VeganMoFo #18: Sydney - Saturday shindigs

Argh! Somehow yesterday totally slipped my mind for my blogging... I don't know how or why, I wasn't actually doing anything else really! And then I almost ran out of time today, so now I am posting late at night and tomorrow I shall have to post twice to make my 20 post quota!

Anyway, back to the happier times of Sydney. Saturday morning dawned and I was SO happy because I was finally going to have brunch at Naked Espresso! Then I was going to go to the Sydney Vegan Bakesale and meet Mandee and buy lots of food... or so I THOUGHT! Until I found out that some climate change protest had taken the spot and turned our bakesalers out... so they could make an ice sculpture and sell sausages!! *sigh* But, all was not lost! Read on...

We trundled on down to Naked Espresso to watch the lovely Leigh in action and order some fuds. Here is the list of breakfasts:


Brendan ordered the Builder's Breakfast, which is a joke Leigh suggested one fateful day that has since become a wildly popular brunch item. It is a pie (plain, mushroom or pepper) with a vanilla slice. Brendan had the pepper pie and I tried a wedge - delicious! Not sure how I feel about this first thing in the morning! (OK, I admit that my brunch wasn't actually first thing in the morning, I had had a pre-brunch breakfast before I left... I get really hungry you know... hee).


Diana ordered the Bacon, Lettuce, Avocacado and Tomato sandwich (BLAT), which is her favourite. Doesn't it look just great? The bacon is Redwoods.


I ordered the Aussie Feast, which was three slices of smoked tofu (I love smoked tofu), baked beans (not out of a can either - hurrah), has browns (mmm.... potato goodness), mushrooms (delicious), two slices of sourdough toast with Nuttelex and also some spinach, tomato and pumpkin. Hey, where are those last three?


Oh, there they are - they were under my bread! It is a great breakfast, everything is so tasty - nothing oily or bland here! But I was having one of my super hungry days because about 30 minutes later I was starting to feel peckish again!


Leish ordered The Morning After, which is the same as the Aussie Feast except that it has two Redwood sausages instead of the smoked tofu.

Now I mentioned that I was sad the bake sale was canceled as I was looking forward to meeting Mandee. However, Mandee wisely also had decided that brunch was an excellent plan!


A CupcakeKitteh and a dimsimkitty together at last! It is always great to meet people in the non-cyber world. :)


Mandee also very thoughtfully brought me some goodies from the bake sale! Gingerbread, Banana Split and Chocolate PB cupcakes! There was also a gingerbread horse, but his head fell off so I didn't photograph him in case it disturbed young children. All were DELICIOUS! Plus Mandee also got me onto some vegan 100s and 1000s, so now I've been eating fairy bread like it's going out of fashion!

After brunch we took a stroll around Newtown and then headed back to Di and Brendan's to get ready for their housewarming/Sydcoat shindig that night. The shindig was great, and I was able to catch up with even more Sydcoats and also a friend from work who moved to Sydney a while ago! Awesome.


The theme was BBQ, so us vegans had some Sanitarium sausages, marinated mushrooms and an awesome retro rice salad provided by the lovely Mim!


Leigh also brought some spare pies from work, and I had a mushroom one. Delicious! Alex, one of the omnis, liked them so much he took one home! And so the day ended on a glorious note of friends and food... bliss!

Cute Kitty Photo of the Post


The third cat of the Brendan/Di household is Wesley. He is younger than the others and is a real little scamp. His nickname is Kitten.

VeganMoFo #17: Sydney part two - Friday's mains

When I left you yesterday, we had just finished our large order of delicious friend entrees and salads and waiting for the main courses...


Mock Chicken with Curry Sauce - This was great. A sweet and slightly spicy curry sauce, so yummy. You can also get the Fried Tofu and the Mock Beef with this sauce.


Mock Chicken with Sweet and Sour Sauce - I am normally not a huge fan of sweet and sour, but this was quite good. Sour with just a hint of sweet, not that horrific sweet and sticky stuff that normally comes with sweet and sour. The sauce also comes with Fried Tofu.


Mock Squid with Lemon Grass and Vegetables - Hmmm... Ummm... OK. So, probably best to skip the mock squid. It is kind of rubbery and gross. Di ordered this in a fit of exceptional braveness. Unfortunately, the lemon grass sauce is ridiculously hot and she doesn't handle chili well. Be warned! You can also get the sauce with Fried Tofu, Mock Chicken and Mock Beef.


Mock Meat with Combination Vegetables on a Hot Plate - Nice and simple, with a great tasty sauce. But be warned - may contain some freaky mock prawns. Sorry, I am just not into mock prawns! You can also get this with tofu and mushrooms instead of the mock meat.


Fried Tofu with Mushroom Sauce - This was my pick and was announced the WINNER of the table! The sauce is crazy good - salty, mushroomy goodness. Drink it up goodness! Mushroom sauce also comes with Mock Chicken, but I think the tofu is the winner.

And then there was NOM! What a great dinner it was, I highly suggest you go and check it out if you are in the area. The only downside, and rather annoying thing, is that while the main part of the menu is vegan the desserts are not. This sort of thing does make me annoyed - how hard is it to buy some soy ice cream instead of dairy and some agave instead of honey? They say they can make some of them vegan, but what they mean is they will leave out the ice cream and will give you just a banana fritter on its own.

Not fancying deep fried fruit we decided to take a stroll up King Street. Some of the kids went for gelato, but Di and I went up to Naked Espresso with Leigh (who is now a part owner - hell yeah) and bought some of Leigh's Vanilla Slice to take away!


And it was delicious! The funny thing is that Leigh doesn't like vanilla slice and has never actually tasted her masterful creation, which is SO scrumptious! And was excellent enjoyed on the sofa with a gaggle of Sydcoats passing the laptop around and generally geeking out!

Then there came the sleeping, to prepare for another day of nomming the next day!

Cute Kitty Photo of the Post

This is the adorable Fray, the second of Brendan and Di's kitties. Fray is a fraidy cat, and his main activities include hiding out in the wardrobe. He does come out and give some snuggles with time though!

Vegan MoFo #16: Sydney part one - Friday's starter

On Friday I went to Sydney for the weekend to have a fabulous time hanging out with my Sydcoats. What is a Sydcoat you ask? Who here has watched Joss Whedon's Firefly and Serenity? If not, for shame and go and do so at once! If so then you may know that the independents during the war were also called the Browncoats. Super awesome fans of the show/movie have adopted the name to refer to themselves. Hence, Browncoats. Browncoats in Sydney = Sydcoats! Even though I am back in Brisbane now, I am still a Sydcoat!

My trip started with a slight delay - upon boarding the plane we were told a window was jammed (???) so we promptly unboarded the plane and t=got on another one - thankfully they had a spare just lying around! But soon I was in Sydney, which was my home for six years and so is a super special place for me.

The first event of the weekend was Friday night dinner at Vina's - a vegetarian Vietnamese restaurant in Newtown. I had never been here before, but was with an experienced patron who made many suggestions. And hence, the eating began!


Crispy Xui Chao - Delicious, delicious fried. Dumplings with some sort of filling (I'm not sure exactly what it was) and a nomtastic sauce - I think sweet and sour maybe?


Steamed Mock BBQ Bun - A steamed BBQ bun is always a winner! Be careful biting into these - they are steaming hot.


Crispy Mock Fish Nuggets - These were great! A very mild fishy flavour, but they were essentially tasty little nuggets of tasty goodness.


Lightly Fried Crispy Tofu - Fried silken tofu with fried onions on top and a lovely soy sauce.


Fried Spring Rolls - Always a classic. I didn't actually try these because one couple were having some extra sides and just one main to share.


Crispy Curry Samosa - See above!


Green Salad - It is meant to be tomato, capsicum, cucumber, corn and avocado with a sesame oil dressing, though ours somehow got ordered without the avocado because a certain very off person (he knows who he is!) doesn't like it. Unfortunately most of the rest of the salad was capsicum - gag! I had a bit of the lettuce, cucumber and tomato though and it was quite nice with the dressing.


Vina Coleslaw - This is AWESOME! It is a salad of shredded pickled carrot, white radish, bean sprouts and cucumber topped with cashews and 'chicken'. It is totally amazing and something you could just eat all day everyday!

Now, it may seem like a whole lot of food but the above were just our starters! Tomorrow I shall continue on to the mains, a delicious journey!

Cute Kitty Post of the Day


During my time in Sydney I was staying with the lovely Brendan and Diana and their three kitties. This is Caleb, one of the three. He is the sookiest great big boy, and he is so lovable. I blew raspberries on his belly a number of times, something only the most relaxed and patient of cats will allow. He is a big handsome man!

VeganMoFo #15: Things to come...

So, I was going to post a quick post about waffles today. However Flickr and Blogger have conspired against me and now I cannot post ANY PICTURES! I am quite traumatised by this, as I have never before posted without a picture. I almost cannot cope!

But I wanted to post today because tomorrow I am going to Sydney! I may get a chance to post something quickly in the morning if the interwebs are behaving again, otherwise I'll be MIA until Monday evening. I am going to Sydney to hang out with my very bestest Browncoat friends. If you don't know what a Browncoat is, then I say shame on you and go and watch Firefle and Serenity immediately!

Weekend plans will include a lot of eating, so here is what you can expect to see photos of...

- Dinner tomorrow night at Vina's Vegetarian Vietnamese restaurant!
- Brunch tomorrow morning at Naked Espresso
- Vegan bake sale
- Vegans attending a housewarming party in vegan style
- A massive vegan mexican feast

So I am sorry for this most pathetic of posts! Can you believe we are on the MoFo home straight now? Only 9 days to go!

VeganMoFo #14: Recipe Round-Up - Vegan Planet

Back to the round up of Vegan Planet recipes... I still have so many more photos to post as well! Let's see what I have been cooking up...


Layered Polenta-Chili Casserole is a delicious way to use up some leftover chili. I had leftovers from one of the VP chili recipes - but I don't remember which one! The recipe called for a 9x13 inch baking dish but I found that this was too big for the ingredients called for so I used a smaller pan. It is delicious layer of polenta with a layer of chili and topped off with melted Cheezly - yummy!


Tempeh adds delicious protein to this Pappardelle Cacciatore - nom nom nom! I couldn't find any pappardelle pasta that didn't contain eggs, so I used my favourite spinach fettuccine.


This is ridiculously good! It is Grilled Portobellos with Rosemary-Roasted Vegetables. A simple combination of red onion, zucchini and tomato (I left out the capsicum) roasted and piled on top of a grilled portobello (which I grilled in our George Foreman grill). I served it with Wild Rice Pilaf from The Complete Vegan Cookbook and a green salad. VP suggests a variation where you add a grilled veggie burger on top of the mushrooms and under the vegetables for a more substantial entree. To be honest, I think this would really take away from the glorious fresh flavours, and I love it just as it is!


Red Bean Cakes with Creamy Coconut Sauce are a pretty dinner. The red bean cakes are so amazingly tasty and would be great as burgers made in their own right! The coconut sauce is nice but a bit bland. I served it with some brown rice and some sauteed broccolini - I think a nice salty vegetable side definitely picks up the whole experience.


Tempeh Goulash is full of fermented goodness - tempeh and sauerkraut... delicious! It has a very interesting flavour, but it is damn tasty!

Cute Kitty Photo of the Blog

Sahara loves a really intense head rub, here she is with my mother's hands encircled around her face giving her a nice scratch/rub/pat. Her little face is all squinched up in happiness. She was purring super loudly with her rattle purr!

VeganMoFo #13: Short and sweet.

A really short post tonight. I am exhausted, but if I don't make a post tonight I won't make my 20 MoFo post goal! So even though I technically have time for a longer post, a super short post is all I have time for. Sometimes it is like that with cooking. You want something delicious, you have the time to make something, but you just don't have the energy.


This is a recipe for one of those days! It takes about an hour and a half to cook, but there is actually pretty much no effort involved. Your oven does all the work for you. It is Wendy's Lentil and Brown Rice Casserole from La Dolce Vegan. Just mix together lentils, rice, onion, stock, tinned tomatoes and herbs in your casserole dish and pop in the oven. Towards the end you sprinkle on the cheeze until it gets melty, and that is about the extent of your involvement. Anyone can handle that much effort, and it is made from things that most of us have on hand all the time (well, maybe not the cheeze, but you could omit or make some cheezy sauce if you get a little energy burst). And the result is delicious! Here it is served with some salty sauteed broccolini - one of my favourite sides!

Cute Kitty Photo of the Post

It is my lovely Gizmo, snorgling up to her cat nip heart. I bought her this for her birthday last year and she loves it! It is premium super strength cat nip and she goes crazy for it. She spends a lot of time just lying with it as a pillow, rubbing her head over it, sniffing it and licking it. It says 'Lick Me,Kick Me, Bunnykick Me' on it. It was so popular with all the cats that I bought another one that says 'Can't Break This Heart'.

And now... slumber. Off to work a 24 hour shift tomorrow.

VeganMoFo2009 #12: My Vegan 100

We are now over half way through Vegan MoFo... and I still have over 1,000 unread posts in my Google Reader!! I have been doing a lot of speed reading, but I am hoping to be able to comment at least a few times on everyone's blog. Does anyone else find themselves using the same words over and over again? Delicious, yummy, fantastic, scrumptious, beautiful, stunning, fantabulous, amazing, yummy... oh wait - I used that one already! It's the same sort of feeling you get when you have to smile so much taking photos for a wedding or whatever. Though to be honest I feel grateful that there are so many amazing vegan food posts in the world that I cannot come up with different words to describe them all! So please don't think I am not being sincere - I am doing the best I can with the limited vocabulary we have available to us. Apparently when they created the English language they didn't consider VeganMoFo!

Anyway, today I thought I would jump on the bandwagon of the Vegan 100, which came from a blog... somewhere... and has been posted on numerous others. Kudos to the source! Anyway, this is slightly biased against me because it is heavily US-centric (and NYC in particular), but I have done my best with what is available to me here in Brisbane!

Here are the rules...

1) Copy this list into your blog or social networking site profile, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out or italicize any items that you would never consider eating.
4) Optional extra: Post a comment on this post linking to your results. The Vegan Hundred:

1. Molasses
2. Cactus/Nopales
3. Scrambled Tofu
4. Grilled Portobella Caps
5. Fresh Ground Horseradish
6. Sweet Potato Biscuits
7. Arepa
8. Vegan Coleslaw
9. Ginger Carrot Soup
10. Fiddlehead Ferns
11. Roasted Elephant Garlic
12. Umeboshi
13. Almond Butter Toast
14. Aloe Vera
15. H and H Bagel NYC (Across the world... so no)
16. Slow Roasted Butternut Squash
17. White truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Freshly ground wasabi
20. Coconut Milk Ice Cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Orchard-fresh pressed apple cider
23. Organic California Mango (I am subbing in for delicious QLD organic mangoes!)
24. Quinoa
25. Papaya Smoothie (No... but I have recently discovered a love of papaya so much have one)
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet or Habañero pepper
27. Goji Berry Tea
28. Fennel
29. Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookie
30. Radishes and Vegan Buttery Spread (No, but it sounds like a fantastic way to use up left over radishes)
31. Starfruit
32. Oven fresh Sourdough bread
33. Sangria made with premium fruit and juices
34. Sauerkraut
35. Acai Smoothie
36. Blue Foot Mushrooms
37. Vegan Cupcake from Babycakes nyc (Nope, but I have had some mighty fine ones from right here!)
38. Sweet Potatoes and Tempeh combo
39. Falafel
40. Spelt Crust Pizza
41. Salt and Pepper Oyster Mushrooms (not oyster mushrooms - portobello though!)
42. Jicama Slaw
43. Pumpkin Edamame Ginger Dumplings
44. Hemp Milk
45. Rose Champagne
46. Fuyu
47. Raw Avocado-Coconut Soup
48. Tofu Pesto Sandwich
49. Apple-Lemon-Ginger-Cayenne fresh-pressed juice
50. Grilled Seitan
51. Prickly pear
52. Fresh Pressed Almond Milk
53. Concord Grapes off the vine
54. Ramps
55. Coconut Water fresh from a young coconut
56. Organic Arugula
57. Vidalia Onion (I don't know that we have this specific variety here)
58. Sampler of organic produce from Diamond Organics (well... no!)
59. Honeycrisp Apple (Not available here)
60. Poi
61. Vegan Campfire-toasted Smores (We don't really have them here... would love to try though!)
62. Grapeseed Oil
63. Farm fresh-picked Peach
64. Freshly-made pita bread with freshly-made hummus
65. Chestnut Snack Packs
66. Fresh Guava
67. Mint Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies
68. Raw Mallomar from One Lucky Duck, NYC (Again... hello different continent)
69. Fried plantains (Another note for Brisbanites - I get mine from Mango Mango on Turton St in Sunnybank)
70. Mache
71. Golden Beets
72. Barrel-Fresh Pickles
73. Liquid Smoke
74. Meyer Lemon
75. Veggie Paella
76. Vegan Lasagna
77. Kombucha
78. Homemade Soy Milk
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Lychee Bellini
81. Tempeh Bacon
82. Sprouted Grain Bread
83. Lemon Pepper Tempeh (No... but I want it!)
84. Vanilla Bean
85. Watercress
86. Carrot you pulled out of the ground yourself
87. Vegan In-Season Fruit Pie
88. Flowers
89. Corn Chowder
90. High Quality Vegan Raw Chocolate
91. Yellow fuzz-free Kiwi
92. White Flesh Grapefruit
93. Harissa
94. Coconut Oil
95. Jackfruit
96. Homemade Risotto
97. Spirulina
98. Seedless 'Pixie' Tangerine
99. Gourmet Sorbet, not store bought
100. Fresh Plucked English Peas

So, sadly I have only eaten 58 of these. What a poor showing! I guess I have some new food goals to reach for!


OK, so I have to have at least one food photo for the post!


Chocolate-Chocolate Chip-Walnut Cookies from Veganomicon are some of the most amazing cookies ever... except with pecans instead of walnuts. The right mix of chewy and crunchy, full of fantastic chocolate chips and crunchy nuts. Just wonderful!

Cute Kitty Photo of the Post


The is Bobby. When I was in my final year of vet school I had to go on rotation, and one of those rotations was to a rural mixed practice. I am a city princess cat lady vegan geek, so one can imagine that spending four weeks in a country town, away from my beloved cats and having to continually explain my vegan ways to farmers who were doing the very things I felt so strongly against was not high on my list of things to do! Thankfully I was able to get a placement at a clinic owned by the husband of my then boss, who was well aware of my outlook, and only two and a bit hours from Sydney so that I could motor home on the weekends and spend them with my cats in my little city haven! The other plus was Bobby, the clinic at. Bobby is actually a supermodel!! He was chosen over many other cats to be a model for Friskies brand of cat biscuits. Only thing is, little 2 year old Bobby was picked for the SENIOR cat boxes... ouch! ;) Bobby got his name because he has a bob tail of unknown origin. He was an awesome little friend to have around when I didn't have my own kitties! In a sweet twist to my time there, one of the vets invited me over for dinner with her and her farmer husband. They still cooked a meat roast for them, but for me they made a Sanitarium roast and made sure all the vegetables hadn't come in contact with any animal products and even went looking for special vegan snacks! Everyone tried some of the vegan roast, and our farmer had two slices and took some leftovers in his sandwich for lunch the next day! He was really curious and interested about my veganism, in a totally respectful way. And when we were first sitting down he uttered the rather hilarious (but kind of sad) line: 'Wow... I didn't think vegans actually existed!'. While he isn't going to change anything he does or eats, it was good to be able to have a really nice discussion about being a vegan without encountering prejudice and scorn! Oh, and for the record the four weeks were not too horrific, it turns out I kick butt at giving cows epidurals! Still, I am glad to leave that aspect of vet life behind me in vet school, where it belongs! Cats FTW.

OK, that was a rather long paragraph! Time for sleep now. Tomorrow I need to read another bazillion posts!

VeganMoFo #11: Tarting around.

I have a teeny confession to make... I haven't done much work with rolled out pastry. Something about it just scares me a little, for reasons I cannot fathom. Or perhaps it is just that sometimes I get struck by laziness and the thought of having to clean up flour and pastry scraps off the kitchen bench. Perhaps it is even that I find it hard to make it perfectly pretty and can never roll it out into a perfectly even circle, and I am a hopeless perfectionist so I get frustrated. Whatever! Recently though I have been doing it more, it really isn't that hard or scary at all. This is one of my first attempts - it is the Pear and Cranberry Tart from Vegan With A Vengeance.


Ooooohhhhh.... So, I made my dough (which had ground nut in it - super yummy) and chilled it, but when I was rolling it out it crumbled a little bit. I ended up getting a reasonable amount rolled, so when I put it into the tart pan it covered most of it but there were some gaps. I usedthe bits thathad crumbled off to plug said gaps. Then it was into the oven.


Ahhhhhhhhhh.... When it came out, it was pretty darn cute. But I had to get it out of my tart pan, which filled me with dread! I have one of those cute shallow ones with fluted sides and a push up bottom. This was actually the first time I had used it, so I wasn't sure if it would stick or not. But after a few breath holding moments, it came out and slid off and was pretty!


Nomnomnom.... The result? Delicious! I used frozen cranberries, because I've never seen fresh ones, and they were great. I love how tart they are - a great contrast to the sweet pear. Served with a scoop of ice cream? Winner!

Cute Kitty Photo of the Post


This is sweet Garthy! Garthy is a wonderful cat, and we had him at the clinic for a long time. He was one of our blood donors, but we were also trying to find a home for him sooner rather than later because he did not fit in well with out other colony cats. I used to take him upstairs with me when I was on call, and he was awesome! Such a big boofy boy, but so affectionate. When I went to bed he would jump up and plant himself resolutely between my feet, and he didn't wake up until the morning. The lovely Garthy has been rehomed, and has gotten his happily ever after!

VeganMoFo 2009 #10 - Baked risotto balls.

The other day I made this...


It is Green Pea and Lemon Risotto with Roasted Red Peppers from Veganomicon. With some baked marinated tofu and some green salad. For the record, once I took this photo I gave the capsicum to someone who does not hate them!

But what to do with the leftovers? Risotto balls! I don't like things that are fried, so I decided to try some baked ones. I didn't actually write down any exact quantities, but you don't really need any. I had just under 2 cups of risotto, from memory, and I used 1 slice of Helgas wholemeal bread that I turned into breadcrumbs, and then I mixed them up. Apparently non-vegan risotto balls have eggs in them, but I didn't bother trying to replace this. Just risotto and bread crumbs. They formed into balls and held together really well. I also cut up some cubes of Smoked Cheddar Sheese and enclosed them in the centre of the balls. Then I baked them for 40 minutes at 220 degrees Celcius.


They looked so pretty! They were great and crispy on the inside. I cooked them on alfoil that I had sprayed with olive oil and they stuck quite a bit on the bottom. I had to carefully disengage them, otherwise they threatened to pull my balls apart! The bottoms were super great and crunchy though.


And the inside! Nice melty Sheese. So yummy!

Overall - delicious! And quite pretty to boot. I highly recommend it for any leftover risotto!

Cute Kitty Photo of the Post


OK, so no kitty in this particular picture. It is clear evidence of where a cat has been! You may note that my thongs here have several little holes all over them. Holes the size of certain little kitty claws. And then there is the randomly placed mouse. Hmmm.... the work of the shoe fetisher herself, a miss Dim Sim?

VeganMoFo 2009 #9: Match made in heaven.

Whenit comes to muffins, I love them all - but I do have a clear favourite. Lemon and poppy seed - who is with me? It's funny. I used to dislike anything lemon flavoured when I was younger, but then I grew to enjoy lemon in baked goods and now I just love it anywhere, any time, any place. But as far as muffins go, lemon and poppy seed is where it is at. Though lemon and blueberry is a fairly close second.;)

What makes a good lemon muffin to me? They need to have a delicious, real lemon flavour. They need to be not too sweet. And they need to be pretty light in texture.

Below are two batches of lemon poppy seed muffins I have made.


From Vegan Brunch.


From Vegan With A Vengeance.

OK, yes - both are Isa books and both are similar, but there are a few differences. The VB version doesn't require any soy yoghurt - which is great seeing as I need to make my own yoghurt if I want something that isn't flavoured and doesn't contain dairy starter culture. But they both fit the bill!

What is your favourite muffin flavour?

Cute Kitty Photo of the Post


It's a beautiful and sleeping Sahara. But look closer. You shall see that above her I have left some clothes lying on the bed (I know, slob, whatever, hee). But look under Sahara's head. Yes - she is sleeping perfectly curled up on the hood part of my jumper! This cat is like the princess and the pea, I swear. If you leave anything lying around on the bed, she will sleep on it. She likes as many layers under her as possible! It's rather amusing, and keeps my clothes covered in red cat fur! I don't mind though. ;)

(For those who were hoping to find out about the risotto balls, they have to wait for a few days. My camera is at the clinic so I used my mother's camera. She is out at the moment and I don't know where the cord is to transfer onto the computer!)

VeganMoFo #8: Recipe Round-Up - Vegan Cooking For One

I seem to be doing a run through of recipe round ups at the moment from different cookbooks. I'll have to try to do something different next post! A big shout out to all the awesome vegan geek chicks out there - hurrah for geeks. ;)

The book I am rounding up today is Vegan Cooking for One, a book full of recipes for the single vegan who wants to cook different things each night without having to divide ingredients or having buckets of left overs. I find the serving sizes are very large, so often decrease the amount of rice or pasta called for so I don't explode.


Pasta e Fagioli seems to be a staple recipe in most of my cookbooks. And why not - pasta, beans and a fresh tomato sauce... what's not to love? I decreased the amount of pasta the recipe calls for (in fact, that goes for any recipe here that has pasta in it). I give mine a liberal sprinkling of nooch too!


Mediterranean Bean and Tomato Stew is a nice, warming dinner but the flavour lacks any real depth. I find that quite a lot of the recipes in this book tend to the bland side, so I would suggest seasoning liberally with whatever suits your tastes! It was quite nice with some lovely wholemeal bread with Nuttelex on it.


This was yummy. Green beans, carrot, celery and onion with tofu in an almost gravy like stew seasoned with lots of sage and pepper. Oh, it is called Tofu and Vegetable Stew.


Macaroni and Vegetable Stew is a rather comforting dinner. I decreased the amount of pasta but even so there was still almost too much! The vegetables are leek, carrot and potato.


This is called just Macaroni Stew. Again, decrease the amount of pasta! This one is a bit bland, I think some tomato paste would go really nicely here to make it tastier. It is still quite satisfying though.


I have saved the best until last! This is Caribbean Rice and Beans, which is one of the best things I have had from this book. It is essentially brown rice, black-eyed beans and coconut milk with some seasonings, which sounds pretty plain but is just incredibly delicious! The recipe calls for quick cook brown rice, which I cannot get up here in Brisbane (I could in Sydney). I cheated and used the 90 second microwave rice, though I didn't microwave - I just put it in the pot and used a little bit less of the coconut milk. I served it with a very straight forward saute of zucchini and cherry tomatoes, plus some salad. Fantastic!

Cute Kitty Post of the Blog


Dim Sim has a shoe fetish. She really likes my velvety ballet flats, and is often found snuggling up to them. She also loves thongs! That's flip flops, for the Americans reading - she does not have an underwear fetish! She loves to sharpen her claws in them. Cute!