Vegan MoFo Day 24: What I Ate Wednesday

I totally spaced out today and forgot that it's Wednesday and that I needed to take photos of what I ate. So umm here's what went into breakfast... choccy spread on toast.

I had a muffin at about 11am, these are vegusto cheese and vbites bacon flavour! Fancied making some savoury ones.  These are good but I forgot to add oil so they have that fat free baked good texture that I am not a fan of.  I think they also need a little something else, but need to play around with it before I can give a recipe.

I still hadn't remembered when I ate my lunch, but it was basically this salad from sainsbury's - the only vegan pre-packed salad they do!

I remembered after this, so here's the yoghurt I ate after my salad.

I also ate too many of these delightful crisps, that were on offer in sainsbury's for 50p for a massive bag! BARGAIN!  Gonna stock up before they sell out.

For dinner I made soup, rought recipe to follow.  And I chucked a part-baked baguette into the oven while it was simmering because soup needs good bread to go along with it!

I also ate a few of these things that I found in tesco last week. Pretty filthy and delicious! :)

Hmm looking at this makes me thing I should probably go eat some fruit now cuz, damn!

Curried Butternut Soup - a rough instructional!

Slice up a medium onion with the fine blad of your food processor and whack in a big pot with a bit of olive oil and a pinch of salt. Fry on a medium heat.

Whilst this is happening, change to the grater blade and grate up 3 medium carrots and a butternut squash. Mine was a whopper and I had already used the neck end so it was just the bulb end.  I'd say I had around 4-6 cups of grated squash.

Add this to the pot along with 5 cups (1.25 ltrs ish) of boiling water, 3 stock cubes, 2 heaped spoons (the one you're gonna eat the soup with probably) of korma paste and half a chopped red chilli (optional).  Bring to the boil and cook for around 20 minutes. Or until your bread is finished baking.

Turn the heat down as low as it'll go then add a small tin of coconut cream (they're about 100ml), stir well and then blend that shizzle with a stick blender. If it's too thick, add a bit more water to thin it.  If it's too thin then you added too much water and I can't help you!  I still love you though.  (You could chuck some instant potato flakes in to thicken it if it's really too thin but I'm sure it'll be ok really.)

Check seasoning and serve with a wanky swirl of soya cream on top if you wanna.

END.

Happy humpday everyone.

Laterz
xXx

Vegan MoFo Day 16: Veganising Jamie

Tonight's recipe from Jamie Oliver's 15 minute meals is one that I've been fancying ever I first watched the episode where he made it. I love soup and I love nachos. WIN!  Also, I thought I might actually be able to manage this in 15 minutes* because it's so simple. This recipe was already vegetarian and I only had to make a couple of dairy swaps to make it vegan.

(*I didn't!)

Mexican Tomato Soup

 
Recipe Link: It's not on Jamie's site, but someone has posted the recipe HERE.

Actual Time Taken: This took me just under 19 minutes from when the ingredients and equipment were all out and ready.

My Substitutions
- I subsituted soya yoghurt for dairy yoghurt
- I substituted some vegusto mild cheese for the feta
- I subsituted Violife cheese for pizza for the cheddar

Verdict
This was yummy and easy.  I loved the crispy cheesy nachos that went along with it and the toppings. My tortilla chips were a little saltier than I'd like but overall they were great.  I fed this to my Dad, Bro & Sis-in-Law and if we hadn't scarfed the leftovers, it would've comfortably fed mum too!

My favourite part was the jalapeno/mint yoghurt! Damn this shiz was good! I'd make that again to go with any Mexican inspired dish, it was awesome!

So, the cheese....
I bought this when I was in Infinity in Brighton at the weekend (seriously, if I lived in Brighton I would be bankrupt and it would be that shop's fault!!) and it was great.  It was a son of biatch to get out of the packet but it tasted very mild and it melted beautifully. Can't wait to try it on pizza!

Hope you're having a good week!

Laterz
xXx

Vegan MoFo Day 13: Soup and a toastie

I was hoping to give you an awesome soup recipe today but alas, it was a bit meh! This was dinner the other night.

Sweetcorn chowder inspired soup and a cheezly and tomato toastie. And some salad and mayo with a tonne of Franks in!!

Hope you're all having a good weekend. I'm off to brighton to hang with Jojo and eat dirty sandwiches! Yay!!

Laterz
xXx

Vegan MoFo Day 23: Sick Foodz

So I have caught a lovely strain of lurgy that is going around and because of this, I am totally off my food. This makes me super sad.  Basically dinner the last couple of days has consisted of a tin of soup I've heated up and then eaten 2 bites of.

Lamey Lame-O or what! 

Maybe tomorrow I'll feel like eating actual foodz.

Laterz
xXx

Vegan MoFo Day 12: I'm Souper, thanks for asking

Happy Friday peeps.  I can't believe we're almost half way through MoFo - it's bananas!

 

Yes yes, I'm aware that I'm HILarious!  But enough of my razor sharp wit, onto the food.  I spent AGES yesterday looking through cook books and trying to work out something rad for dinner and in the end I decided just to wing something quick out of the contents of my fridge.  I had less than half a tin of chickpeas left that I opened to make the chickpea cutlets, so I smushed 'em up with some vegan mayo, some nori flakes and some sweetcorn to make a faux tuna salad. I stuffed it into a roll and put a tonne of vegan cheese on top for a riff of a tuna melt.

 

Cheesy goodness before being blasted under a hot grill.  I used Tesco's red cheddar, which I surprisingly like. I say surprisingly cuz I always thought Sheese, which this basically is, tasted like butt.

 

Melty Goodness!

 

There was so much filling it was bustin out!

 

To go with it I made a really easy soup by just sauteeing a clove of garlic and a shallot in a teeny bit of oil, then chucking in a tin of chopped tomatoes, half a cup of basmati rice, some dried thyme and some veggie stock.  I cooked it for 15 minutes and added some sriracha so it was good and spicy, et voila!  Easy as pants and plenty of leftovers for lunch today.

 

I'm leaving to go onsite for work today, so I'm not sure how good internet access will be, but so far I'm still planning to blog every day.  Food onsite is SUPER exciting*, so I bet you guys can't wait for that!

 

(* = shite!)

 

Have a good weekend all and think of me walking round yawning and pretending caravans are really interesting, while you're enjoying yourselves! ;o)

 

Laterz

xXx

FAIL cake!

Well I had planned to blog last week but I don't have many pics to share.  I've decided to do a short post anyway.

Remember I mentioned last weekend was my dad's birthday and I was making cake. Yeah that was a FAIL!

My cakes cracked .... :-(

I tried to salvage it with buttercream and cherries but even cocktail sticks couldn't hold this volcano together!

So we had a laugh and stuck some candles on it anyway.  I was pretty gutted, not gonna lie. I wanted to cry and the state of the cake!  My mum suggested putting a ribbon around it, not sure she was impressed with my response of "what's the point, you can't polish a turd mum!"

Having said all that, once we sliced it, it was pretty damn delicious.

Dinner at the weekend, pizza! Haven't had pizza in a while.  This was a pre-bought based (Tesco Value I think!! haha).  I added some shop bought sauce, broken up facon (RealEat), sweetcorn, peppers and about half a block of cheezly white cheddar. It was good! My dad even snuck some of the leftovers and said it was good.

EXTREME CLOSE UP! WAAAAAOOOOHHHH!  WAAAAAAAAAOOOOOOOOOOHHH!

And soup.  I made this Sunday and am eating the leftovers this week for lunch.  It's the Bodacious Bean & Barley Soup from Garden of Vegan, that I have blogged about before and made many times. It is THAT awesome.

Enjoy the rest of your week peeps.

Laterz
xXx

Vegan MoFo: Soup.... again!

I have been making lots of soup lately. Today I made some for lunch out of a sweet potato, an onion, a red pepper, a clove of garlic, some veggie stock and a couple of teaspoons of garam masala.

It wasn't the greatest soup I've ever eaten but it was tasty and I had one of my soda bread rolls with it! :-)

I love soup because it's easy and quick to make and it is a great way of using up whatever veggies are leftover in your fridge/vegetable drawer! What's your favourite soup?

Laterz
xXx

Vegan MoFo: Soup & my fancy, but not schmancy, new piece of equipment

Afternoon all, just a short and sweet one from me today. Well short and savoury actually!

I finally bought myself a food processor, I've wanted one forever and have been holding off because I wanted a fancy schmancy one. In the end I just went for a moderately fancy - no schmancy! It's a kenwood though so it's a good make and should do the job pretty well.

The first thing I did with it, was shred up a tonne of carrots, swede, onion and garlic to make this awesome soup! Soup is one of my favourite things to make any time of the year but especially at this time of year, when it's starting to get really cold.

This one was a pretty simple affair: onions, garlic, carrots, swede, barley, red lentils, yellow split peas, dried herbs and veggie stock. Simple but delicious!

I'm looking forward to thinking up more things to do with my new machine. Also, I haven't named him yet - any suggestions??

That's all for today, see you tomorrow MoFos!

Laterz
xXx

Looking back....

.... oooover ma shoulldeerrrr. Oh I'm gonna be singing that song all freakin day!! Ah well. The reason for it is that when I was looking through the pics for today's post, I realised 3 of the items were follow ons from last week's post and one was a recipe from last year.

So remember last time, the tomato soup recipe I posted? Well it makes 2 servings and I had one left in the fridge and I turned it into a couple of pasta dishes instead of just reheating it.

Starting with this one, a simple dish. I just sauteed some mushrooms and added some soya mince and a some gravy granules and half the remaining soup and served it over wholewheat spaghetti with a little sprinkle of nooch and parsley.



This was the winner though. I sauteed some mushrooms and some spring onions, added the other half of the soup and some capers and stirred it into wholewheat penne. Then I made a salad of sweet red and yellow cherry tomatoes, capers and toasted pine nuts with just some salt, pepper and really good olive oil on and put it up on top of the pasta. Simple but delicious!

On saturday night, my friend was down for her first wedding make up trial (wedding in Oct and I'm doing the make up!!) and for dinner I cooked us some of my carrot falafel with tahini sauce, some tabouleh and just a simple salad of rocket with a simple lemon juice and olive oil dressing. I've just put some chickpeas on to cook so I can make these again, I forgot how yummy they are.

And last time I made the vegan brunch omelets. Well I had half the batter left so I made another one. But I made a total mess of it when I flipped it, probably because I put the batter in the pan chilled and it was hard to spread. Next time I'll remember to bring it out before hand.

Still once it had a topping of mushrooms sauteed in soy sauce and herbs and a bit of cheezly mozz on it, all was forgiven!

This soup I made the other day to use up some fresh corn I had. It was pretty crap so I won't bother giving you the recipe.

And today I made mini muffins, I like to have some around for snacks and they are less calories than a full size muffin. Recipe is below pic.


Coconut Choc Chip Mini Muffins
Will make around 16 mini muffins or about 6 regular sized ones.

Dry Ingredients:
1 cup plain flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 cup sugar
teeny pinch of cinnamon
6 tbsp desiccated coconut
6 tbsp non-dairy chocolate chips
Wet Ingredients:
1/2 cup unsweetened non-dairy milk
1/2 tsp cider vinegar or lemon juice
1/3 cup soya yoghurt
1 tsp vanilla extract
a few drops almond extract
2 tbsp rapeseed (canola) oil

Method:

Preheat oven to 180C/350F. Line a 12 cavity bun tin (fairy cake tin, not a muffin tin) with baking cases.

Whisk dry ingredients together. Mix wet ingredients together, pour into dry and mix until just combined, a few lumps are ok and will bake out.

Spoon a couple of tbsp (about half way up the case) into each case and then bake for 20 mins, or until a skewer comes out clean. For regular muffins they'll take around 25 mins.

Transfer to wire rack to cool.

That's all for now folks.

Laterz
xXx

Mini Me

Look at me posting after only 8 days' break!! hehe. It's a mini post from me today, because honestly, I really haven't cooked all that much this last week. I've been out for dinner a couple of times and instead of having the girls over here we went to Em's and she cooked - wonders will never cease!! :-)

So I'll start with the other day's lunch, roasted cherry tomato soup. This had a trip hit of tomatoes because I also added some tinned (well boxed actually) and some sun-dried toms. Recipe is at the end of the post. It was yummy.


Brunch today - I had some tofu leftover from the brownies that are coming up in a minute! So I made tofu omelettes from vegan brunch. I halved the recipe and the other half of the omelette batter is in the fridge for tomorrow morning. Once I spread out the batter I chucked on some chopped up sun dried tomatoes, spring onions, sweetcorn and a couple of rings of jarred jalapenos. Then flipped it to cook the second side. Then I flipped it back and sprinkled it with black pepper, dried oregano and grated on some cheezly mozz, then stuck it under the grill for a minute to melt. Soooooo delicious.

I said brownies.... I made these on Tuesday night to take to Em's for pudding. The recipe is from Vegan Cookies .... for the chocolate brownies and I added 1/3 cup of walnuts and 2 packets (50g total) of white chocolate buttons broken up. I cooked them for just the very minimum amount of time so they would be super fudgy and delicous and they were - best vegan brownies I've ever made!! SO EFFING GOOD. I must admit, when I first bought this book I was underwhelmed with it, but I've now made a few things and everything has been so tasty that I've really grown to love the book.

Dinner the other night, tacos! I sauteed a couple of spring onions and a clove of garlic and added a cup of sainsbury's frozen veggie mince (they didn't have any Linda McCartney, but this one is pretty much the same!). I added half a box of chopped tomatoes, a green chilli, some mild pepperdew peppers (I didn't have any red or yellow peppers!) and some cumin, coriander, oregano and paprika. I also grated about half a courgette in finely, then left it to reduce down. It was easy, nice and not too spicy. It made enough to fill about 6 taco shells, so I had leftovers. I had some salsa in the fridge so I topped it with that, some shredded lettuce and some soya yoghurt. Oh and some chopped, fresh coriander.

All ready to munch....

Close up of the taco filling...

Ready for assembling...

And here's the recipe for the soup:

Ingredients:
1 cup cherry tomatoes

2 fat cloves of garlic

olive oil

1 small onion

1/3 cup white wine

2 cups veggie stock

1/2 box (about 1/2 - 3/4 cup) chopped tomatoes in juice

4 sun-dried tomatoes*

1 tsp paprika

1/2 tsp dried oregano

1/2 tsp dried thyme

1/2 tsp dried rosemary

pinch of sugar or splenda

Salt & pepper to taste

Method:
Put the cherry tomatoes and garlic on a baking sheet and drizzle on a little bit of oil then bake at 200C/400F for 20 minutes.

Saute the onion over medium high in a tbsp or so of olive oil, with a good pinch of salt, for 5 minutes until starting to soften but not too coloured.

Once the tomatoes and garlic are done, pop the garlic out of the papery skins and set aside. Don't bother taking the skin off the tomatoes.

Back to the onions! Add the wine the pan and let it bubble off for a couple of minutes. Then add all the other ingredients and bring to the boil. Reduce heat and leave to simmer for 15 minutes.

Then pour into a blend and blend till smooth.

I served mine with a small blob of soya yoghurt on top, just to look poncey but it's not essential.

* I used sun-dried tomtoes packed in oil and just gave them a good shake off of the excess oil and then chopped them roughly. If you use dried ones, just chuck them into the soup when you add the stock and they'll reconstitute as you cook it.

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