I'm Still Here!

Erm...hello! Sorry for my lack of blogging lately. The past week or so has not been the best for my family and while I’ve still been cooking and eating (of course :)) I haven’t been in much of a mood to enthuse about food here. But now I think it’s time to get back to it, so here’s some stuff we’ve been eating lately... This is Moroccan Chickpea and Lentil Soup from Vegetarian Soups For All Seasons by Nava Atlas. Strangely even though it has my favourite chickpeas and lentils this has been one of my least favourite soups from this book. I found it a little bland and had to spice it up some more.Fatfreevegan.com provided the inspiration for this meal. Yummy roasted veg on a baked potato topped with some Follow Your Heart Vegan Gourmet Cheddar Cheese. A tasty meal, but we could have done without the cheese. I’m not sure why I bought the vegan cheese. It’s only the second time since turning vegan that I’ve bought it and I think it will be the last...neither of us are really bothered about it. To use it up I made some macaroni cheese. And while we did really enjoy the meal I don’t think it will get me running out to the shops for more vegan cheese any time soon... And here it is with some roasted asparagus...mmmm!!! Another recipe from Fatfreevegan.com. These are Black Bean and Butternut Tacos. The ones pictured are Wee G’s which I made with black beans, but mine had chickpeas instead. I read on the internet (I’m not sure where now) that to make your tortillas in to taco shells you should bend them over the oven rack and leave them to crisp up in the oven for a few minutes. Although they were a little wonky they turned out quite well and were super crispy. Any longer in the oven and they would have broken our teeth though... :) I made Aloo Mutter Gobi from Fairly Odd Tofu Mom’s recipe again. It is just so good that Wee G insisted I make it again. This time I used sweet potatoes and edamame instead of potatoes and peas, so I guess the name is rather inaccurate now, but whatever...! I also cut down on the oil again and instead of coconut milk I just used soy milk. It was obviously less rich and creamy, and perhaps a little runny (note to self: use less soy milk in future!) but I enjoyed it just as much. And to go with the curry I made some more naan bread. Oh yum! This time I added the baking powder when I was supposed to which helped a lot! I also sprayed a little oil over them before grilling which made them a bit browner. They are so good I could eat them by themselves!!
I’ve made Moroccan Chickpea Patties from Vive Le Vegan! several times before and they are gorgeous! My only problem with them is that they can be a little soft making it hard to fry them. This time I added a flax egg and baked them in the oven. I also omitted the breadcrumb coating. They turned out just as good as when I have fried them and they were less prone to falling apart. These are some sweet potato and carrot sticks baked in the oven with some cumin, cinnamon and allspice and coated with a little spray oil. These are fantastically tasty and are a great side to go with almost anything. I made some garlic mayonnaise (just Veganaise and garlic mixed together) to dip them in....yum! And we have been eating some salads too. All pretty boring and much the same, but this one is quite pretty so I thought I’d share! I attempted to make a vegan Cadbury’s Crème Egg around Easter time. I have to admit that I in my veggie days I was quite partial to a Crème Egg even though they are super sickly and sweet. The original recipe was from here and advised to make the inside first and refrigerate it to harden, then dip in chocolate. If you’ve ever eaten a Crème Egg you will know that the inside is quite soft and not the easiest thing to dip in warm chocolate. To address this issue I decided to make the chocolate in an egg mould first and then fill with the fondant centre. Unfortunately I couldn’t find egg moulds and tried to use these little plastic eggs that not only halved the wrong way and had holes in the bottom but were also impossible to get the chocolate out of. They did come out tasting quite like Crème Eggs (although they were a little too strongly vanilla flavoured), so if I find proper egg moulds before next Easter I’ll probably attempt them again. The one pictured is the only one I managed to get out of the “mould” without breaking...

Looking forward to catching up on all the blogs I’ve been missing lately... Have a great day!! :)

A Whole Lotta Food

First up is an amazingly yummy curry posted originally by Fairly Odd Tofu Mom a while back. It’s Aloo Mutter Gobi (Spicy Cauliflower, Potatoes and Peas). I saw it again on Veg-a-nut's blog and she was raving about it. Like veg-a-nut I used less oil and light coconut milk. I also used edamame in place of the peas. I have to agree with veg-a-nut, it is soooo good! Anytime I have made Indian food before it’s never been quite as good as from a restaurant, but (even if I do say so myself!!) this could easily have came from a top notch Indian restaurant! Wee G was well impressed! So, thank you Fairly Odd Tofu Mom for this wonderful recipe! I will be making it again many times I am sure!

I also made some garlic and coriander naan bread to go along with it. I forgot to add the baking powder and only realised just before I was going to cook them...oops! So I tried to knead the baking powder in to the dough!! They actually came out reasonably well considering!

Then I still had some coconut milk left over so used it making this Coconut Millet Pudding. I got the idea from a recipe on the millet packet that used dried coconut. I missed out the dried coconut and used the coconut milk in place of some of the soy milk in the recipe. It came out pretty nice, but slightly dry and I had to add more soy milk after it was cooked. Yummy served with a dollop of jam. It wasn’t very coconutty mind you...

Artichokes were on sale in their thousands in Trader Joe’s last week and I’ve only ever eaten them a couple of times before so I jumped at the opportunity to try them again. I followed the instructions I found on this web site and served them with some melted Earth Balance margarine and some Vegenaise (thinned down a little). I know that you eat far from the whole thing, I was a little disappointed that for all the effort there really was next to nothing to eat...I couldn’t even find much in the way of hearts in them. I probably ate more mayo and margarine than artichokes!!

Another exciting find, at Whole Foods this time, was Living Harvest Hemp Milk. I didn’t even know there was such a thing as hemp milk and was keen to try it in the hopes it would be a nice alternative to my usual soy milk. First of all I drank it plain and I really didn’t like it. A couple of mouthfuls was more than enough! It was kind of nutty, but even after a good shake it seemed a little oily to me. However I did use it to make a quick smoothie the next day and I was happy to find that I couldn’t taste the yucky flavour this time (smoothie made with 1.5 cups hemp milk, 2 dates and a banana). If I was to continue to buy it I would probably use it mostly as an ingredient until I got a bit more used to the flavour.

This is some scrambled tofu from VWaV with added courgettes and broccoli. This is so good and makes a great brekkie with some whole wheat toast.

This is a mix of two recipes I have posted about previously – Far East Spicy Tofu and Tofu and Pineapple Stir Fry. It was basically Meoldy’s sauce from the Far East Spicy Tofu with tofu and fresh pineapple, broccoli and mushrooms. It was gorgeous! I love Melody’s sauce...it’s so tasty!