Beltane 2020

I know that spooooooky season has just ended (though the horror of the world continues). I have never much been one for Halloween. I didn't grow up with it, and I just do not like food that is made to look like gross body parts. I don't want to eat it. Or look at it. Halloween has been growing in popularity in Australia, but I remain unmoved. Though I love seeing my friends getting a lot of joy out of it. Why am I talking about Halloween in a post about Beltane? Because in the Northern hemisphere, Halloween lines up with Samhain, and it is a nice autumny time. In Australia, it is spring but really it is already summer where I live in. And because our year of the wheel for sabbats is the opposite down here, the 31st of October is actually time to celebrate Beltane.

Beltane (31st October - 1st November, 2020)

Beltane is between the spring equinox and the summer solstice, and it celebrates life and fertility. Beltane fires are a common theme, but I did not light any fires here. And I certainly didn't jump over them. And certainly not with another human. Nor did I make a Maypole. Instead, I did what I do best and celebrated with food. All the recipes I made ended up being from books written by Colleen Patrick-Goudreau! That wasn't a concious decision, it just worked out that way.

Strawberry Lemonade from Color Me Vegan: My first time making homemade lemonade, it it won't be my last. In fact, I have another recipe chilling in my fridge as I type this. Strawberries are just going out of season here, so I made the most of them with this gorgeous drink. It is really nice and tangy, with the right amount of sugar and a good flavour balance. It did foam up a lot in the blender, which you can see here. But delicious.
Rating: :)



Pasta Primavera from The Vegan Table: Spring vegetables is a great way to celebrate Beltane, and this very simple pasta dish was packed with carrots, zucchini, asparagus, tomatoes, and basil. Also some olives. I left out the capsicum, scallions, and red pepper flakes. I made this with 8oz (250g) of pasta rather than 12oz (which the book says would be 160g of pasta, which is just completely wrong), and because I was using less pasta I only used 3/4 cup or stock rather than 1 cup for the final simmer. The next day I had the leftovers made into a pasta salad, with some Vegenaise, nooch, and chopped celery added. I love turning pasta leftovers into pasta salads, inspired by Food for Dissertating.
Rating: :)





Fruity Spinach Salad: I picked this salad because spinach is a great spring vegetable, and it had berries in the dressing, also very Beltane. The dressing is a really nice blend of raspberries (I used frozen ones, thawed out) and seasoned rice vinegar. I made a half recipe of the dressing, and kind of just went by feel for the rest of the ingreidents. But it has baby spinach, oranges, cucumbers, slivered almonds (that I used instead of chopped macadamias), and sunflower seeds in it. It was also meant to have poppy seeds in it, but I was out.
Rating: :)



Raspberry Oatmeal Bars from The Joy of Vegan Baking: This recipe is so quick and easy to make! It is a simple crumble of flour, brown sugar, oats, and Nuttelex that is pressed into the base, covered in raspberry jam, and then sprinkled with more of the oat crumble mix. The only think you need to think about is remembering to take your Nuttelex out to soften.
Rating: :)



And here is my dinner all together.



The next day I did not wash my face in the morning dew, as some people speak about. That would not really work here. But I did have a lovely breakfast of crumpets with rice malt syrup (instead of honey) and some fresh strawberries on the side.

Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



Just a couple of cuties.

VeganMoFo 2015 #15: Guess who's coming to dinner?

15. OMG, Barack Obama is coming over because he knows you make awesome vegan food! What are you going to make?

First up, today is my 15 year veganversary, so yay! I don't know the exact date, to be honest, I just know it was September 2000 when I made the decision to go vegan and make it stick (I'd had two failed attempts), and I was going off to do some practical work for uni (on a horse stud of all places) and I packed vegan food. The rest is history. Anyway, mid-September feels about right, so I mark it on the 15th. Of course I am at work today, so no chance to really celebrate with ridiculous food, but there is still time for happy reflection on the reason that I became vegan (the animals) and the reason I remain vegan (the animals). The fact that the food is awesome is just an added bonus!

UPDATE: Due to work and other commitments, I prepared several posts in advance for MoFo. I wrote this post up last week, when Tony was Prime Minister. However, LAST NIGHT there was a leadership spill, and Tony was ousted. Our new Prime Minister is Malcolm Turnbull. As I didn't have time to put together a spread of vegan caviar and pate and expensive champagne for Malcolm to come over, I still am going with the Tony dinner. Turnbull would be too busy smugly celebrating to come over for dinner today anyway. Pretty rude of them to not wait another 24 hours to do the spill so that I could get my MoFo post out! I have updated the post a little bit to reflect these recent changes. Let's get political!

Back to MoFo! So the Americans get Barack Obama to be their president, here in Australia we were stuck with Tony Abbott as prime minister... until last night. Anyway, due to locality I am going to have to have Tony over for dinner (now it will be a sorry you got booted dinner), because the last time Obama came to Brisbane parts of the city were shut down and it was annoying, and I wouldn't do that to the people of Brisbane. See what I a kind soul I am? To be honest, I can't imagine Abbott being at all excited about vegan food, but I will lure him here with the promise of onions. Tony Abbott loves onions so much, he will eat them raw, skin on. Full credit to Amy, who is awesome, for coming up with the hilarious onions for dinner idea!

Of course I am not going to serve raw onions. I myself don't like raw onions. Instead I settled on the French Onion Pie from The Vegan Table aka Tony's Schadenfreude Pie.



The recipe makes two 9 inch pies, I halved it to only make one. It calls for thawed, uncooked pie shells. We can't get pre-made vegan pie shells here, so I made my pastry from scratch using the savoury shortcrust recipe from Wrapped in Pastry by my awesome friend Leigh Drew.



The filling for the pie is slowly caramelised onions, which is then mixed with a pureed tofu base, poured into the partially baked pie shell and then baked until brown and set. It set up really well, and sliced beautifully. It had a lovely mellow and sweet flavour.

I also made the Rawkin' Rainbow Kale Salad with Creamy Chili-Lime Dressing from The Abundance Diet. Same-sex marriage has been a much talked about issue in Australian federal politics lately, with Tony being firmly against it. The dressing in this recipe is based on red capsicum, but I totally changed it around using some carrots and sundried tomatoes instead. I did have to thin it a bit with water to get it smooth. The dressing on its own was quite strong in terms of lime and salt, however blends wonderfully with all the vegetables. I used a bag of baby kale rather than chopped regular kale. For the toppings I left out the raw onion, and substituted jicama for radish because I couldn't find jicama, I also added some cherry tomatoes and cucumbers as well. It looked pretty!



Dinner is served Tony. Also, I noticed that the pie, much like a revenge leadership spill, was excellent served cold.



There are so many other issues I have with Abbott and his government (issues that will continue, even with the leadership change), that to make a dish representing each one of them would mean I would still be in the kitchen cooking! To be honest I didn't make a dessert because I don't see us really hitting it off at all, and why prolong the awkwardness.

In good news, the pie makes for excellent leftovers! Here it is being a lunch at work, with lots of vegetables leftover after I made the salad on the side.



Recipe ratings: Pie :D, Salad :)

Cute Kitty Photo of the Post: Month of Gizmo



Gizmo believed in equality and love.

Menu Madness: The Vegan Table: Curry in a Hurry

I love making menus from books, and I love alliteration! The Vegan Table by Colleen Patrick-Goudreau is a book full of menu plans.

I made the Curry in a Hurry menu last year for Father's Day, because my dad loves all things Indian. To be honest, sometimes the menus in this book seem a little disjointed, but this is relatively simple and goes together very nicely. This menu is from the 'Formal Dining for Six to Ten' chapter and is the 'Summer' section (I did not actually make this in summer, which is pretty shocking for me).

Pumpkin Curry: I only made a half batch of this (as I was cooking for three). This uses lentils, onions, pumpkin purees, shredded coconut and spices. Because I am a chili wimp, I used one dried chili instead of five. I needed to increase the heat and cover for the last 10 minutes of cooking to get the lentils to cook all the way through. I also changed the water to vegetable stock for some more flavour.
Rating: :)



Yellow Split Pea Dal: I made the whole recipe of this, which made an okay amount, but if I broke this into the 6 servings it said it makes they would be pretty small. I love dal, and this was nice and satisfying, though not the best dal I've made.
Rating: :)



Looking nice and tasty together!



This menu doesn't have anything green or really many vegetables at all, so I roasted a bunch of Brussels Sprouts to go on the side.



Curried Puff Pastry Nibbles from Quick-Fix Vegan by Robin Robertson: This is a ring-in. I wanted something a little extra as the menu itself was fairly simple, so I picked these cute curried puff pastry twists. Ready-made puff pastry is pressed with a mixture of ground cashews and spices, then baked. I found they turned out a little dry, but nothing some mango chutney couldn't fix.
Rating: :)



I served all of this with some brown basmati rice for a very tasty plate.



Frozen Mango Lassi: Of course we had to end with dessert. This menu ends with a frozen mango lassi, made mango, yoghurt, agave and cardamom. The mango and the yoghurt need to be frozen first, and because it was not mango season I just used a bag of frozen mango I always have on-hand for smoothies. This made quite a large amount. On the night I served it with some strawberry cupcakes (from Colleen's other book The Joy of Vegan Baking).
Rating: :)





Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



Remember Honey from my last post? Here she is helping me out at work by lying on the keyboard.

Apples for my Dad.

As I continue to catch up on my backlog of Things To Blog, these are the special dinners I made my father last year. I just discussed how my mother loves baked beans. Well, my dad likes apples, and you will see a few apple desserts coming up.

Birthday 2010

My dad let me pick for his birthday dinner last year. I know he really likes seitan, so I chose The Vegan Ghost of Julia Child Menu from Veganomicon.


The main course was Sauteed Seitan with Mushrooms and Spinach with Herb-Scalloped Potatoes. The seitan calls for 2 cups, but I have written here that I used a whole batch, which I think must mean that I used 500g (1lb) of seitan, as that is what I consider a normal batch size. The recipe calls for 6 cups of spinach, but it cooks down a lot so you can always add more for extra green goodness. The potatoes are good too, though they never seem to brown up quite as much as I would like. There seems to be a lot of liquid in them.


The dessert was Individual Heart-Shaped Apple Galettes, which are SO CUTE! I was a bit worried that they wouldn't work out, but they were really easy and look adorable. They would be awesome for company.


This is the Bulgur, Arugula, and Cannellini Salad. I did not actually make this the same night as my Dad's birthday dinner, but it is an optional part of the menu, so I thought I'd share it here with you. I made it to take to work for lunches. It is nice, but even better topped off with some marinated mushrooms or baked tofu - yum!

Father's Day 2010

My dad also likes vegetable curries. He picked a red curry for Father's Day.


I thought I might have a go at making my own curry paste, so I did. This is the Red Curry Paste from The Asian Vegan Kitchen. It was very easy to use, and looked so fresh and spectacular compared to the stuff from the bottle.


The curry paste went into Thai Curry With Veggies from The Vegan Table. The recipe says it yields 2-4 servings, but it seemed to make HUGE servings! I did add some additional broccoli to make it a bit more green, but still! Next time I would cut down on the potatoes, three potatoes seems excessive, especially when serving with rice. I also used carrots instead of red capsicum.


Dessert was the Apple and Pear Cobbler from 1000 Vegan Recipes, served with some soy ice cream. In this recipe I did not grate the apples, I just chopped them and it worked out fine. I would have like a teeny bit more of the topping mixture to spread over it.

Birthday Cake

Not content with a birthday dinner and a Father's Day dinner, my Dad also wanted a cake! He wanted a dessert for his birthday dinner, and a cake for later.


This is the Apple Lover's Cake from 1000 Vegan Recipes. This cake never really rose, it stayed quite flat and lumpy throughout the baking process. I also found I needed to add another teaspoon of juice to the icing to make it spread enough, but be careful as it gets too runny quickly. It has apple sauce, dried apple and fresh apple in it, plus apple juice in the glaze, so it is apples all around.

Cute Kitty Photo of the Post


The handsome Possum, being adorable in the garden again. He loves lying in this garden so much, and snuggling gently up to the flowers.

(% '1000 Vegan Recipes' Blogged: 9.2%)