Yule 2022

Here we are in winter in Australia, and actually having a period of reasonable chill here in Brisbane! So while my northern hemisphere friends are sweating through what seems like an atrocious summer, we are in our cold times. And June is the time for the sabbat celebration of Yule, the shortest day of the year. You can see my other posts about celebrating different sabbats though food here.

Yule aka Winter Solstice (21st of June, 2022)

You can easily serve a lot of what people would consider Christmas-themed food during Yule, as aspects of it have been co-opted into traditions of Christmas, but I like to celebrate with really good, hearty comfort food.

Winter Stew from One Pot: Three Ways by Rachel Ama: One of my newer books, that you will be hearing more from. But I knew I wanted to make this wonderful winter stew for Yule from the moment I saw it. A stew of carrots, shallots, mushrooms (I used shiitake as I couldn't get oyster mushrooms), tomatoes, and sweet potato with red wine and herbs. A quick prep on the stove, and then a nice long bake in the over!



Mashed Potatoes & Long-Stem Broccoli: The premise of this book is you make the base recipe, and then there are three different ways you can use it. I went with this classic winter comfort combo of serving it with mashed potatoes (made with butter, nutritional yeast, and seasoning), and sauteed broccolini. It was everything wonderful and comforting in a bowl.
Rating: :)



Rich Winter Ragu with Pasta: Slipping this in here, even though I made it a couple of days later. This is simply leftover stew simmered and served with pasta. The recipe calls for pappardelle, I used fettucini. I also added some chopped facon and peas to it. This was such a great way to make a quick meal after leftovers.
Rating: :)



Spiced Cider from Cafe Flora Cookbook: Bringing us back to Yule dinner proper, I made this wonderful warmed cider. Cloudy apple juice is simmered with whole spices, then allowed to sit for several hours for the flavours to meld. After straining, you can serve it hot or cold. I went with hot, given it was a cold night!
Rating: :)



Tamarind Apple Crisp from To Asia With Love by Hetty McKinnon: Apple crumble is a perfect winter dessert, and add in some tamarind? Delightful! I made a half recipe of this for three serves. The apple filling has a hefty dose of tamarind paste added, which brings some lovely sour tang to the rest of the sweet, and it is topped with a lovely oat crisp topping. I served it warm with the very last bit of my So Delicious Cashew Vanilla Ice Cream.
Rating: :)





Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



Boo continues to enjoy the sunroom on these colder days.

Recipe Round-Up: Cafe Flora Cookbook

This is the final post in my current round up of the Cafe Flora Cookbook. See what else I've posted about from this book here.

Apple and Roasted Delicata Pizza with Sage Walnut Pesto and Smoked Mozzarella: This book has a whole chapter of pizzas! Most of them are not vegan, but they are so easy to veganise, like this one. First up though, I used butternut squash because I have never seen delicata squash here. The sage and walnut pesto was easy to make, but ended up being a bit bland and oily. It brought the overall experience of the pizza down, I'm afraid. Instead of mozzarella, I used cheddar shreds. I'm glad I did, as it needed a nice strong cheese flavour to cut through the sweetness and also the pesto. If you did have a vegan smoked mozzarella, that would be wonderful, but I only had plain so I went with cheddar. This pizza did improve the next day, when I ate a leftover piece cold.
Rating: :| (The pesto let it down)



Roasted Chanterelle and Leek Pizza with Roasted Garlic Pecan Pesto: Another easily veganised pizza! I should mention that each pizza recipe makes two pizzas, but I halved them all to make just one pizza. I had to substitute and use cremini mushrooms, I have never seen fresh chanterelle mushrooms here. But all mushrooms are good mushrooms! The pesto for this pizza was a lot better, giving a wonderful rich flavour! This recipe calls for two types of non-vegan cheese (smoked mozzarella and Jarlsberg), I just used some FYH mozzarella and it was great.
Rating: :)



Tropical Pizza: This is the only specified vegan pizza in the book. When I made this, I also made a half recipe of the Herbed Pizza Dough for the base. The other pizzas I just used the Coles pizza dough. It's a nice dough recipe, and you can add any herbs you want to it (I added coriander and parsley). The rest of this pizza has a base of macadamia roasted garlic spread, topped with sauteed shiitake, pineapple, and ginished off with coriander and a drizzle of sweet soy. It was a great pizza!
Rating: Dough :), Pizza :)



Cafe Flora French Dip Sandwich: This is one of the dishes I actually ate at Cafe Flora, so I was curious to see how it would turn out at home. First you need to make mushroom essence (very easy and I've made if a few times for different recipes, mushrooms and mushroom stems simmered to make a rich stock) and a french dip spread. The spread is a combination of sauteed shallots, garlic, and herbs mixed into some softened vegan butter, I used Nuttelex. The rolls are layered with sauteed portobellos and onions, the spread, and cheese (I used some Tofutti American slices), and served with the mushroom essence for dipping. These were very rich, but wonderfully savoury.
Rating: :)



Chickpea and Roasted Yam Wrap with Tahini Sauce: Obviously, in my world yam = sweet potato. This involves a mash of spiced chickpeas gently mixed with roasted sweet potato. The sweet potatoes were meant to be roaste with chili, I used paprika. A spinach wrap is spread with Tahini Sauce (a recipe from the staples chapter), then filled with the mash and, in my case, some baby spinach. I didn't bother serving with sweet chili dipping sauce, because spicy. This was a nice combination. I served it with some roasted broccoli, topped with extra Tahini Sauce.
Rating: Wrap :), Sauce :)



Teriyaki Tofu Wrap with Macadamia Roasted Garlic Spread: This recipe made use of some of the leftover spread from the tropical pizza I made above, as well as some more of the spinach wraps from the packet. I used a storebought teriyaki sauce to bake my tofu, and it was really super salty. I wouldn't use that one again, I think it was Ayam brand. After spreading the wraps with the macadamia spread, a layer of seasoned rice is added. The rice is seasoned with fresh coriader, ginger, garlic, mirin, and rice vinegar. I left out the japaleno. Then finished off with the tofu, shredded carrot, and sprouts (I used alfalfa).
Rating: :)



Cafe Flora Cheesy Grits: Another easy to veganise recipe! I used Flora Plant Cream and some grated Daiya Smoked Gouda instead of smoked mozzarella (the last of my Daiya stash, I didn't have any more to use on the pizzas above.. and Daiya doesn't seem to be here anymore. Please bring back my smoked gouda!). I also used polenta because we don't really have grits here and they seem like they are kind of the same? (I'm sorry Bianca, don't be mad!) I also left out the hot sauce. Served with some roasted zucchini and some breakfast patties I unearthed from the back of my freezer.
Rating: :)



Rosemary Lemonade: My fondest memory of eating at Cafe Flora was their delicious Rosemary Lemonade, so I was super excited to make some at home. I had a huge pile of juicy lemons from a friend's lemon tree, and I also have a large rosemary bush in the front yard, so the stage was set. And can I say, this was every bit as delicious as I remembered! The perfect flavour!
Rating: :D



Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



Yesterday (so the 30th of January here in Australia) was Abby's sixth birthday!

Recipe Round-Up: Cafe Flora Cookbook

Diving back in to my Cafe Flora Cookbook round-up, with the second of three posts. You can catch up on my other posts about this book here.

Wild Mushroom Curry: This includes a recipe for making your own red curry paste, but I am tired and also don't like spicy foods, so I just used a smaller amount that written of a storebought one that I have kicking around in my fridge. I also used a mix of light coconut milk and water so it wasn't too rich for me. The recipe calls for a mix of mushrooms, carrots, and capsicum. I left out the capsicum, and I could only get cremini mushrooms. I added some Soyco Japanese marinated tofu. Served over rice and garnished with some tinned beansprouts, dehydrated coriander, and crushed peanuts. In these times, you take what shelf-stable ingredients you can get!
Rating: :)



Indian Chickpea Stew: This is a rich, tomato and chickpea stew that has plenty of spiceys (of course I left out the jalapeno), potatoes, and greens. I used tinned chickpeas rather than cooking from scratch, because I am tired. Served over some basmati rice and with a big dollop of mango ginger chutney.
Rating: :)



Seitan and Vegetables Mu Shu Style: I did not use seitan here, I used some Soyco Japanese marinated tofu because it is easy and I love tofu. I left out the capsicum from the rest of the vegetables, which included carrots, shiitakes, cabbage, and bean sprouts. I also sauteed my scallions with the rest of the veggies because raw scallions don't suit my tummy. The stir-fry itself needed a bit more flavour to it. But once it was in a wrap (this calls for the easy version - flour tortillas) and smothered in hoisin sauce, it all worked out.
Rating: :)



Seitan Jambalaya: I did use seitan here, as I had picked up some Suzie Spoon seitan fillets. I made a half recipe of this, and I left out the capsicum, chile and the hot sauce. Instead I added carrots and used extra celery. Served this over some brown rice and baby spinach.
Rating: :)



Spicy Seitan Fajitas: Of course I made this non-spicy, by leaving out the hot sauce in the vegetables and seitan marinade. I also left out the capsicum in the vetables, using zucchini instead, and I used some more Suzie Spoon seitan fillets. This recipe has a few components, there is the marinade for the seitan, then the vegetable stir-fry, and then to serve it recommends a bunch of optional other recipes you can make from the book including chipotle pinto puree, pico de gallo salsa, and guacamole. In a fit of enthusiasm, I made all of these! For the bean puree I used tinned beans, left out the chipotle and hot sauce, and added smoked paprika. The pico de gallo salsa was a lovely fresh mix of tomatoes, coriander, and lime. I left out the chile and garlic, and added celery for crunch. And finally, the guac was a mix of avocado, tomatoe, lime and coriander. I found this a bit too heavy on the lime as written.
Rating: Fajitas: :), Bean Puree :), Salsa :), Guac :| (too much lime!)



Turmeric Basmati Rice and Spiced Coconut Sauce: Being a cookbook from a restaurant, some of the recipes have a lot of components (see above), and sometimes just one or two of those sound promising, but the others sound like effort or not something I'm interested in. So, just make the bits I want to! This duo was meant to be served with some Black Eyed Pea Fritters. But instead I served them together and sauteed up some vegetables and chickpeas to mix with the sauce. Spiced coconut sauce may surprise you as a choice I made, but I used a mix of light coconut milk, soy cream, and water instead of regular coconut milk. I left out the chiles and added paprika. It had a lovely mix of spices in it, and was great as a sauce for vegetables. The turmeric basmati rice was super easy, especially as I through it in a rice cooker, and had a great savoury taste and pretty colour.
Rating: Rice :), Sauce :)



Moussaka with Mushrooms, Lentils, and Walnuts: Sometimes, I have the time and energy to dive on into a recipe with several parts. This had a mushroom-lentil-walnut mix, roasted eggplant, cinnamon tomato sauce, and bechamel. The bechamel in the book is a ricotta bechamel, so I just subbed it out for the bechamel from another vegan cookbook. You could do this and just crumble some tofu through it if you wanted as well. It also calls for cheese to add to the layerings, I used some Sheese Mozzarella. This recipe was... nice. I have no issues with the flavour, but for the amount of effort you would want it to blow your mind. And it didn't quite do that. Still, it was a day of distract myself in the kitchen!
Rating: :)





Black Bean Stew: Another example of picking out a component of a recipe. This was a component of Oaxaca Tangos with Black Bean Stgew and Tangy Swiss Chard. The potato/cheesy tacos did sound amazing, and perhaps something I will make one day, but I was after something quick and easy. It's a very simple stew when you use tinned beans, and has corn and coriander in it. Of course I left out the spicy stuff and added some paprika. I served it as a bowl with some white rice, lettuce, tomato, and sour cream. It was a but on the blander side, at least when you leave out the spicy! But it was still just what I wanted.
Rating: :)



Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



What I wouldn't give to be able to curl up next to my cinnamon scroll angel again.

Recipe Round-Up: Cafe Flora Cookbook

Time to keep moving through these cookbooks. Today the alphabetical order brings us to Cafe Flora Cookbook. I am pretty sure someone gave me this during a clean out they were doing, and I took it because I have been to Cafe Flora several times before. And now I'm feeling sad looking through these blog posts, I miss my friends. Not just my Seattle friends, but my everywhere friends. The friends I haven't even had a chance to meet yet. Sigh. Let's look at some food. This cookbook, like the restaurant, is vegetarian with lots of vegan options. And honestly plenty of the vegetarian recipes can be easily subbed to make vegan. This is the first official round-up of this cookbook, but I've posted about a few individual recipes before

Roasted Vegetable Tofu Scramble with Cafe Flora Fu Sauce and Rosemary Roasted Potatoes: A pretty classic brunch plate. The scramble has a mix of roasted vegetables (I didn't have onion or yam, so I added extra of the carrots broccoli, cauliflower, and zucchini), that are mixed into a pretty basic scramble. A lot of the flavour comes from the Fu Sauce, which has sesame seeds, soy, mirin, cinegar, ginger, mustard, garlic, and sesame oil (I left out the red pepper flakes). I also added spinach to the scramble. The potatoes are simple but a classic. Parboiled and then roasted until crispy on the outside.
Rating: Scramble :), Potatoes :)



Dill Caper Tofu Aioli: Dill and capers? Sign me up. This is simply blended up using silken tofu as the base, I used garlic powder instead of fresh garlic, and added extra dill and capers because obviously. This is meant to be served with a selection of crudites. I went slightly off script, with some nuggets along side my cucumber, celery, and grape tomatoes for a fun dinner.
Rating: :)



Sesame Vegetable Soup With Miso: I was excited for this, because I love a good miso soup! But unfortunately the flavour just fell a little flat. I did enjoy making my own dashi with dried mushrooms and kombu. Despite it having red miso and soy sauce, it just needed a bit more of both of those. As you can see, it also had leek, celery, carrot, and silken tofu in it. I made a half recipe, and got just over two serves.
Rating: :|



Smoky Split Pea Soup: Again, another soup that fell just a little bit flat. I found i needed to cook it for longer, because even soaking my split peas overnight they were still a bit firm at the end of the cooking time. The recipe calls for smoked mushrooms, but as I don't have my own smoking abilities I went for some smoky tofu bacon instead. I pureed it a little bit at the end to thicken it up.
Rating: :|



Ginger Miso Dressing and Garlicky Sweet Shiitaki Mushrooms: Both of these were elements of a salad that I didn't really feel like making, I just wanted to make these parts. So I did, and I turned it into a little bowl. The dressing is lovely with misop. roce vinegar, and garlic. I replaced the oil in the dressing with water and guar gum, as I just can't handle really oily dressings. The mushrooms are simply sauteed and then doused in dry sherry and sweet soy sauce. I added a little bit of tofu to them as well. Rather than letting the mushrooms cool, I had them hot with rice white, baby spinach, avocado, and pickled carrot and ginger. Poured the dressing all over the top, and sprinkled with some black sesame seeds.
Rating: Dressing :), Mushrooms :)



Soba Salad with Peanut Sauce and Vegetables: I love noodle salads with peanut sauces. This one has a couple of components, with a quick pickled red cabbage and the peanut sauce. For the cabbage, I didn't have any raspberry vinegar so I just used rice wine vingar instead. The peanut sauce was meant to be spicy, but of course I left out the spicy part! Rather than blanch broccoli florets separately, I added them to the soba in the final minutes of cooking and then drained them and ran them under cold water together. I also didn't bother to serve the noodles and the broccoli separate, I just mixed them together. And I added some Soyco Japanese Marinated Tofu as well. Topped with the cabbage, pickled ginger, and some Seaweed Salad Topper I had hanging out in my cupboard. The recipe suggests topping with pistachios and seaweed salad, but you do you!
Rating: :)



Janine's Wasabi Potato Salad: This is a lovely mix of regular and sweet potatoes. It is meant to be purple potatoes rather than white, but we do what we can with what we have. I took a shortcut on the wasabi dressing and used Vegenaise in place of the silken tofu, rice vinegar, soy milk, and vegetable oil. Mainly because it required such a tiny amount of silken tofu that and I didn't have any immediate plans to make anything with the rest of a packet if I opened one for this. It also has baby spinach, snow peas, and cashews. I really enjoyed this, but I would increase the wasabi powder in the dressing because I like a bit more of a kick.
Rating: :)



Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



Yesterday was ten years since Gizmo passed away, which seems impossible. I miss my sweet, caring, tabby girl.

Christmas Day

Hello! Today is New Year's Day here in Australia, but I still have Christmas stuff to share.

Behold our little Christmas tree! A few years ago we swapped out our huge one for a cute little table top one. I love it. I also have several ornaments from some of my favourite artists to hang on the tree as well. And out Angel still gets to go on top. I can't remember a Christmas without her.



This year I also ordered some special memorial ornaments for my girls and also for Possum. Just from one of those personalised ornament kiosks you see in shopping centres. This was pre-COVID is everywhere in Brisbane. Because our tree is very small, there isn't really space to hang them on it, so I got some ornament hangers so we could have them up on our bookshelves.





Now for some food. I took a low key approach to my Christmas breakfast. A vegan croissant I had bought a few days before filled with some mango peach jam, a bowl of Alpro vanilla yoghurt with mango and blueberry, and one of the cranberry muffins I had made a few days before for Litha. We normally have some orange juice as well on Christmas morning, but I tend to find straight up OJ a bit acidic for my tummy. So I mixed mine with some Mojo Ginger Kombucha and it was lovely!



Then it was time for presents! We are pretty low key as far as presents go at Christmas. I got some books, which I think is always a good Christmas present. And my mum also surprised me with a vegan chocolate hamper! It was from a place called Only Mine, which I had never heard of before. I haven't tried any yet because we are still working our way through some other snacks, but I will definitely report when I do!





But what you really care about is what was in those stockings for the cats! Well, there was a whole array of toys and treats. Behold!





After presents, we watching The Muppet's Christmas Carol before starting on getting ready for our late lunch. I had bought a whole bunch of roasts this year, and we decided on the Field Roast Pastry Wrapped Hazelnut and Cranberry roast this time. We'd had it before, so we knew it would be good.



Watermelon, Spinach, & Cucumber Salad from Cook, Share, Eat Vegan by Aine Carlin: Because Christmas is in summer here, we always make a salad to include on our Christmas lunch table. This year I chose this lovely fresh offering. The recipe actually calls for watercress, not spinach, but I couldn't find any and I had a bunch of baby spinach to use up. It was such a great salad, topped off with some delicious tahini sauce.
Rating: :)



Orange Roasted Carrots from Happy Vegan by Fearne Cotton: This was the other new recipe I tried this year, some lovely orange and maple glazed carrots. I was able to find smaller carrots so I could halve them and they looked cute.
Rating: :)



This platter features the sliced Field Roast, the last of my precious Tofurkey ham slices, and Citrus Cinnamon Cranberry-Sauce from Keep It Vegan by Aine Carlin, which I have made several times before and is my favourite cranberry sauce recipe.



Then we had the roasted carrots, steamed green beans, and Potato Squashers from Eat, Drink, & Be Vegan by Dreena Burton, which have been a staple on a Christmas lunch table for several years.



Cranberry Ginger Cider from The Cafe Flora Cookbook: I also made this refreshing festive beverage! It is made by simmering fresh grated ginger in water, cooling, straining, then adding the ginger tea to some cranberry juice. My ginger tea simmered down a bit too much I think, so even though it was a concetrated flavour on its own it got a little bit lost with the juice. Though it still have a slight ginger punch. Or maybe it is just because I like my ginger to be super strong. But it was still lovely.
Rating: :)



Obligatory photos of the table and my plate!







Quite a bit afterwards, it was dessert time. This year I wasn't able to find a vegan Christmas pudding I wanted to buy. I didn't really feel like spending $50 on a huge vegan gluten free one from The Green Edge, and the vegan and vegan-friendly puddings in the supermarkets seemed to sell out weeks beforehand. So I dug into the freezer and found this little Sticky Date Pudding I still had hiding in there, heated it up, and served it with custard, cherries, and grapes.



Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



I continued the tradition of tormenting cats with hats, but this year I bought an all new one that has lights in it! As you can see, Boo was monumentally unimpressed with this development. Sorry Boo, this is what Christmas is like in your new home!