Eating In

A selection of foods I either had delivered or got take away.

Being a southside girl, I don't tend to frequent northside shopping centres. But I happened to need to pop into Chermside, and decided while I was there to suss out some vegan options. There are a lot. I just got a couple of sweet options for snacks and afternoon tea. They have a branch of ice cream chame Gelitissimo there, which in addition to vegan sorbets has rotating flavour of vegan ice cream. After confirming it was coconut free (amazing!), I got a scoop of the flavour of the moment, the vegan Strawberries and Cream. And it was AMAZING. It was so good! I am so sad that they have moved on to a different flavour I am not interested in. They should bring this one back as a permanent option!



I also stopped by Brooklyn Doughnut Co, which had a few vegan options. I got the chocolate raspberry doughnut to take home. It was nice, though the chocolate icing was very thick and a bit too sweet. The doughnut itself was good, and I loved the tart freeze dried raspberries.



Back home, and one night we got a delivery from Kingsfood Chinese, which has several vegan options and I have ordered from them before. This time I got the vegetarian ho fun, a huge serving of noodles with veggies and tofu. It was hot and delicious. The sauce was a little oily, but really good.



PieFace is a chain of pie shops associated with petrol stations that have some vegan pies and doughnuts. I decided to feed two birds from the one bird feeder, and I stopped in to one to fill up and get lunch! I got the vegan cheeseburger pie, the vegan pastie, and the vegan chocolate crunch doughnut. I also got a Connoisseur Plant Based Brownie ice cream from their freezer. I have seen this ice cream in the supermarkets, but as it is coconut based was reluctant to buy a tub or pack. But a single icecream I was willing to take a chance on, and I am happy to report this falls into the tolerated coconut ice cream category. It was yummy! Though doughnut was just OK, I guess what you would expect from a petrol station doughnut. The vegan cheeseburger pie was fun, but my surprise favourite was the vegan pastie. Just something about tasty root vegetables in pastry really hit my in the right way.



Finally a delicious drink from my favourite Huey's Sugarcane and Coconut Juice stall in Garden City. This one was watermelon cococane (sugarcane and coconut juice... a terribly portmanteau), and it was delicious.

Eating Out: Cardamom Pod Brickworks

Earlier this year, I had been back at work for a few weeks but things were still hard. I was on reduced hours, so on one of my days off I decided to get out of the house by doing a little mini road trip down to the coast to get some food and visit some nearby shops. The food came courtesy of The Cardamom Pod Brickworks, a fabulous almost all plant-based cafe (they do have cow milk for their coffees), which I have visited a few times before.

I was keen to try the Iced Matcha, which was described as being made with oat milk, tahini, and maple syrup. It was a good matcha, though I couldn't really tell it had tahini in it.



For my food, I ordered the Healthy Benny. They also have a 'blinged out benny' (that I have had before), but I was craving something a bit lighter and tempeh and sweet potato sounded just right. It has sweet potato, field mushrooms, avocado, tempeh (yay tempeh!), cashew hollondaise sauce, asparagus, and cherry tomatoes. As you can see, it was beautifully presented! And it was really just what I wanted.



The cafe is situated in a little centre that has several other shops, including a bulk foods shop, an eco friendly shop, and a fruit and vegetable market and deli. The market and deli also has an ice cream shop in it, that had several vegan flavours. I didn't get any as I was pretty fully, but I took a photo!



I got a couple of nice things from the market, including some lovely heirloom tomatoes and purple carrots, also some curry leaves as I was looking for some to make some specific recipes.



But the main other reason I went down there was to visit Discount Grocery Outlet in Southport, just a few minutes drive away. This is a discount shop that I heard carried quite a few vegan products at heavily discounted prices. But most importantly, they were selling the new Flora Professional Plant Cream for only $1.99 per carton, rather than the usual $14.99 or thereabouts. They had that, and more. All the products were either close to or just past their best before date, but they are just a suggestion and I had no problem with any of these products. I got all of this for less than $24!



I'll be talking about some of these products in upcoming posts, so stay tuned!

Midweek Munchies

Munchies that I munched.

My friend posted about loving this chocolate, and then I found a block of it the next day. So it seemed like fate. This brand of chocolate is on the Food Empowerment Project Recommended Chocolate List, and I really like their raspberry one. This one was just OK. There is another brand of chocolate with crunch in it that I enjoy more.



Fun with cheese! Even though both of these have coconut oil in them, as long as I don't go overboard it is not enough to make me feel unwell, and I do enjoy these cheeses. The feta I have spoken about previously. It isn't really crumbly like I remember feta being, but it is good. I got some of this from The Green Edge, and then I scored some from the Discount Grocery Outlet later. The slices are sold in Coles Supermarket, which is handy and makes them easy to get. They are good on burgers and grilled cheese.



A little fancy snacking session at my friend Amy's place. This dip from Coles was nice, but these sweet carrot crackers stole the show. They were really nice. I can't remember where I got them, so I am always on the look out again.



This Pho kit is handily vegan, and was a quick meal for me and my dad one night. Inside everything was split into two lots of packages, so you could just make it for one if you wanted and keep the rest for later. It is all shelf stable. I added tofu, lots more vegetables than it said, and coriander. It was nice, though I didn't get much chance to taste the broth because my dad somehow took it all and mine was more like noodles than soup!





A very quick lunch of Sheese cheddar slices, Salada crackers, and tomato. With some cucumber on the side. This became a bit of a regular on my depression lunch schedule as it involved very little effort.



I had this soup pack kicking around in my cupboard for ages, so I made it one day when I needed something simple. You just add hot water. It is OK, a bit blah in flavour, and is quite thick with quinoa and rice. I served it with a grilled Sheese sandwich.

Abby

A non-food post. I mentioned a few posts back that I had been down to the coast for a special reason, and this was the reason.

Those who follow my on the socials have already met Abby. If you don't... well, this is Abby.



Abby came into my house just five weeks after Dim Sim passed. Too soon really, but I needed someone to get up for, to look after. Abby is five years old, and she has been in foster care almost her whole life. She was rescued off the streets with her mum as a teenager kitten, and she was very anti-social. Her carers put amazing work into making her blossom into the sweetie pie smoochy pants that she is today. However, she is an incredibly shy scaredy-cat, so no one was very keen on adopting her.



Her little face in her profile photos was so sweet, and I felt that maybe this shy little girl and my broken heart could take our time to form a bond together. When I went to the meet and greet with her, all I did was peek at her from where she was hiding on top of the kitchen cupboards at her carer's house. We mostly chatted about Abby, and I patted some of her other cats. But I just felt like if Abby was willing to take a chance on me, I was willing to take a chance on Abby.



In a twist no one saw coming, Abby was coming out for pats with me within the first week. We had expected it to take months. She's still a shy girl, she is just coming around to my dad, still hiding from my mum, and doesn't go downstairs. But with me she is a total love bug. She doesn't like to be cuddled or restrained (I pick her up occasionally for a quick hug if she doesn't squirm away and she is starting to tolerate it better), but she loves loves loves getting pats.



Abby has been a very brave girl, having a dental a few weeks ago to take some sore teeth out. She was really good at the clinic! And she was very forgiving of me when we got home. For all her wariness, she doesn't hold a grudge. She loves to play with her mousies, eat her food, get all the pats, and she sleeps on the bed. Though not all night, early morning is for loud playing with the mousies.



Opening my heart to Abby has been hard. Not because she makes it hard, she is so sweet and full of love towards me, but my heart is so broken and obviously no one can replace my girls, who were my soul mates. But I do love her, she is a wonderful sweet little friend, and she has made my life better at a time when I thought I couldn't go on. So, official blog welcome to Abby!

Mother's Day 2021

Mother's Day came around again this year, as it always does, and I made a fun little dinner for my mum.

Smoky Maple Baked Beans from Kindness Community Vegan Cookbook: Despite the name, this recipe involves no baking. It is all done on the stove, and it doesn't take that long. The beans are a mix of butter beans and borlotti beans, and they are simmered in a mix of tomato, smoked paprika, maple syrup, and vegan Worcestershire sauce. They were quick and tasty. I served them with some roasted broccoli, potato gems, and some Rough Rider BBQ Sauce that I had made from Vegan Diner (another cookbook) to serve over the top as my mum loves that sauce. The recipe says it makes two serves, but we got three serves out of this, which worked well as there were three of us!
Rating: :)



Chocolate Fudgy Puddin' Cake from Cookin' Crunk by Bianca Phillips: Colder nights call for warmer desserts, and this was a pretty easy one. I love a good self serving pudding! The only issue I had with this was the recipe calls to cream room temperature vegan margerine with soy milk... I've had a couple of other recipes call for that as well and it never works, the butter just goes a bit chunky through the milk. So I added half the flour and continued to beat and it all combined nicely, then mixed in the rest of the dry. This baked up with a delicious warm chocolate sauce bottom, and was great served with vanilla soy ice cream.
Rating: :)





But wait... there is more! Well, a little flash back. My mum's birthday is early December, but last year that was only about a week and a half after Dim Sim passed, so I didn't make her a big special dinner, because I could barely feed myself. But I did want to do something, so I made a chocolate pudding cake... but a different one to the one above. It made my feel a little better to be able to do something nice for someone I loved.

Chocolate Puddin' Cake from La Dolce Vegan by Sarah Kramer: This recipe was a little easier in that it didn't involve margerine so there was no beating involved. Just mixing. The only change I made was to replace the walnuts it called for with chocolate chips, to make it extra chocolately. Please enjoy a very similar photo to the one above, but it was a different recipe!
Rating: :)

Recipe Round-Up: 1000 Vegan Recipes

While I am still getting the motivation to dive back into my proper big recipe round-ups, let us do another mini one from 1000 Vegan Recipes. You can see my previous posts about this book here.

Penne with Creamy Asparagus Sauce: This recipe has an asparagus-based sauce made creamy by the addition of white beans and soy milk. At the end, more asparagus is mixed through. The sauce only calls for one cup of white beans, and there are more than that in the tin, so I added the leftovers into the pasta when I was mixing through the asparagus.
Rating: :)



Fusilli with Fennel and Sun-Dried Tomato: I don't use fennel enough, because I always enjoy it when I do. This is an easy sauce of sauteed fennel with tinned tomatoes, sun-dried tomatoes, and basil. I added a few splashes of pasta cooking water to the sauce to thin, as it got very thick. I decreased the amount of pasta required by half, and added a tin of red beans at the end.
Rating: :)



Carbonara-Style Sapghetti: Tempeh bacon crumbles and a creamy tofu and soy milk-based sauce are used here. The sauce also has a hefty dose of nutritional yeast added. I did use a the whole 450g (one pound) of spaghetti here, but I would recommend decreasing it because although it seems saucy at first, it quickly absorbed into the pasta. I would have liked it to be a bit saucier while eating. This is topped with home-made parmasio, fresh parsley, and more tempeh bacon crumbles.
Rating: :)



Farfalle with White Beans and Roasted Asparagus: This is very simple! Roast asparagus, warm and season beans, mix into cooked pasta! I used 250g of pasta rather than one pound, and I got two large serves as I was pretty hungry!
Rating: :)



(% 1000 Vegan Recipes blogged: 30.7%)

HerbiDoor

I'd never ordered from a meal delivery service before, mostly because I like to make stuff. But with all that went on after Dim Sim, it seemed like a good time to try some, especially with some discount codes. I have tried two, and I will talk about the first one today (the second one will need to wait until I finally finish the last one I have in the freezer).

HerbiDoor got me with their targeted advertising, which had a 25% off your first order code. The thing I liked about Herbidoor is you do not have to sign up to a recurring plan. You can buy things individually, or get a 10 pack of your choosing for slightly better value. I went with the latter. I got nine meals, and one dessert. My options with any sort of ready meals are limited because I have to filter out anything with chili or coconut cream, but Herbidoor still had a good selection. Most had 8 days until they expired if kept in the fridge, but you could also freeze them. I wasn't eating them all in a row, so I froze a lot of them. They all reheated well. There was not a lot in the way of vegetables though, so you will see I added greens (mostly baby spinach) to them. I'll do my best to remember how things were!



Creamy Kale Fettuccine: Not as creamy as I would have liked, it had a bit of a vinegar tang to it. I like vinegar, but this was a little out of place.



Eggplant Katsu Curry: The ingredient didn't specify chilli, but there was chilli in this. I realised later they just said 'curry powder', and I had been scanning for chilli specifically, so the sauce was too spicy for me. However, I scraped it off and can say that the eggplant cutlets were delicious.



Ayuverdic Healing Kitchari: This wasn't anything flash, but it was nice and comforting. Which is what kitchari was supposed to be. It came with the roasted potatoes, I added the spinach and some peas.



Spinach and Herbi-Cotta Canneloni: This was nice, though was not very filling. More a lunch than a dinner. It had a nice mix of herby tofu-based ricotta, and was topped with some tomato sauce and cashew cream.



Sunday Roast Yorkies: For all the appearance of a mediocre reheated frozen roast dinner, this was really yummy! A seitan-based roast, roasted vegetables, peas, gravy, and those great little yorkshire puddings. It was very satisfying.



Cashew Cream Lentil Lasagne: This was one of the gluten free range, and it was... not good. The pasta had that really heavy, grainy gluten free texture. And the rest of it was just very dry.



Lentil Shepherd's Pie: This was nice. I enjoyed that it had a sweet potato mash on top. Nothing special, but nothing bad. The green beans were added by me because I was out of spinach.



Bangers and Mash: This meal has been rotated out for some new options (they seem to do this with a handful of meals every few months, keeping things fresh). I didn't add anything extra to this, it came with the peas. And more of their yummy gravy! I don't remember what the sausages were, I recall they were some brand, and they were OK. I guess being microwaved they were a bit smooshier than if you had pan-fried them, but this meal was all about comfort.



BBQ Cottage Pie: I liked the creamy yet crunchy potato topping on this, and the insides were good too. You cannot really tell, but there is a bit of vegan cheese that was included in the topping, it has just melted in the microwave. The filling was lentils and vegetables and apparently silken tofu but maybe that was blended into the BBQ sauce because I couldn't tell. It was a little bit dry, so I did add some more BBQ sauce for eating.



Did I mention dessert? I sure did.



I got a two pack of sticky date puddings, yum! You can eat them cold or warm, so I ate the first one straight out of the packet with some custard and it was good! The second one is still tightly wrapped in my freezer, waiting for a good cold winter night to heat it up and have it with some ice cream.

Would I order from Herbidoor again? Yes!