Recipe Round-Up: Food52 Vegan

Another new entry into my Recipe Round-Up rotation! Food52 Vegan by Gena Hamshaw is a lovely book of 60 healthy but tasty recipes. The book has a photo for every recipe, which I know is important for some, so you can definitely picture what you will be ending up with!

Muesli: This is a simple, sweet, overnight oats recipe. The full recipe makes four servings, I made a generous quarter of the recipe (probably closer to a third) to get my breakfast, served with fruit. I used raisins, cashews, pumpkin seeds and chia seeds, which made this a filling way to start the day.
Rating: :)



Green Smoothie with Avocado: I love avocado, but I am suspicious of it in smoothies. Sometimes I find that it just doesn't suit me. Happily, this recipe uses just enough avocado to give a good boost of healthy fats, but not enough to give it that weird blended avocado smoothie taste. It also has frozen bananas and frozen mango in it, making it extra thick and cold and creamy, just the way I like my smoothies! There is a touch of vanilla extract in it, which was nice.
Rating: :)



Parsnip (and Carrot) Fries with Spicy Harissa Mayonnaise: This was great! The recipe was meant to be all parsnips, but I ran out so I added some carrots as well. My oven has roast and bake features, so I gave them 20 minutes at 230dC on the roast, then again on the bake to get them at least a little crispy (the recipe said only 25 minutes all up, but they were not crisping). The mayo, which is based on cashews, is thick, creamy and delicious! I used a little bit of a very mild harissa paste that I had made from another cookbook, and added the teeniest amount to give just a very mild heat, and I left out the cayenne all together.
Rating: :D



Creamy Tomato Soup: I made a 1/2 recipe of this, which gave my one serve (with some grilled cheese on the side). The creaminess comes from a mix of cashews and non-dairy milk (I used oat milk), and I also left out the red pepper flake. Because I was making a half batch, I used a golden shallot instead of an onion as it was smaller.
Rating: :)



Sweet Potato and Peanut Stew with Kale: I feel like peanut butter, tomatoes, and sweet potatoes make for a pretty great soup base. This soup also has loads of kale (obviously), but also some red lentils to help thicken and bulk it up. I used the tinned tomato option for this, rather than fresh tomatoes. I got about 3.5 serves from this.
Rating: :)



Heirloom Tomato and Golden Beet Panzanella: This one time, I chanced upon some golden beetroot. They are super hard to find here! And I was excited, so I made this recipe. It was just me eating, so I scaled it down to a half recipe for one serve (though I used slightly less bread that required). This was a great salad, though I felt like maybe there was a bit too much tomato in the balance of flavours.
Rating: :)



Butternut Squash Mac and Cheese: Of course I make the mac and cheese! This recipe had a lovely sweet flavour from the butternut, but I think it could have been cheesier. I like things cheesy. I decreased the amount of pasta from 450g to 250g, and increased the broccoli from 2 cups to 4 cups, and I used panko for the dry breadcrumbs to top it with. Served over spinach, and with a vegan BBQ sausage on the side. This recipe said it would serve 6-8, and with the full amount of pasta it would, but my changes made for four serves.
Rating: :)





Kabocha Squash and Tofu Curry: A simple curry, based on red curry paste. Though of course I cut down on the red curry paste from 3TBs to a dessert spoon scoop. Apparently I accidentally doubled the sugar in the recipe, making it a bit sweet, but it was still good. I only had 350g of kabocha, so I made up the extra 100g with carrots, and I added some peas rather than capsicum. I also mixed some coriander through, instead of just using it for garnish, as I had a bunch that I needed to use up. Served over some baby spinach and brown basmati rice.
Rating: :)



Eggplant Tagine with Millet and Preserved Lemon: This was quite remarkable! At the end of cooking, the tagine has the most wonderful savoury and saucy broth, that is great soaked up by the millet. It has a mix of eggplant, chickpeas, and olives... also capsicum, but I used peas instead, and I added some coriander. I used some preserved lemon that I had made a while ago from another book and had stored in my freezer.
Rating: :D



Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



This sweet ginger boy made himself a cave while waiting for his dad to come and pick him up.

Christmas Day 2017

For the last few years, I have started my day with a 7.30am bikram yoga class. I find it a really lovely way to start the day (though yes it is hot and sweaty and sometimes makes me regret my life choices), and afterwards they always have a big fruit platter that makes up my breakfast. In previous years I have come home and made a smoothie afterwards, but this year I was so full of fruit that I didn't feel the need. I came home, showered, we opened presents and then I spent a few hours pottering around in the kitchen getting a late lunch ready. At some point I had a Rebel Kitchen Chai that had been kicking around my fridge for ages and some cherries when I got a little peckish, but I knew we had a substantial lunch coming up. But first, my presents! The pink mushroom is a kitchen timer.



My parents are not vegan, but for the last several years we have had a vegan Christmas lunch, which is lovely. For this year's 'centerpiece', we had the Field Roast Celebration Roast, stuffed with butternut, apples, and mushrooms. We just had the little half roast, but that was plenty for three people after we baked and sliced it, and we had some left over as well. We all really liked it.



I have a dwindling supply of precious frozen cranberries (they are almost impossible to find here most of the time), so I made a half batch of the Orange-Scented Cranberry Sauce from The Superfun Times Cookbook. This was OK, I am glad I made it the day before to let it mellow, as it was super tart when I first tasted it after it came off the stove. I used bottled fresh OJ for it, so I didn't have any zest to add. A decent sauce, though not as good as the one from Keep It Vegan that I have made for the last couple of years.
Rating: :)



We normally make the Potato Squashers from Eat, Drink, & Be Vegan, but this year the potatoes were too big. So I made the Crushed and Crispy Potatoes from Eat Like You Give A Damn, which are basically the same thing but with bigger potatoes. My potatoes were slightly different sizes as well, but they baked up perfectly, squashed easily, and then crisped up. I did flip them and give them a final 10 minutes at the end. The smaller ones are a bit better, as there is a higher crispy to creamy ratio, but these were still great.
Rating: :)



Because Christmas is in summer here, the rest of our spread was made up of salads. Starting with the Wheat Berry and Green Bean Salad with Dried Cranberries and Celery from Food52 Vegan. But wait, you say, where are the green beans. Well, some doofus (me) forgot to write them on the shopping list, so I had to make it with frozen peas. It worked fine, and there was still some crunch from the celery and toasted pecans in it, but the green beans would have been nicer. The recipe calls for 1 cup of dried wheat berries, but I only had 2/3 cup and it made loads. I switched the ratio of walnut oil and lemon juice in the dressing to have more lemon juice, otherwise it was a bit dull. I also think I would have liked a few more cranberries. But I loved the wheat berries, they were so nice and chewy. A good festive salad!
Rating: :)



I also made the Creamy Broccoli Salad from Blissful Bites, which is an old family favourite. As well as broccoli, it has grated carrots, sliced radishes and chickpeas in a creamy mustard and mayo dressing. I've posted about how great this is before. And it keeps well, so great to take along for a potluck!
Rating: :D



The final salad I made was the Festive Roast Vegetable Salad with Tahini Lemon Drizzle from Dianne's Vegan Kitchen. We normally have hot roast vegetables, but with a prediction for 35dC on Christmas day (that ended up being even hotter), I was glad we decided to try this cooler version. It was delicious! I used carrots instead of the beets, and I sadly had to throw out a lot of my sprouts because they were gross inside, but everything roasted up great and the dressing is delicious! I made a half batch of the dressing, which was plenty to mix through the vegetables with some left to drizzle on top. Super yum.
Rating: :D



And here is our full Christmas spread! Including some sliced cucumbers.



And my plate, with a bit of everything.



It was a late lunch, so we were pretty full for a while afterwards. We watched Christmas Inheritance on Netflix, which was terrible! And then we had our dessert for dinner. I had bought a Pud Vegan Christmas Pudding, which was delicious (though expensive for being so small!). I drowned my piece in some Alpro custard, and it was perfect.



I went back to yoga again on Boxing Day morning, and then spent the day pottering around, watching Buffy, and eating leftovers from the last two days. A nice break from the kitchen! But I am back in it again this weekend for New Years!

Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



What to get the 17 year old cat who really doesn't want anything? She is indifferent to toys and beds, and she is rarely food motivated except for Greenies. She doesn't get to eat them much because she is on her special kidney diet (and she seems to swallow most of them rather than crunch them, defeating their purpose!), so I gave her some and she was happy to have them. Her favourite game of all time is to play with an old ribbon that I dangle for her, so I also gave her this cute bright pink string for us to play with together. She doesn't ask to play often, but she is not adverse to sometimes joining in if I start. Here is a bonus picture of her!