The Veggie Patch

Saying farewell......

2010-05-16T20:00:00.001+10:00

As you all know (well those of you who happen to still be reading), it has been a long 6 months since I last posted. I didn't want to leave it so long, but I have had some big decisions to make and much soul searching has been done in regards to my diet and my health.

I won't go into great detail but being unable to to eat beans, lentils, any fruit, limited dairy, limited wholegrains and limited vegetables didn't leave much to eat except rice, sugar, white flour, nuts and seitan. As much as I wanted to I just could not make a totally vegetarian diet work for me. So I have had to sacrifice my my beliefs in order to keep myself healthy.

Do not get me wrong. I still believe that a totally vegetarian (this includes vegan diets) diet is more than sufficient for people to be fit, well and healthy on, it just doesn't work for my body with it's numerous dietary limitations.

I do miss blogging and I miss all of you a lot. I tossed up what to do about writing this post, if I should be honest, how I'd feel about the inevitable judgement for going back on my morals and I thought about starting a whole new blog. But I know that deep down 99% of you have no interest in what I cook these days and while I find some of it delicious, it's more often than not a case of trying to distract myself while choking down something I've tried to disguise and it's hard to blog when you have little enjoyment from what you are putting in your mouth.

Who knows, sometime in the not to distant future I might just come back to blogging. I don't want to make this a goodbye, more of an I hope to see you later.

Thank you so much to you all for reading my blog, leaving me comments and friending me on facebook for those who have. Your support and caring has meant so much to me and kept me battling on diet wise, long after I think I would have given up had I not had such beautiful and wonderful people backing me up.

I hope to see you in the future and I am still here reading most of the blogs I have always read, just a little quieter.

Farewell for now dear friends

Amy

~Vegetation~

Just editing to add that Rhys contacted me and asked for an interview for his blog, so for those of you who are interested in knowing a little more about my reasons for having to give away my vegetarianism you can find it here: Let Them Eat Meat Interview

Hiding Out....

2009-11-17T17:28:00.000+11:00

Hi everyone. I just wanted to apologize for my absence, both here and in commenting on your blogs. My health has hit a bit of a low and I am trying to sort it out, which isn't making for interesting food or much to talk about. I do plan to be back, I just needed to take a little break and focus on improving. Thank you for your understanding and I hope you'll be here when I get back :)

Ashley and Janelle, thank you so much for your blog awards. I am truly honoured. I adore both your blogs.

See you all soon.

Vegetation xxx

Strap yourselves in.....

2009-10-25T14:24:00.000+11:00

This is going to be one heck of a post. I have been unbearably swamped with blogging lately! Not my own....but trying desperately to keep up with everyone else's (thanks Vegan Mofo!) And I've been failing dismally, so if I haven't left a comment in a while, I'm sorry! I am getting there....just really slowly (like slower than snails pace!).

I have also been majorly slack with my blogging. I think I'm having the food blah's again (oh noes!) I really haven't been feeling like much at all. I have been eating though! So here are some of those Summer Eats I promised 2 posts ago......

First up Avocado Potato Salad. This one wasn't from Vegan Brunch and I kind of half copied something off the interwebs and made stuff up as I went. It was nice, but to be honest I'm not sure I actually like avocado on potato (blasphemy I'm sure!). It really made my avocado allergy flare up too which made me sad :(

Then I tried Beetroot Salad. I wish I could remember where I got the recipe for this from because it was yummy! Alas, I can't :( It had beets, carrots, bean shoots and I think some kind of lemony coriander dressing. Even the UnVegettes liked it! I'll have to hunt it down so I can share (the perils of not blogging enough!)

I discovered a link for Shittake Bacon on Miss V's Blog a while ago and decided it would be perfect for a caesary style salad. Sadly I was not a fan of Shittake Bacon, as much as I wanted to be but it looked nice :P

I made some BBQ Seitan Burgers from Vegetarian Times. I left out the Chipotles because I couldn't find smoked Jalapeno's plus I'm a wimp. I threw in 2 Tbsp of Heinz Spicy Red Sauce instead and a little smoked Paprika. I also left out the chilli powder and halved the cumin. They were pretty yummy! I served it up with a quick pasta salad and steamed broccoli.

Last time I went to my Organics Store I found Syndian Burgers in the freezer section. I was super excited. They're pricey but soy free and it's always nice to have something quick and easy you can eat on occasion. They were nice, but I can't say I loved them. Mine doesn't look at all like the one on the website either! This one was the Aussie Burger. Served up with lettuce and some roasted taties. Mmmm taties.

I grabbed a whole heap of fresh tomatoes the other day and decided to whip up Vegan Yum Yums Super Quick Basil Cream Tomato Sauce. I usually use canned tomatoes but the fresh one's are amazing. Served on gluten free spaghetti.

I made the Courico Tacos with Grilled Pineapple Salsa (minus the onion) from Vegan Brunch again. I didn't like them the first time. I thought the spices were over powering. I halved them this time and it was perfect deliciousness!

Kitteh (thanks!) sent me a link to some recipes from Alicia Silverstone's "The Kind Diet" which I have on order. The Bok Choy with Gomashio was really calling to me, plus I finally had a use for the Umeboshi Plum Vinegar that I've had for months and not known what to do with! This was delicious, but next time I'd eat less stems!

Again, mine doesn't look nearly as pretty as hers :( But it was still tasty and that's what counts right?

I made the Southern Fried Tofu from Vegan Vittles after seeing it mentioned on the PPK. I believe this is the recipe here and of course I used chicken style seitan. Mmmm fried yummies!

One night I felt like bourghul. I decided to make a pilaf. I threw in lemon zest, lemon juice, bourghul (bulgur for you overseas folk reading), yellow capsicum, celery, some cooked onion, a few handfuls of spinach, salt and pepper and a whole lot of sumac. It was nice and 2 of the UnVegettes ate a whole plate full, but it needs a little something before I'd post an actual recipe.

Last but not least, yesterday I decided to make some gluten free vanilla cupcakes. I altered a couple of different recipes. They're vegan and they're nice, but to be honest, they came out more like Vanilla Muffins than cupcakes :/ The lemon icing is delicious with them though!

And that is all for today. Phew, if you've made it this far, thanks for reading! I'll see you soon (and I promise, I'll get my intensive reading gear on soon and make it to all your posts!)

Jessy's Most Awesome Mexi-Millet....

2009-10-15T19:31:00.000+11:00

I know I promised summer meals! But it's cold.....and not summery at all here so I'm going to interrupt with this short post to tell you that you absolutely must make Jessy's Spicy Mexi-Millet! Bossy aren't I? But it is seriously fantabulous (yes, I still like to make up words)!!! I made a couple of small changes.

*I put in slightly less than half a cup of beans because I don't think I could handle that many.

*I used a red onion because I read the recipe wrong, bought yellow capsicum as well as green and didn't have any yellow.

*I went with the Red Kidney Bean option because that's what was in the freezer.

*I left out the Chilli Powder

*I only used 1/2 tsp Cumin, 1/8 tsp Onion Powder and 1/8 tsp Garlic Powder.

*I only used 1 clove fresh Garlic

*I added about 2 1/2 cups finely chopped English Spinach

And at the end I served it with Pita Crisps (home made) seasoned with salt and pepper, some extra capsicum, onion and tomato salsa and a dollop of Guacamole and sour cream (cashew, not pictured).

YUM!!!

Plus yay! Thank you Jessy for showing me that millet can be yummy! And not mushy! Every time I've ever cooked millet in the past, it has been a big ball of mush in the bottom of the pan. This was perfect and very much like couscous. Definitely a new favourite!

Double yay, it's gluten free if you use corn tortilla's for the crisps!

A Very Happy 7th Birthday....

2009-10-12T14:58:00.000+11:00

to the UnVegette Twins I and J. Happy Birthday girls! We love you lots!!!

(Celebrated with vegan chocolate cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World of course! Topped with some basic chocolate icing instead of frosting).

I'll be back to regularly unscheduled blogging shortly! Thanks for indulging a Mum ;)

Everyday Eats-Cold Weather Edition

2009-10-06T20:05:00.001+11:00

Every now and then I check my "blog photos" folder on my desktop and realize there's lots of meals I've eaten and photographed, but not blogged about. So here is some of it (some is quite recent, others a little older, but all within the last 2 months).

First up Sausages with Caramelized Onions and Mashed Potato. The onions were caramleized in a little red wine if I remember correctly and were delicious (I wish I could remember where I got this recipe! I'll have a hunt in my folder and see if I can find it):

I made some meatballs using this recipe here.

I didn't use the sweet and sour sauce though. Instead I cooked them in the sauce from Kurma's Juicy Curd Steaks. They were kind of dry, but I think with some experimenting they could work. They tasted nice.

I made some Smashed Potato Enchiladas from write.cook.listen. They were awesome. Make them!

I used Mainland Colby Cheese because we don't get Monteray Jack Cheese in Australia. I also topped them with some avocado mashed with a little lime juice and some sour cream. (And that's steamed sugar snap peas in the background. Weird I know, but I need greens with every meal almost!)

One night I made Shepherds Pie. I started with this recipe, but got distracted and in the end my version had some red wine, tinned tomatoes, double the herbs (plus some extra's), no peas but corn and some carrot too. I also threw in a tablespoon or 2 of Gravox Supreme (which is vegan, yay!)

This week Lauren sent me my testers copy of Vegan Yum Yum. So from it I have made Corn Fritters:

(served with Celeriac Puree, roasted Sweet Potato Chips and Roasted Asparagus)

and Italian Rice and Beans, I used Red Kidneys because I had some leftover from the night before and also threw in my new favourite seitan sausage, which is the spices from this one but using Julies recipe as a base (I highly recommend you try these! I'm happy to put up a recipe if you want, just ask :)) The seitan went amazingly well with the Rice and Beans! Also, I double the spinach, because I love my greenery!

And for a quick deviation from food. I went to water UnVegette K's tomato plant the other morning and on it was the teeniest tiniest praying mantis (I think) I've ever seen! Look! How adorable is he?!?!

to get some idea of his size, here he is with my index finger (excuse the fact that I need cream and nail polish remover!)

Awwwwwwww!!!

Sorry I don't have a lot of actual typed out recipes! I've mostly been cooking from other recipes and adapting like mad lately. I'll try to have some soon!

Stay tuned for Every Day Eats-Summer Edition.

Sweet and Sour Balls.

2009-09-29T19:20:00.003+10:00

Yes. I said it. I had balls for dinner. For those of you who read regularly, you'll recall (hopefully!) that I bought some Deep Fried Gluten Balls from the local Asian Grocery Store. Well after a whole heck of a lot of googling, I discovered that they can also be called Fried Gluten Puffs or simply Gluten Puffs. That bought up a few more results, although not a lot.

I stuck with something safe this time and decided on Sweet and Sour Gluten Balls.

I admit, I was really scared I was going to hate dinner.

So the verdict?

Umm they're.......interesting. Kind of squidgy and soft on the outside (dare I say it? Almost slimey? But not in a bad way) with super chewy centres that look a little like crepe paper. I didn't love them. But they weren't terrible either. I'm glad I tried them.

Would I buy them again? Yes, but next time I'll have fun doing something else with them! So little time, so much food to be eaten ;)

Sweet and Sour Gluten Balls

1 50g (1.7oz) packet Deep Fried Gluten Balls or home made.

1 recipe Lolo's Sweet and Sour Sauce

1/4-1/2 cup Water or Vegetable Stock (I used Water)

Rice and Steamed Broccoli to serve.

Prepare Sauce ingredients.

Put 1/4 cup water in a medium sized saucepan and bring water to the boil. Add the gluten balls and cook, stirring and kind of flattening them for about 8-10 minutes or until they collapse and get soft (might take up to 15, some of mine were still a little too firm). Add more water if the saucepan gets dry.

Add the sauce part of the sweet and sour sauce and then stir in the cornflour and water mixture. Cook over lowish heat until sauce has thickened and serve with cooked rice and steamed broccoli (or whatever you want :P)

Serves 1.

Joanna's Chicken Nuggets.

2009-09-25T14:31:00.001+10:00

Go forth and make them NOW!!! (Seriously!!! We've eaten them twice in the last week and a half *blush*).

Oh and just letting everyone know, after months of agony I have removed myself from people's "followers" lists. I'm still following your blogs, it's just that it was seriously mucking up my google reader (it took me about 3 hours to fix everything). But I still love you all and will still be reading!

Who says Vegetarians can't BBQ?!?!?

2009-09-21T12:42:00.000+10:00

Mr UnVeg cooked for me the other night. I got a night off cooking for the first time in over 2 years.....'nuff said :P

Clockwise from the bottom right hand side: Potato Slices, Eggplant, BBQ sauce infused paneer, (on top) artichoke hearts and portabello mushrooms. All served on a bed of lettuce and topped with sumac dressing.

Birthday Brownies.

2009-09-14T19:20:00.000+10:00

Today I am another year older (*sigh*). No major celebrations are going on. It's not a major birthday and Mr UnVeg arrived home at lunchtime after a 12 hour night shift, 2 hours sorting out a licence he needs for work and a 3 hour trip home, so dinner and celebratory foods are up to me :P

Now I like cake. But I don't love it. And to be honest, I am the worlds worst cake decorator. I can do cucpakes, but cake just seems to be out of reach for me! I was too lazy to make cupcakes and while I do love them......I don't love them. What I do love...is brownies. Mmmmm gooey, fudgey, delicious brownies. So, that's what I made:

I used the recipe from here which is wonderful! Dense, fudgey and very, very delicious!! This is definitely one of the best brownie recipes I've tried!

I didn't bother to healthify them at all. Because it's my birthday and I'll eat junk if I want to :P

I was lucky enough to get a new cookbook for my miniscule collection:

And something else......but it's coming from the US so I'll blog it when it makes it :D

Dinner was me cooking because the Mr was in bed catching up on 24 hours of no sleep. I wanted quick and easy but something a little bit special. I found Pearl (Israeli) Couscous at Coles the other day and was super excited so I did a bit of googling and settled on one of Lolo's recipes using chicken style seitan instead of tofu:

Definitely try this dish. It was perfect!

I may not blog again for a couple of days. I'm having some trouble with a tooth and pretty sure it's going to be removed tomorrow morning. Wish me luck! I have an insane fear of all things dentist!

Awesome cookbook giveaway!!

2009-09-12T09:05:00.000+10:00

(Image stolen from Alisa's Blog, hope that's okay!)

Hey everyone! Just wanted to give a big shoutout to Alisa who is giving away not 1 but 2 awesome cookbooks! Not only is she giving away a copy of Vegan Brunch, but a copy of Vegan Soul Kitchen and I for one would LOVE LOVE LOVE to win! Now I already own a copy of Vegan Brunch, so should I happen to be lucky enough to actually win I promise to forward on Vegan Brunch to one of my lucky readers (I'm not sure if it would be an overseas thing, shipping is generally a killer, but I'd definitely look into it.)

Fun Foods....

2009-09-10T11:57:00.002+10:00

First up I wanted to say a big (belated) Happy Fathers Day to all the Dads out there (Aussie and otherwise, I know the US at least celebrates on a different day). I wanted to blog that day but was busy with Dads (I'm lucky enough to have 3 wonderful Dads in my life, my own Dad, my Dad In Law and my childrens Dad).

We celebrated with small gifts:

Some Vegan Brunch Coffee Choc Chip Muffins with double the coffee because the first time we couldn't taste it enough:

And some of Ashley's Snickerdoodle Blondies which I halved and veganized.

I'd love to tell you how but I had a minor disaster. I decided to sub the eggs with "yoghurt" (meaning I mixed half a cup of rice milk with 1 Tbsp of Cornflour and microwaved it till it was thick). I mixed 3 Tbsp of the yoghurt mixture into the dry ingredients and couldn't figure out why my mixture was so immensely dry! I knew she said it was more like cookie dough but this was more like desert sand.

On 2nd glance, I noticed that I was supposed to add half a cup of butter! Only problem was we'd just run out and it was too late to be running to the shops, so I threw in the rest of the yoghurt mixture and added rice milk until the mixture resembled batter. I threw it into the oven with a heavy heart, knowing that concrete was likely to emerge.

What came out resembled slightly dry cake, so with a sigh, I plated it, covered it with plastic wrap and left it on the bench for the night.

The following day, who would have guessed, it was absolutely perfect! And I'm happy to say that every last little bit got eaten!! (Mr UnVeg was the biggest fan of all!)

Okay, enough story telling! Yesterday I went to the Asian Grocery Store. Sometimes I find a lot I want, sometimes not much.

This is the haul I came home with.

Seaweed snacks, gelatin free jelly mixes (I'm not sure I'm going to use these to be honest, they contain FOS which I didn't realize till I got home and I'm a little scared of it!)

Some Fried Gluten Balls, these are usually stuffed with meat:

And some Dehydrated Roasted Gluten:

Google searches haven't turned up great info on either of these last two. I know Susan from Fat Free Vegan has a recipe for soup, but it's no secret that I really don't like soup. Anyone have any ideas?

Coriander Lime Rice and Beans.

2009-09-05T08:24:00.000+10:00

I love rice and beans. That being said, I'm not a huge fan of rice (which you've probably gathered because I just don't serve it up that often), but I do like it with beans. I always think rice and beans need a little something. Maybe it's a throw back to my meat eating days, or maybe it's just me, I'm not sure, but this meal had that little something and came out just perfect. I found the recipe for the rice and beans somewhere on the internet years ago and for some reason have lost the link. I've done some googling but there's a thousand similar recipes and I cannot find it, so credit goes to whomever I got this from! Thank you!! The seitan is one I adapted from a meat recipe years ago.

Seitan Marinade:

4 Chicken Style Seitan Cutlets
1/2 cup Lime Juice
2 Tbsp Peanut Oil
2 Tbsp fresh Coriander, finely chopped
2 cloves Garlic, crushed

Coiander Lime Rice and Beans:

1 1/2 cups uncooked Brown Medium Grain Rice (you can of course use long grain, but I like medium)
1 1/2 cups cooked Pinto or Black Beans
Zest of 1 Lime
Juice of 1 Lime
1/4 cup fresh Coriander, finely chopped
1 Tbsp Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Paprika to taste
Salt and Pepper to taste

Optional:

1/2 cup Mayonnaise
1 Tbsp Sweet Chilli Sauce

Mix together the ingredients for the marinade and marinade the seitan for 2-4 hours (or more if you like, the longer you marinade the more tender the seitan becomes~as a note, I use simmered seitan for this recipe).

At dinner, cook your rice according to the packet directions and drain.

Meanwhile fry beans gently in a large non stick frying pan over medium low heat, until they are warmed through. Add salt, pepper, olive oil, a splash of the lime juice, zest and paprika. Mix well and heat through.

Add the rice to the mixture, stir to mix well and serve.

For the chicken seitan: Remove cutlets from marinade and cook 5-8 minutes per side in a non stick frying pan over medium to high heat until well browned. Pour any remaining marinade over cutlets as they cook if you wish.

Serve the cutlets on top of a bed of the rice and beans and if you wish top with the optional Sweet Chilli Mayonnaise (we didn't have it because I forgot it was in the fridge so it's yummy without too!) and some steamed greens.

Serves 4.

Potato and Tomato Dahl with Chapatti Crisps.

2009-08-27T19:40:00.001+10:00

Dahl is one of the most confusing dishes ever. Why? Because I had to google if my spelling was right! Spell it how you wish (Dahl, Dhal or Dal), it's definitely one of my favourites! I've long wished that lentils sat better with my stomach, sadly they don't, this dish however was a perfect way to bulk them out with other stuff yet still have the deliciousness of dahl!

It is slightly adapted from one of my 3 favourite cooking magazines (all featured here) or it may have been Recipes Plus. I cut it out long ago and stuck it in a folder to make later. I wish I had made it sooner, but never mind, now I'll be making it all the time!

Potato and Tomato Dahl

Serves 6

1 large Onion, finely chopped

3 cloves Garlic, crushed

3 tsp crushed Ginger (from a jar, feel free to use fresh)

1 Tbsp Vegetable Oil

1 large Potato, chopped

350g Orange Sweet Potato (or Kumara), chopped

3 medium tomatoes, chopped

1 tsp Garam Masala

1 tsp Ground Turmeric

1/2 tsp Ground Cumin (optional)

1/2 tsp Ground Coriander (also optional, I like lots of flavour in my Dahl)

1 1/2 cups Red Split Lentils, rinsed

2 cups Vegetable Stock

Heat the oil in a heavy based large saucepan over moderate heat. Cook onion until softened and translucent then add garlic and ginger and cook a further minute or until fragrant. Add spices, potato, sweet potato (or Kumara) and tomatoes and cook for 5 minutes.

Add lentils and stock. Cover and bring to the boil. Reduce heat and simmer, stirring occasionally, for 25-30 minutes or until lentils and potatoes are tender and the sauce has thickened. If it gets too thick add some extra vegetable broth as needed.

Chapatti Crisps

1 packet (6) Chapatti

Cooking Oil Spray

Salt and Pepper

While your Dahl is cooking (or beforehand if you prefer, they will keep for a few hours), preheat the oven to 180C. Cut chapatti in half, into quarters and then 6ths and finally into 8ths. Lay on a baking sheet and spray with non stick spray (I use Alfa One Rice Oil spray)then turn and spray the other side and season with salt and freshly cracked black pepper. Bake for 6-8 minutes or until golden and crisp. Be careful, they burn quickly once they're done.

Serve with Dahl.

(Hmmm as a side note, I don't know if I'm loving the new blogger New Post Layout......I don't like change!!)

Spiced Oat Bran Breakfast Muffins.

2009-08-20T19:13:00.004+10:00

I'm not a breakfast person. I should be a breakfast person. Everyone should be a breakfast person. I buy packets of cereal with the best of intentions to start eating breakfast and then I end up eating them for a post dinner snack instead of for their intended use!

I love muffins (just in case no one had noticed :P) so I decided to hunt around for a good, fairly healthy breakfast muffin. I wanted it to contain oat bran because at my last checkup we discovered I have high cholesterol. It came as a shock. Even more so because it has doubled in the last 12 months, although I do have a strong family history of high cholesterol. I don't particularly want to take drugs for it so I'm attempting to fix up my diet a little (but don't expect a sudden lack of fried goods, I have far too much fun frying things for that!)

I used this recipe as the basis and made a couple of changes to suit myself.
Spiced Oatbran Breakfast Muffins

1/2 cup Brown Sugar
1 1/2 cups Oat Bran
1 cup Wholemeal Flour
1/2 cup Atta Flour (or Whole Wheat Pastry Flour if you have it or Plain Flour)
2 tsp Baking Powder
2 tsp Baking Soda

1/2 tsp Salt
1 tsp Cinnamon
1/2 tsp Nutmeg

2 Flax Eggs (2 15ml Tbsp ground Flax Seeds mixed with 4 15ml Tbsp Water)
1 cup chilled unsweetened Applesauce
4 Tbsp Mild Oil (I used Grapeseed)
3/8 (90ml) Rice Milk
2 tsp Vanilla Extract

Optional: Extra Brown Sugar for sprinkling
1/2-1 cup Sultanas or Raisins

Pre-heat oven to 180C.

Sift together the dry ingredients in a medium sized bowl.

Whisk together the wet ingredients and add to the dry and set aside for 10 minutes to allow oat bran to soften (add the raisins at this step if using)

Line a muffin tray with muffin cups, spoon mixture in, top with a sprinkling of brown sugar if desired and bake at 180C for 15-20 minutes or until done.

Makes 12 muffins.

Because my muffin tray only holds 6 I did 2 batches. 1 with Raisins and one without. Both are nice.

I also made PBU. Which I discovered after Emily introduced herself on my blog a little while ago. At first mine didn't thicken at all, so I threw in an extra dollop of peanut butter and it's perfection! I also used oat milk instead of almond because that's what was open in my fridge. Don't expect sticky-ness like you get with regular peanut butter, it has a texture all of it's own, kind of like mousse, but oh my it's delicious!

Laska and Heaven on a Plate.

2009-08-15T19:32:00.003+10:00

Last week when I went to the Asian grocery store I happened to stumble across some frozen Lamyong products. I was super excited because, as I've mentioned many times before, I generally get Mr UnVeg to get them for me while he's away for work and bring them home.

I decided to be adventurous and try the Prawns so I grabbed a bag. But like all things fake meat, I got them home and didn't really know what it was I wanted to do with them (isn't it funny how we forget what it is we used to do with meat/seafood etc). In the end I decided on Laksa.

Now let me tell you, these prawns are not for the faint hearted. I only had 4 in my dinner which was actually more than enough and I had to keep reminding myself that they weren't real. While they didn't look enormously like the real thing once cooked, they did taste suspiciously real! If you're not into faux products you can always sub the prawns for tofu of course. Make sure you check your laksa paste! Most contain shrimp paste. In Australia try Yeo's.
Vegetarian Laska
Serves 4 6-8 US Tbsp (15ml each) Vegetarian Laska Paste
2 cans Lite Coconut Milk
1 cup (250ml) Water
16 Faux Prawns/Shrimp
1 bag (about 2 cups) Bean Shoots
200g dry Thin Rice Stick Noodles
1 bunch Coriander
1 Cucumber, shredded

Bring a large pot of water to the boil and cook noodles according to packet directions.

Meanwhile, heat a saucepan over medium heat and stirfry the Laksa Paste for a couple of minutes until it is fragrant. Add the coconut milk and water and bring to a simmer. Add prawns and simmer uncovered for 5 minutes.

Add bean shoots and simmer a further minute.

Drain noodles and divide between 4 bowls. Divide prawns between bowls as well and top with bean shoots and ladles of the sauce.

Garnish with fresh coriander and shreds of cucumber and serve immediately.

And I made this today also.
But if you want to eat this (and I KNOW you do, believe me, I could have eaten the whole cake myself!), you have to be buying Tami's fabulous American Vegan Kitchen.

The Perfect Spaghetti Bolognase.

2009-08-12T18:36:00.005+10:00

Some of you may remember my experiment with Nutmeat Bolognase. Pre-veg one of my favourite quick and easy meals was spaghetti bolognase. I've been trying to find a substitute for my favourite meal ever since, but most have come up a little short.

I've tried lentils. It was okay, but not bolognase.

I tried Seitan, but the flavour was all wrong.

I tried buglur. That sort of worked, but the texture was a bit soft.

I tried bulgur and lentils together. Nice....but still not what I was after.

Finally I tried Nutmeat. It was good......but just not quite right.

Then a couple of days ago I was going through old saved recipes (I have billions, seriously!) and stumbled across a sausage style seitan that I had bookmarked to try but never got around to. I got busy and made a batch. The only things I did differently was to use 1/2 a Tablespoon of ground fennel instead of the seed and I made 2 logs with it, wrapped them in cheesecloth and simmered them for an hour and 20 minutes in vegetable stock instead of baking them.

Today I ground up one of the logs in the food processor and added it to *blush* another jar of store bought tomato sauce (hey, sometimes you just want to open a jar, right? ;)).

Well....it was fabulous! All 3 of the UnVegettes happily polished it off and even my biggest meat eater said she couldn't tell the difference between that and the meat version! So I thought I'd hop on and share :D

The other log is going in the freezer for future use. I'm just trying to decide whether to share with you all my Mum's Spaghetti Bolognase recipe or her Lasagna...so stay tuned :D

Creamy Vegan Pepper Sauce.

2009-08-01T18:52:00.003+10:00

A lot of the time my experiments don't pay off so well. This one just happened to turn out amazing (haha, modest aren't I? :P).

If you read regularly, you'll remember Mr UnVeg bought me some Lamyong Mini Mushroom Pepper Steaks which I ate with Steak Sauce (how funny that Steak Sauce is vegan!) and I thought a creamy pepper sauce would go better. Well I can tell you...it really does!

This sauce would also be wonderful on steak. I use Tami's recipe but use 3 tsp dried Mushroom Powder (mine are Shittakes however so maybe they aren't as strong), no marmite, I sub one of the tablespoons of Tamari for Dark Mushroom Soy Sauce and I use a beef style broth. I also don't pan fry them before I simmer them.

Okay, onto that sauce recipe! I'm sorry if it seems overly complicated. When I'm winging it I'm not always as straight forward as I should be!

Vegan Creamy Peppercorn Sauce

1/4 cup Raw Cashews
3/4 cup Water
1/2 Tbsp Olive Oil
1 Tbsp Savoury Yeast Flakes (Nutritional Yeast, optional of course)

1/4 of a Brown Onion, finely diced
1/2 tsp minced Garlic
1/2 of a 55g tin Green Peppercorns

Non Stick Spray

Grind the cashews to a powder then transfer to a blender (or if you're lucky and own a Vitamix, which I'm very jealous of by the way, then grind them in there) and add the water, savoury yeast and olive oil. Blend until smooth and creamy.

Heat a non stick frying pan over low-medium heat and fry the onions gently for 5 minutes or so until they are translucent and soft. Add a splash of water or more oil if they're too dry. Add the garlic and most but not all of the peppercorns. Cook for about 1 more minute.

Add peppercorn and onion mixture to blender and blend again until smooth and creamy.

Heat a little more non stick spray in a non stick saucepan and cook remaining peppercorns for about 1 minute. Pour cashew mixture into saucepan and heat over low heat for about 5-8 minutes or until it gets thick and creamy.

Serve hot.

Makes about 200ml or 2 generous servings.

Muffin Mania...

2009-07-24T19:35:00.003+10:00

I've had a great week for disasters the last week! First I forgot I had my potholders on top of my little oven and after baking in it for an hour I couldn't figure out what the weird smell in the house was. When I went to get the potatoes out of the oven......my oven mitts were all sitting there slowly smouldering and giving off the most wonderful chemical smell ever!!

Tonight I almost fed us green potatoes. Almost...but not quite.

And last night.....well last night I decided to bake a batch of muffins after dinner. Problem was, I forgot that I had been grilling in the oven at lunch time so it was set to grill (you see where this is going right?). Yup, I grilled my muffins. Not a little bit. I grilled them for the whole 25 minutes they were in the oven so by the time I rescued them the tops were blacker than black, smelled like chocolate scented charcoal and the bottoms were liquid goo :( I wasted half a bag of frozen raspberries in those muffins! Luckily my tin that goes in that oven only holds 6 so I managed to save the 2nd half of the batch. 6 muffins is better than none right? :P

First up I decided to try these Sweet Potato Muffins. I had been wanting to change up Vegan with a Vengeance's Pumpkin Muffins for ages but I tend to be lazy in the kitchen when it comes to muffins and kept just making the pumpkin ones. Luckily megatarian had done all the work for me and I can tell you, these were just as fabulous as the pumpkin one's!
Then I found these Coconut Muffins. How........could........I..........resist? I couldn't, that's how and they were amazing! They smelled like butter in the oven and tasted like coconut heaven! I had to lower the temperature to 180 and cook them for 5 minutes longer though because they burned a little on top at the recommended temp. Mmmm..
Finally I bring you Cocoa Raspberry Muffins from Vegan Brunch (these are the one's I tried to assassinate). I went with the choc chip option and used raw caster sugar instead of white. I did my usual 1 cup wholemeal flour and the rest white. These are absolutely fabulous!

Sides and Sweets

2009-07-15T14:51:00.004+10:00

I think we're finally on the mend around here. After my last cold, I got better for 24 hours before I felt that familiar tickle in the back of my throat and along came another. Before I had a chance to recover from that one, one of the UnVegettes came down with a vomiting bug......that was Monday, so far she's the only one....fingers crossed it stays that way! I have a fear of gastric bugs!! So I apologize for my lack of comments lately. I had over 400 posts to catch up on in my google reader and I'm getting there slowly...I promise!

Poor Charlotte has also come down with a respiratory infection so she had a visit to the vet today and is on a course of antibiotics. Unfortunately it's contagious so I'm also keeping an eye on little Toby. Please keep your fingers crossed for them! Thankfully we've managed to catch it in it's early stages so hopefully she'll just get better rather than getting worse before she gets better.
In food related news, I have actually done a little cooking around the blocked noses and lack of tastebuds :P

First up Sweets! I had a craving for waffles the other day at lunch...so I grabbed Vegan Brunch and remembered that one of the recipes that made me buy it in the first place, was the idea of gingerbread waffles. I subbed powdered ginger for the grated ginger because I just did :P These were absolutely amazing and I plan to have some in the freezer for quick snacks (not that they're exactly healthy snacks, but sometimes you just want something sweet and yummy right?)
I sent Mr UnVeg on a shopping expedition for me while he was away for work the other week and one of the things he came back with for me is Lamyongs Mini Mushroom Pepper Steaks. The texture on these is incredible! I didn't know what to do with them so I just served them up with some horseradish, but I have plans for a creamy pepper sauce to go with them next time.
As sides, we had my new love.....mashed Carrot which you can see in the background there. It's not really a recipe, but you need to make this!

Mashed Carrot
Serves 4

6 large carrots, peeled and cut into rounds
1 Tbsp Margarine or Butter
Salt and Pepper
Chives for garnish

Simply boil or steam the carrots until tender then whiz them all up with your stick blender until they're smooth and creamy. Whip in the butter, salt and pepper and serve immediately topped with a small sprinkling of chives.

Yum. I could eat the whole bowl by myself *blush* (no....I didn't....but I could!)

We also had Potatoes in Parchment from Vegie Food
This was an awesome way to cook potatoes and as a bonus, no mess to clean up!

Potatoes in Parchment
Lightly adapted and veganized from Vegie Food

700g baby Potatoes, halved
1 Tbsp fresh Herbs, stemmed and chopped (I used Thyme, but you could also go for Rosemary or anything else you like)
6 Cloves Garlic, unpeeled
2 Tbsp (40ml) Olive Oil

Preheat oven to 200C. Cut 2 pieces of baking (parchment) paper, about 50cm (20 inches) long. Place half of the potatoes in the centre of one piece and the other half on the other piece. Add the garlic and sprinkle with the herbs. Drizzle with the oil and wrap parcel tightly by folding the edges in, starting with the long side. If it's dodgy (like mine was) wrap a 2nd piece around the outside and place the parcels seam side down on a baking tray. Bake for 1 hour 10 minutes or until potatoes are tender. Serve with a sprinkling of salt.

And finally, it was also served up with Asparagus Spears with Gremolata, also from Vegie Food.
Asparagus Gremolata

50g Butter, Margarine or 1/4 cup Oil
1 cup fresh Bread Crumbs
1/4 cup Flat Leaf Parsley, chopped
2 cloves Garlic, minced
3 tsp finely grated Lemon Zest
400g (14oz) Green Asparagus, woody ends trimmed
1 Tbsp (40ml) Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Melt the oil/butter/margarine in a heavy based saucepan or frying pan over medium heat. Add the garlic and saute it for about 1 minute then up the temperature to medium-high. Add the breadcrumbs and cook, stirring regularly, until they are golden brown and crunchy. Remove from pan and set aside to cool.

In a seperate bowl combine the parsley and lemon rind. Once cooled, add the breadcrumbs and season with salt and pepper to taste.

Bring a large saucepan of water to the boil and add the asparagus. Cook for 2-3 minutes or until bright green and tender. Drain well and arrange on a large serving plate. Drizzle with as much of the oil as you choose and top with the breadcrumbs. Serve immediately.

American Vegan Kitchen.

2009-07-11T19:11:00.002+10:00

I can finally share some of the delicious things I've been busy testing for Tami's new cookbook....American Vegan Kitchen. I can't give you the names of the recipes just yet, but you can drool over them anyway! There are more fantastic one's, but these are some of my absolute favourites (I didn't want to make too huge of a post!)

Enjoy :D

Some Main Meals:
These were so fantastic. Even the UnVegettes polished them off and wanted more!

Yum. What else can I say? I tested these in winter but I can't wait to make them again and stick them on the bbq!

I'm sure you can guess what these are.....and they're amazing!

Side Dishes and Appetizers:
These are the best things I think I've ever eaten!! The salad in the background is a test recipe also and is creamy-licious!

Another fabulous salad....with a twist!

I will eat this salad over and over and over.

These were absolutely addictive!! I could eat them every single night!

Some Baking:
These will rival any store bought roll and are more healthful as well.

And some Sensational Sweet Things:
This is so amazing my family never stop asking me to make it!

Do-nutty type goodness (but they're not donuts!)

Muffins. With a secret....and it's a delicious one!

Sweet Tooth.

2009-07-08T18:41:00.002+10:00

Not a lot of exciting cooking has been going on around here. A wonderful cold decided to circulate among the family, rendering my sense of smell and taste absolutely useless for about a week and a half. But I am mostly mended now so hopefully I'll get my motivation back!

In the meantime, here's some sweet treats you definitely need to try!

After seeing it on eatme_delicious the other week I realized that I actually had that book in my hot little hands and had bookmarked the recipe for Caramel Walnut Chocolate Chunk Granola. I would never eat this for breakfast, but oh....let me tell you. I've had a hard time keeping my hand out of the jar I have it in! It's a definite "must make".
I also made Blueberry Ginger Spelt Muffins from Vegan Brunch. I put the first lot in paper cases and they went really strange and flat on top while busting out the sides so I nixed that idea and the next lot came out just perfect! These are absolutely delicious. Sadly 2 of the UnVegettes aren't really fans. But that's okay, there's more for me!
And last but not least, to make up for the lack of food..a random picture of my Charlotte who was yawning while grooming her paws....but I think she looks like she's about to eat one!

Happy Birthday..

2009-07-01T19:08:00.002+10:00

to my oldest unvegette who turned 10 today. We love you K!!
(Just wanted to share with the world, I apologize for not sharing her herself. I'll publish her on her 18th birthday ;) )

(And yes, yes that IS Vegan Brunch East Coast Coffee Cake......again).

The Latest Eats.

2009-06-29T17:33:00.005+10:00

Sorry for the lack of updates everyone! I have excuses, none exciting...just life being busy, sick with a cold, bloodwork, locking ourselves out of the house (UGH!), not being able to access my blog...the list goes on. I also apologize for my lack of commenting for a while! I've desperately been trying to keep up with comments, but (again because of the above reasons) I got a little behind for a while. I'm slowly getting there though!

But there has been cooking. Some new, some old, but most were rather tasty so I'll go ahead and share anyway :)

First up Vegan Brunch East Coast Coffee Cake. If you haven't made this yet...what are you waiting for?!?!?!
I went with adding in frozen raspberries, which didn't actually work that well...it made it kind of like East Coast Blondie in some places but that's okay. I still could have eaten the entire cake myself. I've been desperately trying NOT to make this again because I just know that next time I will gobble it all up!

I made Buckwheat Waffles with Red Wine Mushroom Tarragon Gravy also from Vegan Brunch one night. I had a little trouble with the batter being too runny, but when I added more flour it turned to a glue type consistency and while my waffles were wonderfully crispy on the outside, they remained glue in the middle :( The gravy however was to die for and even Mr UnVeg said it was the best gravy ever (well one of them...he really likes good gravy!)
After seeing them on Sals blog, I really had a craving for BBQ Ribs the other night. They came out superbly as they most normally do (I've had troubles once or twice in the past...I think it was my smoked paprika). These are definitely the best ribs ever!
I made Warm Burgul Salad with Herbed Baked Ricotta from a little free recipe book I found, which if you are an Australian, you can order for yourself here. It has a couple of fantastic recipes. All are vegetarian, but not all vegan. Most I imagine can be veganized though.
From that same little recipe book I made Lentil Sausage Rolls. These were great and phyllo pastry made a nice change from puff, although I plan to make them again with puff. They did use an egg which I subbed with Orgran No Egg and it worked just fine.
Last but not least I made Chocolate Mug Cake from Green Gourmet Giraffe. I subbed Orgran No Egg for the egg and it worked perfectly in this too. I considered using flax egg for the fibre but was worried I'd be able to taste it. This mug cake was violently wonderful and as I said to Johanna, I'm not sure if I love her or hate her for posting that recipe (:P) because it's going to be a nightly battle to restrain myself from making it every........single........night!
Yes, it's that good! Even Mr UnVeg said it rivalled oven baked chocolate pudding and couldn't believe I'd whipped it up in 3 minutes total and cooked it in the microwave! If you haven't made this yet...why the heck not? Run...run like the wind to your microwaves! (I know it's a crummy photo, but it was dark, late and it smelled SO good!))

A Myriad of Meals.

2009-06-13T19:36:00.005+10:00

Just some eats from the past couple of days :)

Quesadilla. This one had sweet potato, Amy's refried black beans, baby spinach, cheese and was topped with some avocado. I am loving wholemeal tortillas. Yum!

I've also been having a love affair with Taste.com this last week. I've made
Warm Potato Salad
This was wonderful! I used half low fat sour cream half mayonnaise instead of all mayonnaise.

Caramelised Spiced Carrots
These were fabulous! Mr UnVeg gave them the nod of omni approval and actually thought he was eating pumpkin rather than carrots. I left out the chilli because of my chilli wimpiness. These will show up often around here.

Finally
Fennel and Cheese Stuffed Sweet Potato
These were sensational! Even the omniverous other half polished one off. I cheated and baked my potatoes in the microwave first then finished them off in the oven. I also doubled the fennel, onion, breadcrumbs and cottage cheese and added some grated parmesan to the top.

Cranberry Almond Quinoa Bulgur Pilaf.

2009-06-10T18:59:00.002+10:00

Whew, what a mouthful, but wow, what a mouthful! This was great (if I do say so myself :P). I woke up this morning and just really felt like grains and veggies. Something simple, something healthy but something yummy.

I'd seen a recipe for a quinoa bulgur pilaf a few days ago and while it sounded nice it didn't have the flavours I was feeling like today so I did a bit more googling and came across this recipe which sounded like it would be a great base for a few added twists. I'm going to repost it because I made it a lot smaller to serve 2 as a main dish and changed it up a bit. It may not be necessary to pre~cook the quinoa but I didn't want to take the chance of crunchy pilaf.
Cranberry Almond Quinoa Bulgur Pilaf

1 to 1 1/2 Tbsp Butter or Margarine
3/4 cup Leek, finely sliced
1 1/4 cups Salt Reduced Vegetable Stock (use a ready made or rich home made one, not powder and water or cubes and water)
1/2 cup uncooked fine Bulgur (Bulghur/Bourghul)
1/4 cup uncooked Quinoa (any colour, I used a mix of red and white)
1 rib Celery, finely diced
3 large handfuls Baby Spinach, finely sliced
1/3 cup dried sweetened Cranberries
1/6 cup Almond Flakes
Salt and Pepper to taste

Toast the almond flakes in a dry non stick frying pan for about 5 minutes until golden and remove from heat. Set aside.

Pre~cook the quinoa for 10 minutes (use 1/2 cup water and rinse under cold water once drained).

Melt the butter or margarine in a medium heavy based saucepan over medium heat and saute the leek for 3-5 minutes or until it starts to colour. Add the celery and cook for a further 3-5 minutes or until the celery softens. If the leek is getting too brown (a bit is okay) turn the heat down.

Add the stock to the pan and bring to a boil. Add the pre~cooked quinoa, bulgur and spinach and boil for 5 minutes. Turn off heat, stir in the cranberries and cover with a lid. Let sit for 15 minutes.

After 15 minutes add most of the toasted flaked almonds and stir through. Season to taste with salt and pepper and serve over roasted asparagus. Garnish with the last of the flaked almonds.

Makes 2 large servings of yum.

I also got baking from The Joy of Vegan Baking yesterday. I wanted something somewhat healthy for kids lunchboxes and decided on the Jam Filled Oat Bran Muffins. I made 6 filled with Jam and 6 filled with Jam and 2 choc dots.
We all love these. On first bite we were all thinking "oh no, totally healthy unsweetened oat muffin" but with the 2nd bite you hit the jam and it's like a delicious explosion in your mouth! These are definitely a hit and I'll be making them again!

Soggy.

2009-06-04T18:50:00.002+10:00

That is the only word I can use to describe the weather the last 10 days! It has rained non stop, not a little bit of rain, but a steady soaking rain with a few heavy downfalls in between. If you dare step on the lawn, you sink knee deep in the mud and bog! Today I caved and replaced my dryer which blew up about 3 months ago. Wouldn't you know......I purchase it and the sun comes out! And stays out for hours! But after a wee bit of moaning on facebook, the clouds came back over and miserabled up the day (which I'm totally fine with, I adore the rain!). Anyway, you're not here to talk about the weather, you're here for the food!

Because it has been so cold and I wanted something warm and comforting. I wanted soup. But as you who read my blog regularly know...I don't like soup. So I "stewed" up and vegetarianized another soup recipe and it was great! Just be careful with the stock you use. I used Massel ready made Chicken Style and it was a touch too salty, next time I'll probably go with vegetable. Again, get low salt if you can and add your own salt to taste.

Silverbeet and Risoni Soup
Adapted very slightly from Vegie Food

15g Butter
1/2 Brown Onion, chopped
1 clove Garlic, crushed (I forgot this!)
1 Litre Low Salt Vegetable or Chicken Style Stock
3/4 cup Risoni Pasta
250g Silverbeet (Chard), de~stemmed, washed and finely sliced
1/2 cup Basil, finely sliced

Heat the stock in a medium saucepan over high heat until it comes to a boil.

Heat the butter in a separate heavy bottomed saucepan and saute the onion and garlic for 3-5 minutes or until softened. Add the stock to this mix and return to the boil. Add the risoni, stir and reduce heat. Simmer for 8 minutes before adding the silverbeet and basil. Cook for a further minute until the Silverbeet has wilted. Season with pepper and salt (if you choose, taste it first!) and serve with toasted cheese bread*
*Toasted Cheese Bread was just a crusty loaf of bread, toasted and spread with margarine, dijon mustard and cheese and grilled under a hot grill.

Even the kids liked this one which surprised me because they usually shun anything with spinach or chard in it!

Speaking of the UnVegettes, I went to the store to get museli bars for school and noticed that they'd once again had a price hike. I know museli bars from the store aren't the healthiest of treats, but there's worse things out there. I was happy to pay $3.80 for the homebrand one's but imagine my shock when the same product is now selling for $5.80! I decided to try my hand at some home made one's and ducked around the corner for some quick cooking oats which came to a grand total of $1.45!

I came home and did some googling. I knew Celine had some tasty one's somewhere over at Have Cake Will Travel and I was right! Behold a Pumpkin walks into a Molasses Bar.
Deeeeelicious! The kids adore them, I adore them and they were SO easy! The best bit is, that even though they have sugar, I KNOW they're much better for the girls than what I was getting at the store (unpronouncable humectants anyone?) I can't wait to try more!

I also finally decided to try my hand at some home made bread. I combined this recipe with this one and made some Whole Wheat Oat Bread, inspired by the one I was ogling at Eat Me Delicious (this one is next on my list to make, it looks fabulous!) Excuse the fact that the top looks burned. It is a little dark (the perils of cooking in my mini oven), but not as dark as it looks in the photo (you can see the wet ground outside I was talking about before ;))
(Almost) Wholemeal Oat Bread

2 tsp (7g) instant Yeast (the kind you use in the bread machine)
1 cup Warm Water
2 Tbsp Neutral Flavoured Oil
1 tsp Salt
1/8-1/4 cup Brown Sugar (I'll reduce this next time, I used the 1/4 cup , I prefer my bread less sweet)
1 cup Bread Flour
2 cups Wholemeal Flour
2 Tbsp Gluten Flour (Vital Wheat Gluten)
1 cup Quick Cooking Oats

Throw it all in the bread machine and set it on the dough cycle (do check if you need to add more liquid! I added an extra 2 Tbsp in the end)

Once the dough cycle has finished punch down the dough and shape it into a loaf. Spray a large loaf pan with non stick spray and place dough inside. Sprinkle an extra tablespoon or so of oats.

Cover with cling wrap (spray the underside of it with a little more non stick spray) and allow to rise for 45 minutes in a warm place.

Heat the oven to 180C and bake for 45 minutes, covering after 10-15 if the top is getting too brown. Bread is ready when you tap the bottom and it sounds hollow. Allow to cool completely on a rack before cutting.

Like I said, this bread was a little sweet so good for jam etc. If you want it with savoury spreads I'd leave out most of the sugar (not all though or the yeast won't work!)

From Breakfast till Dinner.

2009-05-31T19:37:00.005+10:00

My copy of Vegan Brunch arrived the other day. I was ecstatic! Let me just say that I continue to be impressed by the Book Depository. They're books are very well priced, they don't charge for shipping and the book made it here in a mere 6 days!

I've gone through and tabbed a massive amount of recipes to try! The first thing I cooked was the Courico Taco's with Grilled Pineapple Salsa. I used wholemeal tortillas for a burrito style version and the seitan option as well as leaving the onion out of the salsa (I hate raw onion and garlic with a passion). They were nice, but quite strong in flavour and I can honestly say that I don't know if I'd make them again. I loved the salsa though and will definitely make it again!
Today I got baking with it. My first choice was the Coffee Chip Muffins. We LOVE these, although next time I will double the coffee because apparently we are coffee fiends and couldn't taste it enough for our liking. I loved that these didn't have much sugar too. I used half wholemeal flour, half high fibre white flour instead of plain and subbed all but 1/8 cup of the oil for applesauce. Mmmm.
Dinner was Paneer Steaks as I had a few half blocks of Paneer in my freezer. Paneer freezes okay but it crumbles very easily when you cook it so please excuse the photo. It was mighty tasty despite the crumbles! I used a couple of different recipes I found on the internet and came up with this:
Marinaded Paneer Steaks

1/2 packet (125g) Paneer
1 Tbsp Ghee or Oil
Salt and Pepper to taste

Marinade:
1/4 cup smooth Sweet Chili Sauce
1 1/2 Tbsp (30ml) Soy Sauce
Pinch Onion Powder
1 Tbsp Tomato Paste
1/2 tsp Mild English Mustard
1 Tbsp (20ml) cold Water

Combine all marinade ingredients in a small bowl and whisk together.

Heat the ghee or oil in a small frying pan over medium heat and season with the salt and pepper. Fry the paneer both sides until golden brown. Pour over marinade and cook for 5-10 minutes, turning a couple of times and basting the upper side with the marinade from the frying pan until the marinade has almost evaporated. Serve hot.

Last but not least is my mother in laws Chocolate Pudding. Mr UnVeg has been asking me to make this forever, so the other night I decided some baking was in order after dinner and we called his Mum up for the recipe (thanks Katie!! We loved it!). This pudding was absolutely delicious and the best bit was that it's egg free already! You could quite easily make it vegan by using margarine instead of butter and non dairy milk instead of milk.
Katies Chocolate Pudding

Preheat oven to 180C.

For the pudding:
2 cups Plain Self Raising Flour (or 2 cups Plain Flour and 4 tsp Baking Powder)
1/2 cup Caster or White Sugar (I used Vanilla Sugar because that's all I had)
2 Tbsp Cocoa Powder
Pinch Salt

85g (3 ounces) Butter
1 cup Milk
1 tsp Vanilla Extract

Sift the flour, cocoa, sugar and salt into a medium mixing bowl.

Melt the butter and add the milk, whisking as you do. Add vanilla and then mix the wet ingredients into the dry.

Pour the whole lot into a sprayed or oiled largish casserole dish (it will expand!)

For the Sauce: (we used about 1 1/2 times the recipe, it depends on the size of your dish, but you may want to double the sauce)
1/2 cup Brown Sugar
1 Tbsp Cocoa
1 1/2 cups Hot Water (boil it in your jug and use that)

Mix the sugar and cocoa together and sprinkle over the top of the pudding.

Carefully pour the water over the back of a tablespoon or dessertspoon onto the top of the pudding. You don't want to upset the batter!

Bake in the oven uncovered for 30-45 minutes, depending on your oven. Pudding is done when the cake layer floats to the surface and it is firm in the centre.

Serve hot topped with ice cream!

Orange Sesame or Poppy Seed Roasted Vegetables

2009-05-29T10:45:00.004+10:00

This doesn't look like much. With winter light well and truly here (dark by 4pm anyone?) it's kind of hard to get good shots and this was the best of a bad bunch. I've said numerous times already that there's LOT'S of roasted veggies being eaten around here and there is! This was a lovely take on an old favourite though.

Orange Sesame or Poppy Seed Roasted Vegetables
Veganized and Adapted from Vegetables~Best Ever Vegetable Recipes

500g Baby Potatoes, unpeeled and halved, or quartered if large
2 Parsnips, peeled and cut into 2cm pieces
1 Swede (Rutabaga), peeled and cut into 2cm pieces
500g orange Sweet Potato, peeled and cut into 2cm pieces
6 Shallot Bulbs or Pickling Onions, peeled and halved
1/3 cup Oil (you can reduce this, I used approximately 3/4 of that amount)
1 Tbsp Black Sesame Seeds (or Poppy Seeds, I used black sesame)

Orange Dressing:
1/2 cup fresh squeezed Orange Juice
1 clove Garlic, crushed
1 Tbsp Dijon Mustard
1 tsp White Wine Vinegar
1 tsp Sesame Oil

Heat the oven to 200C. Prepare vegetables and place in a deep baking dish. (You can pre-steam your veggies before doing this if you choose. I always steam mine for 5-8 minutes to start the cooking process off, it means you don't get those burned but still hard veggies). Pour over oil and toss gently. Bake for 50 minutes to an hour, turning and stirring the veggies once or twice during the cooking process.

Combine all dressing ingredients in a small bowl or glass jar and whisk or shake to combine.

Pour the dressing over the vegetables when you take them out of the oven and toss gently to coat them. Serve immediately.

Warming Winter Winners.

2009-05-23T19:30:00.003+10:00

The cold weather seems to have set in this week. It's gloomy, freezing and rainy.....and I love it! But weather like this does call for absolute warming comfort food.

First up I chose a stew from Vegetarian Times. You can find it here. I followed it as is, only I also threw in a 400g tin of crushed tomatoes and 2 tablespoons of tomato paste. It was absolutely fantastic and I loved the fact that there was a variety of veggies in there, including swede which I haven't eaten a lot of before.

Second I happened to stumble across a photo somewhere for Veganomicons Spicy Peanut and Eggplant Soup. It sounded like something that would be perfect for the cold weather. Except it called for green beans and I don't like green beans. I also don't like soup generally. So I made it a stew. I left out the beans and doubled the eggplant and then served it up over brown rice (as the book says you can). It was amazing! The eggplant turned into melt in your mouth amazingness! I can't believe I overlooked this recipe (it did teach me to always check the soup section in cookbooks though, I usually skip right over it!) It doesn't look fabulous, but it tasted it!

Mushroom Pot Pies.

2009-05-20T13:13:00.003+10:00

These were great. Warm and comforting on a cold night!

Mushroom Pot Pies
Adapted slightly from Vegie Food

5 Tbsp Olive Oil (you can cut this down by steam frying of course! I did!!)
1 Leek, sliced
1 clove Garlic, crushed
1kg large Portabella or Field Mushrooms, roughly chopped
1 tsp dried Thyme
1 Tbsp Cornflour (Cornstarch)
300ml thickened Cream
1 sheet Puff Pastry
2 tsp Dijon Mustard
1 Egg Replacer (I used Orgran= 1tsp powder with 2 Tbsp Water), whisked until thickened a little

Preheat oven to 180C (350F). Heat 1 Tbsp of the oil in frying pan over medium heat. Cook the leek and garlic for about 5 minutes or until the leek has softened and become translucent. Transfer to a large saucepan.

Heat the remaining oil (or use 1 Tbsp Oil and then once it's drying a little keep adding splashes of water or vegetable stock to steam fry) and add the mushrooms (in 2 batches if neccesary) and cook for 5-7 minutes or until they release their juices and soften. Transfer to the saucepan with the leek and garlic and add the thyme.

Add 2 Tbsp of the Cream to the cornstarch in a small bowl and mix to combine. Set aside.

Place the saucepan over high heat and add the remining cream and dijon mustard. Cook 5-7 minutes, stirring often, or until cream starts to thicken. If it's still quite liquid add the cornstarch and cream mixture and cook for a further 1 minute.

Remove from heat and season well with salt and pepper.

Divide filling between four 1 1/4 cup ramekins or ovenproof bowls. Cut the pastry into rounds slightly larger than the tops of ramekins and brush the rim of the ramekins with the egg replacer mixture.

Place pastry on top and press down to seal. Brush the tops of the pastry with remaining egg replacer and place ramekins on a metal baking tray. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until pastry has puffed and tops of pies are golden.

Makes 4.

More Tasty Teasers....

2009-05-12T14:31:00.005+10:00

and some kitty's because I haven't cooked anything new other than test recipes for Vegan Appetite and I feel bad! But roasted veggies are soooooooooo good when the weather is cold I could live off them! (Okay well I haven't eaten roasted veggies EVERY night, but there's been a whole lot of repeats going on in between test recipes!).

First up was Fried Corn Salad. This was really good!:

Yankee Cornbread. Now I don't like sweet cornbread usually but this one was amazing!

And last but not least, Yankee Grilled Cornbread with Blueberry Sauce. This was heaven on a plate. Mmmmmm:

And now because of my lack of recipes comes the big kitty haul:

Remember how Toby was sitting up in his corner surveying his territory?

Here's the fuzzy behind. It was just too adorable not to take a picture!

And him glaring at me because I was interrupting his surveying skills:

"Mu-um, enough butt photo's already!"

And finally, when I put the turtle out for some sun I throw a blanket over the side of the ledge to give him some shade. Tobes decided it might just be a new secret place to spy on his territory from:

I'll try and get some more of Charlotte soon. She's in Granny Cat mode and spends all day lying down with her eyes closed :P

Tasty Testers.

2009-05-02T19:05:00.003+10:00

As you all know I'm busy testing for Tami from Vegan Appetite. As is usual with testing I'm allowed to give you names and photos but not recipes. What I can say though is that you guys are in for a real treat with this book!

To tease you tonight I have:

Italian Big Bowl
Pasta....Italian....Delicious

And Double Berry Muffins
OMG! These were AMAZING! Very delicate, very delicious and a perfect combination. Even Mr UnVeg polished off a couple and so did the "but I hate fruit in muffins" UnVegettes!

Last but definitely not least was the Beer B Q Sandwich. All I have to say about this is mmmmm:

Sumac Mini Wedges.

2009-04-29T16:32:00.002+10:00

Yesterday at the shops I noticed the baby potatoes were cute and quite small (often here the baby potatoes are almost as big as a smallish regular sized potato). I had seen a recipe in a book borrowed from the library I knew I wanted to try for Sumac Wedges so I decided instead to make mini wedges. I really like Sumac. If you don't, you won't like these but they had just a hint of spice and a touch of lemon flavour to them and I thought they were wonderful. Plus anything I can throw in the oven and forget about is always a bonus around here ;)
Sumac Mini Wedges
Approximately 1kg Baby Potatoes (you can of course use regular ones and just make regular sized wedges)
1 Tbsp Olive Oil
2 Tbsp Sumac

Preheat oven to 220C.

Wash and cut baby potatoes in half then in half again along the long side of them to create mini wedges. Toss in a microwave safe bowl along with the oil and the sumac.

Cook, covered in the microwave for 5 minutes on full power then transfer to a non stick oil sprayed baking tray. Bake for 30-40 minutes or until softened inside and crispy outside (sadly mine didn't crisp much because I had to do them in the big oven and the big oven sucks :(). Serve with a sprinkling of sea salt if desired.

Enjoy!

I noticed a number of you enjoyed my last kitty pic and I have some cute one's so I thought I'd share some more.

Eat, Drink and Be Vegan finally made it to our library (and you better believe I was the first person to borrow it :P I've had it reserved since the first day I noticed they had ordered it....quite a number of months ago now!). I had been reading it in bed the night before....turns out I have 2 kitties who are rather interested in Veganism :PFluffy Paws

Busy Reading

Tired Out

Charlotte takes a peek.

And finally one of Toby. This is his new spot, up in the top corner of the pergola in the entertainment area out the back above the bbq. I should have got a picture from behind, his little bottom on the brick ledge is just too cute! From here he can see all of our yard and the neighbours and is in the perfect position to attack should one of the neighbourhood kitties decide to climb across the roof out there. I love the way his front feet just sort of dangle over the wall like that!

Food and Confession.

2009-04-26T18:42:00.006+10:00

First up thank you all for your patience! Not only did I switch from a desktop computer to a laptop (hello confustication!) but I changed from Windows XP to Vista (hello double confustication!!) which meant that something like oh....I don't know....99% of my programs that I've always used (like for my digital camera) suddenly wouldn't run. ARGH!

Secondly, thank you all for your kind comments during my rather extended break. School holidays with 3 kids at home require your undivided attention at most times. The confession?..........

I was considering giving up my blog. Why? Because there are a billion wonderful bloggers out there and I know I'm no chef. I can follow a recipe, I can change it up a little, but mostly I cook other people's (wonderful) recipes. Combine that with the end of summer blah's, winter on it's way making food photography somewhat ordinary and a cooking rut that has felt more like a cooking crevasse than a rut and I thought maybe it was time to say goodbye.

But then inspiration slowly started to come back. And I got chosen as a tester for Tami's new cookbook (yay!) and I just KNOW that I'm going to love her recipes. I'm super excited to have been picked! So I decided that maybe I had just needed a little break from blogging. 2 years of blogging deserves a little break right? :P I also apologize for my lack of commenting lately. I've been struggling to keep up (as usual!) but I have been reading and loving all your posts!

If you've made it this far, thanks for listening to my blah blahing. I'll move onto what you're really here for now..food! The last couple of weeks I've made Fideo from Vegan Explosion. So simple, so easy and SO delicious. I confess I've made it twice in the last couple of weeks. I found the orginal just a little salty so I halved it with the 2nd and it was just perfect. I also subbed 1/4 cup extra tomato sauce for 1/4 cup of the water and it was thicker. I liked it both ways though and 2 of the UnVegettes just LOVED it with J going back for 2nds and 3rds! (Excuse my messy bowl. I only just noticed it!)
I served it with wholemeal (storebought *blush*) tortillas and Dreenas Vegveeta Cheese Dip. This was nice...I added some canned tomatoes and capsicum to make a Queso Style Dip. It reminded me of something but I couldn't pick what. I still seem to be off the Nutritional Yeast so this worked well although I didn't exactly think it was particularly cheesey (still yummy though!) I don't seem to be keen on tahini later either though so if I made it again I might try using almond butter.
I've had Pasta Della California from Veganomicon. I'm not one of those who are afraid of hot avocado. I used some cool curly spaghetti I found. This I'm sorry to say wasn't to my liking. I don't know why. I just wasn't a fan :( It's the first thing from Veganomicon I have not liked so far (there's got to be something in there I don't like though :P)
Last but not least was tonights dinner. I knew as soon as I saw these that I had to try them. I admit that I forgot to add the coriander to the mushroom mix but it didn't matter. They were still amazing! I had a very simple guacamole: avocado, lime juice and coriander. Just how I like it. Mmmmm I'm hungry all over again!

I'll be back soon.

2009-04-18T15:49:00.002+10:00

Hi everyone! Just wanted to let you all know that I got a new computer (yay!) but it's been taking me a while to set everything up. Combine that with school holidays and I've barely had time to brush my hair in the mornings. I'm currently busy trying to catch up on all the blog posts I've missed over the last few days and once I'm up and running I'll be back with more food! Thanks for hanging in there with me

xxx

That baking...

2009-04-12T09:05:00.003+10:00

FINALLY! I finally got my rear end in gear. Sadly now, these seem more like an Easter post than a blog anniversary post, but whatever, they were yummy anyway ;)

I adapted the recipe from here. I'm not going to lie. I usually healthify my muffins a little. These however are all white refined flour, full sugar, full fat muffins so if you want healthy.....these aren't it!

Butterscotch Muffins with Caramel Sauce

Muffins
375g Plain Flour
1 tsp Baking Powder
1 tsp Baking Soda
1 cup tightly packed Brown Sugar (sift it if you need to, but small clumps just turn into extra caramely goodness)
1 1/4 cups Almond Milk
1 Tbsp Lemon Juice or Apple Cider Vinegar
90g unsalted Butter or Margarine
1 Flax Egg (1 US Tbsp~15ml mixed with 3 US Tbsp Water and ground in blender)

Preheat oven to 180.

Add the vinegar or lemon juice to Almond Milk and set aside.

Sift the flour, baking powder, baking soda and sugar into a medium sized mixing bowl.

Melt the margarine or butter and add to the almond milk along with the flax eggs. Whisk well (I whizzed mine up in the magic bullet/rocket blender).

Stir the wet ingredients into the dry and stir until just combined. Bake at 180C for 20-30 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.

Leave in pan for 5 minutes and then allow to cool completely on a rack.

Top with your favourite caramel sauce*.

*I tried to veganize the caramel sauce using a blend of a couple of recipes, however in the end it tasted like burned cashew sugar and I gave up and used my Mum's recipe which has been a family favourite for a long time but is sadly not vegan.

Baking still coming...

2009-04-08T18:49:00.006+10:00

Yay! I baked today! I had a bit of a disaster with vegan caramel however so by the time I finished it was too dark to snap a photo. But I can tell you, that what is coming, is delicious!

In the meantime I have some food. 2 days ago I got a new bag of almonds and knew already what I wanted to do with some of them. I wanted to make the Almond Feta from the latest issue of Vegetarian Times. I've been getting it for free for a couple of months now (it's a great opportunity to see if I'm interested in an actual subscription, plus I'm not wasting paper!) from here. You do get a couple of emails from them, but I haven't been inundated.

If you don't want to do that, you can get the recipe here. It was definitely worth making. The texture was awesome! I used only 1/2 a clove of garlic because I'm not a big fan of garlic in uncheeses and I'll use less lemon next time, but it's a great base to work from and I'm seeing it in some kind of lasagna soon! Tonight though I crumbled it and had it on a salad. Even the UnVegettes loved it so much they were eating it straight off the plate!
The second is what I did with some more of Tami's Seitan Steaks.

Steak sandwich with the lot. MMmmm. I sliced the cutlet lengthwise so it was 2 super thin cutlets. I marinaded one in the Tempeh Bacon recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance and left the other plain. Then I simply fried them both in a non stick pan. I had it with caramelized onions, lettuce, beetroot, cheese, pineapple, tomato and topped with tomato sauce. Mmm this was delicious! I know I've blogged one before but this was way better thanks to those steaks!

The Day That Didn't..

2009-04-06T15:41:00.003+10:00

Today is my 2nd blog anniversary. It's hard to believe that I've been blogging 2 years (although I confess, when I'm not feeling inspired, it feels a lot longer than that :P).

I am grateful to have come to know so many wonderful people, those who keep a blog and those who just read and I thank you for each and every comment you have all left me. I appreciate and value every single one of them.

I've learned quite a lot in 2 years. Photographic wise anyway. Here is my first ever food photo:
Apparently I didn't even think it necessary to plate a dish before taking a photo ;)

Compared with one of my recent favourites...MUCH yummier looking (I think ;) Very modest of me, I know :P)
My day today started out well. I had plans to celebrate. I even had my something yummy picked out to bake. Only thing is, that recently all the padding had worn off my favourite cow oven mitts and being fussy I wanted something cute. I couldn't find anything local, except some blue one's with big yellow flowers and while they were okay, they weren't anything particularly special.

So I got up with every intention to pop over to the mall near my parents house 10 minutes up the road for a peek at K~Mart, hoping they'd have something cuter. And they did, cupcake oven mitts, but they were hideously expensive compared to the regular one's so I decided I didn't like them quite that much.

I grabbed my groceries and headed out to the carpark. Except I couldn't find my keys in my handbag (you see where this is going right?). I rummaged around, pulled everything out of my handbag and nope, no keys. I headed back to the first shop I'd been to, but I knew deep down that I had left them in the boot of the car when I put them in there while reaching for my calico shopping bag.

I was right, they weren't at the store so I called Mr UnVeg who was out and didn't have his mobile with him. I called my parents on the off chance that my Dad was home and was in luck so he came out to collect me so I could use their internet to find the number for the 24 hour roadside assistance. Only thing is Dad needed to go to the bank and there was zero parking so I took over the driving, told him to hop out and that I'd meet him at the bank.

So I parked, hiked it inside to the bank and...........no Dad. Not anywhere. I called his mobile but of course he'd left it on the bench back at his house! ARGH! I walked around that mall 3 times before calling my Mum to find out which bank they were with. In the meantime some lovely Public Liason Officers happened to walk by me and noticed me looking stressed (I'd been missing Dad for about 20 minutes by this stage) so they kept me keeping watch from where I was while they went all over the centre trying to find him. Eventually he came around the corner, turns out I'd been waiting at the bank when he really needed the credit union.

Anyway, none of this was helping to get my keys out of the car. I called the Public Liason Officer to let him know I'd found Dad and he offered to see if he could get my keys out. In the end he was worried he'd damage the car, so I went back to my parents house and waited an hour for the Roadside Assist. to get there and let me into the car. I'm sure I looked quite a sight, you see, my button inside my car that pops open the boot deactivates as a security measure 5 minutes after the car has been turned off, so I had to climb into the car, open up the back seats and haul my entire body into the boot to try and reach the keys which were right up near the boot opening!

By this time it was well and truly past lunch and by the time I got home and prepped the dinner it's really too late (and I'm too tired) to start baking. I plan to hopefully get my anniversary baking underway tomorrow but I didn't want to let this occasion pass by with nothing ;) I offer you this reposted photo of my 2 furry lovelies holding hands (they generally don't like each other at all) to tide you over until I get a chance to bake (and if you made it this far in my post I thank you for reading my waffling ;))

Last thing, thank you everyone for your comments on my last post! I will try to answer them tonight or tomorrow morning :D

Steak Diane

2009-04-04T19:24:00.004+11:00

When I was 16 or 17 I remember going to the local pub for lunch with some friends. They made THE most awesome Diane Sauce there and I used to eat it slathered on potato chips. I don't think I've eaten much of it since, here and there but nothing very memorable.

Recently I'd been feeling like it again so I browsed through all of Tami's posts on Seitan. Let me just say, Tami is a seitan genius! And Tami, if you ever decide to make a seitan cookbook and you need a tester count me in! (I will also be first in line to buy a copy!!!!) I decided to make some of these steaks. They came out a teeny bit less flavourful than I would like, but it's my fault. There were some ingredients I just couldn't get so I had to substitute and I was a little lazy on the broth. They do taste good however and are very meat like!

There are a gazillion Diane recipes on the internet, most of them not very vegetarian and all of them pretty different. I chose 2 and mixed them up a bit. My sauce was a little sweet, but I suspect it's because the vegan Worcestershire Sauce I bought is primarily made of fruit puree, maybe with a different brand it would be a little less sweet. It could also of course been the addition of tomato sauce (ketchup).

I confess, after I made it I swiped a fingerfull and then caved and bought a packet from the supermarket. After I made that one though I realized it contained food additive 471 which can come from meat sources (and to be honest, it didn't smell anything like what I was after anyway).

The hunt continues for my dream Diane Sauce but this was quite delicious in it's own right and I will definitely make it again. The best bit is it's completely vegan, soy free and very creamy!

Vegan Creamy Diane Sauce

1/4 cup raw Cashews
1/4 cup Water
3 Tbsp finely chopped Green Onions
2 Tbsp Dry White Wine
1 Tbsp Tomato Sauce (Tomato Ketchup~next time I will try puree or maybe even leave this out~this is optional))
2 tsp Dijon Mustard
2 Tbsp vegan Worcestershire Sauce
1/2 cup Beef Style Broth
2 Tbsp finely snipped Chives

First grind the cashews in a coffee grinder, blender or food processor. If using a food processor transfer to a blender, otherwise add the 1/4 cup water and blend until smooth and creamy.

Heat a non stick fry pan over low-medium heat and add the margarine. Saute the green onions for 1 minute then add the wine, mustard, tomato sauce if using, and Worcestershire. Increase the heat a little and cook stirring until it reduces to a syrup like consistency. Remove from the heat and add the cashew cream 2 Tbsp at a time until it reaches the creaminess you want (I went the unhealthy route and added all of it).

Taste for seasoning and add salt and pepper if desired. Stir in the chives and serve hot over seitan steak, mashed potato, hot chips or whatever takes your fancy.

Food Porn Galore!

2009-04-01T18:58:00.003+11:00

I have a HUGE bunch of backlogged food porn. Sometimes I eat something that's just not worthy of it's own post, but definitely worth a mention at least because it's delicious all the same.

First up though, I want to say a really big Happy Birthday to Mr UnVeg for yesterday! We had a quiet day at home together just enjoying the fact that he wasn't away at work for his birthday. I plan to hopefully find time to bake him something yummy this week so stay tuned for that (I may of course be me and never get around to it :P)

Okay, the last weeks eats have included:

Wasabi Noodles with 2 Tofus. I found a discontinued Noodle Sauce on sale. I'd been eyeing it off forever but was too scared to pay full price for it. I realized after I'd eaten this that the sauce has egg yolk :( ALWAYS read your lables folks! It was yummy though! I served up the sauce on Soba Noodles and topped them with some Split Pea/Rice Tofu and some plain Rice Tofu. Rice Tofu pretty much tastes like cubed rice noodles. Veggies included were rehydrated Shittake Mushrooms (I couldn't get any fresh that day :( ), broccoli, carrot and water chestnuts. Mmmmmm water chestnuts.....
Ahem moving on.... I had my favourite marinaded Lemon and Coriander Chicken Seitan served with Lower Fat Hassleback Potatoes (no I didn't eat all of those!), a massive green salad with Umeboshi Plum Vinegar Dressing (Umeboshi Plum Vinegar may just be my new most favourite food ever next to Sumac...yes, this was a sumac salad) and steamed broccoli:
I made Lemon Scented Green Tea Muffins. These were good, but not good enough. I plan to make them again only less dry and more green tea-y. I'll share the recipe then, but they looked nice ;)
I had a sweet potato going bad in the pantry so I got busy and made some Sweet Potato Gnocchi. Gnocchi is a lot of work! I won't be making my own all the time. I wanted something to showcase it so I picked this. It was yummy. I was a dunce though and started to fry the gnocchi before I boiled it! After smacking myself in the head and saying a few swear words I threw it in some boiling water and then proceeded to fry it (again) and it came out fine in the end. My gnocchi isn't very pretty, but it was yummy!
Today I had waffles for lunch. Lemon Corn Waffles with Blueberry Sauce from Vegan with a Vengeance. Sigh, these might just be my favourite waffles ever (after the VwaV pumpkin one's that is!). I cheated with the sauce and just boiled down a small handful of frozen blueberries with a tablespoon of rice syrup and a tablespoon of brown sugar. Mmmmm.....
And finally dinner tonight! I felt like Indian and I hadn't had Paneer in ages. I went through my recipes and came across Paneer Jalfrezi which I got from here.
I prefer my favourite Palak Paneer but this was nice for a change and quite a bit lighter (I used a lot less oil, just 1 Tbsp and topped up the rest with water). I forgot to stir the fresh coriander through at the last minute though :( It was still good!

If you managed to sit through all that I give you a MASSIVE thank you! I'll try to not let the yummies back up so much in the future!

Finally, I have one small favour to ask of you. They are still "culling" the kangaroo's in Canberra where I used to live and I have recieved an email today with photo's showing that the kangaroo's are not starving as is being claimed in the reasons for culling these beautiful animals. I'd like to copy and paste this section from the Animal Liberation ACT email I recieved:

Some people have asked recently what contacts would be best or what action they could take to stop the massacre of thousands of healthy kangaroos and their joeys at the Majura Defence Base in Canberra.
Well, if everyone and all their friends and family (supportive ones) phone up and /or fill in Prime Minister Kevin Rudds feedback form below, this may help. Those running petitions with national and overseas signatories could send this email or an email of your own to the people on the petition and ask them to please ring or contact our PM to ask him to please stop the massacre of thousands of kangaroos and their joeys at Majura Training Base in Canberra on the grounds that there is no evidence that they are starving, that there is no evidence that they are damaging any habitat or threatened species, and that it will inflict large scale terror and cruelty upon these gentle intelligent icon.
Please see attached photos of the kangaroos at the site just days ago showing healthy kangaroos and healthy habitat.
Killing kangaroos can never be humane in light of their close and loyal family and group bonds. The fact that ex pouch joeys of Eastern Greys are still feeding off the mums at present is also a significant cruelty issue as they will be either seperated from their mums during the shooting or become orphaned when she is shot.

The contact details for Mr Kevin Rudd, Prime MInister of Australia are as below including a web contact feedback form which can be filled out directly from the link.

This is one of our only hopes to save these guys and it may help especially if it comes from interstate and overseas.

Mr Kevin Rudd
Prime Minister of Australia's contact details are

http://www.pm.gov.au/contact/index.cfm

Please help if you can. These kangaroo's lived down the road from me and were just beautiful.

A HUGE thank you.....

2009-03-31T10:46:00.003+11:00

to a fellow blogger, Kris from the Nom Nom Nom Blog. She had a competition running a little while ago where you could win some of her Nom Nom Nom pins. Being a big fan of both her blog and kitties I desperately wanted some! And I was in luck when she generously decided that everyone who had commented should get some, no matter where they live.

I waited for the mail to arrive (mail from the US comes slowly to Australia) and one day peeked in my letterbox to see the blue envelope. I could see a black ring mark where each of the 3 badges were so I excitedly opened the box, grabbed out the evelope....and the badges were gone. They had either fallen out or been taken out. I was devastated.

So I contacted Kris to let her know I was filing a complaint with Australia Post (long story short I got the run around and gave up) and Kris generously said she would send me some more.

Imagine my huge surprise this morning when I opened the front door to take kids to school and find a box sitting there addressed to me from Kris.

The kids crowded around excitedly, I cut open the tape and inside I found......this:
So Kris, a really big thank you to you! This is more than wonderful of you! So please, if you haven't found her amazing blog already, go and visit someone who is not just a wonderful blogger, but a wonderful person as well.

Carrot Cake Mini Loaves

2009-03-27T18:53:00.004+11:00

I thought I would have something new(ish) to post tonight with a variation on the Burmese Split Pea Tofu. It was a combination of maize meal, split pea flour and a teeny bit of rice flour. It set up perfectly fine. I marinaded it most of today in the Italian Tofu marinade from Vegan with a Vengeance. When I baked it however it totally turned to sludge. I know it can be baked, others have done it, so I'm guessing something in the marinade (maybe the wine?) made it go funky. Sigh. Looks like I'll be having breakfast cereal for dinner :P It was just too gross to eat.

I do however have some carrot cake for you. Yum. That is all there is to say about this (you don't have to add the walnuts, but I do because while I'm not the biggest fan of walnuts, they totally make carrot cake). I know there's a bazillion carrot cake recipes out there, but this is the first one I've made that didn't come out of a packet so bear with me :). It's vegan if you leave off the frosting. Excuse the glowing frosting in the picture. It's overcast and dark and that was the best I could do!

Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting Mini Loaves
Adapted from here.

1 1/4 cups Flour (I used half wholemeal, half white)
1 tsp Baking Soda
1 tsp Baking Powder
1 1/2 tsp Cinnamon
1/2 tsp Ground Nutmeg
Pinch Ground Ginger (optional)
1/2 cup (50g) Walnuts, finely chopped
1 1/2 cups medium coarse grated Carrot (about 3 small)

2 Flax Eggs (2 US Tbsp 15ml Whole Flax Seeds ground then blended with 6 US Tbsp Water) 1/2 cup unsweetened Applesauce
1/8 cup mild Oil
1/2 tsp Vanilla Extract
3/4 cup Caster or Vanilla Sugar
Up to 1/2 cup non dairy Milk

Pre~heat oven to 180C.

Spray a mini loaf tin with non stick canola spray.

Sift the flour, baking soda, baking powder and spices together into a medium bowl.

Whisk the flax eggs with the applesauce and oil. Add sugar and vanilla and whisk to combine.

Stir wet ingredients into dry adding the non dairy milk a little at a time if the mixture seems too dry (I needed the whole half a cup but I tend to be heavy handed with the flour). Gently fold in the carrot and walnuts and put into mini loaf tins.

Bake for 25-30 minutes at 180C or until a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean. Allow to cool before frosting.

Cream Cheese Frosting

75g Cream Cheese
75g Margarine or Butter
125g Icing Mixture
1 tsp Lemon Zest
1 tsp Lemon Juice

Using a handheld mixer whip the margarine or butter until fluffy. Add the cream cheese and whip to combine. Slowly add the icing sugar, mixing well between each addition. Add the lemon zest and juice and mix to combine.
Also Panda with Cookie is giving away THE most adorable blue monster ever (and I want it!!) so please, head over there and love her stuff as much as I do!

BBQ Seitan Burgers..

2009-03-25T18:30:00.004+11:00

Tonight I felt like burgers, but I deviated from my favourite White Bean and Sage Patties or Bean based burgers and decided to try something with seitan. A little bit of googling lead me to this, which was a great start but I didn't have any mushrooms and forgot to pick some up while I was out so I modified it a little. They're fantastic on burgers, I'm not sure if I'd just eat one alone, but even K said it was yummy on her burger. I'm not sure if you need that much cornmeal. Mine were kind of mushy so I just kept adding it before I decided to fix it with a bit of gluten flour. Feel free to add the gluten flour first and then as much cornmeal as you need to form a stiff burger pattie.

Barbequed Seitan Burgers

1/4 cup Whole Wheat Flour
1/8 cup Fine Yellow Maize Meal (I'd leave this out next time I think)
1/2 cup Instant Polenta
2 Tbsp Gluten Flour (Vital Wheat Gluten)

170g Seitan (I used a beef style one based on Bryanna's Beefy Style Seitan)
1/2 Tbsp Olive Oil
1/4 cup finely chopped Onion
1/2 cup finely chopped Green Capsicum
1 tsp minced Garlic (or I clove, crushed)
1/4 tsp Salt
1/8 tsp dried Oregano
1/8 tsp dried Thyme
1/8 tsp Celery Seed
1/8 tsp Mustard Powder
1/2 tsp Smoked Paprika

1/4 cup Smokey BBQ Sauce

Chop your seitan and then pulse in a food processor until it looks like coarse mince. Set aside.

Heat oil in a non stick frying pan over medium heat. Add the onion and cook for about 5 minutes or until softened. Add the garlic, capsicum, salt, oregano, thyme, celery seed, mustard powder and smoked paprika. Cook for a further 5 minutes or until soft. Transfer to a bowl with the seitan.

Add the flours, wheat gluten and bbq sauce to the bowl and mix well. Knead with your hands once it gets too thick to stir. (Alternatively, mix it first without the wheat gluten then add the gluten and knead).

Using 1/3 of a cup of the mixture for each pattie, form the mix into burgers and fry in a non stick pan for about 4 minutes per side or until heated through and browned on the outside. Serve on a roll with all the fixings :D

Makes 5.

Sausages with Caramelized Balsamic Sweet Onion and Tomatoes and Sumac Potatoes

2009-03-23T18:53:00.002+11:00

Whew, that was a mouthful of a title. This was a nice simple weeknight meal but delicious all the same. I prepared the potatoes ahead of time by refrigerating them after boiling them until I needed them.

Sausages with Caramelized Balsamic Sweet Onion and Tomato
(Adapted from the latest Super Food Ideas)

2 Seitan Sausages per person (I used Tami's Smokey one's I keep posting about)
125g Baby Tomatoes per person
1/2 a Red Onion, sliced, per person
1/2 Tbsp Balsamic Vinegar, per person

Plop a glug of Olive Oil (yes, this is a super scientific recipe ;)) in a frying pan over medium heat and fry the onion for 10-15 minutes or until it's nice and caramelized. Add the balsamic vinegar and tomatoes and cook for a further 5-10 minutes or until tomatoes soften and start to collapse.

Meanwhile fry your sausages in a non stick pan until heated through. Serve sausages covered with tomato and onion mixture.

Sumac Potatoes
(From Ready Steady Cook)
Feeds 2 Adults and 3 kids

6 medium Red Potatoes, cut into small cubes (I halved the potato, then cut each half into thirds and then into small cubes)
1 Tbsp Oil
1 Tbsp Margarine
Pinch Salt
2 tsp Sumac

Boil cubed potatoes for 10-15 minutes or until just tender. Drain and run under cold water. If you want refrigerate until you're ready to use them. Heat oil in a non stick frying pan and add potatoes. Cook for 5-10 minutes and add margarine. Cook for a further 5 minutes, season with salt and add Sumac. Serve hot.

Chips and Cookies.

2009-03-21T19:06:00.002+11:00

First of all, thank you all for the supportive comments regarding my current lack of interest in food. I decided to kick myself in the butt today and make myself get back in the kitchen! I have made a couple of yummy dinners in the meantime though.

First up, dinner the other night I decided to try Lolo's Candied Lime Sweet Potatoes. These were a big hit with both Mr UnVeg and myself (I'm not surprised, sugar for dinner? Yum!) I've never really thought to eat sweet potatoes .....well sweetly, I usually have them savoury. They were really good though! Next time I'd like to put the ginger in but Mr UnVeg doesn't like ginger. I served them up with some of Tami's Sausages and steamed Broccolini.
I revisited baked potatoes. Nothing too special. I did discover that Tami's Sausages (yes, these are totally the best thing since sliced bread!) make really good seitan bacon. I've made a couple of versions of them. I add HEAPS of smoked paprika to them now. I marinaded them in the marinade from Vegan with a Vengeance using 2 Tbsp of Maple Syrup instead of the Cider Vinegar the recipe calls for.
Today while butt kicking I decided to try making some Silverbeet (Swiss Chard) Chips. I can't get my hands on Kale so decided to try the next best thing. These were amazing and I who is a self confessed Spinach and Silverbeet HATER (her emphasis) LOVED these! (Woo Hoo!). They do burn very quickly so be careful (I used the benchtop oven where I could see them cooking) and they don't keep very well. Eat them fast to prevent sogginess.

Simply toss 1/2 bunch of Silverbeet (stemmed, washed, dried and cut into bite sized pieces) with 1 tsp or so of Olive Oil and sprinkle with Salt. Bake at 180C for 8-10 minutes or until browning and crispy, on a parchment lined baking sheet. Try not to eat the whole bowl at once :P
Excuse the hair on the lens, I promise, that one was on the lens (although they're usually in my food and I never notice them until long after I've eaten that food!)

And finally one for Mr UnVeg who complained I hadn't cooked cookies in ages. Chewy Chocolate Choc Chip Cookies. I threw in a teeny bit of white choc chips that were fast approaching their useby date (shhh, don't tell anyone I un~veganized a vegan recipe! I swear, I usually don't!)

Salisbury Seitan..

2009-03-15T20:05:00.004+11:00

I was supposed to have a baked goodie for you all today. My run of bad luck appears to continue however. I got out my self raising flour, which admittedly I use almost never, and when I open the lid of my flour tin I notice a creepy crawly walking over the surface of my flour. EEK! So into the bin it goes and I decide that I'll use my regular flour instead and add baking soda and powder.

So I'm happily scooping away when......oh noes! A BUG! In this flour too! So I hold my breath and go and check the pantry and yes, half my flours are infested with weevils!! ARRRRRRRGHHH!

It took me 5 hours to pull everything out of the pantry, discard what was infested, freeze what wasn't because it was in air tight containers (I just want to be sure it's okay) or wasn't open yet (I hope those are okay, they appeared to be), refrigerate the soba noodles, spray the entire pantry with straight vinegar, wipe it all out then wipe it over with peppermint essence, add a little container of crumbled bay leaves to every shelf, wipe over everything that had to go back in and get it all back in there! I wanted to cry. I had to throw out a huge amount of money's worth of flours and rolled grains :(

I still have a stack of grains and lentils (by a stack I mean about 20 odd containers worth) that I want to freeze before putting back in the pantry (a little paranoid I guess, but I am :P). I'm seriously considering buying a deep freezer and freezing everything always *shudder*.

I did however manage to make dinner. I discovered a little while back that you can view some of the Real Food Daily cookbook online here. I made the Salisbury Seitan with Golden Gravy.
Again, in keeping with my current food funk, it just wasn't that great. I remembered just a little too late that I didn't have any flour for the gravy, so I used Rye Flour (might I recommend never using rye flour for gravy!) and I was too exhausted to start frying onion so I used powdered onion and garlic. Unfortunately it didn't thicken...at all....it was like water so I rummaged through the freezer and took pot luck with some cornflour (cornstarch) I had in there that I'd only opened the other day. It finally thickened and it was okay...but just...okay.

The seitan was quite nice, I used my own rather than one from the book and I think boiled seitan would be better suited than steamed in this particular recipe. Either that or I just really don't like baked seitan. The marinade was quite thick though and seemed to just sit on top rather than actually marinade the seitan and consequently, it burned while baking (just a little, enough to taste that charcoaly flavour though).

Note to self. Don't cook when exhausted. Have a plan B ;)

I PROMISE I won't bore you all with any more disasters and I'll have that baked goodie once I get to the shop and replenish some of my supplies (oh well, at least my pantry is tidy right?)

(Just as a side note, I am publishing this so you can all laugh along with me, because if I don't laugh about all my disasters lately I might want to cry :P! I'm totally not expecting anyone to tell me how wonderful it looks ;))

It's a cats life....

2009-03-14T14:58:00.004+11:00

well I wish mine was anyway. No food today (sorry, I generally stick with food), but I couldn't resist sharing!

Food Funk...

2009-03-12T19:21:00.004+11:00

I'm in a food funk. I seem to be kind of unenthusiastic about food at the moment (don't you hate those times?). I'm not feeling very inspired to cook anything much and when I have, I've made a number of disasters and things I plain didn't like and even if I did like it I just feel kind of apathetic about food in general at the moment. I did promise disasters when I first started my blog so here are some of the latest (and if you're bored, by all means, scroll to the bottom, there is yumminess down there!)

First up, Snugglebunny pointed me in the direction of Polenta Scramble (because I really miss scrambles even though I was never a big egg fan). This has potential, don't get me wrong, user error was obviously in effect though and my polenta, instead of getting crisp and nice, turned into one big bog of sog. I didn't follow the recipe at all though and was throwing stuff in willy nilly (like I said, 100% user error, plus I made my polenta from scratch, maybe I used too much water IN the polenta?). I somehow managed to chow down a teeny bit of it (with massive bites of the avocado and tomato salsa-y thing you can see with it), but ugh, it was bad. Snugglebunny, I'm so sorry I frigged it up!
Next up was Bulgur with Leeks and Swiss Chard. Now it said it could be made with spinach, so spinach was what I bought (because I was feeling lazy and didn't feel like prepping all that chard). I could tell while it was cooking that it was going to be boring as heck, so I started hurling in all manner of Italian style dried herbs (I think I threw in oregano, thyme, red pepper flakes, rosemary and some tarragon). It was still dismal and I could only eat half a bowl of it. It mostly tasted like water with spices added. Blech.
The same night (oh yes, I was on a roll that night) I had made some potato cakes. I didn't really base them off anything much. Just threw some mashed potato, wholemeal flour, sautee'd carrot, onion and some of the spinach into a pot, mixed and added some paprika. I then coated them in flour before shallow frying. They weren't violently awful, but they weren't flash either.
After loving the Veg News Mac and Cheese that I made the other week, I decided to feed some to the UnVeg (as a side dish). For some reason I decided to go with the variation Lolo made on Vegan Yum Yum and I doubled the sauce and almost doubled the pasta so we'd have leftovers (never do this unless you have tried something first! Valuable lesson right there ;)).

But the UnVegettes didn't like the broccoli and I seem to have gone off Savoury (Nutritional) Yeast and even the smell of all that nooch was making me feel sick :( Of course, Mr UnVeg thought Savoury Yeast was terribly weird and we all kind of picked at it before sticking leftovers in the fridge indefinitely. Again, I think it was mostly me, just because of the Savoury Yeast, but next time I make it I think I'll make the original.
And now, finally, onto the good!

Roasted Vegetables with Bocconcini and Aioli. This was really good (in keeping with my disasterous theme I have going on the red capsicum I bought today was full of mould inside when I cut it open so I left it out, but it would have been nice, I forgot the garlic and I didn't realize that the meatballs that Mr UnVeg cooked in the roasting pan a few nights ago would resurface in smell in the veggies, blech, meatball smell aside though, it was good! I promise!)
Roasted Balsamic Vegetables with Bocconcini and Aioli
Serves 2-3 as a main dish or 4 as a side
Adapted from the Womans Weekly mini cookbook, meal in a bowl.

1/8 cup (30ml) Olive Oil
2 cloves Garlic, crushed
1 Red Onion, diced
500g Butternut Pumpkin, cut into 1 1/2 cm cubes (I pre~steamed this for 5 minutes)
500g Red Potatoes, cut into 1 1/2 cm cubes (peeled or unpeeled, up to you), par boiled for 5-8 minutes (check after 5, but they might need 8. You still want some resistence, just not hard and crunchy)
1 large Red Capsicum, de~seeded and cut into 1 1/2-2cm squares
3 baby Eggplant (300g), cut into 1cm circles (or 1 300g Eggplant, diced into 1 /2 cm cubes)
3 Zucchini (300g), cut into 1 cm circles
1/4 tsp dried Oregano
1/4 tsp dried Rosemary
1/4 tsp dried Basil

1/2 tsp soft Brown Sugar
2 Tbsp Balsamic Vinegar (I used White but Plain was what was originally called for)

180g baby Bocconcini, thinly sliced

Aioli
1/4 cup Mayonnaise
1/4 cup Light Sour Cream (or regular)
1 tsp Dijon Mustard
1 tsp Lemon Juice
1 heaped tsp Parsley

Pre~heat oven to 190 C. Pour the oil into the bottom of your baking dish and let it heat in the oven for 3-4 minutes. Add pumpkin, garlic, potato, capsicum, eggplant, zucchini and the herbs and toss to combine. Bake for 30-40 minutes or until softened through and browning a bit.

Combine the brown sugar and balsamic and drizzle over the vegetables. Return them to the oven for 10-15 minutes until they brown up a little more and are ready.

Remove from oven and toss with the sliced bocconcini. Serve topped with a dollop of the Aioli and some salad greens. I chose sorrel, rocket and baby spinach.

Fun with Food.

2009-03-08T19:33:00.005+11:00

I don't technically have anything new for you today. I do however have a super quick and easy cheats way of making Split Pea Tofu. After attempting to make Chickpea or Burmese Tofu not too long ago and it being awesome to have a new food to eat that wasn't soy but could possibly take the place of tofu in some savoury dishes I was super excited.

Except that Chickpeas make me almost as sick as soy does. I read on Snugglebunny's blog that as well as rice, you can use Split Pea Flour. Now for some reason, I do okay with split peas some of the time. I went on a massive hunt and finally convinced my local organic store to order some in for me (she had to order 24 packets of it! Whoops! I only wanted 2!

I gave it a try using the traditional soaking/draining/boiling/sludge method described here and it worked and worked well. Split Pea Flour lends a slightly more polenta-ry feel to the tofu than chickpea flour does, but is still super delicious (and don't worry, it tastes nothing like it smells as you're cooking it!).

But, truth be told, I'm lazy in the kitchen and I wanted to be able to make this quicker. Then I accidentally stumbled upon an article about Panelle which is basically chickpea flour cooked like polenta and I thought...why not with the split pea flour?

So today, given that we were having soba noodle stir fry, I got to work (work? Ha!) experimenting. I only wanted enough for 1 or 2 so here's how I did it:

Super Easy Split Pea or Chickpea Polenta or Tofu

1 cup Water
50g Split Pea (or you could try with Chickpea Flour but I can't vouch for it)
Pinch Salt

(you can add in flavourings I would imagine, like using broth instead of water if you want but I left it plain this time).

Using a whisk, mix the split pea flour into the cold water and add the salt. Heat over a medium heat for 5-10 minutes or until it's thick and smooth and pulling away from the sides of the saucepan (if you make a larger quantity it may need 15-20 minutes or if your flour is coarse, mine is quite fine).

Pour into a lightly oiled mould and set in the fridge for at least half an hour before cutting and cooking.

That's it! No more waiting over night! I can't vouch for the chickpea flour having the same texture exactly as the way the Burmese Tofu is made, but it certainly worked for the split pea flour.
I served it over stir fried veggies (my favourite is Changs with Bok Choy), extra fresh bok choy and choy sum and soba noodles and topped it with this:

Soba Noodle Quick Sauce (not soy free, but okay for soy intolerance)

6 Tbsp Soy Sauce or Tamari
5 Tbsp Mirin
2 Tbsp grated Palm Sugar
2 tsp grated Ginger

and a whole lot of Fried Shallots (in your Asian Grocery Aisle in Woolies and Coles for us Aussie folk).
Unfortunately my soy intolerance or allergy (I'm not sure which yet, I really should get some testing done, but life seems to pass by way too fast) seems to be getting worse and even the amount of soy sauce I used on this caused me problems (and one of the UnVegettes who also has had problems with soy since birth), so from now on I think I'm going to be re-visiting Bryanna's Soy Free Soy Sauce, which of course you can use in the above recipe if you are totally soy free.

While I was dishing up, I asked Mr Un~Veg to keep an eye on my Split Pea Polenta so it didn't burn. He was very proud of himself, proclaiming himself to be cooking a vegetarian dish (isn't he cute?) He asked for the camera (I assumed he wanted proof that he was cooking for me) but no, when I uploaded the pics there was a fish shape in the frying pan, a letter A for my name
and this:
Awwww (too bad I didn't teach him how to use the flash :P). Sorry to all you soy munching people, this post is in all likliness terribly boring for you! I will have better yummies soon (at least I hope I will :P).

In other frustrating news, I managed to fix my old blog tonight (WHY?!?!?!). I won't be heading back there (even though I think it looks all new and shiny now :P) because you're all here with me (:D) but at least I have a search function on it again!

Absence makes the heart grow fonder...

2009-03-06T13:06:00.003+11:00

well I hope so anyway! I don't want you all to leave me!

Sorry for my absence! I really haven't been cooking anything new or exciting. My week has been one taken up by stress. We had a house inspection (which is fine, we look after our house, but still, it involves a lot of stress and cleaning when you have 3 kids to bring it up to scratch) and my Mum broke her leg and has been in and out of hospital and it's going to take about 3 months for her to recover properly (at least 3 months, depending on how and if the break heals), so I've been running over there as often as I can.

I did make one dish which is most definitely blog worthy and that is Lolo's Crispy Sweet and Sour Seitan. I have blogged it before on my old blog, but I made the old sauce and it honestly wasn't one of my favourite dishes. This time I used boiled seitan cutlets and made it with the new sauce and other than the fact that I can't read and used the 1/4 cup cornstarch in the sauce instead of 1 1/2 Tbsp (Whoops!) to coat the seitan (yes, I added a LOT more water to make up for it :P), it was amazing and very easy! As you can see from the photo, I had extra sauce due to my inability to follow a clear recipe. Mmmmm. It was even a hit with 2 of the UnVegettes! I ate WAY too much of this!!
I'll leave you for now with the cutest turtle behind you've ever seen (well I think it is, I just had to share it). Please excuse me if my posts are a little sporadic temporarily and my commenting a little behind (I have 162 of your posts to catch up with in my reader at this second!). I will definitely try to post as often as I can though!

Roasted Vegetables with Avocado and Mixed Greens.

2009-02-28T19:19:00.003+11:00

See? I told you there'd be veggies. Veggies was pretty much all I felt like for dinner so veggies is what I ate :P

I can't remember who's blog I first saw this on. It wasn't that long ago (and if it was yours, leave me a comment so I can link to you!). It was someone who's blog I follow regularly, but for some reason I only copied down the link to the actual recipe, which you can find here.

I made miniscule changes. I used Verjuice instead of Red Wine Vinegar (mostly because mine had been in the pantry for who knows how long and had some funky sediment on the bottom of the bottle that I just didn't trust).

I also added a bunch of cut asparagus to the roasting potatoes and onion (roasted asparagus is my new addiction) and 2 cloves of garlic (which I left out of the dressing and just mashed and mixed through the veggies after they'd finished roasting instead).

I had planned on using smoked paprika instead of the chili but to be honest, I forgot and as much as I love that stuff, I'm kind of glad I did because it really didn't need it.

Finally I chopped my pumpkin seeds finely in the magic bullet blender before sprinkling them on. I served it over my latest salad addiction (sadly a packet mix from Woolworths) called Sorrel salad which is a mix of Sorrel (LOVING that stuff), baby rocket and baby spinach.

Let me just say. This meal was amazing! I shall be eating it and eating it often! Even J loved it so much she hovered nearby waiting to pick off my plate any leftovers she could find (and then polished off the rest of the leftovers as well, and here I was not giving it to them because I thought they wouldn't like it!).

The Main Event.

2009-02-27T19:45:00.004+11:00

I have to say. I don't know where I'd be without all the awesome things you guys blog about! There's so many meals that I just fall in love with thanks to all of you/sappy~ness.

First up, I knew as soon as I saw it on Snugglebunny's blog the other day that I had to make it and soon. Seitan and Polenta Skillet with Fresh Greens. The only thing I did differently was to use White Balsamic Vinegar instead of Brown (not that the recipe specifies). This was great. I really loved it.

My only complaint is that she didn't say what type of seitan. I guess it's up to you to decide. For me this demanded sausage style. But not Italian this time. I went on a blog hunt and came across Tami from Vegan Appetite's Sausages. They sounded perfect (not to mention delicious). I kind of adapted mine, because it was getting on in the day and I didn't have canned beans handy. Here's my adaptation but I plan to make Tami's version with the beans and soon! These were awesome:

Smokey Sausages
Makes 8
1 1/8 cups Gluten Flour (Vital Wheat Gluten)
1/8 cup Chickpea or Split Pea Flour
1/4 cup Nutritional Yeast
1 tsp ground Fennel
1 tsp Smoked Paprika
1/2 tsp regular Paprika
1/4 tsp Salt
1/2 tsp Onion Powder
1/4 tsp Garlic Powder
1/4 White ground Pepper

1 cup Vegetable Broth
1 Tbsp Olive Oil
2 Tbsp Tamari
1 tsp Liquid Smoke
1/2 Tbsp Tomato Sauce (Ketchup)

Mix dry ingredients together. Mix wet together. Then mix wet into dry and stir until well combined. Wrap 1/4 cups of the mixture into sausage shapes in tin foil and steam for 30 minutes (I use the steamer on my rice cooker).

The other meal I saw was an all time favourite of mine. I've blogged them before (wow, I'd like to think my photography has improved somewhat!). Alton Browns Split Pea Burgers.

However, they've been revised and they are amazing! I LOVED them before. But I think, I love them even more now! And they're much easier to handle. I don't mind a soft burger but if you're afraid of soft burgers but wanted to try these, go and make them now! YUM! (I admit, my diet is lacking in veggies, I was meant to have the pattie with a salad and veggies but got caught up collecting my daughter so dinner had to be fast and easy while I did other stuff. I promise you some vegetable love soon!)
It has been asked of me by a friend Mike, why I put my food on the grass. So I thought I'd just clarify with you all that the lighting in my kitchen sucks at dinner but is good in the backyard, so I just stick my plate on the grass for the photos (plus the green always picks up the green in my dinner and I like that :P). Also, the backyard is a lot neater than my kitchen once I finish cooking!

Take Away......

2009-02-25T19:03:00.004+11:00

Errm well maybe not. More like take it nowhere? But I'll get to that in a minute.

Firstly just let me start by saying thank you for all the well wishes for my finger from my last post! You're all too sweet! It's well and truly on the mend. I did take a photo, but I won't share it, it looked pretty gross. It's driving me crazy, catching on just about everything but it's not really sore anymore unless I knock it on something (and I can type! Yay!). It's going to be a while before it looks like a fingernail again :(

Despite the fact that I said I wouldn't be doing much, I couldn't help myself. I did eat some absolutely dismal meals the first 2 days but by day 3 I was so over packet-y type food so I stuck with some tried and true, quick and easy favourites like Lolo's Spicy Lemon and Broccoli Pasta. I know I've posted this before but it's on regular rotation around here and I think very pretty (aside from being very tasty). All I change is the pasta. This was Rice and Millet Pasta from Orgran.
I also made some Peanut Butter Cups. I know they've done the rounds, but I hadn't made them before and melting chocolate and stirring peanut butter was about all I could manage at that time. They are fabulously delicious. I had to give most of them away in order to stop myself gorging on them. I used Hannah's recipe here. I didn't bother to soften the peanut butter. I just rolled it up and stuck it on (hee hee...lazy!):
And the finished product:
Today I wanted muffins. I was going to make Blueberry Cornmeal one's I was eyeing off on Bok Choy Bohemia. But I'm saving those for next because I'd just bought frozen strawberries so Strawberry Love Muffins it was. Minus the love because I don't have love heart muffin pans. I also used a combination of white Spelt, wholegrain Spelt and Barley Flour and threw in 1/4 teaspoon of strawberry essence because I had it in the cupboard. I used rice milk instead of vanilla soy and vanilla sugar. Mmmm they're good!
Sadly my best photo was blurry :( You'll have to put up with this one.

Here is my kitty's, looking like carbon copies. This is pretty much what they do (it was too cute, they usually don't like each other very much so the fact that they looked so similar tickled me):
(Excuse my bear. That's Bernstein. They like to cuddle with him.)

What's that? Oh! The take away. I mean, the Stay at Home.......well. Last night we were munching dinner and an ad came on for KFC tower burgers. Now, it's not often I miss omni food and when I do it's usually something I rarely ate anyway. Suddenly I was wanting KFC hash brown greasy burgers. So I got busy in the kitchen today and using my favourite fried chicken recipe, made up some seitan chicken KFC type patties. I topped the buns with tomato, lettuce, a hash brown, the chicken seitan and a dollop of mayonnaise and mustard. Mmmmm perfect (and no, there's no way on earth that there is ANYTHING healthy about these....except maybe the lettuce and tomato, but what the heck. It's not like I eat this stuff every day :P)
KFC Style Chicken Seitan
adapted to suit burgers from www.vegcooking.com

1/2 tsp Salt
1/4 tsp Onion Powder
1/2 tsp White Pepper
1/2 tsp Garlic Powder
1 cup plain white Flour
2 Tbsp Savoury (Nutritional) Yeast (optional)
1 1/2 Tbsp prepared Yellow Mustard
1/4 cup Water
1 Tbsp Baking Powder
3-4 Chicken Style Seitan Cutlets (3 will just mean a little leftover)
1 3/4 cups Canola or Vegetable or Peanut Oil for frying (enough to cover about 1 1/2 cm in the bottom of the pan)

Mix together the salt, onion powder, pepper, garlic powder, flour and savoury yeast in a deep bowl.

In a separate bowl, dilute the mustard with 1/4 cup water and add 1/6 of a cup of the flour mixture and stir to combine. Add the baking powder to the dry flour mixture and mix.

Dip the seitan into the wet mustard mixture and then into the dry until you have the amount of crust you want.

Heat the oil in a large frying pan over medium high heat until a little of the coating dropped in sizzles and browns fairly quickly. Fry the cutlets for about 4-6 minutes each side or until brown and crispy. Drain on absorbent paper and add to burger.

You can also deep fry them if you'd rather.

(See, I told you they weren't healthy!)

Yummy, yummy, yummy....

2009-02-18T19:34:00.003+11:00

I've got food in my tum~my (sorry, got carried away......).

Last night I wanted comfort food and I had a craving for pesto so I dug through the gazillion wonderful blog recipes I have bookmarked and came across Tofu Mom's Pumpkin Seed and Sage Pesto with crispy Pumpkin Polenta Triangles. It sounded just like what I felt like!

I made a couple of small changes. For one I used Rice Milk instead of the soy in the polenta and also used a whole lot more water and rice milk (almost double), but I usually have to do that with polenta. I also left out the agave becaude I already find rice milk quit sweet and I'm not big on sweet in my dinner. Lastly I sprayed them with a bit of oil and baked them because I was too lazy to fry them. They still crisped up nicely though and were delicious.

I made a couple of small changes to the posto as well. Anyone who regularly reads my blog knows I'm not afraid of oil or fat, however, I just couldn't make myself use 3/4 cup of oil in the pesto, so I used 1/4 cup and used Bryanna's Fat Free Oil Substitute for the remainder. It worked perfectly, I used a little less too to make the pesto more thick and paste like. Lastly I omitted the garlic because I just don't like raw garlic.

This meal was so delicious I plan to make it often! And I'm super happy because I have leftover pesto I can't wait to put on some pasta! Yum!
Tonight's dinner I wanted pasta and I've been eyeing Lolo's Eggplant and Pine Nut Rolled Lasagna ever since she posted it. Again, I made a few small changes. I bought gluten free lasagna sheets, which unfortunately, once I opened, were teeny tiny. Nothing was getting rolled in those, so I shifted gears and decided on mini ramekin lasagna's instead. They're not nearly as pretty I know.

I also made the pine nut cream using raw cashews because I'm not much of a fan of pine nuts. I added a teaspoon of nutritional yeast to it and about 4 exta tablespoons of water, just until it turned into a thick paste (I think cashews are less oily than pine nuts).

Finally, I sautee'd baby spinach and omitted the eggplant because I ate eggplant 2 nights ago and it doesn't like me a whole lot. I prepared them this morning making 3 layers in all and had to bake it for an hour because it was cold. I'll be honest, I was a little nervous that I wouldn't like these, but when it emerged from the oven it smelled awesome and I'll be honest, I usually miss cheese in dishes like this....but this time I most definitely did not!
I'll type up the recipe how I made it in a couple of days, but I'm taking a break for a couple of days because this afternoon while chopping parsley I also chopped off the top 1/3 of my left index finernail (about half way down my finger) and unfortunately took some finger too. It's not pretty and it hurts like heck (plus, it's just taken me forever to type out this post) so sadly I'm seeing some packet and frozen meals in my near future (Mr Un~Veg sadly doesn't cook vegetarian food). I'll see you all as soon as I am mended though :)

Oh and please forgive me if I don't comment on your blogs for a couple of days either! It's just too hard to try and type! If you haven't made either of these, go forth and cook them! You won't be dissapointed.

Just Food....

2009-02-16T13:23:00.004+11:00

Sorry, but I don't have a Valentines Day post for you all. You see, despite the fact that I don't buy into it, I happened to meet my husband on the 14th of Feb. and consequently we chose to get married 3 years after we met, which just so happened to be the 14th of February. So as much as I resist Valentines Day it is incidentally a cause for me to celebrate.

And just because he sometimes hops on my blog for a peek I will say Happy Anniversary Mr Un~Veg, you're still as special to me now as the day I met you (well that's a lie actually, you're more special to me now!). Okay, mushy stuff over now :P

Sadly this year Mr UnVeg was away working on our anniversary, but we plan to celebrate it this week when he's back. However, because of this, I didn't actually cook or make anything special at all on Valentines day. I don't have a lack of food for you though, I have been busy in the kitchen, just not on Valentines day :P

First up I have Cold Sesame Noodles from the Bittersweet Blog. These were wonderful, the only thing I'd do differently is not to prepare them ahead and stick them in the fridge next time. The sauce went all thick and try as I might I couldn't thin it down (that being said, I sort of forgot to take them out of the fridge ahead of time so they were REALLY cold, totally user error). I had some marinated seitan on the side and steamed broccoli (I know, I eat a lot of food!):
I've also made Tabbouleh from Kurma's blog. What I loved about this is the fact that it doesn't use the usual garlic and onion, but does add Sumac and Asafoetida powder instead. I love Tabbouleh but always feel like the garlic and onion kind of kill it for me, this let the other flavours shine through and you really don't miss the onion OR garlic:
I (obviously) put it on a wrap and paired it with some Orgran Falafel, which I was excited to find, as they're made with Yellow Split Peas rather than the traditional Chickpeas which I don't tolerate very well:
(excuse the big moo cow glass in the background, I only just noticed that!)

Last night I felt like I needed something fairly light and fresh and dug out You Are What You Eat by Gillian McKeith. I haven't actually used this book a whole lot, I bought it years ago, mostly out of curiosity, but I just love this salad. Red lentils with a hint of ginger and garlic, coriander, green onions and then the bite of baby rocket and some baby spinach. I find her servings tiny and because this is a side dish but I had it as a main, I added a mixture of brown and wild rice to the side.
Last but not least, I bought a box of popped Amaranth from the supermarket a few weeks ago. When I opened it up, it had a smell (I can't describe it, sort of like plastic or something) and none of us were very keen on it. I needed a way to make it more palatable and I'd seen some brown rice museli bars in the supermarket that looked good, so I based this off them.

I mixed together
2 cups Puffed Amaranth and
1/4 cup Cocoa Powder

then zapped
1/2 cup Rice Malt Syrup
2 Tbsp Maple Syrup and
1 Tbsp Margarine

in the microwave for 1 minute 30 seconds (800watt) and mixed it all together before pressing it into a small rectangular tin. I stuck it in the fridge for an hour before cutting it into squares. 2 of the UnVegettes love it. Me? I think it would be better with puffed rice and peanut butter (of course!), but it was a great way to use up unwanted cereal and is strangely addictive!

More Summer Lovin'

2009-02-10T17:18:00.004+11:00

Well sort of. I came down with a cold 3 days ago so there hasn't been a whole lot of anything exciting going on around here. There's something very wrong about snuffling your way through a 30+ degree C day when all you want is a hot lemon drink and a water bottle. Today I'm still aching all over, but thankfully the weather has gotten cold enough for me to indulge in some of my new favourite....Miso Soup.

There's a thousand recipes on the internets if you do a google search. Mine consists of a mushroom broth, soba noodles, some asian greens, fresh shittake mushrooms,carrot, celery and of course chickpea miso. I'm having another one tonight with regular mushrooms, green tea soba noodles, carrot, buk choy and fresh baby corn.
I love borrowing cookbooks from the library, even if they aren't veg. The latest was Tana Ramsays Family Kitchen. I'll leave my review of this particular book as less than impressed but I did find one recipe (if you can call it that) in there that I took away with me for the kids. Yoghurt, crushed digestive bicuits and boiled raspberry's layered in a glass. These were a hit with 2 of the 3 UnVegettes and I think they were pretty:
When it was still hot, we decided to have kebabs one night. I'd seen a recipe on Taste for chicken and olive skewars and knew I wanted to adapt them. I made 2 varities. The first was Halloumi, Lemon and Green Olive and the second was Chicken Style Seitan marinaded in a mixture of 1 Tbsp Olive Oil, the juice of 1 lemon, zest of 1 lemon and a heaped teaspoon of fresh chopped oregano, then skewered with lemon pieces and green olives. These were yummy but I couldn't eat enough of it to make me full because it was too rich (thank goodness for sides!)
And finally one night we had Polenta Fries (because everyone deserves a lazy junk food night once in a while right?). I used this recipe changing it to suit. They were REALLY good, but you have to like polenta and don't be expecting potato like chips. I subbed the chicken stock for a chicken style and served them with a big green salad. The UnVegettes polished them off like they were going to disappear before they could eat them!

Apple Cinnamon Muffins.

2009-02-05T17:36:00.003+11:00

Sorry about the lack of updates all week! I've been on an internet hiatus. When I opened my google reader this morning I had 102 blog posts to catch up on from all of you. I have read them all, but please forgive me if I haven't commented on your most recent post or 2! Going back to school has seemed to send life even crazier if that's at all possible!

I know there's probably a gazillion recipes for these, but honestly, I had a hard time finding a recipe that used dried apples instead of fresh. I did however find this recipe so with a couple of small modifications came up with these one's.

They have Mr Un~Vegs lip smacking tick of approval and all 3 of the Un~Vegettes happily polished one off for afternoon tea.

Apple Cinnamon Muffins

1 1/4 cups Plain White Flour
3/4 cup Whole Wheat Flour
1 tsp Baking Powder
1/2 tsp Baking Soda
3/8 cup White Vanilla Sugar
3/8 cup Brown Sugar
1 1/2 tsp Cinnamon
1/4 tsp Nutmeg
1 cup dried Apple, chopped

1 Tbsp Chia Seeds
1 cup Oat Milk (or other Non Dairy Milk)
1/8 cup unsweetened Applesauce
1/8 cup Rice Bran Oil (or other mild oil like Canola/Sunflower)

Preheat the oven to 180C.

Mix the Chia Seeds with the milk and let sit while you make the rest of the recipe.

Sift the flours, sugar, baking powder, soda and spices into a large bowl. Stir in the apple pieces, make sure they're not all in a big clump.

Stir the applesauce and oil into the milk and chia mixture and pour into the dry ingredients.

Stir until just combined (add a little more milk if you need to) and spoon into muffin tin holes, about 3/4 full.

Bake for 15-20 minutes or until browning lightly on top and a toothpick inserted into the centre comes out clean.

Cool in tin for 5 minutes before allowing to cool completely on a rack.

Makes approx. 15.

Sensational Sides...

2009-01-28T19:32:00.003+11:00

I swear, my titles are getting cornier by the minute! I do apologize, but after blogging for over a year, post titles start becoming hard to come up with!

I'm pleased to say the weather cooled off, for like a night and it's back to hot. Thankfully not as hot as the 43 degree heat that Melbourne and Adelaide are experiencing right now (and my thoughts go out to you who live there, I do know how bad that is, I used to live in a place where 45 degrees most days of summer was normal).

Tonight for dinner we had a very much blogged about and talked about dinner. The Veg News Savoury (Nutritional/Nooch) Free Mac and Cheese. I confess, I was worried about a Nooch free version, but I didn't actually feel like it today and I wanted to try a noochless version out on UnVegette I (aka Miss Carnivorous Incarnate). While she didn't love it, she did say it was yummy and ate half of what I put on her plate.

UnVegette K went back for seconds and UnVegette (aka Part time Veg) J went back for seconds, then thirds and finally a fourth helping. I've never seen such a skinny minnie eat so much food! She was worried at first because she loves the New Farm Vegan Mac and Cheese and wanted it, but she loved it. So this one's definitely going on the winner list. Excuse the fact that I slightly burned the breadcrumbs. It didn't harm them any, they were just extra crispy and they didn't taste like charcoal, just looked like it :P The only thing I'd do next time is make a little more sauce for the noodles. It sort of disappeared a little while baking it.
This wasn't tonight, but a number of nights ago I made Cracked Wheat with Mustard and Tarragon from How to cook everything Vegetarian. This was good, not sensational, but a nice change from the usual grains and flavours and it had a nice chew to it. I had it with one of my white bean and sage patties, steamed carrots and some steamed broccolini.
And finally some lower fat (low~ER not low!) Hassleback Potatoes. I really had a craving for some crispy potatoes the other night so decided to have a go at these. Traditionally they are basted with a mixture of butter and oil while cooking but I just sprayed them with some Olive Oil Spray (the kind you put in your own sprayer, not that stuff from the grocery store). They really were sensational, crispy on the outside and tender in the middles. Mmmm. I made mine very plain, no garlic, just medium grind sea salt and olive oil. I had a salad with it and some sausages that I made from Celines Seitan Chorizo Sausage Crumbles.
Very Simple Lower Fat Hassleback Potatoes

1 pot Water
1 metal Skewar

2 white Potatoes per person
Olive Oil Spray
Medium Grind Sea Salt

Boil potatoes whole in a pot of water for approximately 12-15 minutes or until a fork will just go into the potato. Drain, rinse under cool water and let cool down completely (I put mine in the fridge).

Preheat oven to 200C (400F).

Stick a metal skewar through the bottom of the potato, along it's length, about 1cm from the base of the spud.

Using a sharp knife, cut very thin strips down to the metal skewar, being careful not to cut all the way through.

Lay potatoes on a roasting dish and spray evenly and fairly generously with olive oil spray (or you can baste with a brush if you prefer). Sprinkle with the salt and put in the oven. After 10 minutes give them another quick spray and cook for a further 20-40 minutes, depending on your oven, until they are golden brown and crispy on the outside.

Try not to eat them all yourself :P

A Summer of Salads.

2009-01-23T19:47:00.008+11:00

Well the heat here continues. We had about a 10 minute respite today where it looked like it would rain and cooled off a little. About 10 fat drops of rain fell on the pavers out the back and then the sun came out to create a wonderful sauna effect. Anyway, with all this heat, there's not been a lot of interest in food other than salads (sorry to all of you who live in the US and are looking at cold salads in the dead of winter! If it makes you feel any better I'm looking at your chilli's and stews and pot pies when it's sweltering :P).

The first was Ricotta, Beet and Rocket Salad (except I used a Sorrel Salad Mix from Coles which had Sorrel lettuce, Rocket and something else which I can't recall right now). This was really nice, although baked Ricotta isn't exactly on the budget side of things. I also used Verjuice instead of the Vinegar and a little less oil because I ran out (we didn't use all the dressing anyway, it made a fair bit). Baked ricotta and beets go really well together and the spiciness of the rocket was nice and fresh against the cheese and the sweetness of the beets.
Last night we tried Karina's Horseradish Spiked Red Potato Salad. I'm usually a person who likes creamy potato salad so while I love horseradish and this sounded lovely I was a little worried. It turned out to be a total winner however and I think I actually liked it because it didn't have all that heavy mayo and sour cream. It was just perfect and Mr UnVeg loved it too. I used only 1/4 of a red onion in ours because we're not huge fans of raw onion and I cut it so fine it was almost minced, but otherwise I followed the recipe. I highly recommend next time you are looking for a delicious filling salad you give this one a go! Yum!
Tonight we were kind of saladed out, but being hot again meant that no one felt like pasta or anything hot. I happened to come across this recipe for Paprika Lamb Kebabs (yes, I've used taste.com.au a lot this week :P). I thought about making some felafel to go with it, but in the end decided to try making a lamb style seitan. I based it off this recipe here. I boiled mine in cheesecloth but you could just as easily try baking it. I can't vouch for the texture though.

This made enough for maybe 2~3 people to eat this recipe but you could easily double it if you wanted more. You couldn't really taste the mint sauce in this, if I make it again I'll definitely add a bit more mint to it. It's not perfect, I think it needs something, but I'm not quite sure what. I'll share what I did though and you can work from there (it wasn't bad, just would have been nice with a little something, I didn't care though because it got marinaded anyway).

Lamb Style Seitan

1/2 cup + 1 Tbsp Wheat Gluten Flour (Vital Wheat Gluten)
1 Tbsp Whole Wheat Flour
1 Tbsp Tapioca Flour
1 Tbsp Savoury Yeast Flakes (Nutritional Yeast Flakes)
1/4 tsp Chicken Style Stock Powder
1/4 tsp Beef Style Stock Powder
1/8 tsp Garlic Powder
1/8 tsp Onion Powder
1/8 tsp dried Rosemary
1/8 tsp dried Parsley

1/4 cup + 1/8 cup + 1 Tbsp Cold Water
1/8 Tbsp (basically just splash a bit in) Soy Sauce or Tamari
1/8 tsp Gravy Browner/Parisian Browning Essence (Kitchen Bouquet I think it's called outside of Australia)
2 tsp Mint Sauce (if you don't have any of this just throw a little mint into the dry ingredients, maybe 1/8-1/4 tsp, I didn't have any on hand so I used the sauce, if you use dry mint though, add an extra 2 tsp water to the wet mix).

Mix the dry ingredients together in a small bowl. Whisk wet ingredients together in a measuring jug and pour into the dry. Knead for a few minutes (longer if you plan to bake it, at least 5 if baking) and form into a small log shape. Wrap in cheesecloth, tie the ends and simmer for 80 minutes in a mixture of 6 cups water and 1/4 cup Soy Sauce. Remove from pot once cooled a little and drain before popping in the fridge until ready to use. It does benefit from being in the fridge for at least a few hours though.
Paprika Lamb Kebabs

1 recipe Lamb Style Seitan, cooled and sliced into thin slices
1 Tbsp Lemon Juice
1 Tbsp Sweet Paprika
2 tsp dried Oregano
1/2~1 tsp minced Garlic
1 Tbsp Olive Oil
3~4 Lebanese Bread
1 small Butter Lettuce, leaves separated
1 Red Capsicum (Red Pepper), seeded, thinly sliced
1 Red Onion, thinly sliced
1 Lebanese Cucumber, cut into ribbons using a vegetable peeler or mandoline
Natural Yoghurt, to serve

Combine the lamb seitan, lemon juice, paprika, oregano, garlic and oil in a medium glass or ceramic bowl. Cover and set aside for 15 minutes to marinate, or longer if you want.

Heat some oil in a large frying pan over medium heat. Add the onions and cook, stirring occasionally, for 1-2 minutes or until browned. Add the marinaded seitan and cook, turning once or twice until well browned.

Place a pita bread on each serving plate. Top with the lettuce, capsicum and cucumber. Add a dollop of the yoghurt and top with a bit of the seitan and onion mixture. Roll up to enclose the filling. Serve immediately.

Serves 2~3 (serving is approximate, I only made enough of the veggie version for one)

Sorry the writing is all screwy on this recipe! I don't know what's going wrong but it won't let me fix it :P

Last but definitely not least, I just wanted to thank you all for your well wishes for Charlotte. I'm happy to say that while she's not impressed with her new diet (she's started her own new diet for now, the starvation diet, she won't eat the food!), she is doing much better, so thank you! I just have to wait for her to stop hating me for sticking pills down her throat twice a day!

Halloumi and Asparagus Salad and Pumpkin Choc Chip Squares.

2009-01-20T19:29:00.005+11:00

It's been another scorcher in Australia today, at least in the parts where I live. I know it gets hotter elsewhere but as far as temps here go, it was as hot as it's going to get. So for dinner a nice salad was in order. I had found this recipe online the other day and it sounded nice and I just happened to have some Halloumi hiding in the fridge. I served it on a bed of lettuce because something about nothing but asparagus and halloumi didn't seem salady enough.

Halloumi and Asparagus Salad

3 1/2 Tbsp Olive Oil
1 1/2 Tbsp fresh Lemon Juice
Pinch Caster Sugar
Salt and Ground Black Pepper, to taste
2 bunches Asparagus, ends trimmed
1 250g packet Halloumi Cheese
Plain flour, for dusting
1 bag fresh Lettuce Leaves

Mix 2 Tbs of the oil with the lemon juice, sugar, salt and pepper in a small jar with a lid to combine.

Bring a large saucepan of salted water to the boil over high heat. Add the asparagus and cook, uncovered, for 1 minute or until bright green and tender crisp. Drain and refresh under cold running water.

Cut the Halloumi into 4 rectangular slices, then each of those in half again (really just cut it however you wish to eat it. Place a little flour on a plate and toss the Halloumi slices in the flour to lightly coat, shaking off any excess.

Heat the remaining oil in a large frying pan over medium heat (I didn't do this, just sprayed it with a little olive oil). Add the Halloumi and cook for 1 1/2-2 minutes each side or until golden brown and crisp. Place the lettuce leaves on the plates, top with asparagus and Halloumi and drizzle with a little of the dressing. Serve immediately.

Serves 4 (or 2 Adults and 3 kids).

I also on the spur of the moment while cleaning out the freezer yesterday, found an over abundance of bags of mashed Pumpkin so decided to once again make these. Pumpkin Choc Chip Squares from the PPK recipe index (plus I saw them on a blog the other day, but I can't remember which blog it was but if it was yours thank you for the delicious reminder!.

We don't get pumpkin pie spice here so I used the spices based on the Pumpkin muffins from VwaV (1 tsp Cinnamon, 1/2 tsp Nutmeg, 1/8 tsp Cloves) and I also used a fair bit less sugar, but used Vanilla Sugar instead of regular. I cut the amount of choc chips down by about 1/3 and honestly, next time I'll cut them even further to at least half. Last but not least I used mostly applesauce for the oil and only about 1/6 of cup of oil.

These are like dense moist muffins in a square form. But oh so wonderfully good!
Finally I was hoping I could ask you all to keep my Charlotte in your thoughts (she's my black and white kitty in my avatar over there). She came down with another UTI so quickly and so bad and has been really quite sick. If she doesn't get better they're thinking it's possible her kidneys aren't working properly. She is 10 years old but I'm not ready to say goodbye to her yet, so if you could all just send well wishes her way they'd be majorly appreciated. Thanks :D

Blueberry Chia Muffins

2009-01-16T19:16:00.006+11:00

What began as an experiment, turned out rather well (I think anyway, one of my daughters agrees with me~she polished off 3 of them, the other 2 smaller ones don't, however they had already eaten their fill of blueberries earlier in the day so maybe they were just blueberried out).

These muffins are soft and moist. They're also not really high in sugar and are high in fibre but they still taste good. Best bit is, they're fat free too well aside from the Essential Fatty Acids in the Chia)! If you like really sweet muffins you may want to up the sugar by 1/4 cup, but I really don't think they need it, they were sweet enough as they were.

I was half listening to Oprah the other day while I did some housework and Dr Oz was talking about Chia Seeds. I had seen some at my local health food store so decided to grab a bag. They come in white and in black but are apparently the same, I chose black but I guess white may have some merit if you're worried about colour, they make a lovely gray coloured gel :P

Anyway, onto the muffins!

Blueberry Chia Muffins
Makes 12~15 (Mine made 15)
1 cup Whole Wheat Flour
1/4 cup Barley Flour
1/4 cup White Cake/Pastry Flour
1/4 cup Wheatgerm
1 Tbsp Baking Powder
1/2 tsp Salt
1/2 cup Vanilla Sugar* (use plain if that's all you've got, but vanilla sugar is yummy!)
1 Tbsp Chia Seeds
3 Tbsp Water
1/2 cup Unsweetened Applesauce
1 tsp Vanilla Extract
2/3 cup Oat Milk (or other non dairy milk)
1 tin Blueberries, drained and rinsed

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius (356 F).Combine the sifted flours, wheatgerm, baking powder and salt in a medium sized bowl.

Put the chia seeds into a small bowl or measuring jug and mix with the 3 Tbsp of water. Set aside to gel.

Combine the applesauce, vanilla and oat milk in a measuring jug or another small mixing bowl.

Toss the blueberries with about 2 tablespoons of the flour mixture and set aside.

Whisk the gelled Chia mixture into the wet ingredients and then pour the wet into the dry and stir until just combined.

Fold through the blueberries and bake for 15-20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the centre comes out clean (I use my toaster oven and it only takes 15 minutes).

*Make your own by combining a few cups of white sugar in a container with a single vanilla bean. Shake well and let it sit for a couple of weeks before you use it. You can reuse the vanilla bean to make more too :)

Thai-Style Garlic Chicken Seitan

2009-01-13T19:08:00.003+11:00

This was another favourite dish of mine before I became vegetarian. The weather here this week is still scorching (and set to get hotter, but I shouldn't complain, it's not getting as hot as they predicted, about 10 degrees C less in fact, thank goodness!) This dish is fairly light but filling and the best bit is, it's about as hard as frying something for 5 minutes and steaming some rice. I adapted it to suit from a cooking magazine (I can't recall which one, it would have either been Super Food Ideas or Good Taste).

It's a bit veggie-less however so it's nice served up with some steamed greens and/or baby corn (I thought I had some but we'd eaten it so it was just steamed broccoli tonight).

Thai~Style Garlic Chicken Seitan
Serves 2~3 but can be doubled

2 1/2 cups Chicken Style Seitan, diced
2 cloves Garlic, minced
1/4 cup Brown Sugar
1 large Lemon, juiced
1 Tbsp cracked Black Pepper
1/2 cup Coriander Leaves, chopped
1 Cucumber, shaved into long strips (I used a Julienne Peeler but a regular one works too)
2 cups Steamed Rice (1 cup Raw, Jasmine is nice, but I went for Brown tonight)
Extra Coriander to serve

Place seitan in a bowl or plastic container, cover with half the marinade and toss to combine. Refrigerate for at least an hour but if you can manage a few hours, even better.

Put rice on to steam and when it's almost done heat a non stick frying pan over medium-high heat. Add the remainder of the marinade and the 1/2 cup Coriander to the seitan and toss again quickly. Cook for about 5 minutes or until it's heated through and caramelized slightly.

Serve seitan on top of rice and top with more coriander and the shaved cucumber.

Feeling Hot Hot Hot...

2009-01-07T19:07:00.003+11:00

I was going to call this post summer loving.....(haha, too many songs in my head :P) but truth be told, I don't love summer and it's been so hot the last 4 days that my chocolate has been melting on the shelf in my pantry :(

When the temperature rises I always dig around in the freezer for my "go to" meal, you know the one you have that takes minimal effort and minimal heat? Mine is veggie burgers. Any which way. As patties, as cutlets, in burgers and on the side. You can do pretty much anything with a good veggie burger patty.

I recently visited both my local organic stores. Well one is local, the other one is half an hour away so not so much but I only go out to it every 6 months or so. I was lucky enough while there to come home with this haul (this is from the one far away):
Syndian Burgers and Bites, which I had been hunting for for a long time! I found them in the other one too so it's nice to know there's a closer source if I need it (it's recently had a much needed upgrade and started stocking a lot of stuff it didn't previously). They're exciting because they don't have any weird things on the ingredients list, I think all (or at least most) of them are soy free and vegan and the only thing I have to watch out for is the chickpea ones. Yay! They're not cheap, but it's nice to have convenience food in the freezer sometimes.

Anyway, some of what I've been eating lately has been (excuse some of the bad photos, my photography skills seem to have gone on holidays even if I haven't!):
A Syndian Rice and Vegetable Burger burger. These are nice, not my favourite thing ever but nice. They're better as a burger than as a side to veggies or something (I think my mistake the first time I tried it was to serve it with barley salad. Grain overload!)
A Syndian Aduki Bean and Kumara Burger. These were so delicious. A little crumbly but I didn't care, the flavour more than made up for it. It kind of hurt my belly a little later though :( They must have a pretty hefty bean content. Not that that's going to stop me from enjoying them in the future!

Tonight we had a throw together Green Salad:
A pre-mix bag of lettuce from woolies (called Three Leaf Mix) which contains mixed baby leaves and watercress. This is my new favourite pre-mixed salad (I'm terrible, I almost always buy lettuce in a bag!. I topped it with sliced grape tomatoes, an avocado and some crumbled Australian Feta. We drizzled it with a dressing I kind of adapted from Mark Bittmans "How to make everything Vegetarian" which I borrowed from the library recently and have fallen in love with. I'm hoping to add it to my very limited cookbook selection one day soon! It was 1/3 cup Olive Oil, 3 ice cube tray holes of lemon juice (maybe about 4 tsp?) and some fresh cracked black pepper. Yum!

With it I had:
a Veganomicon South Western Black Bean Burger which I made into a cutlet shape instead of a burger shape and baked it similar to the Chickpea cutlets (180C for 15 minutes each side). It was phenomenal! Unlike my cutlets which often come out very crispy and a tad on the dry side, this was crispy outside and tender in the middle but not gooey in the slightest! I don't know what's different between these and the cutlets but these are a definite new favourite!

On the side there is some Sun-dried Tomato Couscous which was simply based off one of our favourite pasta dishes from Vegan Yum Yum:

1 cup dry Couscous
1/3 cup Sun-dried Tomato Strips (in oil)
1-2 tsp Oil (I used it out of the tomato strips jar for extra tomatoeyness)
1/4 tsp Paprika or Chili Flakes (no prizes for guessing which I used)
1 1/2 cups boiling Water
a few tsp fresh or frozen chopped Basil
Pinch Salt
Fresh Ground Black Pepper to taste
Lemon Wedges for serving

Place couscous in a medium sized bowl. Stir in tomato strips, oil, paprika or chili and mix well until the couscous is coated in the oil. Pour over boiling water and cover with a plate for 5 minutes before adding the herbs, salt and pepper and fluffing with a fork. Squeeze lemon from wedges over the top at the table.

Serves 4 as a side dish.

Spinach Sang Choy Bow

2009-01-05T15:26:00.006+11:00

Wow! For some reason my last post brought you all out of the woodwork! I feel so incredibly loved :D You have all made my year (yes, I admit it, you made my year with comments on my blog!).

I felt pressure after all those comments to top what I posted last. I can't (well not for now). But I came pretty close, tonights dinner was pretty darn special anyway. I used to make this fairly often pre-vegetarian, but I stopped in part because I wasn't a huge fan of seitan when I first started not eating meat and partly because when you stop using hot things in food for a while you get to be even more of a wimp than usual. I adapted this recipe from a Womans Weekly mini cookbook. I hope you like it :D

I used chicken style seitan in it because that's what I had and I had a seitan making disaster yesterday after I attempted to cook seitan cutlets in the slow cooker. They came out so water logged and spongy (and stuck to the bottom) that most of them tore and the ones I managed to salvage, once cooled, could be literally rung out over the sink like a wet sponge. I'm sticking to simmering in cheesecloth from now on (or steaming!). Anyway, long story short, I used chicken, but it's meant to be made with pork so if you have some kind of pork style seitan handy, by all means, use that. Chicken styles do exist though I'm not sure it would make much of a difference, the sauce kind of drowns out the seitan flavour ;) Even one of the UnVegettes who ate my vegan version loved it and wants it every night (she likes to ask me to make her favourites every night :)

Spinach Sang Choy Bow

50g-100g Bean Thread Noodles (originally 50 but we like extra)
2 bunches (1kg) English Spinach, look for nice leaves!
1 Tbsp Peanut Oil 400g Chicken or Pork Seitan, minced (I just ground it in the food processor) 2 cloves Garlic, crushed
3 Green Onions (Scallions), chopped
2 Tbsp Light Soy Sauce (normal works)
2 1/2 Tbsp Rice Wine Vinegar*
3 tsp Sambal Oelek (if you like spice) or Paprika Relish (if you're a wimp like me)
1/2 tsp Sesame Oil
2 tsp grated Lime Zest
2 Tbsp chopped fresh Coriander Leaves

Place noodles in a small heatproof bowl and cover with boiling water. Drain, rinse quickly under cold water and cut into rough 4cm lengths (if you use scissors while holding them over the bowl it's quite easy).

Trim and discard bottom stems from spinach (not too much or the leaves tear), wash well and dry in a salad spinner (or pat dry with paper towel if you don't own one).

Heat peanut oil in a wok or large frying pan and fry seitan, garlic and green onion for a few minutes, 5-7 or until seitan starts to brown (it doesn't need to be crispy) and garlic and onion are no longer raw. Add sauce, vinegar, sambal oelek or paprika relish, sesame oil, rind and juice and stir fry for a further 2 minutes. Stir in noodles and coriander. Add a teeny splash of water if the mixture seems too dry.

Serve filling in a bowl alongside spinach leaves. Spoon small amounts of filling into spinach leaves, roll up and much.

Serves about 3~4.

*The recipe calls for Rice Vinegar but I only had Rice Wine, after a bit of googling it seems they are one and the same.

Cornbread Waffles With Pantry Mole Rojo And Seitan

2009-01-01T18:35:00.004+11:00

Isa does it again, she creates a winner, recipe here. I have one thing to say about this meal:
Yes, I am about to burst open at the seams :P

I made my usual wimps substitution using Paprika instead of chili (and cutting back a little on how much), used Panko instead of the tortilla chips because I didn't have any and halved the recipe. Really, the sauce is the only thing that takes any time and it's mostly measuring out the spices. I made it this morning and it sat in the fridge until dinner and I still have another serving or 2 left to freeze for another yummy meal :)

I also had to add just a little more flour to the cornbread waffles, my waffle maker wasn't very impressed with the ratio of flour to cornmeal and I made them ahead too so at dinner time while the seitan (beef version), capsicum and onion were sauteeing I just threw it in the toaster oven and it came out crispy and perfect! I have 3 more of them to freeze and retoast too, woo hoo!

Go and make this now! (sorry I know I promised creamy pasta salad and it's coming but I just had to share this one, besides, who doesn't want to eat chocolate for dinner?!?!?!?!?!)

Happy New Year.

2008-12-31T08:57:00.005+11:00

Just wanted to say I hope you all have a Happy New Year and I look forward to another year of loving all of your blogs and enjoying all your yummy recipes ;)

PS. If you haven't already, head over to the wonderful Chocolate Covered Vegan Blog, comment drive post here and leave a comment. She's been offering to donate 20c to charity for each comment she gets and until New Years she is doubling that! What a girl :)

Post Christmas Eats.

2008-12-29T20:01:00.003+11:00

Whew, I've just spent an hour trying to get my post page to load, so I spent the time uploading all the blogs I follow (lol, I think it's bugging up my internet :P)

Post Christmas eats started off very lightly. It was hot the day after Christmas and none of us really felt like much. I did some googling and came across this Lime and Mint Quinoa Salad from Karina's Kitchen. It was delicious, even the UnVegettes liked it (well 2 did, but it's rare I get all 3 eating anything) and wonderfully light, just what you need after a hard days work of face stuffing (note to self, clean edges of salad bowl before taking photos!):
With it I served up some chicken seitan strips marinaded in this (scroll down to the bottom of the post) and then quickly shallow fried in a non stick pan. They were a perfect accompaniment to the salad (in the background a blob of mayo and a smidge of sweet chilli sauce):
Coming soon: a creamy pasta salad and some experimentation :)

Christmas Day.

2008-12-25T11:38:00.002+11:00

Last year I made a bunch of cold salads and mango rice paper rolls and it was freezing so I didn't feel like any of it. This year I decided that I wanted some kind of roast, just in case it was cold. And you know what? It was! 19C for the middle of summer!

I decided to go with the roast I'd seen on Vegan Dad, partly because I knew it would likely work (as his recipes always do for me) and also because Amy from Iron Chef Vegan had trialled it the other day (yeah, I know I should really trial my own, but I was disorganized and just winged it this year :P, thanks Amy for doing the hard work for my Christmas :P).

I changed it up a little, we can't just buy poultry spice here in the shop as far as I know, so I went with making up my own based on an internet recipe but I left out the pepper and the ginger. I also used less onion and garlic powder in the seitan because I'm not a big fan and threw in a tsp or so of tomato sauce (ketchup) and a tsp of Paprika. Last but not least I used chicken style stock instead of water and oat milk instead of the soy.

Finally I also changed the filling to a Sage Cranberry and Couscous Stuffing but I used re-hydrated cranberries instead of fresh (because that's what I had. It was delicious all on it's own :) although next time I'd use just a little less sage. Oh and I threw in a pinch of thyme with it too.
With the roast, Cranberry Sauce (shock, horror, from a jar, yeah, I know, but I was busy!), gravy, roast potatoes and pumpkin (which burned a bit because of our crummy oven) and a big green salad with a pesto dressing.

The roast came out really well and was yummy, although next time I think I'd take the foil off for a bit of the baking because I was kind of hoping for a bit more of a crust around the outside.
Last but not least, the gingerbread we made yesterday for Santa (and for us and the family who visited today). Recipe from Isa's PPK blog. I am quite possibly the worlds worst cookie/cake decorator, but anyway :P They taste good and that's what matters the most!
Hope you all had/have a wonderful Christmas!

Happy Christmas!

2008-12-24T12:35:00.002+11:00

Well, the shopping is done (thank goodness I was organized early this year), the tree is sparkling, we braved the crowded mall this morning in order to get a Christmas photo with Santa (fake grins abound!) and there is stuffing in the fridge and gingerbread baking in the oven. The kids are dying for Santa to get here tonight (I guess tomorrow night for all non Aussie readers) and are busy planning all the food they're going to munch on tomorrow and telling Mum she needs to make extra icing colours in order to decorate the cookies with the "proper" Christmas colours (although I suspect this Mum will be sticking with white :P)

Anyway, I wanted to wish you all a very happy, safe and festive Christmas from me and the UnVeg family! I would like to say that you are all wonderful and I appreciate all my blogging friends each and every day :)

I'll be back after Christmas with yummies :) (and yes, there is not a doubt in my mind that my cats hate me but I think they're just so darn adorable! :P)

Green Tea Soba Noodles with Dipping Sauce.

2008-12-20T19:33:00.003+11:00

Yesterday I finally got around to attempting chickpea tofu again, after seeing it could indeed turn out. I made it once before about 2 years ago and it was an absolute disaster! It never set up and I ended up with this yellow gelatinous stuff in the pan in the fridge that much resembled yellow snot (ugh, sorry! But it did!).

Yesterdays batch was much better right from the beginning. It started to thicken as soon as it heated up and continued to thicken right up until the last minute. By the time I got in in the fridge it was half set already. Here it is in all it's naked glory (very very unattractive I know!).
I followed these instructions, simply halving the recipe but there's an easier method of making it which you can find here (this came about I believe after many hints and tips discussed in a thread on the PPK).

Anyway, enough waffling, what to do with this chickpea tofu?

Tonight was rather rushed. One of my daughters had a birthday party from 3pm until 6:30pm so dinner had to fit in around that and with Mr UnVeg being away for work at the moment I couldn't be leaving anything on.

I had found some Green Tea Soba Noodles the other day and picked them up in case of a situation like this and decided upon Green Tea Soba Noodles with Dipping Sauce. This was nice and easy and kind of fun, because you get to dip your noodles in the sauce and then hurl them into your mouth, splashing dipping sauce everywhere as you go. The chickpea tofu on the side went perfectly with the sauce, although next time I will maybe drop the sugar to a half tablespoon.

My kids have declared Chickpea Tofu a winner and wish me to serve it to them "every night for the rest of their lives". I just wish chickpeas didn't cause me almost as much trouble as soy :( But it's nice to have the option, even if it does cause pain! If I can find some split pea flour I'll definitely be trying that version, it doesn't seem to hurt quite so much.

(close up of the cooked chickpea tofu)

Green Tea Soba Noodles with Dipping Sauce
(from the back of my noodle packet :P)

130g Green Tea Soba Noodles (or any soba noodles will do)
1 cup Water
1/4 cup Mirin or White Wine
1/4 cup Soy Sauce
1 Tbsp grated Palm Sugar (just use regular white sugar if you wish)
Dried Shittake Mushrooms
Ginger Root
Green Onions

Add some Shittake mushrooms to 1 cup of boiling water. Simmer for 5 minutes over a low heat then hadd the soy sauce, wine or mirin and sugar and cook over medium heat for a further 5 minutes.

Remove the mushrooms and chop roughly into small pieces before throwing them back in.

Finish off with a bit of peeled and grated ginger and some chopped green onions.

For the noodles, I cooked mine in boiling water for 6 minutes, but it's best to follow directions on the packet in case.

Dip and enjoy!

Makes one pretty big serve.

(oh and if you want chickpea tofu with it, simply cut it into 1cm squares and fry quickly in a non stick pan in the last 2 minutes of cooking and dish up next to it).

Dipping Sauce

Chocolate Raspberry Muffin Bars.

2008-12-18T13:35:00.004+11:00

Time to post what came out of my new pan :P

I based these off the Mocha Chip Muffins from Vegan with a Vengeance. I only used 1/2 cup of sugar, but it really wasn't enough in these so I've posted the original amount.

Chocolate Raspberry Muffin Bars
adapted from Mocha Chip Muffins in VwaV

1 1/2 cups Plain Flour
3/4 cup Sugar
1/4 cup Cocoa Powder
2 1/2 tsp Baking Powder
1/2 tsp Salt
1 cup non~dairy Milk
1/4 + 1/8 cup unsweetened Applesauce
1/8 cup Rice Bran or Grapeseed (or other mild) Oil
1 tsp Vanilla Extract
1 cup frozen (or fresh) Raspberries, roughly chopped

Mix flour, sugar, cocoa, baking powder and salt in a bowl.

In a second bowl mix together the milk, applesauce, oil and vanilla extract.

Add wet to dry and mix until just combined.

Gently fold in Raspberries and bake at 180C for 25 minutes (these were for bars, start checking at 15 minutes if making regular muffins).

Remove from oven and let cool in tin for 5 minutes before cooling completely on a rack.

More food photos for Claudia...

2008-12-15T09:07:00.005+11:00

a friend of mine who demanded more food porn on my last post because it's been to long since my last update due to my camera cable being unplugged. I hate crawling under my computer desk to plug it in :P (the fact that I was mistaken and it was actually plugged in all along....well...whoops!)

At the shops the other day I found these:
I've blogged these once before but they're just so pretty I had to put up a new photo of them on this blog :P

I decided to make them into a salad as it was hotter than hot the other day. Using this recipe as the basis, I came up with Quinoa and Avocado Salad. It was filling and a nice change from green leaf salads and Mr UnVeg loved it. It also got 2 out of 3 UnVegette ticks of approval :)

Quinoa, Capsicum and Avocado Salad

1 cup dry Quinoa
2 cups Vegetable Stock
350g sweet baby Capsicum or 1 large Red or Yellow Capsicum
1 Avocado, diced

Dressing:
2 Tbsp Lemon Juice
2 Tbsp Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Dash Soy Sauce
Salt and Pepper to taste

Bring stock to boil in a medium saucepan. Rinse Quinoa well under running water and add to boiling water. Cover, lower heat to very low and simmer for 15-25 minutes or until stock has been absorbed and Quinoa is tender. Refrigerate (if you wish to serve at room temp, just let it cool).

Chop capsicum and avocado once quinoa is cooled and add to salad, tossing gently. Add dressing and there you have it.

Makes about 4 cups of salad.

I went into the city on Saturday and stumbled across something I'd been trying to find for ages and ages, so of course, despite the fact it was more than I usually spend on bakeware, I had to snaffle it up ;) Stay tuned for what came out of this yesterday:

White Chocolate Cranberry Muffins

2008-12-09T10:53:00.003+11:00

I felt like muffins the other day, but didn't feel like going to the shop, so I dug around in the pantry and the freezer to see what I had. I managed to find a container of white choc chips and a half used bag of frozen cranberries. So I fiddled around and came up with these. They aren't very sweet (although they seem to get sweeter as they get older) but they're not unsweet either and the bits of chopped tart cranberry contrast well with the bits of sweet white chocolate. They've been a hit with all my family members, even the older of the unvegette twins who refuses to eat anything with cranberries in it.

White Chocolate Cranberry Muffins

1 1/2 cups Flour (I used that new White Whole Wheat, but use whatever you prefer)
1/2 cup White Sugar
1 tsp Salt
1 1/2 tsp Baking Powder
1/2 tsp Baking Soda
3/4 cup Milk (non dairy if you have it, I used non dairy despite the fact that there was dairy in the chips *blush*
1/8 cup Applesauce
1/8 cup mild Oil (I used Rice Bran)
1 tsp Vanilla Extract
1 cup frozen Cranberries, chopped
1/2 cup White Chocolate Chips (or more if you like lots or prefer a sweeter muffin)

Preheat oven to 180C. Spray a non stick muffin pan.

Combine flour, sugar, salt, baking powder and baking soda in a medium to large bowl.

Whisk together the milk, oil, applesauce and vanilla.

Add wet to dry and stir until just combined.

Fold through cranberries and white choc chips.

Fill muffin holes about 2/3 of the way full and bake for 15-25 minutes (depends on your oven, mine were done at 15 and my oven usually runs slow).

Remove and cool for 5 minutes in the tins, then completely on a wire rack. Mine stuck a little but I think it was my non non stick spray acting up.

Try not to eat too many :P

Makes about 12 muffins.

Barley with Toasted Pecans...

2008-12-06T19:30:00.004+11:00

Christmas seems to have come to my house. My kids discovered the Chipmunks Christmas CD tucked away (hiding) today and I type this to the delicate strains of "me I want a hula hoooooop". Ahem anyway....

Summer seemed to also have appeared today for the first time since it's official arrival a week ago, so I wanted something light but didn't particularly feel like a lettuce salad for dinner.

I was doing a PPK search yesterday trying to figure out how much soy the Real Food Daily Cookbook contains and happened to come across this recipe, which was perfect for today. I had tried barley about 8 months ago and didn't like it at all. This recipe was proof to me that you should always try a food more than once because it not only restored my faith in barley but has definitely made me think I'll be putting barley into a regular rotation of sorts in my house (because nothing about my house is regular, dinner is off the cuff, organized morning or lunch for that night).

I'll share the recipe with you here because I was having computer trouble and lost the link but if you search barley on the PPK I've no doubt it will show up (it's been a long day, I will likely come to fix this later :P). I did make a couple of teeny changes to the orginal though.

One note to myself more than anything though is to use a veggie stock you actually like, rather than the one buried in the back of the cupboard that is there with good reason! I was not a fan of the veggie stock I used, next time I might buy one of those pre made ones (do they come in vegetable?) rather than using a powder. Excuse the blurry photo. I'm still having trouble with my photos resizing (and blogger don't appear to be fixing it~grrr. I know I'm not alone).
Barley with Toasted Pecans

2 1/2 cups Veggie Stock
1 medium Onion, diced
1 Bay Leaf
1 cup Pearl Barley
2 Tbsp chopped Pecans
1 Tbsp Olive Oil
1 small Carrot, diced
1 clove Garlic, minced
1 head Broccoli, cut into florets
1/2 cup (approx) Green Onions (Scallions)
1 Tbsp Verjuice or Rice Wine Vinegar (I discovered my Rice Wine Vinegar was expired in *cough* 2005 so decided against using it :P)

In a medium/largish saucepan heat the tbsp of oil. Add the onion and saute gently until softened. Add garlic and saute a further minute then add pearl barley and stir to mix/coat. Add barley leaf.

Add the vegetable stock and bring to a boil, cover and simmer over low heat for about 40 minutes or until tender and stock has been absorbed.

Toast your nuts over medium/high heat in a dry frying pan until they brown slightly and smell toasty.

You have 2 options here. You can either stir fry your carrot, then add the broccoli once it's soft and then the green onions or you can steam them briefly to soften (minus the green onions) and quickly stir fry them for a bit of flavour, adding the green onions as you do so.

Once the barley is done, fluff with a fork, mix with the vegetables and toss gently with the verjuice or vinegar.

Allow to cool to room temperature (I did this in the fridge and made it about an hour and a half before dinner) and top with the toasted nuts.

Salt and pepper it if you wish.

Served with it, nothing flash but I thought they looked yummy so I'd share, we had Chicken Seitan. Coated in flour, then dipped in a mixture of flour, savoury (nutritional) yeast, mustard and oat milk then covered in Panko bread crumbs (and fried, I am not afraid of fried food apparantly, not that I eat it daily or anything :P).

Mmmmm the kids were asking for more of these.

Creamy Polenta with Tomato Spinach Saute.

2008-12-01T19:06:00.004+11:00

I got this from here, but you can't read all the destructions....so I made them up (plus I made a couple of small changes). I heard on an Aussie tv cooking show, Ready Steady Cook, that creamy polenta should always be made with milk, so for the first time decided to try it and the polenta came out smooth, fluffy, light and delicious. I served mine with a Veganomicon chickpea cutlet.

Creamy Polenta with Tomato Spinach Saute'
Serves 2-4

3/4 cup Cornmeal (slow cooking, not instant)
1 cup Milk
2 1/4 cups Water
Pinch Salt
1/2 cup grated Parmesan Cheese

2 Tbsp Olive Oil
2 Onions, diced
2 punnets Grape Tomatoes
2 cloves Garlic, minced
1 bag (150g) baby Spinach Leaves
Splash of Balsamic Vinegar

Heat the water and milk in a medium to large saucepan over high heat until it boils. Slowly pour the polenta in in a stream, whisking as you do. Bring back to the boil then lower the heat right down and simmer gently for 20-30 minutes, whisking often until it's thick and creamy.

Meanwhile heat 1 Tbsp oil in a large frying pan and fry your onions until translucent and soft. Remove from the pan.

Add the tomatoes and cook for about 5 minutes, then add the garlic and cook a further minute.

Add 1/2 cup of water and simmer the tomatoes on low for about 10 minutes. If they don't break down use a potato masher to gently help them along.

Add the onions back in and add the spinach by the handful cooking it until it's wilted and soft.

Add 1/2 the parmesan to the polenta and serve alongside the tomato and spinach mixture. Top with the remaining parmesan and a splash of the balsamic vinegar.