Ostara 2022

In Australia, Spring officially starts on the 1st of September, even though the equinox takes place later in the month. Ostara is the sabbat that celebrates this equinox, and the return of Spring. Easter has folded in a lot of traditions from the original pagan celebrations. Of course, here in Australia Easter happens in March or April, and has nothing to do with the seasons. Eggs are a common food theme, given the celebration of new life. Seems wrong to be celebrating new life by using a product created by the horrific destruction of chicken lives. Thankfully there are many wonderful ways to celebrate with food that don't hurt animals. Hurrah!

Ostara aka Spring Equinox (23rd September, 2021)

I kept up an eggy theme, and also went with another classic spring food - carrots!

Eggless Tofu-Olive Salad from Cookin' Crunk by Bianca Phillips: Tofu makes the best egg salad! Bianca's version includes chopped green olives, which I really enoyed. I had plain green olives, the pimento stuffed ones (as suggested) would have been even better. I think if using plain green olives, increase the amount so you get lots of those great briny punches throughout. I left out the raw onion, and I used some white pepper instead of black pepper. This was great on a sandwich, but also scooped onto crackers. Or off a spoon.
Rating: :)



Carrot Cake Ice Cream from Vegan Desserts by Hannah Kaminsky: Instead of coconut milk, I used my good friend Flora Professional Plant Cream as the base of this ice cream. I also couldn't get 100% carrot juice, so I used some Ginger Ninja juice, which is mostly carrot but also has some apple and ginger in it. As well as the carrot cake ice cream, it has a cream cheese ripple through it. Though mine didn't really ripple. I need to work on my stirring technique! This makes a HEAP of ice cream. It says it makes one generous quart, heavy on the generous. I have a 1L ice cream tub for homemade ice cream, and there was still quite a bit of extra I had to put in another container.
Rating: :)



Tomato Macaroni Soup and Scrambled Egg from To Asia, With Love by Hetty McKinnon: I was under the weather, so this soup sounded like a perfect way to honor the sabbat and also give myself some comfort. I made a half recipe of this and got two serves. For the scrambled Egg I used some Orgran Vegg, though it had a bit of a funky bitter after taste, I need to work on my seasonings for this particular brand of Vegg. It is a powder that you mix up, like the old FYH Veggs. My soup was quite thick, and very hearty. I did find it a little bland, but a splash of soy sauce to serve took care of that.
Rating: :)



Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



I like to post this for my Ostara posts. It is my sweet little carrot Sahara, hugging her sweet little carrot toy! They are both pirates.

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.

Boxing Day

The day after Christmas here is another public holiday called Boxing Day. Though because Christmas was Saturday and Boxing day was Sunday, we also got Monday and Tuesday as public holidays here. Though I worked on Tuesday morning. Anyway, Boxing day as normally a day for relaxing, snacking, reading, and watching.

I started my Boxing Day with some very standard and boring yoghurt, granola, and berries. No photos there. But for lunch I put together a nice plate of leftovers. Including my traditional Boxing Day ham and cheese croissant, as well as a piece of roast and the leftover veggies and dressing from Christmas lunch.



Dumpling Salad from To Asia, With Love by Hetty McKinnon: I like to make a salad for dinner on Boxing Day, and this year I went for this lovely dish. Fresh salad with some dumplings added and dumpling dipping sauce used as dressing. I just used some frozen veggie gyoza we had in the freezer. On a bed of baby spinach, topped with some chopped tomato, cucumber, and coriander and then a lovely simple dumpling dipping sauce. I left out the chili and the raw scallions. This was lovely, light, but satisfying as well.
Rating: :)



Early on in the month, when I decided to go Full Christmas and Christmas Hard, I had bought a whole bunch of Christmas sweet stuff. But then instead of snacking on it festively throughout December, I left it tucked away with visions of eating it on Christmas Day. But as you saw, we ate plenty on Christmas day! So I put together a Boxing Day dessert platter. It featured some stollen for Aldi that happens to be vegan, some vegan fruit mince pies (probably the best ones I've tried, I am not a huge fruit mince person, but these were good), and some Woolworths vegan rum balls. Also some fresh cherries, because cherries are essential at Christmas. I arranged them on a platter, and I was very proud of myself for how pretty it looked!





There ends my Christmas Posts! I still have a New Year's post to share, then it will be back to regular programming. Hope you all had a nice time, however you spend it.

Cute Kitty Photo of the Post





Two photos today! Abby absolutely refuses to participate in the Santa hat game. She's a wily one. The best I could do was to hold the hat above her head, while she faced away from me, or gently lay it on her back. I guess this is as close to Santa as Abby will get!

Mum's Birthday

Earlier this month it was my mother's birthday, and as per usual I made her a special birthday dinner!

Deconstructed Banh Mi Salad from Quick-Fix Vegan by Robin Robertson: And as per usual, she wanted this salad for dinner. She refuses to budge and pick something new. Thankfully, this salad is outstanding, so wonderful and fresh! I've posted it on the block a number of times before... because she always asks for it for her birthday!
Rating: :D



Flourless Soy Sauce Brownies from To Asia, With Love by Hetty McKinnon: Normally I'd make a cake, but she had ordered one and sometimes there is just too much cake. So we settled for brownies instead. Completely different! This is a recipe she had previously marked as interested in when I got this cookbook, and it was agreed that they would make a wonderful cake stand-in! The recipe uses almond meal, and no flour, so is gluten free if you want it to be. It does require three large eggs, but I subbed in some Vegg Baking Egg Mix. These brownies were wonderful, and even better the next day after being kept in the fridge overnight. 10/10, recommend. On the night, I served them with some So Delicious cashew vanilla ice cream, and a candle stuck in the piece for the birthday girl.
Rating: :D



Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



This photo may not look super Christmassy, but this was a quiet Christmas morning that Dim Sim and I spent together, before other people were awake. (Yes, her eye is runny. I also had to do a Christmas day trip to work to get her some ointment for conjunctivitis... not her favourite Christmas present!).

Ostara 2021

It is officially spring here in Australia, and the spring equinox has recently passed. Our seasons start based on calendar dates, so Spring started on September 1st (and it is 1st December for Summer, 1st March for Autumn, 1st June for Winter). Of course being that I live in Brisbane, spring barely gets a look in as it is full steam ahead into summer weather. Gross. Today as I write this it is going to be 32 degrees Celcius here today, which I wish to decline.

Ostara aka Spring Equinox (23rd September, 2021)

A lot of Ostara has been coopted and folded into Easter traditions, given that in the Northern Hemisphere they are around the same time. In Australia, Easter is in Autumn. Ostara is the coming of spring, a celebration of new life and fertility.

Egg, Pea, and Ginger Fried Rice from To Asia, With Love by Hetty McKinnon: Eggs feature heavily in Ostara celebrations, but we don't need to exploit chickens. This is a vegetarian recipe, but I made it vegan by using some Follow Your Heart Vegan Egg instead. I made the equivalent of 2 eggs (which I blended up with my handheld blender, thanks Bianca for that tip), cooked it like an omelet, chopped it up and seasoning with some black salt. I scaled down the recipe a bit, based around using 450g of white rice rather than 740g. I served this over some baby spinach, and got two serves out of it.
Rating: :)



Carrot Cake Granola by Donna Hay: I had planned on making a carrot cake, but the day before I bought a treat box from a local vegan bakery (more on that in a later post), and just didn't feel like more baked goods to eat. So I went the granola rout! I used this recipe from the Donna Hay website, scaled down to a quarter recipe. It still gave me three good sized serves. The flavour of this is wonderful, and definitely very carrot-cake like! I realised after I made it and ate it that I forgot to add the raisins in after it cooled, but to be honest it was fantastic without them. I served it over some Alpro vanilla almond yoghurt, topped with some almond butter, more yoghurt, and shredded coconut.
Rating: :)



Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



Two weeks of sutures, a cone, and confinement meant no cat max for Boo! But now that is all behind her, she has been loving spending hours and hours in the cat max. She has really taken to sleeping in this little plastic kennel that we originally bought for Dim Sim. Dim Sim never used it, however Boo has decided it is the best place to be. Her final lot of results came back, showing that her high calcium is idiopathic (which means we don't know why... cats love to be mysterious). We have ruled out a lot of rare and nasty things, and she has been started on some medication which will help both her calcium levels and her IBD.