Alien on Toast

Happy New Year!

2012-01-09T03:33:00.000-08:00

Did everyone have a good Christmas??

I know I know, I'm over a week late, but here is the pictures of my christmas food and a few things since then.

I make a yule log every year and here was this years (VCTOTW basic chocolate recipe and store bought frosting - I was lazy!!) It fell apart a bit when I rolled it, so I just covered it with a tonne more icing.

Christmas day - first drinky!

My Christmas dinner. I took the pic before I slathered it with gravy. This was a Redwoods celebration roast (fake turkey and pigs in blankets). It was pretty gross and I wouldn't buy it again. To be honest though, I'd have been happy with just the veg, sage & onion paxo stuffing and gravy, which is what I will probably have next year, if I'm too lazy to make something seitan based. My Mum makes the best roast potatoes ever. Ever.

Christmas cake! I never write down the recipe or follow one for that matter, I just wing it and if I'm lucky it turns out good. This year was a good-un. The decorations on top were not vegan (egg-white), so I picked them off my bit. I just decorated it with a layer of marzipan then a layer of ready-made fondant icing, as cake decorating is not really my best talent, as you can see!

Dinner on boxing day was a puff pastry concoction I made. It was mushrooms and onions sauteed and then I made a white sauce and added some cooked potatoes to it, then just wrapped it in puff pastry and baked. It was pretty good for something I didn't put much thought into.

The next day I fancied soup, so I used some of the leftover veggies from boxing day...

I added the veg to veggie stock, a bit of tomato puree, some sauteed onion and garlic, lentils, a chopped up Wheaty Hemp Spacebar and some smoked paprika. It was yummy and kept me in lunches up until I went back to work.

OK jumping forward a bit, this was dinner for my 3 besties, who came over on Saturday night. I made the coconut lemon bundt cake from Veganomicon. I ordered a bundt tin from amazon, but it didn't arrive in time, so I made it in a regular tin and it burnt a wee bit. Sadface! However, it was still really really good! I can't wait to try it again in the right tin, if the sucka ever arrives. I used lite coconut milk in this.

It was a Veganomicon kinda night, because I decided I do not cook from that book enough, and it's awesome. So I made the saffron garlic rice (although I only used 2 cloves of garlic, as my friends are not as into it as me).

And the Chickpeas Romesco. I LOVED this. I think the only change I would make next time is to maybe use ground almonds, as my food processor didn't get them as fine as I think they need to be. Aside from that it was delicious.

The side dishes were just some blanched green beans that I then sauteed with shallots and some baked tofu. I made the marinade up as I went along, so I can't remember exactly what was in it, but from memory I think I added some wine, sherry vinegar, agave, paprika and vegan worcester sauce. I burnt it a bit (theme of the night??) but it was still not bad and all got eaten!

And this was yesterday's lunch. A quesadilla I made with cheezly white cheddar and jarred salsa. Easy and quick (and yummy!). My dad said I shouldn't post it as it was burnt (recurring theme...) but I think it was just well done! :-)

Hope you all had a fab break and if like me you celebrated an anniversary of being vegan on 1st January - Happy Veganniversary!! Mine was 4 years! :0)

Laterz
xXx

Crap party food and awesome cheesiness

2011-12-19T03:46:00.000-08:00

Morning all! Can you believe it's less than a week until Christmas already?? Scary!! Well I thought I'd show you some of the christmassy themed stuff I've eaten lately. Starting with the food from my work Christmas do last Tuesday.

Unfortunately for yours truly, the vegan food pretty much sucked. I was very grateful still to actually have a vegan menu offered to me, but wish it was better executed!!

The appetiser was the best bit... bread & hummus.

The starter was a (small) piece of melon. At least it wasn't gross and hard!

The main was a potato thing (that really is the best I can describe it, as I'd had a few glasses of wine by this point) that was pretty good, but cold. The sauce was cold, the veg were cold. The peppers and aubergine were not properly cooked or seasoned at all. I struggled to get my knife through the pepper!

Dessert was really REALLY imaginative - fruit salad!! It was ok, but boring.

Aside from the food, it was an awesome night though!!

Onto some ~~good~~ GREAT eats. My friend Jojo had a vegan wine & cheese party at her house, this past saturday and these were my offering - cheese & potato pasties. I have given a vague recipe for this at the bottom of the post if anyone's interested. They were good!

There was leftover pastry so I decided to make some mini pastries - these were filled with smooth speculoos paste and a few chocolate chips. YUM!

Onto the rest of the food. Obligatory cheese & pineapple on a stick!

My friend Kip's awesome cheeseball, which is amazing and rolled in cranberries and nuts. We always ask her to make this for parties because it is SO. FREAKING. GOOD!! One day I will remember to ask her for the recipe for it!

In this pic is Kip's blue cheese dip, cheezly blue and cheddar with cranberries that I bought (it's their Christmas selection) and crock cheese from the uncheese cookbook - not sure who made the crock cheese, I think it was Jojo? I have that book and have never made anything from it, but the crock cheese was really good so I'm definitely going to have to make some soon!

Kip's awesome artichoke dip. This stuff was GOOD! Also in this pic is my balsamic onion chutney. It was a recipe I found on the interwebz and was pretty good, but a bit too sweet for me. My dad seems to like it though!

The spread!

The wine!!

After the party me and our friend Hana both stayed at Jojo's, so the next morning we all went for breakfast. Although actually it was lunch really by the time we motored ourselves out the door. We decided to go to Wai Kika Moo Kau, as Iydea stop serving breakfast at 11.20 - stupid time or what!! Anyway, I got the brighton deli wrap, which was good, but just a bit too much salad for my liking. The sausages were good (they tasted like Linda McCartney's to me!).

Chips in the wrap - yes I am a genius!

Recipe for the vegan cheese pasties

Filling:

2 large potatoes (I used 2 bakers)

1 large onion

1 pack of cheezly (I used half a pack of white cheddar and half a pack of red cheddar) or whatever vegan cheese you like. About 200g!

2 tbsp olive oil

1/2 tsp dried thyme

1 tsp paprika

Salt & pepper to taste

Chop the potatoes into small dice and par-boil for 10 minutes (until JUST cooked but not too soft). In the meatime, saute the onion in the oil and a pinch of salt for 5-10 mins, until cooked and starting to brown. Add thyme and paprika and season lightly.

Mix together the potatoes, onion mixture and grated cheese then test for seasoning (I didn't need to add much salt as the cheese is pretty salty). Chill the mixture (I left it overnight).

To assemble, I rolled out ready bought frozen puff pastry (I used the big pack of Jus-Rol) and cut around a cereal bowl for each one. Then wet the edges of the circle and put a generous tablespoon of filling in the centre. Folder over, press to seal and then use a fork to crimp the edges shut. Place on a baking tray lined with parchment and spray lightly with olive oil. Bake 20-25 minutes at 180C/350F or until lightly browned.

Cool on a cooling rack and try not to burn your tongue when you eat one too quickly because you are too hungry to wait (like I did)!

This filling makes a lot! I used about 3/4 of the pack of Jus-Rol and got about 16 pasties, but it depends on your bowl size! There was quite a bit of filling left so I have frozen it for future pasty making over christmas!!

The rest of the pastry I used for the sweet pastries, which I cut out with a 1 cup metal measuring cup and filled with a tsp of speculoos paste and about 3 or 4 chocolate chips. These took about 15 minutes to bake.

That's it for now - hope you all have a fantasmical Christmas, if you celebrate it and I will see you after chrimbo for pics of Christmas dinner! YAY.

Sing it now.... "When the snowman brings the snow.... well he just might like to knooooowwww he put a great big smile on SOMEBODY'S FACE." Yeah that'd be my face!!

Laterz

xXx

FAIL cake!

2011-11-22T03:49:00.000-08:00

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!

2011-11-11T04:08:00.000-08:00

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!!

2011-11-04T07:14:00.000-07:00

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....

2011-11-01T03:08:00.000-07:00

...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...

2011-10-27T04:58:00.000-07:00

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

2011-08-22T12:24:00.000-07:00

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!

2011-05-16T06:08:00.001-07:00

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....

2011-03-14T05:19:00.000-07:00

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.....

2011-03-04T02:18:00.001-08:00

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

Vegan MoFo: The last one of MoFo!

2010-11-30T11:17:00.000-08:00

I hadn't planned on blogging today but then I realised it was the last day of MoFo and thought I gotta!

Yesterday's dinner - I got my hands on some Taifun tofu (10 million times better than the skanky new cauldron crap) and decided to make a scramble. I haven't had tofu scramble in AGES and this one was pretty amazing. It had mushrooms, tomatoes, pak choi, sweetcorn and fresh basil in, along with cumin, paprika, coriander and turmeric for the spices and nooch of course. I had it with some roasty potatoes that I added some thyme to before I roasted them.

Today's dinner and I used more of the tofu in my thai green curry. I used shop bought paste, light coconut milk, veggie stock, sugar snaps, potatoes and baby corns. I added some frozen peas right at the end and served it over basmati rice.

I also made some quick spelt/cornbread muffins. I know they're really meant to go with chilli but I love them with curry too.

I've found myself a bit uninspired this MoFo, as you could probably tell by my posts, but it has been good to have a kick up the bum to post a bit more. So I'll try and go back to once a week and not slip back to once a month. But hey, I'm not promising anything!

Tomorrow starts Christmas month! WOoT!

Laterz
xXx

Vegan MoFo: Wagamamas

2010-11-28T11:38:00.000-08:00

This weekend I stayed at my parents' house. After a cold trip out looking at a potential new car for my dad, we went for lunch at Wagamama's. I've been really excited about the fact that one has opened up in my town and couldn't wait to go.

Normally I have the Saien Soba, which is noodles in a vegetable soup with tofu and just swap the egg noodles for rice noodles or udon. But I decided to try something new this time, so I got the Cha Han, minus the egg.

Fried rice, tofu and sweetcorn, with a side of miso soup. I really liked that miso soup.

Up close!

You also get a side of pickles - which are really unusual and tasty.

The three of us shared a side of edamame beans, with chilli & garlic salt - my favourite side!

Overall, I prefer the Saien Soba, but as I'm going back on Weds for dinner and will be having it then, I'm glad I picked something different to try and it was really good!

I made it to 20 MoFo posts! Woot!

Laterz
xXx

Vegan MoFo: Lazy Pasta

2010-11-26T09:31:00.000-08:00

I was being mega lazy with dinner tonight, in fact I figured it would be moderately crap so wasn't planning to blog it but you know what....? It was a surprise hit!

I tossed some cooked brown rice pasta with some raw, sliced mushrooms, a tsp of sun dried tomato paste, a tbsp of margarine and a tbsp of nooch. Then I added black pepper and a little bit of lemon zest. So easy and really delicious!

I guess sometimes, lazy is good!

Laterz
xXx

Vegan MoFo: My stupid stomach!

2010-11-25T10:12:00.000-08:00

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

Vegan MoFo: Roasted Veggie Pasta

2010-11-24T02:38:00.000-08:00

Last night I went to see Jimmy Eat World at Brixton - they were freaking AWESOME but that's beside the point. I had to have a quick tea as we had to get a train at 6.30.

So earlier in the day I roasted up some cherry tomatoes, half a courgette, a couple of shallots, a clove of garlic and a yellow pepper. Then I processed it with a tbsp of tomato puree until it was still a bit chunky and mixed it with some of the pasta water and salt & pepper before mixing in the pasta. I used Doves Farm's gluten free brown rice pasta which is really delicious. MUCH nicer than any other gluten free pasta I've tried.

Laterz
xXx

Vegan MoFo: Soup.... again!

2010-11-23T07:09:00.000-08:00

I have been making lots of soup lately. Today I made some for lunch out of a sweet potato, an onion, a red pepper, a clove of garlic, some veggie stock and a couple of teaspoons of garam masala.

It wasn't the greatest soup I've ever eaten but it was tasty and I had one of my soda bread rolls with it! :-)

I love soup because it's easy and quick to make and it is a great way of using up whatever veggies are leftover in your fridge/vegetable drawer! What's your favourite soup?

Laterz
xXx

Vegan MoFo: Soda Bread Rolls

2010-11-22T09:49:00.000-08:00

I was going to blog yesterday with the food I ate at my friend Kip's house. But being crap as usual, I forgot my camera and ended up taking some on my camera phone. The pics were so terrible I decided not to blog them.

So instead, head over to Kip's site and see some proper pics!! Amongst other things, she made:

Tapioca balls in coconut milk. Balls! pffthahahaa!
Sweet sticky black & white rice
Lemongrass stuffed tofu

She also made an awesome coconut curry and a couple of salads. All of it was ace.

My dinner today was fairly uneventful, but I did make some spelt soda bread rolls, so here's a pic of one with jam on it! Recipe is underneath the pic.

Ingredients:
1.5 cups wholegrain spelt flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup unsweetened soymilk
1/2 tsp vinegar
2 tbsp water

Method:
Mix the dry ingredients together. Mix the wet together and pour into the dry then mix into a sticky dough.

Split into 4 and blob them onto a baking tray you've sprayed lightly with cooking spray then bake at 180C/350F for 20 minutes.

(I only wanted to make a small amount but for a loaf, I usually double the recipe and bake it for at least 30 mins or until it sounds hollow when you rap the bottom.)

Laterz
xXx

Vegan MoFo: A crappy pic of a tasty butternut casserole

2010-11-20T06:47:00.000-08:00

I have to apologise for this crap picture of what was a very tasty meal! It's crap because it is just a pic of the leftovers, as I forgot to take one last night.

It was a butternut squash casserole, the recipe for which I got (and changed a little bit) from Cook Vegetarian Magazine, the halloween one so it's a month or two old.

Basically you roast up a whole butternut squash, cut into chunks with shallots and a few garlic cloves (they didn't roast their garlic but I felt like it!), then you add some wine and flour and transfer to a casserole dish, add beans* veg stock, sun dried tomato paste, seasoning and some sage leaves and cook it for 30 minutes.

(*I used cannelinni beans instead of the butterbeans used in the original recipe, as my friend doesn't like butter beans.)

After the 30 mins is up, you're meant to add dumplings, but I left them out as I didn't want to tempt my stomach acid to rise up due to the stodge! So I just cooked it 45 minutes instead.

It was really tasty and my friends really liked it. I served it with couscous cooked in veggie stock and a big salad with a lemon vinaigrette. And a glass of wine!

Laterz
xXx

Vegan MoFo: Muffins!

2010-11-19T09:17:00.001-08:00

These muffins are tonight's pudding for me and my friends. They are super easy and I'm posting the recipe below. I added a chocolately drizzle to be a bit fancy pants, but feel free to leave that off!

Banana, Peanut Butter, Choc Chip Muffins:
Ingredients:
1 ripe banana
6 tbsp soymilk
2 tbsp rapeseed or sunflower oil
2 heaped tbsp chunky peanut butter
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp vinegar
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup plain flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
dash allspice (optional)
1/2 cup chocolate chips

Method:
Preheat oven to 180C/350F and line a muffin tin with 6 or 7 paper cases (I got 7 out of this mixture).

Mash the banana in a bowl and add the rest of the wet ingredients and the sugar and mix well. Place a seive over the bowl and put the choc chips in it. Then put the dry ingredients in and seive them through into the bowl over the chips. Toss in the chips and fold it all together until just mixed.

Divide between 6 or 7 muffin cups, fill them about 1/2 - 3/4 full and then bake for 22 mins or until a skewer comes out clean. Remove from oven and leave to cool a few mins before transferring to a wire rack to finish cooling.

For the glaze, I had about half a pack of chocolate chips left (about 1/2 cup) so I microwaved them for about a minute on 50% power and then added soymilk slowly, mixing well, till it was dropping consistency. Then drizzled it over the muffins. This made waaaayy too much for my 7 muffins, so I just poured the leftovers into a muffin tin and put it in the fridge to scoff later.

Tonight's dinner will feature tomorrow, hopefully it's a hit!!

Laterz
xXx

Vegan MoFo: Stuffed Peppers

2010-11-18T11:10:00.000-08:00

I really REAAAALLY enjoyed my dinner today. Stereotypical veggie dish right? - Stuffed peppers. But I shook it up a little.

I soaked half a cup of bulgar wheat in hot veggie stock, covered, for half an hour. Then I cut a pepper in half, sprayed it with cooking spray and cooked it cut side down for about 10 mins while I did the filling.

I sauteed a handful of chestnut mushrooms, a couple of small shallots, half a courgette and a fat glove of garlic. Then added a tsp of paprika, 1/2 tsp of thyme, 1/2 tsp rosemary and half a tsp of rasel hanout spice mixture. I added a bit of water to cook out the spices and then added the bulgar. Flipped and filled the peppers and baked another 20 mins.

There was a tonne of stuffing left, so I'll be having that for lunch tomorrow!

I'm excited about tomorrow's dinner and hope it turns out well. It's a recipe I got out of Cook Vegetarian magazine! I'll report back tomorrow!

Laterz
xXx

Vegan MoFo: Punk Rock Lentil Gravy!

2010-11-16T12:54:00.000-08:00

I decided tonight to make the punk rock chickpea gravy for dinner, from VWAV. Only I forgot I didn't actually buy that can of chickpeas when I was in the supermarket, as I thought I'd cook up some dried ones instead. But as I forgot that too, I cooked some lentils and put those in instead.
Good choice, it was awesome. With sweet potato fries, roasted brussels and steamed sugar snaps.

Laterz
xXx

Vegan MoFo: Birthday Cupcakes

2010-11-13T04:02:00.001-08:00

So I promised baking pics and here they are!

Today is Daddy Alien's 60th birthday! And we are having a big fancy dress party tonight to celebrate and I spent all of this morning decorating the 48 cupcakes I baked yesterday! (There are 3 boxes in total but I only took pics of two as it still shows all the flavours). All recipes from or tweaked versions of recipes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World.

Rosewater & Pistachio & 'Elvis'

Basic chocolate filled with cherry pie filling, vanilla buttercream, a glace cherry and chocolate sprinkles on top and basic chocolate with mint buttercream and a mint fondant chocolate.

Up close & personal shots:

Mint choc

Chocolate cherry (black forest)

Pistachio rosewater

Elvis (banana, with pb frosting)

Gotta go - I got a hotel to decorate!

Laterz
xXx

Vegan MoFo: African Sweet Potato Stew

2010-11-12T15:09:00.000-08:00

Last night for dinner I made this stew of awesomeness. I've made (and I think blogged) this before and it's so good, I know I'll be making it again. Sweet potatoes, chick peas, tomatoes, peanut butter... It's rad. I served it with brown rice.

I have been baking baking baking, look out for those pics on Sunday!

Laterz
xXx

Vegan MoFo: Moroccan Inspired goodies

2010-11-10T10:04:00.000-08:00

I made more effort tonight!! :-)

I took some tempeh (that I boiled for 10 minutes first) and spread it with a mixture of lemon juice, rasul-hanout spice mix, olive oil, paprika, a teeny pinch of allspice, grated ginger and grated garlic. Then I baked it for 20 minutes @ 200C. It was tasty!! I served it with some bulgar wheat just soaked for 30 minutes in veggie stock and an awesome salad.

My salad consited of canellinni beans, rehydrated sun dried tomatoess, rocket, alfalfa sprouts, cucumber and fresh mint & coriander. The dressing was more lemon juice, tahini, extra virgin olive oil, rasul hanout (a teeny bit), paprika, salt & pepper. Delish!

Laterz
xXx

Vegan MoFo: A little better than yesterday.... but not much!

2010-11-09T11:18:00.000-08:00

So today I think I did a little better than today, although it's hardly earth shattering stuff. I made mashed swede & carrots, anya potatoes, sweetcorn and a frys chicken burger! hahaha - I couldn't be bothered to conjure up a healthy bean based burger after I got back from the gym.

Tomorrow I'll think of something less lame. Promise!!

Laterz
xXx

Vegan MoFo: Lack of inspiration strikes!

2010-11-08T13:58:00.000-08:00

This is what happens when you haven't been shopping and can't be arsed to cook! hahaha mushrooms, canned beans, jarred dolmio sauce and spaghetti. Dull as arse but good enough for a crappy wet Monday.

My acid reflux has been playing up lately and it's kind of dulling my appetite and my will to cook! But as this is MoFo, I should probably kick myself up the butt - now that'd be a feat!!

Maybe tomorrow, I'll come up with something less crap!

Laterz
xXx

Vegan MoFo: Sunday Roast

2010-11-07T13:03:00.000-08:00

I like a good roast dinner on a Sunday.

That is all.

Laterz
xXx

Vegan MoFo: Enchiladas Baby!

2010-11-06T07:49:00.000-07:00

I suck at MoFo, I was meant to blog this Thursday!! OK well better late than never.

Enchiladas!! I made these on Thursday for my friend and I, along with a mega fail of a cake that I'm not blogging. Normally I don't make them saucy, just filling and then baking. But I tried them the traditional way this time and they were amazing!

The filling was tofu, yellow & orange peppers, onions, mushrooms and sweetcorn all spiced up with cumin, coriander, paprika, chilli powder and oregano. Then I made a sauce out of passata and the sames spices / herbs as the filling, plus a pinch of sugar. I added about 1/2 a cup of the sauce into the filling before filling 6 flour tortillas and rolling them up. Then I poured most of the sauce over them and scattered a tonne of daiya mozzarella and cheddar on top. They are baked @ 180C for 30 minutes, covered with foil, then off comes the foil and they bake a further 5 minutes.

I made sure to leave some of the enchilads un-sauced, as I like where the tortillas go all crispy. They were awesome.

There was some sauce left so I added water and cooked my rice in there to give it some extra flavour.

Laterz
xXx

Vegan MoFo: Soup & my fancy, but not schmancy, new piece of equipment

2010-11-03T09:27:00.000-07:00

Afternoon all, just a short and sweet one from me today. Well short and savoury actually!

I finally bought myself a food processor, I've wanted one forever and have been holding off because I wanted a fancy schmancy one. In the end I just went for a moderately fancy - no schmancy! It's a kenwood though so it's a good make and should do the job pretty well.

The first thing I did with it, was shred up a tonne of carrots, swede, onion and garlic to make this awesome soup! Soup is one of my favourite things to make any time of the year but especially at this time of year, when it's starting to get really cold.

This one was a pretty simple affair: onions, garlic, carrots, swede, barley, red lentils, yellow split peas, dried herbs and veggie stock. Simple but delicious!

I'm looking forward to thinking up more things to do with my new machine. Also, I haven't named him yet - any suggestions??

That's all for today, see you tomorrow MoFos!

Laterz
xXx

Vegan MoFo: Wedding Foodz Part 2

2010-11-02T11:35:00.000-07:00

If you're wondering where part 1 is - that was last year during MoFo when my other friend got married!

So Saturday was my friend's wedding. Those of you who are friends with me on facebook will have already seen the pics and look out in few weeks for the make up pics over on my beauty blog! But back to the important stuff - the food!

The hotel my friend got married in apparently had a chef who boasts a michelin star. Having said that, the vegan food wasn't especially exciting or inventive - but then from chefs it tends not to be. However it was pretty tasty.

For a starter, I got onion soup (it needed salt!)

The main was really good though, it was a squash with loads of roasted veg and marinated tofu, with potatoes and carrots.

The dessert was predictably a fruit salad. Not very creative but tasty nonetheless!

The next morning in the hotel, everyone had full english brekkies. But although they had soymilk, there wasn't a right lot of choice for me. I had cereal and toast and jam. So when I got home I made myself a vegan full english for brunch. Birdseye potato waffles, fried mushrooms, realeat facon, linda mccartney sausages and spaghetti hoops. Oh and HP sauce! It was pretty freakin rad I must say.

Laterz
xXx

Vegan MoFo: Howdy Y'all

2010-11-01T05:58:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone! Firstly, happy World Vegan Day. WVD also marks the start of MoFo - hurrah!

I'm going to start MoFo by blogging all the food from my recent trip to sunny Dallas. Looking through my photos, I had hardly any of my friend and I, they were mostly food. Haha. So here we go:

The pics of kind of in reverse order, just the way they came off the camera. Here is one of the last meals we ate, at Spiral Diner in Forth Worth. Spiral is an all vegan place and it's awesome! I found Daiya there and ended up coming home with 6 bags of it. I had said to my friend that I wanted to go there for their Sunday brunch and we actually ended up going there for dinner twice as well. This is the Meatballs and Sketti, which was really delicious. With lots of pine nuts, pesto and garlicky herby toast.

My friend had their burger, with a nut patty and lots of guacamole. She said it was good, it definitely looked it.

We were too full for pudding so we took it home for late dessert / brekkie the next morning. My friend got 2 chocolate chip cookies and I got a snickerdoodle and a brownie. Both of which were amazing, but that brownie knocked my socks off.

On our last proper night out (ie, where we could drink without having to worry about being hungover on a plane the next day), we went to the Sundance Square area of Fort Worth, to a restaurant called the Uno Chicago Grill, which had loads of pizzas on the menu, including this vegetarian one. It had a base of salsa and a tonne of veggies and I just had them leave off the cheese. It was spicy and delicious.

One night we decided on a night in, as we were going out early the next day. So we ordered in chinese takeout. I got a tofu dish with lots of veggies, that was really good.

We also got a rice noodle dish, plain rice and fried mushrooms.

The next day, we went to Six Flags, to scare ourselves shitless on the rollercoasters. It's slim pickings for vegans I'm afraid and not much better for vegetarians. I ended up having fries and onions rings. They were good fries but the onion rings were a bit pants!

On the Sunday night, we were going to go to an Italian restaurant that was a short walk from Spiral Diner we'd seen. But it was shut, as was pretty much everything on that street, except for a Mexican restaurant. We'd eaten a fair amount of tex-mex and were a bit sick of it, but not having much choice we went in. There were not a lot of veggie options on the menu so I talked to the waitress and they came up with this cheeseless green enchilada for me. It was lovely but my god it was hot! I had to scrape off most of the green sauce in the end because my mouth was on fire. Then I tried their home made pico de gallo and I thought my head was going to assplode! Jeebus, it was the hottest thing I've ever eaten, and that counts the whole chilli I ate in a thai restaurant once as a dare. My mouth was seriously burning for about half an hour afterwards. But I digress, the enchilada came with rice and refried beans.

Sunday brunch @ Spiral Diner. Heaven! I had the Lumberjack breakfast which was biscuits and gravy (something I've always wanted to try), sausage and scrambled tofu. It was awesome. All of it, I loved it.

My friend had the Viva Las Migas, which was scrambled tofu with avocado, salsa and corn chips. Which she said was really good, it looked lovely.

On our first trip to Spiral, I had the meatball sub, which was deliciously cheezy and amazing. And massive. I picked potato salad as my side, and it was completely different to any potato salad I've ever had. It was more like mashed potato with loads of flavourings like gherkins and mustard. It was awesome, I need to try and recreate it soon!

My friend had the crispy spring wrap, which I guess is a veggie take on the hoisin duck wrap. It was the first time my friend had tried seitan as well. She liked it, but I think it took her a few bites to get used to the seitan. I was the same though the first time I tried it, I think it's a bit of an aquired taste.

Dessert - oh my god dessert!! We both had the hot cookie sundae. A warm gooey choc chip cookie, with vanilla ice cream, soy whipped cream and chocolate sauce. If I could marry a dessert - it would be this one! It was so freaking good I cannot tell you. Their ice cream is the best ice cream I've ever had - vegan or not!!

And even though I was pretty damn full - I knew it would be a crime to leave any in the bowl ....

I also had a chocolate almond milk to drink which was yummy too.

On a shopping trip to Hulen Mall, I got a falafel / salad meal with curly fries on the side. It was pretty good and it was nice to actually get some salad.

I used the leftover pitta and curly fries to make an awesome chip butty - I'm thinking curly fries and pitta may be the ultimate chip butty??

There was only really one night that had a bit too much booze and that was a night out in Fort Worth's Stockyards. Loads of bars / saloons selling things like these: Texas Tea! One of these + a beer the size of my face and hello drunkeness! It was like a long island iced tea but with less coke in, if that's possible!

For food, we shared some fries which also had fried onions and jalapenos. Whoever thought to fry jalapenos is a freakin genius!! We also got these fried corn things you can see in the background but I ate one and was dubious of their veganess so stuck with the fries.

The end of our first full day in Dallas, we found a lovely italian restaurant. I'd had a couple of drinks in TGIs by this point, so I forgot take a pic until I was half way through - hence this horrendous picture! It was a pasta dish, sans the cheese with broccoli and other veggies in and it was pretty damn good for something so simple.

And helping me along to forget to take pics, bellinis! (I have no idea what's going on with my friend's face in the background though, hehe!)

So that's it from Dallas. I hope everyone is enjoying MoFo so far and I'll be back tomorrow with the food from my friend's wedding this past weekend.

Laterz
xXx

A whole heap of crap and I hate you blogger

2010-09-28T08:26:00.000-07:00

So I just typed this muthafucka and then blogger deleted the whole. damn. thing! GARRR! So forgive me if it's less than informative! hahahaa.

Ooh I been busy lately from work to hen nights to planning a holiday to starting another blog!! More on that later though.

Onto the food. I got hold of some taifun tofu (which in my opinion kicks Cauldron's cack excuse for a new recipe's arse!!) and I sliced it up and brushed with a glaze of mustard, miso, rice syrup and a bit of olive oil. Then I sprinkled it with sesame seeds and baked it, brushing it again with loads more glaze half way through so it was good and sticky. It was delicious with steamed veg and herbed butter, well vitalite anyway.

Leftovers the next day - with some tabouleh.

Microwave cupcakes! I quartered the basic chocolate recipe in vegan cupcakes take over the world and split it between 4 silicone baking cases and nuked them for 1 min and 40 seconds in total. The glaze was a mix of heated cherry jam that I seived and then mixed with icing sugar.

This week's dinner with the girlies. I made us a sweet potato and butternut squash curry (which was awesome).....

With some raita (strained alpro yoghurt, lemon juice, cucumber and fresh mint) with a wee drizzle of olive oil on top.....

some mushroom rice (I made it foofy and fancy by dying a little bit yellow, a little bit red and mixing it in to look like takeaway rice)....

And homemade naan breads. As usual I was winging it, one day I'll remember to write down when I make up a recipe.

Dessert was ice cream - the easiest ice cream EVER. The flesh of a large mango, blended with 1 carton (250ml) of alpro fresh single soya cream and a tablespoon of rice syrup then put in the ice cream maker. Delish and easy peasy lemon squeezy.

Onto seitan. I finally got around to makng the red seitan from Viva Vegan and yes, it is as awesome as everyone says it is. It makes 4 logs and you get 2 servings from each log. So I froze 2 and here are a couple of the meals I made with the other 2:

I brushed it with barbecue sauce and baked it for 15 mins. Served it with a baked potato topped with coleslaw.

This was my favourite thing I did with it. I veganised Nigella's Moroccan Lamb & Cacik. Basically I took one log of seitan, just opened up the foil and poked holes in it then poured over and rubbed in a mixture of: 1.5tsp of ras-el hanou spice mixture, juice of 1/2 a lemon, 1 tbsp olive oil, 1 grated clove of garlic and a pinch of salt. Then I sealed the foil back up and baked it at 180C for 10 mins, then opened the foil and let it carry on cooking for another 10 minutes. I served it with bulgar wheat just cooked in veg stock and cacik (which is exactly the same as my raita above, but with a clove of garlic also grated in).

This is what the seitan looked like after baking, isn't it pretty with the rose petals from the ras-el hanout?

Here, I pressed the seitan into some ground peppercorns and dry fried it. Steamed veggies, mashed potatoes and stuffing with a tonne of gravy completed this awesome sunday roast!

I made spelt bread. It was awesome but I've not got the recipe exactly how I want it yet, will report back with the recipe when I've got it right.

I also made some cornbread for a chilli the other week. But I love it most with jam! YUM. This recipe is from La Dolce Vegan. It always works perfectly for me every time, great recipe.

Remember that hen night I mentioned, here's a jug of pimms royale: pimms, prosecco, lemonade and a crap tonne of fruit. YUM!!!!

And some of my contributions to the food: cupcakes, rock road cookies and peanut butter cups.

Close up of the cupcakes - it was a 90s weekend and we were doing a ravers theme - hence my aceeeeeed cupcakes!

I also mentioned another blog! Totally separate from this one, I'm still keeping this one!! My new one is my beauty blog - mainly about make up but really is my showcase for make up work which I'll be adding to the more weddings / occasion make up that I do. Head on over and have a look if you're curious: http://sjbeauty.wordpress.com/. Blogger deleting my posts is just one of many reasons I decided to put the new one on wordpress!

I'm off to Dallas on holiday in a few days and I can't WAIT. So this'll be the last post before then, see you next time with pics of Dallas foodz!

Laterz
xXx

Guess who's back ... back again...

2010-08-26T03:01:00.000-07:00

....Shady's back, tell a friend...... hee hee

HELLOOOOOOO! It's been ages hasn't it, I'm bad! Honestly I just haven't felt like blogging lately, a few crap things happened at the beginning of the month but I won't bore you with that because life is starting to look a bit better now. So managed to finally kick myself into blogging mode! Which means I got a lot a pics for you!

Starting with a dinner this week - roasted veg an polenta. I think this is my new favourite thing to do with veg - hit them with balsamic vinegar after they've roasted. Last night I made more and they were even better but I didn't take a pic. Last night I mixed courgettes, sweet potato, mushrooms, butternut squash, red peppers and red onions with a little bit of olive oil, some dried herbs and chopped garlic. Then roasted them at 180C/350F for about 45 mins. Once done, I poured over 2 tbsp of balsamic vinegar and a handful of chopped parsley and mixed. They were awesome!

Cookies! I know I know, I've blogged these before, but they are so damn delicious. They are the rocky roads from Vegan Cookies.... These were a present for a friend's birthday.

Pacakes!! Chocolate blueberry pancakes, they weren't great but they hit the spot with a good glug of golden syrup on (maple syrup is about £5 a bottle at the moment, so I had to cheap it!!)

This was a cake I made my friends and I for dessert a few weekends ago, it had big chunks of raspberry and mango in and a sugary, crunchy coconut crumb topping. It was lovely and I'm going to work on the recipe a bit before I post it.

Dinner that day was pie! I made a simple pie crust from 1.5 cups of flour, 3 tbsp of vitalite and 3 tbsp of shortening, a bit of salt and then cold water until it came together. The filling was linda mccartney mince, mushrooms, peas, onions, a bit of red wine and some stock with some bisto powder added. Delish! I just did some plain new potatoes and sugar snaps to go with. It was such a nice day that we ate this on the balcony in the sun! Where oh where did that sun go??

This was inspired by the news that my town is getting a wagamamas soon! YAY! I had a go at making something like one of their soups that i love - the name of it escapes me. But it has fried mushrooms, tofu, pak choi, beansprouts (which I didn't have) and other veg in a lovely broth with noodles. Mine wasn't as good as theirs but it was pretty freakin delicious.

Last month I went to the Sonisphere festival and we had quite a lot of tent-side barbecues. Most of the food was not really blog-worthy but there was a veggie food stand that did the best burgers ever..... In the words of Samuel L Jackson in Pulp Fiction "MMMM HMMM, that's a tasty burger!"

Here's some muffins I made. This pic is so old, I can't even remember what flavour they were, but I have a sneaking suspicion they had spices and walnuts in.

Man, this pic is OLD! I made a lasagne, using Linda Mc mince and lovely white sauce. I topped it with a bit of nooch. The dough balls were awesome, I was winging it but I really wish I'd written down the recipe!! Next time I will I promise.

Close of the dough balls after baking and brushing with melted vitalite.

I tried making the crash hot potatoes that were all the rage on blogs a while ago. They were good but....

I dropped them getting them out the oven and lost a couple! :-(

And here is pics from a PPK meet up back in early July - look at all that food, it was awesome. There were sausage rolls, calzones, pasta salads, falafels, cheezly straws, cupcakes, cookies ..... and a baby! We didn't eat him though - he was too cute!

My contribution was the east coast coffee cake from vegan brunch - the jam swirl variation. I also made carrot falafels again, but didn't take a pic. They are in my last post though if you want to see them.

That's about it for now.

Laterz
xXx

Looking back....

2010-07-08T07:55:00.000-07:00

.... oooover ma shoulldeerrrr. Oh I'm gonna be singing that song all freakin day!! Ah well. The reason for it is that when I was looking through the pics for today's post, I realised 3 of the items were follow ons from last week's post and one was a recipe from last year.

So remember last time, the tomato soup recipe I posted? Well it makes 2 servings and I had one left in the fridge and I turned it into a couple of pasta dishes instead of just reheating it.

Starting with this one, a simple dish. I just sauteed some mushrooms and added some soya mince and a some gravy granules and half the remaining soup and served it over wholewheat spaghetti with a little sprinkle of nooch and parsley.

This was the winner though. I sauteed some mushrooms and some spring onions, added the other half of the soup and some capers and stirred it into wholewheat penne. Then I made a salad of sweet red and yellow cherry tomatoes, capers and toasted pine nuts with just some salt, pepper and really good olive oil on and put it up on top of the pasta. Simple but delicious!

On saturday night, my friend was down for her first wedding make up trial (wedding in Oct and I'm doing the make up!!) and for dinner I cooked us some of my carrot falafel with tahini sauce, some tabouleh and just a simple salad of rocket with a simple lemon juice and olive oil dressing. I've just put some chickpeas on to cook so I can make these again, I forgot how yummy they are.

And last time I made the vegan brunch omelets. Well I had half the batter left so I made another one. But I made a total mess of it when I flipped it, probably because I put the batter in the pan chilled and it was hard to spread. Next time I'll remember to bring it out before hand.

Still once it had a topping of mushrooms sauteed in soy sauce and herbs and a bit of cheezly mozz on it, all was forgiven!

This soup I made the other day to use up some fresh corn I had. It was pretty crap so I won't bother giving you the recipe.

And today I made mini muffins, I like to have some around for snacks and they are less calories than a full size muffin. Recipe is below pic.

Coconut Choc Chip Mini Muffins
Will make around 16 mini muffins or about 6 regular sized ones.

Dry Ingredients:
1 cup plain flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 cup sugar
teeny pinch of cinnamon
6 tbsp desiccated coconut
6 tbsp non-dairy chocolate chips
Wet Ingredients:
1/2 cup unsweetened non-dairy milk
1/2 tsp cider vinegar or lemon juice
1/3 cup soya yoghurt
1 tsp vanilla extract
a few drops almond extract
2 tbsp rapeseed (canola) oil

Method:

Preheat oven to 180C/350F. Line a 12 cavity bun tin (fairy cake tin, not a muffin tin) with baking cases.

Whisk dry ingredients together. Mix wet ingredients together, pour into dry and mix until just combined, a few lumps are ok and will bake out.

Spoon a couple of tbsp (about half way up the case) into each case and then bake for 20 mins, or until a skewer comes out clean. For regular muffins they'll take around 25 mins.

Transfer to wire rack to cool.

That's all for now folks.

Laterz
xXx

Mini Me

2010-07-01T04:53:00.000-07:00

Look at me posting after only 8 days' break!! hehe. It's a mini post from me today, because honestly, I really haven't cooked all that much this last week. I've been out for dinner a couple of times and instead of having the girls over here we went to Em's and she cooked - wonders will never cease!! :-)

So I'll start with the other day's lunch, roasted cherry tomato soup. This had a trip hit of tomatoes because I also added some tinned (well boxed actually) and some sun-dried toms. Recipe is at the end of the post. It was yummy.

Brunch today - I had some tofu leftover from the brownies that are coming up in a minute! So I made tofu omelettes from vegan brunch. I halved the recipe and the other half of the omelette batter is in the fridge for tomorrow morning. Once I spread out the batter I chucked on some chopped up sun dried tomatoes, spring onions, sweetcorn and a couple of rings of jarred jalapenos. Then flipped it to cook the second side. Then I flipped it back and sprinkled it with black pepper, dried oregano and grated on some cheezly mozz, then stuck it under the grill for a minute to melt. Soooooo delicious.

I said brownies.... I made these on Tuesday night to take to Em's for pudding. The recipe is from Vegan Cookies .... for the chocolate brownies and I added 1/3 cup of walnuts and 2 packets (50g total) of white chocolate buttons broken up. I cooked them for just the very minimum amount of time so they would be super fudgy and delicous and they were - best vegan brownies I've ever made!! SO EFFING GOOD. I must admit, when I first bought this book I was underwhelmed with it, but I've now made a few things and everything has been so tasty that I've really grown to love the book.

Dinner the other night, tacos! I sauteed a couple of spring onions and a clove of garlic and added a cup of sainsbury's frozen veggie mince (they didn't have any Linda McCartney, but this one is pretty much the same!). I added half a box of chopped tomatoes, a green chilli, some mild pepperdew peppers (I didn't have any red or yellow peppers!) and some cumin, coriander, oregano and paprika. I also grated about half a courgette in finely, then left it to reduce down. It was easy, nice and not too spicy. It made enough to fill about 6 taco shells, so I had leftovers. I had some salsa in the fridge so I topped it with that, some shredded lettuce and some soya yoghurt. Oh and some chopped, fresh coriander.

All ready to munch....

Close up of the taco filling...

Ready for assembling...

And here's the recipe for the soup:

Ingredients:
1 cup cherry tomatoes

2 fat cloves of garlic

olive oil

1 small onion

1/3 cup white wine

2 cups veggie stock

1/2 box (about 1/2 - 3/4 cup) chopped tomatoes in juice

4 sun-dried tomatoes*

1 tsp paprika

1/2 tsp dried oregano

1/2 tsp dried thyme

1/2 tsp dried rosemary

pinch of sugar or splenda

Salt & pepper to taste

Method:
Put the cherry tomatoes and garlic on a baking sheet and drizzle on a little bit of oil then bake at 200C/400F for 20 minutes.

Saute the onion over medium high in a tbsp or so of olive oil, with a good pinch of salt, for 5 minutes until starting to soften but not too coloured.

Once the tomatoes and garlic are done, pop the garlic out of the papery skins and set aside. Don't bother taking the skin off the tomatoes.

Back to the onions! Add the wine the pan and let it bubble off for a couple of minutes. Then add all the other ingredients and bring to the boil. Reduce heat and leave to simmer for 15 minutes.

Then pour into a blend and blend till smooth.

I served mine with a small blob of soya yoghurt on top, just to look poncey but it's not essential.

* I used sun-dried tomtoes packed in oil and just gave them a good shake off of the excess oil and then chopped them roughly. If you use dried ones, just chuck them into the soup when you add the stock and they'll reconstitute as you cook it.

Laterz
xXx

Hello?*

2010-06-23T04:22:00.000-07:00

Hello - I've been neglecting this poor blog. I'm going to try and get back into a routine of posting again though, so I don't keep leaving it so long.

Well since the last post, my birthday came and went rather unspectacularly and we've had some gorgeous weather. That's about it. hahaha.

I did have a month's worth of food pix but rather than bombard you with crap, I just picked out the stuff I liked.

Starting with this pasta bake. I made the vegan yum yum sauce (but without the basil cuz I didn't have any, so I used dried thyme and rosemary instead) and mixed it with wholewheat penne. Then topped it with cheezly mozz, breadcrumbs and nooch and then baked it for 20 mins until the cheezly melted. Good stuff!

This was a salad I made last week, with red, yellow and orange cherry tomatoes, cucumber, sun dried tomatoes, cucumber, carrots and a simple oil & vinegar dressing. The tempeh, I boiled for 10 mins then marinated in lime juice, soy sauce and hot sauce then baked it in the marinade, under foil for 20 mins. Then flipped it, took off the foil and baked another 10 mins. It was really tangy and yummy.

Mini muffins.... I am dieting so I thought if I made them small, theyd be less calories. Which they are but then I eat 2!! hahaha. Ah well, the thought is there.

This was a riff on something that Giada De Laurentiis made on everyday Italian. I cooked a cup of orzo pasta then sauteed some spring onions and a couple of chopped up plum tomatoes, then added a cup of peas and about half a cup of alpro soya cream (the fresh one). I also put in some nooch and some thyme if I remember rightly and added some pasta water to make a bit more sauce. When you first mix in the sauce it's quite erm, well saucy! But as it sits the pasta soaks up all the sauce and so it makes really yummy cold leftovers.

This was dinner for me and my friends a coupleof weeks ago and also, the first thing I made from Viva Vegan. That book is awesome and this was the Guatita (creamy peanut / potato stew). SO FREAKING DELICIOUS!! I made a salsa to go with it with sweetcorn, black beans, avocado, cucumber and cherry tomatoes and served it all with some brown basmati rice.

It makes a lot - about 6 servings worth. My friends and I ate about 4 servings between us by the time we finished off what was in the serving bowl and then I had loads of leftovers :-)

For pudding, I made us cupcakes. It was my friend's birthday so that's why one had a candle in.

Speaking of birthdays, mine was at the beginning of the month. I decided the theme for my cake this year would be a hot mess! hahaha - I think I pulled it off with the aid of a shit tonne of sprinkles and jelly tots:

Even the inside was a mess! I coloured portions of the cake with food colouring:

And swirled it....

The only colours that came through well though were the blue and the green. Next time I know I'll have to put in way more. You could see the orange a bit, but it wasn't much darker than regular cake colour! And you can see a bit of the pink but the purple kind of disappeared. Ah well, it was still a hot mess and it could have sent even the biggest sugar love into a sugar coma if they'd eaten enough!

Onto a random dinner - mushroom parm! Something else I saw Giada make (I think). I made a quick tomato sauce with some cherry tomatoes that weregoing a bit soft in the fridge. I grilled some mushrooms and then topped them with the sauce and a topping made of breadcrumbs, nooch and cheezly mozz mixed together. Under the grill they went for 5 mins u ntil the cheese melted and I served them with a rocket salad dressed with a tahini and lemon dressing. DELISH.

That's about it for now. Have a great week in the sunshine everyone.

Laterz

xXx

* dammit I'm gonna be singing Lionel Richie all day and now hopefully - so will you! BAHAHAHAHAAHA!

Oops! I did it again.....

2010-05-13T07:22:00.000-07:00

... I left it too long between posts! Bad Sal!

Well I'm making up for it with lots of pics. Starting with pictures from a recent PPK meet up. I was in Brighton to see Ash playing at Concorde 2 that night (they were freaking awesome by the way) and all the food in the day made this one brilliant weekend.

It was supposed to be in the park but the weather was decidedly dodgy, so JoJo graciously hosted for us. But, as if you didn't already know, I'm a bad blogger and I forgot my camera, so I took a pic of my (first!) plate with my phone. I've totally forgotten who made what so here's a vague outline. Cheesey feet crackers! hehe they were awesome, carrot tart which was delicious, salad with pasta / seitan sausages and rocket, sausage rolls, potato wedges with barbecue sauce, rice salad, spanakopita (sp?) and home made bread. All delicious. The potato wedges, barbecue sauce and rice were my contributions.

Then the important stuff - the dessert plate - Clockwise: Kip's fortune cookie (with added snarky defensive omnivore / vegan sayings inside - brilliant!!), Helen's rocky road cookies, Jojo's rocky road brownies, Holley's vegan jaffa cakes (AWESOME!) and my apple / custard mini pies.

Those rocky road cookies were so good - you're gonna see them again in a couple of pics' time!

A close up of my rice salad that I took just after I made it. Sauteed peppers, onions, mushrooms, redwoods bacon style rashers, sweetcorn and peas with brown basmati rice.

And my pies. Totally cheated on these - I cooked up some granny smith apples with sugar and spices and then rolled out shop bought shortcrust pastry and cut them out and put them in muffin tins. A spoonful of alpro soya custard and apple mixture with a cute heart of pastry on top and a sprinkle of sugar and they were ready for the oven.

I had som pastry left and I love pastry so hate to waste it, so I made a turnover with the leftover apples and custar. It came out weird looking but yummy.

The next morning, my friend and I were planning to go to Wai Kika Moo Kau for a veg brekkie but as my bro and his girlfriend came with us, we went across the road to Bubble Kitschen. They serve a vegan breakfast alongside their vegetarian and omni versions. It was MASSIVE and the coffee was pretty bad but the breakfast was pretty damn good!

Onto some randomness. Dinner the other night. I saw Levi Roots make pumpkin rice the other night and thought it looked pretty good. And I had a butternut squish (hehe) in the fridge already so I made my own version. I also had some orange pepper and sweetcorn leftover in the fridge so I chucked them in too. It was good but I think I need to play around with the spices before I post the recipe. I just had it with some steamed tenderstem broccoli.

I made some seitan sausages on Sunday and for a quick dinner I blitzed up some tomatoes and mixed them with wholewheat penne, sugar snaps, asparagus (HURRAH for UK asparagus season being in swing!!), cannellini beans and some herbs and spices. Oh and one of my sausages - pretty good for a quick dinner.

I made the sausages because I fancied sausage and mash. So that's what I had sunday, with onion gravy. YUM.

Remember those rocky road cookies I mentioned before - well I dreamed about them for a week after having them in Brighton. So I dug out Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar and made a batch. Me and my friends ate some when they were round for dinner and I made them take a load home so I didn't eat the whole batch myself. I froze some because I was in danger of eating them all. They are SO good! My friend's hubby who I sent some home with my friend for, said they're my best baked good yet, so thanks Isa & Terry!! I made sure to only cook them the minimum time so they were fudgy and soft. If you have this book you gotta make them!!

Here's the dough, I had to seriously restrain myself from just eating all the dough straight out the bowl.

When I was in Brighton I went into Infinity to buy some Tempeh and all they had was the one with sea vegetables in. Boo, but I bought one anyway! And thought I'd make the chesapeake tempeh cakes from Vegan Brunch. The only complaint I had with these is not to do with Isa's recipe - it's my own fault - I added some old bay seasoning because I found it in the American shop near where I live. And so they pretty much just tasted of celery - and I don't like celery! Dummy. So I'm going to try making them again without the old bay and I think they are going to be awesome.

I made a potato waffle to go with them. I haven't got these quite right yet but I'm working on it and I will post the recipe as soon as I have it right!

This was a quinoa pudding that I got the recipe for from the GI Vegetarian cookbook. It was spectacularly underwhelming. But I like the idea of it - so I'm going to play with it and report back next time!

Simple dinner of rice salad and some tempeh that I baked with a bit of all purpose seasoning sprinkled on it and had in a big floury roll with barbecue sauce. yummy.

This was a recipe I got off sparkpeople for tempeh carrot salad. It had ginger and orzo pasta in in. I changed it a bit by adding some lime juice and adding shredded cabbage and sugar snaps. It was really really good but I think it needed more tempeh. I'd make it again definitely.

And finally, a quick dinner of spaghetti bolognaise - made with linda mccartney mince and sprinkled with nooch. Yum.

I will try not to leave it so long next time.

Laterz
xXx

I've got a big one for ya!!

2010-04-15T10:55:00.000-07:00

haha did that sound dirty enough? Good.

So like I said, I have a tonne of pics for you because I've been a lazy/busy bint and haven't blogged in a month.

So I'm gonna start with a trip to Terre a Terre in Brighton with some PPKers last month. I had the smokey soul in a bowl - a jamaican inspired dish. It was good but way spicier than I thought. It was a corn cake filled with spinach. The absolute best thing about this was coconut spinach it was sitting on - SO good.

For dessert I had the fragipane tea & cake. It had amaretto ice cream (which is what sold this for me) and the cake was absolutely delicious. The glass was spicy fruity tea - weird but yummy.

Yesterday I went for vegan pizza (among other stuff) at fellow PPKer Kip's house with a couple of other PPKers including Holley and JoJo and her hubby. Kip brought some daiya cheese back from a recent trip to the states and can I just say - it's pretty freakin awesome!! It actually melts and tastes like proper cheese. These pizzas rocked, but I only took a pic of one. This one had garlic, frys chicken style burgers and vegan bacon on. Yum.

My plate: salad, pizza, dough ball, bean salad and a vol au vent.

Dough balls - so freaking good.

Fancy vol au vents. These had some cheesy stuff made with cashews (if I remember right), vegan bacon and a piece of apple. Kip is awesome! She also made this lavender lemonade which was so freakin amazing I can't tell you, but I forgot to take a pic!

So remember I said Kip was awesome - further proof as if needed, oreo ice cream.

And a crap tonne of home made cookies. They were all delicious.

And my contribution - chocolate pie with hob nob cookie base. It didn't turn out exactly how I wanted it to and was a bit too crumbly, but it was still pretty good. But my poor pie did feel a bit intimidated next to all the amazing stuff that Kip made!

So I've been onsite for a few days for work and was really looking forward to eating decent food when I got home, even though I did not too bad in the hotel for food.

I went to waitrose on my way home as I heard their iced buns were vegan and really fancied them. Only they didn't have any! Poo. So I thought I'd make my own. I'm not posting the recipe because I really didn't get them right. They were way too chewy, but I'm willing to work on them till they're right.

Dinner when I got back had to be something easy and quick. So I made a curry to use up the really overripe tomatoes in my fridge. I added a tonne of spinach, a tin of chickpeas, a small tin of new potatoes and some home made curry powder. Then added som soya yoghurt right at the end. It was yummy.

This was dinner before I went onsite for my friends and I - chili, that I made using the new Linda McCartney soya mince, which used to be Realeat apparently. I really REALLY like the new recipe (or old one if you were ever able to get hold of Realeat which I never have been!). There's a couple more pics featuring this mince.

To go with it, I made us some corn muffins, these were AWESOME. I've posted the recipe at the end of the post.

For pudding, I made us a low fat chocolate cake. I used this recipe off spark people - my mum uses this recipe a lot and it's really really good! I sandwiched it with some cherry jam and just dusted it with some icing sugar to make it purty! I took the leftovers onsite and myself and the safety manager polished it off when no one was looking! :-) I made a couple of changes, I used cider vinegar instead of balsamic and I only used half a cup of sugar insteadof a whole one and added in 6 tbps of splenda to make up the sweetness.

OK onto some random pics that were on my camera.

I wanted to make some coronation tofu but I did't have any mango chutney, so I just used yoghurt and curry powder. It was still pretty good. I used the new cauldro tofu, which is WAY soft and I don't really like it. But it was ok. I mixed the remainder of the sauce into some leftover cooked rice and some veggies.

I made some chickpea burgers when I wanted something quick one day. They were alright but nothing special. To go with though I had some broccoli that I steamed and then dressed with a tsp each of sesame oil, soy sauce and sesame seeds. YUM. And some butternut squash roasted with a bit of curry powder.

Dessert last Sunday, a quick crumble for one! I had a rather mangy looking apple in my fruit bowl and found some frozen peaches in my freezer so I mixed them with some lemon juice, spices and some dried cranberries. Then added a crumble topping and baked it. I had it with soya cream, well about half of it anyway. It was not bad.

A quick dinner one day, I had some coriander and mint in the fridge and some leftover rocket leaves so I whizzed them up with a small clove of grated garlic, some pine nuts, olive oil and nooch to make a pesto. Then I had it with some pasta with some peas mixed in. YUM.

I made spaghetti bolognaise with the linda mc mince for a friend and I a while back and I forgot to take a pic. But the next day I mixed the leftovers with some black beans and some tabasco to make a quick chilli and had it on top of a baked potato. Good stuff.

Oh look - more soya mince!! Old fashioned stylee. This is what got me to buy the stuff in the first place. My mum used to make the best mince ever when I was a kid. Obviously now I don't eat beef anymore so when I went over there a few weeks ago, she made me some with the Linda Mc mince, which I never would have bought because I hate most fake meats. She added bisto granules (GENIUS!) and some veggies and it was so freakin good I ran home and bought a bag myself to have a go. And here it was with tenderstem broccoli, green beans and potato/sweet potato mash - which by the way is a little piile of heaven. So delicious, low fat and proper comfort food!

Leftovers - some tofu that I just sprayed with braggs and dusted well with bacon salt and then baked. It really did taste bacony! It was yummy. I had some cooked rice leftover so I just mixed it with some veg and a vinaigrette.

Sunday lunch a few weeks ago, lentil & veggie soup and a toasted cheezly sammie.

These were some cupcakes I made a few weeks back. I saw Giada de Laurentiis make cupcakes out of brownie mix (cheater cheater compulsive eater!!) and they looked pretty good. But I don't know if any box mixes are vegan plus honestly, it's not that hard to make chocolate cakes!! But I stole the flavouring ideas. I added walnuts and chocolate chips to the batter and then topped them with cream cheese frosting and more choc chips. I used the new Pure cream cheese. It was not bad, not as good as tofutti though. Plus it's really sweet so no good for savoury stuff.

Oh and I bought some tiger bread one day and I had french toast for breakfast. With ketchup, the way it should be, none of this maple syrup crap. OK!

Oh and I forgot about this till I saw the pic but in the words of Janice.... OH. MY. GOD!! This was an african sweet potato / peanut stew and it was SO effing good, make it - make it NOW! I got the recipe off spark people again.

And as promised the corn muffin recipe, I did it all in cups - sorry UK people, I was too lazy to weigh.

Dry Ingredients:
3/4 cup plain flour
3/4 cup fine cornmeal
2 tbsp splenda
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp fine sea salt (if using table salt, use only 1/4 tsp)
5 or 6 sun-dried tomatoes, rehydrated in hot water
3 or 4 small spring onions (or 2 fatties)
A small (160g drained weight) tin of sweetcorn
Wet Ingredients:
3/4 cup unsweetened soy or other non-dairy milk
1/4 rapeseed (canola) oil
1 tsp vinegar or lemon juice

Method:
Mix together dry ingredients. Make sure the spring onions, s-d tomatoes and sweetcorn get a good coating of dry ingredients to stop them sinking to the bottom of the batter.

Whisk together the wet ingredients and then pour into the dry and mix until just combined.

Spray a muffin tin with oil and then divide the mixture between six holes. I filled them pretty much full to make 6 bigger muffins, but you could probably eek it out to 7 or 8 if you make them smaller.

Bake for 20 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean. Leave in the tin a few minutes until the muffins are cool enough to remove from the tins. Then put on a cooling rack to finish cooling.

Hello? Hey WAKE UP!! Told you it was a long one. Congrats if you're still awake!!

Laterz
xXx

I'm Alive!

2010-04-12T05:56:00.000-07:00

It's just occurred to me it's been forever since I blogged.

Crazy few weeks with work etc so it's slipped my mind and I'm really behind with everyone's blogs too.

I'm onsite at a show for work right now, freezing my arse off and getting shouted at by ill-tempered a-hole contractors, but I'll be back in a couple of days and have a load of pics to share with you then.

Sal
xxxxxxx

These aren't the droids you're looking for!

2010-03-08T08:42:00.000-08:00

EDIT: I've just realised that on the 5th of March this blog was 2 years old! Thank you thank you everyone who reads. I love yous.

I finally have an excuse to use that post title - I got a new phone – it’s an android phone (similar to iPhones but cooler!! Hahah). I’m very excited about it and not just cuz it’s pink....

It's actually that light pink colour, the hot pink surround is a skin I bought for it to protect it when I drop it, which will happen - I'm clumsy.

I thought I’d start off with a pic that I took on the phone – this was brunch on Sunday, not bad for a camera phone. I went down to visit my brother and his girlfriend in their new flat in Hove. Sunday morning we caught the bus into Brighton, which is awesome because it’s so vegan friendly. We went to Wai Kika Moo Kau – I’ve wanted to go there for ages because I love the name of it! It’s a vegetarian cafe with vegan options as well. I had the full vegan English breakfast: sausages, marinated tofu, oven baked butter beans (instead of tinned baked beans which are the devil’s work), tomatoes with pesto sauce and a yummy hash brown. It was awesome and I had a soya latte with it. My bro and his girlfriend had the veggie breakfast, he wasn’t getting bacon or ‘proper’ sausages so he needed eggs - I think tofu would have finished him off!

They haven’t lived in their flat very long so I made them a little housewarming present – cookies. These had white chocolate, cranberries and walnuts in and they were super yum. I played with Dreena Burton’s recipe again and I think I changed it up enough so I’ll put the recipe at the end of the post. Dreena’s original chocolate chip recipe is online here though (and it’s AWESOME and really adaptable).

Mum and Dad came over for dinner last week and I made us some nice chunky soup for dinner. It was lovely and I made a massive pot so I could live off leftovers for lunches for a few days. It had butternut squash, turnip, onions, parsnips, red lentils, celeriac and a teeny pinch of chilli flakes.

Random dinner last week. I bought this tomato in waitrose that you're meant to eat while it's still green. But as you can see I left it in the fridge a wee bit too long. It was pretty though I thought. I roasted half of it (the other half went into the aforementioned soup!). I had it with some firm polenta with sweetcorn in and some roasted brussels and celeriac.

These were a birthday present for my friend last weekend. Coconut cupcakes with raspberries. I poked a hole in them and put some mushed raspberry & cointreau in, then piped coconut buttercream on before decorating with a fresh razza. They were yummy but fell apart a bit, probably because of the extra liquid from the raspberries. I'm working on this recipe, they'll be awesome one day!

This was last friday's dinner. Rachael Ray made these german style potato wedges which looked great, aside from being cooked in bacon fat. Blech. So for mine, I doused the potatoes in cider vinegar and sprinkled on some sugar and bacon salt! I found bacon salt in the american sweet shop not far from where I live. The plain one has milk in but the one with pepper is vegan. So it took care of the bacon flavour, salt and pepper! Triple threat!! They were pretty good, maybe I should have sprinkled some bacos in after they'd done cooking, or then maybe that would be gross??? The burger on the side is a Frys Chicken Style burger, my new favourite thing - and that comes from a hater of most fake meats!

Another random dinner. Remember the tempeh stuffing balls from last time? I had some leftover tempeh and decided to try my hand at a white chilli. It was good but not quite right, so I need to work on it before I post the recipe.

And as promised, the cookie recipe:

Cranberry, Walnut & White Chocolate Cookies

Dry Ingredients:
150g (1 cup) plain flour (I often sub this for white spelt flour and it works perfectly)
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
4 tbsp (1/4 cup) granulated sugar
1/4 tsp ground allspice (optional, but yummy)
1/4 tsp sea salt (if using table salt, half that)
4 tbsp (1/4 cup) dried cranberries
4 tbsp chopped walnuts
50g vegan white chocolate buttons or chips (about 1/3 cup if I had to guess - I used 2 bags of the dairy free white choc buttons they now sell in the free-from sections in tesco & sainsburys!!)
Wet Ingredients:
4 tbsp (1/4 cup) malt extract
20 ml (ie make the malt extract up to 1/3 cup) golden syrup
1 tsp vanilla extract
4 tbsp (1/4 cup) rapeseed (canola) oil
1/4 tsp blackstrap molasses

Method:
Preheat the oven to 190C/about 360F.

Whisk together the dry ingredients (I always sieve the baking powder and soda through a little tea strainer as you can get lumps of soda otherwise in your cookie). Add the cranberries and walnuts. Smash up the buttons a bit, but don't make them too small - some big pieces are good! Add to the dry ingredients and give it all a good mix.

Whisk together the wet ingredients (be patient, it'll happen!) and then pour into the dry. Mix with a fork till you can't anymore then get your hand in and mix it till it comes together in a ball of dough.

Pull off pieces about a rounded tbsp (walnut sort of size) and roll into a ball. Space them apart on a cookie sheet lined with parchment. Then wet a fork and press it lightly one way then another, for cross-hatches! Bake for 5-6 minutes for a chewy cookie, 7-8 for crispier. (dreena's recipe says 10 or 11 but that's for bigger cookies). Leave them 5 minutes on the sheet to firm up then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

That's all folks.

Laterz
xXx

Oh balls!

2010-02-24T07:16:00.000-08:00

Hellooo everyone. Did you have pancakes last Tuesday??? I did, more on that in a minute though.

I'm starting off with last night's dinner. In my mind for weeks I've been dreaming of balls. Ahem, what I mean to say is meatless balls!! That doesn't sound any better does it? Well these are a mixture of tempeh and sage & onion stuffing mix. Sounds gross, tastes like a little ball of heaven! tee hee. Recipe is at the end of the post but I think this recipe has potential to be great just as a way of awesoming up stuffing mix or even flattened into patties and baked for a burger.

I served them with mushroom sauce (thought tomato would be too heavy) and quinoa pasta. Yum.

Dessert was simple. I cut up a nectarine and put it into a foil package with some rice syrup and baked it at 180C for 15 minutes. I served it with a blob of plain soy yoghurt and a wee sprinkle of ground allspice and then poured the fruity syrupy juices from the package over it.

These were some oat crackers I made last week. They're pretty good but I haven't got them exactly right yet. Recipe will follow once they're better.

I made some cookies last week. I played with Dreena Burton's homestyle choc chip cookie recipe by taking out the choc chips, swapping the plain flour for white spelt, swapping 1/4 cup of the flour for cocoa and using rice syrup instead of maple syrup (WAY cheaper!). I also made them smaller, a round tbsp or so each so I got 23 out of the mixture instead of 12! I baked them 8 minutes and they were nice and crispy.

So I mentioned pancake day last week. I prefer the fluffy american style (drop scone) pancakes for breakfast but on pancake day, it's only right to have flat ones. I didn't attempt to flip them, I suck at that! Here is one, ready for a rollin.....

And rolled up with the traditional filling of some lemon juice (bottled - tee hee) and sprinkled with sugar. Yum.

This was dinner one night last week. Oh that pile of horrible looking green mush was broccoli smashed potatoes. An idea I stole off Rachael Ray! But she put in a crap tonne of cheese and cream. I just added a bit of soymilk and salt & pepper and a sprinkle of nooch - they were really really good. Reminded me of when I was little and my mum used to mix mashed swede in with the potatoes so I would eat them! :-)

I feel bad for this lentil soup because he was oh so tasty but I don't think is a way to make a soup made with brown lentils a pretty one! Ugly? Yes. Tasty? Oh yes!

This was dinner on Friday night. I made a basic risotto with some onions and sun-dried tomatoes in and then at the end stirred in a bunch of steamed green veg. It was soooo tasty. I added peas, green beans and broccoli.

Here's that recipe I promised:

Sage & Onion Tempeh Balls
Ingredients:
100g (1/2 a pack) tempeh
1/3 cup (40g) sage & onion stuffing mix (paxo and sainsbury's own are both vegan)
1/2 cup (125ml) boiling water
1/2 a medium onion (about 1/2 cup)
1 tbsp olive oil
Braggs or soy sauce
1/2 tsp dried thyme
Salt & Pepper to taste

Fry Light / cooking oil spray

Method:
Preheat the oven to 200C/400F.

Then start with the tempeh. Cut it up into rough chunks and throw it in a pan (I used a frying pan) and fill it with enough water to just cover the tempeh. Bring to the boil then leave it for 1o minutes.

Meanwhile, mix the stuffing mix with the boiling water and cover with a plate. Set aside for at least 5 minutes.

Once the tempeh is done, remove from the pan and dry out the pan. Add the oil and saute the onions for 5 minutes until just starting to get some colour. Crumble the tempeh up nice and fine and add it to the onions, cook for a good 5 mins or so to get some colour on the tempeh. Then add the thyme and spritz with braggs (about 10-15 sprays) or add a tsp or 2 of soy sauce or tamari. Mix well and then remove from heat and tip into a mixing bowl to cool. Add the stuffing mixture and mash it all together with a fork.

Once cool enough to handle, roll about a heaped tbsp at a time into balls (you should get about 18). Then spray a baking sheet with fry light and put the balls on ready to cook. Spritz the top of them with fry light (optional) and then bake for 15-20 minutes (until lightly browned). Then serve with whatever you like!!

If you make larger balls (hee hee) or patties, you'll probably want to bake them 20-25 mins!

That's all for now aside from saying that I'm on Twitter now (sal_on_toast) - feel free to add me if you're on there, I only have 3 followers! hahaha.

Laterz
xXx

Tell me, Von Dahl-ing, what was it won you over?

2010-02-11T13:49:00.000-08:00

"Don't give me that, matey. I know your game. Tell me, "Von Darling", what was it won you over? Was it the pumpernickel or the thought of hanging around with a lot of men in leather shorts?"

"I'll have you court martialed for this, Blackadder."

"What, for obeying the General's orders? That might be how you do things in Munich — or should I say München - but not here, Werner. You're a filthy Hun spy, aren't you? Baldrick - the cocker spaniel, please!!" **

Ahem, sorry. But sometimes I forget how awesome Blackadder was, until I go searching for a random quote with the word ‘darling’ in it so that I can make it into a bad pun for my post title. Le sigh. And that is one of my favourite ever episodes.

Get to the point Sal, I hear you cry! Well, I had Tarka Dahl for dinner yesterday and today and it was bloody spankingly loverly! I always order it in indian restaurants as a side dish but have never made it myself, but it was so easy!

I looked forward to it all day and it didn’t disappoint. I used THIS recipe, but used olive oil instead of butter and halved the recipe. It made a tonne, enough for 3 portions really rather than 2. I had it with brown basmati rice that I cooked in veggie stock then stirred some rocket leaves and a load of herbs (parsley and mint) through. YUM YUM YUM YUM YUM YUM YUM! So effing good.

I made some savoury muffins t'other day. They were cornmeal, spelt flour, courgette, sweetcorn and some spices. Pretty good but nothing to write home about. Once I make them awesome I'll post the recipe.

I thought this was pretty but it looks a bit of a mess in this pic. It was a one-pot wonder though! Tempeh, veggies, cooked spelt and spicy peanut sauce. YUM.

Sunday night's dinner, pizza! This wasn't my best effort I must admit. I bough some cheezly super melting edam style. YUK! I will stick to the mozarella from now on. This pizza was average at best, I didn't eat much of it.

Saturday night I had a couple of friends round for dinner and a couple of apple martinis! I made us a brown rice salad with a tonne of veggies and some homemade tofu thrown in. I roasted up a chilli too and minced that up and threw it in. The batch was pretty mild but this was one spicy mama!! It was yummy. I made some roasted veg and some Eat Drink & Be Vegan Cumin Lime Tofu to go with but forgot to take a pic, doh!

I also made us a choccy cake. A healthy one though, of sorts! hee hee. I used wholegrain spelt flour, replaced most of the oil with apple sauce and half the sugar with splenda. But then I put some chocolate ganache on top. I also put some desiccated coconut in the batter and some flaked coconut on top. Pretty yum. My friend ate most of it over the course of the night / breakfast and then took the leftovers home so I didn't have to worry about eating it all myself and ruining my diet! Score.

For snacks, I made us some dips. To go with I toasted up some pittas....

This was seriously the best hummus I've ever made, so good! I sprinkled some paprika and pine nuts on top to make it pretty.

I also made baba ganoush. I've never made it before so I was winging it, it was pretty good! One aubergine, that I roasted until it was soft. I roasted some garlic along with it and threw that in, with some tahini, lemon juice, a pinch of cumin and salt & pepper. Yum.

This was one tasty bad boy of a dinner last week - tempeh hash! I saw that episode of barefoot contessa where she makes chicken hash again! Last time I saw that I made veggie hash. This time I added in tempeh, pretty sure I stole that idea from Jessy! Served witha side of steamed broccoli.

This was such a random mish mash of stuff I threw together as I hadn't been shopping! haha, it was good though. A grilled portabello, steamed cabbage, mustardy firm polenta, black beans with salt, pepper & hot sauce and steamed broccoli. I dressed the broccoli with a tsp each of sesame oil and soy sauce and added some sesame seeds on top - it was sooooo good. The broccoli and polenta were battling each other fiercely for the title of star of this plate - it was too close to call.

Lastly about my PIF post, it was a bit of a fail, only 2 people responded!! So no randomator needed! So - River & Vivacious Vegan - email me your details (click top right) and some homemade goodies will be winging their way to you at some point in the near future (it may take a while as my supplies are low and I need to do a bit of ordering!!)

Have a great weekend peeps.

Laterz
xXx

**I couldn't find a clip of the episode that line is from but this is another of my favourite scenes. Brilliant! I must buy the DVDs!!

Overdue PIF Post

2010-02-02T05:39:00.000-08:00

So I have a memory like a sieve and have been forgetting for ages that I need to put up my PIF post!!

The very awesome Bethany sent me the cutest calendar (there's a pic of it on her blog - I can't get one that does it justice), that arrived at the beginning of January (perfect timing) for PIF and so now it's my turn to dole out the love!

So I'm not the craftiest person ever, I am only just learning to knit. But I can make pretty decent bath/body goodies. So if anyone wants to take part, they will be getting some home made goodies to pamper themselves with from me.

If you want to take part, the dealio is this, leave me a comment and I'll choose 3 at random. You would then need to post about it on your blog and agree to send something handmade to the readers of your choice.

I'm not stipulating any rules about numbers or what you send - I didn't make this up so don't really think it's my place to.

So if you want some handmade goodies from me - HOLLAAA!

Laterz
xXx

So much cuter, with something in your mouth.....

2010-01-29T01:48:00.000-08:00

I have no real reason for that title, except that I couldn't think of a name for this post and I went to see Nickelback last week and they were awesome as ever! I even had a pretty great view for most of it and being a short-arse, that's rare!

Also I disovered a new band through them - Daughtry!! They were the support band and they were great, I've downloaded both their albums and listened to them to death since them. I know you're probably thinking - they've been around ages, Sal - catch up!! But I don't watch American Idol so I'd never heard of them!

OK so back to reality. I haven’t blogged for a bit because I didn’t think I had many pics to share but I actually had a fair few on there! Although lately, I haven't been taking pics every day because my dinners have been looking all very similar – like this.... roasted veg with some sort of grain on the side! Kind of boring but tasty!!

This was roasted veg with bulgar wheat that I cooked in veg stock and spices and threw some chickpeas and frozen peas into.

I wasn't going to post this one, it was kind of ugly but I had a mini disaster with it! when I was making the nooch sauce for the macaroni, I open the big side instead of the shaker on the onion powder, shook hard and ended up putting in abou 3 tbsp of onion powder! ARGH!! luckily it clumped up and I managed to get most of it out and not wreck my sauce! hahaha phew!

This was yummy though. I saw the barefoot contessa make this zucchini gratin on her show and it looked awesome but loaded with cheese. As me and my friends are dieting I decided to try and hack the calories down as well as veganise it and it worked out really well (recipe is at the end). I love Ina, but her recipes do usually start with 3 sticks of butter and bottle of cream!!

But anyway, I always plug my recipes into sparkrecipes.com as I count calories and I plugged in the original recipe too out of interest! Depending on how many you split it between, hers weighed in at 433 cals per serving with 33.5g of fat (20.3g of saturated fat!!) GROSS! Mine was 124 per serving! Although we actually split it 3 ways not 4 so it was more like 164 but that’s still pretty good!!

Last weekend I went up to the midlands to see family. I haven’t seen my dad’s side in more than 3 years (bad Sal!!). My 3 aunties and uncles and my Granddad, plus me and my mum and dad all went out for dinner. We went to a pub/restaurant so I wasn’t sure what the food would be like for me and I couldn’t get hold of anyone by phone to ask. But I was really lucky – there were a couple of veggie options that could be easily veganised by taking off the cheese and the waiter also told me that they didn’t use butter on their veggies, it was a substitute approved by the vegan society!! Happy day!! I had a roasted aubergine filled with lots of other veggies, plus carrots and cabbage and green beans on the side. Oh and the best chips ever! I didn’t get a pic though!

But for putting me up, I made these as a gift for my Auntie & Uncle. They got the omni seal of approval as I got an email from my auntie saying they were the best cakes she, my uncle and my cousin had ever tasted and could she have the recipe!! This is a big compliment because my Auntie's an ace cook!

They were the basic chocolate cupcakes from vegan cupcakes take over the world. I tweaked it a bit to replace some of the soymilk with amaretto liqueur and upped the almond extract a bit. The icing recipe I struggled to give her because I always wing the icing! It was a bit of pure soya margarine, some tofutti cream cheese and icing sugar, then I just added almond extract, amaretto and a bit of soymilk to it.

Last week in the supermarket, I saw this cauldron curry. I'm not a lover of ready meals but sometimes when I get back from the gym I'm not always in the mood to cook and so I thought I'd give this a go and was pleasantly surprised. It wasn't at all bad!

Needed a bit of salt, but then I think that about most things! :-)

I found this on my camera, forget when it was from (probably Sunday) but it was a pretty yummy roast dinner of baked tofu, sage & onion stuffing, roasted potatoes and parsnips and green beans & peas. Oh and lots of bisto of course!

oh and here’s that recipe as promised.....

Courgette/Zucchini Gratin:
Ingredients:
1 tbsp olive oil (divided)
1 medium onion
2 courgettes / zucchini (about 500g)
2 tbsp cornflour (15g)
250ml/1 cup light unsweetened soy milk
1 tsp tahini
1 tsp Dijon mustard
2 tbsp nutritional yeast flakes
¼ tsp fresh grated nutmeg
½ tsp paprika
¼ tsp onion powder
Salt & pepper to taste
25g breadcrumbs (optional)

Method:
Slice the courgettes about 1 cm / ½ inch thick and throw in a large bowl. Pour on 1 tsp of olive oil and mix well until all are coated. Lay in a flat layer on a cookie sheet or baking tray and bake at 180°C/350°F for 15-20 minutes, until just soft but not too browned. Once you’ve taken them out the oven, turn the heat up to 200°C/400°F.

Meanwhile, dice the onions and sauté then over a medium heat in the remaining 2 tsp of olive oil, until softened and starting to brown, but not too coloured (about 5-10 minutes).

Then make the sauce. Mix together the cornflour and soymilk and put into a saucepan. Bring to a simmer on a med-high heat and stir until thickened. Remove from heat and stir in tahini, mustard, nutritional yeast and spices. Add salt & pepper till you’re happy with it.

To assemble, put the slices of courgette into a baking dish and put the onions on top, give them a jiggle around to mix together. Pour the sauce over and spread it out.

Sprinkle the breadcrumbs on top and spritz with low fat cooking spray. Bake for 15-20 mins, until the sauce is bubbly and the breadcrumbs are golden brown.

Have a freakin awesome weekend everyone, whatever you're doing!!

Laterz
xXx

London foodz & shopping

2010-01-17T07:29:00.000-08:00

Remember Joey and Janice's Day. Of. Fun*? Well yesterday was UK Vegans' Day. Of. FOOD!!

(*I couldn't find a vid clip!!)

We had a meet up of a few UK PPKers as a fairwell to Pieta, who is going back to the Netherlands next week ( :-( boo!). We had a lovely day of eating though!

We started with a bit of shopping at David & Goliath in Covent Garden (pics further down) and then to the Neals Yard Salad Bar in Covent Garden for vegan soft serve ice cream. Which by the way was totally effing sock-rocking!! You could get chocolate or mango and I went with a mixture of the too, as did most of us. It was reallllyyy good, especially the chocolate.

It's a pretty cool place. We only went for the ice cream, but there were lots of vegan options on the menu if you wanted proper food too.

Then it was off to Pogo Cafe. After a long bus journey and a very wet walk into somewhere in Hackney that I'll never be able to find again, we arrived. It's an awesome place, really relaxed atmosphere, just a bunch of people hanging out and some eating, some working, some doing cross stich... etc! Plus it's all vegan food.

I knew we were eating again later so I just went for a sandwich, a sausage sandwich. It was really good, I wish I'd asked what brand they use!!

This place is definitely worth a visit if you're ever in Hackney and you have GPS on your mobile phone!! hahah.

After this, we bussed it over to Camden, with the intention of going to inSpiral but in the end we never got there. We went into one of the crazy bazaar type places in camden to find the Secret Society of Vegans stall, which I think is temporary until their new shop opens. I bought an awesome bag, pix below.

After this, was time for more food. We had sort of decided not to go but in the end all decided that we would. So we hopped on the tube to Kings Cross and a short walk away was Itadaki Zen, a totally vegan organic Japanese restaurant. Not only was this place really cool inside and had the cutest waitress you've ever seen, but the food was delicious too!

I had nigiri sushi to start with....

And then this noodle dish that I forget the name of. The noodles were made of sweet potatoes and the mushrooms were called jew ears!! hehehe. It was really really yummy.

A couple of bonus shots: Happy vegans @ Neals Yard Salad Bar. From the front left - around the table: Kip's Friend Nicole, Kip, Zeinab, Pieta's friend Tom, Pieta, Holley and Me.

The shopping! I bought this David & Goliath vest (I have the shopping bag with the same picture on that I bought year's ago at Clotheshow.

Another tee - this was £5 in the sale, also at David & Goliath! Bargain. I LOVE D&G's stuff! They do loads of pajamas, hoodies, baby clothes, bags, watches, fridge magnets....

My SSOV bag. I love it!

Back to food. This was dinner for me & my 2 best friends on Friday Night. Thai green curry with tofu, green beans, baby corn, green beans and peas. YUM. There's basmati rice hidden under there too!

We're all dieting (not that you'd know it from that ice cream shot at the top, but you gotta have a day off now and then right!?) so I have been trying to think of ways to cut the calories and fat way back in my baked goods. This attempt was pretty good but I'm still working on it before I share the recipe. These were mango & coconut muffins.

Oh and last week, I have mostly been eating mini meatloaves. The recipe is from Cozy Inside by Joni Marie Newman and it is awesome. I halve the recipe and bake it in muffin tins to make individual ones, instead of one whopper. The rather ugly side dish was lentils, rice and peas cooked in veggie stock and spices. Ugly? Yes. Delicious? Hell yes. Oh and roasted green beans - my new fave way to cook green beans cuz they go all crispy and delish!

This time, starring alongside some simple steamed green veg and wholewheat couscous made with veggie stock and spices.

And lastly, with roasted sprouts, green beans and tomato polenta that I also added some corn into.

Enjoy what's left of your weekend, peoples.

Laterz
xXx

Semi waffle success, McVegans and cake!

2010-01-10T08:42:00.000-08:00

What is it about weekends - they go way too quick!!! Hope everyone is having a good one though anyway.

I started Sunday with some waffles! I made some yesterday and they were not bad but I forgot to take a pic. These are today's - chocolate with walnuts in. I'm still working on the recipe, there never seems to be enough to fill the whole waffle iron and they come out look like a big round one! But I'll get it right. They were pretty yummy with a blob of soyatoo whipped cream and chocolate syrup (just maple syrup and cocoa powder mixed together).

Lunch - I made McVegans. I had made some seitan the other night with these in mind. I cut a circle out of a seitan patty and out of a block of tofu. I dipped the tofu in chickpea flour seasoned with a little salt, onion powder, paprika and black salt and then lightly fried in a teeny bit of oil. Then stack the sucker up on a wholewheat english muffin, with a tofutti slice and stick it under the grill until it melts. YUM.

Friday night I had the girlies over for dinner and cooked us up a mushroom risotto. I've never made a proper one with arborio rice and adding the stock slowly before, so I was glad it all worked out. In fact it was really yummy. I added a bit of tofutti cream cheese and some nooch in at the end. We had it with steamed green beans and sugar snaps.

For dessert - a choccy cake. I cut the sugar and oil right down in this and added some apple sauce to make it lower fat - it was really good. I also chucked in some dried sour cherries. Although I hiked the calories right back up by putting chocolate ganache on top. Ah well, it was yummy and friday night!! (I'm still working on this recipe!) I struggled to get a decent pic of this.

With a blob of soyatoo!

And to drink we had Nigella's apple martinis (vodka not gin!). I bought the apple syrup online and got some apple sourz liqueur last time I was shopping so that I could make these. I thought I'd have to up the syrup because I'm not one for really strong drinks but I didn't - they were perfect. They need ice though in my opinion! So good but pretty sweet though. I've just realised that I bought granny smith apples to serve a wedge of apple in them and forgot. DOH!

This was dinner on Thursday I think. Roasty sprouts and butternut squash and potatoes with a seitan cutlet. I also made the merciful miso gravy from La Dolce Vegan to go with it. That stuff rocks.

This was another meal from last week that was awesome! The squash was a bit crap - it's one of the most tasteless ones I've ever had. The tofu I just sprayed with braggs and sprinkled it with spices then baked it. The lentils were the star though. I stole the idea of the barefoot contessa and veganised / spiced it up a bit. Recipe at the end of the post.

Lunch last week - blended up chickpeas with some mayo and nori flakes and some sweetcorn added, with a salad of rocket, shredded carrots, cucumber and avocado. The dressing was just some lime juice, soy and wasabi powder. YUM.

And another lunch - miso soup: Veggie stock, soy sauce, lime juice, pak choi, red pepper, tofu, spring onion and miso. really quick but really yummy.

Edit: I forgot the lentils recipe - so here it is:

Spicy lentils
Ingredients:
1 tsp olive oil
1 Small onion, diced
1 clove of garlic, minced
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp oregano
1/2 tsp salt (or to taste - dep on how salty your stock is)
1/4 tsp black pepper
1- 1.5 cups (250 - 375 ml) veggie stock
1 medium carrot, diced
125g green puy lentils
1 tbsp tomato puree
1 tbsp cider vinegar

Method:
Heat the oil in a pan and saute the onion for a few minutes. Add the garlic and spices and cook for about a minute.

Add the lentils, carrot and about a cup of stock and stir well. Cover and cook for about 20 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the lentils are cooked. Add more stock if the pan goes dry at any time. If at the end of the 20 mins there's stock un-absorbed, turn up the heat and cook it uncovered a few minutes till most of it's absorbed.

Stir in the tomato puree/paste and vinegar and then serve.

This makes 2-4 servings, depending on how big you want the portions to be.

That's all for now folks. Enjoy what's left of your weekend.

Laterz
xXx

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

2010-01-02T03:48:00.000-08:00

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So how was everyone's new year's eve? How did you celebrate? My friend came over, we had a couple of cosmopolitans, some crisps and watched Police Academy, Goonies and Spaceballs (<3 80s movies!). I managed to stay awake till Pizza the Hut ate himself but was dozing off before midnight. Luckily my friend set her alarm so we could watch the countdown. We cheers'd, hugged, said happy new year then went to sleep. hahaha.

New Year's Day was my veganniversary - 2 glorious years! Last year I baked some blondies to celebrate but I wasn't really in the mood yesterday so I just had leftover chocolate log from xmas! hahah. Happy veganniversary to anyone else who celebrated yesterday too, I know there's a few of us!

Onto the food pics. I don't have any from chrimbo - I forgot to take my memory card with me and now I can't find the cable to get the pics off my camera, DOH! So instead, here are some from Wednesday. We went down to Brighton for the day and had dinner in Terre a Terre. My bro let me take some pics on his iPhone..... The food was amazing, even better than last time!

We started with a plate of the Lavash Tanoor (fried lavash bread with baba ganoush) that we shared between us but I didn't get a pic.

This was my bro's dinner - a rosti with spinach and cheese and an egg on it.

Lara's (my bro's girlfriend) - Saltimbocca, which was mushrooms and polenta I think.

My mum's - she had the Tandoori Tattie (the tofu one). It was really yummy, I'm having that next time!

And mine (my dad had the same) - The Sodden Socca - chickpea pancakes with a couple of different sauces, very yum.

OK back on to my food. For xmas, my awesome bro and his awesome girlfriend got me a waffle maker!! SQUEEEEEEEEE!!!! Here it is, in its shiny new glory!

Inside shot....

Well obviously I need practice folks! I used the first waffle recipe in Vegan brunch, I had to sub a couple of things that I didn't have. But I followed the salt and baking powder etc proportions correctly but I found the batter way too salty. The first batch, I obviously didn't put enough batter on - as you can see.

But the second batch, not only did I forget to re-oil the plates but I put too much in and resulted in this disaster. :-(

So I need to keep playing around with batters and amounts. Like I say they were a little salty but once I covered them in mango sauce (whizzed up frozen mango, soya cream and golden syrup) they were not bad at all!

Last night's dinner was seitan. I cleared out my little freezer drawer the other day to make room for ice and I found a seitan sausage, so I defrosted it. I had it with some roasted veg - peppers, onions and asparagus - cuz that's what I had in the fridge. And some soft polenta. YUM.

And dinner another night - noodles with mushrooms, bok choy and smoked tofu. Quick, simple and yummy.

That's it for now, hopefully I'll have more successful waffle pics next time!

Laterz
xXx

Snow is fallin' all around me....

2009-12-24T04:51:00.000-08:00

.... OK the snowing stopped, but you gotta love a bit of Shaky at Chrimbo!

It's Christmas Eve - YAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!! I love Christmas and I'm in the process of making the food for tonight and getting the flat ready for my friends to come round before we go out!

So onto the food pics. I dug out my battered old breville sandwich toaster the other day to make this awesome sarnie, I called it pizza toasted sarnie, because it really was pizza-y! That's mozarella cheezly, tomatoes, black pepper and dried oregano. YUMMO.

Gooey cheezly - the only way I can eat vegan cheese - melted to oblivion!

I believe I mentioned cupcakes last time.... here they are. My best friend's husband turned 30 this week so I made these to celebrate. VCTOtW Golden Vanilla cupcakes that I added some chocolate chips and a bit of mint extract to. The icing is just a basic chocolate buttercream that I also added mint extract to.

And here - more cheezly. This was disgustingly trashy and freakin awesome. I made mac & noochy cheeze sauce then put some breadcrumbs on top and put it under the grill a few minutes. Then I added some bacos and cheezly and gave a couple more minutes under the grill. Trashy comfort food at it's best.

This was gonna be dinner for me and my friends on monday but they both got stuck in those ridiculous traffic jams coming home from work and didn't get to mine at all, so I had leftovers the next day. It was these nuggets that I made from black eyed beans and barley then coated in cornmeal and fried (probably what gave me acid reflux attack - haha oops!). I'm working on the recipe still and I'm going to bake them next time to be safe, but they were almost there.

The next day was pretty miserable because of the afore-mentioned acid reflux pain. All I could face cooking and eating was soup, so I chunked up an onion, a big parsnip and about 5 big carrots, the stalks of a bunch of coriander leaves and cooked them in stock for 20 mins. Then I added some soymilk and the leaves of the coriander and blended. It was yummy.

And a sneak peak of tonight's xmas eve foodz - peanut butter krispie balls (hee hee). There's tonnes of recipes out there and someone put some they'd made on their blog last week (I've forgotten who and didn't bookmark it so whoever you are - sorry!) and they looked so good I knew I had to have a go. So I mixed up peanut butter, rice krispies and some other stuff and rolled into balls (hee hee) then put a big old blob of melted choccie on top. I'll post the recipe next time.

I've also got some fudge in the fridge that doesn't appear to be setting up, even though I followed the recipe to a T! if it hasn't set in the next hour I'm going to have to try and salvage it - will report back next time!!

So as Shaky says "ooooh ooooooooh oooooh ooooh oooh oooooohh - shooby dooby dooby doo wop....!" Wait no sorry, "I mean Merry Christmas Everyone!!" and I'll see ya in 2010!

Laterz
xXx

When the Snowman brings the snow, well he just might like to know.....

2009-12-18T03:06:00.000-08:00

HE PUT A GREAT BIG SMILE ON SOMEBODY'S FAAAAACCEE!!

Woo it's almost Christmas AND I woke up this morning to a lovely layer of snow over my balcony! GREAT BIG SMILE MR SNOWMAN!! I'm choosing to ignore the horrible 2 minute car journey to the gym this morning, yes I am!

Thought I'd start off the food pics with a pretty one - cookies!! I knew I wanted to make some cookies for me & my friends for after dinner last night because I've been dying to make something from Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar. I settled on the Ginger & Macadamia drop cookies because I had all the ingredients in the cupboard - but only because for some unknown reason, the other day when I was in the supermarket I bought macadamias on an impulse!

These were so good and my friends loved them too. It's a good thing I only made a half batch because we ate too many! hee hee.

Here's dinner the other day. I mixed together some soy sauce, maple syrup, spices, lime juice and a bit of olive oil and cooked a piece of tempeh in it. It was yum! I had it with some corn/cucumber salsa, avocado chunks, some peppers and onions cooked up with spices and some tomato puree and some basmati rice.

I struggled to get a good pic of this - miso soup that I threw together for lunch one day when I just needed something light. Miso, veggie stock, spring onions, coriander leaves, yellow pepper and tofu. yum & quick!

Ooh now these were really good! Giada de Laurentis made these stuffed portabellas on TV the other day and I decided to do something similar. I crumbled up some tempeh and sauteed it with an onion and some sausagey spices and herbs. Then I mixed together some fresh thyme, parsley and breadcrumbs. Grilled the mushroom for 5 mins on each side then filled it with the tempeh and then breadcrumb mix. Then topped with cheezly mozarella. YUM. I just had some steamed grean & edamame beans on the side.

This is a recipe I'm working on. I have the icing perfect and the spices but I need to work on a few bits with cupcakes. Stay tuned...!

The view from my flat this morning! :-)

My balcony....

And my christmas tree! I even managed to get the pic when it was snowing outside! I should have taken one at night really though, cuz it looks prettier in the dark.

I promise one more post before chrimbo and next time - there will be cupcakes!

Laterz
xXx

Malta Foodz

2009-12-11T08:36:00.000-08:00

Hi all, I'm back. Ok you got me I been back since Sunday, but better late than never eh? Malta was awesome, we had beauty treatments, walked by the sea, took an open top bus tour and ate lots of foodz.

Starting with the plane journey there. I was pleasantly surprised with the vegan meal - as gross as it looked, it was actually not so bad! It was veggies in a tomato sauce with rice, fruit salad and a roll. The fruit salad was really good, sometimes they're dry but it wasn't at all.

The first night we'd planned to go to the restaurant in the hotel but it was shut for a private function. So we walked (in the rain!) till we found a restaurant. We settled for an italian place, because almost every restaurant in Malta is Italian! They had a vegan option though anyway, a veggie pizza, so that's what I had.

The second night we made it to the restaurant in the hotel but I forgot my camera. Don't worry though, we went back, it was that good! So there are some pics in a bit.

Night 3 and we went to a tex mex place and were disappointed. We both had the veggie burrito and it was kinda bland and a bit sickly. The rice was good though and my mojito was awesome.

On the friday we had our beauty treatments and cuz the weather sucked, we ordered a film and went to the local supermarket to buy stuff for a bed picnic. The local supermarket was pretty good, I managed to get soymilk, soy yoghurts, alpro chocolate desserts and vegan butter!

One of the things we got for our picnic was this Bigilla. It's a bean pate made with Tic Beans - something I've never heard of before. It was really tasty, I have no idea what herbs & spices were in it though.

The spread - wholewheat crostinis, local hummus, Bigilla, Kinnie (the Maltese local drink, which I grew to love), sherbet fountain and Crix which are pb flavoured crisps! Basically they're peanut butter & cornmeal, fried. Good stuff but sickly so I could only eat a few.

And lastly, the meal on our last night at the hotel restaurant. It's an awesome restaurant and if you ever go to malta, I would recommend paying a visit to the Palace Hotel in Sliema and going to the TemptAsian. It has all different Asian cuisines on the menu and I just ordered a bunch of vegan stuff for me & mum. We got:

Miso Soup

Yaki Soba Noodles

Vietnemese style sushi (rice paper rolls with veggies and tofu)

Tempura veggies (SO good)

f
And schzezuan aubergin - this stuff was seriously so yummy! We had it both times we went there.

I didn't get a pic of the plane meal on the way home, it was pretty boring pasta in tomato sauce!

Anyway, I think my muffins are about down so I'm off now - pix next time.

Laterz
xXx

Camera clearance and a crap tonne of tofu!

2009-11-30T08:03:00.000-08:00

This time tomorrow - I'll be in Malta!! WOOO! Mummy Alien and Me are flying out tomorrow for 4 nights in a gorgeous hotel and I'm SOOOO excited. Here's hoping it doesn't rain.

So I had to clear out my camera and found a tonne of old pics but most were so boring, I deleted them. So here are the ones that made the cut.

My new favourite thing to do with polenta - tomato polenta! So easy and quick (recipe at end although a monkey could probably work it out really it's so easy!). Firstly with black bean/sweetcorn/cucumber salsa and roasted butternut squash.

Is it me or does it look kinda like Jabba the Hut??

So good I had it again the next night. And the squash (just toss it in oil and curry powder and bake at 200C for 20 mins - delish!). With spinach and smoked tofu. There's a lot of pics with that tofu (Taifun smoked tofu with almonds and sesame seeds) in this post! Now they sell it at waitrose, I have it a lot. It's sooo good.

Tofu again! With giant wholewheat couscous that I just cooked in veggie stock. The beany thing is my take on pepperonata that I saw Rachael Ray making on TV. I used onions, peppers and tomato puree, garlic and a good dose of chipotles in adobo sauce. I had some butter beans in the fridge to use up so I added those too. Spicy yum.

A rarity - salad! I don't really have salad that often as I find it so boring but this was good. I had some cabbage left so I made some coleslaw. Cabbage, carrot - no onion. Also I only used 1 tsp of plamil mayo and about 2 tbsp of soya yoghurt to make it a bit lighter. I also added some mustard, it rocked. buried under it are butter beans, yellow pepper, cucumber and baby spinach. Oh and there's that tofu again!

This is what most of my Sunday dinners have looked like lately - I love me some TVP chunks!! Cooked on a low oven (150C) slow (about 1.5-2 hrs) with stock, veggies and red wine. I put it in the oven before I go to the gym and it's ready after body pump and SO good. With lots of mash and a flatbread (I had dough in the freezer from the flatbreads I made in the last post).

This was brunch last weekend. I made these TVP sausage patties (I actually only ate 1 in the end they were pretty filling). I've been working on making these without using vital wheat gluten and so far I haven't got it quite right! They taste awesome but still are a bit too soft. ah well, here they are with tofu scramble and a coffee chip muffin (recipe from Vegan Brunch - awesome!!!) and coffee. I love weekends!

Oh and big shocker - there's that tofu again!! hahaha, with rice that I cooked in stock and herbs and threw some roasted squash into, with a side of broccoli.

That's it until I'm back from Malta, when I will also catch up with everyone's blogs (I been bad at that lately :( - sorry!!).

Oh right, except that polenta recipe right....

Per person:
1 cup (250ml) veggie stock (mine looks dark in the pic cuz I use Vecon, which makes it dark)
1/4 cup (40g) polenta
1 plum tomato, deseeded and chopped fine
1 tsp vegan butter
1 tbsp nutritional yeast flakes
salt & pepper to taste

Method:
Bring the stock to the boil and then turn down slightly and add the polenta in a slow steady stream, whisking all the time. Keep whisking for a minute or so until most of the lumps are gone (a few are ok).

Turn the heat down to medium and throw in the chopped tomato. Cook, whisking occasionally, for 3-5 minutes or until cooked. The tomato will mostly break down which is awesome!

After the 3 mins are up, turn of the heat, add the butter, nooch and season to taste. Eat asap before it starts setting up on ya!

See ya next time, with pictures of (probably really dodgy) vegan airplane food - if they get it right!!

Laterz
xXx

You know what I say when I feel like swearing? Fudge!

2009-11-20T07:17:00.000-08:00

Been a bad blogger again haven't I!! Well I won't bore you with yakety yak, I'll just get on with pics of some of my recent eats. Starting with Wednesday night's dinner: Roasted tofu and stuffing balls (just packet mix), steamed cabbage, mash and roasty carrots. Sunday lunch on a wednesday night, perfect!

This was a really quick meal. I just sprayed each side of some tofu triangles with a bit of low sodium soy sauce then rubbed some 5 spice powder in and baked it for 30 mins, flipping once. The noodles were just straight to wok rice noodles, red peppers, sliced up mange touts and carrots. I made a sauce with a little peanut butter, lemon juice, soy and 5 spice. Really quick and tasty.

This one took a bit longer, but not that much. I was in the mood for moroccan-inspired foodz. So I made a veggie tagine that had all sorts in: tofu, courgettes, red peppers, onions, brown lentils, tomatoes, apricots, spices and a bit of agave. The couscous was simple - veggie stock, lemon zest and raisins.

But the real star were the flatbreads that I made to go with them. I just eyeballed everything so don't have a recipe really but next time I'll write it down so I can post it.

This was another random dinner. I was not feeling all that inspired and hadn't been food shopping so I just pulled out whatever was in the fridge and that was basically onions, mushrooms and peas! I cooked them up and added some cashew cream (I just whizzed up some cashews and water until they were as smoothe as my processor would get them) and a tonne of nooch. On wholewheat spaghetti with some smoked tofu on the side. Not bad for an uninspired night.

Lastly, last Friday was my dad's birthday and I decided to make cupcakes from a different book than vegan cupcakes take over the world. No disrespect to that book, it's probably my favourite book ever, I just wanted something different. So I made the caramel apple spice cupcakes with penuche frosting from Veganomicon. I'm glad I did cuz they were really REALLY good!!

I found the frosting a bit hard to work with as it set up pretty quick but I got it on as good as I can. So they were not perfect - but it is home cooking after all - not bakery perfection.

The frosting made loads and it was super sweet so I didn't want to pile it all on. I really only used about a third of it on the cupcakes (which I only got 11 out of, despite it saying there'd probably be leftover batter - I guess I filled the cases too much!).

So I figured that instead of freezing yet another load of leftover frosting I'd make into fudge, as it was setting up that way already anyway. So I stired in about 1/3 cup of creamy peanut butter over a low heat to get it to mix, then put it into a plastic food box and left it to set at room temp. Once set (an hr or so later) I cut it into chunks. It was SOOOOO YUMMYYYY!!! For realz. My friends and I ate some of it with our drinks before we went out Friday night.

If you have a go at this, you might want to refrigerate it when you're done pigging out (trust me it's sweet so unless you can tolerate a crap tonne of sugar, you won't be able to eat that much of it in one sitting!). It will stay in shape at room temp but melts a little.

That's all for now, I'll try and not leave it so long next time!

Laterz
xXx

(PS: Post title inspired by this scene in Supernatural. Hehe I Love Dean!!)

Bad MoFo!

2009-11-10T11:58:00.000-08:00

So I missed the last couple of days of MoFo and I haven't blogged for two weeks!! Gah, sorry. But I do have a recipe to make up for it, even if it isn't my own!

I'll jump right in with today's dinner. I bought some giant wholewheat couscous and I tried it out today - it's good stuff! I sauteed some mushrooms and shallots with some garlic. I crushed up some cumin & coriander seeds and added those along with about 1/2 a tsp of chipotles in adobo sauce (I got a tin in my PPK swap and I whizzed them up in my food processor so I could store it in the fridge and use them as a paste). I also added a teeny bit of liquid smoke to accentuate the smoky flavour. Good stuff. To go with it was some steamed cabbage and some baked tofu that I just sprayed with Braggs and rubbed with some spices (just a shop bought chicken seasoning!). Also some bread - I will come back to that bread!

Sunday I had a big crockpot full of chickpeas I'd put on before I went to bed Saturday night so I knew the soup I wanted to make was the Bodacious Bean & Barley Soup from Garden of Vegan - I love that soup so much.

With it, I made Rachel Allen's Wholewheat Oat & Seed Bread. I haven't got a cut pic (aside from a not great one in the first pic) but there's still some left so maybe you'll see it in the next post.

OK so this recipe isn't mine, it's Rachel Allen's. But I'm posting it here because it was on her TV programme and isn't in any of her books apparently. Also, for some weird reason UKTV food haven't put the recipe on the website, which is unusual. Rachel Allen is the shizzle - and so is this bread, so here it is. It's so easy you gotta give it a go. It's really REALLY good!! No kneading people - NO KNEADING!!!

Ingredients:
350ml warm water
1 table spoon of agave nectar (Rachel used honey), or golden syrup or black treacle.
7g dried yeast (about 1.5 tsp)
200 g wholemeal flour
75g plain flour
75g mixed seeds (I used a combo of sesame, linseed and pumpkin seeds)
50g oats
25 g bran (I used wheat bran)
1 tsp salt
1 tablespoon sunflower oil

Method:
Grease a 1kg/2lb loaf tin. Preheat oven to 200 degrees centigrade (185-190 for fan ovens).

Measure 100ml of warm water and add the agave. Stir and add the yeast, stir again then leave for a few minutes until the yeast begins to work (you want to see a cm or so of bubbles on top of the water).

While waiting for the yeast to work mix all the dry ingredients into a bowl and mix well with your hands. When yeast is ready top it up with the other 250mls of warm water and add the sunflower oil. Stir, then make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients and add most of the liquid. Using your fingers bring it all together, it needs to be quite ‘sloppy’. It should look like you need to add more flour - but you don't!! (Depending on how the mix comes together, add more of the liquid if needed. If all the liquid is used and it’s still not sloppy, add a further 50-75mls of warm water - I had to add more.)

Empty into the loaf tin, give a little shake to even out then with a knife, score down the length of the loaf in the centre (apparently this prevents it cracking). If you like, sprinkle more mixed seeds on the top (I didn't), cover with a clean tea towel then leave in a warm (not hot) place to rise. This takes between 10 & 30 mins. Once risen to the top of the tin, place in the mid to lower part of the preheated oven and bake for approximately one hour.

Take it out of the oven 5-10 to mins before the hour is up and take it out of the tin. Place back in the oven out of the tin for the other 5 to 10 mins to slightly crisp the sides and base. Once you can tap it on the sides and base and it sounds hollow… it’s ready.

Friday night's dinner and I wanted chips. I was so tempted to stop at the chippy but I wanted to stick to my diet so I resisted. So I made oven chips instead and they are just as good as deep fried ones but way healthier. I just cut the potato up into chips, sprayed them with a little olive oil and then baked them at 200C for about 30 minutes, flipping once. They stuck a little because I didn't add too much oil but not enough to be an issue. Once done, give them a good shake of sea salt. YUM. I had some smoked tofu and mushy peas with them.

Oh and maybe most importantly - chip butty!! Loads of ketchup. Good stuff.

Laterz
xXx

Vegan MoFo: I pea'd on the floor!!!

2009-10-27T11:08:00.000-07:00

:-( They fell out ma over-stuffed fridge!!!

I wish I'd taken a pic of last night's tea. I had mum & dad round and made us a chilli with cornbread muffins. Ah well. Tonight's was kind of mish-mash, cuz I didn't really know what I fancied.

Pasta with mushroom sauce, roasted sprouts and butternut squash and some Taifun smoked tofu with herbs and sunflower seeds (I <3 that stuff!!).

Maybe tomorrow i'll be more inspired!

Laterz
xXx

Vegan MoFo: Sunday foodz and an ouch!

2009-10-25T11:49:00.000-07:00

I am clumsy bint today. I caught my stupid fake nail in a drawer when I was tidying up and bent the fucker back. I think some of my real nail has come away from the nailbed, i just don't know how far down because stupid fakey is still attached. But there was blood. And pain. And a LOT of swearing.

Anyway, at least I had dinner to make feel better. I made another stew but this time I was inspired by the Barefoot Contessa's beef bourginon. So it's just onions, button mushrooms, soy chunks, stock, red wine and thyme. I also added peas cuz I <3 them.

With lots of mashed potato. YUM YUM YUM. So good.

For lunch I really wasn't all that hungry but I did have both an avocado and some tortillas in the fridge that were past their best. So I chopped up the tortillas and baked them and made some guac. And then I chomped them while watching last night's Strictly Come Dancing on the iPlayer (my stupid sky signal went out again last night). Jo is gone, at last!! hurrah. She was sweet but effin rubbish!

Did you remember to put your clocks back?? I didn't so when I was lying in bed this morn waiting for the church bells to start going off it took a minute to realise that it was actually almost 9am not 10am!! doh.

oh and Jojo - I edited my last post for you to add the soup recipe.

Laterz
xXx

Vegan MoFo: Cauliflower Cheeze....

2009-10-24T11:14:00.000-07:00

...soup?

I have this block of strong cheddar sheeze and it's open so I need to use it up. I don't like the texture of it so sandwiches are out and the damn stuff doesn't melt, so it's no good for regular cauli-cheeze. So when I saw Rachel Allen make cauliflower and cheddar soup I thought I'd rip her off!

I made some changes, obviously, but more than just veganising it. She started with a bechamel sauce, added cheese and then boiled the cauliflower in stock and blended it all together.

For mine, I roasted a cauliflower, onion and some garlic first, the put it in cold stock, brought it to the boil and cooked it 5 minutes. Then added a little soymilk, some instant potato granules and my sheeze and blended it.

It was not bad. The taste of the sheeze was pretty strong but it was good. Although I doubt it'll be making a regular appearance Chez Alien! However, if you're a faux cheese lover and you want the recipe, let me know and I'll post it.

I made some breadsticks to go with it. They were awesome.

And brekkie this morning was pancakes and berry syrup, as I didn't have any maple syrup. I made common old pancakes but I added in some cocoa, next time I'd add more, but it was still good. For the syrup, I chucked some frozen fruit, the juice of an orange, a tiny bit of sugar and a dash of cinnamon in a pan and boiled it up, then pushed it through a seive. It was pretty tart, but I liked that with the chocolatey pancakes.

OK, I'm off, it's time for Strictly Come Dancing!!

Laterz
xXx

For Jojo - the soup recipe

Ingredients:
1 head of cauliflower
1 small onion

1-2 fat cloves of garlic

2 cups of veggie stock

1/2 cup soymilk

1/2 cup cheddar sheese
1/4 cup instant potato (optional to thicken the soup)

salt & pepper

Method:
Cut the cauliflower into florets, cut the onion into wedges and roast both in a little bit of olive oil (i use a spray bottle) along with the garlic still in their skins, for about 20 minutes at 180C, until the edges are lightly browned.

Tip the veggies into a pot and add the (cold) stock and a pinch of salt & pepper. Bring to the boil, cover and then simmer for 5 minutes.

Add the sheese, potato granules (it might go a bit lumpy but that's ok) and soymilk and pour into a blender. Blend until completely smooth then check seasoning. Pour back into pan and heat gently if needed.

Vegan MoFo: Friday night takeaway

2009-10-23T12:57:00.000-07:00

Instead of the old grease-laden takeaway tonight, I thought I'd make my own chinese meal but with a few cheats.

Starting with a tin of granose mock duck. Which looks so gross out the tin, but drain it and bake for 15 minutes and it looks scarily like crispy duck.....

With some shop-bought hoisin (check the label for honey!!), cucumber and spring onions.

And I couldn't find the pancakes so I used iceberg leaves instead. I kind of prefer them anyway, gives nice crunch.

I had another go at making singapore noodles. I cheated and used straight to wok rice noodles (couldn't be arsed to wait 20 minutes for soaking the dried ones!). I stir fried some strips of tofu, red pepper, spring onion, carrot and a clove of garlic. Then threw in the noodles, some curry powder, extra turmeric and 5 spice (not authentic but I love it) and some ground ginger. I left out the chilli because my reflux has been playing up a bit today. Then just sploshed on some soy sauce and they were ready to go. And they were good too!!

Hurrah it's the weekend. Have a great one everybody!

Laterz
xXx

Vegan MoFo: I cooked. And baked!

2009-10-22T11:52:00.000-07:00

I didn't blog yesterday because I didn't have much inspiration. I had leftovers for lunch and dinner and I wasn't sure anyone would a post on the genius of mushy peas - aside from me!

Today though I had a productive day. Cuz aside from watching half the first season of This Life*, I bought a few bits in the supermarket and HURRAH, brussels are available again! I had some roasted with butternut squash and red pepper, with some baked tofu and brown rice that I cooked with some stock and spices and threw some sweetcorn into as well. Yum.

And I made some muffins. I used my basic recipe as a start and added spices, a banana and walnuts to come up with this recipe. They are cooling as we speak and I'm looking forward to having one with a nice cold glass of soymilk.

*I forget how awesome This Life was. Seriously, thursday nights are still not the same and it's been off the air about 12 years! haha.

Oh and Charlotte Hatherley's latest album, New Worlds, came out this week. It is amazing, go buy it!!!

Laterz
xXx

Vegan MoFo: Ya mama says you ugly!

2009-10-20T10:43:00.000-07:00

My poor dinner today and yesterday! They were tasty but goddammit they were UGLEEEE! Like today's lentil soup.....

And yesterday's pasta bake. Pasta bake has potential to be pretty but somehow all the pix I got made it look fugly.

Luckily for them they tasted good and hurrah for leftovers.

Laterz
xXx

Vegan MoFo: Brighton up your day!

2009-10-19T06:31:00.000-07:00

haha Brighton Pier - I stole your 'genius' catchphrase!

Can't believe it's Monday already - where are the weeks going??

Yesterday, my friend and I headed down to Brighton for another PPK meet up. We went to the George, which is a veggie pub and has plenty of vegan options on the menu. I went for the chicken style burger with vegan cheese & bacon. Normally I am not a lover of fake meats (especially bacon) or cheese but this burger was really really good. And the cheese tasted scarily real.

We asked what brand they used and they said it was redwoods. Now we just have to work out which variety!

Here's my burger, with fries.

Close up of the burger!

We walked around and went to a few shops and then got cake from the Infinity Cafe to take down and eat on the beach. I got a slice of the banana chocolate chip cake and have to admit, I was disappointed. It was really dense and seemed a bit undercooked. And they were really stingy with the frosting. A bit more would have made it much better.

It was a really fun day and I love Brighton all over again.

Laterz
xXx

Vegan MoFo: Weekend Foodz

2009-10-17T11:20:00.000-07:00

Well Friday & Saturday's anyway. I forgot to take a pic of the dinner I made my friend and I last night. But I did get one of the leftovers that I had for lunch today. Tofu, bean and pepper enchiladas with spicy rice and guacamole.

I put one of my home-grown chillis in the enchiladas. These suckas are hot, I didn't even use half of it!!

And dessert was strawberry mousse. Basically a punnet of strawberries, whizzed up and seived and then blended with a package of firm silken tofu, vanilla extract and agave nectar. Not bad.

And then today's dinner - Mac N Cheeze. I made a noochy sauce and added some peas and sweetcorn added. Then I put some breadcrumbs and some strong cheddar sheese on top and grilled it for 5 minutes. It was pretty good and satisfied the craving.

I'm now off to channel surf. I finished season 4 of Gilmore Girls (in 2 days, I'm that sad) and now have nothing to watch. Rory & Dean, Lorelai & Luke - OMG - I need season 5!!! (PS: I know I'm like 5 years behind, but do not give me spoilers please - I don't want to know!!!)

Laterz
xXx

Vegan MoFo: Baking Fail!

2009-10-16T11:30:00.000-07:00

I am sad, I had to throw away cake!! I put in too much baking soda! Boo. I was on auto-pilot and thought I was making muffins, not cake. Dang.

Ah well, I’m not giving up on this recipe, it has potential.

Laterz
xXx

Vegan MoFo: Stew & Beans I Guess

2009-10-15T13:51:00.000-07:00

I dunno where that phrase came from but every time we had stew or casserole growing up, my Dad would, without fail at some point, say "Stew & beans I guess!"

Those stews were a little different though, because of the meat/ick factor. So today I was totally in the mood for a hearty, delicious casserole and I decided to put it in the oven on a low heat and leave until I got back from my body combat* class. I used TVP chunks, potatoes, carrots, green beans, onion, some stock, tomato puree and some dried herbs.

When I got back from the gym it'd had about 2 hours in a really low (about 125C) oven. I put it on a low heat on the hob, added som cooked butterbeans and peas and left it 5 minutes to heat through. It was ssoooo good.

I've never cooked with TVP chunks before. I bought them to make the Cholent recipe in Veganomicon that's been calling me for ages (still haven't got round to that yet, but I will!). They go a bit chewy but not unpleasant at all, and I dunno what you guys thinks, but I think they look scarily like beef chunks!!

And of course - THE best thing about stews..... loads of thin gravy and soaking bread in it at the end till it goes mushy. Awesome.

*Body Combat is AWESOME, not as fun as Jam but really really good nonetheless. And good for getting out some agression too. Feckin hard though, I sweated a lot!! I know you wanted to know that! hahaha.

Oh and go buy Shakira's new album, it is awesome.

Laterz
xXx

Vegan MoFo: Roasted veggie soup

2009-10-14T12:17:00.000-07:00

I've just got back from another awesome Body Jam class and I'm a bit gross but thought I'd blog before I hit the shower. Seriously guys, I think I'm hooked. I might not be so happy tomorrow night when I get back from my first Body Combat class - eek!!

Tonight's dinner was soup and it was really really awesome. I had this idea to roast some tomatoes first but as I was chopping them I thought why not roast up some other veggies too. So I did.

I roasted up some tomatoes, onion, aubergine and courgette and a couple of cloves of garlic in just a tiny bit of olive oil. 200C for 25 minutes and they were perfect.

In the meantime I cooked 1/4 cup of brown rice in about 2 cups of water, with a veggie stock cube, a tbsp of tomato puree and some dried herbs & paprika. Oh and a bit of fresh chilli. It needed a bit more water than that as I was cooking it.

Then I sqeezed the garlic cloves out of their papers and put them in a jug with the other veggies and blended them and some hot water with my stick blender. This went into the rice along some more water until I got it the consistency I liked. Then just salt & pepper till it tasted right, et voila!

It made 3 portions that looked a little small but the brown rice makes it really filling!

I'm off to shower my stanky self!

Laterz
xXx

Vegan MoFo: Munchkin(pumpkin)Land

2009-10-13T09:18:00.000-07:00

I was in the supermarket the other day and saw these munchkin pumpkins. They were too cute to ignore (and only £1 each), so I bought one. I bought this one cuz it was pretty, but they did have regular orange ones too.

I decided to bake it then stuff it. So that's what I did, 200C for about 35 minutes and it was soft. I carefully cut off the top and scooped out the flesh, discarding the seeds. I mixed the pumpkin flesh with a mixture of sauteed veg, brown rice, crumbled steamed tempeh and asian inspired flavours like soy sauce, lime juice, chilli and fresh coriander leaves. The stuffing made enough for 2 portions, so the rest is still in the fridge.

It was nice but nothing special so I didn't bother with the recipe here, you could probably do better, and so could I if I tried again.

It was pretty though.

Laterz

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Vegan Mofo: 3 cheers for......

2009-10-12T05:56:00.000-07:00

..... Alphabetti spaghetti!!

Just a daft little post from me today with a pic of today's lunch. I love spaghetti on toast and I hate hate HATE baked beans. So this is for all the baked bean haters out there! And yay for alphabetti spaghetti - bringing out the 8 year old in spag-lovers everywhere!!

MOFO! (It took me longer to find the F than it did to scarf this!)

Laterz
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Vegan MoFo: Wedding Foodz

2009-10-11T05:39:00.000-07:00

Yesterday my best friend got married. It was a beautiful day, the bride looked amazing, the venue was absolutely stunning, the weather was great, the ceremony was gorgeous and the food was ace!!

I was a bridesmaid and if your're a facebook friend, look out for the pix later today!

My dinner - the starter. This was a tomato terrine, I think. It was lovely and spicey and it had avocado on the top. Hell yeah. So pretty isn't it!!

After that was a blackcurrant & cassis sorbet

The main was an artichoke with spinach and mushrooms and sun-dried tomatoes. It was sooo good.

Pudding was a raspberry vegan panacotta. This was SO goood! I'm gonna have to try and recreate it!

Here's a pic of the cake. OK it wasn't vegan so I couldn't have any but it was so pretty. With white chocolate shavings all around it.

For me and two wheat intolerant guests, I made some cupcakes. Chocolate spelt cupcakes with orange frosting.

The night before the wedding, after the rehearsal, we went for dinner and I had bruschetta to start which was amazing.

I didn't fancy veganizing any of the pastas/pizza items on the menu so I asked them to do me a salad. They came up with this and it was great, roasted aubergine, courgette, peppers, sun-dried tomatoes and a balsamic dressing over salad leaves. It really was good!

Bonus pic, the bride and us 3 bridesmaids. Hair & make up done yesterday morning but still in the PJs that the bride bought us for the morning of the wedding!

Laterz
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Vegan MoFo: Soup & lazy breadsticks

2009-10-08T11:32:00.000-07:00

I really couldn't think of anything I wanted for dinner tonight so after staring into the fridge I found leftover mushrooms, soy cream and sweetcorn. So I made soup.

And twisty breadsticks. It was yummy.

I don't have a recipe for the soup, I just chucked stuff in the pot, but I do have one for the breadsticks. They're lazy breadsticks - the best kind! This makes 4 breadsticks.

Ingredients:
1 cup of plain flour
1 sachet of fast action yeast
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp olive oil
1/2 tsp agave nectar
1/2 cup warm water

Method:
Mix together dry ingredients and then mix together wet and pour into the dry. Mix until combined and knead until combined (about 30 seconds, told you they were lazy!). Add more flour if too wet or more water if too dry.

Divide into 4 and roll into sausages then twist. Put on a baking tray and spray with a little oil

Bake at 200C/400F for 15 minutes or until just starting to brown and they sound hollow when you tap the bottom.

I'm off to watch gilmore girls and resist the urge to make another microwave mug cake!!

Laterz
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Vegan MoFo: The dumbass, the crap photots and the cake

2009-10-07T12:34:00.000-07:00

The dumbass would be me! I had a tonne of photos on my camera of today's dinner and the cake that this post is about but when I put the memory card back in to take another pic, I somehow managed to delete everything else off my camera!!! DUMBASS. Oh well, the gist is this....

I got back from body jam* tonight and felt saucy and cuz dinner was quite low calorie I went with it. I decided to make my own version up of the differeent microwave mug cake recipes that's going round t'internet and this is what I came up with. I tried mixing sugar and cocoa and sprinkling it on top then adding hot water in the hope of seeing some nice sauce appear on my cake, but was disappointed.

That is until I got to the bottom of the mug and found there was a bit of sauce - squee! However, it was that discovery that lead to me taking out the memory card and... oh you know the rest! boo.

So here are a couple of hella shite pics of my microwave choccy cake, I had some soya cream on it too, that's what the white gunk is!

Sorry! But to make up for my stupidity, here is the recipe. I won't lie and tell you "this is the greatest cake you'll ever eat like OMG!" But for a cure to a chocolate craving that takes less than 10 minutes to prepare, cook and wash up, it's pretty good.

Ingredients:
1/4 cup (4 tbsp) of flour (I used white spelt)
1 tsp of cocoa powder
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp baking soda
pinch salt
1/4 tsp coffee granules (optional)
3 tbsp of non-dairy milk
1/8 tsp cider or white wine vinegar
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp rapeseed (canola) oil
1 tbsp agave nectar or maple syrup

Optional extra:
1 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp cocoa powder
1.5 tbsp hot water

Method:
Stir together your dry stuff in the mug of your choice. Chuck in the wet stuff and mix till combined. Mix together sugar and cocoa powder and sprinkle over the top. Then pour the hot water over the top.

Put on a microwave safe plate (just in case there's spillage), then microwave for 1 minute. Leave it to cool a bit before scoffing or you'll burn your tongue - piggy truffler!!

*Does anyone else do body jam?? I've been a few times now and I LOVE it. It's so much fun, you honestly don't feel like you're exercising until the music stops and you realise you're an un-coordinated sweaty mess! If your gym does Les Mills BTS classes, I recommend you go shake your booty at this one!

Laterz
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Vegan MoFo: And you just had some kind of mushroom and your mind is moving slow!

2009-10-06T10:45:00.000-07:00

OK so I think Jefferson Airplane may have been high when they wrote White Rabbit, and my post is about baby bella mushrooms, not magic ones!! But gimme a break, I don’t know any other songs about mushrooms.

Today was a day like many others where I have no clue what to make for dinner. But luckily I looked into the far depths of my fridge and found me some mushrooms!! So I decided on a stroganoff of sorts. I had some soy yoghurt left and some herbs but no soy sauce, damn. No recipe because it was one of those wonderous things where I just chucked stuff in and hoped for the best. I used mushrooms (duh), an onion, some paprika, thyme, rosemary, garlic powder, sweetcorn, tofu, braggs and some veggie stock. Then added some soya yoghurt at the end and some fresh parsley. Yum yum.

Did you guys see aliens take over my blog yesterday!! Well not exactly but some a-hole hacked it and posted a bunch of crap about Frankfurt!! What’s that about! Sorry if you subscribe by email and got an email full of spam from me!!

One pill makes you largerrrrrr and one pill makes you smallllllll! Gonna be singing that all night!

Laterz
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Vegan MoFo: This bread is bananas. B.A.N.A.N.A.S!

2009-10-04T12:05:00.000-07:00

One thing I've noticed from reading some old posts is that I make stuff and then forget to go back and perfect the recipe if I don't get it right. So I'm revisiting some recipes during MoFo and starting with some banana bread that wasn't so perfect the first time round.

I used pecans instead of hazelnuts this time. I left some of the bananas chunky again but pureed some too, I also kicked the spices up a notch. It was WAY better this time, so here's the recipe.

Dry Ingredients:
1 cup (150g) white spelt flour
1 cup/(130g) wholegrain spelt flour
1tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1.5 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp allspice
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp ground ginger
1/2 cup, packed (120g) dark brown sugar
1/2 cup (60g) pecans, chopped. Measure before chopping!
Wet Ingredients:
3 ripe/overripe bananas
1/2 cup (125ml) soya yoghurt
1/2 cup (125ml) unsweetened non-dairy milk
1/4 cup (60ml) rapeseed (canola) oil
1.5 tsp vanilla extract
1 tbsp agave nectar

Method:
Preheat oven to 180C/350F.

Chop pecans and mix together with the other dry ingredients.

Chop the bananas and throw half in with dry ingredients and get them coated in flour. Mash the other half and mix the rest of the wet ingredients in with it.

Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and mix until just combined.

Spray a loaf tin with rapeseed oil and pour the mixture into the tin. Smoothe out and bake for 35 minutes. Then turn the heat down to about 160 and bake for another 25 mins or until a skewer comes out just clean.

Unfortunately my photography skills suck so this is the best cut pic I could get.

Here it is with some pure soya on while it was still warm. (It's also good with a bit of jam on!)

Laterz
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Vegan MoFo: argy bhaji!

2009-10-03T11:10:00.000-07:00

I was bored the other day so I watched Market Kitchen (I have to pretty dang bored to watch that!!) and this dude was making onion bhajis. I had already planned a curry for dinner so thought I'd give them a go, but deep frying them is not good for my diet.

So I decided to make my own up as I went along and to bake them instead and they worked too!! They are really easy to make as well.

Here's the recipe if you want to have a go yourself (good news for gluten free folks, they use chickpea flour!!)

Ingredients:
1-2 tbsp olive oil (plus extra for baking)
1 nice large onion, finely sliced (you need about 2 cups of onion)
1/4 cup (4 tbsp) chickpea (gram) flour
2 tsp rice flour (I used brown rice flour)
1/2 tsp turmeric
1 tsp garam masala or curry powder
1/4 cup (4 tbsp) water

Method:
Preheat the oven to 180C/350F.

Heat the oil over a medium heat and add the onions and a pinch of salt (don't go nuts or it'll overpower the flavour of the bhajis). Cook them for a good 10-15 minutes until they are cooked through and are starting to get golden, just don't burn them.

Transfer the onions to a bowl and dump the other ingredients in. Mix everything well.

Spray a cookie sheet with oil or line with greaseproof paper. Divide the mixure into 4 and spoon it onto the baking sheet. Flatten a little the spray the tops with a teeny bit of oil.

Bake for 10 minutes, then spray a little more oil over them and bake another 5-10 minutes until cooked and starting to get golden.

I served mine with curry and basmati rice. YUM YUM.

Laterz

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Vegan MoFo: Easy Tiger!!

2009-10-02T08:36:00.000-07:00

I know I wrote a post about this when I first started this blog, but goddamit I love tiger bread.

Just look at this magnificent beast! There is no week crap enough, no day full of idiots phoning me, no ailment that can't be soothed somewhat by some freshly baked tiger bread. Well maybe not exactly but in my head today, that's how it goes.

Tiger Tim (take that Henman, I stole your nickname!!) - he is happy with just a bit of pure soya....

But he really shines with a big dollop of chocoreale or spekuloos spread.

But he is not a fussy beast, no. He is just as happy with a generous coating of hummus.

I brought the small loaf - wasn't that restrained of me! And it was still warm, oh happy day. I'm off now to see what I can dig out of my cupboard to put on more tiger bread.

Laterz
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Vegan MoFo Day 1: Muffins – how I love thee!

2009-10-01T01:44:00.000-07:00

Wooooo MoFo!!

Yesterday I was baking muffins and thinking about what to make my first MoFo post about, when it hit me that the answer was staring at me crazily from the cooling rack: Muffins!

I love muffins. LOVE THEM. And anyone that reads this blog will not be surprised by that as they feature pretty regularly. It’s just that they are they are so easy to put together and there are a million and one combinations that you can dream up, with whatever is lurking your pantry.

I don’t even need to get a book out for a recipe anymore as I know the basics off by heart – I just open the cupboard, see what falls out and hits me on the head and pray it’s not dehydrated potato. Although come to think of it, maybe that would be awesome!

I’ve settled upon a basic recipe for muffins that’s a combination of a few I found, god knows where on the interwebs! It is this base that I use for all muffins now and here it is (I always use cups to bake - I didn’t include weights here because different flours and sugars vary in weight):

Dry:
2 cups of flour
1 cup of sugar
1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
Wet:
1 cup of non-dairy milk of your choice *
1 tsp apple cider or white wine vinegar (leave out if using yoghurt)
¼ cup (4 tbsp) light oil (such as rapeseed/canola or sunflower)
1 tsp good vanilla

*you may need more or less milk, depending on your flour / other additives, so star by adding about ¾ of it and add the rest if you need it. If you use gluten free flours, you’ll probably need a fair bit more liquid and you’ll need to add probably 1 tsp of xantham gum if you’re not using pre-mixed GF flour.

Method:
Couldn’t be easier. Mix dry ingredients together in a large bowl. Mix together the wet ingredients and pour into the dry then mix until just combined – don’t overmix. Then put into muffin cups.

This mixture will make around 12 muffins, depending on how high you fill the cups and you need to bake them at 180C/350F for around 20-30 minutes. Cooking time depends on many factors: individual ovens, additives, how high you fill the cups..... etc.So that’s the basics and it’d be a tasty muffin but a freakin boring one!! So jazz it up.....

- Experiment with spices (anywhere from ½ a tsp to 2 tsp, depending on what spices you chuck in there!)
- Throw in some nuts
- .....or dried fruits
- ..... or vegan chocolate chips
- .....or fresh chunked up fruit.....
- ..... or chopped stem ginger
- Replace your non-dairy milk of choice with fruit juice, or coconut milk or chocolate soymilk....
- Replace some of the liquid with vegan yoghurt (I love doing this – it gives the muffins a lovely texture)
- Experiment with different flours (I like to use spelt flour for most baking)
- Replace some of the sugar with maple syrup or agave or brown rice syrup...
- Add some molasses
- Add some wheat or oat bran mixed with a bit of non-dairy milk to your mixture for a healthy bran muffin
- Add a couple of mashed bananas
- Add some peanut butter
- Add some grated lemon zest, or orange, or lime....
- Replace some of the flour with cocoa powder or carob**
- Replace half the flour with cornmeal for yummy corn muffins
- If you make your own nut/soy milk, don’t bin the pulp/okara, chuck some into your muffins!
- Make savoury muffins, add some spices, herbs and nooch! Some grated courgette or carrot or some tinned/frozen sweetcorn are all awesome additions too.

And on and on and on it can go!And a tip – if you’re adding stuff like chocolate chips or fruit... etc, then toss them in with the dry stuff and mix them in well – the coating of flour will stop them sinking to the bottom of the muffin.

And just so this post isn’t pictureless – here are the muffins that inspired this post. I only made half a batch and here is the recipe – I put it on spark so that I can add it into my calorie tracker!

*I would just like to state that I’m not advocating the use of carob in any way, I have nothing but hatred for the stuff but I know some of you like it! Weirdos! ;0) Whoever said carob is the new cocoa was seriously disturbed!!

Laterz
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