VeganMoFo 2019 #18: P is for Plant Crush (Blog)

Today I have another round up of some blog food to share with you. I love the recipes on Plant Crush - beautiful photos, lovely food, and a heft dose of five spice (my favourite spice blend). I've already posted a couple of recipes from this blog in some of my Midweek Munchies posts, and you can see those posts here, but for MoFo I made three all new to me recipes. I have a bunch more saved that I want to make as well, so be sure to look for them in the future! In the meantime, let's get hungry thinking about these recipes I already made.

Vegan Chinese Five Spice Beef Stir-Fry: This caught my eye because... five spice! Also because Ann uses dried TVP beef slices in the recipe, and I love them. They are my favourite to use for any sort of beefy stir-fry recipe. I was just serving two people, so I halved the recipe, but in retrospect you want leftovers because it is delicious. I marinated my strips (using boiling water for the stock) for about four hours, to let lots of flavour sink in. Once marinated, you just tip them into a pan to simmer off the extra liquid. I needed to vigorously simmer for about ten minutes before all of mine had soaked in. I served this as suggested, with some steamed rice and some fresh cucumber. It was amazing. My omni dad loved it too.



Shredded Tofu and Mushroom Banh Mi: I was late to the banh mi game, but I have since come to love them a lot. This is a fantastic one! It is pretty simple to make, the main component being the shredded mushrooms for the filling. I used portobello mushrooms, and tried shredding them with a fork but immediately stabbed myself so just shredded them with my hands. The tofu is dry fried, and Ann gives a simple guideline for making a fabulous paprika mayo (just mayo, smoked paprika, and garlic powder). I made some pickled carrots quickly using this recipe (from the Viet Vegan blog, and leaving out the daikon because I didn't have any). I made a half recipe of filling because I was serving two, and served it on the crusty Vietnamese rolls you can get fresh from Coles.



Bulgogi Fusion Tacos: This was the perfect chance to use up the rest of my packed of TVP beef slices. I only had enough of them left to make 1/4 of the recipe, which was the perfect amount for two of us. I soaked my TVP strips in some beef-style stock for added flavour. For the marinade, instead of using actual onion and garlic I used powdered, and added a few TBS of the leftover beef stock soaking water for liquid. I chopped up the beef strips a bit to be smaller to fit in my little tortillas better (I used mini ones). The filling also has onion and mushrooms in it, as well as the beef strips and marinade/ The recipe also includes some quick pickled radishes and cabbage, which were amazing. Once everything was ready to go, I served it with some baby spinach leaves, filling, and pickles, and they were wonderful. I had some leftover filling, which I took to work for leftovers with some rice and spinach for a quick bowl.



Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



At the end of last year we got a new sofa, and where was a while where we were all sitting on camping chairs between the old sofa going and the new one coming. Because the camping chairs were really saggy, I put Dim Sim's bed on one of the chairs to provide some support for me to sit on. Of course, she hadn't even looked at this bed in ages, but as soon as I was using it she had to perch awkwardly on it for a little while to remind us that it is hers even if she doesn't want to use it. She is glad we have the new sofa now!

Midweek Munchies

I missed out on a munchies post last week because life got away from me, but not this week!

I was excited for this cookie because I love peanut butter, but alas this was not good. It tasted like protein powder, and just had a weirdly smooshie texture. They have other flavours, but I will not be trying this brand again.



Syndian is a company here that does vegan stuff. In the supermarkets you can mostly find their burgers and their bites, which I generally don't get as they are pricey and they are too soft to make a satisfying burger experience for me. But they recently came out with some flavoured sausages, complete with plant-based casing. These cheesy kale ones were pretty tasty. Again, a bit too soft once you got through the casing, but fun flavour.



The Deep Dive Bar in Seattle (something to do with Amazon), came out with a ridiculous fancy hot dog. The classic 'Seattle Dog' has cream cheese and sauteed onions (and I love it), but this bar has tried to make it very classy by using cream cheese, pickled red onion, pickled jalapenos, and pink salmon roe. They also attached an US$18 price tag as well. I recreated it a bit at home, in a not so fancy fashion. Using a Field Roast Frank, I took the more tradition route with tofutti and sauteed onions (pickled onions, though delicious, upset my tummy a bit), left off the jalapenos, and topped it with some Ikea seaweed caviar. You can get red caviar from Ikea, though I had black so that is what I used. It was a fine combination, though I wouldn't bother doing it again. Anyway, behold my terrible photo of it!



I got these in a Cruelty Free Shop Mystery Box, and I really enjoyed them. They are so crunchy and fun to eat. I need to get some more.



I needed some cookies to make as a gift, and couldn't go past these Ginger Chai Chocolate Chip Cookies from PlantCrush. They were such a good flavour combination! I used some brown sugar and plain flour to simplify the recipe for my pantry. I used an AU TBS (20mL) as a scoop and got 20 cookies from the recipe. I baked them a few minutes longer in my oven to get them where I wanted them to be. I recommend this recipe!



Finally, a fun little haul I got from Nutrition, Delicious & Co on one of their 20% off days. Most excitingly, the New Wave Pizza. I haven't had it yet, but it is made by the same people who run the Red Sparrow vegan pizzeria in Melbourne and their pizzas are so good. I also got a new flavour of the Nutty Bay Cashew Cheese spread that I love, a tasty Elderflower water kefir, some trusty Tofutti cream cheese, a halva bar (that I just realised I haven't tried yet, it is somewhere in my stash of bars), and some Bamboo Babe panty liners. Unfortunately I can't recommend these, as by the end of the day they were always falling apart. I will stick with a mix of Toms and my reusable ones from Hannah Pad for the moment.



I hope your week has brought you some good munchies!

Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



We have some new kittens at work! This is Sesame, and she is tiny and cute and dainty looking but she is also so full on! She wrestles her brothers with no holds bars! I'll show you her brothers next post.

Midweek Munchies

Some more random munchies! A lot of ice cream in this post, plus a couple of other things.

So I know everyone has been losing their mind over the vegan Magnums. I was more cautious - they have coconut oil in the chocolate coating and the ice cream is based on pea-protein, which I am not overly fond of. But I got a packet of both the original and the almond on sale, and shared them with my parents (three in box, three people in the house, worked out well). I thought the original was a bit meh, I could taste the coconut oil (though it didn't make me sick), and the ice cream was just fine. I preferred the almond because of the crunchiness of them in the coating. I suspect I am in the only vegan in the world who won't be buying these again, though I'd eat one if I was somewhere and they were handing them out.



The vegan Cornetto's, however, are a completely different matter. I LOVE THEM! I love them so much. I always want them in my freezer. I love how the cone is so crunchy, but to crumbly, and when you get down to the bottom they have that little bit of chocolate. The ice cream is soy based, which some people don't like but I love a soy ice cream. I will happily keep buying and eating these.



While you are poking around in the ice cream section in the supermarket (which now includes several brands of vegan ice cream and sorbet, though most of them coconut based), don't forget about fruity ice blocks! Especially in the heat of summer, I much prefer a frozen fruity treat to a creamy one. I grabbed this box on a half price sale. Both flavours are refreshing and not too sweet, and they are the perfect size for a quick cool down treat.



Here is a little ice cream sundae I made one afternoon for a snack. It had So Good Almond Chocolate Ice Cream, some honeycomb crumbles from the bottom of a bag I had gotten in one of my mystery boxes, and some fresh blueberries. It was a great combination.



Moving on from ice cream, I like to make overnight oats for breakfast before work on the Saturdays I have to go to the clinic. I often make up my own combinations, but I love looking for other inspiration. I made these Vanilla Overnight Oats from Plant Crush and they were lovely. I doubled the recipe of course, because I am a hungry person, and that was a great amount to fill me up. I didn't have vanilla milk, but I did my normal trick of regular oat milk and some vanilla essence (which I also like doing because most vanilla milk available here is very sweet, and I didn't need to add any other sweetener either). I topped mine with peanu tbutter, blueberries, cinnamon, and almonds. Recommend!



And finally, a cute package from the lovely Cadry. With my very favourite food in the world, Justin's Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups. Also a bag of Little Secrets - this flavour is like peanut M&Ms! It was fate, because the day before (I didn't know the package was coming) I had been talking to someone about these and how I wish we could get them here... and then I got some! Also some cute pickle toys for Dim Sim. Thank you so much Cadry!



Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



Those that follow me on Instagram and Twitter will know I had a bit of a scare with Dim Sim the last few days. I mentioned in my last post we were waiting on some culture results to confirm a UTI. They came back negative... so why the bloody urine in a senior cat? She had a bladder ultrasound yesterday, to rule out tumours or stones, and it was all clear. This is good news to rule out lurking badness. So we chalk it up to idiopathic cystitis... which is medical talk for we ruled out all the stuff we can for your bladder inflammation, and we don't know why it happened. Cats are big fans of idiopathic!

Edit: Last night Dim Sim had a seizure! I am pretty sure it was caused by the sound of my opening a foil packed right near her while she was on my lap. Feline Audiogenic Reflex Seizures are a disease that occurs in older cats. We have seen a few at work. Even though I know what was going on, I still called my feline specialist boss to cry and confirm that I didn't need to rush her down for a CT scan or blood tests today. And now she is all back to normal. I need to be careful what sort of noises we make around her from now on. This all sounds like I am talking with my vet brain, but I assure you that my mother brain was hysterical. Seeing your baby have a seizure is terrifying and awful. Thankfully they are not aware of it when it is happening. But she is acting like everything is fine now.