Mirabelle

Hello friends! Some of you might have noticed I posted a couple of mysterious black cat photos in my Cute Kitty Photo of the Post. So now I would like to formally introduce you to Mirabelle!



Mirabelle, or Mira for short, has been in foster care for the last two and a half years and is about four and a half years old (we think, her age when she came into rescue was an estimatation). She was rescued from a horrible place, where cats were kept in bird cages with no litter, hardly any food or water, very little human contact, and were obviously being used to pump out kittens. People can be so awful! Thankfully, Mira and others were rescued by the wonderful people at Best Friends Felines. She had three babies the night she came into foster! They all got homes long ago, but of course being adult and black, Mira was overlooked for adoption herself.



She spent those two and a half years in foster turning into a wonderful sweet sassy little girl. She doesn't like to be held, and while she loves pats she doesn't like it if you go straight for her head, but that is all understandable given what she went through. But she loves affection on her terms.



She is settling in with Eloise and Boo. Though poor Eloise is not sure what to make of it, given that Mirabelle may be small but can also be a bit of a menace! But we are working things out.



Anyway, you'll be seeing her pop up on my posts from now on! And yes, for those keeping score, this does mean I have three black cats at home now!

Midweek Munchies

That time of the week.

I tried the new V2 schnitzels that came out. There are two in this packet and they are HUGE! But nice. But HUGE! This was a minimal effort dinner, so I served them with some baby spinach, instant mashed potatoes, and some gravy. This was my first time trying the Green's gravy granules. Normally store-bought gravy powder is a massive disappointment, but this stuff is GOOD and THICK! My preferred easy to have on hand gravy forever.





I've tried one of these Loco Love flavours before, but they are super expensive and I was never that impressed. I found them on super sale so bought a couple of flavours. Thoughts? Meh. The flavour is good, but there is just something about the texture. The ganache is sort of hard and waxy.



Another new V2 product, this time their lasagne ready meal. This was good for what it was, but there was no sign of the bechamel sauce and it also doesn't come with any cheese. Also, expensive. But it is a pretty solid meal at least.



Picked up this Pumpkin and Carrot Pate on a whim from The Green Edge one day and it was great! I ate it as a dip and on sandwiches, but I think it could also be niced mixed through some leftover pasta to a fun little lunch. Would buy again.



Everyone was very excited about these new vegan sour cream and chives veggie chips. Of course I had to get them! They suffered from what so many chips suffer from, not having a strong enough flavour. I had to think really hard while eating to pick out that it was actually sour cream and chives and not something just slightly tangy.



Finally, I have been loving these Field Roast Mushroom and Balsamic slices! I am really back into sandwiches this year, they are so wonderful! And these make a great sandwich or grilled cheese. I love the earthy mushroom mixed with the hint of balsamic. Do recommend.



That's it for this week! Trying to get the energy to post more of all the other things I want to share, but energy is hard to come by at the moment. Hope you are all hanging in there.

Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



It was Eloise's first birthday this week! Happy birthday to her! She is now officially a cat, so I can go back to saying I have all adults at home. Love this little girl (who is not so little) a lot.

Midweek Munchies

Summer is coming, and it is making me very sad. Our spring was about three days, then it started getting hot! But miraculously today is a cool and rainy day, and I don't have to leave the house, so looking forward to spending the rest of the day on the sofa watching TV with cups of tea.

Here is a stirfry I made using entirely ready made ingredients. I had tried the Meet frozen beefy strips before, but these were their newer fridge product... that I didn't use when I first bought, so I stuck in the freezer. I marinaded them in this Korean BBQ marinade packet, which had a nice flavour, and cooked them with some of these stir-fry vegetables I had hanging out in my freezer. It can be hard to find a frozen stir-fry veggie mix without capsicum, so I appreciate this one. I just served it over some rice.





My Eurovision breakfast! Yes, Eurovision was 4 months ago, but I am catching up on things forever. I get up at 4.30 to watch the live broadcasts that start at 5am, so I don't have time for a fussy breakfast. So this year I enjoyed some crumpets (one with vegemite and Nuttelex, one with peanut butter and jam), a cut up plum, and a mug of my favourite licorice and cinnamon tea. I filled up the mug about 1/3 with oat milk and it is a lovely slightly sweet milky comforting tea. Also pictured are my morning Nurofen (chronic pain is no joke friends) and vegan multivitamin.



I am not the biggest fan of mint and chocolate together, too often it just tastes like toothpaste blended into chocolate. But this Only Mine vegan mint chocolate was good, but virtue of the fact that instead of mixing the mint through the chocolate they the chocolate a creamy mint filling. Very much like to Whittaker's dark peppermint chocolate block.



I made a silly spider using some of the last of my So Delicious Cashew Vanilla icecream (RIP So Delicious, which isn't available in Australia at all anymore) and some Blueberry Sour kombucha. I am terrible at taking nice photos of drinks, but the sweetness of the ice cream and the sourness of the kombucha went perfectly together.



V2 came out with some new vegan ready meals, and I tried them when they were on their introductory special. This Penne Bake was good, but you need to add your own cheese. Which I did with some FYH parmesan (RIP as well, Follow Your Heart is no longer available in Australia... which means NO MORE VEGENAISE... I'm devestated). This was fine, though too expensive for what it was. Though I feel like that is the case with a lot of vegan ready meals.



Here are a bunch of soups I bought to enjoy over winter. But I have only actually had one so far. Good intentions, etc. But the Pumpkin, Sweet Potato, and Cumin soup was very nice! Stay tuned for updates on the other ones, which I guess I will be having over summer now...



Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



Who is she?

Midweek Munchies

What a better way to start getting back into some food blogging that with some midweek munchies!

I ordered some limited edition Hot Cross Bun chocolate from Treat Dreams for Easter. It was spiced and had little cookie crumble bits in it. It didn't really remind me of Hot Cross Buns, but it was really nice. Tragically, Treat Dreams has just announced that they are closing for good, whever is very sad.



This strawberry coconut water was refreshing and delicious, will definitely keep this in mind for summer which is about to come crashing down on us.



This was one of those cheesecakes that I tested for my friend Leigh! This one was Turkish delight - a plain base with turkish delight filling and turkish delight jelly. It tasted lovely, though you can see that it was a bit runny in the middle. Neither my cheesecake or my jelly quite set. But as this was the first one of these I had made, I was able to tweak things for my oven and for testing notes for the future ones.



Veef came out with a bunch of new products, including the Pulled Pork. It also has some Pulled Beef, which I haven't tried so I don't know the difference. I got this on sale. It was not bad. I ended up cooking it up with some BBQ sauce and serving with roasted spiced potato, baby spinach, and hummus. I had some stuff to use up.





These Bird's Eye Plant Burgers were also new to me. I don't think I'd buy them again though, as they seemed to have a strange after taste. I just made a simple burger with mayo, spinach, and BBQ sauce.



I served the burger with some purple potato salad. I had found some at the shops, which is rare, so bought them but wasn't sure what I was going to do. Until I saw Food For Dissertating post about this recipe. It was a lovely way to use them!



Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



All the toys, beds, and igloos in the world and, in peak cat form, playing in a paper bag. Hmmm... but wait! Who do you think this might be????

Eloise

Food blogging will resume soon, but I know you want to know more about Eloise!

You may have noticed based on this photo from the last post, Eloise has a little stumpy tail!



She was born like that! Some people call all cats with a short tail a manx, but a Manx is a breed, she is a Domestic Short Hair with a stumpy tail! She was adopted from Best Friends Felines, which is the same rescue that Abby and Boo came from.



She was rescued from a house where two cats where were not desexed rapidly turned into many cats. Thankfully, Best Friends Felines stepped in and took the many offspring (of all different ages, some were pregnant themselves!) and desexed the original duo for the humans. She came into care in April and quickly established herself as a little sweetie pie who loved to cuddle in bed and be on your lap. She also has L-O-N-G legs.



She is also completely ridiculous!



She has settled in really well, even with Boo. Though she is very busy exploring and playing in her new house, so she hasn't had quite as much time for snuggling. You know how it is when you are a busy cat. She is younger than I was expecting to adopt, being only 10 months old when I adopted her. But she will be turning one at the end of this month. But she has been an absolute delightful addition to our home and my heart.

Life Update

Hello friends!

It has been a while, but do not worry. Yes, some of it is because I have been exhausted from work to do anything other than just turn into a lump as soon as I am home, but there have been some other nicer things going on as well. My brother and his partner visited from Spain for the first time in three years, so that was lovely. They just left two days ago. We did some fun things together while they were here, but I wish we had more time. While they were here, I hardly cooked at all because we were never quite sure what dinner plans would be, so there was a lot of delivery. But we did have a couple of memorable meals together, which I will share with you in some upcoming posts.

I hope you have all be hanging in there as best you can.

Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



Those on Instagram already know, but for those who don't this is Eloise. She is one of the reasons I have been a bit busier lately. I;ll introduce you to her properly in a future post!