Random.

I’ve been tagged by Lori over at Pleasantly Plump Vegan to give five random facts about myself. I’ve tried to make them as random as possible, and things that most people don’t know about me.

1. I own exactly five pairs of shoes. One pair, hot pink, strappy high heels, hasn’t been worn in about two years. Two others, pregan clog-style Earth Shoes and hard plastic flat sandals I got for free from a clothing donation box, are worn very rarely. I have a pair of sneaker-like Payless shoes that I wear for biking. But, 40% of the time, I wear flip flops, and 50% of the time I’m barefoot.
2. I have spent 160 hours under the sea (not counting snorkelling or swimming). I became scuba certified just before heading over to PNG for two months or hard-core diving, so I had to catch on quickly. I also learned to identify corals to genus level (some to species level). I haven’t been diving in over a year, since that trip.
3. I have two tattoos. One is on my front right side, just on the inside of my hip. It is the symbol for my astrological sign, Scorpio. I got that one in December 2005, and it took about 20 minutes of pain. The other is a jasmine flower, on my upper left thigh. I got that one in January 2006, and it took nearly three hours. I gave the tattoo artist creative licence on that one, and it came out really, really great. I want more, but probably won’t get them any time soon.
4. As cute as they are, I really hate green tree frogs. They make the most annoying noises when its damp out, and for some reason they love to croak just outside the bedroom window at about 5 am.
5. I usually sleep on my side or my stomach. But every morning, between 5 and 7, Nacho stands on my pillow and stares at me with her purr on in a big way. She stays there until I roll on my back, and then she lays on my stomach for a pat. I usually like it, unless she kneads and uses claws. She usually only stays for 5 or 10 minutes, but sometimes she falls asleep there until the sun gets really bright.

Since I’m posting random things, I thought I would put up some random food photos.

Here is some tofu dill salad, from Vegan with a Vengeance. I thought this was really tasty on sandwiches and wraps, but it was quite dry. Unfortunately, I used the last of my tofu mayo when I mixed it up, so I couldn’t add any to the mix. I think it was so dry because I used frozen tofu and it sucked up liquid like a sponge.

And here is a fancy pasta dish, which I invented by combining two recipes from Vegan Planet. Fettucini is tossed with sautéed strips of capsicum and zucchini, and then covered in a cannellini-balsamic sauce. This was really easy to put together, and really very tasty.

A few weeks ago, we got a pressure cooker. I’m still playing with the timing for perfectly-cooked beans, but it comes in handy. Except for last time I cooked kidney beans. I think the pot was a bit too full, and I must have let the pressure off a bit too quickly, because I ended up with red liquid squirting out of the lid. Lovely. Still, it’s quick and relatively easy, so I like it.

Pressure cooker tips from experts would be much appreciated, though.

Now for some random links. Well, not really random.

I posted about this last week, but I think it's worth mentioning again. 400 kangaroos are set to be culled (read: murdered) by the Australian government. In protest, Aboriginal Australians are teaming up with animal rights activists and making a pretty big statement, even offering to take the lethal injection on behalf of the kangaroos. Said one Aboriginal member of the Tent Embassy, "If you could see the kangaroos through our eyes, you would see how important this is to me," he said. "This cull is genocide, because these kangaroos are my brothers, they're my sisters, they're my aunties, my uncles and my babies." Peter Garrett has said this is necessary--what a freakin' sellout. This article also quotes an AR activist: "I've heard the Government saying the cull is for conservation, but it's not, it's about development." That's the key, I think, it's all about development.

In addition to being bad for kangaroos, the Australian government isn't so good for sheep, either. After selectively breeding sheep with lots and lots of skin, sheep farmers have found that the excessive skin around a sheep's bum is a breeding ground for blowflies. They lay eggs in the moist wool and the maggots then burrow into the sheep's body and slowly kill it. It's pretty gruesome, so to avoid that fate the sheep farmers simply slice off the excess bum skin. It's called mulesing, and they do it without any pain relief or bandaging up afterwards. Peta has been pushing for a while to get this practice changed, and now a few European countries are banning Australian wool until the practice is made more humane. I think the focus should be less on making it more humane, and more on getting people to stop using wool. Ending one bad practice will make people think they've solved all sheeps' problems, but really, the methods of dipping and shearing don't look very nice from a sheep's perspective. Anyways, sheep are an introduced species which are really not so good for the Australian environment.

Love is a warm muffin

The semester has started with a vengeance. This semester I’m tutoring for a first-year subject. For North Americans, aussie uni classes are split up into 2-hour lectures and 1-hour tutorials. Tutorials are small groups (10 to 20) where students are meant to discuss the readings and lectures. I’m leading two tutorials a week, but luckily I only need to prepare once!

The start of the semester just had to coincide with a crazy few weeks of field work. I have regular meetings in addition to community forums, morning teas, Sorry Business, and an upcoming trip to a nation-wide rally.

If I were living alone, I would be eating crap—cold leftovers, tinned spaghetti, soy ice cream. But luckily, when I get home late dinner is often cooked, or has at least been started. Like Tuesday, I got home just before 7 to the smell of something baking.

Andy made these carob muffins for me, even though he’s not a big fan of muffins. They’re from a mix, which I got at an organic shop a few months back when it was reduced to clear. The first ingredient is chickpea flour; they are dairy free, egg free, gluten free, low in fat and high in fibre.

With the leftover batter, Andy made a little slice, with peanuts mixed through and coconut on top.

Neither of us are huge fans of carob (I think it’s good, but I don’t think it tastes like chocolate at all), but coming home to warm muffins is such a nice experience! And, they have been great to bring to uni for a healthy snack to combat mid-afternoon slump.

The freshly-baked yumminess didn’t stop at sweets, though. Dinner was baking away in the oven at the same time—baked potatoes (and two cloves of garlic roasting away).

We had the potatoes topped with some leftover burrito filling, olive and caper tapenade, tofu mayonnaise, satay dip which was reduced to clear at the shop, and BBQ sauce. It may sound like a weird mix, but somehow it worked! The photo, however, did not, so I’ll leave you with a Nacho picture instead…

Updated to add the link to this article, about protests against kangaroo culling in the ACT. The reason I'm linking it is because AR folks are working together with Indigenous elders, which I think is just great!

booja booja

When I was ordering nutritional yeast a few weeks ago from The Cruelty Free Shop, I figured that since I was paying for shipping anyways, I may as well just throw in some chocolates to the order. Makes perfect sense, no?

I was tempted by a few different varieties, but the one that ultimately won me over was Booja Booja Ginger Wine Truffles. In addition to being a vegan and organic chocolate, the wooden box they come in is sustainably grown and harvested (whatever that means).

When I got home from uni to find a parcel on the step, I was very excited. I ripped it open, and immediately started opening up the truffles. Before I could get the inside paper stuff off, I realised the chocolate had melted in a big way.

Derrrr, Theresa, chocolate melts in the tropics! That’s why we keep all our chocolate bars in the fridge at all times. What made me think that shipping chocolate from down south to Townsville would be a good idea? Especially in the summer, and when it was sitting in the sun all afternoon.

My stupidity aside, we are able to break off oddly-shaped, truffle-sized portions of chocolate after it had spent the night in the refrigerator. These are really, really good. I can’t judge their appearance or texture, but the flavour was spot-on. A slightly boozy inside with little pieces of sweet and spicy ginger, all encased in yummy dark chocolate. The combination of ginger and chocolate is one that I find amazing but underrated; these truffles just confirm my opinion. The best part about these truffles is their super-rich taste, which means that we can stop after just one.

So when the weather is cool, do yourself a favour and order some Booja Booja truffles. As it says on the package, “Everyone needs a little booja booja now and then.”

Prisoners and sexual violence.

I've been crazy busy the last few days, and I haven't had time to think about uploading photos or coming up with creative new blog posts. So today I'm posting a few things I've grabbed out of Women's Centre newsletters.

This post is inspired by some of my busy-ness. On Monday afternoon, I went to the Townsville Correctional Centre with the Women's Centre, to celebrate International Women's Day with a group of women who are often forgotten about. Currently living their lives behind razor wire, these women are often treated as less-than-human by the prison guards who work in the Women's Secure section. But, the majority of women are in prison for minor offenses, many of which are related to poverty--break and enters, centrelink (welfare) fraud, stealing. But they are still women, and they deserve to be a part of International Women's Day.

So a group of women went up to the prison to spread the IWD cheer. We brought with us a proper deadly Aboriginal poet (proper deadly means really good in local Murri slang). We were met at the prison by an Aboriginal women's dance group and Soroptomist International (a moderate group of older women)--the Soroptomists had funded a visitor from the Pacific, a UN delegate. There were the obligatory speeches, and then there was dancing. A vast majority of the prison population is indigenous, and many of the women got up to join in with the dancers. (I joined in for the freestyle dance at the end, dancing like a turtle.) We heard heart-wrenching stories of homeless women who were victims of sexual assault, domestic violence, and poverty, and they don't know what to expect when they leave the prison--will the law protect them at all?

It was an incredibly moving experience, and words just really can't express how amazing and difficult it was. So I'll stop trying, and leave you with these statistics from the newsletters.

How much do we know about violence against women?

The best indicators available are from the ABS Personal Safety Survey 2005 which updates information about women’s experiences of violence collected in the 1996 ABS Women’s Safety Survey.

From the 2005 survey the ABS estimated that in the previous 12 months:
363 000 women (4.7 % of all women) experienced physical violence; and 126 100 women (1.6 %) experienced sexual violence.

The ABS further estimated that:
2.56 million (33 %of all women) have experienced physical violence since the age of 15; and 1.47 million (19 %) have experienced sexual violence since the age of 15.

From this it is possible to estimate that approximately one in five women (19 %) have experienced sexual violence at some stage in their lives since the age of 15 and one in three women (33 %) have experienced physical violence at some stage in their lives since the age of 15.

http://www.aph.gov.au/library/intguide/SP/ViolenceAgainstWomen.htm

Statistics on Reporting Rape in Australia

“Though not exact, the consensus seems to be that only one in five rapes gets reported.
So, if 20 out of every 100 rapes are reported to police and 15 per cent of those reports lead to charges being laid, according to latest research, then only about three of the accused in every 100 assaults face trial. This suggests, based on the 25 per cent conviction rate at trial, that fewer than one of the original 100 assaults actually ends up in a conviction.”

Somewhere to help heal and fight back
Simon Mann
The Age
July14 2007

I think this is an important question to ask

If:

• 89% of women in prison have been sexually assaulted

• 70% of men in prison have been sexually assaulted

• one in 4 girls are sexually abused by 18

• one in 8 boys are sexually abused by 18

• On average in a classroom of 30 grade 12 students 5 of these have been affected by sexual assault

• one in 3 women are sexually assaulted

• only 10% of sexual assault is reported to the police

• only 10% of this reported crime results in a conviction and not always a prison sentence

Are there more victims of sexual abuse incarcerated into our ‘Correctional Centres’ than perpetrators of sexual assault?

Heather Bond

Weekend eats and shops

First up, the eats. Saturday night we had lime and basil chickpea cutlets, topped with Almost Sour Cream and sweet chilli sauce. I’ve changed the recipe around to suit our tastes, using a mixture of gluten and regular flour. The gluten makes the texture meaty, but cutting it with plain flour keeps the cutlets from being stringy. On the side, we had garlic and spring onion mashed potatoes, and a fresh corn, capsicum and caper salad.

Lime and Basil Chickpea Cutlets
Based on the recipe from Veganomicon, but changed enough that I’ll post it

What you need:

2 c. cooked chickpeas, mashed fairly well
¼ c. olive oil
½ c. gluten flour
½ c. wholemeal flour
1 heaped cup rolled oats, processed into crumbs (or just use bread crumbs)
juice of 1 lime, topped up with water to make ½ c.
¼ c. soy sauce
zest of one lime
½ t. dried basil
½ t. onion powder
3 cloves garlic, smashed and minced
¼ c. minced fresh basil

In a large bowl, mix everything together. Knead for a few minutes. Form into 6 patties and fry over medium-low heat until browned and firm.

The first time I had lime and basil in combination was in the form of ice cream from Frosty Mango, and it was such a tangy and delicious combination. Of course, any kind of citrus and any kind of herb will work—lime & coriander, lemon & parsley, etc. But if you make those changes, you can't call them lime & basil cutlets.

Sunday night we had the leftover cutlets in burger form. They were good, but they are better solo. With the burgers we had sautéed spinach and carrots with soy sauce, spring onions, garlic and sesame seeds. And another fresh corn salad, this time with browned zucchini.

We’ve also been slowly making our way through the Peanut Butter Silk Pie’s from our picnic. Andy thought they were a little bit too rich, but discovered that a blob of strawberry jam on top cuts through the richness and makes them very nummy.

This is Andy's photo, which he took while I was at a seminar. He posed it in front of the window for optimal lighting. A future food blogger?

Now for the shops.

Sunday morning we headed to the market like always, and afterwards went to the organic shop nearby. We got allll this stuff:

From the market, three ears of corn, 2 red capsicums, 3 green capsicums, a kilo of zucchini, 6 big carrots, 3 red potatoes, 3 white potatoes, 2 bunches of bananas, 4 onions, and a bunch of asian spinach. All that for $20. From the organic shop, a pack of nut yeast, a half-price pack of soy flour, and some organic fresh ginger.

On the way home, we stopped at a few shops and decided to purchase our most expensive piece of furniture. Aside from our mattress, this new item is more expensive than all of our furniture combined. That isn’t a hard feat, as most of our furniture cost us nothing, coming from freecycle or the side of the road. But still, it was a lot to spend on a bit of wood covered with some carpet.

At first, Nacho was a little wary, but it didn’t take long for her to start licking and biting the edge of the base. With a bit of enticing in the form of yarn, she climbed up onto each level. She chased her tail for a few minutes in the hidey-hole, and looked down on her kingdom from the top perch. Our clumsy little kitty had a bit of trouble climbing down at first, but she seems to be getting the hang of it. Even after all that exploration, she still spent the afternoon napping on the floor, with her head or paws resting on the base of her new tree.

Now, a wee little rant while we’re on the topic of shopping. Yesterday’s newspaper had a big cover story about how the Government may impose a fee on plastic bags from shops. The story speculated that the fee could be $0.25, but it could be up to $1. Shock! Horror! The reporter seemed ready to take up arms to fight for his right to use environment-degrading plastic bags. The photograph for the story was two women and a child with arms full of plastic bags—the caption read “[Their names] want retailers to provide an alternative to plastic bags”. Hello! You can buy reusable green bags for $1 at every single store! You can buy them in a variety of colours, you can get them with your favourite sports team logo printed on them, you can get them in various sizes and you can even get insulated ones for your cold items. They are such a popular item that they are often given out for free—in about 18 months living in Australia, I’ve gotten four free bags (red, green and 2 blue), and we hardly ever go anywhere. If you don’t like the style of those ones, you can always make your own. Or, you could pack your groceries into cardboard boxes instead of bags. Okay, so alternatives are sorted. A news report last night said people thought even $0.25 was too much, but, isn’t that the point? If it’s an easily affordable number, people will just pay for them without thinking. But the purpose of a levy is to phase out the use of plastic bags altogether, and the only way to do that is to charge an amount that people are unwilling to pay. Peter Garrett, former Midnight Oil lead singer and current Environment Minister, has ruled out a levy and says the process of phasing out plastic bags must be voluntary. Call me cynical, but I just don’t think an education campaign will work the way a levy will. There has been a very concerted education campaign over the past several years, but according to the figures given on the ABC last night, plastic bag usage hasn’t even been halved. People have come to see plastic shopping bags as a god-given right, and they don’t seem to be giving them up willingly. So what do you think—is a levy the answer?

A Friday morning picnic

It was a beautiful day this morning, so Andy and I 'chucked a sicky' and headed down to Alligator Creek. Just 30 kms south of Townsville, and the start of a fairly large national park, Alligator Creek offers hiking, swimming holes, camping, waterfalls, and picnic areas galore. (Click on the pictures for bigger views.)

Since it was mid-morning when we got there, we left the picnic in the car and did some exploring. The main picnic area has bbq's, tables, and an information centre.

A kangaroo was having a picnic of his own...

We looked at the sign and realised the main hike would take us 5 hours--but we had little water, no bug spray, and thongs on our feet. So we took the short boardwalk to the swimming hole, instead. Along the boardwalk are plenty of signs telling you about the local environment, and little glimpses of the creek through the trees.

The path opens onto a beach, which Andy surveyed and deemed not good enough.

So we climbed along the rocks and chose a more secluded place to swim.

The water was icy cold, fed from rain and springs up on Mt. Eliot and the surrounding hills. Despite the cold, we stayed in for a while, but enjoyed the heat of the sun when we got back out onto the rocks. Andy pointed out a dyke, though he's not totally clear since he hasn't taken geology in a few years.

After we had dried off, we took another short walk up to the lookout, where we surveyed the view from up high.

Upstream...

Downstream...

By the time we got back to the car, we had worked up our appetites. We pulled out our little esky bag...

Which was packed with fresh hummus loaded with garlic and parsley, and leftover bean/veggie mix from burritos the night before. We planned on eating them with veggie sticks and some tortilla chips, but we forgot the chips at home, so it was just veggies for us!

While we ate, we were quickly surrounded by a family of 10 or so bush turkeys.

We threw them a few little bits of carrot and capsicum, which they wolfed down.

For dessert, we brought cupcake-sized No-Bake Peanut Butter Silk Pie.

The recipe is from Vegan with a Vengeance, but instead of chocolate cookies I used gingernuts for the base. These are good. Rich, and very unhealthy, but very good.

After we finished eating we headed down an inconspicuous stairway next to the picnic table...

And found a very shallow section of the creek.

On the drive back home, I marvelled at how green the hills are. Usually varying shades of rusty brown, the rain has really greened up Townsville!

Just before getting back to Townsville, we spotted a Giant Brolga, so we stopped to have a photo with her.

Full of good food, refreshed after a swim and some sunshine, it was back to uni for a seminar I have this afternoon--the life of a post-grad is really hard, wouldn't you agree?

A pleasant surprise and some lols.

International Women’s Day is on Saturday, and this year will be the 80^th that the day is celebrated in Australia. To commemorate, I had a few feminist rants written for you all—about assholes who yell out ‘show us your tits’ as they drive past on the street, about super-expensive IWD events around Townsville, and sexual assault and prisons. But, I accidentally deleted them, and they can’t be recovered in any way. So, shoot. Maybe I’ll recreate them soon. For now, here are a few little things.

--The JCU Student Association hosted an alternative media workshop, a free bbq, and a movie night yesterday for all women. As far as I know, it was the only free, open-to-the-public IWD event in Townsville this year. Even though I am wary of bbqs, I wanted to go even if I just ate a bit of lettuce on bread. Well, imagine my surprise when I turn up to find an all-woman band playing kick-ass music while homemade chickpea-veggie burgers were being grilled on a meat-free grill! (There were beef burgers, but they were cooked after the veggie burgers were taken off.) Sure, the crowd was very small, but it meant that I got to have good, in-depth conversations with other feminists. And, even though I knew I would be eating dinner when I got home, I ate a veggie burger and it was so good. When the meat burgers were all cooked, no one was eating them. The 'chef', a veg*n, asked if anyone ate meat--amidst a chorus of "no", only one person said yes. Wahoo! Vegan feminists! Unfortunately, I had to cut the afternoon short because I was riding home on my bike, and I didn’t want to get stuck in the dark.

--When I did get home, Andy was just starting to cook me a delicious dinner. This is the second time he’s cooked in two days, thanks to late afternoon meetings—Tuesday I got home at 9:30 and was welcomed with fried rice and orange tofu. Last night he had the Ultimate Uncheese book open to the “Spinafel” recipe, which are spinach and ricotta balls. The recipe was changed in a fairly big way—instead of firm tofu we used a tin of chickpeas. And instead of vegan mayo, we used a block of silken tofu and a splash of vinegar. They were good, but a little dry and a little bland. After some tweaking, I’ll post the recipe. While he was mashing, I peeled and chopped some beetroot which we tossed with olive oil, salt and pepper.

--Nacho loves chickpeas. Andy was getting annoyed with her trying to get into the mixing bowl while he was cooking, and I overheard a conversation that made me laugh out loud:

“Nacho, when I sleep on the couch all day and you walk to the shop to buy the food, you can have all the chickpeas you want. Until then, get off the counter.”

--Nacho also loves Andy’s armpits, for some weird reason. The other day he was sitting with his arm resting on the windowsill, and she was going nuts, licking and biting his armpit hair. We bought her a toy a few weeks ago and she just doesn’t like it. We thought maybe it was the smell, so I came home to find the toy wrapped in Andy’s shirt, which was really sweaty from a bike ride. I laughed out loud when I saw that (maybe it was endorphins since I had just ridden home). She still doesn’t like the toy.

Pesto Dream Sauce

With all the rain we've had recently, interspersed with hot, sunny days, the garden has been doing pretty well. The basil was growing so well that the plants were starting to crowd one another, so Andy did some major thinning, and we were left with a whole lotta basil that needed to be used. We were having sweet potato croquettes for dinner, and I had planned on making some sort of gravy, but we decided pesto cream sauce would be a much better idea.

The croquettes are simply mashed cannellini beans, white sweet potato, frozen spinach, grated carrots, fresh corn, and onion. On their own, they were quite ordinary, but with the addition of creamy pesto deliciousness, they were an amazing dinner (and lunch the next day).

Here’s the recipe:

What you need:

2 T. olive oil or margarine
3 cloves of garlic, minced
1/3 c. plain flour
2-3 c. (low fat) non-dairy milk, depending on how thick you want it
1/3 c. minced fresh basil
2 T. ground almonds
¼ c. nutritional yeast flakes
salt and pepper to taste

What you do:

In a medium saucepan, heat oil or margarine over medium-low heat. Sautee garlic for 2 to 3 minutes. Whisk in flour and try to keep it from being lumpy. Cook flour to 3 to 4 minutes, and then whisk in a little bit of milk. When mixture is smooth, whisk in the remaining milk and stir constantly until sauce thickens to your liking. Remove from heat, stir in basil, almonds and nut yeast. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

The next day we ate the cold leftovers, which had thickened up quite a lot. This made a great addition to bean and veggie wraps—tomatoey refried kidney beans, corn, spinach, and capsicum.

My long lost friend, the oven.

Though Townsville doesn’t really have seasons in the same way that most people think of them, there are definite differences in the weather. For example, ‘summer’ is stinkin’ hot and humid. The weather tends to come from the north in the form of monsoonal lows. In the ‘winter’, however, the winds change and come from the south and bring cooler, drier weather. Some years (like last year) it can get downright cold—I think 13 degrees Celsius (55 F) was Townsville’s record-breaking cold day last winter.

Now that it’s ‘autumn’ it seems appropriate that there is a mild low hovering overhead that is making it cloudy with temperatures in the 20s instead of the 30s. Although the temperature drop doesn’t seem like much, it feels like heaps when you’re accustomed to sauna-like days and nights. On the plus side, cooler weather foods are much more appealing to us, especially those which require baking or roasting.

Wrapping or enclosing food in pastry makes it immediately appealing to me, no matter what the weather (I’m definitely not on a low-carb diet). So when Andy mixed some leftovers with some veggies and gravy and turned it into a pie, I was definitely a happy vegan. Since the oven was on, I cut up some radishes we found reduced to clear and tried them roasted. This was the first time either of us had (knowingly) eaten cooked radishes, and we were convinced that this is a great way to have them. I also sautéed some broccoli with bragg’s and cumin, and Andy—a tomato fiend—had some fresh tomato with his dinner.

An oven dish that I’ve wanted to try for ages (but have been dissuaded by it’s long cooking time at high heat) is Vicki’s Vegan Potato Tart. I made a few minor changes to her recipe, mostly using chilli-capsicum spread instead of pesto. And I made mine in a springform pan, in the hopes that it would crisp up and be gorgeous. It didn’t crisp, but it was delicious!

To double-up on oven usage, we had the potato tart with stuffed zucchini. Andy made the stuffing out of leftover rice, bread cubes, frozen spinach, soy sauce, and coconut cream. These were really good, especially with a bit of mustard on top.

It’s hard to resist eating garlic bread every time the oven gets turned on in this house. We buy buns and baguettes when they are reduced after 7 pm, and cover them with garlic/parsley butter (nuttlex margarine) before sticking them in the freezer for later use.

Since I’m already wearing sweatpants and it’s still 28 C (82 F), I think the oven will be getting a fair workout this ‘winter’.

New twists on familiar foods

I read in a magazine once that most people have an average of nine meals that they eat regularly in differing rotations, and they only occasionally step outside of that repertoire.

I don’t know if Andy and I fit into that statistic exactly, but we do have some staple meals that come up every fortnight or so. Normally we keep them pretty standard, but every now and then we’ll spice things up with some new flavour combinations.

Pizza is a perfect example. We have pizza fairly often, usually topped with chicken-style seitan, pineapple, capsicum, mushrooms, olives, and tomatoes. To mix things up, we tried a new topping combination that I’ve been meaning to try for a while now: Potato and Sausage Pizza. A simple crust provided the base garlicky tomato sauce spiced with oregano and aniseed, thinly sliced potatoes, and veggie sausages, all topped with freshly ground pepper and fresh rosemary. Andy was more than sceptical when I told him my plan for the pizza crust, but the simple elegance of this pizza won him over quickly (though he did add BBQ sauce to his half).

Notice the way the toppings come right up to the edge of the crust? Andy hates plain crust bites, whereas I enjoy a few of those at the end of my pizza slice. Similar to couples who have half-cheese/half-cheeseless, we have half-exposed crust, half-toppings right to the edge. How’s that for a compromise?

Risotto is a meal we have once a month, and our favourite is definitely lemon risotto with green peas. Unfortunately, lemons are expensive during the summer, so we have to change things up a bit. In my head (so Andy didn’t make fun of me), I called this ‘The Incredible Hulk Risotto’, because it was green, ‘meaty’, vegan and a little out of the ordinary. Yep, that’s right, The Hulk was veg, a little known fact I picked up when I was a member of the Vegan Freak Forums (which I unfortunately had to quit because it was taking up too much time and internet quota). Apparently there is one edition of the comic book where Bruce Banner is eating lunch and his co-workers make fun of his tofurkey sandwich. Out comes the green monster, shouting ‘TOFURKEY NOT FUNNY!!’

Anyways. The stock was a mixture of bad-tasting white wine we needed to use up, the dregs of a BBQ sauce bottle washed out with water, mushroom soaking liquid, and green herb stock powder. We stirred that into the Arborio rice along with broccoli, frozen spinach, green peas, and minced up veggie sausages.

Store-bought gnocchi is good for an easy meal that doesn’t require a lot of work. We usually pair it with a mushroom cream sauce, or a jarred tomato sauce. Inspired by Megan the Vegan, I wanted to try something a little different. I cubed some chicken-style seitan and sautéed it in veggie stock and bragg’s for a few minutes. Then I sautéed some mushrooms and cooked the gnocchi. Afterwards, I put the cooked mushrooms and seitan in the pan with the gnocchi and some fresh baby spinach, and poured in a mix of veggie stock, balsamic vinegar, and arrowroot. After taking it off the heat I mixed in ½ c. or so of minced fresh parsley. I would have liked the sauce to be a bit thicker, but it was a very yummy combination, anyways.

Finally, breakfast. I know I only recently lamented my boring breakfast repertoire. Saturday morning I woke up and really felt like corn muffins. I know that Andy isn’t a fan of muffins for breakfast, but I thought I could enjoy some fabulous corn muffins while he ate a boring bowl of cereal. As I was gathering ingredients, the good Theresa on my shoulder spoke louder than the selfish one, and I thought Andy might want some pancakes. Since the polenta was out, I made corn pancakes as a variation on our normal flapjacks. I would have added lemon or blueberries, but we didn’t have any. Still, I really liked them. They were like a denser version of corn bread. Andy didn’t love them, he didn’t even really like them, but he doesn’t like the gritty feeling of polenta in baked goods.

Plus, he’s a breakfast grinch, remember?

PS... Aussie vegans, voting has opened for the Aduki vegan awards. Vote for your favourite veg stuff!