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

Remember remember the 5th of November... Gunpowder, hotdogs and wine!

Hello lovelies. It is Friday again, big fat mega YAY!  I'm excited to finish work for the weekend tonight and then go to the pub! 

This weekend is Daddy Alien's birthday so next time, expect some pics of the cake I'm making tomorrow.  But back to this week and I'll start with last friday's dinner. 

Veganz - we is healthy!!  Fry's burger and smash with nooch. YES!!! Friday trash is awesome.

Onto weeknight dinners when I try to be a bit healthier.  I made Isa's baked falafel from Appetite for Reduction, only I had to make a few substitutions: I had no chickpeas so I used kidney beans. I had no chickpea flour so I used cornmeal. I had no parsley so I used coriander/cilantro.  HAHA so yeah not really falafel then Sal??  Ah well, they were still tasty enough to eat 2 nights in a row.  Here they are with bulgar cooked in veggie stock, salad, a pitta and hummus.

And again with pitta, salad, hummus and brown rice! 

Saturday night was bonfire night.  Mum, Dad and myself stayed home and had a barbecue and fireworks.  Starting as we meant to go on with some sparkly pink wine....

I had Redwoods hot dogs (my fave vegan hotdogs) on buns with ketchup, mayo, homemade garlic bread and potatoes roasted with garlic and rosemary. YUM.

Ugh! Horrid profile shot my mum took! hahaha.

And one of the parents enjoying their hotdogs too. Not vegan, but I thought the pic was cute! hehe

I bought some of those Alpro vanilla puddings and they taste just like the custard to me, so I've been microwaving them for a minute and pouring them over a banana for pudding this week. Really good and easy peasy. Sorry for the blurry pic, it gets dark at like 4 o'clock at the moment so it's not easy to get a great picture! Not that you expect that from me anyway, right? ;-)

Last night I made Susan V's Ridiculously Easy Curried Chickpeas and Quinoa.  They really are ridiculously easy and tasty as well - and I'm not really a lover of quinoa!!  I was going to serve them in taco shells, but when I tasted it, it didn't seem to be something that would go right in a taco, so I just had a pita with them instead.  Also, I split the recipe into 3 not 4 servings, because I was freakin Hank Marvin after my Zumba class.

Lastly, brekkie this morning. Crumpets. YUM!  After I took this pic I poured over a generous blob of golden syrup on each one. Best way to eat crumpers, ever!

Bonus kitty pics!!  This is what most of my photos of Jazzy look like... her running away!  She is super camera shy (either that or the flash scares her!)

Today I got one of her about to eat.  HAHA I turned the camera on and called her name and BAM! photo taken before she had a chance to realise.

"I got laser eyes - and I know what you're thinking!"

Have a spankingly awesome weekend everyone.

Laterz

xXx

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.