Vegan MoFo: I don't understand how a heart is a spade but .....

Somehow the vital connection is made... BOOOO! Ahem, sorry about that little trip back to 90s britpop there.

So I'm sitting in my crappy hotel room and I can't face the restaurant here. Premier Inn only ever has one thing on the menu I can eat - with a modification that is - and it sucks anyway. So now I come prepared and I stopped at the supermarket on the way for some fruit, samosas, lemon puffs and some tortilla chips. I even remembered tea bags for once, hotel freebie tea is always mingin!

I'm working on some pics and tips for hotel survival for another post later in the month but for now, here is a little pic of my hotel foodz. Brought to you courtesy of my workmate's mobile broadband - SLOWEST AND SHITTEST CONNECTION EVER!

As you can see from the pic, I have my lovely boys of Supernatural to keep me happy for the next few nights so I'm off to watch a couple of eps before bed!

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!!

Vegan MoFo: Bakin' hot

I told you there'd be baked goods and here they are!

I made my own bread - no packet mix this time and I'm so excited about it too. To tell the truth it's a bit sad how excited I am! I used this recipe, only I replaced the honey with agave and used 400g wholemeal bread flour and 100g white bread flour, instead of half & half - next time I might use all wholemeal. Also I followed the instructions on the side of the yeast jar to activate it before adding it to the flours.


I baked it for 25 minutes so it's still nice and soft and it rocked for dinner with some pasta.

My baking experiment didn't go exactly as I planned (more on that in a bit) so I made a crumble to use up the plums and strawberries in my fridge, before I go onsite on Tuesday. It rocked.

I cut up 4 plums and about a cup or so of strawberries....

Put into a dish and then rub 100g of vegan margarine into 150g of plain flour. Add 100g of oats, 70g of sugar and a pinch of salt. Then sprinkle it on top and bake in a preheated 190C oven for 45-60 mins (took 55 in my oven) until lightly browned.

I served with a splosh of soya cream but the leftovers will be eaten with custard tomorrow at my parents' house!

Onto the failure - my pecan toffee apple muffins. Well I say failure but they're not that bad. The flavour is awesome but the texture is wrong. I want to try these again really soon though because I think they have the potential for greatness! So recipe is pending tweakage.

I made these for part of the brunch I made for myself and my two friends this morning along with bran muffins, tofu scramble and roasted potatoes - that I stupidly didn't take pictures of!

Vegan MoFo: Saturday Night I feel the air is getting hot

Gah, I still remember the dance to that stupid song!

Well it's saturday night and I'm sitting on my couch watching Harold & Kumar. It's sad isn't it.

But it's the weekend - hurray - and I intended to start it off with french toast, but there was a problem with that plan - I had no bread. So pancakes it was instead. With maple syrup and some mango sauce which was just some tinned mango whizzed up with a bit of the juice from the can and a splosh of soya cream. YUM.


Lunch was awesomeness - Coronation Seitan (recipe at the end of this post).

I used to love me some Coronation chicken back in my omni days and I've tried it with seitan before and it's sucked royally - excuse the pun. But I think that it was just a clash of flavours, this one worked magically!

Not that I think anyone needs a tutorial on a sandwich but I was bored so I took some piccies!

First take a wrap of your choice and put some slices of cucumber in the middle:

Then spoon the seitan on topFold in the bottom of the wrap

Fold in the sidespull a daft face and then scoff!

Coronation Seitan
Ingredients:
1/2 cup / 125ml soya yoghurt
2 tbsp mayola (or vegan mayo of your choice)
1/4 - 1/2 tsp salt (depending on how salty you like)
1 tsp curry paste*
2 tbsp mango chutney
About a cup of chicken style seitan cut into smallish chunks

Method:
Mix together yoghurt, mayo, curry paste and salt until smooth. Then add the mango chutney and check for seasoning. Mix in the seitan and serve.

This will make 2 or 3 sandwiches and makes awesome filling for baked potatoes (that's tomorrow's lunch :) !!)

*I used 2 tsps cuz I like it spicy and extra curry-ish!

Onto dinner..... veggie paella, which rocked socks.

This was super easy. Just gently fry half an onion, sliced into thin half moons in a bit of olive oil. Add 1/2 a green and half a red pepper and some sliced mushrooms and cook for a couple of minutes.

Add 1/2 cup of aborio rice, 1.5 cups of veggie stock, 1 tsp of saffron powder (or turmeric if you don't like the flavour), 1 clove of garlic finely chopped, the leaves of 2 sprigs of thyme (I throw in the sticks too and just take them out when it's cooked), a good pinch of sea salt, a pinch of black pepper and 1/2 tsp of smoked paprika. Mix well, bring to the boil and turn down. Cover and cook on low for 10-15 mins until rice is tender. Add 1/2 a cup of frozen peas and cook until peas are done. Check seasoning and serve.

Baked goods tomorrow! :)

Vegan MoFo - Bitch! Jerk!

So I have this big bowl of chicken style seitan that I made sitting in my fridge and I have been eyeing the jerk seitan recipe in VwaV for ages.

However, I'm so fucking lazy that I bought a jar of jerk seasoning and cooked my seitan, some mushrooms and red pepper up in that instead. VwaW recommends serving it with coconut rice but as mentioned before we have a problem - I'm lazy. So instead of reading the recipe I made it up as I went along and I'm happy to say, it was freaking superrad!

To make the coconut rice, I took the 150ml (just over 1/2 a cup) of light coconut milk I had left from a disasterous effort of jelly and made it up to 1.5 cups with hot water. I mixed in 1/2 cup of jasmine rice and a tsp of creamed coconut and put it in my steamer for 20 minutes, et voila!

I added a bit of salt once it was on the plate but it really didn't need it and was much better without. I served it with some steamed broccoli and green beans.

It's not very photogenic though is it - looks a bit like dog food! Ah well, it tasted good which is what counts.

Cooking to: Snow Patrol - Songs for Polar Bears

Vegan MoFo - Mock-a-doodle-stew

Lame title. I'm sorry.

Today I had PMT - the angry kind and work sucked so I was fighting the urge to put on Rage Against the Machine and sing FUCK YOU I WON'T DO AS YOU TELL ME! at the top of my voice. I went with plan B instead - chick flick and comfort food. Plus angry PMT has turned to lameass teary PMT - I cried twice while watching the Sex & the City Movie!

I love a good stew and when I saw the Barefoot Contessa's show yesterday I knew I totally had to steal her idea! (This recipe.)

Ingredients (approximates as I didn't measure anything):
2 tbsp olive oil
1 medium onion
3 tbsp margarine
3 tbsp flour
2 cups ish stock (I used the faux chicken stock I cooked the seitan in)
1 clove of garlic
1 cup of chicken seitan (I made my own and more on that at some point during Vegan MoFo!)
small handful finely chopped parsley (about a tbsp)
leaves from 2 sprigs of time
1/2 cup peas (actually it was prob nearer to a cup - my hand slipped!)
2 carrots

Method:
Peel & chop the carrots and cook them in boiling water for 10 minutes.

Saute the onion in the olive oil for 5 minutes, then add the margarine and turn heat down low. In a separate pan, gently warm (don't boil) the stock. Once margarine is melted, add the flour and stir well, cook out flour taste for a minute or so. Slowly add the stock, bit by bit until you have a lovely thick smooth sauce.

Add the garlic and thyme, stir and cook for a minute or so then add the seitan, veggies and herbs, stir well, turn down low and cook with a lid on for 5-10 minutes. Serve with sprinkle of fresh parsley, dumplings and mashed potato! YUM.

I baked the dumplings / biscuits and just put then on the stew for the last 5 minutes. But I made a booboo! I just used the recipe on the side of the Atora packet but I use plain flour instead of self-raising and forgot to add baking powder. DOH. So they were more like hockey pucks than fluffy dumplings but hey, it's been that kind of day.

Cooking to: the Sex and the City Movie!

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!!