December Dates: Mum's Birthday and Litha 2022

A little catch up December post before we head in to Christmas.

Mum's Birthday:

In a shocking break in tradition, Mum picked something other than the usual Deconstructed Banh Mi Salad, and instead asked for a different salad! Several years ago, Mum and I had a stopover in Hawaii on our way home from Seattle, and we had lunch a the California Pizza Kitchen. Mum had a BBQ Chicken Chopped Salad that she loved, and she had since bought the CPK cookbooks. So I veganised the BBQ Chicken Chopped Salad for her! I used this for my chicken, and left the oil out of the marinade as this roast chicken was already very oily.



The salad has a lot of non-vegan ingredients, but thanks to the world we live in it was easy to veganise! For the garden herb ranch dressing I used vegan mayo, homemade buttermilk made from oat milk and lemon juice, Made With Plants sour cream, and vegan worcestershire sauce. Everything else in the dressing was herbs or spices. The salad itself has baby gem lettuce (rather than a mix of cos and iceberg), fresh basil, celery for crunch as I couldn't find jicama, chopped Sheese mozzarella, black beans, corn, coriander, and tomatoes. I scaled the recipe way down, as it was asking for huge amounts of ingredients! Even a halved recipe of the dressing had lots of leftovers! The salad is topped off with crushed tortilla chips (rather than homemade deep fried tortilla strips, which the recipe included), the chicken, and BBQ sauce as well as dressing.



Normally I would make a cake, but this time I was a terrible child and I bought one because I just didn't have enough time or energy. Woolworths has a Vegan Chocolate Hazelnut Mud Cake. It is huge, a 1kg slab of cake.



You could defnitely tell it was store bough, as it had an overly sweet icing and the cake itself was a bit dry. But I enjoyed the leftovers with the icing scraped off and some chocolate ice cream. Next year I will definitely make one.



Litha aka Summer Solstive (21st of December, 2022)

The summer solstice has finally come! Which means at last the days can start getting shorter. Too much sunshine for too many hours. Bring me the dark, please. I had a super lowkey litha, I literally just made the salad I will talk about below and I ate a lot of lovely summer fruits - cherries, peaches, plums, and apricots are all in season. So good! I had planned on making more, but again I just was out of time and energy. So I am not stressing about it and will just show you my dinner!

Charred Zucchini and Sweetcorn with Basil Caesarish-Sauce from Tenderheart by Hetty McKinnon: Tenderheart was one of my birthday presents! And I am just realising I don't think I have posted about my birthday yet. I will eventually. I hardly ever get cookbooks anymore, but this one was a must get and it is gorgeous! I picked this salad for Litha because zucchini and corn are definitely summer produce! And while made on the grill,charring is grill-adjacent. The zucchini is first sliced and charred in a hot pan, before being drizzled in a tiny bit of red wine vinegar. I used frozen corn kernels, which are also charred in the hot pan. Then they are combined with fresh herbs and a lovely dressing. The caesar-ish dressing is based on tahini and has capers, basil, and more in it. You will notice that my dressing looks very soupy, which is because I am a doofus and accidentally put in double the amount of water required so then had to add in more of everything else. I served this with some fresh (from the bakery, not from me) olive sourdough slices.
Rating: :)



Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



Gizmo made a very fetching Santa Claws. This Christmas is going to be hard for myself and so many of my friends who have lost their furry loved ones recently. If you are grieving, leave space for that and be gentle with yourself.

Midweek Munchies: Mooncake Edition

A while ago Loving Hut announced that they had a limited number of vegan boxed mooncake sets, and I had to race out and buy some. They were very beautifully presented! There were four flavours: Durian, Fruit & Nut, Pandan, and Lotus, and each one also had a vegan egg yolk in it.









I tried the Durian one first, and it was lovely. It had a tropical sort of pineapple flavour to it. The egg yolk parts were kind of dry and crumbly, maybe a very slight black salt flavour.



The Fruit & Nut was very sweet. Kind of like a Christmas cake flavour in a mooncake.



The pandan had a great flavour! I really like pandan.



But Susan, you say, that is only three? Sigh. Indeed. I was saving the Lotus for last, because I LOVE lotus! But alas, I forgot the part where they were also preservative free and when I opened it after a few days of being on the bench, it was all mouldy. I was so sad. Next time, put them in the fridge!

Cute Kitty Photo of the Day



Everything here is christmas this and christmas that. Here is a photo of the time that Gizmo met Santa at the clinic. She was not impressed.

Eating Out: The Green Edge

I've been to The Green Edge for breakfast a couple of times because they have undercover outdoor seating and if you go when they open at 8am on a Sunday morning there are not many people there yet! I have been slowly working through their breakfast menu, so here are a couple of new things I have tried. You can see my previous posts about The Green Edge here.

I tried the Breakfast Burrito when it was a special, it has now been added to the menu! It has spinach, bacon, scramble, and a hashbrown inside, and is served with tomato relish. Very yummy.





I also tried one of the drink specials, a Turkish Delight Hot Chocolate. This was SO SWEET! I let my friend eat all the fairy floss, because I don't like that at the best of times let alone first up in the morning. The hot chocolate had a lovely rose flavour, which was why I had to get it. I love rose flavoured things.



The last time I went I tried their Southern Crispy Chick'n Pancakes, which are pancakes with crispy chicken, bacon, house dressing, and some maple syrup. It normally also comes with hot sauce, but I had that left off. I ordered this because I really wanted pancakes, but their buckwheat pancake options were all extremely sweet. This was good, but very filling and kind of same-ish. I gave one of the chicken patties to my friend, and focused more on the pancakes. I really wished I had some fruit to go along side this! Should have ordered a juice, but I had ordered a turmeric latte. I wouldn't get this again, but it was fun to try.



Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



Something miraculous happened on Sunday night - THREE CATS ON MY BED! I was reading with Eloise curled up next to me, and Mirabelle was around as well. Then Boo surprised us all by jumping up and settling down on top of me. This has never happened before, she normally sleeps downstairs. Mirabelle is the one at the end of the bed, she was kind of annoyed when she realised Boo was there as well. Hee hee. But I read for about twenty minutes with all three of them, before it was time to turn out the light. Then they all left me. Hmph.

Recipe Round-Up: Cook Share Eat Vegan

Time to move on to a whole new cookbook to round-up! And this one we'll be staying with for a while, because I have a lot to share. Stick with me and maybe in about 20 years I'll have finished rounding them up and will be back to the start of the alphabet again. It's good to have a long term goal, right? Anyway, the cookbook in question is Cook Share Eat Vegan, the third cookbook by Aine Carlin. I definitely recommend this book, it is really fun and full of great food. It is split into loose flavour themes: Zesty, Fresh, Spicy, Grains & Goodness, Nuts n Seeds, Earthy, Sweets, and Baking. This is the first actual round-up post I've made for this book, but you can see some recipes I've already featured on the blog here.

Crispy Tofu Salad: This is a fantastic salad that is great for a hot day. Crispy fried tofu with carrot, cucumber (which I used instead of raw zucchini), persimmon, and salad leaves. It is topped with a lovely yuzu and miso dressing, which I recommend making a double batch of.
Rating: :)



Sweet Potato Gratin: I made a half recipe of this and got two servings along side some green beans and sausages. The recipe calls for the potatoes to be sliced into 1cm thick slices, which I fid found a bit too chunky to overlap, I ended up just sort of stacking them. It is easy to make, with za'atar and soy cream for the bake and topped with some lemony panko crumbs.
Rating: :)



Cripsy Cinnamon Potato Tacos: This recipe has a few components, including the potatoes, a sweetcorn and radish salsa, and a lime cashew sour cream, but it all comes together beautifully and is worth the work. I left out a few things, of course, such as the jalapenos in the sour cream and the raw onion and chili in the salsa. But it didn't suffer for it. The lime sour cream in particular is excellent.
Rating: :)



Angel Hair Pasta: I love angel hair, and this is erved with a delicious lemon, dill, and walnut sauce. I also love dill. I made an entire batch of sauce, used 200g (rather than 300g) of pasta, and also added a tin of white beans. The sauce also has capers and mustard in it, so is wonderful and zingy.
Rating: :)



Za'atar Roasted Vegetable Platter: Cauliflower, broccoli, and zucchini are roasted with lemon and za'atar, before being topped with a great carrot pesto. I haven't made carrot pesto before, but it was really good. The recipe also has a basil oil component, but I left that out and just topped it with some minced basil instead. This is perfect for those days you just want a giant pile of vegetables.
Rating: :)



Peaches and Oats Smoothie Bowl: This is a mix between a smoothie and overnight oats. It has nectarines or peaches (I used peaches), raspberries, oats, amond butter, non-dairy milk (I used oat), yoghurt (I used almond) and some lemon. It also had dates in it, which I decreased the amount of. I did end up adding a tiny bit of maple syrup to drizzle when serving. This is blended and then left overnight to thicken up. I topped it with slivered almonds, frozen raspberries, and freeze-dried peaches.
Rating: :)



Back-To-Front Bibimbap Bowl: This recipe definitely takes time, there are several components, but it makes for a lovely combination! There is some lemony broccoli rice, seasoned baby spinach, pickled carrots, and scrambled tofu. I left out the chilli wherever it was called for. It is topped off with some fresh cucumber, parsley, and sesame seeds. The recipe says it makes two serves, but I got three from it.



Glass Noodle Salad Bowl: This is just the perfect thing for a hot day. I swapped out the edamame for tofu, and it also has sugar snap peas (that I blanched) and cucumber ribbons. The dressing is lovely and zesty with lime, I left out the chilli.
Rating: :)



Made In Minutes Minted Pea Mash: I love mushy peas! No shame. And this is a lovely version that include leek and mint, but still is super easy by using frozen peas. It does call for coconut cream, which I am against, so I used a bit of soy milk. I also used garlic powder rather than fresh garlic, and white pepper rather than black. This is simple, but was the star of the show! I served it with a pie.
Rating: :D



Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



What's with the face, Eloise??

Midweek Munchies

We really seem to be hurtling towards the end of the year, but there is still so much to get done. So let us have a break for some snacks.

From my friend's mix and match cheesecake kits, this is a PB&J cheesecake! It has a peanut base, strawberry cheesecake filling, peanut butter mousse, and strawberry jelly. A lovely layered treat.



The Pie Society makes a number of vegan options, including this meat free cottage pie. It wasn't anything outstanding, but it was pretty good for what it was.



These meatballs were a bit of a disappointment. They had a blend of beyond meat and beans, and were just extremely smooshy in texture. The meatballs and sauce you just need to zap in the microwave, and cook your own spaghetti or whatever you want to serve them over. I wouldn't buy these again.



I bought this BioTzatziki on a super sale and approached with extreme caution as it has coconut oil in it and BioCheese makes me sick. But I am forever curious and can't resist a bargain price. It tastes really good, though is a thicker cream cheese consistency rather than a runnier tzatziki. I ate it in small quantities, and it didn't make me sick or have that gross coconut oil flavour or after-feel. I wouldn't pay full price for it or ear a whole bunch of it, but I would buy it again on a super sale.



This was my final ever order from Treat Dreams, which consisted of a whole box of strawberry bears and some peanut crunch bars. You'll still be seeing me post about some other chocolates from them as I continue to work through the quite substantial stockpile I bought over the last year, but this was my final delivery. RIP.



And last, these peanut butter bars. Mayvers is one of my favourite brands of peanut butter, so of course no surprises that their peanut butter bars are fantastic.



Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



Eloise, flat on her back and fast asleep. My funny big baby.

Eating In: An Assortment

This is a little round up of deliveries or take aways.

I found a delivery only vegan thai place on Ubereats called Vegan Thai-riffic! But it is only very sporadically available, and I haven't been able to get another order from them since this one. I got roti and peanut sauce and tofu skewers and peanut sauce, both of which were very good. The thai stir-fried noodles were a bit on the bland side. I also got some berry rice to see what berry rice was. It seems to be a mix of red rice and wild rice.



Another poke bowl from Cheeki, I don't remember exactly what was in this but I can tell from the photo this is when I tried their crumbled yam chips as the crunchy part.



Working my way through the vegan options from Kingsfood, I tried the Vegan Noodle Soup. And I added some of the fried tofu with garlic sauce into it because that stuff is the best!



A restaurant called Vietfood Springwood recently showed up on the delivery apps, and they have a huge vegan selection! Here I tried the Vegan Duck Bao buns, and also the Vegan Pho. They were both very good, but I wish they had a tofu option for the Vegan Pho because all the mock meats they used were a bit too rich for me.



And I finally got my hands on the plant-based chicken sushi from Woolworths. But I'm afraid to say it was a bit dry for me. But still a fun option to see available.





Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



Same Eloise, same.

Recipe Round-Up: Color Me Vegan

Finishing up my current round-up of Color Me Vegan by Colleen Patrick-Goudreau. You can see other posts about this book here.

Mushroom-Topped Baked Potatoes (Brown) and Onion Gravy (Brown): This seemed like a nice comfort food-style combination. I doubled the amount of mushrooms the recipe called for, which was a good call because they cook down so much, and I used baby spinach instead of capsicum. I decided instead of roasting whole potatoes (too much time I didn't have), I would instead serve these mushrooms over roasted potato chunks. This was a good call as crispy creamy chunks of seasoned potatoes helped the fact that mushrooms themselves ended up being a bit bland, definitely neeed some more punch. However, the onion gravy more than picked up the slack on that account. This recipe is deceptively simple... simmering onions in a mix of stock and white wine and butter. I was a bit skeptical because this doesn't end up looking so much like a gravy as it does some cooked down onions, but oh my gosh it is absolutely delicious!
Rating: Mushroom Potatoes :|, Onion Gravy :D



Eggplant with Sweet Miso (Dengaku) Sauce (Blue/Purple): I love dengaku! I can rarely find Japanese eggplants these days, so I did have to make do with regular globe eggplants that I sliced into rounds. The miso sauce is lovely. Excellent with some brown rice and baby spinach.
Rating: :)



Potatoes and Eggplant (Aloo Baingan) (Blue/Purple): This was a simple recipe that includes the titular eggplant and potato, but also some tomatoes and a bunch of spices. I left out the jalapenos. Simple, but absolutely delicious!
Rating: :D



Salt-and-Pepper Tofu (White/Tan): This is not quite the typical salt and pepper tofu you would see at restaurants. I cut my tofu into cubes rather than slices, so a bit more true to the original, and after pan frying it is tossd in a mix of salt, smoked paprika, and pepper. I went further off the path and used white pepper instead of black pepper. It is also cooked with some scallions and garlic. The book gives a number of sauce options to serve it with, I ended up making a ginger sauce with rice vinegar, soy sauce, and brown sugar. Served with rice and broccoli.
Rating: :)



Brazilian Black Bean Stew (Feijoada) (Rainbow): I do enjoy Feijoada, though of course I make it my own by leaving out the capsicum (I used celery instead) and the jalapeno (no subs). This recipe also calls for some Mexican-spiced sausage, but chipotle sausages are too spicy for me so I just used some Vegie Delights BBQ sausages instead. This has some cubed mango added in at the end, which gave a lovely burst of flavour.
Rating: :)



Minstrone with Spinach (Rainbow): I made a half recipe of this for two big bowls of soup. I made a couple of changes, the main one being that I used baby spinach instead of the kale that was actually in the recipe title. And even though I halved the recipe, I still used a whole tin of beans. Rather than adding cooked pasta at the end, this recipe was brothy enough that I added some dry macaroni tubes and cooked them right in the pot, which made for less cleaning up!
Rating: :)



Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



Mirabelle had five teeth extracted on Friday! She was such a brave girl, and has bounced back fast to her normal happy little self.