Recipe Round-Up: Chloe's Kitchen

Time for the final installment of the current Chloe's Kitchen recipe round-up, see previous posts about this book here.

Southern Skillet Black-Eyed Peas with Quick Buttery Biscuits amd Garlicky Greens: I used tinned black beans in this recipe as they are easily available. This is a lovely sweet BBQ sauce recipe that as well as beans has cauliflower and celery (which I used in place of capsicum), I also used paprika in place of the chili powder. I scaled down this recipe to make half, but accidentally mucked up when making the biscuits by intially not adding enough flour... so I had to mix in more at the end. They still tasted great, but maybe not as flaky as they should have been. The biscuits are slathered in Whipped Maple Butter, which is a combination of butter (Nuttelex) and maple syrup that are whipped to be light and sweet. I took a slight deviation in the garlicky greens recipe by using broccolini instead of a leafy green, there was a real shortage of greens earlier this year.
Rating: Beans with Biscuits :), Whipped Maple Butter :), Garlicky Greens :)



Peanutty Perfection Noodles: Who doesn't love peanut sauce and noodles! I glutened this recipe up by using linguine rather than rice noodles, and I only used half the amount. The recipe itself has carrots and scallions as the vegetables, but I added broccoli florets, peas, tofu, and spinach! I used a mix of light coconut milk and water in the sauce, and left out the sriracha, and I also added alittle bit of tamarind paste as I found myself out of lime juice.
Rating: :)



Penne alla Vodka with the Best Garlic Bread in the World: The only reason I ever buy vodka is to make vodka sauce, and this was a nice one with lots of basil and cashew cream, though the overall flavour fell a bit flat. The garlic bread is easy to make and tastes food, though is not the best in the world. Chloe loves to be dramatic when naming her recipes.
Rating: :)



Spaghetti Bolognese: This uses a blend of walnuts, mushrooms, and beans. Blending it to be crumbly and chunky without being mushy was difficult given the bean component of it, and once it hit the frying pan and I was stirring it around, it tended to clump together anyway, which you can see. It was quite a sweet recipe, Chloe uses maple syrup in her sauce recipe, which I would recommend leaving out because why?
Rating: :|



Wild Mushroom Strogranoff Fettuccine: This uses a mix of fresh (crimini and white, in my case as I couldn't get all creiini) and dried (porcini) mushrooms in a creamy roux-based sauced. I used linguine and cut the amount from 450g to 250g to get my preferred sauce to pasta ratio. I also added peas and served it over spinach.
Rating: :)



Herbed Polenta Cutlets with Marsala Mushroom Ragout: I cannot find a vegan marsala where I live to save my life, so I consulted the internet and used a mix of white wine and brandy for this gloriously mushroomly ragout. It has both crimini and shiitake mushrooms! I was making this one night when I was on my own, so I scaled down the recipe to 1/4 of the polenta but 1/2 of the mushrooms, because I love mushrooms! The polenta is easy to make and filled with herbs, but does need to be made ahead so it has time to set. I poured it into a little remakin to set so it came out as a circle, rather than spreading it onto a pan and cutting a circle shape later.
Rating: :)



Hot Fudge Sundaes: This includes a recipe for mint chip ice cream, but I don't like mint ice cream so instead I used the vanilla ice cream recipe that is also included in the book. For the ice cream I used Flora Professional Plant Cream instead of coconut milk, which is my new favourite substitute when making vegan ice cream. This had a beautiful vanilla flavour, and was very creamy. The hot fudge sauce is made with yet more Flora cream (instead of coconut milk), chocolate, and sweeteners. As you can see, it did set up pretty quickly when it hit the ice cream, rather than staying hot and fudgy, but it still tasted great!
Rating: Ice Cream :), Sundae :)



Thsi ends this round of round-ups from Chloe's Kitchen! I still have a lot in the book I have not cooked, so I will come back to it one day. In about ten years after I finish working through and rounding up the rest of my cookbooks alphabetically. LOL.

Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



A little flash back photo of our beautiful family boy Possum.

Midweek Munchies

Hello friends, I live! I had my surgery last week, and spent a night in hospital, but was thankfully able to go home the next day. Goodbye uterus! They found adenomyosis and benign glandular tumours in my uterus, plus some endometriosis. So it definitely needed to go. A long road of advocating for my right to be rid of it, and I am so glad it is done! I still have a few weeks of recovery left until things are back to normalish, but thought I'd try a short blog post.

These are all munchies from pre-surgery times. I will at some point talk about my hospital food. But for now, let's enjoy these treats.

I got these sausages from Aldi, on one of the very few times I have been in. I just find Aldi stressful, plus the ones near me never seem to have all the amazing vegan stuff other people are getting. But these sausages were pretty good. I used some in a recipe, but had one left over that I stuck in a hotdog roll with cheese, ketchup, mustard and fried shallots.





A fun little dinner using one of the Coles Christmas Roasts I had leftover (I still have another one in the freezer), some of the Kraft Vegan Mac and Cheese, and some green beans you can just microwave steam right in the bag. The roast comes with chutney, which is the sauce used over this.





I also used some of the leftover roast, mac and cheese, and chutney to make a toasted sandwich for lunch the next day.



Finally, I bought this Ben & Jerry's Non-Dairy Netflix and Chill ages ago, and unearthed it from my freezer to finally try. I really liked it, especially the peanut butter flavoured ice cream. Would eat again.



Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



Random photo for today is this lovely one of Possum, who was our handsome family kitty.

Recipe Round-Up: 1000 Vegan Recipes

It's been a while since I've done a mini round-up of my huge backlog of recipes from 1000 Vegan Recipes by Robin Robertson, so let's take a minute to dip back in and see a few things. All tempeh all the time in this round-up. You can see my previous round-ups here.

Teriyaki Tempeh: This recipe uses a teriyaki marinade that you make from scratch, before pan-frying the tempeh and then simmering down the rest of the marinade with it to make a thick glaze. This teriyaki was good, but on the salty, I prefer a bit more sweetness in mine. Served with rice and some steamed broccoli.
Rating: :)



Barbecued Tempeh: You need to make your BBQ sauce first for this recipe, but it is very easy. I left out the capsicum from it. The BBQ sauce has a nice flavour, with molasses and mustard involved. Once you have made the sauce, it is added to pan-fried tempeh and simmered further to really get that flavour in. I served it over brown rice with a salad.
Rating: :)



Orange-Bourbon Tempeh: I don't drink these days, but I was able to source a small amount of bourbon to make this recipe. The tempeh is simmered in a marinade to really get the flavour in, before being cooled and coated in flour, pan-fried and simmered with the orange-bourbon sauce. The orange and bourbon went very nicely together, it is certainly not something I would have thought about making. I have drunk bourbon once upon a time, and it made me really really sad. I am glad to report that this did not have a similar effect!
Rating: :)



Tempeh Cacciatore: This photo is particularly atrocious. Some of these recipes have been sitting in my blogging backlog for over a decade now, so I can only plead the ignorance of use. But, photographic atrocities aside, this was a delightful dinner (thank goodness I keep notes of everything I make!). Very simple, with onion nad carrot, and diced tomatoes, white wine, and some herbs. I left out the capsicum. I served it over some spinach fettuccine, along side some steamed broccoli.
Rating: :)



(% 1000 Vegan Recipes blogged: 33.5%) - Just over one third now!

Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



Continuing our month of random photos from the archives, today turned up this cute photo of Possum having a snooze on the deck chair!

Litha 2021

While I watch all my Northern Hemisphere friends go from cozy to chilly weather, over here in Australia we are sweltering. Hot hot hot. Thankfully, we just had our summer solstice, known as Litha to the pagan-inclined among us. The longest day of the year means that now the days will get shorter! Bring back the darkness! Go away sun, you burning menace!

Litha (aka Summer Solstice) (21st-22nd December, 2021).

I celebrated as I always do, with food! Summer foods, grilled foods, fiery foods, red foods. Let's see!

I didn't actually grill, I do have a BBQ outside that I really need to use because it has been long neglected, but for this easy Litha dinner I made burgers just on the stove. I just made quick and easy cheeseburgers, using the V2 burger patties, Sheese Red Leicester slices, Veganaise, and some Coles cheeseburger sauce. I couldn't get my favourite Fry's brioche buns, so I just made them with some regular burger buns from Coles. Served with some cucumber slices and salad.



Dustin's Favourite Summer Salad from Epic Vegan Quick & Easy by Dustin Harder: For the salad, I went with this sublime summery offering from one of my newest cookbooks. This is simple, but oh so delicious! Corn, tomato, avocado, and basil in a lime-juice based dressing. It is sweet and juicy and tangy and creamy in all the right ways.
Rating: :D



Ginger Lemonade from Cafe Flora Cookbook: I love making homemade lemonade! And this gingery concoction was just perfect for a warm evening. You make a simple ginger infusion, then dilute with lemon juice and water. It is very easy, has a lovely spicy ginger burn, and was very much enjoyed.

Rating: :)



Vegan Cranberry Muffins from Dianne's Vegan Kitchen: Tying together some lovely red and orange colours with the approach of Christmas, these muffins were a great way to end the meal. I made a half recipe, for six muffins. I just used regular plain flour, and I used defrosted frozen cranberries. These turned into wonderful tart little flavour bursts. The muffin includes some orange juice in the liquid, which gave a nice flavour with the cranberries.
Rating: :)



I hope everyone had a happy solstice, be it summer or winter.

Oh, BTW, my COVID test came back as negative. Just a cold. Though since we opened our borders our numbers have been jumping up hugely every day. And yesterday the Chief Health Officer said: 'Not only is the spread of this virus inevitable, it is necessary. In order for us to go from the pandemic phase to an endemic phase, the virus has to be widespread. We all have to have immunity, you will all have to develop immunity and there's two ways you can do that: by being vaccinated or getting infected.' So... cool cool cool. I have been waiting to get it, I know it is coming for me, and apparently now that it is a good thing? Also, being infected doesn't give immunity. Lots of people have had it more than once. Lots of vaccinated people get it. People will die. People will get Long COVID. So if you are waiting to see what the next fun mutation will be, it will probably be in Queensland! Let's cheer ourselves up with some cats.

Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



Possum was the first one who had to suffer the indignities of dressing up for Christmas. Just look at him suffering through the indignity of this santa had and scarf.

Eating Out: North Brisbane Vegan Markets

Well friends, Queensland's borders have opened, and over the last three days COVID cases have been increasing every day. Opposite of yay. So while I still have quite a few eating out posts to be shared in my archives, I am not sure that I will be doing much eating out at all in the future. Let alone at something like this, the North Brisbane Vegan Markets. This is at a newer location, upstairs at a shopping centre, and it is actually not a bad one. I met up with my friend last month so we could check it out, and get some food.

I was really excited to try a Breakfast Muffin with scramble and bacon on it, from a stall that sells their own vegan scrambled egg mix. I don't remember the name, and really there is no reason to because sadly this was not good. The scramble tasted weird. And even the tots were so fried and oversalted that they almost hurt my mouth to eat. The lemonade I got as part of the meal deal was also extremely average, not like they just added some lemon juice to water. So no need to look up this stall's name, because I am not going to recommend it or get anything from it again.



My friend got some tacos from Holy Taco. Though they seem more like tacquitos? They are rolled up and crispy. They have three flavours to choose from - potato, beans, and vegan mince. I have completely forgotten what she chose, but she really enjoyed them.



I fared much better with dessert, getting a Loaded Biscoff Sundae from I Should Coco.



And my friend got a crepe with walnuts, strawberries, and caramel sauce. I cannot remember the name of the crepe stall, and not because it was bad. She really liked it. I should try and find the name of it, but I am tired. So if you ever go to the vegan markets, just look for the crepe stall.



My friend also got some cute cupcakes from Pippa's Pantry to take home.



I got a Carbonara Pizza with Cheesy Stuffed Crust from Piante Pizza to take home for lunch. This was so good! I've been wanting to try their pizza for a long time.



I also bought some chocolate, some jerky, and some sourdough crumpets to take home!



Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



Possum, our sweet family boy, probably had to deal with the reindeer antlers the most. As you can see, he was resigned to his yearly fate.

Midweek Munchies

Things that I ate at some point. But first, a possum! A while ago my dad went to use a bucket and found this bebbeh possum having a snooze in it!



The newest addition to the vegan friendly ice cream snacks is Drumsticks, which are similar to a Cornetto. They recently released three vegan flavours - Vanilla Chocolate, Coconut Raspberry, and Affogato. The Vanilla Chocolate is the only one I can have, as I don't do coffee and the Coconut Raspberry one has a load of coconut fat in it. The Vanilla Chocolate does have a bit of coconut in it, but it is not enough to cause me issues. It is tasty and fun, though I think I prefer the Cornettos.





Here is another photos of loads of gorgeous berries. I miss fresh berries.



Earlier this year, I went to my best friend's house to watch some Buffy and Angel. She made a snack of chicken nuggets, potato gems, and sauce on white bread. So good.



Then we baked a Fry's Meditarranean Frozen Pizza. It has Fry's chick'n strips and tomato, spinach, basil, and olives... and most importantly no capsicum or chili! It is really good, so nice and fresh tasting. We had it with some Coles brand garlic bread, which happens to be vegan.





I had bought a heap of Daiya Cheddar Mac and Cheese on sale (it was like $2 for each box), but I kind of got sick of it on its own. It is fine but not amazing. So I tried to fancy it up a little bit. First up, I mixed a tin of Baked Beans and a bunch of Bacon bits into some.



In this one, I mixed in some creamed corn and sauerkraut, and topped it with some fried shallots.



Here is a delicious sandwich I made, using some leftover Nooch Tofu, with tomato, spinach, avocado, and mayo. So kind of like BLAT but with noochy tofu instead of tempeh bacon.



Finally, I was craving a cheesy bolognese style pasta for lunch one day, and I had this Lentil Bolognese microwave meal in the fridge. It didn't have any cheese on it, so I added a bunch of Daiya to melt as it cooked and also added some cashew parmesan. I am glad I did, because the bolognese itself was meh. The lentils were quite al dente.... to undercook red lentils is quite a feat. So I was glad for all that cheese!



Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



Speaking of possums, we also had a lovely portrait of our old family cat Possum done by Papadore Art.

VeganMoFo 2019 #27: Y is for Yavanna (Eating Out)

I've been to Yavanna a few times before, but they released a new menu a while ago and I was keen to get back to try some stuff. Yavanna is the place to go it you want decadent vegan comfort food. Think lots of mock meats, lots of carbs, lots of delicious. I heard from someone who went there recently and complained that there weren't enough vegetables. Because they assumed a vegan restaurant would be all vegetables. Oh sweet naive soul, no. Vegans like all sorts of food! I guess they didn't check the menu before they went!

A quick little comfort food lunch of some of their Mac & Cheese with a side of their Creamy Slaw. The mac and cheese was cheesy and saucy, and I loved the bacon bits and crunchy bread crumbs on top. The slaw was a lovely, fresh side to it. Creamy without being too heavy, and lots of crunch.



A burger and chips is a classic lunch choice. But instead of a side of chips, I tried their Poutine. The gravy was wonderfully savoury, and the cheese sauce was nice as well. I had it with their Classic Cheeseburger: beef patty, onions (I forgot to ask them to leave them off), pickles, ketchup, mustard, two types of cheese, and a brioche bun. This was just OK. It wasn't bad, but I've definitely had much better cheeseburgers.





I was happy to see their Chicken Parmigiana, previously only on the dinner menu, join the lunch menu. It is a hefty lunch, to be sure, but delicious. A nice crispy coated schnitzel topped with napoli sauce, bacon, and cheese. It is served with chips, and some of that creamy slaw.



Yavanna - 9/2 Latrobe Terrace, Paddington, QLD

Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



Our sweet family boy Possum was never one for cat beds in the tradition sense. But he did love a good cushion. The day he found a deck chair cushion in the sun out on the deck was a good day for him. Comfy sleeps, fresh air, sunshine, but still nice and close to home.