Holidays are Over

Today marks my return to work, after four weeks of blissful holiday fun. We opted not to travel during our time off, partially because we went south in November for a wedding, partially because we are trying to pay off a mortgage quite quickly, but mainly because our house is still new to us, we haven't had any significant time off since moving in, and we just wanted to hang out here.

I did only a little bit of work during my time off - work that I have wanted to do for a while, but keep putting off because the idea of starting it, amidst all my usual work, was too daunting. Thus, the holidays were a good time to get a start on turning my thesis into a book with no other work distractions, and now that I have a good start I think I will have the motivation to keep working on it.

What made up the bulk of my vacation?

I did manage to blog a lot more regularly. I won't promise to keep it up throughout the teaching semester, but I'll try. I updated and added to the pages across the top, too.

We took Tika for plenty of swims.

I read a lot of books. I went to the library maybe 6 or 7 times during my 4 weeks at home, to pick up books I had reserved.

We painted the toilet and the hallway.

This line between living room and hall is gone. I call the colour "soy chai latte".

I did some bigger cleaning projects that I don't do normally, like dusting off the blinds (a big job, since we always have our windows open) and moving furniture to vacuum under it.

My dislike of these blinds is now more than aesthetic.

We planted a few more things in the garden - a peanut butter tree, jackfruit, another papaya, some more pineapples.

We harvested many huge piles of basil and filled up the freezer with pesto.

Gnocchi with pesto, spinach and broccoli.

(Seriously, our freezer is so full right now, between pesto and mango and reduced-to-clear tofu and veggie burgers.)

Future smoothies.

I took many, many naps.

Like this, but on the couch.

We watched series one of The Killing, a Danish crime drama. It was really good - a little bit like The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, but less polished. I am looking forward to watching series two!

I made a pretty good dent on organising my craft room.

Before.

After.

And used it for the first time, to sew a Go board.

I rediscovered my love of cooking and had time for more complicated recipes, like Mochi, Bacon Cheeseburgers, or steamed buns filled with Lamyong beef, cabbage and 5-spice BBQ sauce.

We made mango chutney and jam, and did a few more things that will get their own posts in the coming weeks.

Mango pancakes with mango jam.

But sadly, the holiday fun times are over. I didn't tick off everything I wanted to get done - cleaning behind the oven was never really a priority, I guess - but it was so great to have a few weeks off to play, to relax, to tinker.

Mochi - without a microwave

I discovered mochi by chance in Hong Kong in 2011, and Andy and I both dug it. Not enough to, like, pine for it or anything - I wasn't having dreams about mochi. But I would have liked to have some more. Then in September and October, while perusing The New Scoop (which I reviewed here) I saw the chapter on ice cream mochi. The author said mochi was just not possible without a microwave or a mochi machine, but instead of letting it go, I took that on as a challenge. I googled, and found James & Matt's mochi post the most helpful - they mentioned cooking mochi dough on the stove top, and even though it wasn't a part of their tutorial, just knowing it was possible was enough for me. I got some glutinous rice flour, and then eventually got around to making it. It took me two tries to get it right, using two very different methods.

First Attempt

The first time I tried it out, I used the recipe for mochi dough from The New Scoop, because I had a hard copy I could keep on the kitchen bench while I worked. My only variation was to cook the mochi in a bowl over a pot of simmering water, hoping that would do the trick.

I double-boiled for 10 minutes and thought that must surely be enough - the dough was getting dry around the edges, and the consistency was different.

So I took it off the heat and did the rest of the work. I kneaded my dough, briefly. I cut it into pieces, formed balls, and filled them with a mixture of rice bubbles, tahini and toasted sesame seeds.

All the while, I thought that all the dramatic explanations of how to make mochi, with dire warnings about hot lava-esque dough that sticks to you and itself and everything, were a little over the top. Sure, the dough was hot, but it was a bit easy to work with, really!

The ease which marked my mochi experience was the first indicator that I had done it wrong. Biting into them was my second clue. Instead of sticky, chewy, gluey dumplings, these were soft and doughy. The flavour was a little bit chalky - not unpleasant, but similar to icing sugar.

Second Attempt

A week or so later, I decided to try again. This time, instead of assuming a double boiler would work without actually looking up a specific stove-top recipe, I did a more thorough search. I found this gem of a video.

Short summary: instead of cooking the dough and then forming dumplings, this recipe turns the process upside down - steam the pre-formed dumplings. Revolutionary.

So I did! The only change I made to the recipe was to use corn flour rather than wheat starch, which may have been a mistake - these mochi did not stay soft at all.

Mochi
1 1/4 c. boiling water
1/2 c. sugar
1/2 c. corn flour
2 1/2 c. glutinous rice flour
filling of your choice

In a big bowl, dissolve sugar in boiling water. Add flours and mix them in. Knead for a minute or two, until the dough resembles play dough in texture.

Break off small pieces of dough, roll into balls, and flatten them. Place your filling in the middle and then pull the dough around the filling, sealing it in.

Place the finished dumpling on an oiled steamer pan. When the pan is full, steam the mochi over gently boiling water for 10 minutes. Meanwhile, make the rest of your mochi.

I used two fillings: in some, peanut butter mixed with icing sugar; in others, pieces of mango. The peanut butter, of course, melted as a result of being steamed for 10 minutes. So instead of nice, round mochi dumplings, I had flattish, blobby things.

Take the mochi off the steamer tray immediately, trying not to break them. This is where I got to experience the joys of molten, sticky mochi dough. A few busted open, so I ate them right away.

Put the (unbusted) mochi straight from the steamer into a container of coconut (or sesame seeds, crushed nuts, icing sugar, etc) and shake them around to coat.

 Eat them within 12 hours. Fridging them made them firmer, but still chewy and nice - on the first day. By the second day they were hard from the fridge, and reasonable (but not great) when they came up to room temperature. By the third day, they were practically inedible. In future, I will cut the recipe down to make only what we can eat in the same day. This batch made 24, which in hindsight is only worth making to bring to a party or something.

Mango mochi looks a little bit like a soft-boiled egg.

So the form-then-steam method is the way to go for those who, like me, don't own a microwave. Or for those who don't want to knead and mould molten hot mochi dough.  It won't work at all for ice cream mochi, and isn't the best for runnier fillings like peanut butter, but I think I'll try mixing the nut butter with some crumbs of something to see if that firms it up.

Yummy chewy mochi. 

Vegan Bacon Cheeseburger

Last week I was browsing one of my favourite quirky-lifestyle blogs, Offbeat Home & Life, and was stoked to see this guest post by The Sweetest Vegan about a vegan bacon cheeseburger. I pinned it and facebook shared it, partially to let the Offbeat blog admin people know the post was a good one, but also because - OMG vegan bacon cheeseburger! Sure, I make vegan burgers all the time. I make vegan cheese semi-regularly. And vegan bacon recipes are plentiful. But this recipe was straightforward, and it put all the components together. 

Filed away in the back of my mind, the recipe made its way back to the front on Monday night when I saw this post by Tara. On Tuesday, I decided I just had to make it. I am still on holidays, you see, while Andy is back at work, so I have been getting lost in complicated recipes this week. 

Not that this recipe is complicated, but it was a mammoth effort in multi-tasking (it would be less so if you used canned beans). First I put black beans and white beans on to soak while I went out to grab the few ingredients I didn't have on hand - sweet potato (though I could have probably dug some from the garden), coconut flakes, and bread rolls.

When I got home, I put the first batch of beans into the pressure cooker. Then I peeled my sweet potato (and cooked the peels in the oven for a crunchy snack for Tika), and put it in boiling water to cook.

 I mixed up the marinade for the coconut bacon and put it all in a bowl to soak up the flavours.

When the black beans were done, I put the white ones on to cook while I made the burger patties: mashing together the beans and sweet potato, but leaving out garlic powder (we can't keep it in our humidity), sriracha (we don't have), and onion (I don't love). I had about 1 cup of beans leftover, and 1/4 cup of sweet potato, so I threw them in too, and then folded through the oats. This I set aside while I got on with other things.

I put the coconut bacon in the oven to crisp up. I had it in there for nearly half an hour and it didn't crisp, so I  took it out in case the crisping happened as it cooled. It never did, but oh well.

While the coconut bacon was bakin', I put the cheese together. This is a great recipe, because it doesn't require cooking. I cut the recipe in half, because I only had half a cup of nutritional yeast, and we still have about 4 times as much cheese as we needed. 

I formed my patties and put them in the fridge to chill out, and then it was time for me to chill out myself. Less than an hour and a half in the kitchen and I had cooked two batches of beans from scratch and turned them into the vital components for a vegan bacon cheeseburger. 

The only thing left to do was cook the patties, but instead of putting them in the oven I did them on the BBQ, because we have one, and it's summer.

On the Weber with some okra and a tiny eggplant. 

And because, check out those grill marks. 

Then I put it all together. A bit of mayo on the top of the bun, and some cheese on the bottom. Then lettuce, a burger, some more cheese, some bacon. Andy added tomato sauce, but I didn't think it needed it.

This is a great recipe - aside from a few exceptions, the ingredients are easy to find in most pantries. Aside from some soy sauce, all three components are soy free - no tofu or soy milk here. They also lend themselves to being gluten free, if you used gluten free oats, or subbed in something like quinoa flakes. For vegan junk food, there isn't really too much that is actually unhealthy about any of the meal. And, holy pants it was yummy. 

Stank-Buster

Internet, I have a confession. Sometimes, I stink. Lately, those stank-times have been more often than not. Coles stopped carrying my usual deodorant. I switched to my back-up supply, a tea tree scented deodorant that worked not that well against the tropical summer. Then even that started to run low. No worries, I though, I'll go to Woolies. But Woolies stopped carrying my usual deodorant, too. I got angry and frustrated. I looked online - $7-$10 for one single container of vegan deodorant, plus shipping?! You've got to be kidding me. I could have looked in pharmacy, health food and cosmetic shops, yes. But the other day I was sitting on the couch and Andy noticed a bad smell, and realised it was coming from me. So I stopped what I was doing on the internet, and looked up how to make deodorant at home.

Well, my friends, it could not be simpler, nor more effective.

1/2 cup of coconut oil - since this isn't for eating, I used the cosmetic grade stuff I bought in PNG rather than expensive edible ones
1/4 cup of corn flour (corn starch)
1/4 cup of bicarb soda (baking soda)
scented oil, if you roll that way

Mix the three together. Rub some on your pits. Stank no more.

Seriously. I made this straight after the stink-incident above, and rubbed some on straight away, and the bad smell was gone. On the first day I wore this, it erased BO, and held off any new stank despite very hot & humid weather featuring outside work in the garden. The second day I wore it, only one application in the morning made it through a very sunny outing at the beach, plenty of digging and landscaping outside in the hot sun, and then 12kms worth of bike riding - all with no stank! So in terms of deodorising, it was a total success.

Where I went wrong: I tried too hard to be clever. In looking for a jar or container for storing my deodorant, I came upon these two, 50mL pump bottles, which I love because they have a cap so you can travel with them and they don't squirt their contents everywhere. I thought it was perfect, because I could bring one to uni and it could crash around in my shower bag in my office, and I could leave one at home.

All was well until the next morning, when I went to my pump bottle and found oil all over the outside of it. And the pumper all clogged with bicarb and cornflour. Not only did the dry ingredients settle out, but somehow the coconut oil expanded and exploded (a tiny explosion, but no less devastating than a big one). I tried to salvage the pump bottles, but in the end I gave in to reason and transferred (most of) the contents to a bigger jar. So friends, learn from my mistakes. If you try to make your own deodorant (and I really think you should!), put it in a big, wide mouthed jar with plenty of room to breathe. And if you live in a warm place, be prepared to stir up your deodorant before you use it in the mornings. Now I just need to find a smaller jar so I can bring some to work...

Plans, Goals, Resolutions

I know some people think new year's resolutions are for suckers. I've heard the argument that January 1st is an arbitrary date, that resolutions are just setting ourselves up for failure, that if you want to change your lifestyle you should do it and not wait for the new year, yadda yadda yadda. When I was younger, I never had resolutions. I don't know that it was for any of these reasons, or because I was already so perfect I didn't need to make any changes (ha!), or more probably, because resolutions weren't a thing we did in my family. But somewhere in my 20s I started making them, and I think it's a good opportunity. Sure, in absolute terms, the start of the year could be any day. But in our social context, January 1st marks a new beginning, and I am happy to take advantage of that opportunity!

Just to keep things interesting, some photos. This is cashew cheese, enjoyed at a Vegan picnic and again at our house. Yum yum. 

So this year, I have some resolutions, some plans and some goals for the year ahead. I have found, over the years of resolutions and non-new year life changes, that I commit to new habits much better when I have a concrete goal. If I say "keep doing X" I'm more likely to let it slide than if I say "do X 3 times a week". I also do better, as many of us do, when my plans are recorded so I can be held accountable. So the list below reflects that, and also gives me an opportunity to keep track of what I've done, which gratifies my Type-A, list-loving personality.

Fitness
Run 500k this year. I started running in October 2012, and in an attempt to keep me running regularly, I'm setting this as my target. My normal running routes are between 4 and 5 kilometers, so this means I will need to run an average of twice a week across the year. Do-able.

Cycle 1600k this year. My commute to work is 4k each way, so this is 40 weeks of riding 5 days a week. That gives me some wiggle room for the weeks I am on holidays, the weeks I travel outside of Townsville for work, and any days that are rainy.

Do push-ups at least once a week. I started doing some push-ups every now and then in the second half of this year, and I think that strength-training in general is a very good thing.

Breakfast on the patio on New Year's Day

Work
Clear out my inbox every day at work, most likely at lunch, but at least before going home for the day. This way, I will be less likely to forget to respond to emails (especially from students, who get a bit stroppy when you don't reply to them!), and I will have less clutter in my inbox for when I need to find important things. Despite cleaning out my inbox in the first half of 2012, I still ended up in December with 1300 messages - just in my inbox. I spent about 2 days deleting most and moving some to folders. I'd like to do that more regularly this year so I don't have a big task in December 2013!

And a related one: Unsubscribe from email lists that I don't read regularly, and stop subscribing to new ones. I put my email address down for a lot of things, and as a result I get a ridiculous amount of messages that I delete without reading. Instead of telling myself I might read it next week, I'm just signing off.

My biggest work goal for this year is to turn my PhD into a book and get it published. The second part of that might take more than 2013, but I have already started on the first part. I have a well-published mentor to keep me on track, I've made my plan public to colleagues, to friends, and to the people I researched with, so the plan is set in stone and it will happen this year.

Crafty
Set up one of our spare rooms as a craft room. At the moment I have a table, a few boxes of yarn, fabric, paints and glitter(!!), and a new sewing machine. But there is no real order, nothing is organised and the room isn't really pretty, so I don't use it much. (There is also space in the room for a futon or some kind of guest bed, and it's also the room that houses my clothes and some random bits like suitcases, so it's more a craft-corner than a craft room, but that just doesn't have the same ring to it.)

Finish crocheting the blanket I started in early 2012. Preferably in time for winter, so we can use it to keep warm. It's about halfway finished.

Sew curtains for the bedroom and the hallway, and possible for other rooms.

Garden
Plant more flowers, bee-attracting ones, in amongst the veggies. We actually looked at buying a hive of Australian native bees, which are sting-less, and which would really help our pollination efforts! But at about $500 to get the hive and the bees up to Townsville, we decided against it. Instead, I will put more sunflowers and other bee-friendly flowers in our garden beds to get some to visit our garden of their own accord. (Note that Australian native bees produce almost no honey, just enough for themselves, so our plans to get bees were of course unrelated to honey.)

Home and Life
Keep track of everything we spend for at least two months of the year. This is something we have done every now and then for the last few years, mainly when we were saving up to buy a house. We keep a scrap of paper on the fridge and every day write down what we've spent, and on what. Then I transfer that to a spreadsheet and we can see, over the course of a month or two or three, what our money goes to. We're pretty good at saving rather than spending anyways, but this is just a good check of what is up with our budget.

Do more food-prep and meal-planning on the weekends. In the last few months of 2012 Andy and I were both super busy, and I don't think 2013 will change very much. As a result, we'd often say to each other, "What do you want for dinner?" - "I don't know, what do you want?" - "I don't know". And then we would just decide to throw some veggies on the BBQ and that was that. BBQ veggies are good, but not particularly inspiring, and they don't really make good leftovers for lunch the next day. So I'd like to have a better idea each week of what we can have, especially quick meals, and also maybe keep some food in the freezer that I can have for lunch on BBQ days when there are no leftovers.

Help out with at least 3 vegan outreach stalls. I hope it is more, but I'll be realistic. For at least one of these, I'd like to head over to Magnetic Island to hang out with Stevie and Luc at their weekly vegan outreach table.

So there you have it - 13 things I'd like to see happen in 2013.

The Vegg

Just before Christmas, we received a wonderful surprise in the mail: a free sample of the Vegg, courtesy of Rocky. The Vegg is a powdered egg yolk replacer. It has a very small ingredients list, which possibly puts it at risk of people reverse-engineering the recipe, but which is a good reminder that vegan replacements of omin favourites don't need to be scary franken-foods.

To use the Vegg, you must first blend up the packet with a litre of water. So note that you will need a blender, or at least a stick blender, to use this product. On opening the packet, I was hit with a strong fart smell, which I suppose is an indication of how authentically egg-like it is! You can blend up smaller amounts, but since it is supposed to keep in the fridge for a few weeks and in the freezer for even longer, I decided to just do it all in one go. We put a small-ish jar in the freezer, used a bit straightaway, and put the rest in the fridge for the next few weeks. We found shaking the jar was enough to re-mix the Vegg before we used it. Just be prepared for that farty smell every time you open the jar.

So what did I do with the Vegg? 

Instead of starting small, to get a taste of it and see how it is, I decided to go the whole hog and attempt to make a poached Vegg. I watched this veggietorial, and despite the very clear statement that an agar-style white would be the best, I went with cornflour. I blended some silken tofu with a little water, some cider vinegar, and salt and pepper, and then cooked it up with some cornflour to thicken it. I put this into 4 silicon cupcake moulds to set up.

The next morning I scooped out a bit of the middle, filled the gap with the Vegg, and then put the scooped-out white stuff back on top. 

I verrrry carefully transferred these to a pan of boiling water, in their silicon moulds, which I guess makes them more "coddled Vegg" than poached. Anywhoo, getting them out of the hot water ended badly only once, but of course (since I didn't use agar) they didn't really set up into anything, so when I flipped it out onto the toast it went a bit mushy.

It was sort of like eating really thick gravy on toast, but that is my fault, not the Vegg's! Andy wasn't too keen on my egg whites - who can blame him? - but he did say that he thought the Vegg part was really very eggy. 

Andy loves poached eggs, but he eats them just about never because I'm so very unhappy when he does, so I am keen to try again with some agar and maybe a better game plan. He doesn't think it is worth the effort, but where's his sense of adventure?! 

Andy sprinkled bac-o's on his poached vegg.

After that failed experiment, we decided the Vegg's strength was more in the dipping arena, so on Christmas morning I poured Vegg into two ramekins and heated them up in a hot water bath, which we had along with our mushrooms, spinach, and toast. Here, the Vegg really shone. Andy poured his over his brekky, while I preferred to daintily dip mine, but we both really enjoyed it.

The next morning Andy heated the Vegg straight up in a saucepan, then threw spinach into it, and finally pouring all of that on top of mushrooms on toast. Again, it was really good here, adding that special something-something to breakfast, and providing something for that last dry corner of toast to mop up at the end of the meal.

Last night I tried putting the Vegg into a chickpea flour quiche, in place of the black salt my normal recipe calls for. I didn't cook the quiche batter long enough, meaning it was sloppy instead of set, meaning I didn't take a photo because it looked a bit like throw-up. It was tasty, but I wouldn't use Vegg in this sort of recipe again. The Vegg quiche tasted almost identical to the usual black salt variety, which is a bit unsurprising given that the Vegg is made of black salt. Although I would like to try some things like french toast, and maybe custard, with the Vegg, I suspect that the majority of our Vegg-use will be poured over mushrooms, or perhaps mixed through tofu scramble. 

At $9 or $10 a packet, the Vegg seems a bit spendy at first, but now that I've seen how far it goes, I think it's actually good value. Andy, a lover of runny egg yolks, really enjoys it. It is the sort of product that would go really well with a microwave, but even without one we have found it an easy and yummy addition to our breakfasts. What I would like to see from the Vegg in the future is the option to buy larger quantities, in a jar or a tub, for example. Either way, I'm looking forward to trying more things with it! Thanks, Rocky!