Midweek Munchies

Random things, but featuring several of the now defunct Treat Dreams special flavours.

Like this one, the Wild Hibiscus and Wattleseed. I was extremely suspicious of this, because it is white chocolate, but people told me it had a wonderful flavour on its own. It did not. It just tasted like white chocolate and was gross.



This Lamington flavour was much better! It had berries and coconut and little crunchy bits and was very good.



I picked up this vegan jerky from Woolworths, and it was good. It takes very similar to jerky I get from the Asian grocery stores, but it was double the price, so I'll skip this particular brand in the future.



When I saw that Kehoe's was making a creamy gerkhin dip, I immediately went out and bought some. I had such high, high, high hopes. And friends, they were crushed. This was SO salty. It just tasted like salt. What an epic disappointment, especially as this brand is not cheap. I'll just make my own gherkin dip in the future.



Incredible new flavoured oat milks have dropped! This brand is available in certain petrol stations, including the petrol station I fill up with! It is the best vegan flavoured milk I've ever had.



Another Treat Dreams flavour, this Toffee Crunch is classic. A dark chocolate with little bits of toffee in it. Normally I don't like toffee, but this is not super sweet and the toffee bits were nice and crunchy.



I have known that Sour Patch Kids are vegan for a long time, and I finally tried them. These were cherry cola, pineapple, mango peach, and blue raspberry flavoured. Pineapple and mango peach were my favourite flavours, but overall there are other vegan gummy lollies that I prefer.



Finishing it off with some Kombucha. I mentioned the Jiva kombucha flavour I tried but didn't like in the last midweek munchies post, but there are the two flavours that I do like! Pomegranate, and Mango and Passionfruit.



Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



Eloise turned two years old yesterday! And what did we do to celebrate? I brought her home some chippies from the McDonalds' drive through (McDonalds fries are vegan here) for a birthday treat. This girl loves her chippies!

Recipe Round-Up: Cookin' Crunk

Popping back with another post about Cookin' Crunk, by Bianca Phillips. See previous posts about this book here.

Mess o' Greens with Turnips and Granny's Corn Casserole: I rounded out this meal with some Field Roast meatloaf that was lingering in my freezer. The slowly simmered turnips were so lovely! I cannot get collard greens or mustard greens here. I probably should have gone for kale, but I took the easier option of baby spinach that I ended just in the last few minutes. The casserole was lovely and creamy (thanks to cream cheese). I left out the pimentos and chiles, and added some celery, to keep it mild.
Rating: Turnips :), Casserole :)



Seitan Beef Stew: This is great for cold weather! Instead of seitan, I used big TVP chunks that softened up wonderfully during cooking and absorbed all the flavour. I used baby spinach instead of kale for the greens.
Rating: :)



Seitan Tips over Brown Rice: I used some beef-style strips in this recipe, which came together very quickly. I used carrot and celery instead of capsicum, as per usual. It also has mushrooms in it, and has a great savoury taste. I got three serves out of this, served over brown rice as instructed.
Rating: :)



Eggplant and Sausage Jambalaya: I took the easy route with this recipe, and after sauteeing the vegetables I threw everything in the rice cooker (except the sausages) and forgot about it until dinner time, which was great! I used some Field Roast sausages, and zucchini instead of capsicum, and I also left out the spicy parts. The sausages are slices, sauteed, and added at the end.
Rating: :)



Cheesy Broccoli-Rice Casserole: This lovely recipe combines mushrooms soup and cheesy sauce (both recipes are also in the book) for a great creamy outcome. You do need to have cooked brown rice for this recipe, so plan ahead. I decreased the amount of brown rice from two cups to one and a half cups because I was using some leftovers and that is what I had.
Rating: :)



Creamy Tofu Chicken Pasta Bake: There is a great recipe for tofu chicken in the book, which is part of this recipe,though I did find the flavour of the tofu chicken got lost a bit once it was all baked. This also uses the mushroom soup recipe as a base, mixed with some diced tomatoes. It is topped with just nutritional yeast, which is great because I love it.
Rating: :)



I'd like to talk about something completely different at the end of this post - music! My favourite musician Jenny Owen Youngs has just released a new album called Avalanche, and it is INCREDIBLE. If you like beautiful, emotional music, please check it out. You will cry. You can stream it in all the streaming places, or you can buy it on Bandcamp!

Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



Mirabelle contemplating life from within a paper bag.

Midweek Munchies

Something that I have eaten.

This orange & ginger jam from St Dalfour was like a fancy marmalade, very nice. Enjoyed with peanut butter on toast, and in overnight oats.



In my efforts to find a non-stevia kombucha, I tried this Jiva watermelon and mint. Sounds lovely and refreshing, right? But somehow tastes awful. Thankfully their other flavours are much better.



Tried this new vegan schitzel that I found in the frozen aisle. The schnitzels themselves are huge! But it was pretty good. Served with mashed potatoes, steamed frozen green beans, and gravy.



Forgive this awful photo. But there is a fairly new little Japanese grocery store at one of my local shops, and they sell vegan hojicha ice cream! Also black sesame and matcha flavours, but the hojocha is the best! It costs almost AU$18 for a 2L tub, so it is definitely on the pricier side, but I have paid almost that amount for a quarter of the amount of So Delicious ice cream back in the day, so everything is relative.



Veganaise is over. It not longer gets shipped to Australia, and I am bereft. It is really hard to find a decent mayo here, most of them tend towards being too sweet and too vinegary. Hellman's vegan mayo is now availabe in supermarkets, and it is the closest to Veganaise I have found.



Made this tuscan meatball recipe base using some vgan meatballs. It was quick, easy, and tasted good.





Finishing off with some more St Daulfour jam, this time the mango and passionfruit. I loved the tropical flavour this had, though I always struggle texturally with gritty passionfruit seeds. I mostly used this is overnight oats.



Hope everyone is hanging in there.

Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



Boo had a rough day yesterday. I'd noticed that one of her back claws was sticking out funny, and she was licking it, and it smelled funky. Of course she wouldn't let me touch it. So she had to come to work with me, stay in hospital for the day being furious, and then got sedated. Turns out she had just broken her claw and it had gotten infected, so it is all cleaned up and she had antibiotics. But she was so miffed by the whole experience. I'm sorry Boo that my attempts to keep you healthy are met with such disdain! Forgive me.

Recipe Round-Up: Cookin' Crunk

My how time flies. It has been almost four weeks between posts? Not intentional, but just things happening. Nothing of note happened, just, you know, things. But let's get back to some recipe round-ups! It has been ages since I have done one, and we are ready to move on to a new cookbook. This series of round-ups will be coming from Cookin' Crunk, written by Bianca Phillips of Vegan Crunk blog fame! See other posts about this book here

Tangy Tempeh Chops with Mashed Sweet Taters: The tempeh chops recipe was meant to have green peppers in it, but no way, I used some extra celery. I made half the recipe and got one very satisfying serving. The sauce has a bunch of things in it, including ketchup! The mashed sweet taters looked suspiciously too sweet when I read the recipe... maple syrup and nutmeg? But actually they were not too sweet, and had a lovely flavour that was the perfect companion for the tangy tempeh. I made a quarter of a recipe for one serve. All served over some baby spinach.
Rating: Tempeh :), Sweet Potato :)



Creamy Tahini Sauce: This was absolutely delicious! I did switch it up a little by just using a few drops of sesame oil and using water for the rest of the tablespoon it called for, but I find a tiny bit of sesamy oil goes a long way. This is used in one of the recipes in the book, but I served it over some brown rice, roasted broccoli, and sauteed tofu for an old-school vegan bowl.
Rating: :D



Sweet 'n' Savoury Marinated Tofu: This is a variation given in the book for the sweet 'n' spicy tofu, but no spicy here. This variation switches out the sriracha for ginger. And it is sooooo good! I scaled the recipe down a bit as my block of tofu was only 300g rather than 450g, but I wish I had the bigger block because this tofu is incredible! I did use some of it in sandwiches, but I also used some of it just for eating straight up.
Rating: :D



Tofu Cottage Cheese: This recipe is very simple to make, but then has a bunch of different uses. Bianca recommends spreading it on toast with Marmite, so I put it on toast with Vegemite. Vegemite is Marmite's superior Australian equivalent. So salty, so good. I also added some fresh tomato slices. This was excellent for breakfast or for lunch.
Rating: :)



Cheese Tofu Scramble: I am a simple woman, and at the end of the day I love a tofu scramble over any vegan-egg based scramble. Tofu is my truest food love. This is a great savory flavoured cheese scramble. I used celery, mushrooms, and spinach as the vegetables. I browned the tofu first, before adding in the flavouring mixture. A lovely version of a classic.
Rating: :)



Tofu Scramble Enchiladas: I switched this up a bit to suit my own tastes, replacing the chili powder with paprika, leaving out the salsa, and using wheat tortillas rather than corn tortillas. What we got was a lovely casserole of saucy, cheesy, tofu filled enchiladas that was just as good for dinner as they would have been for breakfast.
Rating: :)



Dill Weed Potato Salad: A fun twist on a potato salad, this has pimento olives in it! I have never had a potato salad with olives in it before, but it definitely works. I left out the raw onion and the jalapeno. I used dried dill for this, as the recipe called for, but if I had fresh dill I would definitely have used that instead.
Rating: :)



Cute Kitty Photo of the Month



The 7th of September was Mirabelle's one year adoptiversary!