What I've been eating at home

Oh Dear.

I've not been very good at keeping to my New Year's Resolution of blogging more often.

However, I gone further than just 'Being more vegan' and have actually gone vegan.  I was going to write a blog about why I've made this decision, but developed writer's block and didn't attempt to blog again for over a month. Therefore I'm just going to abandon that idea, it's not like there anything that's not been said before.

Being vegan hasn't meant eating dull food, otherwise I would have cracked by now. I thought I would use this post to update you on what I've been making at home.

I've been making a fair few noodle dishes, the first one below is some microwave noodles I picked up at Home & Bargains that were marked vegan along with some coleslaw mix I marinated in soy sauce, sesame oil, garlic and ginger and then wrapped in rice paper and some stir fried mushrooms.

The DVD box set in the top left hand corner is Father Ted.

This noodle dish is peanutty noodles made using this recipe, again with stir fried mushrooms and some crispy kale 'seaweed' made using this recipe.

An all time favorite, pasta with broccoli, pesto and pine nuts served with garlic bread.  The pesto I use is Zest's vegan pesto however, I've heard that technically this is not a pesto (however, I don't care, it's yum!). The garlic bread is ASDA smart price from the frozen food aisle (the smart price unfrozen garlic bread is not vegan).

This next picture is really something I eat at work, and is more of an idea than an actual recipe. As I get up at 6am for work, and have to be out the house by 6.30 I eat breakfast at work. At the start of the week I fill little containers with porridge oats, ground flax seed, almond butter, raisins and some healthy chocolate fudge sauce made using this recipe, pour over some milk alternative (I like oat and almond milk), pop on the lid and put it in the fridge. Then each morning, take a pot to work and warm it up in the microwave for a minute.

Next time I'm getting Hazelnut butter- mmm vegan nutella!

Buffalo cauliflower (missed out the sauce and put some Nando's Mild Peri Peri sauce on instead), bbq beans (just squeeze in some bbq sauce into regular beans) and some roasted parsnips.  Cauliflower is not my favorite veg, but it's flavour improves when roasted and it retains more of it's vitamins compared to boiling.

Not the best picture, but carrot cake pancakes for pancake day.

A recent discovery, is this vegan mozzarella recipe. I'm not a big cheese fan, but I do miss it's ability to hold toppings on a pizza.

I usually go a bit crazy with pizza toppings, this is quite reserved for me!

I also made a vegan moxy, avocado and red onion toastie, The Boy had to take the toastie maker apart to clean it afterwards as I got a bit carried away with the moxy and it went EVERYWHERE!

Whenever I'm eating alone, this is my go to dish as The Boy refuses to touch nutritional yeast.  Before my vegan days, I would have snubbed mac and cheese, but it's kind of like Pop Tarts- before going vegetarian, I hated pop tarts (I hate sugary breakfast items- my Mum very rarely let me have things like coco pops so now anything like that for breakfast just seems strange) but when I because veggie and found out that the frosted pop tarts had gelatine in the icing and therefore were unsuitable for vegetarians I became obsessed with finding the unfrosted versions.  Now I'm vegan, I developed a similar obsession with vegan mac and cheese.  This version is vegan mac and trees (name from the addition of broccoli) and is from Isa's Chandra's Appetite for Reduction, sometimes I'll add peas instead/as well.  I don't think the sauce tastes of cheese (as it isn't cheese- duh!) but it's very tasty and as I was never a big cheese fan it isn't a big deal.  I added some Zest pesto to the sauce in the picture below.

I have a bit of a cheat's way of cooking pasta- bring the water to the boil, then add your pasta.  When it comes back to the boil, pop a lid on and turn off the hob completely. The pasta will cook in the same amount of time as on the packet, but without using as much energy. I always have some frozen broccoli in the freezer and I usually chuck it in with the pasta just before I turn the gas off, this will also works with fresh broccoli too.

I think that's enough for now!  Just shows you that vegans don't just live on lentils!

A Very Vegan Valentines

Yes, the title of this post does say vegan, and yes after months of denial, I have finally come out as vegan. But as this post is about valentine's day, so lets just pop this revelation on the shelf for a while, and get back to the matter in hand...

I usually don't bother with Valentines day, much to The Boy's dismay, however we usually come to a compromise by celebrating out half anniversary on 5 March. Which in my mind is fecking genius as by then all the valentines stuff is half price and I loves me a bargain.  However, I think I may have been taken over by a romantic Body Snatcher  as it was my idea to actually do something for valentines this year.

The day started off with one our favourite special breakfasts- Jus Rol Pain Au chocolate. I love that all but two of Jus Rol's products are vegan.

Then we began our journey to Sheffield, where we visited the Red Deer pub which had an array of vegan options (I counted six) alongside it's normal omni menu.  The Boy went for fish and chips and I couldn't resist the vegan burger, made with butternut squash, sweet potato, cashews and ginger. Apparently it's so popular that non-vegans have been known to order it with bacon and cheese!

The burger was massive- I'm a firm believer that a burger should be eaten in its entire entity, rather than being split into components (*eyes The Boy with suspicion and judgement*) but I could actually fit the entire thing in my mouth so I had to take it apart. It was worth it, the bun was handmade, and what is there not to like about a burger with butternut squash, sweet potato, cashews and ginger!

Next came dessert, with was in the form of a sweet potato chocolate brownie with a fruit compote.

On first bite, this tasted a little floury, however once I got into it, it was lovely and fudgy and the picture doesn't do this justice. I wasn't to keen on the compote, it had a great sharpness but I'm a bit of a mard arse and didn't really appreciate the occasional pip I bit into, I would have preferred a smooth sauce.

The pub itself was a real ale pub, although I'm not a real ale fan, they sold Stowford's Press which is a Weston's cider, and all Weston's ciders are vegan.  The friendly barman did bring me over a taster of their vegan pale ale, but I couldn't be swayed. The Boy however, enjoyed trying quite a few of the ales, and in an hour and a half had downed three pints- one Stowford's and two different dark ales, whereas my one pint of cider lasted me the whole visit! This is an usual turn of events, as I'm the most boozy one out of the two of us.

I do love real ale pubs, even if I don't drink it, they all seem to have a familiar look/smell that I always associate with my Uni days spent in our own local real ale pub during breaks in 3 hour lab classes. If there is one thing I love/miss about Biological sciences, it the fact so many procedures involves setting a reaction off and then leaving it for an hour. It makes for some good pub sessions. Anyway, back from reminiscing, here is a picture of the inside, just to show you what I mean by that 'real ale look'

After we finally dragged ourselves from the nice warm fire, we headed off to explore a bit more of Sheffield, on the way we popped into the local Tesco Express and picked up a bottle of Henderson's Relish, which is Yorkshire's version of Worcester sauce only without the fish.  Hence it is vegan friendly.

It's so unfair that they only sell this stuff in Yorkshire, you can buy it online via their website but you can only buy it in litres!

For tea we went to Dandelion and Burdock which is a vegan restaurant in Sowerby Bridge. As it was Valentines day, they had a special valentine's menu which was two courses and and a dessert sharer plate per couple for £20 per person.  Unfortunately by this time, both our phones were running out of juice, so all I managed to take a picture of was my drink, which was a raspberry beer.

The meal itself was mostly the restaurant's February menu (the menu is changed each month so that everything is seasonal), minus a few items.  We both went for lentil cakes with an aubergine chutney for starters and and a meatless loaf with mashed potato, peas and roasted carrots for our main. The dessert sharer plate was miniature versions of their regular desserts plus a crème brulee, I'd never had crème brulee before as it's not something that appeals to me, but I decided to give it a go.  It was better than I expected but just not my cup of tea.  My favourite dessert on the plate was a vanilla ice cream- it had a lovely strong vanilla taste and was refreshing after all the food.  Unfortunately, I didn't ask which brand of ice cream it was, however I have my suspicions it may be Booja Booja's vanilla ice cream, as we got given two of their champagne truffles to take away.

I was excited to finally get to try Booja Booja truffles after hearing so much about them and also after standing in various health shops just staring at the boxes of them partly trying to justify spending so much on chocolate and also hoping if I stared long enough at them, whoever I was with might get the hint and get me a box as a gift (that never happened!).  They didn't disappoint, the champagne taste was quite strong, which I didn't mind but I think I would prefer their hazelnut truffles, or perhaps their rum truffles!

So that ends my vegan food adventures on Valentines day, I think it was fair to say I was a bit full on the way home, to the point I was quite concerned I might be sick through over indulgence, however I wasn't (I just did quite a bit of burping!) and ended up in a food induced deep sleep as soon as I got home!

We both decided that we liked Sheffield so much, we are planning to visit again soon and next time spend a whole day there.  There seemed to be so many vegan friendly places in Sheffield and I definitely was to visit Steel City Cakes, which apparently sell vegan cakes and have an offer of 3 slices for £6! As for Sowerby Bridge, we would go back but possibly visit other towns along the route, including Todmorden so we could visit the Lucky Dog and The Bear vegetarian cafe, oh and I'd quite like to visit Gingers in Halifax as well. Sigh, so many things to see/eat, so little time :-) #veganproblems

More Isa Chandra Creations

This is just a quick post to share two more Isa Chandra recipes I've been enjoying:

The first is her Everyday Chickpea-Quinoa Salad with a balsamic vinaigrette, both from Appetite for Reduction. I'm not a salad person, however the salad section of this book shows just how diverse salads can be and I'm really looking forward to trying some more, especially her Strawberry-Spinach Salad once it's strawberry season again.

The recipe calls for romaine lettuce, however I subbed baby leaf spinach, as well as adding sweetcorn and some capers.  It was delicious! One batch make three to four portions, depending on how greedy/restrained you are.  This was the first time I have tried quinoa, and I gotta say I'm impressed. Quinoa is quite pricey compared to other grains but you only have to do a quick Google search to realise just how diverse it is and in addition it is also a complete protein. However, Isa does suggest that you can use other grains if quinoa is out of your price range.  Perhaps couscous? Or giant couscous? I'm just saying that because it looks similar to quinoa!

The second recipe, is Chickpea Cutlets- OMG these are divine! I've made them twice now, both times as part of Sunday lunch.  Both times I've had to improvise as I was missing one ingredient.  The first time I was missing the soy sauce, so used a little extra veg stock and a bit of extra salt.  The second time I had the soy sauce, but was missing Olive oil, so I used regular sunflower oil.  The second batch tasted better, so I've come to the conclusion that the soy sauce is quite important, however it's still nice without.

I'm really a bit obsessed with Isa's recipes at the moment. What are your favourites?

Amazing Vegan Carrot Cake

I have to admit, I've always avoided carrot cake, I don't know why, maybe something to do with being suspicious of vegetable based cakes.

However, when my friend over at Flash-Gordonette (visit the blog, it's awesome!) posted this recipe for carrot cake with whiskey 'buttercream' I thought I would face my demons.

I replaced the whiskey in the buttercream with brandy, as I had some in from making mincemeat (yes it's took me a while to blog about this, the poorly taken picture below was from November) and I put the oven up to 180 instead of 170 (which is the temperature for a fan oven). But apart from that I kept to the original recipe, I was a bit puzzled by the instructions to weight the oil, however I'm informed this is because you need half the amount of oil that you would margarine- after that was made clear it made more sense!

Wow! I'm a carrot cake convert, and this cake is now in high demand by The Boy and his family.  So far I've made this cake 5 times!

The only thing to watch out for is that I've found the cooking time to vary quite a bit, I think it's something to do with the carrots or maybe it's just my crappy oven. So before you take it out after the allotted time, give it a gentle shake to see if it's set, if not put it back in, I had one that took an hour to cook, however maybe I did something wrong there.  Another tip is to make it the night before you're planning to eat it (if you have the will power), it's fine to eat the same day but we've found the flavours develop overnight and the ginger really comes out if you wait a day.

So what you waiting for? Go and get the carrots and make this baby!

Chickpea Picatta

It's after Christmas, everyone is a little skint and trying to lose that extra few pounds they gained over the festive period.

So last weekend when I arranged to meet up with a friend, instead of spending money on a meal out I decided to cook. This happily gave me the opportunity to try my new cook book-  Isa Chandra Mosowitz's Appetite for Reduction and having seen positive reviews, I decided to have a go at her Chickpea Picatta.

The recipe itself is pretty easy to follow, takes 30 minutes and is only 190 calories per serving.  In case your wondering arugula is 'salad rocket' according to wiki, however as I would have no other use for rocket, apart from this recipe, I subbed in baby leaf spinach and as I had no dried thyme I used some mixed dry herbs  (which gets used in any occasion that I find myself without any type of dried herb!). Isa also suggests serving with caulipots, which are mashed cauliflower and potato.  I decided this was too much effort and opted to serve mine with penne pasta.

The picture below is actually of the leftovers I had for lunch the next day, as I was too busy nattering to take a photo the first time! The only difference was that the first time I remembered to follow Isa's suggestion and put the spinach at the bottom of the bowl, then layer with the cooked pasta and chickpea picatta which wilts the spinach without having to cook it (clever!) however I reckon this looks more artistic :-)

The overall dish was lovely, the sauce was thick and almost creamy, but the addition of the lemon made it a refreshing dish. The only change I would make is to serve it with conchiglie pasta, so that you could easily get a mouthful of pasta, sauce and chickpeas, which was quite difficult with the penne! I could see why Isa recommends serving this with caulipots or mashed potato, as the potatoes would soak up some of the delicious sauce whilst allowing a good forkful of chickpeas and spinach.

I will be submitting this post to Book Marked Recipes on Tinned Tomatoes.

New Year

Happy belated New Year everyone.

It's always the case when looking back at this time of year to only see the negatives and 2013 is no exception.  HOWEVER a lot of positive things did occur - one of my friends got married, I met lots of new people, The Boy graduated and started in the world of work and we went to New York!

2014 will not be without it's challenges, the education reforms will mean further redundancies at work and with David Cameron still PM this year will not be plain sailing.  However, unless the revolution starts this year, there's not a lot I can do about that so I'm concentrating on the small things:

1. Be More Vegan: This is something I started last year, and aim to continue this year.  I'm not going to go into details on why I've decided to cut down on dairy and egg products, there's enough information out there for you to figure that one. However, I'm not too sure if  ready to go fully vegan yet.
2. Get up everyday at 6am, even at weekend: Probably the most controversial of all my resolutions, however I'm sick of sleeping my weekend away and feeling stressed that I don't have time to do all the things I want to do.  Then of course there is the situation you find yourself in on a Sunday night, trying to go to sleep early for work the next day but not being able to because you slept in until 11am and then spend all of Monday feeling knackered.  I've kind of softened the blow a bit by allowing myself one lie in a month!
3. Blog more: Will hopefully be helped by point 2!
4. Stop being my worse critic:  I often find myself comparing myself in a negative light to other people.  It's not helpful, I'm not that person and never will be.  Instead I will try and concentrate on the things I do achieve.

I think the second resolution may be the hardest, but I'll give it my best shot.  What are your resolutions? Have you managed to keep them all so far?

Out and About

I'm often one of those strange people you see taking photos of their food in restaurants/cafes. Although it's less strange now, because I've got a smart phone and I'm no longer pulling out a massive camera.  Plus if you taking a picture on a smart phone, people assume that you're just uploading a picture of your food to Facebook or Twitter. Which is quite normal.

So anyway, I thought I'd share a couple of pictures of things I've been eating whilst out and about.

Budda Lounge - Ramsbottom
It was my birthday in November and I went for meal at Budda Lounge in Ramsbottom with The Boy and his family.  I've got no pictures of the main, but I took a rather crappy picture of the starter which was vegetarian crispy duck, which I assume is Seitan. They also do vegetarian rack of ribs!

I should have took a picture of the assembled wrap!

The food here is amazing, but on the pricey side so it's only for special occasions.

V Revolution- Manchester (Northern Quarter)
The Boy was unable to take my birthday off, therefore we took a few days off together the week afterwards and visited Manchester City Centre and for lunch we headed to V Revolution, which is a vegan cafe/shop. Pretty much everything they sell involves some kind of meat and cheese substitute which meant The Boy, who avoids fake meat and cheese had to bite the bullet and face his fears.  We both went for the nacho hotdog, which came with nachos, salsa and the best UK vegan cheese I have ever tasted (I think it was one of the Veganic cheeses which the sold in the shop).

Even The Boy loved this, and pronounced the whole thing as 'pretty convincing' which is the biggest complement he's ever given any kind of meat/cheese alternative!

Nandos
People who know I'm a veggie are always surprised when I say I love Nandos.  In fact Nandos sell three types of veggie burger which is pretty impressive considering that many other places only have one.  Even as an Omni, I always went for a burger, as I have always been pretty grossed out by stuff of the bone.

The only vegan option is their veggie burger  which is a soya and tomato burger (the others are a beanie burger and a portabella mushroom and halluomi burger, both of which contain cheese).  However you need to ask them to skip on the mayo to make it vegan.  I often go for the pitta, along with corn on the cob (to make it healthy) and peri peri chips (which I then cover in ketchup).

I think the grated carrot in the salad is a new addition, of which I very much approve of!

According to their FAQs, all vegetarian food is cooked separate grill, using separate utensils and marinades.

Christmas Markets
Around this time of year, we like to visits various Christmas markets at the weekends.  This usually consists of a few staples (Manchester, Birmingham and Lincoln) and a few wild cards.  This year's wild cards were Ulverston and Bakewell.

Out of the two, Ulverston was our favourite, and may get added to the list of staples.  It's a Dickensian market, like Lincoln but what made it unusual is that quite a few of the residents and stall holders dressed in traditional Dickensian dress.  Trying to keep to a vegan diet at these types of events is always a challenge (even vegetarian can be hard, and mostly involving cheese) however, there was an Indian stall that was run by what I assume to be a Ulverston curry restaurant that advertised itself as being vegan friendly which I bought a samosa from (sorry no pictures).  However for our main meal, we went to Gillams, which is a vegetarian tea room and shop. It was extremely busy, however after a bit of a wait, filled with a browse around the shop attached to the cafe, we managed to get a table.  I went for one of the day's specials which was a sausage sandwich with a red wine gravy.  And for drink, I went for the Christmas market classic of mulled wine.

I also bought a vegan mince pie and a vegan scone from the shop.  The pastry on the mince pie was a bit too thick for me but the scone was nice.

Unfortunately, despite the loving Bakewell itself we weren't too keen on the Christmas Market.  There weren't many vegan options, and the only vegetarian option was a crepe stall.  Therefore, I ending up popping into their Holland and Barrett and getting a 'porkless pie' from their Veg.Out range.  As someone who previously loved pork pie, I thought it was pretty convincing, and came without the disgusting jelly I always despised.  It could be improved by increasing the amount of 'meat' inside it, but I'll be definitely getting one or two of the larger pies for the traditional Christmas Eve buffet.

This weekend we went to Lincoln, which is our favourite of the markets and is the oldest Dickensian Markets.  it's always pretty packed, so I didn't manage to take photos but I had a falafel wrap, some toasted cashews coated in cinnamon and sugar (yum!) and the traditional veggie burger from Lincoln's veggie shop, Yellow Bellies of Bailgate which is right at the end of the market.