Healthy vs. Junky

When Andy was away for two weeks, in addition to a smoothie a day, I ate some other things, too. The last few times I've been home alone I have experienced severe lack of motivation to cook much more than noodles or toast. But not this time! This time I did cook some stuff, but it wavered between being mega-healthy, and mega-junky. All delicious, though.

I started by making a raw cabbage salad, with grated carrot, nigella seeds, and a little bit of olive oil and vinegar.

I often came home from work and snacked on such healthy delights as cucumber (or carrot) and cannellini bean dip.

I made a bowl o' potatoes + beans + carrot + spinach + garlic, which was a pretty healthy dinner.

But then I ate an entire dinner of nachos - not the loaded kind of nachos that Andy and I usually have, which match the junkiness of chips with healthy beans & veggies. These nachos were reminiscent of the sort of snack you can get at takeaway shops (at least, where I grew up). The snack which consists of a container of tortilla chips, smothered in melty-processed "cheese" from a tub. I say "cheese" in quotes, because I suspect it was more chemical than anything else. But, for some reason, I wanted to eat that, so I made a vegan version, using the recipe for Nacho Cheeze from the Ultimate Uncheese Cookbook.

It was good, but I actually kind of liked the veggie- and bean-centric meals better. I dare not tell teenage-Theresa that this was the case, though.

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!

Getting a head

On a recent excursion into our local grocery shop, I saw cabbages on special for only $2.90 a head.  They were pretty big, so that struck me as a good deal and I asked Andy if he wanted a cabbage.  He said yes, on the condition that I find one "as big as New Zealand".

I picked one of the largest cabbages - not the biggest of the bunch, but the one that felt heaviest, to ensure we got the best value for money.  Out of curiosity, I put it on the scale -- it weighed in at 2.5 kilos.  That's just over 5.5 pounds, which is a lotta cabbage.

So how can two people get through a cabbage the size of New Zealand while it's still fresh?

First up, we shredded a small wedge and mixed it with leftover mashed potatoes, some flour, and a few other ingredients to make bubble and squeak.  We put this mix into the freezer, for an easy weeknight dinner later on.

Later on, we pulled it out for an easy weeknight dinner... but a lot of liquid must have come out of the cabbage in the freezing and thawing process, because the mixture was very sloppy.  Instead of adding some extra flour, Andy tried just dropping spoonfuls onto the baking tray.  The results were not very crispy but had a good flavour.   The messy bubbles&squeaks are in the background behind some cheesy-ish broccoli bake, and next to some wilted ceylon spinach.

Then we used another little bit of it, with brown rice and seaweed, to stuff some chokoes.  (Served with some potatoes and dukkah-crusted eggplant -- that eggplant was also huge, practically the size of Tasmania.)

A good chunk got fried up with sliced potatoes in a dinner that reminded me of something my mum might make.  As a side dish, Andy mixed up some broccoli, sundried tomatoes, olives, and dijon vinaigrette.

Then we discovered Andy's new favourite way to eat cabbage.  Using the basic stir fry sauce from this cashew seitan recipe, this semi-Chinese-ish cabbage was salty and saucy and everything good.  It was far superior to the BBQ seitan ribs we served it alongside.

We were finally left with just under a quarter of our original New Zealand-sized head of cruciferous veggie, which we cut in half and baked.  I put both wedges into a loaf pan, put a little chicken-style stock into the bottom, and drizzled on olive oil, salt and garlic before putting it into the oven.  Then we sprinkled with some garlic chives.  The result was tender yet still textural, and one of my favourite ways to eat cabbage.  Served up with roasted potatoes, baked broccoli and a tiny bit of seitan, just to see how an experimental batch tasted.

And that, my friends, is how two people get through a cabbage the size of New Zealand in a mere five dinners (with some leftovers for lunch).  Take that, cabbage that would dwarf me, if it weren't for what my mum referred to as 'football player's shoulders'.