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.

Imbolc and Ostara 2019

As I've posted before, I've been trying to mark the sabbats but making some appropriate food. If you are wondering why I am doing this, check out this post for their significance to me.

Imbolc (1st August, 2019)

Imbolc is a sabbat that celebrates the end of winter (or whatever winter you might have, not much here in Brisbane). It has also been associated with the Celtic goddess Brigid. While I don't believe in gods and goddesses, I have always been very drawn to the symbolism of Brigid, so this sabbat always has a special place in my heart.

Linguine with Purple Cabbage from Colour Me Vegan by Colleen Patrick Goudreau: I needed something quick and easy to make, using what I had on hand. Despite my best efforts, Imbolc snuck up on me this year. Colcannon is a traditional dish associated with Imbolc, and as you can see I didn't make that. But I did take the winter vegetables cabbage and onion to make this pretty purple dish. It was very simple to make. It tastes lovely, but is definitely best to eat ASAP. I freeze leftover for lunches or dinners on work days, and this did not do well being frozen and reheated.
Rating: :)



Pomegranate Granola from Vegan Desserts: The colours red and white are associated with Imbolc, as are seeds. This granola seemed perfect to make, with a mix of nuts and seeds as well as oats. This has three types of pomegranate in it - juice, molasses, and dried arils. I couldn't find dried arils, so I subbed them for dried cranberries. I also realised when I was making it that I was out of pistachios, so I used pepitas. Same colour, close enough! This recipe is, not surprisingly, quite tart, which I enjoyed, Great served over some plain yoghurt (bringing in the colour white).
Rating: :)



Ostara aka Spring Equinox (September 23rd, 2019)

While all my northern hemisphere buds are celebrating the start of autumn, we are in spring here in Australia. Spring officially starts here on the 1st of September, so the equinox means nothing in terms of the calendar seasons here. Many aspects of Ostara have been incorporated into the holiday of Easter (which in Australia is in Autumn).

Tofu Scramble from Just Add: Eggs are a bit part of the spring festivals, but as a vegan I don't want to eat or support that! Why hurt chickens when you can have tofu instead? This scramble seasoning was another tester for the Just Add Vegan Products brand, which has a few new products in the works! I loaded mine up with spinach, cheese sauce, ketchup, tomato, and avocado.



Carrot Cashew Loaf from Whole Grain Vegan Baking by Celine Steen and Tamasin Noyes: Spring, bunnies, carrots, carrot cake. Rather than a traditional carrot cake, I made this lovely carrot quick bread. The liquid comes from a blend of cashews, orange juice, raisins, and milk (I used cashew to continue the theme) all blended up (plus some other stuff), and it is a mix of oat, barley, and whole wheat pastry flour. Of course with lots of shredded carrot mixed in. I didn't have any orange zest (I was using some of my frozen stash of OJ), so I added a bit of orange extract in with the liquid. This loaf was lovely, not too sweet, and made a great snack. Excellent with some Nuttelex, peanut butter, or strawberry jam spread on it. There was the option to either dust with icing sugar, or drizzle with a lemon glaze, but I like my stuff nekkid.
Rating: :)



Speaking of Brigid, here is a little photo of my altar. I use this more as a calming and meditative area, rather than for any sort of ritual use. The candle in the middle is a Brigid candle (meant it was lit from a candle that was lit from the Brigid flame in Ireland), and there is a Brigid cross there as well. The wooden box has some crystals in it, and there are some cute pins on there as well. The coloured tea candle holders represent the four colours of the directions/elements. I like it. It is pretty and very me, and something nice to look at to clear my mind.



Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



Of course, my familiar. I know I mentioned previously that black cats are still considered spooky by some people, and they have lower adoption rates in shelters. But with October 31st coming up, black cats will become a theme. Black cats are not just for the holidays, black cats are forever! Also, if you do have cats that go outside please keep them in around Halloween because some people are terrible. Keep those black babies safe!

Recipe Round-Up: Vegan Desserts

Vegan Desserts by Hannah Kaminsky is an older book that has been sitting on my shelf for sometime. For some reason, I hadn't made anything from it! But that had to change. It has lovely and enticing photos, no surprise given Hannah's photography skills, and a range of delicious sounding recipes. A lot of these I made for bake sales, which are always great events to try out a bunch of fun baking recipes! The recipes are divided by season, with a final chapter for essentials at the back. This is my first round-up of this book, but I did post about one other recipe I made from it here.

Lemongrass Mac-Nut Blondies: These have a lovely subtle lemongrass flavour. The recipe says to chop the lemongrass as fine as possible, I just chopped small then blended with the milk to get it even finer without spending time and cutting fingers trying to get it super small. These baked up pretty tall and puffy, you can see the top cracked a bit, but they still look great and were are nice combination of flavours.
Rating: :)



Zesty Rhubarb Ripple Cake: I love rhubarb, and last spring was a great season for it. The rhubarb ripple is a lovely syrup made from simmering rhubarb (mine was frozen, and I also had a few strawberries I chucked in for fun) with sugar and water, which is then layered and swirled through a thick batter. While the batter has orange juice in it, I only realise after I made it that there was no orange zest in the recipe, although this was mentioned in the recipe introduction. I needed to give this cake an extra 10 minutes in my oven to cook. Just so you know, it rises a lot during cooking, so don't use a shallow pan!
Rating: :)



Mango Lassi Popsicles: I have a little ice block set with six small popsicle moulds, so I made a half batch of the recipe. This filled them all with a little extra left over, though you can just drink that like lassi so there is no waste! This is a very easy recipe, with only five ingredients. I used frozen mango because we had a very short mango season this year. These are a good snack, they are refreshing but also not too sweet.
Rating: :)



Cranberry Streusel Bars: OK, I loved these! A lovely tart cranberry filling, which is balanced by the sweet base and streusel. The filling calls for 3/4 cup of maple syrup, which is super expensive here, so I did use a recipe to make an extended maple syrup from another book to make it a bit more economical, topped up with a bit of pure maple syrup as well and a few drops of maple extract. These bars are very crumbly once you cut them, so a bit messy to eat, but absolutely delicious.
Rating: :D



Sweet Potato Casserole Cupcakes: To be honest, the idea of sweet potato casserole as seen on the Thanksgiving table isn't the most appealing to me. Being a very American thing, I didn't grow up with it, and no shade on people who do enjoy it! But I like the idea of it made into cupcakes. These cupcakes are baked with sweet potato puree. I blended my puree up with the milk and other wet ingredients to make sure it was perfectly smooth. It was a very thick batter, but it baked well and was not too dense. The maple frosting is very easy, and worked out to be pretty much the exact amount for the 12 cupcakes.
Rating: :)



Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



These two cuties are adoption kitties Winnie and Doris. They were hand raised by one of the nurses, and it is sad that they don't have homes yet! This photo is taken through the kitten enclosure, they were sitting on the top of a cat scratching post having a good snuggle. Getting photos of them are hard, because when they are on the go they are ON THE GO!

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.

VeganMoFo 2018 #26: Celebrating Family

26th: Favourite Holiday – What’s your favourite holiday ever? What do you like to make for it?

I don't really have a favourite holiday these days. It was Christmas, but that doesn't have quite the same level of joy and excitement for me these days that it used to. So today I am going to focus on Mother's Day and Father's Day. Basically, I love celebrating people I love. And I love cooking for people I love. Every year for Mother's Day, Father's Day, and their birthdays, I make my parents a special dinner. I've already showcased a few of the Indian menus that I have made for my dad over the past couple of years during my menu week of MoFo. But sometimes there is not handy book menu, and they pick random things from different books. That is what happened for both Mother's and Father's days this year.

Mother's Day

Benedict Pizza from Veganize It by Robin Robertson: My mum loves benedicts (in fact, the reason I now try every vegan benedict I come across is due to her influence), so making a benedict-inspired pizza seemed like a pretty fun idea! This recipe uses a few different components from the book, all put together. Pizza dough, marinated baked tofu, and hollandaise sauce. There is also the option to make a mushroom bacon or hamish loaf from the book, but I took the easier way and used some slices of Tofurky ham. The pizza base is topped with hollandaise, ham slices, baked tofu, wilted spinach, and sliced tomato, and then more sauce after baking. The pizza dough is easy to make, and is pre-baked for 5 minutes before topping. I would bake it a little longer next time, as it was just a little undercooked. The marinated tofu had a good, strong flavour. It is baked in the pan with the marinade, though I took it out and put it on a baking sheet for the final 20 minutes (the marinade was mostly absorbed) to get it nice and firm. I didn't want smooshy tofu on my pizza. The Hollandaise sauce is also very lovely, buttery and lemony, and got my mum's stamp of approval. All together, it was a lovely combination of flavours.
Rating: Benedict Pizza: :), pizza base :), tofu :), sauce :D



Basic Favourite Dressing from 500 Vegan Recipes by Celine Steen and Joni Marie Newman: I served the pizza with some salad tossed with this simple dressing. White balsamic, nutritional yeast, oil, and some dried herbs. I am not sure about the dried herbs, in all honestly, they kind of stuck in your teeth and gave a weird texture. But the basics of this was easy and yum.
Rating: :)



Chocolate Orange Pots from Cooks Share Eat Vegan by Aine Carlin: These rich little pots are so delicious. They are that classic vegan combination of silken tofu and melted chocolate, with orange extract added. One recipe filled three small little cups. As often with this sort of recipe, I find several hours in the fridge helps the flavours to melt. And also is required by the recipe t set up, so that works well. The topping is a Toasted Hazelnut and Cacao Nib Crumb, which was a lovely texture. I only made a half recipe of the crumb, and still had heaps left over! It was a nice topping for some oats.
Rating: :D



Father's Day

Dad normally picks Indian as the themes for his dinner, but this year he decided to branch out with some Chinese!

Vegetable Sweet Corn Soup from The Asian Vegan Kitchen by Hema Parekh: Sweet corn soup has to be one of my favourite soups. This one is based on stock (a Clear Vegetable Stock is another recipe in the book), creamed corn, and finely chopped vegetables (green beans, carrots, mushrooms, and cauliflower). I halved the recipe, which made three small starter sized bowls. The book suggests making another recipe, Green Chilies in Vinegar, to go on top of the soup, but I declined. The Clear Vegetable Stock was easy to make, though had a very subtle flavour (the only seasoning in it were some crushed black peppercorns), but makes a good base for many of the recipes in the book.
Rating: :)



Shanghai-Style Chow Mein from The Asian Vegan Kitchen by Hema Parekh: This was fast and easy. I was able to find some fresh wheat noodles without eggs at an Asian grocery store. They were quite thick and chewy, and it was a 500g packet (rather than 400g for the recipe), but I used all of it and scaled up accordingly. I wish I had scaled up the vegetables even more, because I love a heavy vegetable to noodle ratio. It was still good though, with onion, carrot, shiitakes (it says to use fresh, but I used reconstituted dry), cabbage, and bean sprouts (I used canned). Also green capsicum, which I left out and replaced with green beans instead. I left out the chilies as well. I served with some bok choy in mushroom oyster sauce.
Rating: :)



Ispahan Crisp from Vegan Desserts by Hannah Kaminsky: So... not Chinese. But when I asked what sort of dessert he wanted, he was thinking lychees, and I ran with it. This is based on some very famous french chef macaron flavour, but made into an easy fruit crisp. Except I used strawberries rather than raspberries, as my did is not a big fan of raspberry pips (and strawberries are the best). I used fresh strawberries, but tinned lychees. The recipe calls for an 8x8 inch pan, but you can see that it is quite flat. The topping was a bit too dry, I think it needs more vegan butter in it. It was pale and dry after baking, so I spritzed it with some canola oil and put it under the grill to make it got nice and brown. But such a lovely flavour combination, especially the rosewater in the topping. I served this with some So Delicious Strawberry coconut milk ice cream (I can eat their coconut ice cream, it doesn't make me sick).
Rating: :)



Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



Red and black, touching! Did I move Sahara's tail to actually rest against Dim Sim's back in this photo? Maybe. Who can tell.

VeganMoFo 2018 #24: Pot Luck Perfection

24th: Pot Luck Perfection – What would you bring to a pot luck?

Are you having a party? A food party? Can I come? I will bring food! Actually, I am not really one for large parties. More small gatherings. But I am serious about the food. Here are some things that I might bring to your pot luck.

Never underestimate the power of snacks at a potluck, and they don't have to be super fancy made yourself snacks (though that is always fun). If you are short on time, or spending your time making another dish, there are lots of fun snacks you can buy and bring. Here are a couple of things I have picked up recently. I have tried the cheddar snacks before, they are great and tasty and cheesy. Lots of fun. I haven't tried these cauliflower puffs yet, but I have heard good things from Hillary about them. Plus apparently they are probiotic, which always tickles my fancy.



I know a lot of recipe books have hot dishes as potluck dishes, but I always worry about reheating them at the place. I prefer to bring things that can be served at room temperature. Living in Brisbane, it this works pretty well as well. A sturdy salad is a great option.

Sweet and Sour Brown Rice Salad with Fresh Herbs from Isa Does It by Isa Chandra Moskowitz: I LOVED this salad. But I changed it a lot, using the recipe more as a guide. First up, I changed the dressing. No way was I going to be using a whole cup of sweet chilli sauce, or any amount of sweet chilli sauce. Instead, I used a 150mL bottle of Chef's Choice pad thai sauce that I had got in a CFS mystery box, and adjusted the rest of the ingredients accordingly (I used 1 TBS of lime juice, but I did still use the whole amount of agave as the miso made it quite salty). I also changed the ingredients in the salad a bit, using a large bag of microwave brown rice as my base (about 3 cups, rather than 4). I left out the scallions, used roasted crushed peanuts instead of whole ones, and used a small tin of bean sprouts rather than fresh. I also added some Japanese marinated tofu (instead of the aduki beans), chopped celery, and grated carrots, and served it over some soft lettuce leaves. The fresh herbs were coriander and mint. This was so lovely, and had fantastic and fresh flavours. I only got about three and a half serves, so definitely scale up for a pot luck! I'd also suggest taking the leaves separately if going to a pot luck, so they don't go smooshy under the salad.
Rating: :D



I always like to bring something sweet as well. I love vegan baking!

Spring Fling Muffins from Vegan Desserts by Hannah Kaminsky: These muffins are studded with rhubarb and strawberries, spiced with cardamom, and topped with a crunchy oat and sugar mix. The rhubarb is chopped finely and added raw, so you don't need to fuss around with stewing it first, and it cooks through perfectly. When I first took these out of the muffin tins, they seems pretty soft and soggy on the bottom and I was worried that I didn't cook them long enough, but as they cool down they firmed up perfectly. A great, not-to-sweet treat.
Rating: :)



Of course there are many other things I can make and bring to pot lucks, including working to a theme! But these were a couple of things I made recently with this prompt in mind. Invitations can be directed to Dim Sim, who is my social events coordinator.

Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



A blessed event, three kitties on the bed. Possum, Sahara, and Dim Sim. Possum didn't normally sleep on my bed, but he would when my parents were away (he wasn't shy about seeking out snuggles). This photo was taken after my sweet Gizmo had passed away, but when she was alive there were a few magical times when I had four cats on the bed with me! I don't care how weird and uncomfortable I have to sleep, I want them with me always.