour on 1 tsp of olive oil and mix well until all are coated. Lay in a flat layer on a cookie sheet or baking tray and bake at 180°C/350°F for 15-20 minutes, until just soft but not too browned. Once you’ve taken them out the oven, turn the heat up to 200°C/400°F.

Meanwhile, dice the onions and sauté then over a medium heat in the remaining 2 tsp of olive oil, until softened and starting to brown, but not too coloured (about 5-10 minutes).

Then make the sauce. Mix together the cornflour and soymilk and put into a saucepan. Bring to a simmer on a med-high heat and stir until thickened. Remove from heat and stir in tahini, mustard, nutritional yeast and spices. Add salt & pepper till you’re happy with it.

To assemble, put the slices of courgette into a baking dish and put the onions on top, give them a jiggle around to mix together. Pour the sauce over and spread it out.

Sprinkle the breadcrumbs on top and spritz with low fat cooking spray. Bake for 15-20 mins, until the sauce is bubbly and the breadcrumbs are golden brown.

Have a freakin awesome weekend everyone, whatever you're doing!!

Laterz
xXx

Vegan MoFo: Roasted veggie soup

I've just got back from another awesome Body Jam class and I'm a bit gross but thought I'd blog before I hit the shower. Seriously guys, I think I'm hooked. I might not be so happy tomorrow night when I get back from my first Body Combat class - eek!!

Tonight's dinner was soup and it was really really awesome. I had this idea to roast some tomatoes first but as I was chopping them I thought why not roast up some other veggies too. So I did.

I roasted up some tomatoes, onion, aubergine and courgette and a couple of cloves of garlic in just a tiny bit of olive oil. 200C for 25 minutes and they were perfect.


In the meantime I cooked 1/4 cup of brown rice in about 2 cups of water, with a veggie stock cube, a tbsp of tomato puree and some dried herbs & paprika. Oh and a bit of fresh chilli. It needed a bit more water than that as I was cooking it.

Then I sqeezed the garlic cloves out of their papers and put them in a jug with the other veggies and blended them and some hot water with my stick blender. This went into the rice along some more water until I got it the consistency I liked. Then just salt & pepper till it tasted right, et voila!

It made 3 portions that looked a little small but the brown rice makes it really filling!

I'm off to shower my stanky self!

Laterz
xXx

I'm a bad babysitter got ma boyfriend in your shower...

WOOP I'm making six bucks an hour.

OK so I'm not a babysitter but I don't know any songs about being a bad blogger!! I haven't been making much blog worthy food lately and my google reader has about 100 unread posts in it that I need to catch up on!!

I have got a few pics from the last week. Firstly, I made some more meetloaf (from Cozy Inside) but this time I stole Beck's idea of making mini ones in muffin tins - awesome idea!! Ps: these + good bread + reggae reggae ketchup = the best sandwich EVER!


I had them with roasted veggies. I forgot to take an after shot before here is the before one: beetroot, peppers, squtternut bosh, turnip, fennel & onion. YUM!


This is not very photogenic I know, but it's some soup I made last night. I threw the veggies that were half eaten in the fridge in a pot with some turmeric and veggie stock and it wasn't half bad. There was squash, potato, sweet potato, carrot, onion, garlic & peas.

Last night I made veggie hash for dinner. It was rad!! I added some tofu this time, as I had some to use up.

This is a bit of a lousy pic because it was the leftovers. For sunday dinner I made a sunday roast (forgot to take a pic!!) and this was dessert - a crumble. It had 2 huge mutha bramley apples, a punnet of blueberries & a couple of tbs of sugar in the filling and a thick layer of crumble topping. We had it with custard and it was ace.

I made these muffins on my second snow day (off work!). They were a bit too crispy cuz I don't know mum's oven yet. But they had hazelnuts and cranberries in. When I took a bite I realised I really outta make more things with hazelnuts in - they are good!

That's it for now, I'm off to catch up with my backlogged google reader!

So what has 'S' been cooking lately?

It seems like forever since I've blogged and I haven't really been taking many pictures lately! Sorry for that - combo of living off freezer food, trying to eat a bit healthy, finding it difficult to get inspired to cook and having a bit of a shit time at work of late. But hey enough of that.

Tonight I had my girls (E & M) round for a last meal in the flat and a Gossip Girl mini-sesh as my DVD arrived today - we are now addicted! Only I didn't take any pics! I wish I had though, cuz it was way more photogenic than anything else in this post! I made guacamole to go with tortilla chips, Dreena's cumin lime tofu and mexican stylee spicy rice with black beans, corn & peppers. Also, after seeing Jen's post about Sarah Kramer's chocolate pudding cake, I knew I had to try it and goddam it - it was freaking ACE! I forsee another one being made soon and next time I WILL take a pic!

So anyway, back to the stuff I did take pics of. Firstly, chocolate/ginger muffins. I still don't have this recipe right, but next time - it will be mine!!


This was some soup I made by throwing a craptonne of veggies festering in my fridge into the crockpot, with some stock, beans and brown rice. I also threw in a whole chilli and just pierced a hole in it - that's a trick my dad told me, to get a bit of spicy nip but not blow ya head off spice. It worked too.

This was dinner for me & my girls last week - it's Shelly's awesome smashing grains casserole. This stuff is seriously good. I had used up all my bulgar wheat so I used barley and I didn't have any peas so I subbed edamame. YUM and easy to make - making this again for sure.

I have been eating a lot of meals that look like this lately - I cooked up some bulgar and threw in some veggies, tofu and some soy sauce and served it with some roasted portabellas. Boring but good.

A similar sort of meal but with roasted brussels and squtternut bosh on the side!

This is probably my last post before I move out of this little shoe box I've called home for the last year and I feel a bit sad about it. But I'm sure it won't be long before I'm slinging pans and covering myself in flour in my parents' kitchen to bring you some cookie pictures!

And now I'm off to find out who has been sending Serena porn & bags of coke and hopefully see Blair shred that necky little Jenny!!

xo xo - Sal! (hehe)

Vegan MoFo: Loop-de-loop

I had loads to do tonight to get myself ready to go onsite tomorrow so tonight's dinner had to be quick. So I roasted up some veg and served it with some lemony couscous. mmm mmm.


I quite like Autumn because it means I have an excuse to make spicy warming soups. One of my favourites is curried parsnip but I didn't have any parsnips so I had a root (geddit!?) around in the fridge and came up with some butternut squash. I bought the BNS ages ago and only used half of it, so I froze the rest. Squash can be a bit stringy when you freeze it so it's good for soups if you're going to blend them, like I did.

This (plus an ear of sweetcorn that I forgot to put in the picture)....

Became Spicy Butternut & Sweetcorn Soup:

Ingredients:
1 small onion
A couple of tsps of olive oil or low fat cooking spray
About half a small squash (270g ish)
1 small sweet potato (about 150g)
1 medium potato (about 185g)
500ml (2 cups) stock (I used a tub of fresh stuff that I had - impulse buy!! - but stock cubes and water would work)
Few sprigs of thyme
A clove of garlic
1/2 tsp garam masala
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1 tbsp nooch (optional but awesome!)
1-2 tbsp soya cream (optional)
Salt & pepper
1 ear of sweetcorn

Method:
Saute the onion in olive oil or cooking spray and a pinch of salt, for just a few minutes.

Chunk up the veg and add it in (or grate the potatoes if you prefer - I like to chop). Add the stock, leaves of the thyme (I throw in the stalks too and just retrieve them before blending, spices, garlic and a good pinch of salt & pepper.

Bring to the boil and then turn down and simmer for 20 minutes, covered.

Blend the soup and then add the soya cream and nooch and test seasoning (I found I needed quite a bit of salt as my stock didn't have any salt in it).

Add the sweetcorn and stir well.

I add loads of pepper because I love it but just add a pinch if you want a more subtle hint of spice. Awesome with a hunk of homemade bread! :)

Cooking to: Evolution - I loves me a bit of David Duchovny!!

I have managed to borrow the work's dongle (hehe) to take onsite so I should be able to keep mofo-ing from my hotel room, although the entries might suck!!