Fragments of a tropical vegan

Hi! I am hopelessly overworked this semester! And trying to do things to keep my stress levels down, which also take time. Things like striking, to prevent some of the overworking in future years, maybe. Things like starting yoga classes again, for relaxation and adaptability. Things like gardening and running with Tika and reading novels and crocheting and spending time with Andy. Blogging isn't my top priority at the moment, but I do have some things to share. Rather than taking the mental effort to make some narrative sense out of them, I present to you some fragments.

Creamy Pumpkin Soup with Kale. We grew the pumpkin, the kale, and the coriander. We added garlic, white wine, and coconut cream, and ate with store-bought chappatis for an easy, quick dinner. 

A few weeks ago I saw Joey post about this vegan tuna salad recipe. I tried it out that weekend but used nori and wakame for the seaweeds. It was yummy, but didn't taste at all like tuna, in my opinion. Chickpea-based tuna salads are still the real winner! 

We have been eating PILES of passionfruit because our vine is ridiculous. We've also given stacks away. This cup-and-a-half went into the freezer to be enjoyed during the summer months. 

We eat flowers. It's a shame salad vegetables grow better here in winter, than in summer, but we are really starting to appreciate a good salad in the winter. This one has mizuna and rocket, a radish, nasturtiums, and cherry tomatoes from the garden, plus cucumber and capsicum from the markets. For dressing, I used Dreena Burton's recipe for hummus salad dressing, with a big handful of parsley from the garden. 

I've gotten a few new cookbooks recently, because they make me happy. This is a variation on a recipe from The Sexy Vegan's Happy Hour at Home. They are roasted green capsicums (because that is what we had most of) rolled up with hummus and rocket. Yummy and nice to have some little bites instead of a huge bowl of food every night.

Tika, Defender of Kale and Spring Onions.

Nacho, Disrupter of Academic Work.

Pumpkin Curry

Nacho loves pumpkin. Her love has evolved into ever more invasive practices. When she was a wee little kitten, she tried her hardest to get into any cooked pumpkin we had around. As she grew, she began to recognise the smell of raw pumpkin, and jumped up to investigate whenever any was cut or cooked. More recently, she has begun eating the uncooked inside bits, leaving the seeds behind.

But, if you can believe it, she's gotten even more sneaky & cheeky still.

A week or so ago, when Andy was back at work but I wasn't yet, I did some dinner prep in the late afternoon. I peeled and chopped a pumpkin, which I would turn into a curry. As I worked, Nacho helped herself to the pumpkin guts - as she does. When my pumpkin was chopped, I put it on a plate, covered it with a tea towel to keep the hungry kitty out of it, and then went outside to water the garden. In the meantime, Andy came home, and we were outside for quite a while.

When I came in, I stepped on something squishy in the kitchen. It was a piece of half-eaten pumpkin. I looked at the bench, where my pumpkin-plate was. The tea towel had been pushed aside (with a contemptuous laugh, I imagine). And instead of the full plate I had left, there was this:

Just on the other side of the counter, the culprit was lounging without a hint of remorse.

When I questioned her about the missing pumpkin, her tail started to flick in annoyance.

She gave me her best Julie Bishop-stare, and demanded that I get the hell out of her face (unless I had some cooked pumpkin to give her, please).

I did what any self-respecting cat person would do, and (once photos were taken), did what Nacho told me.  I got on with cooking, and despite having less pumpkin than I started with, we got a pretty good curry out of the deal.

Pumpkin Curry
1 small onion, diced
3 or 4 cloves of garlic, minced
1 small pumpkin, peeled and cubed (or less, if your cat gets into it)
2 potatoes, cubed
3 Tbsp. curry paste - we used tandoori
1 can of full fat coconut milk
1/2 c. diced tomatoes (for us, this was the leftovers of a tin)
1/2 c. snake beans, chopped (use any green veggie - we had snake beans that needed using from the garden)
1 c. cannellini beans, drained & rinsed

In a pot, saute the onion and garlic with oil until they are soft. Add the pumpkin and potatoes and stir them around for a few minutes. Add the curry paste, stir it up until everything is coated in it, and then add the coconut milk and tomatoes. Bring it up to the boil, then turn the heat down and let it simmer for half an hour or so, until the potatoes and the pumpkin are tender. Add the green veggie and the beans, let it cook for another few minutes. Season to taste, eat with rice.

Feeding Tika

Neither Tika nor Nacho are vegetarians - both eat mainstream kibbles (Nacho started out on VeganPet but she abruptly stopped eating it after a few months so we switched over). However, both love various veggies and other "human foods", so we are happy to oblige them. For Nacho, green peas, dried TVP crumbles, oats, mashed pumpkin, nori sea weed, and especially raw corn are just tops. We're still working out what Tika's favourite foods are, but she seems fond of pretty much anything except for capsicum and star fruit so far - she even ate a pear core that our neighbour-baby gave to her.

Though they eat meat-based kibbles, none of the extras we give them will ever be animal based. It is easy and quick to make dog treats that Tika scoffs down, we make chewy dried sweet potato slices for her to clean her teeth on, and we supplement her dinner each night with a bit of extra something. We do this because it looks tastier than the kibbles, to give her a bit of variety, and because it is cheaper - especially once our veggie garden gets growing and we have more sweet potatoes and zucchinis and chokoes and other veggies than we know what to do with (I hope). The only draw back - and sorry if this is TMI - is that all the veggies turn Tika into a serious poop factory. I guess that means she's getting plenty of fibre, but it does mean we have to clean up more around the back yard, and watch where we walk.

(Nacho doesn't like treats, as such. I once tried combining pumpkin and oats - two of her faves - into a biscuity treat and she wouldn't even sniff it. Even mixing peas & corn makes both a little less appealing to her.)

Here is a basic idea of the extras we feed to Tika. She was a skinny girl when she moved in with us, so we were first trying to fatten a little and now we're trying to maintain an ideal weight - so if your dog is on the, ahem, fluffy side, you should probably cut back on the rice.

1 c. rice
2 c. water (or bean cooking juice)
1 tsp. vegemite
1 tsp. chicken or beef stock (vegan, of course)
1 potato, chopped
1 sweet potato, chopped
1 carrot, chopped
1 ear of corn, cut off the cob
1/2 c. green peas
1/4 c. peanut butter

In a saucepan, bring the water, vegemit, stock powder and rice to a boil, then reduce the heat to low, cover and let simmer for about 8 minutes. Then, stir in the potato, sweet potato, and carrot. Replace the lid and continue to simmer for another 8 minutes (check it every now and then to make sure it doesn't burn on the bottom). When most of the water has been absorbed, turn off the heat, stir in the corn, green peas, and peanut butter. Combine it really well, then replace the lid and let it cool. This makes enough for at least 2 weeks' worth of dinners, so we freeze half.

When we serve this up to Tika for dinner, mixed with her kibbles, she pushes the kibbles aside to get to this rice mixture. We don't always make this - sometimes it is more like plain rice, or whatever veggies we've chopped for ourselves that night for dinner. But this is her hands down favourite dinner, and it's good enough for us to eat, too.

New House!

We were supposed to settle on our house last Tuesday. Planner and list-maker that I am, I had a very specific idea of how the day would go. We'd pick up the keys Tuesday afternoon, do a bit of cleaning in the new place, move a small load of stuff in, and then the next morning moving would begin in earnest. And we needed to be in by Wednesday, because we were handing over the keys to our flat on Friday - and we had carpet cleaners coming Thursday morning, and fumigators Friday morning. So, carefully timed, extensively planned operation.

You can possibly imagine my stress when we got a call from the solicitor on Tuesday lunch time, telling us the sellers couldn't settle. We ended up being allowed to move in early anyways, and the place finally settled on Tuesday this week - 7 days late. Everything went smoothly, despite the legal hiccup, and luckily I had cupcakes to absorb some of my stress levels.

Vanilla bean cupcakes, with the last of the rainbow sprinkles stirred into the batter.

Now that we're in, this place definitely feels like home. Nacho didn't think so when she first got here. She walked around, hissing at no one in particular, crouched low to the ground and jumping at Every Little Noise. But after about a day and a half, she relaxed and claimed the space as her own. Now she spends every evening and most mornings running around, full of beans, up and down the hall. She especially seems to love losing her footing on the slidy wood floors as she scrambles around corners.  She also managed to sneak into an awful lot of the photos I took of the house last week, so it kind of looks like she's giving you a tour. So I will let her do the work!

Before we moved, all of our stuff piled up in the garage.

The living room is nice and bright and airy, and the dark wood floor is a perfect canvas to show off all the cat hair.

This is what it looks like from the living room into the rest of the front space. Behind the dining table is a cat-access to the kitchen. The room with the lino flooring is currently a junk room, full of empty boxes purrfect for playing in.

The kitchen is a bit squeezy, and the cabinets are almost too high for a kitteh to jump on top of. Almost. That room you can see into at the other end of the kitchen is Andy's room.

The epic hallway of happy-fun-times! Look at all the doorways a cat can hide behind!

Theresa's room at the end of the house, which is full of empty suitcases at the moment but will become a craft room, a guest bedroom, a yoga/pilates room, and a room full of lovely things.

That's about it for the inside, and since Nacho doesn't go out of the house, I'll have to show you that another time!

Easter Eats

Our four-day long weekend was well-timed before our move in a week, allowing us plenty of time to do some deep cleaning, de-cluttering, and begin the packing process. It was also a good opportunity to do our fair share of eating.  We started, naturally, with dessert.

Friday morning, the first thing I did was to put on a batch of hot cross buns. I had extra cross-mixture, so some became star buns. And one was a bit blobby. Because, hey, why not?

These were the very best hot cross buns I have ever made, ever. Ever. They were the perfect texture - soft, and just a little bit doughy, chewy, full of mixed fruit. We used the recipe from Vegan Bake Sale but only used mixed fruit instead of blueberries and whatever else the recipe calls for. We also left off the glaze, because we like our buns un-sticky and not too sweet.

Since we had the oven on, and we had 4 less-than-ideal apples in the crisper drawer, I also threw together an apple crumble. I used the recipe for Trailview Inn Apple Crumble, from the Girls' Night In chapter of Celebrate Vegan. There is an alarming amount of sugar in this recipe, but let me tell you - it is totally worth it. It sort of melts around the apples and mixes with their juice to create a delicious caramel sauce, topped with crispy delicious oat topping.

We ate ours cold, with hot coconut custard. And it was so good.

It wasn't all sweets, though. I had also been prepping for a few days, getting ready to make a big Ethiopian dinner. Using Mel's recipe for Injera, I finally opened by bag of teff flour. I fed my starter for 5 days, made my batter, and then started cooking the injera.

It was all full of promise, so when the first one didn't work, I didn't mind - the first pancake/crepe/flatbread is often a dud.

When they kept not working - sticking badly to the pan - I switched to pikelet-sized injeras, because at least they are easier to scrape from the pan without completely mangling. Let me be clear that I don't blame Mel's recipe - something about my batter, my climate, my cooking technique, my pan... it just didn't work. And the injera was a bit too sour for my liking. So I will try another recipe, if I can be bothered making this ever again.

By the time I was done with the injera, my feelings towards my Ethiopian feast were a bit battered. But, Andy noticed my grumpiness and came to take over. He made some mesir wat while I put together a shiro. This was our first time making shiro, again following Mel's recipe. This was really good, and I will make it again - with just a tad more chickpea flour, and more berbere (not Mel's recipe's fault - we ran out).

We did get a feast, in the end, and were too full to eat any of our desserts. Good thing we started with them!

This was all appropriate fuel for our cleaning spree, during which Nacho slept. And slept and slept. I've seriously never seen this cat so lethargic. Must be the change in weather, and the coming upheaval, that made her feel so lounge-y.

Sheese Louise

A few months ago, I tried some Kingland Soy Cheese, which was just horrible. My post about it prompted Susan, in Brisbane, to very kindly offer to send me up some Sheese, which is shelf-stable so post-able. I was getting ready to go overseas, so I asked for a rain check, and eventually Susan and I engaged in some package swappering shortly before Christmas.

The package I received from Susan had way more than just Sheese in it. It also had some vegan gummy sour snakes, some Primal Strips soy jerky, and a Go Max Go Joker bar. All things were massively appreciated - gummy candies have always been my favourite, and were one thing I was very sad to give up upon adopting vegetarianism. Candy bars - hello, who doesn't want a vegan snickers? But I love a good savoury snack, and vegan jerky made Andy and I think seriously about how we can make some in our dehydrator.

But the Sheese was really the star, and for a few weeks was the gift that kept giving. I was pretty happy to see that it is grate-able.

For our first try of it, we put it on pizza, along with some BBQ sauce, grilled onions, and vegan bacon bits (which we souvenired from the US). The Sheese didn't melt, as such, but since it was grated and we didn't layer it on too thick, it didn't matter much. It did add a really nice layer of flavour that our normal cheeseless pizzas don't have.

The smoked cheddar flavour is exceedingly good on crackers.

And it made a tasty, if not melty-gooey, toasted cheese sandwich.

The plain cheddar found homes atop nachos, more pizzas, mixed into our Christmas breakfast hash browns, and in a wrap with some BBQ "Pulled" Jack fruit.

Susan - thanks so much for all of this! Vegan bloggers really are the best :-)

Vegan Christmas

It seems appropriate to end 2011 with a summary of our Christmas, because if I leave it until 2012 I will feel slack (even though I'm still posting about our travels which happened in OCTOBER, but whatevs).

Our Christmas promised little in the way of either excitement or decoration - it was just Andy and I hanging out in Townsville, and we had a stack of novels to keep us company, and the limit of my cheer was this little display on the table (which is a major step up from most years).

For dinner, which Andy and I have on Christmas eve, we decided to be modest so we could save room for dessert.

There was a yuba-wrapped seitan roast, made as per last year's recipe, except this year stuffed with a fig & pecan stuffing, which was wonderful. There were some oven-roasted potatoes, which Andy declared "tates awesome" (get it?). There was a crunchy noodle cole slaw - you know the recipe on the back of the crunchy noodle pack, with a sesame-soy dressing. And there was cranberry jelly, from a jar, which I resisted buying because the homemade version is much better, but it was on special and Andy can't resist a bargain.

As per our plan, there was room for dessert, in the form of tropical trifle, but which I forgot to photograph. Here is a photo of my first go, but the Christmas version was made in a rectangular baking dish - partially because that's how Andy's mum does it, but mainly because our usual trifle bowl was under a friend's house and we'd been too slack to pick it up.

On Christmas morning, I woke to put on some bread - cranberry fig bread, a dried fruit combination which, to me, seems more festive than dried mixed fruit, which we always have on hand. I found a recipe for vegan panettone, but decided to just make it like a regular loaf in the breadmaker. Only, when the beep signalled our bread finished, the result was flat in the pan (despite loads of yeast), it was reluctant to come out, and when it did, it collapsed into a heap:

The reason was because it was still pretty doughy in the centre. We ate it anyways, in chunks, though my lofty goal of having cranberry fig french toast on Boxing Day was dashed.

The rest of Christmas Breakfast centred on mango mimosas - champagne with melty mango sorbet.

And on food, too. Hash browns with smoked cheddar sheese and (vegan) bacon bits. More cranberry jelly. Creamy breakfast mushrooms. And see the chunk of bread? Also, Vegan Dad's breakfast sausages. I made a half batch of this lightly sweet but mainly savoury recipe, but made the mistake of steaming them wrapped in baking paper, rather than foil - to me aluminium foil seems wasteful, and the whole thing about aluminium and health... But the baking paper wasn't tight enough so they were a bit flat, and not as dense as they should have been. But still good.

The rest of the day involved cocktails, potato chips, more trifle, novels, It's a Wonderful Life, and leftovers.

Boxing Day saw Nacho throwing up all day, and not eating. One of the throw-ups involved a 20cm piece of shoe lace. She perked up a bit after that, but then got sick again, so when she was still sick on Tuesday morning, we took her to the Emergency Vet - because it was the Christmas Day public holiday, you see, and the regular vet was closed.

While we worried about Nacho, we occupied ourselves by making some mango-beetroot spring rolls. I originally planned to have these for Christmas, but the Christmas Day public holiday is close enough, no?  In rice paper I put 20cent sweet chilli tofu...

And mango...

And a big pile of grated beetroot, grated carrot, and rice vermicelli.

Then I rolled them up.

And after we heard that Nacho's surgery went just fine, and they removed a 60cm piece of shoe lace from her guts, we ate our spring rolls for dinner.

Nacho came home the next night, full of her last dose of pain meds, and with a shaved arm where the IV had been, which I think makes it look like she has her sleeve rolled up.

And with a shaved pink belly.

She's done a lot of laying around since Wednesday night, which is good, but she's also back to eating lots, licking herself, and purring adorably.

 Happy end of 2011 to everyone, and see you next year!