Eating Out: Buddha's Birthday Festival (with bonus NASA at Night)

Every year there is the Buddha's Birthday Festival at Southbank, which includes a vegetarian food stall fair. Not everything is vegan, but there are a lot of vegan goodies to be found there. The majority of the food there is Asian, not surprisingly, but there are burgers and chips and what not if you are after something else. I go there for the Asian food, though I struggle every year with choosing what to eat! So much food, so little stomach space! Last year I didn't get to go, it was just on a bad weekend for me, but you can see some of my visits from previous years here and here.

It was a rainy day, but thankfully had stopped raining by the late afternoon when I met up with my friend Amy. It was perfect, overcast, cool, and not very crowded thanks to the earlier rain. Of course we started by doing a walk through and trying to pick out what we wanted. We started by sharing a classic, the Steamed BBQ Pork Bun. This stall at the festival does the biggest, fluffiest ones ever, and I have been thinking about them ever since I was there two years ago. They didn't disappoint.



We hydrated with some fun drinks. Amy got a Watermelon Lemon Juice, and I had a Black Plum Juice. According to the sign, black plums are boiled and filtered to get the juice, then liquorice, osmanthus, and sugar are added. What is osmanthus? I just looked it up and sore it is a herb used in Chinese medicine. I don't think it detoxified my body (thanks liver and kidneys for doing that), but it was delicious.



I was feeling under the weather, so some soup seemed the way to go. Especially given the actual weather! I saw a Japanese stall that had some Kitsune Udon, and that was all I could think about. And it was delicious! I also found out that stall belonged to a restaurant that is super close to my house (and is also on UberEats to my house) and has some vegan options on their regular menu. GThis is very exciting, because I love Japanese food most of all!



Amy was also feeling like soup, and picked up a laksa from another stall.



I was still a bit peckish, and could eat a bit more. I happened to bump into a friend there who recommended I try some sticky rice. Wrapped in a bamboo leaf and stuffed with tofu, peanuts, and mushrooms I thought this was delicious. Unfortunately, the one that Amy got seemed to be stuffed with mostly peanuts, which wasn't so much fun. Please excuse the terrible photo, the light was fading at this point.



We weren't only there for food. It happened that this day, the fourth of May, May the fourth, coincided with a Museum At Night event for the NASA Exhibit at the QLD Museum. So after eating we headed in for an over-18 (read, no kids, hurrah_ trundle through the museum. It was a fascinating exhibit, with lots of cool stuff about space. Also a lot of photos and stories of white men, which was a bit disappointing. One small plaque with some white women. WHITE MEN ARE NOT THE ONLY PEOPLE WHO CONTRIBUTED TO SPACE TRAVEL. Below I share a few photos, including one of me being a serious space scientist, a teeny tiny capsule that makes me claustrophobic to think about, and Jabba the Hutt. It was Star Wars day after all!







And no trip to the museum is complete without saying hello to our friend the Muttaburrasaurus.



Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



My best friend gifted me this wonderful soft, warm, heavy jumper. It is wonderful to wear. And Dim Sim thought she'd try it out as a blankie as well.

Eating Out: PingAn Veggie Time

It's been a while, but I finally made my way back to PingAn Veggie Time, Brisbane's 100% vegan Thai restaurant. It is not really near my house, but it is close to one of our clinics so I took the opportunity to stop by there for lunch one day. I've only been here a couple of times before, but you can see those visits here.

They have a range of fun drinks, and I ordered a refreshing Lychee Drink with Fresh Lychees.



I was feeling pretty hungry, so I ordered two entrees. The Steamed BBQ Buns (big, soft, and yummy), and the Tofu Skewers with Peanut Sauce (delicious). I chomped those skewers straight down, I love the sauce. The BBQ buns were great, though by the time I ate one and my main, I was pretty full. Which was fine because I kept one and ate it later for afternoon tea at work and it was still great.





I chose my main off their lunch specials list, Veggies and Tofu with Mushroom Sauce and Rice. This ended up being fairly small, so it works well with getting an entree (or two, in my case, even if I did have to keep some for later). They always do cute shapes for their rice with the lunch meals, and this time I got a teddy bear. The sauce was lovely.



PingAn Veggie Time - Shop 3/708 Sandgate Road, Clayfield, QLD - (07) 3262 6056

Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



Dim Sim sleeps on my lap. This particular afternoon, she decided to use my soft tummy as her pillow, which was very cute. She's not normally a pillow cat, that was Sahara's deal, but I am happy to have a tummy for her to use as she wishes.

Recipe Round-Up: Vegan Desserts

Vegan Desserts by Hannah Kaminsky is an older book that has been sitting on my shelf for sometime. For some reason, I hadn't made anything from it! But that had to change. It has lovely and enticing photos, no surprise given Hannah's photography skills, and a range of delicious sounding recipes. A lot of these I made for bake sales, which are always great events to try out a bunch of fun baking recipes! The recipes are divided by season, with a final chapter for essentials at the back. This is my first round-up of this book, but I did post about one other recipe I made from it here.

Lemongrass Mac-Nut Blondies: These have a lovely subtle lemongrass flavour. The recipe says to chop the lemongrass as fine as possible, I just chopped small then blended with the milk to get it even finer without spending time and cutting fingers trying to get it super small. These baked up pretty tall and puffy, you can see the top cracked a bit, but they still look great and were are nice combination of flavours.
Rating: :)



Zesty Rhubarb Ripple Cake: I love rhubarb, and last spring was a great season for it. The rhubarb ripple is a lovely syrup made from simmering rhubarb (mine was frozen, and I also had a few strawberries I chucked in for fun) with sugar and water, which is then layered and swirled through a thick batter. While the batter has orange juice in it, I only realise after I made it that there was no orange zest in the recipe, although this was mentioned in the recipe introduction. I needed to give this cake an extra 10 minutes in my oven to cook. Just so you know, it rises a lot during cooking, so don't use a shallow pan!
Rating: :)



Mango Lassi Popsicles: I have a little ice block set with six small popsicle moulds, so I made a half batch of the recipe. This filled them all with a little extra left over, though you can just drink that like lassi so there is no waste! This is a very easy recipe, with only five ingredients. I used frozen mango because we had a very short mango season this year. These are a good snack, they are refreshing but also not too sweet.
Rating: :)



Cranberry Streusel Bars: OK, I loved these! A lovely tart cranberry filling, which is balanced by the sweet base and streusel. The filling calls for 3/4 cup of maple syrup, which is super expensive here, so I did use a recipe to make an extended maple syrup from another book to make it a bit more economical, topped up with a bit of pure maple syrup as well and a few drops of maple extract. These bars are very crumbly once you cut them, so a bit messy to eat, but absolutely delicious.
Rating: :D



Sweet Potato Casserole Cupcakes: To be honest, the idea of sweet potato casserole as seen on the Thanksgiving table isn't the most appealing to me. Being a very American thing, I didn't grow up with it, and no shade on people who do enjoy it! But I like the idea of it made into cupcakes. These cupcakes are baked with sweet potato puree. I blended my puree up with the milk and other wet ingredients to make sure it was perfectly smooth. It was a very thick batter, but it baked well and was not too dense. The maple frosting is very easy, and worked out to be pretty much the exact amount for the 12 cupcakes.
Rating: :)



Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



These two cuties are adoption kitties Winnie and Doris. They were hand raised by one of the nurses, and it is sad that they don't have homes yet! This photo is taken through the kitten enclosure, they were sitting on the top of a cat scratching post having a good snuggle. Getting photos of them are hard, because when they are on the go they are ON THE GO!

Eating Out: Dicki's

Brisbane is a bit spoiled for choice when it comes to vegan cafes, and I am not complaining one bit! Today's post is all about a couple of visits to the all-vegan Dicki's. You can read about my previous visits here.

I love their housemade maple lemonade. Made on still water (hurrah for not being fizzy), it is wonderfully tart and refreshing and has become my go to drink there.



My body has a low tolerance for deep fried food, it makes me feel sick quickly. But I couldn't go past the special of Gouda Cheese Sticks on one of my visits. Kind of like cheesy spring rolls. They were gooey and delicious, and served with some aioli for dipping.



They also have toastie specials every day, and I was tempted by one with tempeh, pumpkin, tomato, spinach, pesto, and aioli. It was a wonderful combination.



They also boast a cabinet full of vegan sweet treats, and I took home an Apple Crumble Muffin. This was amazing - the crumble is great, there is a hefty dose of apple, and it is huge! I ended up having it for breakfast the next morning with an apricot.



At my most recent visit, I again had some maple lemonade. I can't say no to it! And I also ordered their Big Breakfast for lunch, so I guess technically brunch. Is it still brunch if it is after 1pm? Anyway, this was a beautiful plate full of tofu scramble, sauteed mushrooms, crispy tempeh, hash brown, beetroot hummus, asparagus, roasted cherry tomatoes, and sourdough. The menu also said crumbed eggplant, but I guess they were out? I only realised just now that it didn't have that. I also ordered a side of their cashew dill cream, which is SO GOOD GUYS! I want a tub! Anyway, this was a great big breakfast. It was filling, but still light enough to not weigh me down and make me need a nap on my way to work.



I also picked up another apple crumble muffin, and a slice of lemon and yoghurt cake. No photo of the cake, because it got smooshed a bit in the container on the drive to work. But trust me when I say that it was delicious.

Dicki's - 893 Brunswick St, New Farm, QLD

Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



Jed's been at our main hospital for the last couple of days with a fever and a sore leg. Please send him get well soon wishes!

Cruelty Free Shop May 2019 Vegan Mystery Box

The final box of my six month Christmas gift subscription arrived today for the Cruelty Free Shop Vegan Mystery Box. Let us see what is inside, what sort of note are we going out on?

• Super Fudgio Peanut Salted Caramel Cream: Meh, caramel. But yay, peanut. They suggest that this is a creamy sweet treat snack on the go, but I can't imagine wanting to actually suck this down as I imagine it will be very sweet. I think it will be used as a topping for some sort of dessert.
• Chow Cacao Peanut Butter Slab: I have had this before, but it is a bit of a let down for my own peanut butter chocolate hopes and dreams. Instead of having distinct peanut butter and chocolate parts, the peanut butter is mixed through the chocolate. So you end up losing a lot of that peanut butter taste.
• Candy Lush Love Bear Lollies: I am not one for lollies, but these look super cute and fun and are made with fruit juice so I am hoping won't be too sweet. Vegan gummi bears!
• Belladotti Bacon Bits: I have a packet of these in my cupboard already, and they are really good. Crunchy and bacony, they are excellent on all sorts of things. So I am glad to have more of them.
• SuperOrb Mesquite, Oat, Cashew, Caramel Superfood Snack: That is a lot of things in that name, and there are even more in the ingredients! It seems to be a snack ball coated in 'wildcrafted chocolate' and then rolled in ground cashews, which wounds really interesting. Plus no coconut oil! Hurrah!
• The Chocolate Yogi Hunny Bunny: This is honey comb shards inside a milky style chocolate, so you know what I am going to say. A bit too sweet for me!
• Provamel Organic Soy Cream: I use soy creams in place of coconut cream in a lot of non-coconut requiring sauces and ice creams. Coconut cream and milk is a popular ingredient, but given my coconut fat intolerance I try and avoid it. If I'm making a curry or something that needs coconut milk, I just use a smaller amount of light coconut milk diluted with water. But that doesn't work for sauces or creams relying on coconut cream for the thickness rather than the taste. But I have found soy cream to be a great stand in, so hurrah!
• Sweet & Sour Veggie Chips: The CFS is claiming these as a new product, but they have been available in the supermarkets for eons. Still, they are a tasty fun treat.
• Leda Minton Biscuits: The stalwart, vegan mint slice. I am not normally a fan of chocolate and mint, but these get the mix just right. Also very popular with certain friends overseas!

A bit of a mixed bag. Nothing that blows me away, a couple of meh things, but overall pretty solid and some stuff I will get some good use and enjoyment out of. This will be my last mystery box post until next year, when I get my next subscription as a Christmas gift.

Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



Stoically waiting for me to come to bed.

Recipe Round-Up: Vegan Cooking For One

Vegan Cooking For One by Leah Leneman is one of my older cookbooks, but I have been trying to give them some love lately as well. It is pretty cute if you really are a vegan cooking for one, with weekly recipe plans and shopping lists so you can use up that whole tin of beans over the week in different ways. I have never followed a weekly meal plan though. Sometimes I cook just for one with it, other times I scale up recipes to serve a few or to have leftovers. I have found that a lot of the recipes are pretty substantially sized, so you may just get some leftovers regardless! You can see my previous round-ups here.

Peanut Buttery Stir-Fry: This is a pretty easy stir fry, with tofu, vegetables, and a nice savoury peanut butter sauce. As I was cooking for more than one, I quadrupled the recipe. I switched the vegetables a bit, using baby pak choy instead of the cabbage, adding some spinach for fun, and also some mushroom stems that needed using up. Rather than cooking the peanut sauce separately, I just blended everything up with my immersion blender and added it to the stir-fry at the end to heat up. This was very saucy, which made it excellent over rice.
Rating: :)



Nutty Plum Crumble: I like that this book has lots of single serving dessert recipes. This crumble was a bit of a miss though. In part because I think my plums were very tart, especially after cooking, and there is no sweetener added to the filling. I like tart, but this was a bit too much. The nutty crumble (which had oats and peanut butter in it), was nice but a bit dry. Ice cream was needed.
Rating: :|



Grilled (Broiled) Spiced Peach: This is cooked under the grill aka broiler for my US friends. Skinned peach is slived, sprinkled with sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg, and grilled/broiled until everything is super hot. It made a nice little snack. I served it with some Rice Soyatoo Whipped cream.
Rating: :)



Balkan Stew: This is a simple stew with lots of vegetables and served over brown rice. I used a zucchini in place of the capsicum. It wasn't so much a stew in the end, it needed a bit more liquid for that, but it was nice and satisfying.
Rating: :)



Curried Chick Pea and Sweetcorn Chowder: This uses some left over curried chickpeas from a previous recipe, blended with soy milk, water, and corn. It was okay, but lacking on its own. I think some chutney and flatbread would have improved it.
Rating: :|



Spaghetti Ticino: This is a filling and satisfying creamy pasta dish. The sauce is full of mushrooms, peas (instead of capsicum) and smokey bacon bits, and the spaghetti is tossed in margarine and nutritional yeast before serving as well. Yum.
Rating: :)



Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



The face of a stoic and sad cat, who is meanly not being let out in the catmax because it is time to go to bed.

Midweek Munchies

More random eats and treats.

I was excited to find these a while ago after seeing them on Hillary's blog. And they lived up to my hopes and dreams - so delicious! They have a bunch of other flavours I am keen to try as well.



Another Upton's 'meal' in a box. Pad See Ew is one of my favourite meals, and I am very particular. Of course a boxed version wasn't going to live up to my regular standards. But it was tasty. Though TINY! They say two servings in a box, I say one snack. The spinach was a Susan addition.



Here's an easy bahn mi-ish sandwich I put together for a work lunch. I had some leftover Tartex mushroom pate, so I used that plus some Vegenaise, Soyco Japanese flavoured tofu, spinach, and carrots. No pickles, I know.



Coles put out a small range of vegan branded freezer meals. I haven't tried the chili or the curry because of spice reasons, but I have had these gyoza a number of times. At $6.50 for a box of 12, you could easily go to the Asian grocery store for a larger bag that works out at a better price per gyoza. However, these are easy and are also a good little serving size for one. Or for more served as part of a bigger meal. They have a few different cooking options, I have always taken the easiest by microwaving. That is some black vinegar in the little dipping bowl, which is my favourite thing with gyoza.



I love chocolate and cherries together, so this Chocolate Cherry Smoothie from Dianne's Vegan Kitchen was right up my alley. I used coconut water as the liquid for a refreshing and hydrating post-yoga breakfast, and I subbed out hemp seeds for LSA (a mix of ground linseed, sunflower seeds, and almond meal... linseed is just another name for flaxseed). This was lovely, not too sweet, maybe even a bit bitter - which was perfect for me! Other people may want to add a touch of sweetener, but I enjoyed this as is.



Kresho Bars are magical. They are a locally made candy bar, they are not too sweet, and best of all they are on the Food Empowerment Project's approved chocolate list. They are full of nougat and crunchy roasted almonds, and are just divine. It is rare for me to get so excited about a candy bar, most of them are too sweet for me (I dislike Go Max Go bars a lot), but this one just ticks all the boxes. Plus it is Australian, so it is pretty reasonably priced, so hurrah!



Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



She sleeps.