I can't think of a post title.

Woo woo it's Friday.  I hope everyone's week has been mighty fine.  We actually has some lovely weather over the bank holiday so we decided to have another barbecue.  You have to make the most of the weather in the UK as it seems to have buggered off again and we're not sure when it will return!

 

My plate was pretty similar to the last post, only I made a bean salad with green & kidney beans, some fresh sweetcorn and a bit of red pepper.  We ran out of garlic so had to make do with regular bread - oh the hardship!



 

This was just a quicky dinner I did last week. I was gonna make risotto but I did have the rice I thought I had so I used bulghur wheat instead. Pretty simple, I just cooked the bulghur in veggie stock and while it was cooking I roasted up some chunks of butternut squash, some asparagus and some mushrooms.  Then add the end I stirred in the squash and some peas. 

 

Last Saturday was my gorgeous Godson's christening and my best friend asked me to make cupcakes for the do afterwards.  I did chocolate with coconut icing (pink wrappers) and choc chip with orange icing (blue wrappers).  They went down pretty well, but then who doesn't love a cupcake?

Last night I was gonna make sausage & mash, as I bought some Linda Mc sausages on my lunch break, but instead I decided to cook the potatoes with a bit of onion in veggie stock.  This is something that was in an ancient weight watchers book that mum & I used to love once upon a time.  I forgot how good potatoes are when they are cooked this way. Plus you get gravy all cooked into it, so don't have to dirty a jug making bisto! WIN.

 

This meal was one that I got 2 meals out of, yay leftovers!  I made up a quick bolognaisey type sauce with some Linda Mc Cartney Mince, chopped onion, courgette & pepper and some jarred tomato sauce for a super quick tea.

 

Then the next day, I added some spices and lots of chilli and fresh coriander and used it to fill tacos. Perfect for when you're running short of time, like I often am on a week night.

And lastly - breakfast from Wai Kika Moo Kau the other weekend.  I went to Brighton to hang out with Jojo as it was the last time I'll see her for a bit, as she's off on her travels to America for a while.  This was a pretty good brekkie, although the tofu was a bit soft for me.  I have a weird thing about tofu texture (remnants of gallstone-inflicted food aversions!) and I tend to overcook it a bit so it is chewy!  But the rest was good and I really like it in there.

Have a rad weekend!

Laterz
xXx

Gimme gimme s'more, gimme gimme s'more

We actually have had some sunshine the last few days, which after months of unseasonable cold and snow, was lovely!

In fact it was so nice yesterday, we busted out the barby for the first barbecue of the season.  I had just bought some vegusto sausages so I knew what I was having, and to go along we also had:

The corn & edamame salad from Veganomicon.  I don't make this much but I need to, it's so simple but it's delicious! My mum and dad both loved it too.

I made a salad of just lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers and radishes and just dressed it with a simple olive oil and lemon juice dressing.

 

I also did some potatoes Jamie Oliver style (boil them, then put them in foil with lightly smashed garlic cloves, rosemary (I used dried) and salt & pepper), then put in oven for at least 20 minutes (mine had about half an hour). So good.

 

Also, I bought some fancy olives from Waitrose. They don't always have these because they're obviously popular but that is because they are AWESOME! They have a fat wodge of garlic and jalapeno in each one. YEAH.

 

 I also did some garlic bread (just a Sainsbury's basics one, which is accidentally vegan) but I forgot to take a pic, so you'll have to settle for seeing it lurking on my plate...

 

And for dessert I joyously remembered that ages ago I bought some vegan marshmallows, for no other reason than I found them in a shop near where I live!  But we didn't have any graham crackers (well we did but they were 2 years out of date) so we used speculoos biscuits instead (Lotus Caramel biscuits) and it was awesome.

 

Inside Shot

 

The first one I was mucking around with so it didn't melt enough.  I did better on the second attempt though but I ate it too quick to get a pic.

 

 

Fingers crossed the warm weather stays with us for a while.

 

Laterz

xXx

 

Thread title inspiration: It's Britney Bitch

FIVE... what you waitin FOUR....

.. if ya wanna three three two two one, LET'S DO IT!

I miss the 90s.

HELLOOOOOOOO!

So this blog turned 5 years old in March (dodgy 90s song reference duly explained?); I can't believe it.  If it were my baby s/he'd be in school by now - and sorely neglected, but that's a whole nother matter and this just started to get weird. 

So yeah food.  I haven't posted in so long that it is feckin April already and I haven't even shown you my christmas dinner. By this point I know you're thinking 'no one gives a shit Sal'.  And I could probably keep the pic and post it this year if my christmas dinner turns out shit.  But I won't.  Here it is!  I used Julie Hasson's awesome recipe from Vegan Diner for the chicken style roast.  I've made this 3 or 4 times now, it is so easy and tasty!

Merry Christmas! :o)

 

I made a Christmas cake too but I forgot to take a pic.  So here are the gingerbread cupcakes with lemon icing that I made instead of my usual chocolate log (recipe from vegan cupcakes take over the world).

 

 

A few weeks ago I went down to Brighton for VegFest where my awesome friend Jojo had a stall for her not-for-profit bakery. Look at all those cakes!  They were amazing and she was sold out about half way through the day.  There were a lot of disappointed faces on those that didn't have the sense to get there early I can tell you.  This doesn't even show them all but as you are all well aware, I fail at photography.

 

 

Afterwards, I went over to my Brother and his Fiancee's place to spend the night and so I decided the night before to make them some cookies.  I wanted to make chocolate cookies with mint extract and chunks of minty chocolate in, because my bro is a fan of mint chocolate. But I couldn't find ANY minty chocolate!  So I bought these things....

 

 

Genius right? No.  They are basically just sugar so they turned into a caramelly hard sugar mess instead of cookies.

 

FAIL

 

COOKIE FAIL SAD FACE

 

 

Speaking of fails - PASTY FAIL!

By the way my pasty fail face is similar to aforementioned cookie fail face. Only less bovvered. Cuz I still gonna eat it.

 

And just so this isn't a post full of fail - JAZZY UNFAIL. Cuz who doesn't like a cat in a box with laser eyes? Weirdos, that's who!

What else can I show you.... oh yes. Pie!  This is the wonderfully fabulous Mixed Mushroom, Porcini & Ale pie from Mildred's in Soho, that I had on a day in London with my BFFs. It comes with chips and my favourite vegetable: mushy peas.

I had dessert too: it was some sort of chocolate truffle cake but looking on their menu now I don't see it, so I dunno the right name for it. GAH.

This next pic was a jolly nice pasta dish that I knocked up when I was trying to think of something to do with the half a leftover vegusto sausage!

So I fried it in a wee bit of oil then added a chopped tomato, some chopped (jarred) roasted red pepper, garlic, a shallot and a good squeeze of tomato puree.  I added a bit of pasta water to make a sauce, some light soya cream and a crap tonne of nooch.  Oh and lots of red chili flakes.  Then some fresh basil on top to make it seem fancy.  It was GOOD.

And lastly but not leastly I made a massive shepherds pie, because my friend was coming over and I figured I would eat leftovers for a day or so. But she didn't end up eating at mine so I had to finish it off myself.  After 6 days I was kind of glad to see the end of it, even though it was super delish.

I used lentils as the base and the topping was half regular and half sweet potato, which is a magical combo!

I'm outta here.

Laterz
xXx



What will your daddy do when he sees your mama kissing Santa Claus?

"Ah haaaaah! Are you hanging up your stocking on the wall....."

Oh I love christmas! There's less than a week to go and I'm still not bored of christmas music yet!

I figured I'd try and get in a post before chrimbo so that I can clear my camera out before the xmas foodz.  So here goes...

Last week was my work xmas do. We went for an Italian meal and I gotta say, the menu was pretty lacking in veggie options, let alone veggie options easy to veganise.  So I went safe and got bruschetta without the cheese/pesto that normally comes with ....

please excuse my even worse than usual food photography, the light was terrible in there!

 

Main was more bread and tomato in the form of cheeseless pizza.  Better than a pizza of sadness but not as good as homemade.

 

The day after the party, I headed down to Brighton to hang out with my friend Jojo.  We had an awesome day hanging out in Brighton. We went to the new Duke of York cinema at Komedia and got hot dogs. Now I was sure I took a photo but I can't find it!  Damn. But luckily Jojo has posted a review on her blog and has a photo of the hot dog we both had that day. Lucky!

 

Later on that day, before we went to a late night viewing of Gremlins at the aforementioned cinema, we* made a roast dinner, it was pretty epic.  It was the seitan en-croute from 500 Vegan Recipes and it was good!

 

Here's the top of it - FANCY!

 

And the plate shot! (Before being covered in gravy)

*Jojo made it really, I just peeled some potatoes!

 

Speaking of roasts, I made one other week.  I used Julie Hasson's recipe from Vegan Diner for chicken style roast seitan and I REALLY liked it. In fact I liked it so much that I am making it for christmas day.  I will cook it a bit longer though as it was a little undercooked in the middle.  This also got Daddy Alien's seal of approval ("It's better than those slimy ones you made last week! Nicer texture") So there you go!  I had it with sage & onion stuffing balls (hehe balls), broccoli, mash, bisto gray and sprouts - which may look burnt but they're not. Honest.

 

Earlier than day I made myself a fry up for breakfast (I love Sundays). Scramble, sausage patties, bagel, mini potato waffles and hoops! YEAH.

 

Speaking of brunch foods... I bought some of the Redwoods smoked salmon style slices at the Veg Fayre the other week. 

 

I had them on a bagel with some tofutti cream cheese....

 

I thought they were GROSS!  SO GROSS!  But, a lot of PPKers seem to be diggin them.  For me it's the texture, they are very similar to what I remember smoked salmon to be like and it grossed me out.  I binned the rest of the packet.

 

Lastly, just because it was on my camera, last night's dinner. Scramble with roasted potatoes, asparagus and green beans with some reggae reggae ketchup to make it extra classy!

 

That's all for now, I'll be back after chrimbo with holiday foodz!

 

 

To all those that celebrate it, have a wonderful Christmas!

Laterz

xXx

Wee chooky birdie so lo lo...

....laid an egg on the windy-so, the windy-so, began to crack, wee chooky birdy quack quack quack!

 

That silly song is in my head today, because I was trying to come up with chicken puns and all that came to mind is a song my Nan used to sing to us. She is in my thoughts today because it is 6 years today since she passed away. I keep remembering all the silly (and quite often rude) Scottish songs she used to sing to us as kids.

 

But yeah anyway, chicken!  Last week I decided to make the No Cluck Cutlets from Vegan Sandwiches Save the Day, because I had a day off and had a bit of extra time to cook on a Monday for once.

 

I am a pretty lazy creature and I was kicking myself a bit for picking a recipe that required more effort than my normal lazy attempts at seitan, (rolling out cutlets - SO tedius) but in the end I was really glad that I was 'patient' because these cutlets are AWESOME!!  I basically ate one every day for a week, luckily I froze half of them or I'd still be eating them and probably be bored by now.

 

The first one I had literally out of the cooking pot with some smash (yes I'm shameful, I know) and peas and sweetcorn. 

 

 

I know it looks a bit pale and dry in this pic, but that's because it was before I COVERED that shit in Punk Rock Chickpea Gravy from VWaV. That stuff is the shiznit, is it not??  (My dad tasted some and his verdict was "that goop in the pot tasted good!" haha). So yeah, as you can see below, it needed a before pic to be taken too!

 

Another meal I had was a cutlet that I dipped in seasoned (just salt & pepper) flour and pan fried. This was SO GOOD.  I roasted up some potatoes, BNsquash and sprouts and steamed some broccoli to go with. The sauce is leftover Punk Rock Gravy.

 

Another meal I used them for was this accompaniment to fried rice.  The rice was awesome, I made a plain tofu scramble first to approximate the egg pieces then added cooked rice, peas and grated carrot and fried it up. Then a bit of soy sauce to season.  The sauce for the seitan I just mixed together some peanut butter, coconut yoghurt*, Chinese 5 spice powder and bit of water to thin it. Honestly it didn't blow me away but it was ok. I added some sriracha on top to de-bland it a bit. The rice was superrad though. (*that coconut yoghurt? yeah, he'll be back!)

 

Saturday night, my mum was out so my dad suggested getting a pizza. Honestly the thought of another pizza of sadness was too much for me so I bought the stuff and made my own.  I used the VWaV recipe for crust but instead of making 2 thin ones, made one HUGE fat beast of a crust.  It was filthy good.  The toppings were mushrooms, sweetcorn, fresh tomatoes, jarred artichokes, jarred jalapenos, a chopped up hemp spacebar and a crap tonne of Tesco's medium vegan cheddar, which melts SO well. This pizza was humungous, we actually had loads of leftovers, which never happens with pizza in our house.

 

On Sunday, it was Animal Aid's annual Vegan Christmas Fayre in Kensington.  I have been the last few years and although there's not much new there anymore, it's fun way to waste a couple of hours and gain a few pounds.  I was going to take photos of everything I ate that day but obviously forgot (blaming the jaeger bombs for that!). Although I did get a photo of the awesome cheesy potato pie that Jojo and I both got about 2 minutes after we walked through the door.  Hopefully she will remember the name of the stall, cuz I'm fucked if I can!

 

 OK so that yoghurt I' mentioned before... I'm pretty sure I've blogged about it before, but I love this stuff.  It's quite sweet but not so sweet that it can't be used in savoury dishes. 

 

 It's really thick, it's like coconut cream!

 

I use it quite a bit because putting in a couple of spoonfuls of this plus some water or veggie stocks is so many less calories than a tin of coconut milk!  My favourite way to use it is a noodle / soup type bowl.  I just chuck a bunch of veggies into boiling veg stock and some thair red curry paste, add a portion of dried noodles and cook it about 5 minutes then stir in the yoghurt. It's really good, this one had some cut up leftover baked tofu in too.

 

 And this was tempeh that I fried in hot jerk paste with steamed broccoli then I just stirred some of the coconut yoghurt into cooked plain rice. Really good.

 

Last night I also made a veg curry with the last of the pot, but I forgot to take a pic! Doh.

 

Anyways, hope you all have a fab weekend whatever you end up doing and that you don't get squished in the shops if you go christmas shopping! Cross your fingers for me!

 

Laterz

xXx

Opa!

AKA, my Dad's Big Fat Greek Birthday Feast!

My shiney new copy of Vegan Eats World arrived this month and I've been excited to receive it for ages.  So this month was Daddy Alien's birthday and we celebrated by me cooking us a fancy meal and because I love Greece and Greek food, I picked the Pastichio, Greek Salad with Cashew Feta and the Walnut Spice Sticky Cake to finish.

I started with a bit of a cheat, some shop-bought greek mezze type items.  I bought mini pittas, dolmades (stuffed vine leaves), chargrilled veggies and hummus. Also, those olives were stuffed with a big wodge of garlic and a jalapeno - they were AWESOME!  I made the tzatziki, because a vegan shop bought version is not an option. It was easy, just grated cucumber, garlic, soya yoghurt, chopped mint, pinch of salt and a squeeze of lemon juice.

Here's the pastichio just out of the oven. Pastichio is a Greek pasta dish that is kind of like a lasagne only you use tube pasta instead of sheets and it has some greek spices in there.

There's 2 options for this dish, without or without aubergine/eggplant. I chose to include it and I'm glad I did, although I think it could have done with being roasted a bit earlier than called for so it could be cooked some more in the tomato sauce.  But it was still great. If you've read the recipe, you might notice I forgot to sprinkle nutmeg on top! Eek. Next time I'll remember!

Inside shot, with the cashew feta salad.  I wasn't sure my mum & dad would like this but they liked it all.

And for dessert, the Walnut Spice Sticky Cake.  This cake is SO GOOD. You must make it, now. Do it now.  Seriously, go now!

It was great leftovers for breakfast as well as being an excellent end to this meal, with a glass of wine and some X-Factor!  I should say though that it took way longer to bake than the book said, but I know that all ovens are not equal.  It was still liquid so I ended up turning it down and cooking it longer, because I didn't want to burn the top.

This pic is right after I took it out the oven and poured the syrup over

 

And after cutting

 

 

The following day, my brother and his fiance were round, so we all went for a lovely Thai meal in one of my dad's favourite restaurants.  As puddings are not normally something I can eat in a regular restaurant, I made my dad some birthday cupcakes for us all to enjoy when we got back.  They are the basic chocolate cupcakes from VCTOtW, I just upped the almond extract to a full teaspoon.  Then the buttercream I flavoured with Monin Cherry Syrup and stuck a glace cherry on top.

 

 

I'll leave you with a pic of the birthday boy enjoying his cupcake!

 

Laterz

xXx