Food Update

As I said, I’ve been busy lately. But I want to get these photos up now because on Sunday I’m heading off to Brisbane for 9 days. I’ll be stuck in the State archives, the State Library archives, the University of Queensland archives, and the Museum of Brisbane archives. I think by the time I come home I’ll have had my fill of historical documents. I don’t expect to be posting until at least next Tuesday, so I’ll see you all then! Now for the food.

Sloppy Joes, based on the recipe in Hot Damn and Hell Yeah. These had tvp chunks (cut up a bit after rehydration), mushrooms, corn, and capsicum in a sweetish tomato sauce. We served them over garlic toast, which was a bit lost under all the sloppiness. These were good, but not great.

We ate the sloppy joes before heading off to the Townsville Cinema Group’s showing of the film September. The film is about two families, one white and one Aboriginal, living on a wheat farm in Western Australia in 1968. I think it’s definitely worth watching, because it shows the complexities of life for Aboriginal and white people alike in that era. It doesn’t paint all white people as evil or racist (though some are, like the shop keeper), but it shows the incredibly unfair treatment of an entire race of people. If you ever get the chance, watch September and let me know what you think.

One night I came home from a meeting to this dinner. It is based on the recipe for “Vegetable mountain with gravy” from Hot Damn and Hell Yeah, with a few changes. Instead of the gravy from HDaHY, though, Andy whipped up some “Easy Cheezy Gravy” from The Ultimate Uncheese Cookbook. On the side, some chickpea cutlets. The mountain was fantastic, though far too big for me. It made a good lunch the next day, too. And the cutlets were, as usual, great.

We also had our usual pasta, which features a veggie-full sauce. All these things…

Went into a pot and became this:

At the market last Sunday we saw a woman selling persimmons. They were $5 a kilo, which is a bit dear, but not too much to try them out. She let us have a taste before we bought them, and we liked it, so we got two. One looks like a butt.

When I was feeling a bit sick at uni last week, all I could think about was vegetable soup. This turned into a bit of a clean-out-the-fridge soup, perfect for the end of the week. It has onions, garlic, potato, carrot, zucchini, tomato and spinach, which were all blended up. After blending it, I put in fresh corn and a whole lot of fresh dill. The result was a creamy, hearty and green soup which was probably really good for us.

Another night I was helping Andy to revise a lit review he’s getting published in a major journal soon, so he cooked. ‘Vegetable Mountain with Gravy’ came back out because we had lots of potatoes and it was easy and yummy. This time, the gravy was ‘Punk Rock Chickpea Gravy’ from Vegan with a Vengeance, which I *love* but haven’t had in 2 years or so.

And finally, last night we had Kumudha’s Indian Chickpea Omelette, but changed a bit. On the side, a salad smothered with avocado dressing, and orange-plum-cinnamon glazed beetroot.Have a good week, everyone!