La fiesta vegana

To celebrate le seis de Mayo (or was it a belated cinqo meal?) I decided to host a Mexican vegan potluck for the local vegan group. Unfortunately, the group has been pretty hard to motivate and only a few people RSVPed. Then at the last minute some of those people couldn’t make it, so the potluck turned into dinner at my house with my friend, Mel. We had stacks of fun and way too much food between the two of us. While it would have been nice to have a bigger crowd, it was a good night anyways.

When I was still expecting a few people I made some sangria. Yellowtail red wine with pieces of apple, orange and carambola and topped up with lemonade. I’m sure it wasn’t authentic by any means, but I enjoyed it. Mel was driving so she didn’t imbibe, which meant I got to enjoy it for the next few days.
I had a trio of condiments to have with chips and with our main meal. Salsa, guacamole and ‘Almost Sour Cream’ (from Hot Damn and Hell Yeah).I also made some corn bread, following the recipe from HD&HY, which is probably the best cornbread I’ve ever made. I put the leftovers in the freezer and have been snacking on it since then, and even Andy likes it—he’s a notorious corn bread hater.For dinner I made enchiladas filled with rice and tofu and topped with a tomato-beany sauce. Mel made yummy Spanish rice. Unfortunately I forgot to photo any of our food... but I got a shot of my lunch the next day, topped with sour cream and guac. Not a great picture, but the food was super yummy.
And for dessert, we enjoyed Mel’s Mexican Chocolate Cake. This was seriously good, with a hint of spice and a cinnamon-y kick.
It’s always nice to share a meal with friends, especially when the friend is vegan, too.

Complementary baking

Some of my favourite foods come from the oven—cookies, cakes, pies, roasted veggies.... But using the oven to bake just one thing isn’t very efficient. Preheating and maintaining the temperature in a fairly big airspace just for one pan of food uses a lot of electricity and isn’t good for the environment or the wallet. Not to mention, it makes the house all kinds of hot—this is a good thing in the winter, but not so much in the hotter months. And even though autumn officially started in Australia on Saturday, it’s still pretty warm here.

None of this is enough to stop us from using the oven. We just try to be a bit smarter when we do heat it up. In our house, the oven is stuffed full whenever it is turned on. This usually takes some major strategery—which pans will we use that can fit together; which dish needs to be on which shelf; how long and at what temperature does each dish need to bake; when should batters be mixed and poured into pans...

Sunday, after eating pancakes and reading the paper, Andy and I had a long, drawn-out baking-fest. He was bored (I was doing the crossword) so I suggested he bake some cookies. He flipped through our newest cookbook acquisition, Joy of Vegan Baking, and decided to make both Lemon Bars and Jam-Filled Oat Bran Muffins. And since we had the oven on anyways, he declared, we should have something baked for dinner; his choice was the potato pizza from the latest issue of Vegan Voice magazine (which I didn’t get photos of). And then he requested that I be in charge of the Lemon Bars.

Andy started on the muffins in the early afternoon. Instead of oat bran, he ground up some rolled oats. He kept the wet ingredients separate, in the fridge, waiting for the oven to be preheated before mixing (since the baking powder activates as soon as it hits moisture).

After he had finished with the muffins, he boiled and mashed some potatoes and mixed up the pizza crust.

When he was done in the kitchen, I put together the shortbread crust of the Lemon Bars, pressed it into a slice pan, and put it in the fridge. Then I blended up the topping in a bowl, using mango flavoured silken tofu (not noticeable over the lemony-ness) and custard powder in place of corn flour.

When it came time for dinner, we put our carefully worked-out strategies into action. Andy mixed his batter while the oven heated, then filled muffin cups with batter and jam. We topped the pizza crust, and baked the shortbread. The muffins came out looking delicious, the pizza was rolled out a little thin and fell apart while we ate, and the Lemon Bars took much longer to set than the recipe called for. But everything was really tasty, and now we’ve got treats to last us all week.

Lemon Bars

Jam-filled Oat Muffin and a Lemon Bar

We had another oven meal last night to use up a few leftovers and old veggies. Last week I made an Ethiopian-spiced tofu and vegetable stew. We blended it up and stirred through some leftover barley. This was poured into a crust. The whole lot was topped off with a mixture of mashed potato, sweet potato, garlic, miso and sunflower butter (for a cheesy flavour). I called it Ethiopian Goatherd’s Pie—because it’s not quite shepherd’s pie.

At the same time, Andy made some gourmet-style stuffed sweet potatoes. He steamed a few big chunks of sweet potato, and the hollowed out the insides. They were stuffed with a bread and corn mix flavoured with cranberry jelly and orange marmalade. This was a very yummy, Thanksgiving-flavoured side dish, and that stuffing is likely to make more appearances in our house.

And finally, because Vaala asked after my last post, I’ll share with you my recipe for pastry crust. It’s a mix of recipes and techniques from Hot Damn and Hell Yeah, Wild Morsels, and my mum. This is enough to make one standard sized crust, or six topless mini-crusts. If you need a top, double the recipe.

¾ c. sifted flour
¼ c. ice cold margarine (leave it in the freezer for 20 minutes)
1/8 tsp. salt
2 T. ice water

--Combine flour and salt in a medium bowl. Cut in margarine with a pastry cutter or your fingers, until the mixture resembles bread crumbs. Add ice water and mix well, kneading slightly to incorporate all the flour. Form into a ball (or six small balls, for cupcake-sized pies) and chill for 30 minutes. Roll out between two sheets of cling wrap to desired size. The cling wrap keeps it from drying out the way a floured surface does. When you transfer the crust to your pan, peel off the top piece of cling wrap and flip the crust into your pan, and use the other cling wrap to press it in to place. Fill with something yummy, bake and enjoy.

Brain food.

Andy and I have been working fairly hard since I’ve come back from Canberra—me on writing (I’m nearly done with a rough-as-guts draft of chapter 4!!), him on organising field trips (he’s currently at Orpheus Island and will be back in PNG at the end of March). Thus, much of our time has been spent at uni rather than at home in the kitchen. Add to this the crazy weather we’ve had. When it has rained, the highways flood in the blink of an eye, leaving us cut off from fresh fruit and veggies. When it’s not raining, it’s hot and humid. At least the bike paths are no longer too flooded to ride to uni. However, the conditions are perfect for growing mould—I’m thinking of starting some sort of commercial venture, since it grows so readily on every surface in our house, from the desktop to the outside doors to my clothes in the closet.

But unlike mould, kitchen inspiration has been a bit hard to come by this summer. Still, we have managed to come up with a few good meals...

An easy favourite, when the right ingredients are on hand, are burgers. This recipe for ‘Mexican Patties’, which we loosely followed, is from Wild Morsels and it was good. Beans, polenta, tomatoes and Mexican-inspired spices all combined into these yummy, easy to put together patties. Andy is the master of burger-assembly, and he didn’t disappoint. White bread burger buns, lettuce, tomato, beetroot and cucumber formed the base on which the patty rested. On top were onions sautéed with a few diced Spanish olives, and a generous scoop of Almost Sour Cream (from Hot Damn and Hell Yeah).

There have been a lot of nights when I haven’t felt like eating much more than a bowl of cereal, let alone cooking, so luckily there is someone else in the house to pick up the slack. Andy set out to make me a secret meal and set to flipping through recipes in the cupboard. He settled on SusanV’s mini-crustless tofu quiches. Our experience with these in the past has been tasty but structurally a mess, so he planned to add a crust. Unfortunately, we were out of frozen pastry, so the surprise was ruined and I was mustered off the couch to make pastry. It was worth the minimal effort—they turned out really well, all filled with spinach and love.

Speaking of love, who doesn’t love marked down food? Andy and I always scoop up reduced items, so when I saw the telltale green sticker on this soy cheese I got all excited. The texture is similar to the super-processed Velveeta cheese block, but a bit grainier.

I tried to dice it up to put on pizza, but it is pretty gooey and stuck to the knife. So instead I sort of crumbled it. It has a really cheddary flavour, and didn’t melt, but it made a nice addition to our usual repertoire of toppings (seitan, pineapple, tomato/bbq sauce, and parsley).

On the bright side, the first day of Autumn is in less than a week. On the not-so-bright side, that means almost nothing here in north Queensland!

Before and After

Apologies for my absence of late. I've been a bit busy. At the end of September, Andy came home. With only four days between his homecoming and my trip for Brisbane, we avoided uni as much as possible and stayed home to canoodle instead. A few short days after I came home, Andy's parents got into town. They're here for about a week, and the last few days have been full of sight-seeing, eating, etc. I'm at uni today because I'd signed up to sit at two different market stalls--one for Reclaim the Night, the other for the local Animal Rights group. After the in-laws leave, I have to write a conference paper, but after that things should settle down again, at least for a bit. But enough excuses. How about some food?

To welcome Andy home (that's how far behind I am) before I went to Brisbane, I wanted to make Cherry Ripe Slice. But, my slice pan is lost in the vortex of a friend's messy kitchen, so I had to make a Cherry Ripe Pie instead. It came out really well again, though it was a bit too thick in the pie pan.

Somehow we managed to find the time before I left to go engagement ring shopping. We had planned on skipping that tradition, but after getting hit on a few times I decided it would be easier to have some bling on my finger. To celebrate choosing one (which is being resized still), we got a bottle of champagne.
I love Yellow Tail products. They are local, and vegan, and relatively cheap, and they taste pretty damn good. Combined with a few overripe strawberries, it's the perfect way to celebrate.
Then I went to Brisbane. You read about that in my last post.

When I came back, my plane went at dinner time and I was pretty hungry (though I did get a free pass into the Qantas Club thanks to my travelling companion. Alas, the food they have available isn't too vegan friendly). Luckily, Andy thought ahead and had warm Apple Enchiladas waiting for me. They were based on the recipe from Hot Damn and Hell Yeah, but with much less sugar than the recipe calls for. It's a good thing, too. They were super sweet as it was. Instead of the syrup-y topping from the recipe, Andy made a orange-chocolate glaze.
Soon I'll have time to catch up on everyone else's blogs... but it looks like I'll have a lot to catch up on! VeganMoFo posts are abundant this year!

Veggies Galore.

Here are some more veggie-full meals that we’ve eaten lately.

Sweet potato hash with five spice and watercress, from Vegan with a Vengeance. I used a mix of gold kumara and purple-skinned sweet potato. To go with it, Andy made some broccoli flavoured with mustard seeds, lemon juice and fresh dill.

This was the makings of vegetable wraps. In the farthest black bowl is a mixture of sautéed zucchini and green capsicum, flavoured with mustard seeds. The closest black bowl has raw corn, which added a lovely crunch to the wraps. The rainbow bowl has Andy’s favourite side dish of sautéed spinach and grated carrot, with balsamic vinegar. The yellow bowl holds guacamole, and the glass bowl has some Almost Sour Cream (from Hot Damn and Hell Yeah). All that filling, plus sauce, made for overstuffed tortillas.

Here we have roasted green beans, a garlic-herb dinner roll, baked mushrooms, mashed potato balls and stuffed zucchini. The zucchini stuffing had the zuke inners, a big mushrooms, grated carrot, tomato, bread crumbs and nut yeast.

This was a very filling dinner, but somehow we found room for salad. It wasn’t a typical salad since it didn’t have any leaves in it. Most of the salad was made up of alfalfa sprouts, raw corn and grated carrot. It also had avocado, green olives, capers, and balsamic vinaigrette.

Here was another filling dinner, made entirely for me by Andy. He made sweet potato chippies in the oven, roasted green beans, broccoli and cauliflower baked in cream sauce and topped with yeast sauce, raw corn and red capsicum, and baked peanut tofu (pre-marinated and marked down to $1).

We’re not the only ones who love raw corn. We have to fend off a voracious feline whenever we bring it home from the market or pull it out of the fridge.

Nacho plays with the leaves, wolfs down the kernels and cleans off the cob for us. She likes cornflakes, too, but she really prefers the box.

Variety is the spice of life.

To continue on my Andy-less breakfast binge I made muffins, an item that Andy does not like for breakfast. Since I had some carrots that needed using, I made Spicy Carrot Raisin Muffins from Vegan with a Vengeance. Instead of just raisins I used dried mixed fruit.

These muffins were tasty, but there was more carrot than batter—I think because my carrots were slightly larger than the ‘medium’ carrots the recipe called for. I hate that in recipes… I would much rather have measurements that I can choose not to follow than something so broad as ‘one small pumpkin’. Those are arbitrary. Anyways, the spices in the muffins were really good, but my silicon muffin cups mean I’ll never get big crunchy muffin tops.

For dinner that night I had a spicy southwest meal. I cooked up a batch of black eyed peas and turned them into ‘Spicy black eyed peas and rice’ from The Vegan Gourmet. This recipe was such a let down. It was just brown rice, black eyed peas, caramelised onions, and black pepper. It did, however, make a good base for some sautéed veggies smothered with ‘Mexican Chilli Gravy’ from Hot Damn and Hell Yeah.

Just spicy enough to make my nose run without leaving me too sweaty, this chilli is another winner from one of my favourite cookbooks. The Vegan Gourmet, however, has been a bit of a let down—though the appetiser section is really, really good.

Now, onto non-food things. The wonderful Alice (in Veganland) has passed along a blogger excellence award. Thanks, Alice! It's good to be appreciated! Now I get to pass along the award. There are so many excellent blogs out there, but I'm going to give the award to two deserving women...

• The Little One of The Potato Vine blog. Her political posts say exactly what I'm thinking but more, or they give me information I wanted to know. Her training posts are inspiring. And her vignettes about teaching confirm my future plans. No matter how busy I am, I check her blog regularly. Keep it up, The Little One!
• Amy from Iron Chef Vegan. In addition to posting photos of delicious looking food, both savoury and sweet, and in addition to being a lovely person who shared her favourite Chinese place with me, Amy's recent anti- anti-feminist rant was awesome!

And here's an infuriating article... Peta is negotiating with Australian wool farmers. If they phase out mulesing and breed bald-assed sheep in future, Peta will stop convincing people that wool is bad. Peta! Stop being so lame! Negotiating with the cruelty industry is not what we want! People need to stop using animals for our wants and desires (they're definitely not needs anymore!) and let animals exist for their own selves. Fuck.

But on a happier front, a really good new song has been released in Australia. It uses parts of Kevin Rudd's apology to the Stolen Generations, and a few other big-deal speeches in recent Australian history. It's a remake of a 1992 song by Paul Kelly and Kev Carmody, which is also very moving. Both versions give me goosebumps! Watch them, even if you're not Australian. They are good.

Cooking for one: the first two days.

I’ve spent occasional weeks by myself since moving back to Australia, but they were only a week at a time—so I usually either ate like crap for a week, or tried to be uber-healthy. But this time is different for two reasons: one, it’s for a month rather than a week; and two, it’s the first of many months like this over the course of the next three years. So I’m trying to eat normally, even though I’m on my own.

So, Wednesday I woke up before the sun to see Andy off, then laid in bed for a little while before getting up to a bowl of muesli. I biked in to uni, where I had some pumpkin and hummus wraps for lunch. After biking home, I was pretty hungry even though it was early, so I decided to have a two course meal. First, the soup course. I made a lot, and am planning on having leftovers for the next week or so.

For this soup, I just boiled one potato and one carrot in 3 cups of veggie stock, with a bit of wakame thrown in. This was all blended up, the heat was turned off and I threw in the kernels from half an ear of corn. In my bowl, I mixed in a little scoop of miso (I’ve heard it doesn’t reheat well, so I only added the miso to a single serve). Creamy, flavourful, and healthy!

Then, my second course was quick. I simply sautéed some sliced zucchini and some sliced portabella mushrooms. After they were cooked I mixed in some balsamic, and sprinkled on salt and pepper. Notice the small plate? I eat much less when Andy’s not around.

Thursday was not a good day. I woke up, did a bit of interview transcribing (tedious would be an understatement), and then went to pump up my bike tires to head to a feminist group meeting—but my back tire was 100% flat. So I walked instead. Later on at uni, I had the leftover sautéed veggies, combined with half an avocado.

I came home a bit early so I could get my tire fixed. I don’t know the first thing about fixing bike tires, so I decided I would just take off my back wheel and walk up to the bike shop. Unfortunately, removing the back wheel was not as easy as I thought it would be. Some greasy fingers and a few f-words later, I made it to the bike shop to find out I had a big chunk of glass in my tire. The guy patched the tire, changed the tube, and sent me on my way after warning me to keep an eye on it, since it will need replacing soon. When I got home, I realised getting the stupid wheel off the bike was the easy part—getting it back on, now that’s where the f-word was really needed. I eventually got it, but then screwed up the gears somehow. I was riding around the driveway, swearing and changing gears, then comparing my bike to Andy’s to see where I’d gone wrong. I still don’t know what I did, but it’s fixed, anyways. I felt a little proud of the grease all up my arms and the fixed bike.

Whinging aside, I definitely worked up my appetite for some comfort food. So I pulled out my well-used copy of Hot Damn and Hell Yeah and made his recipe for Taco and Burrito Filling. A base of TVP mince makes it really meaty, and I added portabellas for extra flavour. I turned the other have of the avocado into a quick guac, and opened some corn chips and had a really yummy, filling, and comforting dinner.

I think I can handle this cooking for one business. And I (semi) successfully fixed my bike without any help. I rock!

Sharing the kitchen

As regular visitors to this blog know, I by no means do all the cooking in my house. I have been blessed with a partner who likes to cook creative meals. This weekend Andy made lunch for me both days and made some new creations both times.

Saturday’s lunch was a sandwich on nice bread. Not just any old sandwich, though. This one had leftover sweet potato and red bean burrito filling, hummus, spinach, tomato, beetroot and bbq sauce. And a dill pickle on the side. It was a tasty and satisfying midday meal.

The Sunday he took some leftover pumpkin and peanut stew out of the fridge, mashed it up and stirred in hummus, a dab of oil, soy sauce and some gluten flour, and then formed them into patties. A quick spin on the stove and the patties were put on a bun with slightly sautéed spinach and capsicum, alfalfa sprouts, tomato and beetroot, and then topped with a dab of almost sour cream. Uh, yum is pretty much all I had time to say between bites.

To say thanks for all the delicious lunches, I made an orange-berry no bake pie. This was inspired by Tofu for Two’s recipe, which I tried and failed once before. This time, I took some tips from Urban Vegan on using agar effectively—so I cooked the fruit before mixing it with the agar. But first, I made a biscuit crust with Cole’s brand ginger nut biscuits, melted margarine and golden syrup. Then I combined a package of frozen mixed berries with the juice from one orange, a tablespoon of cinnamon, and about ½ cup of sugar. While it was coming to the boil over low heat, I soaked about ¼ cup of agar flakes (mine are cut really big so take up a fair bit of space) in enough water to cover them. When the fruit had boiled, I mixed in the agar and let it bubble away for a few minutes. Then I whizzed in a block of silken tofu and poured it into the crust, and voila! After a few hours in the fridge, we had agar success!

Unfortunately for me, I won’t have anyone to share the kitchen with for the next month. Andy is off to Lizard Island on Wednesday, for 33 days of diving, watching fish eat coral, and other stuff for his PhD (which officially started two weeks ago).

View Larger Map

He'll be at the green arrow--14 degrees south of the equator--and I'm at the red dot at the bottom of the map.

So it will just be me and Nacho, and she spends too much time lying around on her cat tree to do much cooking.

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!

More hot damn and hell yeah

My obsession with my newest cookbook is still going strong. Probably our two favourite recipes are for mayonnaise and almost sour cream. They have graced the table for a lot of meals in the past few weeks. One thing we’ve discovered, though, is that using lime juice in the sour cream is much better than lemon juice. The best part about them? They only use a little bit of oil, so they are leaps and bounds better for you than their cruelty-filled counterparts.

Fajitas. Tofu strips marinated using the ‘beef style’ marinade. Served with salad, and with almost sour cream and salsa.

Leftover salsa was mixed with fresh raw corn and sautéed onions, and put on top of boiled whole potatoes (we wanted baked, but the oven heats the house up too much). The potatoes were topped with more almost sour cream.

Layered nacho dip. Refried beans, a layer of fresh raw corn, a layer of ‘I Can’t Believe It’s Not Cheese’ Sauce (from the Ultimate Uncheese Cookbook), a layer of almost sour cream, and a dollop of salsa. The whole lot was topped with some diced cucumber and made a perfect dip for crunchy corn chips.

A Mexican-style pasta bake—pasta with refried beans, tomatoes, corn and capsicum, topped with a mixture of bread crumbs and polenta and baked. We served it with lots of almost sour cream, as well as salad and garlic bread. Yum!

Last night I had a human rights group meeting and I came home to couscous and roasted vegetables with dressing. Though the cookbook was open on the counter, I’m pretty sure the only part Andy read was the title before he started making this—aside from couscous, just about none of the ingredients in this dinner were the ones in the recipe. Still, it was delicious!

Though we’re quickly making our way through this cookbook, we have yet to make it into the dessert section… but I’ve still got my eye on the recipe for Apple Enchiladas!

But of course, my favourite vegan Nacho isn't found in this cookbook. She’s nearly five months old now, and more than 2 kilos!

And, for all the aussie vegans out there, nominate your favourites for the aduki aussie vegan awards!