Vegan MoFo Day 4: Will Dance for Foodz!

I'm still alive hurrah.  Body Attack didn't kill me, I did think that it had broken me last night but I feel ok this morning aside from that pain in the thighs!  Anyhoo, as I said it had to be a quick tea last and I went with stir fry.

 

God knows why because usually when I have stir fry and I'm totally disappointed (and hungry again and hour later!).  But this actually did fill me up.  It really was a meal of convenience, store bought mushroom stir fry mix, store bought cooked rice (yes I'm THAT lazy), store bought sauce. I added some realeat chicken pieces, sweetcorn and some butter beans to bulk it up a bit. Sauce was a bit naff but not the worst I've ever eaten.

 

Tonight I'm going for dinner so I'll take pics of whatever I end up eating.

And because who doesn't love some kitty pics...? Whenever my mum and dad have chicken, as soon as Jazzy smells it, she knows she's getting some.

"I know what you're doing!"

"Stop waving it - GIMME!"

"Will dance for foodz!" 

Gah - shameless!

Hope lies eternal that we can get her to gangnam next time!

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

Tell me why..... I don't like Mondays!

How much do Mondays suck! Today was just one of those crap Mondays. However, the sun is shining though so it's not all bad!

Just a few pics today. I made a few things last week that were pretty cack so didn't bother to take a picture of them.

This one is yet another attempt to make something similar to Wagamama's Yasai Itame - I still don't have it, but this was not bad.


I had some coconut milk leftover from the soup so I made a quick stir fry, added some cooked spelt wheat and added some of the coconut milk to it. It was pretty damn good!

Friday night I had 4 girlfriends round for dinner and I totally forgot to take pics of the food. I made beanburgers and spicy rice and a salad of green beans. It was good. I did get a pic of pud though - chocolate orange cake (wheat-free, for my wheat-intolerant friend). There were absolutely no leftovers from dinner or dessert, so it's safe to say it went down well!

Lastly - yesterday's Sunday: soup & sarnie. I made some homemade wraps and filled them with curry tofu and salad - they were killer and I made 2 so today I had the leftover one for lunch and it was even better today.

And the soup was just a bunch of veg I had in the fridge (sweetcorn, onions, fennel, yellow pepper, chickpeas & a tomato), with some stock, tomato puree, a couple of spoonfuls of instant mashed potato flakes and the last of the light coconut milk. Luckily there was enough left as I couldn't be bothered to cook when I got home today, so I had the leftovers.

That's all for now, I'm off to watch click flicks and try to stop myself eating pretzels and speculoos spread out of the jar (I already ate the chocolate spread last night!!)

Let there be Rock!

I was looking through my camera last night and saw that I had a crapload of food pix on there and now I see why - it's been almost two weeks since my last blog post. So strap yourself in - i've got a lot of pics for ya!!

Starting off with last night's dinner. I really could not get inspired last night and couldn't decide what I wanted and somehow it struck me that soup & a sarnie would be a good dinner. And it was. The soup was just a roasted yellow pepper, an onion, some potatoes and veggie stock cooked up and blended with a little soya cream. It was really good!


The sarnie was some tofu that I marinated with some miso, maple syrup and some other stuff that I forget and then baked. With cucumber, tomato, alfalfa sprouts and vegan mayo. YUM!

The inside of the sammie....

This one was brunch yesterday. I had a 'great' idea to try and make individual frittatas. Yeah it didn't really work. It was more like baked tofu scramble. It tasted good though but I need to work on the recipe!


Mum & Dad came round for lunch on Saturday and Dad had made tomato & basil soup and brought it with them. It was tomato with some other stuff chucked in and it was awesome.


I made us some lower fat carrot cake muffins, with an orange glaze one. I ALMOST forgot to take a pic, I was just about to scarf the last one when I remember. Hence the messy pic!

Last week we resurrected our tradition of my girlies coming round in the week for dinner. I made balls! (Hee hee!). That's VCON's beanballs to the less childish of us. The recipe said it made 12-15 balls (hee hee!) but I got 23 out of it! Obviously I don't know what a walnut should look like!

On top of spaghetti ... all covered in..... tomato sauce! YUM. I had read reviews saying the balls (hee hee!) were mushy. I agree, they were a little, but not enough to bother me as they tasted really good.

I also made us some garlic bread to go with.

We're all trying to be good and avoid cake so I made a Lychee & Lime Sorbet. It was ok but I went a bit overboard with the ginger! I will work on it.


This was a stir-fry I did last week. I was knackered and had to get food shopping on the way home so I just picked up a pack of stir-fry veg, a sachet of sauce, a pack of marinated tofu pieces and a pack of crispy seaweed, then just served it with some udon noodles. It was ok, the sauce was a bit bland so I had to jazz it up with some spices.

The next two were variations on a theme. I saw a recipe for a great looking salad in a book I bought a while back called the Low GI Vegetarian Cookbook. It's a pretty good book - it has lots of recipes that if they are not vegan, are mostly easy to veganise. It also has suggestions for both veggie & vegan meal plans. But anyway, back to the salad. I didn't have everything they called for so I decided to wing it.

Udon noodles, marinated tofu pieces, avocado, salad leaves, toasted cashews and I made a dressing with the juice of a lime, a tbsp of mirin, a tsp of rice vinegar and a tbsp of soy sauce. I finished it off with lots of chopped fresh mint and coriander. It was really light and zingly. YUM.

The next day, I still had half an avocado so I went with some more cold udon noodles, julienned carrot, avocado, tofu, spring onions and a similar dressing as before but with a bit of chilli and some peanut butter mixed in. Really good!!

A meal last week - I made a pilaff using barley instead of rice and lots of cumin and paprika. And I served it with the Cumin Lime Tofu from Eat Drink & Be Vegan. I love that stuff - soooo good!

Lastly, a couple of experimental low fat baked goods - both of which need work! Firstly some cookies - they had cashews and sultanas in and oats. They were nice but not quite right.

Secondly, some muffins. These also had sultanas in and some spices and other stuff that I forget. Again, they need work.

OK and non-food related. My mum bought me a Hetty!! Which is the female Henry Vacuum cleaner. Not only are these little things cute, they are more environmentally friendly as they use less energy and they are powerful little suckers too. Plus they take up less closet space so there is more room for shoes! Win-win!


It even came with a pink canvas bag to encourage you to use less plastic bags when you do your shopping.


And lastly, it was pointed out to me last time that I hadn't yet posted a pic of my tattoo. Sorry, it totally slipped my mind. I have struggled to get a decent pic and this is where it's still a bit scabby but you get the gist.... My two best friends have the same* tattoo as well.

(* Well it was supposed to be the same but the guy who did it messed them all up so they are all slighly different.)


Cooking to: Mostly this week - AC/DC (went to see them thursday and they were freakin amazing!!)

Vegan MoFo - Day 1!

It's October, which means Vegan MoFo has begun! I can't say I kicked it off with a huge bang but definitely a big one! I had another recipe in mind for today but my pissing casserole dish didn't arrive yet so I had to change my plans and went for Miso Tofu with a spicy, peanutty stir fry and soba noodles.

This was sooooooo tasty and the smell of it cooking was creasing me it smelt so good.


I bought a julienne peeler today and was dying to use it. And I have had this jar of miso in the fridge for ages and needed some inspiration on what to do with it. So I googled Miso Tofu recipe and found this one. I forgot to print it off and was too lazy to boot up the laptop so I decided to use it as inspiration and made it up as I went along.

So my marinade consisted of 1 big spoonful of brown miso, a couple of tbsp of soy, the same of rice vinegar, a tbsp or so of maple syrup, a splash of liquid smoke (a couple of tsps), a good grating of fresh ginger, a grated clove of garlic and a 1/4 tsp of chilli paste. Then I brushed it on and left it for 5 minutes then baked for 10 mins at 180C, flipped it and baked for another 10 minutes.

This is how awesome my julienner is ....

Somehow I managed to make just enough marinade for 1 block of tofu...

Cooking to: random 80s shite.

I'm looking forward to the challenge of posting enough for the rest of the month but it's going to be tough as I'm onsite for almost 2 weeks out of the month.

Oh and there will be baked goods before the week is out!!

Do these tacos taste funny to you?

HURRAH! Exams are over and now I can chill out and get excited about leaving for a week in Cyprus in 13 days!

I actually had a good trip to London. My hotel room was bigger than my flat (and I'm not exaggerating) and had a nice view of the London eye and the river. I took some pics on my phone, will post them when I work out how to get them off the phone!

I also had 2 good meals! TWO! And one bad one, but I'll not say any more about that. The good - a lovely italian meal, where they made me a risotto with loads of fresh greens like spinach, peas, green beans and asparagus! YUM (wish I'd taken my camera!) And then dinner at Wagamamas - one day I will manage to recreate yasai itame. One day it WILL happen!!

But back to food I cooked. Some of these are from the week before I went and some are from after I got back on Friday.

Firstly, my adventure with tacos!! I have never made tacos before and they were quite possibly the messiest thing I have ever cooked!! I bought some taco shells and some chipolte paste (awesome stuff) and decided to have a go.

I forgot to buy lettuce, didn't have any soy cheese or vegan sour cream. But anyway, I knocked up a filling made of tomatoes, spices, onions, peppers, tofu and cannelini beans, some home-made salsa and a blob of mayola. The stupid taco shells didn't stand up so filling them was interesting and getting a photo was almost impossible. This messy bugger is about as good as I could get.

They were flippin tasty though!



This post wouldn't be right without some baking! I made wheat-free lemon & poppy seed muffins for breakfasts this week. I am planning to try these again with some different flour, because they were a bit powdery and I'm not sure why yet. The flavour is spot on though - it's just the texture.


Last night's dinner - tofu & veggies in a spicy tomato sauce with cous cous. MMMMM!


Last week - I fancied pasta bolognaise, so I went for a mushroom bolognaise. This lot .....

... became this:



Saturday's breakfast! Potatoes roasted with some olive oil, oregano & paprika, with a tofu scramble that I threw some fresh tomato and basil into right at the end.

Saturday's dinner: a REALLY spicy stir fry with fresh chilli, ginger, brown rice and a peanutty sauce that I threw together. Was sooo good.

That's all for now.