Let us eat vegan!

We have been loving our new cookbook, Let Them Eat Vegan! by Dreena Burton. We've enjoyed everything that we've tried so far, and have lots more recipes tagged to try. It's healthy, but in a gourmet way. The flavour combinations are sophisticated and the recipes centre on veggies, beans and whole grains - which really suits the sort of food we've been eating a lot this year, anyways.

Our first try from the cookbook was Jerk Chickpeas. I googled it afterwards, and found it all over the internet - my first choice of recipe was one that had been released as a teaser! But I can see why - they were easy to make, and very delicious. We made ours on the BBQ, rather than the oven, roasted some eggplants in them as well, and made them spicy. At the end of cooking, we mixed through some rocket from the garden, and put them in wraps.

White Bean Mashed Potatoes were a yummy and healthy side dish, but a bit more work than I prefer side dishes to be. Potatoes, pumpkin and cannellini beans mixed together were creamy and rich without being super fatty. We had them with eggplant parma, tahini-garlic gai lan, and roasted radishes.

Andy wasn't sold when I told him I would make Lemon-Infused Mediterranean Lentils. He doesn't like the idea of brown lentils just generally, even though when I do cook them, he generally likes them. The same happened with this dish - he liked them so much, he ate two HUGE bowls full. I didn't follow the recipe exactly - I added some zucchini and eggplant to the mix, and made it saucy, and it was fantastic served over rice. The saucy-stewy lentils were a great cold-weather meal, but the lemon juice and zest kept it from feeling stodgy.

Tonight's dinner was similarly "based on" with lots of changes, this time based on Yellow Sweet Potato Chickpea Pie with Basil. I used orange sweet potato and cannellini beans instead of chickpeas. This was much better than most of the quiche-type things we have made in the past, partially because it doesn't try to be a quiche at all. The slight sweetness from the sweet potato, the aniseedy basil, and the creamy beans all combined into something magical. Andy suggested (and I agree wholeheartedly) that these would be great at a party in mini form.

 This is my current go-to book for recipes when we've got veggies I can't decide what to do with. I'm very glad I got this book!

DIY Sponges

Before I get into this very exciting (or maybe that's just me?) post, let me mention that I'm now on Facebook! Personally, I have had a Facebook account since 2004. But The Tropical Vegan now has a Facebook page. If you use Facebook, please like me  - I expect to update it a bit more regularly that I do this blog, at least during busy work-times.

Now, for the post. One of the very exciting things we have growing in our garden is a luffa. I have posted about it previously. In the comments of that post, a lot of you said you'd never heard of luffa before. I suspect that's true when I'm talking about the vegetable, for eating purposes. Most of you would be more familiar with the loofah, the bath sponge. Good for exfoliating, and completely plant-based.

They are closely related to zucchinis, pumpkins, and cucumbers, and grow very similarly, if a bit more vigorously. Our back fence is covered in the lush, green vine, and all summer we've been picking handfuls of the small fruits for eating. They are good stir fried, and added to stews and things like that.

We actually have three plants, one ridiculous and two which have struggled more. But even the struggle-y ones have produced loofahs, like this one here.

Once the fruit get a bit big, the fibres start to form, and they're no longer good for eating. So those ones we have left. They take a while, but eventually get mature enough to pick and turn into sponges. The process is actually ridiculously simple. The hardest part, for me, was knowing when to pick them. I read that you should let them get soft, but I tried a few like that and they weren't mature enough. Then I realised that they are firm when they are very young, they go soft as they grow, but then they firm back up again. I asked my neighbour, who gave me the seeds in the first place - the trick is to wait until they go a little yellow-brown. Size and firmness don't matter as much as this.

Two sponge-sized loofahs, and four little food ones.

Step one is to cut off the ends. This isn't a necessary step, but I find it easier to get the seeds out, and the end result is prettier.

These black seeds are mature and can be saved to plant next year. 

Then peel off the skin. It comes off by hand with very little effort, really. Not as easy to peel as a banana, but more like an orange.

Once they're peeled, rinse out the seeds and gunky bits. I've used the hose for this, but the laundry sink is easier. My method is to stick my finger in and scoop out as much as possible. If some seeds stay in, it's no big deal, but too much gunk will make them go mouldy (as I learned from experience). They are pretty flexible, so you can squeeze them and bend them a bit at this point to wring out as much loofah-gunk as possible.

Then I squeeze most of the water out, and find them a sunny spot. Let them hang out and dry for a few days, until they have no moisture left.

I think these make fancy gifts for people - look, I made you a sponge! But they also work well, cut into smaller bits, for washing dishes. We have plenty more to harvest, so we probably won't need to buy sponges again for a long time.

Sure, most discussions of "locavorisim" refer to the food we actually consume, but I think growing my own dish-washing sponges is pretty damn cool.

We've got fever, for Betty Beaver

When I was growing up, we lived about 25 minutes from a petrol station which had a sort of three dimensional sign featuring a massively-busty beaver in a very short, American-flag dress. I was just thinking how much I wish I could share a photo, and lo! Google to the rescue!

Check it: http://aesthetic.gregcookland.com/2007_08_19_archive.html

I mainly saw Betty Beaver when I was on the bus to sporting events (as the team manager, because I was definitely not willing to actually participate in actual sports!). We sang a song whenever we saw her:

We've got the fever, for Betty Beaver... Big teeth; big boobs; Betty Beaver's got the moves! Gooooo Betty.

I was, obviously, pretty cool.

Also when I was growing up, my mum had a food-splattered, red & white checker covered Betty Crocker cookbook. It lived permanently on the counter, and we all referred to it fairly regularly.

This Christmas, I was gifted a cash card that could only be spent in the US. I took the opportunity a few weeks ago to order some cookbooks from Amazon. I got two very healthy cookbooks: The Happy Herbivore and Let them eat vegan! Both are proudly low in fat and sugar, and actively avoid mock meats and things like wheat. The third cookbook I ordered is sort of the opposite, in all the best ways - Betty Goes Vegan by Annie & Dan Shannon.

I made my first recipe tonight for dinner

 

This is "Herb-Roasted Chicken and Vegetables", from p. 143. I used Fry's Vegetarian Chicken Strips, my first go at this frozen mock meat. I did make some substitutions - I used balsamic instead of lemon, I used sweet potato instead of white potato, and green peas instead of green beans. So, maybe I didn't really make this recipe, but in any case, it was fantastic.
So far, Betty Goes Vegan's definitely got the moves. Go Betty!

Pumpkin Risotto, three ways

Andy and I discovered the joys of pressure cooker risotto over a year ago now - some chopping, less than 15 minutes of cooking, and voila! Dinner on the table, and not a bad rendition of risotto for no stirring. As such, it has become a pretty regular staple in our weeknight meal rotation, especially since pumpkin is one of the few veggies that is good and available and inexpensive year-round up here.

As I recounted in my original post, one time we improvised, using a thick soup in place of stock in the recipe.  That was a disaster. But more recently, we have tried some safer improvisations, with some success.

Our first rendition is based on the recipe for pumpkin risotto from Urban Vegan - in fact, the only real difference is that our version is pressure cooked. Red wine, sage, sundried tomatoes and pumpkin. And we added broccoli, because, yum. To get the textures right, we put the broccoli stems in early and pressure cooked them. The florets were stirred in after we took the risotto of the pressure, and sitting in the hot risotto for 5 minutes cooked them enough for our liking.

The second variety is herb-centric. Pumpkin, red capsicum, green peas, and sosomany herbs. There were garlic chives, basil, and parsley mixed through this and they made it delicious. The herbs were added right at the end before we served, so they stayed nice and fresh.

Our final attempt was a little on the weirder side, and wasn't perfect but could easily get there. It was a thai-inspired pumpkin risotto. We cooked the rice in some lime juice, instead of the usual wine that is in risotto; lime zest, lemon grass, ginger and garlic flavoured the stock; pumpkin, red capsicum and spinach were then finished off with just a splash of coconut cream. Unfortunately, the risotto was pretty soupy even before the coconut cream was added - I think more liquid came off the pumpkin than I was expecting. Still, the flavours were fab and thai-inspired risotto should totally be a Thing.

Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale

In just a few weeks, Townsville Vegans will be participating in the Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale.

I'm super excited for the chance to bake lots of things, raise awareness about veganism out in the community, and raise money for a worthy charity. I've started practicing some recipes to narrow down my baking contributions. One that is definitely settled so far is these Apple Walnut Cinnamon Scrolls. These are full of sugar, gluten, and cannot be classed as a health food by anyone's standard, which should mean they are a perfect candidate for winning over some staunch non-believers!

I'll also make these equally unhealthy chocolate peanut butter cupcakes with salted caramel drizzle, because they really impressed lots of non-vegans when I last made them.

But for the health conscious, I'm going to contribute some brownie balls. These are based on Hannah's amazing recipe, and they are really delicious. They're also gluten free, sugar free, and super easy to make!

If you're in Townsville, mark your calendars now - Willows Market on the 28th of April. If you're not in Townsville, check out the Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale page to see what's happening in your area, or host your own! 

Slow Weekend

I think I said yes to far too many things this year, and now I find myself really very busy. As a result, I tend to spend the weekends recovering from my crazy busy weeks by crocheting, gardening, reading, socialising, and not really doing much online. As a result of THAT, my poor blog has been neglected.

I really thought that I would give this site some attention last weekend. We had 4 days off, afterall, and no concrete plans. But, instead of queuing up posts with recipes, gardening successes, and craft projects, I spent time cooking, gardening, and sewing instead. But it was a glorious four day weekend - it went by slowly, and gently, and really gave me a recharge. I honestly think we should have a four day weekend every month.

My slow weekend involved lots of lovely things, like...

Peanut Butter Oat pancakes. I saw this posted on Facebook on Friday morning and had to have them. I made some changes - I used chia instead of flax seeds, I used sunflower oil instead of melted butter, things like that.

When I made the batter, I thought it looked like Definitely Not Enough, so I quickly mixed up a second batch, effectively doubling the recipe. That turned out to be unnecessary - we were so full we had leftovers, which admittedly were a nice snack. So even greedy gutses like Andy and I found this recipe enough for two people - if you make it yourself, don't be fooled by the small quantity of batter.

Gardening. Mainly Andy did the gardening, with some occasional support from me. He built some garden beds, covered the front bed with cardboard and then mulch, planted loads of seeds, and harvested this gigantic sweet potato.

Which we turned into African Peanut Stew. The stew also had eggplant from the garden, luffa (aka loofah) from the garden, chillies & capsicums from the garden, and lots of delicious peanut butter.

Easter Eggs. I made some totally amazing Coconut Cream Eggs from Celebrate Vegan. I know Easter is over, but it is worth making these, even if you shape as truffles, because OMGtheyaredelicious.

I mixed up the filling, which involved cream cheese, icing sugar and coconut, and in my version a splash of cointreau, and froze teaspoon-sized blobs on a baking sheet. Once they were frozen-ish, I could shape them into vaguely egg-shaped things. I had a little chocolate left over after coating all my eggs, so I made a ganache and drizzled it, which was sort of stupid but not bad.

Curtains. I made them, with the help of Nacho. Now our bedroom is nice and dark, no matter how full the moon is.

I also made jam, finished crocheting my blanket (now I just need to edge it), and we dog-sat Tika's friend Zoe. It was a full weekend, but it all happened at a nice slow pace. I'm looking forward to the upcoming public holidays to do more of the same!

Quarterly Update

Back in January, I made 13 resolutions for 2013. We're now a quarter of the way through the year, so it seems like a good time to see how I'm going so far.

Fitness
1. Run 500km this year - As of this week, I have run 135.5km. This is 10.5km more than a quarter of the way to my goal, so this is good! I've gotten to the point where I enjoy running, even though my daily run is still only between 3.5 and 5km. I have had one week where I ran all 5 days of the week, but then got sick so haven't sustained it.

2. Cycle 1600km this year - So far I have cycled 366km. This is 34km less than a quarter of my goal, so I need to pick up my game!

3. Do push-ups at least once a week - I have done this so far! Most weeks I do push-ups twice a week, even, always in lots of 30. So far I'm up to 540 push ups for the year, which is 18x.

Work
4. Clear out my email inbox every day - I was going really well with this one before teaching started. I was down to 30 emails at one point! Because of this, I have been more on top of responding, writing things down in my diary and then deleting emails, and so on. Once teaching started it all got a bit hectic, but I still try to find the time to do this regularly. I currently have 89 messages:

5. Unsubscribe from email lists - I got on that pretty early in the year and have managed to avoid signing up for new things, for the most part. But when I'm busy, if I get a stupid newsletter I don't want, I tend to delete it straightaway rather than going through the steps of unsubscribing. Still need to keep this up!

6. Turn my PhD into a book and get it published - I write every Monday morning and am about halfway through the mammoth task of turning my very academic PhD into a publicly accessible piece of writing. I'm happy with how I'm going so far!

Crafty
7. Turn the spare room into a craft room - I did that in the holidays, though it still needs some key things (like a futon or spare bed for lounging on and also for guests). I have spent rather a lot of time in there this long weekend, making curtains for the bedroom window.

8. Finish crocheting the blanket I started in early 2012 - I have added two more rows to this blanket, and will probably finish it off some time this week.

9. Sew curtains for the bedroom and hallway, and possibly other rooms - see above for bedroom curtains. Due to a long gap between buying fabric and making curtains, as well as slightly shonky planning, my intention to get 4 curtains out of this fabric failed - we'll get three, which means I can't really use them for the hallway window. So, still need to work on that.

Garden
10. Plant more flowers amongst the veggies to attract bees - two weekends ago Andy started a bunch of veggie seeds in seedling pots, so the following weekend I planted some sunflower, nasturtium, marigold and echinacea seeds. He's not sold on the idea of flowers in the veggie beds, but this will happen!

Home and Life
11. Keep track of everything we spend for at least two months this year - we did this in February. I haven't had a close look at it yet to see where our money goes, but at least we did the hard bit!

12. Do more food prep and meal planning on the weekends - we have had lots of success with meal planning, and I definitely intend to keep it up!

Example of meal planning success: Channa sag paneer with chappati

13. Help out with at least three vegan outreach stalls - I have done one so far, at the uni O Week Market Day, and will be contributing lots of baked things to the Townsville Vegans Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale in April. On track!

Queensland Jam

Rosellas are a type of parrot. They are also a type of hibiscus flower. This post is about making food from one of these. Can you guess which one? 

We get monthly "what to plant" emails from the website Gardenate.com, and throughout the summer they got a bit sad. November: Plant basils, sweet potato, rosellas. December: Plant basils, rosellas. January: Plant rosellas. We're back into more diverse planting season at the moment, but we're also in the midst of the rosella harvest.

We have 6 rosella plants in our garden, and they are a very lovely plant, I think. They are all at different stages of development, and some took a while to become productive.

After the flower opens, the petals fall off and a red bud-like calyx forms, sort of like a rose hip. This calyx is actually what you harvest. The red "petioles" around the calyx are super tart, and can be turned into jam, cordial, syrup, and those kinds of things. They are also dried and turned into tea - most famously, Celestial Seasons Red Zinger tea, but usually they are an ingredient in most commercial lemon-flavoured teas. Or if the seed pod is removed intact, they are poached and sold for an awful lot of money as "blooming" flowers to add to a glass of champagne. 

We've been harvesting, slowly at first, since December. I made a tiny batch of cordial at christmastime, and I think I will do some again because it would make really nice cocktails.

But most of the harvest has gone into the freezer, waiting for a big enough batch to make jam. This is the most popular use, it seems, of rosellas, which are also known as the "Queensland Jam Plant" - which begs the question, if you refer to them as the Queensland Jam Plant, what do you call the jam? Queensland Jam Plant Jam? Queensland Jam? 

Linguistic conundrums aside, two weekends ago we had a full freezer bag, plus a big bowl full of fresh calyxes to work with. Let the jam making begin! I used this blog post as my guide (but ended up using far less sugar).

Step 1: separate the red petioles from the green seed pod. I put my frozen and fresh calyxes in a big pot with water, to wash off the bugs, crusty old petals, etc. 

Then I spent the next three hours (I kid you not) peeling them apart. It was a lot of work. The pre-frozen calyxes were actually much easier to separate - they peeled away in one quick move. For my next batch, I will definitely freeze them all before working with them. I will also do a better job of washing the calyxes before they go in the freezer, so I don't need to have them in a bucket of water to process. Seriously, my hands have never in my whole life been so wrinkly.

By 7pm on Saturday I had a sore back, wrinkly hands, a bowl full of seedpods and a bowl full of calyxes. I put the rosella-bits into the fridge till the next day.

Put the seed pods into a pot. Cover them with water. Bring it up to the boil, and let it go for about 20 minutes. My jam, in the end, wasn't as set as I would like. I have heard that cutting the seed pods in half is a better way to release the pectin. Probably easier would be to sort of smash them in the water as it is coming up to the boil. I'll let you know if it works better the next time around. After the seed pods have cooked, strain them off. Compost the pods, save the liquid.

Rinse the jam pot out with clean water. Add the red petioles, and the seed pod-cooking liquid. Bring them up to a boil and let them cook until the petioles have gone mushy. This didn't take too long, once the boil got rolling - maybe 5 or 10 minutes. 

Turn the heat down to very low. Let the jam mix cool slightly. Add sugar. I used about 1 2/3 cups of raw sugar, in about 5 cups of jam mixture. This seems like much less than most recipes call for, which could account for the lack of proper-set. But it tasted good - still lovely and tart, but not face-squeezy. Dissolve the sugar gently into the jam while you taste to see if it needs any more.

Once the sugar is dissolved, bring it back up to a rolling boil. Let it cook like that for 30 minutes (sorry, raw foodies, you'll have to look elsewhere). Set a timer, get a book, turn on the fan in the kitchen and stir it pretty near constantly for the whole time. When the 30 minutes is up, you test for set. It's probably best that I don't give advice on this aspect, because I failed. I put my jam on a cold plate in the freezer, but found it hard to determine if it was gelly because of the rosella-bits. So I just thought, schmeh, and we bottled it up.

A lot of people talk about alternative methods for sealing jam jars - popping them upside down while they cool, putting them in the oven, etc. But I've read things that make me nervous about breaking the Preserving Rules, so we got a gigantic pot to boil our jam jars to properly seal them.

We got four jars, which all sealed properly. When I opened one and found the jam was runny instead of gel-tastic, I was a little disappointed, but then I tasted it. And it tasted really, really yummy. And, because of all the rosella chunks, it is still fine to have on toast - didn't run off!

But, what better to do with runny jam than put it into baked goods? I used the recipe for Raspberry Swirl Pound Cake from Urban Vegan, using (obviously) rosella jam in place of raspberry. 

It was even more delicious with another spoonful of jam on top! 

Luckily, we still have 3+ jars of jam, a freezer bag and a half of calyxes, and 6 still-productive plants, because I have falled head over heels for this stuff!

(PS - I made jam out of the hibiscus flower, not the parrot.)

From the Garden

Practically since we moved in to our house almost a year ago, we have had a semi-productive garden which we've used to supplement our purchases of fresh produce. Now that we've been here a while, it's starting to get really good. Have a look at these meals that centred on the harvest from our own back yard.

This BBQ dinner is eggplant parma with sauteed luffa, potatoes and salad. The luffa was sauteed with lime juice which we were gifted from a friend's tree.

We grew the eggplant, all the salad ingredients - cucumber, basil, tropical spinach and chilli - and luffa. The luffa are a zucchini-like climbing vine which, if you let it get bigger, can be turned into the fancy bath sponges you buy from shops. This is what they look like when they are small.

And here is how they look when they grow.

Another night we made sushi. We used bought rice and seaweed, and condiments for dipping. But we grew all the fillings - eggplant that we marinated, snake beans, and cucumber.

Served with a side of sauteed luffa.

Andy's dad made the chopping board. I reckon her should go into business.

The cucumbers we're growing at the moment aren't your typical green variety. They're called "giant russian" and when I first saw one on the vine I thought we'd accidentally grown a butternut pumpkin!

And these nachos were made with black beans, tinned tomatoes, homegrown capsicum and chillies, and my favourite part...

Home grown sweet potatoes.

So we're not obligate locavores yet, but our locallivory is increasing. I just can't wait until our fruit trees start producing.