Isolation Baking

During my two months of isolation, I did some baking. Not uncommon under the circumstances, as long as there was flour to be found! I didn't make bread, I stuck to baked goods. But I also didn't do that much baking, I ended up relying on store-bought biscuits and treats a lot because motivation was hard to come by. But still, this is a little post for the things that I did actually bake during that time.

ANZAC Biscuits from World Vegan Feast by Bryanna Clark Grogan: ANZAC day fell during my time at home, and one must have ANZAC Biscuits on ANZAC day. I decided to try this recipe, which was good. Instead of 24 little biscuits, I made 12 big ones and baked for a little longer. They came out chewy and tasty. The recipe says you can use agave nectar or golden syrup, but any Australian knows that golden syrup is the ONLY choice!
Rating: :)



Easy Applesauce Snack Cake from The Abundance Diet by Somer McCowan: In the early times, we were able to get grocery deliveries but they only offered a limited amount of products and they would automatically sub if they were out. So one day instead of getting my nice regular flour, I got some Coles brand gluten free flour. Sigh. I made this applesauce cake that was meant to be made gluten free, using my gluten free flour instead of making Somer's gluten free flour blend in the book. The Coles GF flour is not great, it is pretty much just rice flour, and definitely gives things a certain texture. This recipe also had a lot of baking powder, and I could taste it coming out of the oven. Let it sit overnight, it is much better the next day. I used sweetened apple sauce and a mix of date and maple syrups, and I left out the stevia because that stuff is gross. I also used mixed spice instead of cinnamon because I had run out - horror of horrors! This is good sliced thick and spread with peanut butter, and maybe a scoop of ice cream if you want to make it dessert-like.
Rating: :) (but leave it until the day after baking to eat)



Walnut Brownies from I Can Cook Vegan by Isa Chandra Moskowitz: Truthfully, I am not that big a fan of walnuts. But I am a fan of being able to buy crumbed walnuts that are ready to add into things without chopping. I vastly prefer pecans, but they need chopping and sometimes that is just energy one does not have. I made a half recipe of this brownie recipe in a 4 x 8 inch pan, and cut it into five brownie slices. Isa loves her damn coconut oil, but I used Nuttelex instead. This has melted chocolate as part of the batter, so you know it is going to be fudgy and delicious, even with walnuts!
Rating: :)



Bananana Cinnamon Swirl Muffins from I Can Cook Vegan by Isa Chandra Moskowitz: This recipe makes 6 jumbo sized muffins, so pull out your big capacity muffin pan. I only had enough spare banana to make a half batch, so three muffins. Again, I had to replace the coconut oil - this time with canola oil. The muffins are made by layering batter with the cinnamon swirl (again, I used canola oil for the cinnamon mix, not coconut), and then swirling. It was meant to have a total of four batter layers, but I found I only made three layers. Regardless, these are wonderful and the cinnamon swirl was a delight.
Rating: :)



Chocolate Tahini Quick Bread from 500 Vegan Recipes by Celine Steen and Joni Marie Newman: Tahini provides the fat and oil content for this not-too- sweet bread. I used regular flour instead of whole wheat pastry flour and skipped the optional coconut milk powder. This rose very high in the 4 x 8 pan I used, I might look at using a 9 x 5 instead. It said to bake for 65 minutes, but mine was done after 55, which is unusual for my oven to be done ahead of time. I like the flavour of this, though I did find it a bit dry.
Rating: :)



Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



More sleeping Dim Sim, such a sleeping beauty.

New Year, Same Me

I'm not one to get excited about a new year. Honestly, it is just the passage of time. I never stay up until midnight, and I don't do long lists of resolutions. I am the New Year grinch. But I still have a few food traditions that amuse me around this time. So here it is, from 2018 to 2019.

New Year's Eve Eve

Normally I make pizza and pie on New Year's eve. However this year (last year?) my brother and his girlfriend were arriving from London on NYE in the evening, so that was going to be its own thing. So I did my tradition a year early. In the past I have made two pizzas, but this year I just made one.

BBQ Hawaiian Chicken Pizza: I guess this can technically be I made a thing, but really it is just I put some stuff on a pizza. I used a pre-made pizza base, topped it with BBQ sauce and Fenn Smoked Sesame Cheese, then layered on some chopped Vegie Delights schnitzel, pineapple chunks, black olives, and Daiya cheddar. Once it was out, I sprinkled it with some bacon bits and some chives. It was really satisfying, and really easy.



Apricot Frangipane Tart from Vegan Desserts by Hannah Kaminsky: I love apricots, and we are having a really good apricot season at the moment. My pastry skills are still pretty amateur, but I was pleased with how pretty this turned out! The pastry was easy to make, though I found it was a bit thick and tough (which could be due to me, I need more practice). The filling was delicious - almond meal and sugar and things, it was like a perfect non too sweet soft marzipan, topped with the sliced apricots. The filling called for 1TBS flaxseed, which you then grind. I skipped that and just used ready ground flax. This was a lovely taste, and kept well for a couple of days.
Rating: :)



New Year's Eve

We decided to go with a spread of snacks for the actual NYE. By the time they landed, got through customs, and my parents drove them home, it was almost 8pm. So I was glad we hadn't planned for anything more complex. There was crusty bread, water crackers, veggie sticks, and GF rice crackers to go with Fenn Smoked Sesame Cheese, Kehoe Beetroot Dip, and Tartex Mushroom Pate. It was my first time trying the beetroot cashew dip, and it was surprisingly tangy. It is probiotic, so I guess that is why?



Rounding out the spread we had some dolmades, kalamata olives, left over tart, cherries, grapes, watermelon, and some vegan GF rosemary, cranberry, and sea salt biscotti. There was only one non-vegan thing on the table, which is hiding behind the star. It was stuffed mini capsicums, which to be honest I probably would have starred out even if they were vegan because you know how I feel about capsicum!



I stayed up way later than I normally would on NYE, but was still asleep before midnight. Everyone else stayed up to eat 12 grapes at midnight, which is a Spanish tradition. My brother's partner is Spanish. Dim Sim and I were asleep.

New Year's Day

Vegan Chocolate Buttermilk Pancakes from The Abundance Diet by Somer McCowan: My brother eats mostly GF, so I made some GF pancakes for my traditional New Year's Day pancakes. Somer has a GF flour blend you can make in the book, but I used a smidge of leftover Bob's Red Mill and the rest just some Coles GF flour I picked up at the supermarket. They turned out so well! These pancakes are delicious, and I was silly not to make a double batch. I got 11 pancakes using a scant 1/4 cup as a scoop, and there were 5 of us, so we savoured what we had. Rounded out with some leftover fruit from the previous night. I used regular brown ground flax rather than golden, because that is what I have and who can tell in chocolate pancakes anyway. I also used maple syrup instead of stevia, because stevia is gross. But do you know what is not gross? These delicious pancakes! SO GOOD MAKE THEM!
Rating: :D



Black-Eyed Pea & Collard Stew with Spicy Tahini from The No Meat Athlete Cookbook by Matt Frazier and Stephanie Romine: Technically this should be called borlotti bean & silverbeat stew with tahini, because I made some changes. Collards are not available here, so I used silverbeet instead (and added their chopped stems to the stew when I added the carrots and celery instead of capsicum). Tinned black eyed beans are also not available here (they were for like, two minutes, but no longer) and I didn't have energy to make some from scratch (yes, I know it is super easy but sometimes you just need a tin), so I used borlotti beans instead. The stew also has pearl barley in it (I soaked it for a few hours before as recommended in the recipe so it cooked perfectly in time) and tinned fire-roasted tomatoes. They are super expensive and hard to find here, so I used regular tomatoes and added some smoked paprika. The tahini drizzle is lovely with lemon, maple syrup, and liquid smoke. It is meant to have sriracha, but I left that out and just had sriracha out for people to add if desired. The stew itself made a lot (served 5 people easily), though was quite liquid. I served with coriander on top instead of scallions because I was using stuff up.
Rating: :)



So hello 2019, I guess. Also, I am also super behind on catching up on reading blog posts, but I am getting there! This year has already started off with some pretty big challenges, so I haven't been on my laptop quite as much.

Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



All I want in the new year is to spend time with her.

Recipe Round-Up: The Abundance Diet

I love The Abundance Diet by Somer McCowan. I love the focus on fresh vegetables, and Somer's recipe for gooey melty cheese is so quick and easy and tasty, you will love making it. You can see what else I have blogged from this book here.

Annie's Da Cherry Bomb Smoothie: The book has a lot of green smoothies in it, so I will just highlight a few in each post. This one is a bit more brown than green, thanks to a whole lot of delicious cherries. This also has a hefty dose of cinnamon in it, which I love. Somer suggests using stevia to sweeten in all the smoothies. I rarely use any sweetener, as I find the fruit sweet enough. Also I would never use stevia, as I don't like it. This was lovely without anything added.
Rating: :)



Ginger Zinger Smoothie: One of my favourite juices is carrot, ginger, and apple... and this is a green smoothie version of that. It calls for carrot juice, which is super hard to find here, so I did use some bottled carrot/ginger/apple juice instead. But it is also made creamy but adding silken tofu, oat milk, banana, and peaches. Plus a ton of ginger! I left out the flaxseed and the sweetener. This was very filling.
Rating: :)



Island Bliss Green Smoothie: This is well named, and is very tropical! Based on coconut water, it is a refreshing drink. I used all spinach for the greens instead of spinach and kale, because I just rarely like kale in smoothies. My mixed frozen tropical fruit blend had mango, honeydew, pineapple, and strawberry in it. Definitely no need to any sweetener with that blend! I used some LSA blend rather than ground flax.
Rating: :)



Apple and Chai Spice Muesli: I love chai, though tend to avoid the caffeinated black tea ones. I couldn't find chai spice, so I took the option of simmering some rooibos chai loose leaf in oat milk and then straining. I absolutely hate grating apple, so I just finely chopped it. I quartered this recipe to get one serving, and I used some dark agave to sweeten rather than making date paste. As well as oats and apples, it also has raw almonds in it for a protein boost. I soaked mine overnight for a quick breakfast the next day. I didn't find it too filling at first, but I felt full a bit later.
Rating: :)



Quinoa Berry Banana Bowls: I wasn't the biggest fan of the quinoa in this, it was all just a bit bland. It uses pre-cooked quinoa, that is topped with milk, berries, bananas, and hemp seeds (which I forgot). I think it would be better if you had cooked the quinoa with some spices and sweetener to make it come together a bit more.
Rating: :|



Cream of Mushroom Soup: This is an old favourite, and a great lunch. I made a half recipe, which gave me one good serve. It is made creamy with cashews, and nutritional yeast gives it a slight cheesy hint. Vegan sherry is very hard to find here, so I used some Chinese cooking wine instead.
Rating: :)



Tomato Basil Bisque: Another old favourite, but made a little fancy. It makes mug size servings, rather than big bowls, if you are following the four servings guide. It is not that filling, so definitely be sure to make a grilled cheese to go with it.
Rating: :)



Moroccan Lentil Stew: I love lentil stew, but this one needs a few tweaks for my preferences. I found it overwhelmingly lemony, and not many of the other flavours came through. It makes a huge amount, so definitely go easy on the lemon!
Rating: :|



Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



Here's a closer look at one of the kittens from the last post, being a very silly girl but really enjoying a good stretch out!

VeganMoFo 2016 #26: Favourite cookbooks

26th: Cookbooks – Show us your favourite cookbooks!

I have a slight cookbook addiction. I currently own over 100 vegan cookbooks, and I have more on the way. I just love them! And I certainly use them. I am trying to cook everything in all of them! Anyway, to have me pick a favourite is pretty hard, because I love many of them so so so much. Sure, there are some that I am not so fond of, and ones I don't use that often, but I am pretty in love with a lot of them. So this is a very hard prompt to narrow it down.

But narrow it down I have. I am going to present to you five very loved cookbooks. I can't say I don't have others that I also love just as much, but these are standouts for me. I also decided that I would not double up on authors in the list of five. This was hard. OK, here we go. In alphabetical order. For each book I will also share a favourite five star ':D' recipe photo, though this doesn't mean that it is my favourite recipe from the book!

Appetite for Reduction by Isa Chandra Moskowitz.

Ugh, you guys, how do you pick a favourite Isa cookbook? They are all so amazing! VWAV has a super special place in my heart, of course. But for choice of favourite it really came down to Appetite For Reduction and Isa Does It. But Appetite For Reduction won out by a hair.
See all my Appetite For Reduction recipe round-ups here.

A favourite recipe: Five-Spiced Squash (The recipe is for delicata, but I use butternut.)



Eat, Drink, and Be Vegan by Dreena Burton.

This is hands down my favourite Dreena cookbook! Let Them Eat Vegan comes a solid second out of her collection.
See all my Eat, Drink, and Be Vegan recipe round-ups here.

A favourite recipe: Potato Squashers. A must for every Christmas!



Keep It Vegan by Aine Carlin.

I picked up this book on special at an actual bookstore last year, and it quickly became one of my favourites. The recipes are so delicious! I also have her new book, The New Vegan, which is lovely. But I cannot recommend Keep It Vegan enough!
See the food I have made from Keep It Vegan by clicking here.

A favourite recipe: Carrot Cake Bites



Quick Fix Vegan by Robin Robertson.

I love Robin Robertson a lot. She has written so many great cookbooks, plus she is an awesome cat lady! I first came across her when I found Vegan Planet, and 1000 Vegan Recipes is a personal life-long challenge for me. Vegan Without Borders is so beautiful, plus she has so many other books that are great. But the Quick-Fix series is the one I recommend to people who are looking for simple and tasty vegan food. All the food can be prepared in 30 minutes or less. So great!
Quick-Fix Vegan is the second in the Quick-Fix series, I also have Quick-Fix Vegetarian (which is all vegan) and More Quick-Fix Vegan.
See all my Quick-Fix Vegan round-ups here.

A favourite recipe: Butterscotch Apple Cookies



The Abundance Diet by Summer McCowan.

This book came at a time when I really needed to sort out my eating a bit, and I am so grateful that it did. This book is packed full of delicious and tasty recipes. You can follow it as a 4 week diet if you wish, or just dip in and out of it as I have. But there is certainly no lack of flavour or variety here.
See all my posts for The Abundance Diet here.

A favourite recipe: Grilled Eggplant and Zucchini Lasagna



As I said, I cannot pick a favourite vegan cookbook. I can't even say that these are my top five cookbooks. They are just five books that I really love out of a huge pool of books that I love. Even as I was writing this I thought of others I wanted to add in, but I stayed firm in my initial picks to share with you so that this didn't spiral out of control into the longest post ever!

How many vegan cookbooks do you have?

Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



We only have four photos of Max ever, and this is the last of them. My brother Greg giving him a hug. Max was only with us for six short weeks before he was found passed away. He was a little wild kitty at heart.

Recipe Round-Up: The Abundance Diet

The Abundance Diet is a big favourite of mine. I credit it with helping me get back on track with eating sensibly and my mindset about food after a rough time I had last year. It is full of delicious and filling smoothies, salads, soups, mains, snacks and some sweet treats. I blogged about it during MoFo last year, and let us see what else I have been making.

Apple Pie Green Smoothie: I like the flavour of this smoothie, but I just don't think that I am the biggest fan of the texture of apple in smoothies. Still, it was nice! I like my smoothies super cold, so I froze the banana first. I also used a date rather than date paste or apple butter, and I left out the stevia (I don't like stevia, but I never add sweeteners to my smoothies anyway).
Rating: :)



Blueberry Vanilla Green Smoothie: While the recipe compares it to a blueberry muffin, I got mostly blueberry and not much muffin. I used a frozen banana, as well as all all spinach rather than a mix of spinach and kale. I added the option maca, which gave it a bit of an earthy taste. I find blueberry smoothies tend to get lumpy quickly, so drink up fast!
Rating: :|



ChocoNana Green Smoothie: This was yum - rich, but not too sweet. I used 2/3 frozen banana and one non-frozen banana. It was a pretty classic combination!
Rating: :)



Chocolate Covered Blues Green Smoothie: This is a very rich and satisfying smoothie, with no lumpy blueberry issues.
Rating: :)



Veggie Patch Sunday Morning Omelets: I made 3/4 of the recipe to get three serves, though following instructions using a scant 3/4 cup batter per omelet I ended up with a larger final omelet. I loved filling this with all the veggies listed, and I added in some mushrooms as well. The moxarella heated up a bit with the heat of the veggies and went a but warm and melty.
Rating: :)



Broccoli, Grape and Spinach Salad: This is from the Lighter Salads section, and I made it to serve with some sandwiches. I'm not a huge fan of raw broccoli, so I lightly steamed it first. This was a big hit! The Creamy Raspberry Poppy Seed dressing was more citrusy than I expected, but was nice and fresh. I couldn't find seedless raspberry jam that wasn't full of sugar, so I sieved some fruit-sweetened raspberry jam to make it smooth instead.
Rating: Salad :), Dressing :)



Abe's Hearty Lentil Stew: I like lentil stew a lot, and this is now my new favourite! It is so good. I got three big sized servings from it. As well as lentils it has celery, onion, carrots, tomato and nooch (very important). I added the optional herb seasoning, using the 1-=Spice Blend from the Oh She Glows cookbook.
Rating: :D



Lightened-Up Laksa: This was a lovely version of laksa. I used a blend of light coconut milk and oat milk to make it creamy, and two heads of bok choy instead of cabbage.
Rating: :)



Creamy White Bean, Potato, and Kale Soup with Mushroom Sausage: I was really excited about this soup, and it was nice and creamy, I just felt it needed a bit more flavour overall. I did like the mushroom sausage a lot!
Rating: :|



Lightened-Up African Peanut Stew: I didn't have defatted PB flour, so I added some peanut butter instead. I used about 2 TBS, but I should have used more to make it more peanutty. I also left out the capsicum and added in peas.
Rating: :)



Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



Flashback to this cute photo I took of my friend's cat Pandora.

VeganMoFo 2015 #26: The apocalypse is nigh.

26. It's cold and rainy and there's a snow drift outside your door! What are you going to make using the ingredients you have?

First off, if this happened to me the first thing I would do would be to freak the heck out and cry a lot, because it does not snow where I live and if there was a snow drift blocking me in then it would mean that something had gone terribly wrong and the end was pretty seriously nigh. Chances of me getting out of bed in such weather are pretty low, though I guess I would have to get up to feed the cats breakfast eventually because Sahara can only wait so long.

OK, so I have cranked the central heat up to infinity (wait, do you lose power if there is a snow drift? I hope not...) and pulled on some very warm clothes and made it downstairs. To be honest, because I am a bit of a food hoarder there are probably a lot of things I could make, because I keep a pretty well stocked pantry, freezer and fridge. Assuming the power is still on. However chances are I would be so confused and miserable that I would just need to eat a lot of cold day carbs.

For example, this would be a good breakfast! I had this recently when I was feeling a bit under the weather, and I can assure you it is good for a cold morning to get you going. It is a piece of toast with peanut butter, banana and cinnamon and a mug of chocolate chai (made with some cashew milk I recently bought to try).



Moving on to lunch, I think it would be pretty similar. One of my favourite things to eat on a cold day is jaffles! There are a lot of different filling options for jaffles, I have put almost everything in them at some point or another, however I am a huge fan of the traditional baked bean and cheese jaffle. I always like to dip my jaffles into a mix of ketchup and mustard as I eat them. Served here with some cashew milk hot chocolate with a few mini pumpkin Dandies that I brought home from the US.





Even though I have a handy stash of Earth Balance mac and cheese and tater tots, I should probably have something a little more nutritious for dinner. Though mac and cheese and tater tots does sound might tempting....

Abe's Hearty Lentil Soup from The Abundance Diet by Somer McCowan is pretty much the best lentil soup I have ever had, and I have made a lot! The always have onions and carrots on hand, as well as lentils and tomato paste. I normally have roma tomatoes as well, though in a pinch I have plenty of tinned diced tomatoes I could drain and use. I don't always have celery, but that is an easy omission, or I could add some frozen peas! When I made this, I had all the right ingredients. I think what makes this so good is the use of both Braggs and nooch in the soup, so yum! It calls for Spike herb seasoning, and I don't know what that is, so I used some left over 10-spice blend from Oh She Glows. This lentil soup will change your life, and is just the thing for a freezing cold night!
Rating: :D



Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



Gizmo knew a thing to two about staying warm. Here she is snuggled into her birthday bed. Even though it was late spring and into summer. She was a funny girl, when the weather got warm she could often be found in close spaces or underneath blankets!

VeganMoFo 2015 #24: Nathan Fillion.

24. What (insert well known person) would eat if they were vegan.

Let me tell you about my future husband. His name is Nathan Fillion. For Browncoats, Nathan will always be the captain of our hearts, and the tightpants of our dreams. A lot of people would now know him from his current show Castle, but he is always Captain Malcolm Reynolds to me.

Okay, okay. So he has a gorgeous girlfriend and he lives in a different country and my cunning plan of winning him over by being in a different country and not being an ex-Baywatch actress and basically having no contact with him whatsoever is taking its damn time. However, I did meet him this one time at a convention in Sydney, so I guess that memory will have to sustain me.



Anyway, in alternate universe land where crazy things happen, maybe I would be making dinner for Nathan. Now, Nathan is definitely not vegan, though his co-star Molly Quinn is, so I am sure she has laid some good groundwork with him about how delicious vegan food is, and I'm sure once we met it would be a quick trip to vegan town for him.

One of the foods Nathan is famous for on the internet is his Seven Layer Bean Dip of the Gods (note, if you haven't seen Doctor Horrible's Sing-A-Long Blog, do so immediately... and then listen along to Commentary! The Musical... yes, they did a musical commentary).

His recipe is actually vegetarian to start off with, and would be easy to make vegan. I decided to mix it up a little, by making the Seven-Layer Bean Dip from Blissful Bites by Christy Morgan. This recipe makes a huge amount, so I just made a half batch. Layers according to the recipe are a mix of pinto beans and chorizo, a layer of sour cream and salsa, a layer of guac, a layer of shredded Daiya, a layer of shredded cos lettuce, a layer of halved grape tomatoes and a layer of black olives. I changed it up a little. For the bottom layer I used a mix of pinto beans and the TVP chorizo recipe from Hearty Vegan Meals. I then had a layer of the Nacho Chee-Zee sauce from Bake and Destroy, because this was still warm and I didn't want it to make the lettuce go soggy. Then I had a layer of tofu sour cream from But I Could Never Go Vegan and salsa, then guac, lettuce, tomatoes and olives. We had this for dinner, rather than as the snack it was designed to be, which was kind of ridiculous but it was very tasty! Just needed about three times the amount of guac because that layer got a bit lost.
Rating: :)



Nathan also mentioned in an interview with Oprah that his favourite meal is his mother's lasagna.

The Grilled Eggplant and Zucchini Lasagna from The Abundance Diet is not your traditional lasagna, but it is so tasty I bet Nathan would love it if he was vegan! I modified this a little by roasting the vegetables rather than grilling because I just didn't have time or inclination to grill them all on my tiny George Foreman. This lasagna is amazing - layers of marinara sauce (with lentils and quinoa mixed in), zucchini, eggplant, red onions and fresh roma tomatoes. All layered and topped with Somer's famous Moxarella, the easiest vegan cheese you'll ever make. This fills an entire 9x13 inch baking dish, and the serving sizes are HUGE (it serves 4). Despite the giant servings, it leaves you feeling light and full of great veggie goodness.
Rating: :D





Cute Kitty Photo of the Post: Month of Gizmo



Another photo of Gizmo on her 15th birthday. This is one of my favourite photos of her, I think it is gorgeous.