It's official!

Remember how, despite all of the time spent in the rainforest and at the beach, how our recent trip to Cairns was actually to submit a permanent residency application?

This application that (as my facebook friends can attest to) gave me so much damn grief. This application that used a forest's worth of trees (I had to shift to a larger binder shortly after this photo was taken) and cost three months' pay. This application that had me getting chest x-rays, blood tests, and finger printed.

Well, five and a half weeks later, it's been approved! Yay! I feel like I should have a meat pie and a sausage roll to celebrate, but I've already got lunch and dinner plans so I'll have to save my Aussie feasting until Andy gets home in two weeks.

They even sent back the christmas cards and things we included with our application. Cool!

Recovery snacks.

As I mentioned in my previous post, my awesome student trainer is actually encouraging me to eat cupcakes post-work out. His reasoning is based on the role that carbohydrates play in replacing muscle glycogen levels, thereby reducing the fatigued feeling. If you're interested, you can read here, particularly p. 38-9.

Simple carbohydrates are the best recovery food, within 30 minutes of training, because the sugars are quickly broken down. If they contain a bit of protein and some fat, then they are even better. Surprisingly, though, fructose is only half as good as other kinds of sugars at replacing glycogen levels, so while a piece of fruit is better than nothing, it isn't the ideal post-training snack.

My first week of training I followed up with muffins--The Best Pumpkin Muffins, from Vegan with a Vengeance.

Then last weekend I decided to try out two new recipes from The Joy of Vegan Baking: raspberry-oat squares and chocolate peanut butter cupcakes.

The slice was really easy, just a matter of mixing the base up and spreading it with jam. It is also really yummy. It isn't very fruity, though. I think next time I'll make more of a raspberry sauce, a la raspberry choc blondie bars from VwaV and use that for the fruit layer.

The choc-PB cupcakes were actually a bit of a letdown. I cut the recipe in half, and possibly did something wrong. My batter was really dry, almost cookie dough-ish. I added a weensy bit more soy milk, so that it was spoon-able, before putting it into the cupcake tin. While they baked, they didn't actually get much lift. Look how puny this one is.

The other thing is that the chocolate and peanut butter flavours are actually underwhelming. The flavour which comes through the most is actually banana, which isn't bad, just not what I was expecting.

Training food

Aside from getting to set your own hours and doing work that you really love (most of the time), working at a university is great because of all the free stuff that comes your way. Art students hold free exhibitions and concerts, physio students hold a free clinic, including massage. One of the recent offers of free stuff was 8 weeks of personal training, with second-year Sports and Exercise Science students. I saw this email come through and disregarded it, but later decided to sign up. Why the hell not, hey?

So for the past two weeks I've been in training. Since I'm not trying to lose weight we're mostly working on strength training, and I am surprised at some of the things I've been able to do. There has been a bit of cardio, mostly on the bike, and overall it's been a lot of fun.

Since I'm working my body in ways it isn't used to working, I've been a bit more conscious of what I put in it. I've been trying, successfully, to drink loads of water during the day. And although I'm never worried that I get enough nutrients in my diet, I have been a bit more deliberate about my meals. My concern isn't protein, but carbohydrates.

Carbs are actually the food that you need to eat both before and after exercise, because the sugars reduce muscle fatigue. Complex carbs are good at least three hours before working out, and then again within two hours after finishing. Simple carbs are actually not a bad thing, particularly within 30 minutes after finishing training.

Because I eat leftover dinner for lunch, I have been trying to combine simple and complex carbohydrates into my meals, along with vegetables, protein, fat, and all of the other good stuff, so that I have enough energy no matter when I work out.

For instance, this chickpea cutlet is full of complex carbohydrates while the jacket potato has a higher Glycaemic Index. I'm not really sure about the sweet potato and salad, but they were very yummy, especially with the roasted garlic butter in the background.
This meal is baked chilli with cornbread topping, and is full of good stuff.Millet, potato, sweet potato, brown rice, navy beans and tvp bulked up the chilli, and it was delicious.

And I don't know where barley falls on the GI scale, but I felt good the next morning in the gym--satay tofu, barley with broccoli, and a raw beetroot-nori salad.
Of course, my favourite thing about training is being encouraged to eat cupcakes, muffins, or slice immediately after a workout. That's my kind of trainer! But you'll have to stay tuned for the sweets I've been using to boost my muscle glycogen levels...

Risotto

Although risotto is a bit of a pain to make, I think it's generally worth it. As long as you get everything ready beforehand, there is no stress and just a zen-like state of stirring for 30 minutes or so. It's delicious, easy to pack full of veggies, and it impresses non-vegans pretty easily. It's also a good excuse to have a glass of wine, since the bottle has been opened anyways!

This risotto was flavoured with a delicate vegetable-mustard stock and some semillon sauvignon blanc. I added broccoli, zucchini, red capsicum and green peas for the last few minutes, and then right at the end I stirred though a mixture of tofutti cream cheese and mashed up roasted garlic, for a creamy garlicky finish. This risotto was really divine, served with a simple salad and a bread roll.

Best ever?

Sometimes the most ordinary things get labelled The Best, which is always a pleasant surprise. The trick, of course, is finding out what was so Best about it, in order to replicate.

I made this lasagna that wasn't very different to our usual lasagna (though to be honest, we don't eat lasagna all that often)... tomato sauce and veggies, layered with noodles and cream sauce.

But somehow, Andy labelled this The Best Lasagna Ever--that is, not just the best lasagna I've made, but the best lasagna he's ever had. So that's pretty good. What about it was so great? I think it had something to do with cooking up the sauce/veggie mix a few days before putting the lasagna together. And the other factor was the abundance of cream sauce. I often run short, so I made lots this time, and layered it in one of the layers as well as on top. The result was obviously good.

Edited to add a lame-ass recipe:

For the sauce--saute an onion until soft, stir in garlic and mixed herbs. Add about 200 g. of finely chopped eggplant and cook for 5 minutes. Stir in 1 small zucchini, diced, 1/2 c. of red capsicum, diced, and 1 c. of broccoli, chopped quite small. Cook for another five minutes. Add 1/2 c. frozen peas and 1 jar of pre-made pasta sauce (or, you know, make your own!). Let this cool and store in the fridge until you are ready to make the lasagna, preferably a few days.

On lasagna-making day, make the cream sauce by combining 3 T. flour, 1 T. chopped garlic, 1 T. miso and 1 t. mustard with 1/4 c. olive oil in a small saucepan. Heat until bubbly and whisk in 3 cups of soy milk, whisking until it thickens. Then layer the lasagna with noodles, red sauce, white sauce, etc. Bake for about an hour at 180 to 200 degrees.

Sorry, I don't have any more description than this!

And these cookies are another example. They were a last minute thing. Andy's dad's birthday was in three days and we had meant to send something sooner, but forgot. In order to get them to him by his birthday, we had to express post them the next morning. The only catch was that we didn't have much in the house. So I found a recipe and bastardised the hell out of it.

In the end, the post was slow and the cookies didn't get there on time anyways, but it didn't matter--Andy's parents thought the cookies were fantastic and have asked for the recipe. Since I'm typing it up for them, I thought I would share here.

½ cup peanut butter
1 cup brown sugar
1/4 c. soy milk
1 T scotch

2 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
½ tsp bicarb soda
1 T soy flour
50 g shredded coconut
100 g chopped dark chocolate
100 g chopped walnuts
1 tsp cinnamon
¼ tsp salt

Preheat oven to 190. Cream together peanut butter, brown sugar, soy milk, and scotch.

In a large bowl, mix flour, baking powder, bicarb soda and soy flour until well blended. Gradually add dry ingredients to the peanut butter mixture, until everything is incorporated. Fold in the chocolate, coconut and walnuts. Drop balls of the dough onto a lightly greased cookie sheet and flatten. Bake for about 9 to 11 minutes or until golden.

Brunch

Who would have guessed that chickpea power is such a wonderful ingredient in brunch? Isa Chandra Moskowitz, that's who. I don't know how she figures out her recipes, but I'm pretty sure she is a goddess.

First it was the chickpea flour in her Fronch Toast recipe. That was a revelation, especially after a few attempts at other recipes involving silken tofu, apple sauce, and other messy ingredients. Fronch toast is easy to put together and doesn't involve any blenders or food processers, so it's a great recipe for the morning.

We love our Fronch Toast served up with jam and even a bit of tofutti cream cheese.

But then Isa reached new heights with an omelet recipe that actually works. I've tried a few other omelet recipes that have resulted in mushy tofu scramble because they just don't hold up. This one did, and it tasted divine.
Andy thought it was a bit weird--apparently his idea of an omelet involved the filling being mixed in with the batter and cooked like a pancake, so next time I'll try that. And he thought it could be a dinner, rather than a breakfast, but then he's a breakfast grinch.

Lentil Love

Although we like pretty much every bean there is, the little protein machines we eat most often is, hands down, lentils. And more specifically, red lentils. They are really easy to cook, and if you cook them a little bit longer they mush themselves up so there is no need to break out the blender. That's a win-win, if you ask me.

Last year we mostly ate our red lentils in dahl form, but this year we have branched out a bit.

Red lentil make a great base for these Neat Balls, which also had things like oats, some gluten flour, and probably a grated carrot. I baked them for a bit before covering them with a garlicky tomato sauce, and we served them up with salad and roasted veggies.

This plate looks like a massive, colourful jumble of veggies (it sort of is). But on the left is a Potato and Lentil Bake from Wild Morsels. This was really yummy, perfectly spiced and easy to make.

And finally, red lentils are our favourite thing to bulk up a Neat Loaf. This one is based on the recipe for Lentil Burgers from Hot Damn & Hell Yeah, with the addition of some leftover risotto, grated sweet potato and gluten flour. This was the best loaf we've made so far. And it was extra good served with smashed potatoes, BrisVegan style.

Get stuffed.

Somehow I managed to accumulate a ridiculous backlog of photos, so that although the weather warmed back up to very high-20s a few weeks ago, I still have winter food photos which I haven't posted.

First, sausage rolls--puff pastry stuffed with a mix of bulgur, tvp, veggies and spices. I posted about these before, at which time I put half the unbaked rolls into the freezer. I'm happy to report that they work well going from freezer into oven, though of course they take a little bit longer to bake. We had our sausage rolls with our newest favourite side dish, Cauliflower Popcorn. This is literally just cauliflower cut up quite small, tossed with salt and/or spices, and baked at 200 (400F) until they get soft and caramelised. Seriously yummy. We also threw some corn and carrots in the oven while it was on to add colour to our plate. (Ooops, edited to add the link to the sausage roll recipe.)

Next is stuffed butternut pumpkin. Andy made this, and it was so long ago that I honestly don't remember what was in it. But as above, the star of the show was the side dish. Roasted daikon radishes, with just a little salt, pepper and garlic. The salad was pretty good too, all tomato and avocado and snowpea shoots.

And in keeping with the other two meals, the side dish was actually the best component of this last meal as well. The entree was gnocchi with tomato sauce, made by Andy. He fried the gnocchi and then added the bubbling sauce to the very hot skillet, and ended up with a tomato-ey Mount Vesuvius. Seriously, tomato sauce was erupting all over the kitchen for about five minutes. The side dish was delicious and not quite so messy. Andy called these "garlic bread zucchinis" and they were basically that--chunks of bread, roasted garlic and oil stuffed into hollowed out zukes and put under the griller for a few minutes. The salad was also fab with its raw corn and fresh dill.

Mustard-glazed sausages

When Andy and I were in Cairns a few weeks ago we flipped on the tv one afternoon and watched Huey's Cooking Adventures. For those outside of Australia, Huey has a daytime cooking show which is fairly cringe-worthy. For instance, in the episode we watched he stuck a tea towel down his pants so that it was easy to access, and then later in the show used it to "clean up the plate", wiping up the drips of sauce for a neat presentation. He often makes little mistakes, but he's a likeable guy because of it.

Aside from providing a few laughs, one of the dishes that Huey made that day stuck in my head--Maple Mustard Glazed Sausages. I wanted to try it, but it hardly seemed worth paying $5 for storebought sausages, so instead I did something else I've been meaning to try: Julie Hasson-style sausages. I did a google search to find variations on the recipe that I thought we would like, and played around with the flavours a bit as well. My sausages were a combination of bulgur and gluten, flavoured with fennel seeds, cumin and mustard. They were really easy to do, but I felt very wasteful using all of that aluminium foil to steam them.

Once the sausages are cooked, the mustard glazing is really easy. This is what I did, altered from Huey's because we don't have any maple syrup:

1 onion, cut in half and thinly sliced
1 t. mustard seeds
2 T. vegetable oil
1 c. beef-flavoured or vegetable stock
3 T. brown sugar
1 t. molasses
1 T. American-style mustard (the plain yellow stuff)
6 veggie sausages

Cook the onions and mustards seeds in oil in a large skillet until they start to caramelise. Push them to one side and add the sausages, cooking until they are warmed through. Meanwhile, combine stock, sugar, molasses and mustard in a jug. When the sausages are ready, pour this liquid mixture into the pan and let this gently boil, stirring occasionally. It should take 5 to 7 minutes to get a nice thick glaze. Then serve!

We had ours with creamy dill potato salad, and some fresh tomato from the farmer's market. I was pretty impressed with the sausages themselves and the meal as a whole. Andy said the sausages were still not quite what he was expecting, but they are better than Sanitarium brand. A bit more tweaking is in order, but it's no wonder these sausages swept the blog world like a bushfire!

(Oz&NZ)VeganMoFo: Produce

Given that today is the first official day of spring, I thought I would kick off the unofficial Month of Food with some local produce.

Last spring, Andy and I tried to take advantage of Townsville's sunny climate by growing things. We planted capsicums, tomatoes, and an eggplant, in addition to our normal herbs and pineapple. Everything grew very well, and within a few weeks we had flowers. But, it got too hot, or too humid, or something. The flowers bloomed and then fell off without setting into fruit. We eventually got two measly capsicums before those plants died in the wet weather of November to February. The eggplant succumed several months later. But the tomato held on strong. It was taller than me, and bushy--full of big green leaves. It wasn't until June this year--8 months after we planted it--that our first tomato flowers set into fruit. We watched and waited patiently as the first tomato grew and turned yellow, then orange, and finally bright red. Sure, it looked a little funny, but it was our own:

Since then, we're getting a slow trickle of tomatoes off of that plant, but none as unique as the first.

Realising that our back garden (if you can call a narrow, paved strip covered in shadecloth a garden) was not really suited to summer growing, we decided to plant some winter crops. In went some silverbeet (chard), some radishes, and some dill. Of the three, the dill was the only success. Now we're rolling in fresh dill and I love it. The silverbeet died from lack of sunlight. And the radishes struggled along, occasionally providing us with the odd leaf to add to a stirfry or pasta sauce. Eventually Andy dug them up, and this was what we got.
Sure, they were small, but they roasted up just fine.

Despite our lack of success, others around us somehow manage to grow gigantor, mutant produce. On our recent trip north, we stopped at a produce stand on the way home, just outside of Innisfail. They were selling 5 bananas for $1, so of course Andy chose the five biggest bananas on the pile. We ended up with four twins and one triplet banana.

These were BIG bananas. And they got ripe very quickly. To use up the triplet, I flicked through my under-utilised copy of The Tropical Vegan Kitchen and came across the Sweet Potato and Banana Casserole, I think from Jamaica. This was pretty simple to do--mashed sweet potato and banana, mixed with a jalapeno chilli, topped with peanuts and coconut. Then baked.

I had high hopes for this dish, and it would probably be good as a side dish in a holiday meal. We served it with falafels, roasted radishes and salad. It was okay, but just a bit... banana-y. Too sweet for a main meal, despite the spicy jalapeno mixed through.

Failures aside, Andy and I are relentless in our attempts to make our back space productive. I've got plans to grow a bag of potatoes, as DJ - Skint Vegan has recently done. Our dill is rolling along, we've got chilli plants getting taller by the day, and a baby pineapple has appeared.

Happy spring everyone!