Eating Out: Grown

A few days after Abby passed away, my lovely friend Alana motivated me to get up out of bed and meet her for brunch. Getting out of bed and eating were two things that were not high on my agenda, but she gave me the push I needed. I met Alana through Abby, she is involved with the rescue Abby was adopted from, and we had become friends on Instagram. We met at Grown, where I have been several times before. When I made the booking, I asked for an outside table that was well undercover, and they provided with a lovely table for two, tucked under cover and completely separate from other people.

Grown makes the best hot chocolate, and we both got one. Even if you aren't in shock and grief, I recommend getting a big mug to soothe your soul.



I got the Congee, which came with slow roasted tomatoes, asian greens, woodland mushrooms, ginger, soy and mustard. This was just a perfect savoury bowl of comfort food.



I also got a side of one of their amazing Hash Browns, and also some of their fabulous smoked sesame cheese.



My friend got their avocado toast on gluten free bread. It came with housemade vegemite, sesame cheese, chickpea crumb, and pickled onion. She also got a hashbrown on the side.



On my way back to my car, I had to walk down by the river for a little bit. Which was beautiful. Even though the Brisbane river is brown, it is still nice to be near trees and water.



Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



I still cannot believe that my beautiful girl is gone. Sometimes it seems like she was a dream. How could that have happened? I love you so much Abby.

Eating In: Baked Things

As more and more places offer vegan options, I have been slowly trying some of them out! Mostly in the before the borders opened and COVID became everywhere times.

Muffin Break has started offering some vegan muffin options, as well as a vegan pie. But they don't always have them, it took me about three or four times before I was successful. I tried the vegan mixed berry muffin, which was fine. Nothing outstanding, but good. I also got the vegan pie, which again, was fine.





In early December I actually went into the city for an appointment, in that brief glorious time before the borders opened. We are back to telehealth now. But on this visit in, I went to the Wednesday markets and picked up this vegan banana chocolate chip cookie. I don't remember the name of the stall, but there are a bunch of places there with vegan options.



Zafarra's is a coffee shop chain, and that have a Blueberry and Banana vegan muffin. Absolutely horrific, do not try. It just tasted like baking soda. Blergh.



Finally, doughnuts are not really a baked good, but they are still on theme. I saw this cute place called Happy Dough at Garden City, and they seemed to have some vegan doughnuts! I got a jam and a lemon curd filled doughnut, and they gave me two cinnamon sugar doughnuts for free! Not all of their doughnuts are vegan, but several are. They are also gluten free, so they did suffer from being a bit heavy and gummy, but the flavours were good.





Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



Another teeny kitten. This is Elle, when she was a baby! She is now a grown up kitten who is going to be ready for adoption soon! But she was so itty and bitty!

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.

Eating Out: Grown (Birthday edition)

Hello friends, today is my birthday! I am turning 40, which apparently is a big deal but I am not so much a birthday person. I am not doing anything big for it, rather I am having a few small outings with only one or two people at each. And it started this morning, when my parents and I went to Grown for breakfast! You can see the other times I have been to Grown here. We all ordered the same thing! A mug of soy hot chocolate (their hot chocolate is the best!), and the tofu scramble (roasted mushrooms and silken tofu, with a slice of sourdough spread with sesame cheese) with a side of hashbrown (they make the best and crispiest ones) and seasonal sauteed greens. Everything was delicious, as it always is! But it was HUGE! We were all so full.





Afterwards I went home and made a cake! And while I was waiting for it to cool, we watched Bring It On. Bring It On is my favourite movie, and I will never get tired of watching it. It is iconic, and a classic. But about that cake...

Raspberry & Coconut Polenta Cake from Like A Vegan: I've had this on my too make list for ages, and this seemed like a great time. It is super fast to make! I mixed all the dry ingredients together the day before, so when we got home from breakfast I just pre-heated the over, mixed up the wet, and mixed it all together. So easy. It also fit my other birthday cake brief, because I am not a huge fan of icing. I love that this cake is delicious and gorgeous without needing ice cream! You could sift a bit of icing sugar over the top if you wanted to make it look a bit fancier (I did not do this because I am not an icing sugar fan), or serve it with a scoop of ice cream (definitely going to do this with leftovers). I highly recommend people try this cake out!



A couple of other birthday related photos...

My mum ordered me these beautiful bunch of flowers! She had ordered an arrangement with peonies, which are my favourite flowers, but the florist somehow managed to not actually include any. Good work florist! It is still a lovely bunch of flowers.



I also got some lovely vegan treats. My mum has ordered from this brand before, and she managed to get all of my favourites!



In other birthday-related news, two days ago I got my hair dyed pink again. This was my second time going pink, but this was a lot more pink over all of my hair! Here is a rare photo of me.



Stay tuned for more food-related fun times! I'm getting ready to go for dinner with some friends in a couple of hours.

Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



This time last year, I knew Dim Sim was sick. What I didn't realise was how little time we had left together. Just 20 days. I am forever grateful that I decided to spend my birthday last year home with her rather than going out.

Eating Out: Grown

Australia is in the middle of a big COVID concern at the moment. Sydney and Victoria are locked down as I type. We have a mask madate up here. So this is back in prior times, in May, when my friend Amy and I went out to dinner with our friend Theresa who had come down to Brisbane for a few days. She got to pick the restaurant, and she chose Grown. I have posted about Grown a number of times before, and it is a place I love and will always recommend to visitors.

I was super excited to order some of their sesame cheese and greens dumplings... but that was the only thing they had sold out of! Heartbroken! Instead I ordered the Charred Broccoli with Warm Pickled Potato Salad. It may look simple, but it was really lovely. They got so much flavour into that broccoli!



Theresa ordered the Gobi Manchurian with Saffron Amasake and Crispy Fried Rice.



And Amy ordered the Housemade Gnocchi with Fresh Corn, Jalapeno, Coconut, and Herbs.



We all ordered the same thing for dessert, the Housemade Chocolate Cheesecake with House Burnt Marshmallow. Of course it came out and they were describing it an mentioned coconut oil and I mentally kicked myself for not checking. But I decided to just commit to it, and eat it before I could regret it. Because it looked amazing! And it was amazing! I could maybe taste a little bit of coconut in it initially, but it faded fast. The beautiful cheesecake was topped with some plum jam and then this toasted marshmallow that was divine. I drank a lot of water to help flush out any coconut oils, and I felt a little icky for a bit, but nothing bad or lasting, and it was kind of worth it for this delight!



Please enjoy Amy's professional hand modelling in the above photo!

Grown - 21 Buchanan Street, West End - 07 3036 7213

Midweek Munchies

As I continue in my recovery, I feel pretty normal most of the time. But one thing is that my appetite has been quite sluggish. Normally I am so food motivated! I am still making sure I eat, and slowly I am starting to get hungry again and starting to think about certain foods longingly. Here is a look back to some munchies from the before times!

Let's start with the bad. This peanut butter cup. What a lie. It was awful. It didn't taste anything like peanut butter, the filling was sort of gritty, I ended up giving the second one in the packet to my dad because it was just too disappointing. Even if I wasn't expecting a peanut butter cup, I still wouldn't have liked whatever this was. Justin's forever!



Thankfully these new sauces from Coles were a much better buy! You'll see them turning up in future posts. But a rundown is that the Cheeseburger sauce is sort of a ketchup/mustard/pickle combination and the vegan burger sauce is like a Big Mac/special sauce. Both very good and do recommend.



I was pleasantly surprised by this frozen Ruffie's spaghetti and meatless ball meal. It was small, as they always are, but tasted good and I enjoyed the meatless balls. All pitiful three of them. Vegan are hungry, gimme more balls! But I have also heard from a friend that she hated this. So, I guess it depends. After I tooked this photo I also added some FYH parmesan (shaker bottle variety) on top which was a very nice addition.



Always on the look out for savoury snacks, these Big Red Tomato veggie rings grabbed my eye in the shops, plus they were on a 50% off sale. They are teeny tiny little rings, so you eat these by the handful. They were nice, though reminded somehow of tomato-y creamed corn, because corn is one of the main ingredients. There's a corn cob right on the cover! I don't know that I would get these again myself, but they are worth trying.



I bought these vegan gnocchi for a recipe I was making (that will eventually appear here). A lot of the packaged gnocchi do tend to be vegan, but I thought I'd spend the extra two dollars to get this fancy one with vegan on the cover. They are really good! The recipe I made required them to be cooked then roasted, and they were absolutely delicious to snack on! These are definitely a bit of a splurge gnocchi, they are more expensive than the other ones, but I really liked them.



Finally, a very adult snack I made myself one afternoon for a post-work snack. Celery sticks filled with peanut butter and sultanas, and a strawberry soy milk. I'm a grown up!



Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



Dim Sim would like you to know that while she takes her carer duties very seriously, it is also tiring work and she needs to get her naps in where she can.

Eating Out*: Grown

*Not at the moment. STAY HOME!

Last year a friend visited Brisbane from interstate, and we went out for brunch at Grown, one of my favourite vegan cafes. You can see some previous visits here.

I had their amazing Dark Hot Chocolate on soy milk, and my friend had an Almond Latte.



My friend tried the avocado on toast, which came with homemade vegetmite and smoked sesame cheese.



I had my favourite, their silken tofu and mushroom scramble with a side of hash brown.The scramble also comes with a perfect piece of sourdough toast topped with smoked sesame cheese. This is so good, probably the best scramble I've ever had.



During COVID, Grown is currently still open for takeaway only, and is offering both brunch and dinner hours.

Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



Say hello to one of our neighbourhood kitties! This kitty enjoys hanging out in our yard, but normally takes off as soon as they see me. But the other day I was outside near the pool with Dim Sim on her harness, and they were very intrigued in my precious girl!

Recipe Round-Up: World Vegan Feast

World Vegan Feast by Bryanna Clark Grogan is one of those books that I bought and then it languished on my shelf for years, unused. In fact, I have only blogged about one recipe from it before! Why? Possibly in part because some of the recipes are fairly involved? But since I dusted it off last year and challenged myself to cook from it, I don't know what took me so long. There are loads of amazing recipes! Here's some of what I have been enjoying.

Multi-Grain Sushi Salad: This uses a blend of short grain rice (it said brown rice, I just used regular white sushi rice) and toasted millet as the grains. I cooked these int he rice cooker for ease. The rice is tossed in a mix of vinegar, salt,and sugar (I left out the optional vinegar), and the book gives a huge suggestions for additions. I added some grated carrot, chopped cucumber and celeray, and some Japanese marinated tofu. Topped off with some pickled ginger, soy sauce, and nori strips. Served over chopped cos, this was a lovely and refreshing dinner.
Rating: :D



Fresh Pineapple-Noodle Stir-Fry: This is a mix of portabello mushrooms, seitan or tofu (I used a 200g pack of Japanese marinated tofu), silverbeet, and of course pineapple. The noodles in question are spaghetti. I left out the sriracha from the sauce, which also had a lot of ginger and some molasses and lime. The sauce was a bit of the too sour side, and needed some sweetness added to it.
Rating: :|



Singapore Noodles: I love Singapore Noodles, but a lot of places make it too hot with the curry powder for me to eat it. At home I can control it myself. This recipe is based on vermicelli rice noodles, and has broccoli, carrot, zucchini, celery (which I used in place of capsicum), and green onions in it. It also calls for seitan/tofu/soy curls and also some smoked tofu/vegan seafood. I used a 200g packet of Japanese marinated tofu and some thick slices of Just Add... Vegan Ham. I changed the order of stir-frying to go sliced spring onions, then I added ginger and garlic, then I added all the veggies, then I added tofu. I also decreased the curry powder from 2 tsps to 1/2 tsp of mild curry powder. Served over baby spinach, I got three serves.
Rating: :)



Japanese Pan-Fried Noodles: Yes I like noodles! This is a version of yakisoba, the fried Japanese noodle dish. It uses soba noodles, carrot, cabbage, and seitan/tofu/soy curls. Can you guess what I used? Yes, a 200g packet of Japanese marinated tofu. I love that stuff. The sauce uses vegan worcestershire sauce, and there is a recipe in the book for it, but I just used some I had bought. I found it a bit bland overall, some added soy sauce certainly perked it up.
Rating: :)



Peruvian Squash and Vegetable Stew: I made a half recipe of this, which gave me 2-3 serves, and only needed a shorter 15 minute simmer to be ready compared to the full amount. I used butternut squash, and the stew is also filled with tomatoes, corn, and peas. I took the option of adding some shredded cheese (I used FYH mozzarella), and topped it with some black olives. I also added some baby spinach into the stew itself, because greens. Served over some rice. It has a really lovely flavour. I am just a bit confused by its inclusion in the Beans Around The World chapter, because there are no beans in it!
Rating: :)



General Tso's Stir-Fry: I made a half recipe of this to serve two people, but really it was more like one serve. I'd say a full recipe would serve two, not four. I used some of my precious soy curls stash in my freezer for this. Once reconstituted (I used some chicken style stock for that), they are marinaded in a mix of cornstarch, sherry and mushroom oyster sauce (there is a recipe for this in the book, I used bottled). They are stir-fried with some ginger and garlic (I left out the chile), and then soy and vinegar based sauce is added. I served this over some rice and spinach. The taste was good, though I would have preferred a bigger serve!
Rating: :)



Crispy Tofu with Olives and Corn-Tomato Relish: This takes one of the base recipes for the book - crispy marinated tofu slices - and turns it into a lovely summery meal.The tofu is marinated, coated with seasoned flour, and fried until crispy. It is topped with a lovely summery relish, which includes a lovely dose of fresh basil and salty olives. The corn and tomatoes are broiled/grilled to give a great flavour. I made a half recipe for this, which gave two small serves. It says you can serve it hot, room temp, or cold, I went with hot and served it with some smashed baked potatoes and roasted zucchini.
Rating: :)



Braised Baby Bok Choy and Shiitake Mushrooms: I turned this side dish into a main dish by adding, you know that I love it, a Japanese marinated tofu. This uses dried shiitakes that you reconstitute, which is nice if you can't get fresh ones. I chopped my baby bok choy rather than slicing it, and I cooked the stems with the mushrooms and added the greens at the end. This is a simple dish, but very tasty. Served over rice.
Rating: :)



Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



Several weeks ago, I shared a photo on here of two sweet little grey and white adoption kittens, sleeping angelically. I wanted to get a photo of them a bit more grown up for you. Hahahahaha. They say they do not sit still for the camera! I would try and sneak up on them sleeping, but as soon as they caught wind, hello! Please enjoy a blurry photo of Harriet (white and grey) and Billy Bob (grey and white).