Eating All The Food

Or, The Great Brisbane Vegustation

I spent the last 5 days in Brisbane for a conference. My time in Brisbane began on Tuesday morning, catching up with a friend from undergrad, with a samosa and a rhubarb-apple crumble from Vege Rama in Myer Centre. It was much, much better than the conference food. But the obvious highlight of the trip was Saturday, which I spent with Susan, eating for about 8 solid hours.

Susan, clearly a woman after my own heart, is a planner - and had a rough itinerary of the best way to get the best of Brisbane's vegan offerings. Plus looking at pretty dresses and shoes. Here is allll the food we ate...

The day started at West End Markets, where we beelined to the ykillamoocow stall for vegan dagwood dogs.

While they were cooking up, we popped across to the fresh sugar cane juice stall. We both got our sugar cane juice with ginger and lime, and it was fantastic.

We had a little walk along the Brisbane River before heading to Paddington, where Green Edge is located. Green Edge is a vegan grocery store cross cafe. We met up with Amy for lunch (for her) and lemon cheesecake (for us).

And milkshakes. Unfortunately they were out of cookies, so my first choice Cookies&Cream milkshake was changed to chocolate, but I can't really complain because it was delicious.

From Green Edge, we went to Fortitude Valley and dropped in to Kuan Yin Tea House. This is where we overdid it a little. The real reason for being there was for Taro Milk Bubble Tea.

But since we were there we also got some Spicy Calamari.

Lots of batter, funny chewy calamari. Covered in plum salt, which was yum!

And Fried Dumplings.

We couldn't actually finish the dumplings because we were both starting to feel a little bit sick. But I took them away in a container and ate them later on, in the airport! The culprit was, most likely, the tapioca bubbles, though several versions of fried food certainly didn't help. So we walked through some shops in the Valley, clutching our food babies as we looked at Melissa shoes and tried on gorgeous dresses (a size bigger than usual, perhaps?).

We must have successfully walked off that feeling of I'm going to die if I eat another bite because we stopped at 5 Dogs and ordered a vegan hot dog to share, with saurkraut, vegan cheese, ketchup and mustard. This we took to New Farm Park where we ate overlooking the river, and about 5 different couples posing for wedding photos.

After sitting and digesting for a bit longer, we made our way to Loving Hut in Mt Gravatt. This was my first time at any Loving Hut, so it was pretty exciting to watch the Supreme Master talk about how she tried to save the people who used to live on Venus from destroying their planet. (Alas, she was unsuccessful.) Susan recommended three of her favourite dishes on the menu, but I decided to go with the Garlic Butter Cutlets, because I felt like European food, and she said a lot of people rave about them. We both ordered them, and were both pretty disappointed. They were salty, and oily (which shouldn't have been a surprise, really), but at least they came with a big pile of veggies and couscous.

I let some butter melt on the cutlets but about 80% was put to the side, and it was still too greasy.

After 5 courses, I left Brisbane feeling fully satisfied, happy to have made up for a few hungry days of conferencing. In hindsight, less fried food and less mock meat may have enabled us to eat much more, but I think we put in a pretty good effort!

The Vegg! Smoked Cheddar Sheese. BBQ tofu jerky (from an Asian grocery, not from Green Edge).
Primal Strips. White Chocolate.

The food didn't stop in Brisbane, though - I stocked up on a few things at the Green Edge.

Spring Things

The start of spring, in Australia, is the 1st of September, and it has definitely warmed up here in Townsville. We still have the blankets on the bed, but when I walk the dog very early in the morning the sun is up, and I don't need a jumper anymore. The warm weather has meant a few different things.

Cucumbers.

Bucket loads of cherry tomatoes. We didn't plant the cherry tomatoes in our garden - they just came up, all over. We get big bowls full a few times each week.

Last week Andy gave Tika some cherry tomatoes to see if she would like them. She did, and he thought that was awesome. The next morning I saw Tika eating them straight off the bush. Upon realising that he has competition for his tomatoes, Andy doesn't think it's so awesome anymore.

Cherry tomatoes in fresh salsa - with cucumber, capsicum, chilli and coriander.

Fresh salsa on Nachos, with refried black beans and guac.

Cherry tomatoes in Brooklyn Pad Thai.

We got a BBQ, which is fantastic not just because BBQed food is yummy, but because BBQ dinner is quick and easy and doesn't make a big mess.

Stuffed capsicums, cooked on the Weber, with some baby zucchinis.

BBQ potatoes, garden radishes, garden zucchinis, felafel balls, and corn on the cob.

Side salad with tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, nasturtiums and rocket, all from the garden.

Chickpea patties. Check those char marks.

I grew soy beans over the winter, knowing full well they are a cool climate crop and they might not do much. But I knew they would fix nitrogen in the soil even if they didn't produce beans, so they were worthwhile.

And they did produce a tiny crop.

I got more shells than beans.

Edamame salad with cucumber, wasabi, soy and pickled ginger.

We also got solar panels. On a good day we get 24kilowatts per day, and if it's a bit cloudy more like 20, which is 2-3x what we use each day, so we're pretty smug about things.

 Also, our patio is getting lovelier and lovelier, with the BBQ and the fairy lights, and a quickly growing passionfruit for shade.

 

Fresh Tomato Pasta

I have a pile of posts in my head, waiting to be written. I have photos from months ago to go with those posts. But, I have a full time job, and it's a lot more work than I ever expected. So the posts remain in my head, at least until I get better at time management. But I can manage this quick post, about a really yummy dinner I just ate.

This afternoon, we came home from work and went out to the garden and came back inside with this big bowl of tomatoes.

Then I went out again, and picked this smaller, but still big, bowl of cherry tomatoes.

While I was picking the cherry tomatoes, Andy was picking this big bowl of rocket.

We decided to cook them all up (not all the big tomatoes, but all the rest of everything) into a super fresh, very tasty pasta sauce. I grabbed a few sprigs of oregano from the garden, and some garlic, and cooked it all together with some olive oil, and salt & pepper. Tossed through pasta, it was a quick and delicious dinner.

Finished off with a bit of coffee & chocolate swirl coconut milk ice cream, what else could a weekday dinner want?

Cuppers

I sort of missed the cupcake trend when it exploded a few years ago. I don't know why, but they didn't really interest me all that much. I was more into cookies. Also inexplicably, I have quite recently begun to love the idea of cupcakes. Andy's friends recently had a birthday BBQ, and something made me really want to make birthday cupcakes for them. But I didn't want to make just any cupcake.  This is what I came up with.

Chocolate Cupcakes with Peanut Butter Icing and Salted Caramel

Cake
1 1/2 c. plain flour
1 c. sugar
1/4 c. cocoa powder
1 tsp. bicarb soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1/3 c. vegetable oil
1 tsp. vinegar
1 c. water

Heat the oven to 180 and line 12 muffin cups with cupcake liners. Sift together the flour, sugar, cocoa powder, bicarb soda and salt in a large bowl. In a jug or a small bowl, whisk together the oil, vinegar and water. Pour these into the flour mixture and mix gently until combined. Spoon the batter into the cupcake liners and bake for about 25-30 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean. Remove from the pan and place on a wire rack to cool completely.

Icing
1/4 c. smooth peanut butter
1 1/2 c. icing sugar
3-5 T. soy milk

In an electric mixer, or with a good fork and lots of energy, whisk up the peanut butter until it's a little bit fluffy. Add the icing sugar a bit at a time until the mixture is crumbly. Add soy milk, a tiny bit at a time, until the consistency of the icing is good. This depends on how you want to put it on - for spreading, thicker is better, but for piping you need it to be a bit looser. Mine was too thick, and the cheap piping bag I bought just couldn't contain it - it exploded at the seams, requiring me to lick lots of icing off my hands which was delicious but also made me feel a bit sick. Make sure the cupcakes are fully cool before putting the icing on top.

Salted Caramel
2 T. vegan butter or coconut oil
2 T. brown sugar
1 T. golden syrup
1 1/2 T. coconut cream (or soy milk)
1/2 tsp. salt, to taste

In the smallest saucepan or skillet you have, mix the butter, sugar, syrup and cream. Put onto medium-high heat and cook, stirring constantly, until everything is melted. Stir occasionally as it comes up to a boil, then lower the heat to medium-low and cook, stirring pretty often, for 8 to 10 minutes. Stir in 1/4 tsp. of salt, then taste (being careful not to burn your mouth) and see if you want it saltier. Remove the pan from the heat and let the caramel cool to not-quite-molten temperature, stirring every so often. Then drizzle spoonfuls over the icing. The cuppers look best on the day you do the drizzling - the caramel soaked into the icing on the ones that sat overnight.

Sweet, yes, but also fancy and sophisticated and quite delicious. The best part about these cupcakes was that the gift box only fitted 6, so we got to keep the spares :-)

From the Garden

I can't believe it's been two weeks since I've posted last - I am full time now at work, which is good, but also means I am very, very busy. One of the competing demands for my time is the garden, which is going gangbusters.

We've been eating a bit of produce from our own back yard, which I will admit makes me feel very smug. But it's also really delicious! Here is what we've been growing and eating.

One of the quickest crops to grow is radishes, which we love roasted in the oven.

Another easy - and pretty - quick crop is nasturtiums, which have a peppery flavour and make a good salad. This one also features some cherry tomatoes from our garden.

Another one we've had success with is zucchini. We have had so many zukes!

We like them stuffed with garlic bread filling.

Garlic bread zucchini and eggplant pie.

 Or sauteed with kale (from our garden, too), capsicum, and pesto (made with basil from our garden) over pasta.

Grated zucchini makes a good addition to veggie sausage rolls.

But who can go past zucchini in sweets? I think when life gives you zucchini, you make zucchini bread. This is from the recipe in Urban Vegan. 

This plate is full of home grown - zucchini fritters and sauteed kale with nasturtium flowers. There is also a cauliflower casserole, but we didn't grow caulis in our garden.

Apparently kale is so not a warm climate veggie, but this Tuscan Black Kale seems to be going okay in our winter garden.

But Andy's favourite thing in the garden is easily the tomatoes. This is a Black Russian, a heirloom variety, which was beautiful and ripe and delicious, though it doesn't go very red in colour.

We sliced it onto avocado toast and it was delicious, and we can't wait for the rest to ripen up.

Soon we'll have pumpkins and capsicums and cucumbers and spring onions and maybe beetroots, but for now we'll keep eating zucchini a few days a week!

Blogger Baking

There are so very many wonderful recipes around the internets that I often see, think would be good, and then forget about as soon as I navigate away from the page. But recently I have discovered Pinterest as a way of organising bookmarks, and I find it much more useful than standard old bookmarking.

I've pinned several recipes from blogs and recently made a few, with varying degrees of success.

First up, I made a Cromwell Tart, a recipe from Joey at Flicking the Vs. When I originally saw the recipe, and clarified one of the ingredients, I thought okara would make a good substitute... but then when I got around to making the recipe I didn't have any okara to use, so I made it with egg replacer powder, instead. I also added a bit more milk than Joey, mainly on accident, but it didn't really seem to affect the recipe. I also used a biscuit base, instead of a shortcrust pastry. After 30 minutes in the oven it was pretty fluffy but seemed baked through - but I wasn't sure, so I left it in the hot oven for a bit longer. The result was pretty yummy - smooth and moist and quite delicate.

The second was Kari's lemon slice, which I had previously eaten in Melbourne, made by Mel. You can tell this is a good recipe, because it's been getting around. In addition to being delicious, it is also super easy to make, and aside from lemons, uses only ingredients that we always have on hand. Still, I made a few alterations, and had a few issues. First of all, I used sunflower oil instead of melted margarine in the base, because I don't have a microwave and melting margarine is just too much work. This wasn't such a problem - the biggest issue was that I needed to oil the baking paper, because when I tried to slice up and put away the slice, it stuck big time. The other adjustment I made was to add a dash of tumeric, because who doesn't want their lemon slice to be bright yellow?!?

You should definitely make this - the lemon topping is yum.

Finally, I made tofu fish fingers by Mel. I followed the marinade recipe pretty well - to the point that I even bought "vegetarian stir fry sauce", which is not something I do often. But I used polenta + desiccated coconut instead of bread crumbs, and I baked my fingers in the oven instead of frying. They were good - a little dry, because of the tofu I used, but with a nice flavour (and the dryness actually did remind me of the fish fingers I used to eat as a child).

So, Pinterest is a winner for me, because it means finally getting around to using these recipes that other bloggers post that make me go 'ooh, yum...'.

Winter warmers

Here are a few of the wintery dishes that we don't often get to eat here in Townsville - but we've become acquainted with them this year!

 

A stewish mix up of zucchini, carrot, and purple sweet potato, in a tomato & cumin sauce. With some guac, because winter is also avocado season up here.

 

Hearth veggie & brown lentil soup. This had zucchini and carrot and sweet potato and white potato and capsicum and corn and maybe other things. And I made a quick batch of biscuits (American style) with teff flour to eat with the soup. They were maybe the best part of dinner.

A green curry, full of veggies and some pawpaw - the sweetness of the fruit is a good contrast to the spicy curry.

Mac & Peas! Cheesy, nutritional yeasty sauce poured over macaroni and peas and baked until the top is crunchy, served up with some roasted corn and a garlic bread zucchini.

 

This is "Chickpea Broccolikash", or a slightly bastardized version of Chickpea Paprikash from Urban Vegan. We didn't have capsicum so we used broccoli instead, but I wouldn't let Andy call it by its rightful name. We also didn't feel like making spatzle, so we served on noodles. It was delicious anyways.

And to wrap it all up, some lime self-saucing pudding. This is another adapted recipe, this time from ZuckerBaby. Her recipe called for lemon, but we had a fridge full of limes. It was so delicious - a light and fluffy cake with a sweet-tart pudding-y glaze all over it. We assumed it would be best warm, so ate it all straight from the oven.