Yesterday was Thursday, Thursday. Today is Friday, Friday!!

It's fri-ee-day fri-ee-day - that damn Rebecca Black and her stupid catchy annoying song!!  Dang.  Ah well, it is Friday - HURRAH.  So here's some stuff I've eaten this week.

As I said I was gonna in my last post, I made the lentil burgers from Hot Damn & Hell Yeah.  I really love these burgers!  I change them up a bit by adding a few extra spices in but the basic recipe is still the same.  I had it on toasted ciabatta (I had no rolls) with some steamed sugar snaps and broccoli and some sweetcorn and kidney beans straight outta the tin with a bit of vinegar and tabasco on - yum.

Later on in the week I wanted something fast, so I chopped up a couple of pieces of leftover AFR chilli / lime tofu from my last post and cooked it with a chopped tomato, some sweetcorn, kidney beans (what was left in the cans after the meal above), some cooked brown rice (out of a packet - tskk naughty Sal!) and some soy sauce and tabasco.  Then I shoved it on top of a tortilla with some lettuce on and a dollop of Tesco's soya yoghurt, which may I just say - kick's Alpro plain yoghurt's dirty sugary ass!!  It made way more than you see below, after I took the pick I just piled it all on the plate! hehe.

Then as it's Friday and I don't feel the need to be so strict with my diet on a Friday I made some muffins.  They are chocolate chunk, coconut and cherry and they rock.  Recipe is below the pic.

Cherry, Coconut & Chocolate Chunk Muffins
Dry Ingredients:
- 1.5 cups plain flour
- 1 cup oats
- 1/2 cup dessicated coconut
- 1/2 cup dried sour cherries
- 1/2 cup vegan chocolate chunks or chips
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 cup granulated sugar

Wet Ingredients:
- 1 cup Kara coconut milk (or you can use lite coconut milk or other non-dairy milk of your choice)
- 1/4 cup rapeseed (canola) oil
- 1 tsp light vinegar
- 1 tsp vanilla extract

Method:
Preheat oven to 180C/350F.

Mix together dry ingredients, breaking up any cherries that have stuck together.  Whisk together wet ingredients and then pour into dry.  Mix well and then divide between muffin tins.

Bake for 25-30 mins, until a skewer comes out clean.

I got 10 out of this, but my muffin cases were quite big, you might be able to eek out 12!

Have a fab weekend everyone.

Laterz
xXx

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!

Hold on.... I'm comin...

I'm trying to keep up with you guys' MoFo posts, but there's so many!! :0)  Everyone is doing awesome jobs.

Just wanted to post quickly to say I'll be back with a new post next week, after the madness of MoFo is over and I finally have some pics for you.  I've been good with posting on my make up blog, but just not cooking all that much over the last 6 months or so.  But that is about to change, baby and I am finally digging all my cookbooks out of storage this weekend!

Peace out... until next week.

Oh and did I mention I have Britney tickets for Sunday night?? Massive SQUEE.


Laterz
xXx

An update

Hello, is anyone out there still?

I just wanted to post and say hi and that I haven't abandoned this blog, I'm just taking a temporary hiatus on it.

In my last post I told you that I had acid reflux: my docs have been telling me this for years and I've been questioning it as the (very strong) drugs they had me on were doing nothing. And it turns out I had gallstones and they were wrong. So I've now had my gallbladder out and am feeling MUCH MUCH better!

I stopped blogging because I stopped cooking. At the worst point I was getting gallbladder pain attacks almost every night and was basically living on mashed potato and rice. Then one night I had an attack so bad that I ended up in A&E (at this point they were still saying it wasn't gallstones).

Anyway enough of the negative - it's finally over with and I'm getting back into cooking again. Once I get inspired to start cooking more interesting food than Smash and sweetcorn, this blog will come back to life.

I'm still following your blogs everyone and if you fancy reading about something else, I have just started a new blog about make up (I took my old one down as I wanted to re-do it). I just did my first post about the make up course I'm doing this week. If you're curious, it's HERE.

Back soon......

Sal
xXx

An apology and a bake sale!

Hey all,

So sorry for not posting for ages again. Firstly I moved house and my camera has been stuck in a box ever since!

Secondly my lovely acid reflux or whatever it is* has meant that pretty much everything I eat is making me have pain. So the stuff I've been eating really isn't blog worthy, as I can't eat anything except super plain, bland and boring crap right now.

Anyhoo, I just wanted to post to say if you are anywhere near the Brighton area, the first vegan bake sale is taking place on Saturday 28th May, outside the Wai Kika Moo Kau cafe in the lanes. I'll be there along with some other blogger friends, so please come by and say hello and of course, buy a cake!



Hope to see you there!!

Love & stuff
Sal
xXx


* I'm seeing a consultant next month so hopefully I'll be able to stop living off mashed potato and rice soon and get back to business with this blog.

Better late than never....

Hellllooooo on this fine, sunny, March afternoon!!

EDIT: so I've just seen my 3 year blogaversary was on the 5th of March!! I thought it was later in the month. I'd better do some belated baking.

So I haven't posted pics in sooooo long and I had WAY more on my camera than I thought I'd taken. Most of them weren't that great so I didn't bother posting them.

Having said that, this first pic kind of sucks, but the food was good so here it is. I made the basic latin (red) tofu from Viva Vegan. I also made the peanut sauce that she suggests as a variation, but I didn't bake the tofu with it on, I just served it on the side. I think the tofu was a little bland so it needed the peanut sauce, but that is probably down to my not very flavourful veggie stock - rather than Terry's recipe. Next time, I'll try it with wine or beer! The peanut sauce was awesome! And the rice was just some simple old savoury rice with onions, a tomato and peas / sweetcorn thrown in. There were meant to be mushrooms too but I forgot them.


Last week was pancake day! I made some pancakes, they weren't great but they did the job. One with the classic lemon & sugar and one with a bit of Biona vegan chocolate spread.

This was a meal I conjurred up last week. I was having lack of inspiration day and was craving dirty cheese tortellini! Seriously, on the rare occasion I crave non-vegan food, it's always mingin shit like that!! hahah. Anyway, I found some aubergine pesto (Sacla brand) in the supermarket, that didn't have any cheese in and looks vegan from the ingredient list. I cooked up some pasta shells then chopped up a tomato and cooked it in a little olive oil, then added a bit of wine, then the pesto and a couple of big handfuls of spinach. It was SO good! I really like that aubergine pesto, it's just a shame it has so much oil and cashews in as it really yanks the calories up!

Here is some soup I made last week - carrot & coriander. I take soup to work for lunch pretty much every day, so like to make a bit pot.

It was nothing special but, the real reason I posted about it, is because here is one of the carrots that went into it..... HEE HEE!!!

PIZZA!!! My freezer broke down a while back and all the daiya I bought back from Texas defrosted. However I just put it back in the freezer when it was working again and hoped for the best! The bad news is though that I'm moving house next month and I don't think it'll survive another re-freeze, so buh-bye daiya!! :-( This pizza had the aforementined aubergine pesto, fresh tomatoes, sweetcorn and daiya mozz.

I've made a few things from Isa's latest book, Appetite for Reduction and really like them! This is the Mushroom & Cannelinni bean paprikash. YUM! I had it with plain white rice and a salad.

This is the red thai tofu. I made this when a friend was down. The beans are also a recipe from the book, but I forget the name of them. The rice was just basmati rice cooked in half water / half light coconut milk. YUM. I could seriously eat the whole batch of this tofu, it's rad.

Here is the mushroom / cannellini paprikas again. This is the first time I made it and to go alongside I followed Isa's suggestion and made the scarlet barley. I made this for me and my parents and we all liked it.

CAKE. I made this one night when my girlies were round. It's the chocolate pudding cake recipe from La Dolce Vegan (I think.... It's one of Sarah K's books anyway). I added in some dried cherries just to up the awesomness. I had mine with soya cream. Such a good cake. AND it's so easy and only uses stuff I always have in the pantry.

Another recipe from AFR - this is the butternut/kidney bean jamba stew. I LOVE this recipe, I've made it a few times and I always get more servings than it says. It's really easy and it's yummy. My friends really liked it too.

I don't even remember making these - meatballs & sketti!! I think I used a pack of granose burger mix for the meatballs. Yes.. yes I did, it's all coming back to me now. They SUCKED. That burger mix is rotten. Next time I'll stick with a tvp based version or the VCON bean balls.

I made some waffles. These were pretty unspectacular and had a banana in the mixture. They were just a bit rubbery but once I poured an eff-tonne of golden syrup on them, they improved somewhat.

Now I know that you expect baking from me. So here is my christmas baking - yeah I know - it was 3 months ago!! But anyway.... christmas cake.

Trifle. I used the VCTOtW vanilla recipe for the sponge and baked it in a swiss roll tin, then i layered it with raspberry jelly made from the vegan jelly crystals you can buy in holland & barrett. Then a carton of alpro custard, topped with a carton of whipped soyatoo and a bunch of sprinkles and almonds. YUMMY.

Here is our traditional chocolate log (or as my bro and I childishly call it - poo log!).

And some candy cane cupcakes. These were really for my friend's hubby's birthday but we ate some as well at dinner, the last time we saw each other before xmas. They had minty frosting with crushed candy canes and edible glitter!

And cherry almond cookies (from Vegan Cookies invade your cookie jar). I made these as xmas gifts for a couple of workmates - they went down very well. My workmates other half (who loves cooking/baking) asked how I got them 'like that' as he says his biccies always dry out. Vegan cookies FTW!!

That's all for now. I'll try not to leave it so long next day.

Man, have I got some catching up to do on all your blogs tonight!!

Laterz
xXx

Time Flies.....

OMG! One minute it's the end of MoFo and the next it's freaking MARCH!!!

Well don't I suck. hahahaha. I just wanted to let anyone who still keeps an eye on this blog that I'm still alive.

I haven't been updating because I honestly have been a bit uninspired with food lately and not taken pics of anything. Even my veganniversary (1 Jan) was a bit of a non-event, marked mainly by an acid reflux attack. Fun.

So I'm gonna attempt to rectify that this weekend and hope to have some new pics to share next week. Plus this month is my 3 year bloggaversary - so I think I need to bake something to celebrate - right??

I am also really behind on all of your blogs, which is probably why I'm so uninspired. I looking forward to catching up with what all of you have been up to.

Love and stuff....

Sal
xXx