Midweek Munchies

Hi friends, thanks for being lovely. Here are some munchies.

This is the KM Foods Lemon Meringue Cheesecake. I got it from the freezer section at The Green Edge, and it is lovely! As with all the KM cheesecakes, the base needs some work. It tastes good but is a bit too soft. But the tart lemon filling and the fluffy sweet meringue, delightful!



These vegan wontons were hanging out in my freezer for AGES. I had plants to make some wonton soup with them, but then that all became a bit much and I ended up just cooking them and eating them. After all that anticipation time, they were kind of bland.



There's this great little Japanese grocery store just down the road from me, and one visit there I picked up this vegan friendly soy milk corn soup. It was SO GOOD! It is like a cream of corn soup and just delicious and I need to go back there and buy a bunch more. Incredible with toast spread with a little nuttelex for dipping into it.



Chicken Flavor Ramen Noodle Snack sounded nice, little crunchy bites of chicken flavoured ramen noodles. BUT, oh my gosh friends, these are SO SALTY. Imagine just opening up the seasoning packet from ramen noodles and putting it straight into your mouth. I died. I ended up putting them in a mug and covering them with boiling water to turn them into a noodle soup, which was much better. That flavour needs some dilution.



Balsamic Vinegar and Caramelised Onion Seed Crackers were really nice. They had a really good flavour, and were great with hummus.



OmBar is a newer chocolate brand here, and I got this Fruit and Nut chocolate on sale. It of course was a bit too sweet, but I do love a fruit and nut chocolate bar.



My favourite Fry's Vegan Brioche Buns have vanished, but this new brand is around now. They are not as good as the Fry's ones, but they are not bad. RIP Fry's buns.



Finishing off with this Super Vegan lasagne. You can see from the photo that instead of making a regular vegan lasagne, they decided to cram as many superfoods into it as they could. And I must ask, why? Just make a regular vegan lasagne. The miso mornay part was good!



That's it from me this week! How are you all holding up?

In three and a half weeks I will be on my way to the UK! So that's something that is happening.

Also just started planning a visit to the US for next year.

Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



Please enjoy this photo of Mirabelle making Eloise lick her head. It happens several times a day, Mirabelle just presents to Eloise with her head down. LICK MY HEAD PLEASE! How long it takes Eloise to get sick of it and bop Mirabelle instead varies.

Midweek Munchies

Hello friends!

Yesterday I got back from a trip to Sydney (the first trip I've been on since several years before COVID even started), where I saw Taylor Swift! I also ate some great food. And I wore my N95 mask and sprayed my nasal spray frequently because we are still in a pandemic! Even if I was the only one who was doing that.

I will share some of my Sydney foods soon, but today as I ease back into blogging it seemed like some Midweek Munchies would be a good way to go. Especially as it is Wednesday today. So, let's see if I can remember anything about these things!

I love kraut, and I love dill pickles, and this was an excellent combination. I had it on sandwiches, salads, and bowls, and very much enjoyed it. I'd buy it again.



This is a new brand of vegan M&M type things, that you can get in Woolworths. They suffer slightly from them trying to reduce the sugar content in it, but at least they don't have stevia in them. They use monkfruit. The peanut ones are the best!



After trying the Impressed Strawberry Oat Milk, I tried the chocolate one after I found it on sale. Again, a but of a funny aftertaste, there are much better vegan chocolate milks out there.



It had been years since I'd had the Field Roast burgers, but they were on sale at The Green Edge so I bought some and stashed them in my freezer until the time was right. I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed them!



Some yummy savoury pies from Coles.



I found these vegan friendly chips at Ikea. I don't remember what they were like, which I guess means they were fine. Not good enough or bad enough to leave an impression.



Of course I had to buy the sweet mustard pickle made with kombucha, how ridiculous. Alas, it wasn't that good. I like my sweet mustard pickle to have actual chunks of pickle in it, and this was weirdly smooth and sludgy.



Coles makes a Vegan Caesar Salad dressing, and it is great! Though the most recent bottle I got looks different, so I hope they haven't changed the recipe.



Cute Kitty Photos of the Post



Eloise, helping me pack for Sydney.

BrisVenture 2023 Day Six and Seven: The Final Edition (also, I LIVE!)

HELLO FRIENDS, I AM ALIVE!

I don't know how it has been almost three months since I have posted on here. Time and things just got away from me. Then I fell into a spiral where I was really far behind on catching up on blog posts, but then for some reason blogger and google wouldn't communicate properly and stopped me from commenting a bunch, so then I felt bad about posting again before I'd caught up. Which is silly talk, I can post and then catch up! Also I have fixed the blogger/google thing so now I can comment again on the posts I still haven't read.

So, what have I been doing?? I have been pretty much working, being with my cats, and my hyperfixation on Our Flag Means Death is as strong as ever. Did you know that MAX cancelled the show even though pre-production for the third season was already underway, and it is one of their highest rating shows?? They did. And it may sound silly, but that really put me in a very not good place. Thankfully part of my OFMD hyperfixation is that I have a wonderful community online of fellow fans, how great is that! Also, we are going to save our show, or possibly die trying.

With that in mind, before you read on could you please visit SaveOFMD.com and sign the petition? Sign it from every email account you have. Share it with your friends, family, colleagues, strangers. The petition is just one part of the campaign to save the show, but every signature could help!

But I know what you are here for, food times! So, time to finish up my adventures with my friends who visited me in November. On our final day, we went to a vegan market. Not one of the regular Brisbane Vegan Markets, this was a ticketed event for one weekend only. I was thinking it was going to be like the Brisbane Vegan Expo I'd been to before. I could not have been more wrong. It was tiny, and had almost no interesting stalls. We were so disappointed. Luckily, it at least had a small collection of food stalls that we visited. And it was in a pretty location.



Helen went straight for this plate of Balinese food.



I started with some tofu rice paper rolls. Molly also got a noodle bowl from the same stall, but I forgot to take a photo of that!



And Sharnette tried a cheeseburger served on a doughnut bun from Vegood!



I also got a pretzel with mustard beer sauce, and a trio of bao from Vegood.



And we all got some lychee iced tea, lychee was the flavour of the day!



What did we do after this? We went home and did... things. I don't quite remember what we got up to in the afternoon. But I do remember we got pizza for dinner from Pizza Hut, and everyone was very impressed that we had several pizza chains with vegan options. We also had fairy bread and Vegemite on toast, and watched the movie of What We Do In The Shadows.

We had a pretty low key day for the final day, starting with Helen making us all beans on toast. This is a very common thing here in Australia, but apparently not in the US!



We ate some vegan meat pies for lunch (apparently also not a thing in the US) and then went back to The Green Edge for everyone to do a final shop. Then home for Helen to make us dinner! Helen and Molly had bought some Plant Based Garlic Kievs, and we cooked those up with some sauteed brocollini and roasted potatoes.





Early the next morning, I took them to the airport and they headed off to Sydney. I had so much fun with them while they were here! Australia is so far away from most of the rest of the world, and Brisbane doesn't have the general appeal of Melbourne or Sydney, so the fact that they came and spent a whole week with me was so special! And I'm always open to visitors from cool overseas friends!!

I plan to be back as much as I can. I still have so many photos to share for things! Though lately I have hardly been cooking, thanks fibro! Chronic pain and fatige sucks. I also have some cool things coming up - I am going to Sydney on the weekend to see Taylor's final Australian Era's show on Monday the 26th of Feb, and then this time in two months I will be on my Scotland/Barcelona adventure! All with my N95 mask strapped to my face, of course.

How have you all been??

Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



Ignore the messy background, but this is a rare photo of all of the girls! They are all doing pretty well, and are as adorable as ever!

BrisVenture 2023: Day 5: Kangaroos, Koalas, and Izakaya Midori

Hello and welcome back to the penultimate post about my adventures with my friends from American.

I took then out to Coombabah at the Gold Coast, for some guaranteed kangaroo watching and probably koala sightings. I am happy to report that both were achieved! Excuse the fuzzy koala picks, it really is like trying to photograph a backlit blob high up in a tree.













Then we hit up Izakaya Midori for a late lunch.

Smoked Edamame.



Agedashi Tofu.



Edamame Chips.



Okonomiyaki and Veef Sushi.



Teriyaki Tofu Don.



Katsu Sushi.



Terichiki Don.



Chiki Avo Nigiri.



Aka Ramen.



After this incredible feast, we headed home, and there was a little bit of resting. Molly made us a late dinner, which included some Lamyong Salty Crispy Chicken she had bought from The Green Edge, rice, salad, and croutons.



Only one more post to share with you about our final two days together! A week goes so quickly.

Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



This Monday just gone (the 27th of November) was the three year anniversary of Dim Sim's passing. I miss her so much.

BrisVenture 2023: Day 1: The Green Edge, Sushi

Hello friends! Last week the magical happened, and I had three friends from the US come and stay with me! My friend Molly had come and stayed with me in 2017, but this time she brought my long time Seattle friend Helen with her, plus new friend Sharnette. Helen and I have known each other for just over ten years, ever since she slid into my DMs on my second visit to Seattle and we had dinner. I have since visited her there twice more, including staying with her during my final visit, but it has been EIGHT YEARS since we have seen each other, and for her to be here in my hometown was incredible! They arrived early Monday morning, and I picked them up from the airport. I also saw these two coming through customs.



After initial pick up, it was home for them to all have a shower (it was a long flight, made longer by delays) and get situated. Then we headed out for some food and vegan shopping at The Green Edge (see my previous posts about The Green Edge here). We ordered a lot of food! And some very fun drinks. Including the Strawberries & Cream Frappe for Sharnette, colourful lattes (turmeric for me, matcha for Molly, beetroot for Helen) and Helen also got a Salted Caramel Milkshake.







Lunch started with some chips and some Buffalo cauliflower wings.



Helen was committed to trying Australian things while she was here, so she got the Origin Burger (it has beetroot, which makes it Australian), where as Molly and Sharnette for the VFC Four Piece Meal and the VFC Burger respectively. I had the Mac & Cheese with a side of turkish bread. Sharnette also got the Truffled Mac & Cheese to try and take home for later.











After lunch, some shopping was done at The Green Edge for fun things. Then I took them to our two major supermarkets, Coles and Woolworths, so they could see and buy some of the vegan things we have available here. It was a pretty fun shopping trip!

After that we headed home for a very relaxed evening and early night. For dinner we ordered in some vegan sushi from a place called Sushi Too: Mini Tofu Rolls, Mini Avocado Rolls, Mini Pickle Rolls, Tofu and Vegetable Rolls, Inari, and Seaweed salad.



I am very excited to share our adventures and food with you from the week. Can't believe it is already over. At least I can relive the magic through blogging!

Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



One of the joys was introducing my girls to my friends! Eloise is pretty shy when you first meet her, and it took her a few days to fully warm up, but she was much admired. Obviously.