Eating Out: VegeRama (DragFest and Gladiators editions)

Thank you so much to everyone for your kind words about Dim Sim, and Sahara. We have a week or so to wait for the final results to get back, so we are just in a holding pattern. Importantly, she is very well and happy in herself. So that is the main thing.

Back to regular programming, here is a post about food. Being in West End, which is also very near South Bank, VegeRama West End is a good place to meet up for food before or after events. Of course, there are loads of places around this area that have vegan options, and VegeRama tends to be a bit hit and miss, but it turns up on the rotation every now and then.

I met up with my BFF Ashleigh and her sister Bec for dinner before DragFest last year. We had planned on going to another place, but they had a line, so VegeRama just seemed like a simple option. We shared some samosas (which are always nice) and some dumplings (which were too spicy for me), to get started.





This was in winter, so instead of the usual juice or smoothie we tried some hot drinks. Ashleigh got a Dirty Turmeric Latte (why anyone would ruin a perfectly good drink with coffee is beyond me), and I had a Beetroot Latte. The beetroot looked prettier than it tasted, which I was warned about by the waitress, but I gave it a try anyway. I didn't taste like much at all.



Ashleigh and Bec shared a Tomato and Zucchini Risotto of the specials board, which was simple but nice. I tried a little bit.



I got the Stuffed Tofu, which was a disappointment. I asked and was assured by the kitchen that it had no chilli in it, but it clearly did. My mouth was on fire and my stomach was burning. It was so close to the time out show started, and I hate making a fuss, that I just rage ate it and then had a sore gut for the night.



The reason I was going to DragFest was because my favourite drag queen Jinkx Monsoon was performing. She is amazing and I love her and she is the only reason I will stay out that late at night. Here is a blurry photo of her.



Another time, Ashleigh and I went to an After Dark night for the Gladiators exhibit at the Queensland Museum, starting with dinner at VegeRama first. We shared some samosas, which are always a good bet.



We tried the Supreme pizza, which was not bad. Not as good as our favourite Artichoke and Mushroom (which is sadly off the menu now), the green swirl was a bit bitter. They also use a load of Daiya on their vegan pizzas, so if you are not a Daiya fan just keep that in mind.



They were changing over to their new summer menu when we were there, so we tried the new Rotolo Pasta. This was a gluten free pasta filled with sweet potato and herbs, with a napoli sauce, grilled asparagus, parmesan and crispy basil. It was really nice, they did a great job with the gluten free pasta. Very good texture.



The museum was hosting a special, 18yo+ event where they open at night so you can explore, play in the science centre, and they also have demonstrations and talks on. The gladiators exhibit, not surprisingly, had a pretty violent history behind it. But it was also quite interesting. Did you know that a lot of gladiators had a predominantly vegetarian diet to stay in peak physical form? They did! Anyway, here is a cool piece of the Colosseum.



And no visit to the museum is complete without saying hi to the Muttaburrasaurus, and stopping by the Whale Mall.





Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



Let's never forget my beautiful Gizmo. Though it has been a bit over six years since she passed away, I miss her forever.

Dim Sim's 18th birthday (and Sahara)

Hi friends, I hope you will indulge me in a cat-full and food-free post! Dim Sim's 18th birthday was on the 16th of February, so I thought I might do a little day in the life post of my sweetheart from her special day.

Dim Sim sleeps either under the covers with me, or on her blankie next to my pillow, so we woke up together. In the mornings, I have to sneak into the bathroom for my shower before she can get in there. She likes to drink water out of the bottom of the bath, and the fact that someone is in there with the shower running doesn't stop her. Once I'm done, I run some fresh water for her, and she jumps in for a drink.



Then she went to have a little drink from her actual water bowl in my room.



Then it was downstairs to have a look out the window at the back yard, then settle onto her special chair for a nap.



I had to work all day, out of the house for 12 hours, but I was sure to get a little photo of us before I left. She had moved from her chair onto her cushion in front of the sunroom window. Now that she is an only cat, all places are her places.



While I was at work, Mum sent me regular photos of her throughout the day. Mostly eating, napping, having cuddles, or occasionally just skulking about in deep contemplation. Enjoy.















As you can see, life is tough when you are a small black cat. When I finally got home, we had some nice snug time with her on a cushion on my lap, sleeping away.



Then we go up to bed, she has another drink from the bath, there is bedtime snacks, and then we sleep. This is a fairly regular daily routine for her, so I guess every day is like your birthday when you are a cat! Still, happy 18th my love. Now she is old enough to vote!

On a sadder note, the 17th of February, the day after Dim Sim's birthday, was the one year anniversary of Sahara's passing A whole year without her, I can barely believe that time would be so fast and so cruel. Though I know, it has been six years since Gizmo. Time does not stop. I went to yoga in the morning, and then had a quiet day watching a lot of Brooklyn Nine Nine. Dim Sim slept on my lap a lot. I made a dinner that involved steamed broccoli, which was Sahara's favourite treat. I miss her.

Recipe Round-Up: Great Gluten Free Vegan Eats

I am happy gluten-full vegan, but not everyone can be. I have a number of vegan friends who are coeliac, and I like to be able to cook for them and make them treats. Allyson Kramer has you covered, with a great blog and four cookbooks! This is a round-up of her first cookbook, Great Gluten-Free Vegan Eats. You can see what I have made previously from this book here.

Mac & Cabbage Polonaise: This is a Polish-inspired baked mac and cheese, with a sorghum flour roux-based cheese sauce, macaroni, and cabbage, all topped with a crispy cheesy crumb. I halved the pasta, and as a result also used only 2/3 of the sauce to get my perfect pasta to sauce ratio. The recipe calls for a head of cabbage, and I used half a large head... there is always so much variation in sizes with vegetables, but this seemed right for the rest of the amounts. The instructions say to make the mac and cheese first, then the cabbage, but I made the cabbage first, then the sauce, then the pasta and stirred it all together. The pasta is layered with some cheddar cheese in the middle (I used Daiya), and then topped with more cheese and the topping. The mix of creamy sauce and strong cheddar was great!
Rating: :D





Quinoa Tabbouleh: I had some parsley and mint I needed to use up, so tabbouleh was on the cars. This uses quinoa rather than bulgur to make it gluten free. I only had 3/4 cup of dry quinoa, rather than a full cup, so I slightly decreased the other ingredients as well. I also decreased the amount of oil in the dressing. I served this with some salad, hummus, and a Fry's Falafel Burger.
Rating: :)



Late Summer Salad with Creamy Dill Dressing: I love dill, so I was excited to make this salad, but I was a bit underwhelmed. I was making a single serving for my own lunch to use up some silken tofu, so I made a third or a recipe (I had 150g tofu). I do often find that I prefer silken tofu dressings to have time to sit overnight for the best flavour, so perhaps that would improve it next time.
Rating: :|



Drenched Pad-Thai Salad: Full disclosure, this is meant to be entirely raw zucchini noodles, but I am just not a fan. So I used some cooked a cooled Pad Thai noodles (a 200g packet), though in this case I did also still add one small zucchini that I spiralised. Zucchini is not pasta, everything is better with carbs! This salad is topped with a beautiful five-spiced tofu, and grilled pineapple slices from a can. The marinade uses the juice from the tin of pineapples. To make the dressing, you mix leftover marinade with peanut butter and lime. The recipe calls for 3/4 cup of the marinade for the dressing, but I had just under so I topped it up with a little bit of orange juice. The salad also has fresh mango in it, so it is lovely for summer.
Rating: :)



Cheesy Broccoli Soup: This soup is thick, rich and very cheesy. I made a half recipe for two lunch servings. The entire recipe serves eight, and if you were serving with anything else I would say that was right, it is so filling! It uses cashew cream, loads of nutritional yeast, and there is also the option to add some shredded cheddar (I used FYH shreds). This soup also thickens up a lot as it cools, so leftovers would be great as a dip or sauce for vegetables.
Rating: :)



Pina Colada Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting: I have blogged these cupcakes before, but wanted to update with my frosting experiments. The frosting in the book uses a lot of coconut oil, and I made it like that once for a bake sale but it didn't set up well enough to pipe, only to smear. And there was so much leftover. Since then I made it a few times with a VWAV coconut frosting. But I recently remade these using the original recipe, but subbing the coconut oil for half cream cheese and half shortening, using only 1T of pineapple juice (rather than 2). The icing was still soft, but I could pipe it and it set up well in the fridge. So if you are adverse to coconut oil, try it this way instead!
Rating: :)



Pineapple Carrot Cake: I really love carrot cake, and made this for a friend's birthday. But unfortunately it didn't turn out great texture wise. Thankfully I only made a half recipe to make a single layer. I baked it for 35 minutes as directed, a skewer came out clean, but it was still kind of underdone and a bit smooshy in the middle. I would suggest baking for longer, regardless of the skewer. At least the taste was still good. There is a recipe for cream cheese frosting to go with it, that is full of coconut oil. I just made an easy frosting using 1/2 cup of cream cheese (Tofutti is my favourite), with a scoop of sifted icing sugar (I don't like things too sweet), and a splash of milk. Perfect. Unfortunately my cream cheese had frozen a bit a the back of the fridge, and thawed with a slightly lumpy texture, but it still tasted great. I ended up putting the rest of this cake in the freezer and eating it frozen, it was still soft enough to do this!
Rating: :|



Banana Berry Cobbler: I made a half recipe of this and got four serves, using a mix of frozen blueberries, raspberries and blackberries. The filling was good, but the topping had a strong baking powder taste (a full recipe calls for a whole TBS, so I used 1.5tsp for my half batch), and wasn't very sweet. Improved with ice cream!
Rating: :|



Chocolate Peanut Butter Green Smoothie: It's cute that this recipe says it makes four serves, because I made the whole thing and it was one actual serve. A simple blend of spinach, frozen banana, cocoa, and peanut butter. The recipe calls for cold water, but I used oat milk to make it creamier and to get a calcium boost in. I also halved the amount of vanilla and agave called for.
Rating: :)



Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



Dim Sim had her liver biopsy on Tuesday. The results are back, and unfortunately they came back as most likely small cell lymphoma. There is still a small question mark, so I have requested an addition test that takes a couple of days to come back. Small cell lymphoma is a type of cancer. It is a different type of lymphoma than the one Sahara had, and has a much less intensive chemo protocol (all done with tablets at home), and has a fairly high remission rate, so that is something. But cancer is never good. My poor baby. Here she is sleeping yesterday after coming home, you can see part of her little shaved tummy peeking out.

Eating Out: Brisbane Vegan Markets December 2017

The last Brisbane Vegan Markets of the year were held on the second Sunday of December. There was only the morning markets this month, as the twilight markets would have fallen on Christmas Eve. I was hoping that there might be a bit of a holiday theme to the December markets, with some fun specials or things to buy, but it was mostly just the normal stuff. But of course, the normal stuff is still great!

First stop was our favourite, Green Street Foods. Tracee and I shared a new menu item, the Krab Burger. I am often not a fan of vegan seafood things, but I needn't have worried. This was awesome!!! The patty is jackfruit based, the bun is their own home-made gluten free dill bun (best gluten free bun I've ever tried, it was delicious, and I am not gluten free), and it even had some foraged beach mustard leaves on it! So good. Next time I won't be sharing. We also ordered some of the black bean nachos, with some of the mac and cheese on top. I missed out on the November markets because I was in Melbourne, which meant missing out on the first year birthday market celebrations. Green Street Food had an all mac and cheese menu, that I was devastated to miss. But I got to experience a little bit of it with these nachos.





Tracee also tried some of their special, tuna sushi rolls. I tried one, and while it wasn't that fishy, it was a bit too spicy for me!



We also got some refreshing beverages from the oddly named Bloody Buddy. Tracee had a passionfruit peaflower iced tea, and I had a fruity rose infusion. So delicious.



They had a new baked potato stall there called Kumpir Guy, where they baked the potatoes in some special baked potato oven. So they were super hot with crispy skins. They all came with butter and cheese (mashed into the hot flesh), but you could add all sorts of topping. I added pineapple, corn, pickled cabbage, falafel and BBQ sauce. So good, but so filling!



I finally got a chance to try the Cacao Almond Milk from Genki Milk Co, local makers of the only almond milk worth drinking. It was rich, chocolatey, not too sweet, delicious!



I decided to try the Caramel Pretzel ice cream from I Should Coco, but because I don't like caramel I turned it into a chocolate pretzel. It was good, though for some reason their ice cream wasn't as set as normal and as you can see it started melting super fast!



For my take home treat, I skipped my usual and ended up getting a Nut Nog from Genki Milk Co. A seasonal treat! Based on cashew and almond milk, with a perfect amount of spice, this was amazing. I ended up buying a big bottle from them the week before Christmas because I loved it so much. Definitely looking forward to this next year. I had it with some fresh cherries for afternoon tea.



Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



This is Barry and Maurice. Two black brothers that are up for adoptions at work. They are super sweet, super silly, and full of purrs!

Cruelty Free Shop February 2018 Vegan Mystery Box

I can hardly believe that I am already up to the third month of my six month CFS Vegan Mystery Box subscription. The time does fly! Let's see what this month brought me.

• Sweet William White Chocolate Baking Buttons: White chocolate is an abomination, but I will use these up in things for bake sales. (Note, Sweet William is on the 'not recommended, but at least addressing the issues' part of the FEP chocolate list.) There was also a recipe in the box for white chocolate and macadamia cookies.
• Sierra Trail Mix Clif Bar: I am all about the Peanut Butter Crunch Clif Bar, they are clearly the best (also Clif bar does not use FEP-approved chocolate). This one does have some chocolate in it, as well as seeds and nuts. I find a lot of other Clif bar flavours to be too sweet or artificial, so I will be curious to sample this. By PB Crunch will always be my go to.
• West Country Organic Korma Curry Paste: This has two sachets of hopefully not too spicy korma paste (though the ingredients don't list chili), which will be handy for some quick lunches.
• Blue Dinosaur Banana Bread Bar: I love snack bars, and I love banana bread. Though this does have coconut oil in it, so I approach with caution.
• Upton's Real Meal Kit - Thai Curry Noodle: This is a handy, super fast ready meal to zap and eat in moments of crisis! It will be a good back up at work for emergency hunger attacks. We now have Upton's jackfruit and meal kits,so I am hoping that mac and cheese will be coming soon!
• Leda Choculence Biscuits: This is a old faithful product in the Australian vegan world, the original vegan version of a Tim Tam (though Woolworths has their own brand version as well). Tim Tams are very Austalian biscuits! Though should be noted that Leda is not on the FEP approved chocolate list.
• Nakula Coconut Water: I am a huge fan of coconut water, especially to make super refreshing post yoga smoothies, so I will never be sad to have some extra around.
• Andalou Naturals Pod Mask: The am super excited to try out this face mask, I love face masks!

Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



Dim Sim normally naps most of the day away, but when she was in hospital apparently she spent most of her time watching what was going on around her. So when she got home yesterday, she was exhausted! Much deep sleeping. And she spent the night in bed with me, as we do. It was so good to have her back. Thank you for your kind thoughts. She has to go back in next week to have a liver biopsy done (still ultrasound guided, not surgically), so we can get some more definitive results.

Eating Out: September 18

I've spoken about getting some goodies from the September 18 stall at the Brisbane Vegan Markets before, but they also have a whole restaurant! It is up in Northlakes, which is a bit of a hike from my place on the southside. But I have been there a couple of times!

I have some friends who live in North Lakes, so if I visit them we normally go here for lunch. You already know that I love their steamed BBQ buns!



They also make some delicious roti bread as well.



Brendan ordered the sweet and sour. I am not a sweet and sour fan, so I did not sample it.



Diana ordered the Hawaiian Nasi Goreng, which is like pineapple and ham fried rice. I tried a little bit, and it was pretty fun.



I ordered the Braised Noodles and Tofu, which was a big soupy dish of savoury deliciousness.



Another time I went to eat there was back when Jojo and Nick where here. They were volunteering at Farm Animal Rescue, which is not too far from North Lakes. So I went and picked them up so we could eat and do some grocery shopping. I met some sheep while I was picking them up!



I had heard a lot of people rave about the drumsticks at September 18, so we tried some. They are the type that has yuba-style strips wrapped around a paddle pop and then friend and spiced. They did not blow my mind, but they were nice!



Oh look, steamed BBQ buns... are you surprised?



We also tried some dumplings, because you can never have too many dumplings!



We shared a couple of mains. The Spring Fried Rice, and the Kway Teow.



September 18 is also super close to a Charlie's Raw Squeeze, which also has a Moo Free Burgers there if you are into it. I am not a fan of their burgers, and will always choose delicious steamed buns and stir-fries every time. But we did stop by after lunch to get some lattes. I had a turmeric, and Jojo had a matcha.



September 18 - Shop 2B 1650 Anzac Av, North Lakes, Queensland - (07) 3886 5581

Charlie's Raw Squeeze North Lakes - 53 Endeavour Blvd, North Lakes, Queensland - (07) 3880 6743

Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



Dim Sim had her ultrasound yesterday, and unfortunately it did show some liver abnormalities. She had a fine needle aspirate, and the results came back looking like they are probably inflammatory, however they could not completely rule out cancer. So she will probably go back next week for a biopsy. She spent the night in hospital on fluids after the aspirate, and it was horrible sleeping without her. I didn't really sleep at all. But she is home now. Not so impressed with having that bandage on her arm from where her IV was taken out, but that can come off in a couple of hours.