Heartburntastic!

Happy humpday people!

So earlier this month I went on a trip to Amsterdam with some friends. Really the main point of the trip was to see Maroon 5, which we did on the last night, but we made it into a weekend.

Unfortunately I don't have much good stuff for you because we mainly ate at classy establishments like this....

My travelling companions weren't really into actual food apparently! haha.  We did get falafels from Maoz one day for lunch but I forgot to take a pic - doh! Also I forgot to take a pic of dinner on the first night, but it was a risotto, nice but fairly unspectacular.

This was breakfast on our second day there. No vegan food at all in the little cafe we found, but we were all a bit hungover so I let them get their full English and I asked for mushrooms on toast, no butter (as I'm a baked bean hater). He looked very confused but in the end I got a mushroom toasty!  Weird, but surprisingly not that bad with some ketchup.  They put the mushrooms in raw so they were partially cooked, which I have to say I kind of liked.

But after a weekend of crappy food I happycow'd somewhere to get a decent breakfast on the last day and this ended up being my favourite thing that I ate during the whole trip. The place was a short walk from our hotel and was called Le Pain Quotidien (it's a chain, but not one I've ever heard of) and they serve local, organic food. It's not a veggie place but all the vegetarian and vegan options are clearly marked on the menu with a little symbol.

The breakfast menu had a few items, but nothing that stood out, so I was glad when they said I could order off both sides of the menu.  I got the black bean hummus tartine, which is basically an open faced sandwich. It had really really good hummus on, plus some harrissa and herby dressing and beans and chickpeas. Plus a lovely crunchy salad. Not the type of thing I'd normally have for breakfast but I just cooked some black beans up so I'm remedying that tomorrow - it was so good!  Plus they had soymilk, yay! So I got a soya latte to go with and I thought their coffee was also really really good.

On our last night, we went to see Maroon 5 at the Ziggodome and they were awesome as always. But the food there sucked! Apparently the omni food was also shite, so not just the lack of veggie options.  There was basically one food place and the veggie options were tortilla chips & salsa and a fruit cup. I had both because it was dinner.  The fruit was pretty good and tortilla chips is tortilla chips but that salsa - DAYUM, it was rank! BLAAARRGH.  Had a really funky taste that stayed with me all through the concert and all the way home. Grim.

OK home and a couple of recent pics off my camera.  This first one was a recipe from Anjum Anand's book, Anjum's Indian Vegetarian Feast. I've mentioned before that Anjum is the shizzle! So yeah, I got the book for Christmas and as I'm a massive lover of Indian food, I couldn't wait to try something out.  So I made the Creamy Pistachio Curry, as we had all the ingredients, with just a couple of subs - I used sweet potato instead of butternut squash, which the recipe says is ok to do and I left out the cloves as we only had ground ones and also my mum's not a fan.  It was really good, but I would've liked it a bit spicier. In this recipe you put the chillis in whole and then discard them, I'd probably just chop one up and put that in next time.  It is mean to be mild though and I loved the addition of chopped and blended pistachios. 

If you're wondering whether this book is worth buying as a vegan, I'd say YES most definitely. There's loads of recipes in and nowadays it's so easy to replace yoghurt and cream, which are the main non-vegan offenders.  There's a few things with egg and I'm sure some of them could be veganised.

This was a meal last week when I didn't have much time and it was basically leftover sauce from the roasty soba bowl that I LOVE from Isa Does It mixed into soba noodles and some veg.  Then I just drained a tin of Granose mock duck and baked it at 200C for about 15 mins, then tossed it hoisin sauce to serve on top. Really good and easy.

And did I mention that I love that sauce from the soba bowl? Yeah I know I know, I'm addicted. It's a problem. But my new favourite thing is roasted veg with awesome sauce on, which is basically that sauce but with a shittonne of Franks hot sauce and nooch mixed in.  I had this for dinner the last 2 nights because it was SO good.  I also put some Taifun basil tofu in with the veg when I roasted them for a bit of protein.

That last pic is from my new camera phone - the others all from my old one!  I think it's WAYYY better - whaddya you guys say? 

OK I should probably go do something productive now, so have a good rest of the week everyone. 

And I promise that favourites post is coming, but it's gonna be a 'current favourites' rather than 2013 favourites, because it's now almost February. MADNESS!

Laterz

xXx

Hoppy Noo Yar!

Well helloooo and HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

I hope everyone had a great Christmas / Holiday season if you were celebrating.  Midnight on New Year's Day marked my 6th Veganniversary, 6 years of radness!  If you also celebrated a veganniversary on 1st January - happy radiversary to you!!

Just a few pics today.  I'm working on a big post of some of my favourite things from 2013.  I'm thinking of including beauty / random stuff in there too - not just food... what do you guys think, do you wanna see that?  (As an aside, ff you are interested in beauty related veganness, I am working on revamping and relaunching my neglected makeup blog and making it fully vegan.  I will post a link here when it's done!)

Anyway onto the food.  Saturday i went down to Brighton to hang out with my buddies Jojo and Holley and we went to Moshimo for dinner. Mainly because we were hungry and it was right opposite the pub we were in, drinking gin in a tin! I can't go to Moshimo and not have their fried veggie gyoza dumplings, because my stomach would be super mad at me for depriving it of them, they are delicious.

I usually have the duck terriyaki (it's made with redwoods duck style pieces) but I decided to branch out and have the Veggie Yaki Udon.  You get the choice to have it with vegan duck or chicken pieces, I chose duck (Holley had chicken). It was pretty good, if a little underwhelming. Although when I did as Holley suggested and poured the dipping sauce from the gyoza over it, it made it quite a lot better! Weird. 

I know I know, you're sick of me raving about Isa Does It by now, right? Tough tittay, because I made (and loved) something else from it - the meaty beany chilli. I halved the recipe and still got 4 meals out of this!  First, just the chilli with some basmati rice.

Then  taco night x 2, both looked pretty much like this...

The last of it I had with some home made potato wedges on Friday night and a sprinkle of vegan cheese.  I didn't take a pic though.

Lastly, this is not super exciting looking but .... THE UK HAS SOY MINCE AGAIN!! YAYYY!   It's been AWOL from the shops for months and although I try not to eat fake meat products too too often, it's nice for a quick tea now and again. This is just cooked with some jarred pasta sauce and served on rigatoni, with some noochy garlic toast. Yum.

So what is gonna be new for you in 2014?  For me, it's already a year of change, I have quite my job,  after 13 years in basically the same role (skuurry). I'm working on starting a business and am busy busy busy wondering how I'm going to afford my salsa class next week! hahaha.  Wish me luck for some temp work or something.

I am not one for new year's resolutions as I never stick to them but I have promised myself I'll make some changes to make my lifestyle healthier and to spend more time and effort on my blog(s), so hopefully you'll see this tired old Alien facade get a bit of a facelift fairly soon.

Laterz

xXx

My current obsession is....

So like every other PPKer/vegan on the planet, I got my excited hands on the latest offering from Isa Chandra Moskowitz last month, Isa Does It and I'm a bit in love with it!  So here are some meals that I have made from (and inspired by) this book, over the last couple of weeks:

First up the tempeh balls (hehe) and sketti.  Now I didn't use the sauce recipe in the book, I just made my own by wingin it.  I made these for me & by bestie at the weekend before a night on the sauce and we both liked it a lot.  Although I'll probably bake them next time as they were a bit soft. But still delicious. I  love me some tempeh.

Next up, Coconut Chaana Saag.  I picked this to make for dinner for myself and my mum and dad and it was great. But it was so similar to the type of curry I normally make when I'm wingin it that I wish I'd picked another recipe. But still, we all loved it.  I used spinach instead of kale, but aside from that, no other subs.

Then the Roasty Soba Noodle Bowl with Miso Tahini (this recipe is on Isa's blog if you don't have the book yet). OH MY GOD - GOOD! That sauce I could chug (to coin a Guy Fieri-ism*) and why have I never thought to roast cauliflower before because roasting cauliflower turns it from crunchy, cruciferous, crudité into a magical tray full of win!!  (*I know he's a bit annoying but I can't help it, I love Guy on DD&D and his Arnie impression ... and alliteration apparently!)   Anyway I halved the recipe but still got loads of sauce, enough to make 2 bowls and use the leftovers for salad dressing, which was AWESOME!

And here's some that were inspired by this book because I was too lazy to follow the recipes exactly.

This book is cashew cream heavy. I mean seriously, there are a tonne of recipes that call for soaked cashews and I LOVE that about it.  So following that lead, I roasted some orange pepper, garlic, shallots and tomatoes while my cashews were boiling for 15 minutes (I was on the fly, I didn't have time for 2 hours of soaking!)  Then I whizzed them all up together with a bit of veggie stock and some tomato puree to make this ace pasta sauce.

 

This was inspired by the butternut alfredo sauce, I just did the first bit - blending cashews, roasted butternut squash and stock - to make my sauce. I need to try again but making the recipe as written because I liked this a lot.



Scrambled Chickpeas. I didn't follow the recipe, I did my usual seasonings of a bit of turmeric, black salt and a crap tonne of nooch instead. This was a genius idea! 

And lastly.... this is the recent recipe from Isa's blog for gingery coconut stew with brussels & rutabaga* (which I am a bit obsessed with at the moment!) and my only regret with this is that I halved it, because it was AWESOME.  *Swede if you're on this side of the pond!

That's it for now.

It's nearly Christmas peeps! EXCITING!!! Almost time to start my Christmas baking.  What are you making this year (so I can totally steal your ideas! j/k)

Laterz
xXx

Of all the silly nonsense, this is the stupidest tea party I've ever been to in all my life!

Actually it was a lovely tea party, but I just wanted an excuse to quote Alice in Wonderland, because it was my favourite film as a kid.

Now I must start by apologising because the pics I'm about to post are fucking dire - even by my standards - and don't really do the food justice but I wanted to post about it anyway.

Last weekend, my cousin and I met up in London and she had booked us into the restaurant of La Suite West in Bayswater, London for Vegan Afternoon Tea.

From what I could gather from chatting to the (lovely and super passionate) Maitre D, the restaurant changed to an all vegan and high raw place earlier this year.  Also, there's no alcohol served at any time there, much to the chagrin of my cousin, but as there were pubs right around the corner, we managed to make do without for an hour or so for afternoon tea.

So here's the menu:

 

I chose earl grey for my tea and as it was a vegan place I didn't have to worry about the lack of soymilk!  (I did warn you the photos were crap - the lighting was terrible in there and I didn't want to use flash....)

Sandwiches... My favourite was the Portobello mushroom & pesto, but all of them were nice. The only one I didn't love was the butternut squash one, my cousin felt the same about it - nice but the flavours didn't quite work. Also the aubergine could've done with a bit longer cooking, but still tasty.

 

Then the star of the show for me - warm fresh scones!  Delicious and they came with a side of coconut sauce (they say whipped coconut cream but it had a more pudding-y texture, it'd obviously had cornstarch or something similar added to set it) and fresh strawberries. The texture of the sauce was a bit off but the taste of it was lovely and went really well with the fresh strawbs.

 

 

The last one was a trio of chocolate thingies. I am not sure if they were all raw, I don't think the sesame halva one was, but they were all really good.  The raw coconut/chocolate cake - I'm still not convinced that was raw because it tasted like sponge and it was delightful. (that's the one at the back with the strawberry 'hat' on!) I took this pic with flash because it was so dark by then that without it, you couldn't see anything at all - yeah I know it doesn't help much! 

So my take on this place is that it's not perfect but it's pretty damn good and their evening meal selection looks really interesting, so I'd be into trying it out for a full meal sometimes too.

Have a good weekend all.

Laterz
xXx

DUDE. SWEET!

Hurro everyone.

Mondays suck, so here's some pictures of a couple of sweet things I've made recently.

Starting with the fluffy pancake pillows from Isa Does It. I've been dying to try these for ages and I was not disappointed.  Although I did accidently leave out the half cup of water you're meant to add in, so I was wondering why I only got 5 instead of 6.  But actually the thicker texture meant they were even bigger! WIN.  (I've since made them properly and they are just as rad, just a little thinner and larger because the batter spreads out a bit more.)

Instead of maple syrup, I boiled a punnet of blueberries with half a cup of rice syrup for about 10 minutes for a lovely fruity syrup.  The rice syrup meant that it wasn't overly sweet.

And last week was Daddy Alien's birthday so I asked if he would like a cake or cupcakes and he said cupcakes. Then went on to talk about the awesome black forest gateaux that my mum used to make for his birthday years ago. Apparently there were fisticuffs over the last piece of cake!! haha

So taking that as inspiration I made the basic chocolate cupcakes from VCTOTW and modified them a wee bit. I took a pack of cherry pie filling and sieved out the cherries, then reserved 12 for the tops and the rest went into the cake batter.  The topping was just plain vanilla butter cream with the reserved cherries to decorate and the cherry syrup drizzled over, with some choccy sprinkles to finish. 

These went down really well with everyone, but then, who doesn't love a cupcake?!

Hope that makes your Monday a little sweeter. Have a good week everyone. 

Oh and shameless plug - but if you're on Instagram, come follow me for more food pics, make-up and pics of Me Jazzy* (I don't think the button on the right works properly but this blog is way overdue an overhaul anyway!!).  I'm @sal_on_toast if you're into Instagram.

*Jazzy is my cat, you dirty birdie!!

Lotsolove.

Laters
xXx

Thread title courtesy of this awesome piece of ridiculousness.

I'm gonna pop some tags, only got 20 dollars in ma pocket....

Helllloooooo everyone. Has it really been over a month since MoFo ended?  October was a really busy month, ending with a fantastic holiday. I spent a glorious week in Ölüdeniz in Turkey and totally fell in love with the place, the weather and the people .... but not so much the food. 

The food was ok, don't get me wrong, but it's a fairly meat-centric (kebab) food scene out there. So I ate a lot of vegetable shish!  But I did have some lovely food too.  However, I am a massive numpty and didn't realise until I was half way to the airport, that I had left my phone at home. So no food pics.  To make up for this, I'm going to recreate some of the better things I ate when I was there and veganise some Turkish food and do a post or 2, at some point in the future.

Anyway, this past weekend I got it into my head that I needed to make fresh pasta, as it's something I'd never done before.  I was hoping to find a second hand cheapo pasta machine in a charity shop (mainly so I could use this song as inspiration for the post title - I'm using it anyway because I can't think of anything funny and pasta related!). I had no luck though and I'm impatient, so I went into TK Maxx and bought a Jamie Oliver one for £25, which I thought was pretty good.

Everybody - meet Jamie.... Jamie - meet everybody.  Charmed and all that. 

Moving on.

I haven't quite got this pasta recipe right yet and my filling was pretty predictable (tofu ricotta & spinach), so once I've perfected it I'll post a follow up and a recipe. I'm pretty sure I can come up with a more inspired filling! haha.

Also, I think that rolling the dough out all the way to the lowest setting made it too thin.  The pasta was soooo delicate and I think it needed to be a wee bit thicker, so next time I will stop on 3 or 2.

Doesn't look that great in this pic does it. Looks kinda like a bowl of brains. BRAAAIIINNZZZZ!

Saucy!

I added some pan-fried pieces of Cauldron's new Italian Tofu as well for a bit of extra tofuiness.  Yes that is a word.  (I can't find this on Cauldron's website, which is weird, otherwise I'd link to it! I swear I didn't make it up!)

I also made tagliatelle, which is super easy because this machine has a cutter for this.  Unfortunately I have no pic of the dinner I made with it because I overcooked it and it was proper mooshy!  It really only does need about a minute in the water, not 3! But here's a pic of the uncooked pasta!

"I wear your granddad's clothes, I look incredible, I'm in this big ass coat, from the thrift shop down the road!"

ehhheheh, good luck gettin' that out your head!

Hope you're all having an excellent week & happy humpday.

Laterz
xXx

Vegan MoFo Day 30 - Tom & Dick

So I had a wicked weekend away with my gals, having some Britneys, putting on crazy makeup and dancing to 80s music.  The fact that I'm now sick in bed with lurgy means I don't have much for my last MoFo post.  So here's a few pics of some of the food we took with us when we went away.

I was gonna cook up some Linda McCartney sausage rolls but I couldn't find any in the 2 supermarkets I went to. So I grabbed some ready made puff pastry and made a tempeh filling and made my own.  Not great enough to give you a recipe but filled a gap.

Straight outta the oven

I did the cooking Thursday before we went away and I gotta say it was an evening of fails. I made some muffins that I overmixed - badly. They came out like hockey pucks so had to be binned.

Also, I had planned to make some tabouleh but it wasn't until after I'd poured the water over the bulghur wheat that I realised I didn't have the other ingredients to go in it! Doh.  Luckily my bff made a bean salad and so we mixed the 2 together and it was great.

I also made us the rocky road cookies from vegan cookies... and a veggie curry for Saturday night - both of which I forgot to take pics of. I suck, I am sorry.

Anyway, I've had a great time posting (almost) every day during MoFo. Thanks to everyone who read and commented and it was great reading so many new blogs as well.  MoFo always makes me super inspired to blog more but it doesn't always work out that way.

I am gonna try though but I also want to get my makeup blog back up and running and rededicated to just vegan makeup/beauty products.  So if you're into that, keep an eye out here for a link when it's ready to go again.

I'd also like to thank this website for providing me with lots of giraffes and helping me come up with post titles for MoFo.

Kat Slaters
xXx

Cockney Translations of the day
Tom & Dick = Sick
Giraffes = Laughs
Britneys = Britney Spears = Beers