BrisVegan

Hot potato!

2010-06-25T18:47:00.000+10:00

This was dinner the other night. There's a baked potato with some melted toffuti slice, bean salsa, sweet chilli sauce, caramelised onion and vegan bacon bits. In the background are baked cauliflower, peas, pumpkin, swede and Isa's garlicky kale with tahini sauce (from Vegan with a Vengeance). Relatively little prep, some baking, boiling and a quick saute and there's dinner. The kids liked everything but the kale and swede. Yum!

Wonton soup + cuddly cats

2010-06-20T15:11:00.002+10:00

The guys have taken off to the shops. M and I decided to have a nice warm soup for lunch. Here's what we made:

It was great. M even ate bok choy, which is normally not something she would touch. She said it was the best soup ever.

Quick Wonton Soup

Serves 2 (with generous seconds!)

Ingredients

(The measures here are mostly estimates, as I didn't measure precisely as I went.)

1 1/4 litre vegan stock (I used Massel chicken style stock)
1/4 cup sliced dried shiitake mushrooms
10 store bought Chinese vegan dumplings
1 small carrot, sliced
1 plant bok choy, stem and leaves chopped and separated
2cm knob ginger, chopped into thin julienne
1-2 tablespoons soy sauce

Method

Rinse mushrooms and put them in a 2 litre saucepan.
Add stock. Bring to boil. Reduce heat. Simmer for 10 minutes.
Add all remaining ingredients, except bok choy leaves. Simmer 5-10 minutes until dumplings are warmed through.
Add bok choy leaves and simmer until leaves are soft.
Serve and enjoy!

Caturday

Sleepy cuddles!

Tofu Mushroom Ragu

2010-06-11T18:13:00.000+10:00

I frequently make this Tofu Mushroom Ragu. It is based on the Mushroom Ragu in The Australian Women's Weekly Vegie Main Meals recipe book, which is one of the small ones Aussies will see on same for a few dollars at the supermarket checkout.

I change it around a bit, by using button mushrooms and adding tofu for protein. I serve it often with pasta, as you can see, rather than dairy laden polenta, as in the recipe. I also add some vegetable sides.

It is a great favourite in our house. In fact it's one of Z's favourite meals.

Here's my recipe:

Tofu Mushroom Ragout

Ingredients

Serves 8-10 with pasta and sides (I freeze half and have 2 meals for 5 people)

Cooking spray or a few tablespoons of olive oil
Approx 750g very firm tofu (can be a bit more or less depending on the packaging style), cut into 1-2 cm chunks
1 Large onion, diced
3 cloves garlic
2 tablespoons Nuttelex
1/4 cup plain flour
500 g button or flat mushrooms, sliced
2 tablespoons tomato paste
2/3 cup wine (can be white or red or cooking sherry, depending on your preference or pantry)
2 cups vegetarian stock (I usually use Massel Chicken-style vegan stock cubes + water)
1-2 cups water
2 teaspoons dried thyme
Salt and pepper to taste
Pasta to serve

Method

Spray large skillet or wok with cooking spray.
Fry tofu chunks until slightly golden. You might need to do this in batches. Remove tofu from heat.
Spray skillet/wok again with cooking spray. Cook onion until almost translucent.
Add garlic and cook for a minute or two longer.
Remove garlic and onion. Melt margarine. Add flour and cook for a minute or two. If it's too dry, add a few tablespoons of water.
Add mushrooms and cook for a few minutes.
Add wine, tomato past and stock and mix until flour mix dissolves into liquid.
Return tofu and onion/garlic mix to liquid. Add enough water to almost cover. Add thyme.
Simmer for 20-30 minutes, until liquid reduces to a desirable amount and thickens.
Taste. Add salt and pepper to taste.
Serve over cooked pasta with vegetable side dishes.

This freezes very well.

Waffles

2010-06-09T19:03:00.000+10:00

I love the Old-Style Chelsea Waffles from Vegan Brunch. I replace the cornmeal with more plain flour and use maple syrup as the syrup sweetener, which makes them a bit easier to make with Australian ingredients (fine cornmeal can be hard to find here and I always have flour).

I made some again the other day and topped them with maple syrup, pear and slivered almonds. Yum!

The kids love them. I usually make a double batch and freeze half for later. With a bit of baking paper between them, you can just take one or two frozen waffles, grill, toast or microwave them for a quick breakfast. I quite like the reaheated ones with a bit of peanut butter and drizzle of maple syrup.

Not-honey jumbles and cats

2010-06-06T10:42:00.005+10:00

I made some honey jumbles (sans honey) last weekend. For those who haven't hade them, honey jumbles are basically small bars of gingerbread with a heavy glaze-style icing. I suppose that they often contain honey, hence the name. However, my old Women's Weekly biscuit cookbook has a recipe that uses golden syrup as a sweetener and not honey. I had not had honey jumbles for years, though I used to make them often as a kid, from the same recipe book (25-odd years ago!).

So I decided to veganise my old favourite. You can find the original recipe here at Taste.com. I replaced butter with nuttelex, milk with soy milk and egg-white with No Egg (egg replacer). Here they are:

As the recipe says, they are best after a day or so, as they soften and intensify in flavour. They look a bit rough, but were very nice, just as I remembered. The cakey, slightly chewy ginger bread is delicious with the slight lemon tang of the sweet glaze. They take a while to make, with the cooling and re-baking, but they were worth it. The kids loved them. They took some to school and apparently their omni friends liked them too. Vegan baking for the win!

Caturday

Two cats snapped on Z's bunk bed. They have decided they like the high bunks (the boys have bunks and M has a bunk over desk bed). If they can't be found, they'll be fast asleep on someone's high bed.

Adventures with Pastry: Pies

2010-06-02T19:34:00.000+10:00

Yes, I am still obsessed with pastry. It's because I bought a pack of Borgs puff pastry. I also love hot pastry out of the oven on cold days. This time, its a vegan twist on Aussie pies. Mine had mushy peas in it with extra on top. Other members of the family left out the mushy peas (crazy, I know!) We served it with sweet potato oven chips and broccoli.

Aussie Pie

Makes 12 pies

Ingredients

1 onion
2-3 cloves garlic
2 cups frozen mixed vegetables
1 tin Sanitarium casserole mic (or use about 1 1/2 cups TVP)
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon red wine
3 tablespoons tomato paste
1 cup prepared gravy (I used Gravox Supreme, which is accidentally vegan, but you could use your favourite mix or homemade smooth gravy)
1 1/2 tablespoons cornflour (if needed for thickening)
3 sheets puff pastry
1 tin mushy peas (optional)

Method

Fry onion and garlic.
Add mince, vegetables, soy sauce, tomato paste and gravy.
Simmer until vegetables are tender (10-15 minutes). This will be the pie filling.
If you think the mix is a bit watery, mix the cornflour and wine and add to pie filling mix. If it is thick enough, add the wine and omit the cornflour.
Cool pie filling. (I put mine in the fridge overnight and used it the next night for a quick dinner).
For individual pies, cut the pastry sheets into 4 squares each. Stretch each a little.
Put 1/12 of the filling onto each pastry square. If you like mushy peas, put some on top of the filling. Fold corners of the pastry squares over the filling and seal edges. (You can also make these in muffin or pie dishes for a rounder and taller pie.)
Bake until pastry is golden (around 45 minutes).
Serve with mushy peas more or favoured sauce.

You can use the filling to make big pies or in a shepherds pie. Everyone loved them. It's a good way to increase the vegetables on the children's plates, without them realising. I am also going to send some to school in lunch boxes.

Adventures with Pastry: Pics of the Baked Bean Sausage Rolls

2010-05-29T17:12:00.004+10:00

As I said the other day, I made Theresa's baked bean sausage rolls. She didn't give a detailed recipe so I just made one up, based on her description, assuming that she probably had actual home made US-style baked beans instead of the canned ones I used. I agree with her assessment, they were some of the best vegan sausage rolls I have made. The kids loved them. They have also been popular cold in the children's lunch boxes. I pop a frozen one in before school and it defrosts by lunch time.

Anyway, here's a picture:

Baked Bean Sausage Rolls (a la Theresa)

Ingredients

2 tins of baked beans (1 drained and one with liquid)
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 1/2 cups oats
1 cup Weetbix crumbs (or use bread crumbs if you wish)
1/4 cup soy sauce
1 tablespoon vegan Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon each paprika, salt and pepper
4 sheets vegan puff pastry (I used Borgs)

Method

Heat oven to 200°C.
Process everything but the pastry in the food processor until the mixture is almost smooth.
Cut each sheet of pastry into 4 squares.
Put 1/16th of the bean mixture in a line in the middle of each square of pastry.
Roll each sausage roll into a tube shape and seal edges of pastry, using a little water if necessary.
Bake until golden and pastry is puffed (35-45 minutes).

Can be eaten straight away, reheated for a few minutes in the microwave or frozen for later. For smaller cocktail-sized rolls, cut each roll into 3 before baking.

Caturday

Sister cats can be very satisfactory pillows:

As you can see, Berry and Switch are very fond of each other. They are litter mates who have lived together their whole life. As the weather gets colder, they love to sleep snuggled together.

Adventures with Pastry: Sausages rolls

2010-05-27T18:37:00.000+10:00

Theresa at Tropical Vegan had these sausage rolls on her blog. They looked amazing, so I stole her idea. I processed a tin of baked beans with oats, soy sauce and herbs. I rolled them in Borg's puff pastry. Yum! Thanks Theresa!

Adventures with Pastry: Spring Rolls

2010-05-25T19:08:00.000+10:00

My kids love spring rolls. We frequently by large packs of vegetable spring rolls (60 or 64) from the supermarket, because they are quick, easy and good for dinner or lunch boxes. I have often thought that they must be easy to make. My sister-in-law (hi Madonna!) told me a while back that she makes her own spring rolls and oven bakes them for a lower fat option. When I saw spring roll pastry on special at Woolworths, I decided to give her idea a go.

They worked out pretty well. We had half of them for dinner, with rice, tofu, greens and store bought vegan BBQ buns. The kids will have the leftovers for lunch at school. One advantage of no meat is that they are much less likely to spoil in a lunch box and the kids get a nice serve of vegetables.

Oven Baked Spring Rolls

Ingredients

1 tablespoon rice bran oil or other neutral cooking oil
1/4 wombok (Chinese cabbage) chopped well
1 large carrot, grated
1 onion, chopped finely
3 dried shiitake mushroom, reconstituted in water and chopped finely
100g rice or bean vermicelli
1 cup bean sprouts
1 teaspoon sugar
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1/2 teaspoon each salt, white pepper and ginger
pinch star anise
2 teaspoons sesame oil
Packet of 20 spring roll wrappers (check ingredients to make sure there is no egg)
Cooking spray or a few tablespoons of extra oil

(you could also add chopped coriander and chilli for a Thai flavour)

Method

Preheat oven to 200°C. Cover 2 cookie sheets with baking paper.
Cook noodles as per packet instructions. Chop into 2-3 cm lengths.
Heat skillet. Add oil.
Add cabbage, onion, carrot and mushroom. Fry over low medium heat until onion has softened.
Add remaining ingredients to skillet. Cook until bean sprouts soften slightly.
Separate spring roll wrappers.
For each spring roll, put a few tablespoons of filling (1/20th of the mix) above one corner. Fold up the corner. Fold ends in. Roll up. Seal with water.
Spray oven trays and rolls with cooking spray or brush with oil.
Bake rolls until golden, turning over after 20 minutes. It will take 30-40 minutes.
Serve with dipping sauce of choice. We like sweet chilli sauce.

Enjoy!

Adventures with Pastry: Croissants

2010-05-22T11:32:00.006+10:00

I will admit up front that I don't have a great history with pastry. I think I overwork it. However, I buy a mean puff pastry (Borg's - it says "Vegan" on the packet!"). After visiting Vegan Dad's excellent blog and seeing his croissants, and in spite of my pastry history, I decided to give them a go for Mother's Day. M asked if she could help. I used this recipe from Jennifer of Vegan Lunch box fame.

First step was to mix the simple yeast dough and let it rise. That bit was easy enough. We then punched it and M rolled it out:

After that, we added a layer of margarine (Nuttelex):

I tried rolling and freezing the margarine as Jennifer directed, but the Nuttelex did not freeze hard. Instead, I just spread it around.

After that, we folded it as directed:

We then refrigerate, re-rolled and refrigerated the folded dough several times as directed.

Finally, we shaped them:

And here is one the next morning on my breakfast tray, as arranged by M, who made me breakfast in bed:

(By the way, the tray was made by J, who gave it to me for a present last year. He is very talented at woodwork and is toying with carpentry for a career idea.)

How were the croissants? The flavour was excellent and they rose well. The whole double batch was eaten by our family on Mother's Day. However, they were a bit more bread-like than flaky inside. That's probably done to the Nuttelex not cooling hard and me over-enthusiastically rolling it. However, I need to give another recipe a go to see if it's the recipe or me. (I'm guessing me!)

Caturday

Berry's Box: Enter at Own Risk

Our cats love boxes and hiding places, so we grabbed a box the other day from a pile at the shops. Berry commandeered it, though Switch frequently sniffed it, interested in smells that we couldn't detect. We realised why it was so popular once we actually read the details on the front of the box!

Lemon Muffins

2010-05-16T20:12:00.005+10:00

I have a few fruit trees in pots. One is a lemon tree. A bit over a month ago, I harvested a couple of lemons. Here is the first one:

If life gives you a lemon, make Lemon Muffins!

These were made using the lemon poppy seed muffin recipe from Vegan With a Vengeance. I didn't have any poppy seeds, so I left them out. They were pretty good. M and I are big fans of lemon baked goods, though the guys of the house aren't so keen. More for me!

Caturday on Sunday:

Miss Switch accepting scratches from both Z and J. She was purring like mad and rolling on her side and back to encourage tummy scratches.

Vegan Dad's Hot Wings

2010-05-06T15:08:00.000+10:00

Do you like seitan? Bake bread? Feed kids? If you answer yes to any of these, you have to go and see Vegan Dad's blog. His food is consistently amazing and appealing.

These are Vegan Dad's Hot Wings, with his Sweet and Sticky Sauce. In this meal from a while ago, I served them with peas, corn and homemade chips. They are little breaded seitan chunks served with a sweet tangy sauce. My kids love these with a passion. Try them. They are seriously good. They also freeze well for a quick meal. I always double the recipe and freeze half of them.

Spicy Chopped Salad

2010-05-04T18:45:00.000+10:00

I made a big bowl of salad Last Friday and have been eating it ever since. It was great.

Spicy Chopped Salad

Serves 8 as a side salad (or it can be 4 lunches!)

Ingredients

1 tin 3 bean mix, drained
1 tin corn kernels, drained
1 apple chopped
4 spring onions chopped
1 apple diced
1 small carrot peeled and finely diced
2 tomatoes chopped
12 pitted olives halved
3 tablespoons flaked almonds
8-16 lettuce leaves to serve (or may be diced and added to salad for immediate use)

Dressing Ingredients

2 tablespoons sweet chilli sauce
1/2 teaspoon ground coriander seed
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon dried oregano
3 tablespoons lime juice
Additional ground chilli or harissa paste to taste (I added a tablespoon of harissa, but this might be too much to serve to non-chilli lovers.)
Salt and pepper to taste (about 1/4 teaspoon each for me)

Method

Combine all salad ingredients, other than the lettuce leaves, if you wish to serve them whole on a plate.
Combine all dressing ingredients and whisk or shake to combine.
Stir dressing well through salad.
You can serve this immediately, but it is good if allowed to sit in the fridge for a few hours at lease.
Serve with lettuce.

This would also be good with extra tomato, added grains, eg leftover rice, or a few teaspoons of olive oil in it.

I'm ba-a-a-ack! (Spinach Calzones)

2010-05-01T14:00:00.007+10:00

Two months?! I can't believe that I have ignored this poor blog for that long. Life stuff has been hectic, but still ... two months!

Anyway, I'm back with mini spinach calzones. I needed to take a plate* to a party last night, so I threw these together quickly. I had the dough for a pizza base in the freezer, as well as some spinach and some Cheezley cream cheese, so I decided to combine a couple of favourites, spinach and calzones. I also like my party nibbles small and not too messy, so these worked well.

Mini Spinach Calzones

Makes 24.

Ingredients

Pizza dough for 1 base, uncooked. (I used some from the Vegan with a Vengeance recipe, with whole wheat flour swapped for about about 1/3 of the plain flour in the recipe. I always make extra when I make pizza and freeze it in 1 pizza batches. Use whatever pizza base recipe you like)
250g frozen spinach
2 large spring onions chopped
75 grams vegan cream cheese (I used Cheezley Sour Cream and Chives variety that I found in my freezer)
2 tablespoons nutritional yeast (also called savoury yeast) (optional)
Salt and pepper to taste

Method

Preheat oven to 240 degrees centigrade.
After you have prepared your pizza dough, cover it and put it aside.
Defrost and drain the spinach.
Add cream cheese, yeast and spring onions to spinach. Mix well.
Add salt and pepper to spinach mix to taste. Mix again.
Using a rolling pin, roll pizza dough very thin, about 1/2 cm (1/4 inch).
Cut 7 cm circles of dough from the rolled dough. I used the top of a skinny glass, but a round biscuit cutter would work well.
Consolidate remaining dough, roll and cut again. Keep doing this until you have used all the dough.
Divide the spinach mixture between the circles of dough, leaving a clear rim of dough to use to shut the calzone.
For each circle, wet the rim of the circle and fold it over into a half circle over the filling. Seal the edge.
Place calzones on two baking trays. Leave a little space (1/2 - 1 cm at least) between the calzones.
Bake until gently browned, turning once. (Approx 10 - 15 minutes)
Serve hot or cold.

I served them cold, in a large bowl. They were delicious and popular. They had a thin crust of pizza bread with a nice substantial serve of savoury spinach filling. I think that they would also be good in lunch boxes or made into approximately 6 larger calzones as part of a meal. The kids loved them, so I'll be making these again.

Caturday

Why would you want to use the printer? Why would you want the contents of your canvas satchel? Cat sleep is far more important than your paltry human concerns. (Featuring Berry sleeping on a satchel and wedged onto the printer tray. Bonus Switch staring at moths out the door.)

Note
* For the non-Australians, the Australian phrase "bring a plate" means to bring food to share appropriate to the type of event. It can mean to bring a main dish, a side, a salad, a dessert, finger food or any similar item to share. I'm told this phrase is far from universal and that it has led to confusion for non-Australians in the past.

Been busy!

2010-02-21T17:39:00.002+10:00

Just a quick note to say that I'm very busy at the moment with work and home. I'll be posting again properly soon. I have been taking blog photos for the last few weeks, but don't have time to do a full post.

Another salad lunch

2010-02-11T21:22:00.000+10:00

Hot weather and cheap salad greens inspired this lunch from last weekend.

We went to Aldi on Sunday, to pick up a few things. While I was there, I saw salad greens for 99c for a big pack. I also got a Turkish bread, to put with some hommous I had at home.

I made this salad. It was mixed salad greens, grape tomatoes, 6 mushrooms sliced and grilled, some chopped cucumber, a spoonful of capers and some mustard dressing. The dressing was actually left over roumalade sauce from Vegan brunch, with a few tablespoons of cider vinegar and a teaspoon of sugar. (Dissolve the sugar in the vinegar, by heating it in the microwave.) It would also be good with the maple mustard dressing from Veganomnicon.

At the back, there is some toasted Turkish bread with hommous on it.

As an aside, I quite like shopping at Aldi. Many of their items are actually labelled "suitable for vegans." It takes a lot of the guess work out of shopping.

Noodle lunch

2010-02-09T21:03:00.000+10:00

I was shopping the other day and decided to grab a few things for lunch. I made these noodles, which really hit the spot. I used the vegan oyster sauce which is available from the Cruelty Free Shop.

Lunch Noodles with Vegan Oyster Sauce

Serves 2

2 tablespoons neutral cooking oil (I used rice bran oil)
300 g tofu diced into 1-2 cm squares
1 cm knob ginger
2 chopped spring onions, sliced into 4 cm lengths
1 packet Heinz frozen steamed vegetables for one (cauliflower, broccoli and carrot)
200g ready to use udon noodles
3 tablespoons vegan oyster sauce
3 tablespoons water

Method

Fry the tofu squares in 1 tablespoon of oil in a skillet or wok.
Once the tofu is lightly browned, add the remaining oil, ginger and onions. Cook for about 1 minute, until fragrant.
Refresh the noodles in boiling water, while waiting for the ginger to cook.
Add the frozen vegetables to the pan and stir fry until hot.
Drain the noodles. Add the noodles, sauce and water.
Serve hot.

They were also great reheated for lunch at work the next day.

Apple and Sage Sausages and Caturday

2010-02-07T20:34:00.006+10:00

Tonight we had homemade apple and sage sausages with mash, vegetables and gravy.

The sausages were a variation on Isa Chandra Moskowitz' cherry and sage sausages from Vegan Brunch. I replaced the dried cherries with a grated apple. I used powdered sage, despite Isa's instruction not to do it. I also replaced the all-spice and cloves with 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon, because for some reason I was out of both all-spice and cloves. I really should check my spice cabinet before I cook.

It was really good. Even M, who is not a huge seitan sausage fan, liked these.

Caturday

Sisterly love!

Just Caturday

2010-01-30T10:05:00.001+10:00

I am heading to a birthday party today, so this is just a quick cat picture.

Caturday

Who is that kitty in the window?

Switch enjoys sitting in our front window and watching the world. There is the added bonus of being hidden from children, if she is not in the mood for more enthusiastic cuddles.

Curry #3

2010-01-29T18:50:00.000+10:00

Maybe this should be Curry #2 1/2. I used some of the frozen mushroom chunk rendang (from my last post) for this meal. I made up packet dosai mix, which happened to be vegan. The dosai were delicious with this curry. As you can see, I also did a quick tomato, cucumber and herb salad. There is also lime pickle and chutney for sambals plus a couple of spring rolls.

The spring rolls were a concession to M, who does not like curry. She had dosai, vegetables and spring tolls, hold the curry.

Tomato, Cucumber and Herb Salad

Serves 4 as a side dish.

Ingredients

1 small red onion (optional and not included due to Mr BrisVegan's aversion to raw onion)
2 tomatoes
1/2 small cucumber
1/2 bunch of chives
2 teaspoons diced coriander leaves (cilantro)
1 teaspoon diced mint
2 teaspoons white wine vinegar
pinch each salt and pepper

Method

Dice onion, cucumber and tomato, into 1/2 to 1 cm dice.
Finely dice herbs.
Mix all ingredients in a salad bowl.
Refrigerate for 1/2 to 1 hour then serve.

Curry #2

2010-01-27T15:38:00.001+10:00

Another curry. This is a big pot of mushroom stick rendang that I made a while ago. It was made with a bottled curry past and tinned coconut milk. The mushroom sticks are quite "beefy" and are a big favourite with my family. I replaced the traditional potatoes with other vegies to increase the vegetable quotient of the meal.

For this one I sauteed onions in a little oil. I then browned the mushroom chunks. I removed the onions and mushroom sticks and fried the curry paste until it was fragrant. I then added the onion, mushroom sticks, vegetables, coconut milk and some water. I simmered the curry until the vegies were cooked. I made it fairly mild, so that Z, a new curry eater, would enjoy it.

As you can see, I made a big wok-ful for several meals. Curry always freezes well. Frozen curry in the freezer means that I can boil some rice, heat the curry and have dinner on the table quickly after work. It helps us to cut down on takeaway meals, save money and have quick, but healthier versions of our restaurant favourites.

Curry week and another late Caturday

2010-01-24T15:09:00.005+10:00

We have been eating curry a lot lately, because I visited an Indian grocery store and impulsively bought an astonishing number of curry mixes. This week I plan to show some of the curries eaten at Chez BrisVegan. Last night, I made two curries from these mixes:

As you can see, there was a butter chicken mix and a jalfrezi mix. They were both fairly dry spice pastes. Both were vegan. The butter chicken contained neither butter nor chicken. Both asked for 50ml cream, but I replaced that with 125ml creamy-flavoured Vitasoy So Milky Lite.

With the butter chicken seasoning, I made butter pumpkin and canellini beans. The creaminess of the sauce works beautifully with the sweetness of the pumpkin and beans. I also added an onion, and a couple of chopped green beans and spring onions, for contrasting green colour.

For the jalfrezi, I made a curry with the mix, onion, carrot, broccoli, mushrooms, peas, tomatoes and green capsicum, as well as the soy milk.

For both, I sauted the onion then added the vegetables and curry mix with water as suggested on the packet. I simmered them until the vegies were almost cooked and added the soy milk. After heating it through, it was ready for serving.

Both were very good, served on brown rice, with chutney and lime pickle. Everyone but M ate them and enjoyed them. The curries were relatively mild and child friendly for Z. M is not a curry fan and ate the veges, beans and rice without the sauce. As a bonus, they made enough to give me some leftovers for another meal and some work lunches.

(Late Again) Caturday

This cat is not yet out of the bag!

(Germophobe note: Don't worry, the bag will never be used for food ever again.)

Baked Soy "Fish" and Late Caturday

2010-01-17T11:34:00.005+10:00

A few weeks ago, I got a beancurd and laver fish-shaped product from White Jade Garden vegetarian supermarket at Inala. It was was pretty cheap at only $5.90.

As it was the size and shape of a whole fish, I decided to do a baked fish dish. I wrapped it in baking paper with a topping of chopped garlic shoots, ginger and chilli. It was pretty good. All the kids loved it, though M found the tipping a bit spicy and scraped it off. The laver layer unfortunately lifted off when I unwrapped it, but I suspect it would be even better with it on.

Baked "Fish"

Serves 2-4 (5 at a push with plenty of side dishes)

Ingredients

Cooking spray
4 garlic shoots
3 cm knob fresh ginger
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tsp each cider vinegar and sesame oil (I think replacing the vinegar with 1 tablespoon of lime juice would be better)

Method

Heat oven to 180 degrees Centigrade.
Cut a sheet of baking paper(parchment), large enough to wrap around the fish and fold several times to shut. Spray the baking paper with cooking oil.
Place "fish" on the baking paper on an oven tray.
Top fish with the garlic shoots, ginger and chilli.
Mix remaining ingredients and then pour over the "fish."
Fold the paper to seal it around the "fish".
Put it in the oven and bake for 1/2 an hour.
Serve. I put it on a plate with lettuce and tomato for colour, but it would also be good on rice, noodles, couscous or Asian greens with capsicum.

(Late) Caturday

Kitty toes!

Berry likes to sleep on my bedside table, lately. I think that it is cooler than the bed, but still close to us. The other day, I woke to a dazzling display of paws. I love how her pads are both black and pink, in her white foot fur.

Braised tofu, fried rice and greens

2010-01-14T18:38:00.000+10:00

As it says in the title, this is braised tofu with fried rice and greens. We had this a while ago and I forgot to blog it.

The tofu is based on a Kylie Kwong recipe that I saw on TV. It is tofu fried and then slow cooked with stock, sugar, soy sauce, sherry, onion and a dash of vinegar. The original recipe had cherry tomatoes. This one had carrots, because from memory, I didn't have any tomatoes.

The greens were just quickly stir-fried in a dash of sesame oil and then sprinkled with sesame seeds.

The fried rice is Z's favourite way to eat rice. It is very quick and easy to make. It's a fairly rough recipe, because I usually just throw stuff in a wok.

Vegan Fried Rice

Serves 6

Ingredients

2-3 tablespoons oil (I use rice bran oil)
1 onion, diced
few slices diced Redwood vegan ham or 1 diced Sanitarium hot dog
3 cups cooked rice (best if cooked the day before, but just cooked is OK), fluffed so grains are separate
3/4 cup frozen vegetables (or 1 carrot, cut into a small dice, 1/3 cup peas and 1/4 cup corn kernels), cooked with the rice
1-2 tablespoon soy sauce
Pepper to taste (optional)
1 teaspoon sesame oil (optional)

Method

Heat wok or large skillet to medium heat.
Add 1/2 tablespoon of oil and onion. Cook until almost translucent.
Add vegan ham or Sanitarium hot dog. Cook until onion is translucent and the protein is lightly browned.
Add remaining oil and turn up the heat so the wok is fairly hot (about 2/3 on my hot plate).
Once the oil is heated, throw in the rice and cooked vegetables.
Stir well, so the rice is well coated with oil.
Add the soy sauce, pepper and sesame oil (if using).
Keep stirring until rice is golden and hot.

This recipe always goes well in our house. It is also good for pot lucks, and reheats well in a microwave, with a few good stirs. In fact, I took this to a party were another person had taken a traditional omni egg and meat fried rice. This one was finished and the other was half left. Quite a few people had seconds of my vegan fried rice. I was pretty pleased with that outcome.

Waffles

2010-01-12T19:22:00.000+10:00

My Vegan Brunch experimentation goes on. Here are some lovely waffles that I made for breakfast one day. These are the Classic Chelsea Waffles, with a few adjustments. I didn't have any cornmeal, so I just used more plain flour instead. I also followed the suggestion and replaced the original malt syrup with maple syrup. I made a double batch and added 1 1/2 cup frozen blueberries to half of it. The picture shows a blueberry one.

As you can see, I served then with maple syrup, So-Good vanilla ice cream and banana.

They were excellent. The children wolfed down 2-4 each. Fortunately, the recipe made 20 waffles on my machine, so there were some for the next day. They were good reheated either in the toaster or in the microwave.

I have also made the yeast rise ones, when my omni mum was visiting. Both types are great, though the yeast ones are a little softer. Both would be great to serve to omni guests. Obviously they are a great favourite with children. Isa Chandra Moskowitz has created another family favourite for me!

Gado Gado Plate and Caturday

2010-01-09T09:45:00.004+10:00

This is not a very good photo, but it was a good dinner. Here is a gado gado plate that we had a little while ago. On the platter are (clockwise from top corner): peanut sauce (store bought + extra peanut butter and dash of soy), tomato, caramelised tofu, cucumber, carrot and steamed/cooled potato. We also had a bowl of rice vermicelli. This was nice and cool on a hot night. However, I would add more greens next time.

Caturday

Berry is in ur bed, stealing ur z's. (Oh damn, now I am writing in lolspeak!)

Cinnamon Buns

2010-01-06T09:58:00.003+10:00

Another Vegan Brunch recipe. This time it's cinnamon buns.

On Boxing Day, we drove 2 1/2 hours west to my sister's place at Dalby. We stayed overnight, as did my brother and his family from Monto (about 6 hours north of Brisbane). To help feed so many people, we all pitched in and made food, which led to several delicious feasts over the weekend. One thing that I took was a big tray of these buns.

Here are the extras that we ate fresh at our place:

They are sweet, light and cinnamon-y. I like the inclusion of cinnamon in the dough for an extra flavour lift.

The ones that we took to Dalby were delicious even though they were 1 1/2 days old. We heated them for around 15 minutes in a 170 Celsius oven. Everyone, including all the omnis, liked them. A few people asked for the recipe. Several of the children (not just mine!) asked for seconds.

Cinnamon buns FTW!

Rocky Road and Caturday

2010-01-02T18:51:00.004+10:00

Like many vegans, I thought I had kissed marshmallows goodbye forever. Then the Cruelty Free Shop started to sell a marshmallow making kit and Dandies from the US. After ordering some of the astonishingly expensive Dandies, I decided to make something to make them last. Rocky road was my marshmallow delivery system of choice.

In my Christmas dinner post, I showed rocky road. I made 2 types. They were traditional (pictured above) and ginger. Here are the rough recipes. You could change the nuts and other fillings as desired.

Traditional Rocky Road

Ingredients

1/2 packet Dandies marshmallows
125 g Whittakers dark chocolate (1/2 250g block)
100g cashews
1 packet dried strawberries (you could also use Turkish delight)

Method

Put chocolate in a microwave proof bowl.
Melt chocolate in microwave. This was 2 1 minute sessions at 3/4 heat on my microwave, but a higher powered machine may vary. Just go gently in short bursts and stir after each time. Remove it when a few small lumps remain and stir until they are dissolved.
Add remaining ingredients. Pour into a loaf tin, which is lined with parchment (baking) paper. Refrigerate until solid.
Cut into bars or squares as desired.

Ginger Rocky Road

Make as above, with the strawberries replaced with 1/2 - 1 packet of crystallised ginger and the cashews replaced with slivered almonds.

Caturday

Some days it's too hot to move. Cats deal with this by hogging the breeze. Not pictured: they will also lie in cool tiled doorways where you wish to walk.

Christmas Lunch

2009-12-28T13:40:00.004+10:00

Hi again. Hope those of you who celebrate holidays are having a wonderful time and all who don't have had some great time off.

We are a blend of lapsed Catholics, vaguely proto-Catholics and atheists in our little household of 5. Despite this, we celebrate Christmas in a rather secular way with gifts, special food and family visits during the week. This year, we stayed home and the 5 of us celebrated a quiet Christmas day. (We saw extended family before and after the 25th.) It was a great day, with lovely family time and time to relax.

Here's our Christmas lunch. I went all out and did 5 courses.

First up was Pumpkin and Lentil Soup. This was Z's request for the meal. He loves this soup. We had Nuttelex or hommous for the rolls.

Then we had Mock Prawn Cocktail. I saw a simple cocktail sauce recipe (mayo, tomato sauce and Worcestershire sauce) in a Margaret Fulton Christmas cookbook. I decided to do a retro entree (appetiser for the US readers). The sauce is served with some mock prawns from the White Jade Garden vegetarian supermarket, lettuce and avocado. Z did not like the prawns, but everyone else liked this. Z still ate all the lettuce and avocado (and some of his sister's).

Main meal. This was cold sanitarium roast with cranberry sauce (cooked the day before), tsueh yu tofu, a roll, Margaret Fulton's beetroot and orange salad, Chang's noodle cabbage salad, mixed tomato salad and a simple pasta salad with italian dressing and olives (Z's favourite). This was all very nice. I loved the beetroot salad, which was both sweet and earthy.

Christmas cake and So Good vanilla ice cream for my small dessert. Others had various icecream/rum ball/biscotti/custard combos. It was a help-yourself thing. The kids enjoyed lashings of icecream, as you can imagine.

Finally, coffee with rumballs and a bite of rocky road.

It was a delightfully quiet day, with a delicious lunch. I'll post some recipes in the next few days.

Happy Holidays!

2009-12-25T07:27:00.001+10:00

Happy Holidays to all who celebrate at this time of the year!

Homemade sausages

2009-12-23T11:39:00.002+10:00

Sorry about the dark picture, it was another phone picture. Fortunately, we have our camera back now, so new photos should look better.

These are the Italian Feast Sausages from Vegan Brunch by Isa Chandra Moskowitz. I am clearly still obsessed with my newest cookbook.

I love these sausages, which are based around wheat gluten, with some mashed beans, stock and flavourings. If you have never made your own seitan, this is an excellent place to start. The use of beans and steaming to cook the sausages give them an excellent texture, which avoids the rubberiness which afflicts some home made seitan. The flavour is also very good. Z said that they were the best gluten product I had ever made. M was not so keen, but from her comments, I think that she had decided that she wouldn't like it before she even tasted a tiny bite.

The recipe says that it will make 4 sausages. I think that they would be more salami sized. I made a double batch and made 18 smaller links, of the size pictured above, about the size of a short fat sausage. I also wrapped them in baking (parchment) paper, rather than aluminium, as I try to avoid aluminium. The baking paper worked well.

Most of the family loved them, when I served them fried with vegetables and onion gravy. The next night I sliced 3 and fried the pieces to use in a pasta sauce (no picture, but it was just 1 fried chopped onion, couple cloves of garlic, large tin of crushed tomato, sausage, oregano and thyme simmered together). The last 5 are going to be used like hot dogs. I think that you could also serve these sausages to open-minded omnis, especially if they were cooked in a sauce.

Try these. You won't regret it.

Xmas Cookies

2009-12-21T14:50:00.007+10:00

I am not particularly religious, but I do enjoy the family closeness and celebrations of the silly season. We went to a large party with Mr BrisVegan's extended family yesterday. We don't really give gifts to adults in that family (no-one does), but I wanted to give a little something. So, like many a food-obsessed vegan, I baked for the holidays. Here are the cookies that I made into little gifts for the family:

(Clockwise from back left: Ginger Sparkle from Vegan with a Vengeance, Snickerdoodles from La Dolce Vegan, Chocolate Chip Cookies from Vegan with a Vengeance and Cranberry Walnut Biscotti from Veganomnicon.)

And here is one of the gifts:

They are all delicious, so I hope that everyone enjoys them. I will be taking some of each of them to various other Xmas parties with my family. I am also making rocky road, fudge, rumballs and mini-fruitcakes. Conversion by sweets for Christmas!

Pear and walnut salad with stinky tofu dressing

2009-12-19T11:13:00.002+10:00

The other day I made this quick salad for lunch. It was very good, if you like sweet and bitter things together. It's another tasty way to use stinky tofu. As you can see, I had it with some pita bread, corn, potato salad and tinned cucumber.

Pear and Walnut Salad with Stinky Tofu Dressing

Serves 1

Ingredients

1 pear
Handful walnuts
3 large leaves lettuce of choice
1/2 teaspoon stinky tofu
1/2 teaspoon olive oil
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar

Method

Make a bed of torn lettuce leaves.
Remove the seeds from the pear and slice it lengthways.
Toss pear and walnuts on bed of lettuce.
Whisk tofu oil and vinegar and pour over salad.

Caturday

Here is Switch with one of her favourite things, her toy dog. When we adopted her, her foster family brought it with her. She had had it for most of her 11 months, so they did not want to deprive her of her favourite toy. She is very fond of it and will carry it all around the house, lick it and play fight with it. She can even hold it in her mouth and jump onto furniture with it. We will sometimes find it left on our bed, when she takes it up there, as she did this time. We suspect that she sometimes leaves it to share with someone who is sad or who she is feeling close to. However, she usually will not let Berry have it, which is no real problem, as Berry does not show much interest in it.

Who says animals can't love toys?

Curry and Lentils

2009-12-16T14:18:00.003+10:00

Last night we had curry, tamarind lentils and sambals. My camera is still dead, but fortunately we had the same thing a couple of weeks ago and I took a photo. I know it was the same, because I froze half of the lentils and curry. We microwaved the left overs last night. Obviously, they freeze well.

The lentils are the tamarind lentils from Veganomnicon. I love them, but then I am a big lentil fan. The rest of the family are not so keen.

The curry was some store bought curry paste (can't remember which one) with coconut milk and a mix of veges. I fried some onion, added the curry paste and fried it for a few minutes and then added the rest of the vegetables and coconut milk. It was served with rice, lime pickles, chutney, Sri Lankan coconut sambal (from a jar) and microwaved papadums.

Everyone over 10 loved it. The smaller two had rice, spring rolls, papadums and steamed vegetables, because they are chilli averse.

Now I am going to have the last bit of the lentils and rice for lunch. Mmmmhh, lentils...

Review: Cream Cheezely Garlic and Herb

2009-12-12T07:19:00.004+10:00

Cheezly has a new range of cream cheese products. I bought a log of the garlic and herb cream Cheezly from Mrs Flannery's supermarket.

(Wrong flavour, but you get the idea!)

Though I am not a big fan of vegan cheese, I like the cheezely options and will sometimes use tofutti slices in a grilled cheese sandwich. I usually only like vegan cheese melted with other things (eg in toasted sandwiches, nachos and on pizza). The only one that I would consider eating alone is Cheezly Herb and Garlic. That's why I tried this option for the cream cheese.

What was it like? Good. Very good. Not exactly like cheese, but then no vegan cheese actually is. The non-cheese overtone is very mild and not bad. It was tasty and creamy on crackers. Everyone in the family ate it, including all the cheese eaters. M asked to have crackers and "cheese cream" for school lunches. She is ready this and says "It was very yummy!"

There was no way that we would finish a whole log in one go, so I cut it into chunks and froze it. It has defrosted beautifully, with no loss of flavour or texture.

While I wouldn't serve it unadorned to the sort of omni who talks about "fake food", it would be fine with other toppings. It would probably be fine for more open minded omnis.

I recommend this one!

Picnic eats

2009-12-07T09:14:00.003+10:00

No pics today due to lack of camera and forgetting to take the phone with the camera in it. We went to a picnic yesterday with a bunch of friends and everyone's kids. We went to Sherwood Forest Park at Sherwood here in Brisbane. It is a good park for groups, with a big covered table area, BBQ's and clean facilities. There are well shaded play areas within 10 metres of the covered tables on each side. There is a creek with ducks, but it is probably 150-200 metres from the play area, so it is easy to keep young children away from it.

We had a great time. The children had a ball climbing trees and playing on the playground. Though J feels he is getting a bit old for all of that, he was in the middle of it all, helping the younger children to climb and stay safe. It was a beautiful day.

I said yesterday that I would come back with an omni-friendliness review for the east coast coffee cake. I took it to the picnic yesterday, cut into small slice-like pieces. It went really well. Everyone had some and liked it. Many people had seconds.

I also took vegan snickerdoodles (from either How It All Vegan or La Dolce Vegan from memory), babaganouj with pita bread and spinach/Cheezely pastry. All were a hit with the omnis. In fact, my food was all gone, though there were still cake and shop bought biscuits left. The kids really loved the babaganouj and the spinach pastry. I have previously posted the babaganouj recipe. Here is the recipe for the spinach pastry:

Spinach and Cheese Picnic Pastry

Ingredients

3 squares frozen vegan puff pastry (I used Borgs)
1 packet frozen spinach (250g from memory)
1/2 log of Cheezely mozzarella (100g) or altenative vegan cheese
2 spring onions, chopped

Method

Preheat oven to 180 degrees Centigrade.
Defrost puff pastry on a flat surface while making filling.
Defrost spinach in microwave or over low heat on your stove top. Drain very well.
Grate Cheezely.
Mix spinach, cheese and chopped spring onion.
Line a cookie tray with parchment paper. Put 1 and 1/2 pieces pastry on bottom of tray. Join any seams with a little water and press together well.
Spread spinach mixture over pastry, leaving a 1 cm edge. It should give you a thin layer of filling.
Cover with remaining pastry. Seal edges with a little water.
Bake for 30-40 minutes or until golden.
You can serve this hot now or allow to cool.
Cut into squares/triangles of desired size.

I served this cold the next day. It was very popular, especially with the children, who mostly wanted seconds.

I use the same filling for pie, with only 2 pieces of pastry and a thiner filling.

VB Coffee Cake and Caturday

2009-12-06T07:48:00.004+10:00

I am addicted to Vegan Brunch by Isa Chandra Moskowitz. It's a great recipe book. My latest creation is the East Coast Coffee Cake:

(Sorry for the poor photo, my camera is being repaired and this was a dodgy phone pic.)

This is a piece made using the raspberry chocolate variation. It is both sweet and rich. The overall cake is very more-ish. The white base is a little softer and sweeter than a lot of Australian cakes, but a fruit layer and the crumb topping are an unusual and interesting addition. By the way, for other Aussies, there is no coffee in a coffee cake. It's a bit like a very light tea cake (in which there is no tea, for the non-Aussies) with a light crumble topping.

I have also made an apple and blueberry version. It wasn't in the book, but I just winged it. Here is the apple and blueberry layer recipe:

Apple and Blueberry option for VB Coffee Cake

Ingredients

Coffee cake and topping as per Vegan Brunch. If you prepare the apples first, they can simmer while you make the cake.

2 very large apples (3-4 smaller ones)
2 teaspoons sugar
3 tablespoons water
1/2 cup frozen blueberries (more if you like lots) left in freezer until ready to use

Method

Peel and core apples. Chop apples by making thin slices and then cutting into 1/2 inch pieces.
Place apple, water and sugar into saucepan. Bring to boil and reduce to gentle simmer.
Simmer uncovered gently for 10-15 minutes until the apples are just tender. Add water if it gets dry. The aim is to end up with cooked apples and almost no liquid.
Remove from heat.
Make cake batter as per Vegan Brunch recipe. Spread apples over batter. Sprinkle frozen blueberries over apples.
Add crumble topping.
Bake cake as directed in Vegan Brunch.

Zach declared the raspberry chocolate coffee cake, "The best cake I have had." Mr BrisVegan and J both liked it. Morgan was not so keen. She found the top "sandy", though she had liked the crumble on the previous apple blueberry option. She has asked for me to make the apple blueberry again. I am taking some to a picnic today, cut into slice squares, so I will be able to give you an omni-friendliness review soon.

(Late) Caturday

Miss Switch in the great outdoors:

Here Switch is perched on my potted lemon tree. I think she was just about to jump on Berry.

Protein and 4 vege with gravy

2009-12-04T18:54:00.001+10:00

This was a simple dinner from a few weeks ago. It's a very anglo-style protein and vege meal. As you can see, we had asparagus, corn, peas and mashed potato. The protein can from a "Black pepper steak" cutlet from White Jade Garden vegetarian supermarket at Inala. The gravy is Gravox Supreme Grave, which I have been told is vegan.

The mashed potatoes were simply mashed with Nuttelex, soy milk, salt, pepper and a dash of onion powder.

It was very satisfying and simple. The kids like the "steaks". Various family members like different vegetables, but everyone ate at least some greens and corn.

Simple Sweet and Sour and Asian Vegan Kitchen Chow Mein

2009-12-02T19:23:00.001+10:00

I mentioned last post that I served the vegetables in black bean sauce with sweet and sour. I realised that I had not mentioned the sweet and sour recipe. Here is a picture of it (left) with the Shanghai Style Chow Mein from The Asian Vegan Kitchen by Hema Parek. The chow mein recipe was nice, but I found it a bit bland, as I often do with chow mein. The kids liked it, but they usually like bland noodles.

The sweet and sour is my own recipe, based in part on various easy anglo-style recipes I had read over the years. The whole family adore this one.

Simple Sweet and Sour Faux Chicken

Ingredients

1 -2 tablespoons neutral oil
500g vegan "chicken" pieces
1/2 large red capsicum chopped
1 small onion sliced
440g tin pineapple pieces in natural juice
1/4 cup tomato sauce (ketchup for the Americans)
1/8 cup sugar
1/8 cup white wine vinegar
1 tablespoon soy sauce
pinch Chinese 5 spice

Method

Heat wok until hot. Add oil and heat briefly.
Add vegan "chicken". Brown. Remove from wok.
Add more oil if necessary. Add onion. Stir fry one minute.
Add capsicum. Stir fry for another minute.
Add pineapple pieces and their juice, and remaining ingredients. Bring to boil.
Add "chicken". Simmer until sauce is reduced to an appealing amount.
Taste. If it's too sweet, add a little more vinegar. If too acidic, add a little more sugar.
Serve with rice and some stir fried vegetables.

Vegetables in Black Bean Sauce

2009-11-30T21:03:00.001+10:00

I stir fry all the time. It's quick, easy, packed with vegetables, tasty and reasonably child-friendly. This one was inspired by a tin of salted black beans that I bought at the Asian grocery store. I served it with rice and sweet and sour faux chicken, which I had previously frozen. If you wanted to add some protein to this dish, to make it a more complete meal, tofu, plain tempeh or mushroom sticks would all be good. Just fry the protein first and then add the onion etc as below.

Vegetables in Black Bean Sauce

Serves 4 -6 if it is the only dish, or more with other dishes

Ingredients

1 tablespoon rice bran or other neutral vegetable oil
1 small onion
1/2 small red capsicum
1 zucchini
1 small bunch baby bok choy
2 carrots
1/4 cup dried slied shiitake mushrooms
glove garlic crushed
1 - 2 tablespoons undrained salted tinned black beans (include liquid scooped up with the beans) (use only 1 if you don't like salt. I used 2)
1/3 teaspoon ground dried ginger (could replace with 1 teaspoon fresh chopped which would also be good)
2 teaspoons sugar
hot water (approx 1/2 cup)

Method

In a bowl, pour the hot water over the dried mushrooms. Set aside for 10-15 minutes while you chop the other vegetables. Don't drain. you want the water.
Slice all vegetables into preferred slice size. Take the stems from the baby bok choy and reserve the leaves.
Heat wok or skillet until hot. Add oil
Add onion, stir fry for one minute.
Add garlic and stir fry for one minute.
Add remaining ingredients, other than bock choy leaves, and stir fry for a few minutes, until vegetables are very slightly tender. Don't forget the mushrooms and their water.
Once the stir fry is basically ready, add the bock choy leaves and heat for about 30 seconds or until the leaves wilt.
Serve with noodles or rice.

The smaller children ate some, but are not vegetable fans. The rest of us loved this one.

You will find that you have lots of black beans left in the tin. I have put mine in the freezer for future use.

Bazu's Fesenjan and Caturday

2009-11-28T08:29:00.006+10:00

A little while ago, one of my favourite bloggers, Bazu of Where's the Revolution, posted her grandmother's Fesenjan recipe. Apparently fesenjan is a delicious Iranian dish of protein (originally chicken, here tofu) in a walnut and pomegranate sauce. The traditional recipe uses pomegranate paste, but Bazu suggests that you could replace it with pomegranate juice and lemon juice, plus a reduction in other liquids. I used that option, along with her suggestion of adding eggplant (for more vegetables, always my preferred option).

I loved this dish. It was rich, tangy and delicious. As you can see, I served it with tabbouleh, pita bread, beetroot dip and olives. The tabbouleh was an especially good match, as its freshness offset the rich fesenjan well. Unfortunately, the rest of my family was not as impressed as me. I think that the flavour was too far outside their usual range of flavours. It may also be that I am the only eggplant lover in the house. Well, it was their loss, because it meant more leftovers for my work lunches. It froze and reheated beautifully, by the way.

Caturday

Tiger cat on the prowl:

Here is Berry in our backyard, checking out our pelargoniums. Our cats are mostly indoor cats. They grew up as indoor cats and don't have any road sense, so they can't safely roam. There are also a lot of aggressive cats and dogs in our area, that I would prefer to protect them from. However, they do come outside when we are in the backyard. Switch usually only comes out for a few minutes, but Berry enjoys keeping us company while we garden or hang out the washing. Ideally, I would like them to have a large cat enclosure, but that is not an option at the moment, so they just have to hang with us.

Quiche

2009-11-26T19:55:00.001+10:00

That's right, I said quiche. How does that belong on a vegan blog? Well, the second thing that I made from Vegan Brunch was a broccoli quiche. It was really, really good. Seriously good. Serve to omnis on Xmas good. Isa is a genius.

I cheated and used some puff pastry from the fridge, rather than make pastry from scratch. In the next few weeks, I plan to make the recommended pastry and try the caramalised onion quiche from the same cookbook.

I'm back!

2009-11-24T21:06:00.004+10:00

Where have I been? Well, we have been a bit caught up with family, work and social stuff this last week.

Family update: Thanks to everyone who left their kind wishes after the last post. My brother in law is much better. By the time we visited him, he was largely recovered, though he still had some weakness in his right foot. He is much better now, though he got a scare.

Other family stuff (with bonus food): It was Z's birthday last weekend. Instead of a part, he asked if we could go camping. This was our first time to go camping as a family. M has a small tent that the children sometimes use in the back yard. In the past, I thought that I was not a camping kind of girl. However, at Z's urging, we borrowed another brother in law's 8 person tent and went to a Sunshine Coast camping and caravan park.

We had a ball. The camp-ground had lots of mod-cons and facilities, including a camper's kitchen, pool, games room, jumping pillow (20 m long!), mini golf and playground. The kids loved the leisure activities. I liked the fun, the price and the kitchen!

What did I cook? We had nachos and not-burgers for dinner. (Sorry, I didn't get a shot of them.) We had lovely mint-choc cupcakes instead of a birthday cake (the birthday boy's pick). They were from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. I made the basic chocolate cupcakes, the mint frosting (1/3 of the recommended amount, no colouring, but with 2x the mint essence) and the quick melty ganache. They got a little knocked around on the way, but they still tasted great.

The next morning, we had apple muffins with a crumble topping, veganised and made by Z from one of his recipe books. Unfortunately, I did not get a shot of that either.

Z said that he had the best birthday ever, so mission achieved!

Bonus cat:

Berry does not approve of people who fail to meet their Caturday obligations.

Health and veganism

2009-11-15T08:02:00.005+10:00

We are about to go to the coast to visit my brother in law, who suffered a TIA (like a mini-stroke) last week. After seeing this Clinical Nutrition review of the latest research in nutrition last night I am especially sad. Being vegan would have reduced his risk enormously, but he, like so many others sees me as the vegan weirdo.

So many, many serious diseases can be avoided, slowed, reduced or ameliorated by a vegan diet. Diabetes, cancer, heart disease, stroke, dementia etc etc ...

If you read this and have health as a high priority, please consider a vegan diet if you aren't vegan already. Look at the research. The top peer reviewed information shows so many health benefits for a vegan diet.

As a massive bonus, you will also be saving lives and the planet.

Food pics next time, I promise.

Vegan Nutrition and Caturday

2009-11-14T09:23:00.007+10:00

One more quick ad for the Vegan Clinical Nutrition Seminar this afternoon. There will be a showing of the "Clinical Nutrition" DVDs by Michael Greger, followed by a panel discussion. There will also be snacks during the session and dinner for $10 by the Loving Hut.

It starts at 1.00pm and runs until after dinner, which starts at 6.00pm. It is $5 per head, which is extraordinary value for over 5 hours of entertainment and education. Funds raised are used for the Green Earth Festival which is a cruelty-free, green festival which is planned to run for the first time in 2010. This fund raising is vital to allow Brisbane to have its own cruelty free festival.

Please come so that I am not talking to myself and the other panellists only!

The full details are here: Vegan Nutrition Event.

Caturday

Whose chair is this?

Why Berry's of course! (But she will graciously allow you to perch on the front half and use the computer.)

Taco Salad and Cheat's Chilli

2009-11-12T18:22:00.001+10:00

American recipe books and blogs often mention taco salad. I decided to give it a go. Here it is with some Cheat's Chilli that I pulled from the freezer and served with mashed avocado and salsa.

Taco Salad

Ingredients

Several torn lettuce leaves
2 chopped tomatoes
1/4 chopped capsicum
handful olives
1/3 packet Woolworth's rainbow salad (julienned carrot, beetroot and broccoli)
few jalapenos
3 tacos baked and broken up (you could use corn chips, but I had some tacos sitting around)

Method

Combine all ingredients.
You could dress it if you wish, with salsa or your preferred vinagrette. As we were eating it with chilli, we didn't bother.

Very more-ish! I can see why it is so popular. It would be great to feed to omnis at a BBQ.

Vegan Omelettes, Yay!

2009-11-10T18:06:00.001+10:00

Above is a tomato and herb omelette, served with salad and toast.

I have a new copy of Isa Chandra Moskowitz's Vegan Brunch. What an amazing book! There are sweet options, like pancakes, muffins, cinnamon scrolls, crepes and waffles. There are savoury options, like quiche, sausages, hashbrown and Ethiopian dishes.

Even better, there are omelettes! I made them first. They are light and savoury, with a texture like egg omelettes and a savoury vaguely eggy flavour. The secret is black salt, which is actually pink and tastes of sulfur, like an egg yolk. I got black salt at an Indian grocery store at Mt Gravatt, but it is also available at other Indian stores and online.

The recipe is simple. It is based around tofu, chickpea flour and nutritional (savoury) yeast. The omelettes are tasty. They fill the omelette void, which I didn't even know was part of my vegan life. Everyone enjoyed them, when served as an entree to our French dinner the other night. Even Mr BrisVegan, who still eats eggs, liked it and asked for a repeat the next day for lunch. The mixture also keeps well overnight in the fridge for an omelette the next day.

Get this recipe book! If you buy it from the Vegan and Vegetarian Society of Queensland, here, the profit goes to a worthy veg*n society.

French food dinner & Julie and Julia

2009-11-08T15:24:00.004+10:00

A few weeks ago, I saw Julie and Julia, the moving about a blogger, Julie Powell, who decided to blog her way through Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French of French Cooking. Julie made all 500+ recipes in the cookbook in one year, while blogging her progress. Her very successful blog was published as a book, which was the basis of her story in the movie. The movie also told Julia Child's story from her first cooking lessons in France through to her cookbook publication and eventual successful TV career. The Julia story was based on her autobiography.

The movie was a fairly light romp. Meryl Streep was excellent as Julia Child. I don't know how they made her look so tall, but she embodied Child well, awkward tallness, irritating voice, joie de vivre and all. The other actors were appealing and did well in their roles. The stories appealed to the feminist in me, showing two women engaging in what could have been seen as trivial women's occupations (cooking plus blogging for Julie) and turning it into wild successes. The story telling was kind to the protaganists, while avoiding the hyperbolic conventions of many success stories.

The down side of the movie was the amount of dead animal food discussed and handled. I don't find corpses fun, but realise that most of the rest of the cinema would have seen the very real dead bodies as no more than another prop or meal. I handled it by closing my eyes in a couple of spots.

The concentration of the moving on Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French of French Cooking, led to me checking it out from the library. In the movie, Julie raved about her mother making Boeuf Bouguignon. As a result I decided to give it a veganised try.

To go with my version, I decided to make a 3 course french meal.

First course, not pictured, was an omelette aux fines herbs, using the omelette recipe from Vegan Brunch, filled with fresh chopped herbs, rolled, sliced and served with a small green salad. I also served sliced french stick with it. This is an amazing omelette. I will blog it further soon.

It was followed by mushroom stick bourguignon, which was better than it looks in this photo. I substituted Lamyong vegan ham for the bacon in the original recipe, nuttelex for butter, Massel beef style stock for the stock and mushroom sticks for the beef. I made a 2/3 sized recipe, with only 300g of mushroom sticks in place of 1kg meat, as it appeared to be around that volume, though it was lighter. I frequently use mushroom sticks in the place of beef in any recipe where it calls for small chunks. Mr Brisvegan loves them, as do the children.

It worked really well. As you can see, I served it with baked potato, cauliflower gratin and baked asparagus. Everyone other than Z liked it. Z likes his mushroom sticks with a more subtle sauce apparently.

To follow, I made my first tarte tatin. It was as easy as it looks on TV cooking shows.

Apple Tarte Tatin

Ingredients

1 tablespoon Nuttelex
2 Tablespoons white sugar
pinch each cloves and cinnamon
3 - 4 apples, cored and sliced
1 sheet vegan puff pasty

Method

Preheat oven to 180 degrees centigrade.
Line a pie dish with non-stick baking paper. In the dish, melt the nuttelex. You can do this by popping it in the oven for a few minutes.
Sprinkle the sugar and spices over the sugar.
Add apples. Return to oven for 20 minutes or until apples are just tender.
Remove dish from oven. You can leave it to cool if you wish to serve the pie hot later in the day.
30 minutes before you want to serve a hot tarte tatin, cover the apples with the puff pastry. Trim and tuck the edges around the apples.
Return to oven. Bake at 180 degrees centigrade for 30 minutes or until the pastry is puffed and golden.
Once the pasty is cooked, invert the tart onto a serving dish. Viola!

Everyone loved the tart. It was so simple and easy, I will be using this method again.

Quick Microwave Baba Ganouj and Caturday

2009-11-07T11:26:00.007+10:00

I have taken a week away from blogger after the intensity of VeganMofo. But now I'm back!

The other day we were having Middle Eastern food. I wanted to increase the amount of vegetables on the children's plates. So, at the last minute, I decided to use some eggplant that I had in the fridge to produce baba ganouj. I find that my children will eat many things in dips that they would never eat alone. Baba ganouj and hommous are big favourites in our house, even though the children aren't fond of either eggplant or chickpeas.

I only used half an eggplant, but I have scaled the recipe up to feed a bigger group. I also threw it together, so the amounts of some items are estimated from dashes. Feel free to adjust them to taste. Also, if you like a darker baba ganouj, don't peel the eggplant and cook it a little longer.

Quick Microwave Baba Ganouj

Makes one medium bowl of dip.

Ingredients

1 large eggplant (around 400-500g when whole)
1/2 teaspoon liquid smoke
1 tablespoon olive oil
3 tablespoons tahini
2 tablespoons garlic
2 tablespoons lemon juice
salt for eggplant and to taste at the end

Method

Peel eggplant and cut into large (3-4 cm) cubes. Salt eggplant and leave to drain for 15 minutes.
Rinse eggplant
Put eggplant in a microwave proof dish with a cover.
Microwave until eggplant is very tender, about 5 - 7 minutes (longer if needed).
Add all ingredients in a blender, food processor or large container, if you only have a stab blender.
Blend or process until smooth
Taste. Add salt if desired. Add small additional amount of other ingredients (eg if you think it needs more of any particular flavour).
Refrigerate until cold (10 minutes in the freezer was good for a small serve, but an hour in the fridge would be ideal).
Serve with pita bread, other bread or crackers.

Caturday

How do two cats deal with cold weather? Snuggle under a blanket, of course:

This photo was taken at the end of winter. I think we put the blanket over them, but they often squirm in under loose blankets all by themselves. Berry in particular is good at getting almost entirely under a blanket, with only a nose sticking out.

Quick Ad!

Next weekend, on 14 November 2009, there will be a vegan nutrition DVD viewing, panel and discussion at the Albion Peace Centre, 102 McDonald Rd, Windsor. It will kick off at 1.00pm and run for most of the afternoon. There will be dinner for $10 from the Loving Hut, served from 6.00pm. There will also be food for sale, during the day.

It is $5 per head for a half day session.

The panel will include Amanda Benham (a nutritionist), Tracey-Lynne Greyson (animal lawyer), Cameron Blewett (Sea Shepherd) and me. I think that I got asked, because I had previously volunteered to be a contact for a survey process for the Vegan and Vegetarian Society Queensland and have a healthy, mostly veg*n family. I am certainly not up to the expertise of the other panellists. However, I do have a big mouth and like to talk about veganism, so maybe that was why I got the call.

For more details, please see: http://greenearthfestival.net/events/events/34-clinical-nutrition-2009.html

Maybe I'll see you there :)

Veganmofo Final Salad and Caturday

2009-10-31T12:24:00.005+10:00

So here it is: The last post of VeganMoFo III. I have enjoyed the blogathon, but feel that I wasn't able to keep up with everyone else's posts. I promise to stop by your blogs in the near future and read through any posts I missed.

Here is my final food post:

This is a salad that we had a little while ago. There is falafel, vege seafood sticks, Changs noodle salad, home grown radishes, pasta salad with home-made pesto dressing, pita bread, hommous and waldorf salad. All of it was good and fit with my ongoing salad obsession.

Caturday: Berry on the rolltop desk

Last week I showed you a picture of Switch asleep on the top of our rolltop desk. This is her sister Berry, showing how she approaches napping on a desk. As you can see, she is a sprawler!

Pumpkin and Lentil Soup

2009-10-30T18:37:00.001+10:00

A little while ago, I decided to make pumpkin soup for dinner again. However, I wanted to make sure that we had a bit of protein to make it more filling. What to do? Add red lentils!

Pumpkin and Lentil Soup

Ingredients

1 small pumpkin, peeled, seeded and chopped into 5 cm pieces (butternut is very good)
1 large onion chopped
1 tablespoon vegan margarine
1 cup dry red lentils
water sufficient to cover (over 1 litre)
2 vegan stock cubes (I used Massel Chicken Style cubes)
1/4 teaspoon dry ground ginger

Method

Heat margarine in a soup pot. Add onion and sweat until translucent.
Add remaining ingredients.
Cook 30 minutes or until pumpkin and lentils are tender.
Blend until smooth. I used a stab blender in the pot for convenience.
Serve with bread and enjoy.

Happily, everyone loved it, including the normally lentil averse children. The dominant flavour is the pumpkin, with a hint of creamy lentil savouriness. It hit the spot on a cold night. I would happily serve it to omnivorous guests.

Way too much gravy...

2009-10-29T18:47:00.003+10:00

This picture shows my crazy love of Isa's Punk Rock Chickpea Gravy, from Vegan With a Vengeance. It shows roast vegetables, cauliflower gratin and Sanitarium Roast, all smothered with the amazing gravy. There is also a bit of cranberry sauce on the roast.

Try this gravy if you dare. It is seriously addictive.

Quick Lower Fat Garlic Bread

2009-10-28T18:23:00.001+10:00

Who doesn't love garlic bread? Buttery, garlicky, savoury carbs. Mmmmhhh (Homer Simpson drool).

As a vegan, there are very few options for pre-packaged garlic bread. I also think that most contain a bit too much fat (including trans fat) to be a good food choice. So, I make my own all the time.

Basically, I split a roll, spread it with Nuttelex and crushed garlic and sprinkle it with herbs. I then pop it under the grill until it is lightly browned.

Everyone in the family loves it. Omnivores love it. It is a universal favourite. It's great as a side dish with pasta, salad or BBQ food.

Quick and Easy Red Thai Curry

2009-10-27T18:57:00.006+10:00

This is a very simple curry. I used a Maesri curry paste, coconut cream and vegan fish paste to create the sauce. In the curry is tofu, mushroom, zucchini, carrot, bamboo shoots, tomato and capsicum. I used a whole tin of the curry paste. It was a bit hot, even though I like hot food, and not creamy enough for me. Next time I would use half a tin and freeze half.

We served it with rice for an easy spicy dinner.

Vietnamese Noodle Salad

2009-10-26T18:33:00.001+10:00

Saturday was hot, so I decided to make an easy Vietnamese style noodle salad. This is so simple and easy to make. It is fresh, easy and doesn't need the stove to be turned on. With all the herbs, it is bursting with flavour.

Unfortunately, all my boring children picked out the herbs, but liked the noodles and tofu.

Vietnamese Noodle Salad

Serves 6 generous or 8 small serves

Ingredients

1/3 cup white sugar
1/3 cup lime juice
1 1/2 tablespoon Thai sweet chilli sauce
1 1/2 tablespoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon finely chopped coriander (from a jar is fine)
100g bean or rice noodles
300-500g recooked tofu puffs (or fry off some tofu)
100g bean sprouts
1 carrot
10 green beans
several sprigs each vietnamese mint, mint, basil and coriander. (You can skip one or more of these, but it is good with all of these) Reserve a couple for garnishing.
1 medium green chilli, finely sliced (optional)
1/4 deep fried shallots
1/4 cup crushed peanuts

Method

Reconstitute noodles according to packet directions.
Heat lime juice and sugar. It is convenient to do this in a microwave, for 30-60 seconds. Mix to dissolve sugar. Heat and mix again until necessary.
Add chilli sauce, soy sauce and minced coriander to lime mixture. Put in fridge to cool.
Once noodles are soft, cool in cold water and drain.
Take a bowl for each person. Put some noodles in the base of each bowl.
On top arrange grated carrots, sliced beans, bean sprouts and herb leaves. Pile tofu in centre.
Drizzle each salad with some dressing.
Top salad with fried shallots, peanuts and garnishing herbs.

Tofu Scramble

2009-10-25T11:12:00.003+10:00

This morning I decided to make tofu scramble. This is a vegan standard. Every cookbook author has a version. I usually just make my own mediterranean-style version. However, this time I decided to use Isa Chandra Moskowitz' recipe. I replaced the mushrooms and carrots with zucchini and tomato, because that's how I roll today.

It make 4 serves. No-one else wanted any, so I will have delicious leftovers for work lunches. Tofu scramble is usually great reheated or in sandwiches.

I liked it. I used the Healtheries Brand Nutritional yeast. I should have used another brand, as the Healtheries is a bit strong for this recipe. However, I happily ate the scramble and will enjoy the leftovers.

Tapas night and Caturday

2009-10-24T17:37:00.003+10:00

As you may have noticed, around once a week our meal involve little snacks, placed in the centre of the table. Each person can help themselves. I find that the younger two children try new items more easily this way. There is less pressure to like it. They also eat more vegetables when it is their own idea to try them.

Of course, Mr BrisVegan, J and I all love to try new foods and enjoy variety, so we love it too.

This meal was tapas influenced. Clockwise from the top, you will see pita bread with hommous and baba ganouj, store bought polenta, baked plain and with a sweet chilli sauce glaze, eggplant baked with tomato pasta sauce and a slice of herb and garlic Cheezely, potato gems (tots for the US audience), mixed baked olives, dates baked in a Redwood Cheatin' ham strip, strawberries with balsamic vinegar and non-alcoholic red lambrusco (yeah, grape juice, basically).

Based on Susan's wonderful example, I have decided to try to put a cat photo up once a week. I will aim for one each Caturday, oops, Saturday. So here we go:

Caturday Photo: Sleeping Switch

Here is our adorable Switch, fast asleep on top of our roll top desk (a favourite perch). As you can see, she has an extremely cute habit of resting the top of her head on her sleeping spot, with her nose tucked under.

Another salad night

2009-10-22T18:20:00.002+10:00

Here's another salad from last week. On the plate are Changs Noodle salad, simple pasta salad, skillet asparagus salad and Vegetation's White Bean Cutlets.

The pasta salad is a favourite of Z's. It is simple cooked cooled pasta, bottled salad dressing and olives.

Skillet Asparagus Salad

Serves 4

Ingredients

1 tablespoon olive oil
1-2 bunches of asparagus (I used 1, but it had around 12 thin stalks)
10 grape tomatos, halved
1/2 zucchini cut into 2 cm dice
2 tablespoons pine nuts
12 pitted kalamata olives
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

Method

Snap woody section from bottom of asparagus. Wash the stalks.
Heat olive oil. Add remaining ingredients, except balsamic vinegar.
Heat for 3-5 minutes until tomato collapses slights and pine nuts brown slightly.
Remove from heat and allow to cool.
Cluster asparagus on a plate. Pile remaining mixture accross the asparagus.
Drizzle with balsamic vinegar.

This was very Mediterranean. I love asparagus, so I loved it.

Veganomicon Portobello Salad

2009-10-21T18:10:00.001+10:00

Another Veganomicon recipe today.

In the heat last week, we had salad several nights. One night I made the Portobello Salad with Spicy Mustard dressing from Veganomicon. This salad has marinated baked portobello mushrooms, with a lovely sweet tangy mustard dressing. For my salad, I kept the portobellos, dressing and greens, but skipped the remaining ingredients. I added tomatoes and sliced zucchini. It was delicious.

The mushrooms are baked in a lovely wine, soy, garlic, balsamic and olive oil marinade (recipe is in the book). I have found that the marinade makes more mushrooms that the 2-4 suggested. I have also frozen and reused the marinade after baking. The mushrooms also freeze well, so you can make a lot and have some for later.

I have made the actual recipe before and found it was very good. The dressing is wonderful on almost any green salad. If you have Veganomicon, try this one.

Veganomicon Curried Udon Noodle Stir-Fry

2009-10-20T18:58:00.001+10:00

This was one of our dinners last week. It was the delicious Curried Udon Noodle Stir-Fry from Veganomnicon. It was an impulse decision to make it, so I used a packet simply called "Gluten" which I had bought from the White Jade Lotus Vegetarian Supermarket, in place of the seitan cutlets. I simmered it in a bit of soy sauce and pinch of sugar. I swapped the broccoli for carrot and beans. The younger two children did not fancy the smell of the curry sauce, so they ate theirs without sauce.

This was the first time I had made a brown roux. I have made white sauces before, but have never used a darker roux. For some reason I thought that it would be hard, but it was easier than I thought. I will try various New Orleans recipes with confidence now.

This is a really tasty recipe. We enjoyed the savoury curry sauce. The leftovers were even better the next day for lunch.

Asian Influenced Feast

2009-10-19T18:26:00.002+10:00

This is a dinner that we had a few weeks ago. You can see a quick stir fried vegan Char Siu and vegetables, szechuan eggplant, store bought spring rolls and Changs fried noodle salad. Not pictured is steamed rice, which is always a favourite with my children.

The fried noodle salad is the one on the back of a Changs Fried Noodle packet. It is not authentic anything, other than a device to sell fried noodle. We use the gluten free noodles, as there are no doubtful ingredients that I could see. Mr Brisvegan, J and Z all love it at the moment, so it is showing up in a lot of dinners. I have tweaked the recipe a bit to reduce the fat. To make it as I do, you use 1/2 wombok, 6 spring onions, 1/2 packet Changs Fried Noodles, 1/4 cup each sugar, white wine vinegar and olive oil, 1 tablespoon soy sauce and 1 small dash sesame oil. Dissolve the sugar in the vinegar by heating them in the microwave for 1 minute and stirring well. Add olive oil, soy sauce and sesame oil and mix well. Add to finely chopped wombok and spring onions and mix well. Just before serving add fried noodles. you can also add slivered almonds, but I usually don't bother. My version has half the oil and fried noodles of the original recipe, but we don't notice the difference.

The stir fry is just vegan char siu, with onion, carrot and bok choy. To make a simple sauce, I added about 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger, around 2 tablespoons of soy sauce, 2 teaspoons of sugar and 1 tablespoon of white wine vinegar.

The Szechuan eggplant was from a recipe book. It was an excuse to use my new Szechuan peppercorns. It was very similar to this recipe from Jes of Cupcake Punk, who I have just discovered through googling Szechuan eggplant. Like her, I would add more than the recommended szechaun pepper.

Larabar Review and Vegan 100

2009-10-18T14:49:00.012+10:00

Larabars are rare creatures in Queensland. I usually get them by post from the Cruelty Free Shop. However, when I was at Mt Tambourine recently, I found them on the shelf in a pharmacy in the small restaurant and shop strip near the local library. They had Cinnamon Roll, Jocalat (chocolate, obviously) and Pecan Pie (eatan and not photographed). I was very pleased.

All three options were very pleasant. I have also tried key lime pie, which is my favourite. They are delicious little bars, packed full of the dried fruit and nuts which are really their only ingredients. The flavours are usually somewhat reminiscent of the named item. They are not sickly sweet, though their high fruit content means they are fairly sweet. The only down side is that they are pretty high in calories, which may be a concern for some people. If you see them and don't have any food allergies or calorie concerns, give them a go.

The wonderful Bazu of Where's the Revolution? has posted her version of the Vegan 100 on her blog. Basically, this is a list of foods that are worth a try. You show which you have tried by bolding items. I notice that a lot of this list is very US centric, with NY items or US versions of produce. Here is my version:

1) Copy this list into your blog or social networking site profile, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out or italicize any items that you would never consider eating.
4) Optional extra: Post a comment on this post linking to your results. The Vegan Hundred:

1. Molasses
2. Cactus/Nopales
3. Scrambled Tofu
4. Grilled Portobella Caps
5. Fresh Ground Horseradish
6. Sweet Potato Biscuits
7. Arepa
8. Vegan Coleslaw
9. Ginger Carrot Soup
10. Fiddlehead Ferns
11. Roasted Elephant Garlic
12. Umeboshi
13. Almond Butter Toast
14. Aloe Vera
15. H and H Bagel NYC
16. Slow Roasted Butternut Squash
17. White truffle (in oil form- does that count?)
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Freshly ground wasabi
20. Coconut Milk Ice Cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Orchard-fresh pressed apple cider
23. Organic California Mango (I think it is fair to substitute a local Qld version. There are mangos growing in our local parks, but I have also enjoyed local certified organic ones.)
24. Quinoa
25. Papaya Smoothie
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet or Habañero pepper (grow my own habanero chillis)
27. Goji Berry Tea
28. Fennel (Only vegetable of which I am not a fan)
29. Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookie (made my own from Isa's recipe - too good!)
30. Radishes and Vegan Buttery Spread (not yet, but sounds good)
31. Starfruit
32. Oven fresh Sourdough bread
33. Sangria made with premium fruit and juices
34. Sauerkraut
35. Acai Smoothie
36. Blue Foot Mushrooms
37. Vegan Cupcake from Babycakes nyc (unlikely without serious travel)
38. Sweet Potatoes and Tempeh combo
39. Falafel
40. Spelt Crust Pizza
41. Salt and Pepper Oyster Mushrooms
42. Jicama Slaw
43. Pumpkin Edamame Ginger Dumplings
44. Hemp Milk
45. Rose Champagne
46. Fuyu
47. Raw Avocado-Coconut Soup
48. Tofu Pesto Sandwich
49. Apple-Lemon-Ginger-Cayenne fresh-pressed juice...with Extra Ginger
50. Grilled Seitan
51. Prickly pear (Once as a kid, these are considered weeds here)
52. Fresh Pressed Almond Milk
53. Concord Grapes off the vine
54. Ramps
55. Coconut Water fresh from a young coconut
56. Organic Arugula (Grow my own)
57. Vidalia Onion
58. Sampler of organic produce from Diamond Organics
59. Honeycrisp Apple (Not available here)
60. Poi
61. Vegan Campfire-toasted Smores (Smores are not an Aussie thing at all)
62. Grape seed Oil
63. Farm fresh-picked Peach
64. Freshly-made pita bread with freshly-made hummus
65. Chestnut Snack Packs
66. Fresh Guava
67. Mint Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies
68. Raw Mallomar from One Lucky Duck, NYC
69. Fried plantains (For my Brisbane friends, you can get plantains at the West End markets in season. I fried my own)
70. Mache
71. Golden Beets
72. Barrel-Fresh Pickles
73. Liquid Smoke (Love it - get it from VVSQ!)
74. Meyer Lemon
75. Veggie Paella
76. Vegan Lasagna
77. Kombucha
78. Homemade Soy Milk (Too lazy)
79. Lapsang souchong (Yum!)
80. Lychee Bellini
81. Tempeh Bacon
82. Sprouted Grain Bread
83. Lemon Pepper Tempeh
84. Vanilla Bean
85. Watercress
86. Carrot you pulled out of the ground yourself (Must go and pull some from my garden this afternoon)
87. Vegan In-Season Fruit Pie
88. Flowers (Nasturtiums from my own garden are great, but have also tried lavender, chamomile, violets, and roses)
89. Corn Chowder
90. High Quality Vegan Raw Chocolate
91. Yellow fuzz-free Kiwi
92. White Flesh Grapefruit
93. Harissa
94. Coconut Oil
95. Jackfruit
96. Homemade Risotto
97. Spirulina
98. Seedless 'Pixie' Tangerine
99. Gourmet Sorbet, not store bought
100. Fresh Plucked English Peas

I bolded 63. That's not too bad. There would be more if I substituted Australian fruit varieties for the US versions. Please let me know if you fill this out. It would be cool to see what you highlight.

Spaghetti Bolognaise

2009-10-17T15:37:00.008+10:00

Ah, pasta, the perennial favourite. Easy to serve omnis, a favourite with children, how many meals has it saved?

Here is a quick spaghetti bolognaise that I made the a few nights ago.

Spaghetti Bolognaise

Serves 8 - 10 (halve for 4)

Ingredients

1-2 tablespoons olive oil
2 small onions
4 cloves garlic
2 tins of Sanitarium Casserole Mince (or 3 cups reconstituted TVP)
1 grated zucchini
1 400g tin diced tomatoes
200 g tomato paste
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1/2 teaspoons dried oregano
2 generous tablespoons fresh basil
salt and pepper to taste
500g spaghetti (or pasta of your choice)

Method

In a large skillet or saucepan, heat the olive oil.
Add onion and fry gently until translucent.
Add garlic and fry for 2 minutes.
Add remaining ingredients to pan.
Bring to boil. Reduce to simmer. Simmer 20 - 30 minutes.
Prepare 500 g spaghetti according to packet directions. (We use 500 g for 5 people, which lets the boys have seconds. I suggest 60g each for small serves, up to 125 g each for large serves of pasta.)
Once the pasta is ready, place desired amount of pasta on plate or in bowl. Add 1 large ladle of bolognaise sauce to each serve. Enjoy!

My children and omni husband love this. I am however hesitant to serve it to other omnis, as I find that TVP and similar products simply taste "fake" to the omnis that I know. (This may be entirely in their head, but I do recall disliking vegetarian burgers, sausages and so on when I first went vegetarian.) If you have more broad minded omnis in you life, they may enjoy the familiar texture and rich flavour.

Nachos

2009-10-16T18:43:00.003+10:00

This was a quick and easy dinner that we had a few weeks ago. At our house, nachos let everyone exercise their creativity and make their own dinner. Everyone likes the chips and avocado. Some go deluxe and some are very basic. The weirdest topping in the house is M's love of nachos with mayonnaise on them (wrong, I know!).

This was mine. On the usual corn chips are Cheat's Chilli, store bought salsa and Cheezely. Because I love the toppings (and am a bit of a guts), I put a thin layer of chips, toppings and then more chips and toppings. That was put in the microwave until the Cheezely melted (3 or 4 minutes from memory).

After microwaving, I added lettuce, tomato avocado mash and olives, because I like salad.

Yes, they were as good as they look.

Nasi Goreng

2009-10-15T18:35:00.000+10:00

To go with the gado gado, which I posted last night, I made a quick nasi goreng, which is Indonesian fried rice. It is easy to make.

Nasi Goreng

Serves 6

1 1/2 cups white rice (replace with brown if you wish)
1 small diced carrot
1/2 cup frozen peas
3 tablespoons oil, e.g. rice bran oil or peanut oil
1 small diced onion
1 tablespoon kecap manis (sweet soy sauce)
hot sauce to taste (1-3 teaspoons)

Cucumber, tomato, crushed peanuts, deep fried shallots and bean sprouts to garnish

Cook rice, carrots and peas according to rice packet directions. I use the absorption method (Water equal to 1 and 1/2 times the rice, brought to a boil and then simmered until the rice is tender, around 12 minutes after reducing to a simmer.)
Ideally, you should make the rice the day before and refrigerate it overnight. however, you can skip that step if you don't have time.
Heat a wok or high sided skillet. Add 1 tablespoon of oil. Cook the onion gently until translucent.
Add the remaining oil. Bring to medium high heat. Add rice, kecap manis and hot sauce. Stir fry until the rice is well coasted an lightly fried.
Turn rice into a service dish and garnish with garnishing items to taste.

My small children find this too spicy, so I make some for them without the chilli. Mr Brisvegan, J and I all like this one. The salad items in the garnish cut trough the rich chilli flavour for a burst of freshness, which is very appealing.

Gado Gado

2009-10-14T18:30:00.000+10:00

Gado Gado is a delicious Indonesian salad. It is relatively quick and easy to make, especially if you use a pre-made peanut sauce.

This one includes caramelised tofu, shredded wombok (Chinese cabbage - underneath), bean sprouts, cucumber, carrot, tomato, beans, radish, sautéed mushrooms, boiled, cooled potatoes, and a handful of Vietnamese mint. Over it all, I drizzled a store-bought peanut sauce and sprinkled a handful of crushed peanuts.

If you wished, you could also use cold noodles and other herbs or salad vegetables of choice.

We served this with a choice of plain steamed rice or nasi goreng. The younger children loved the tofu and picked at the vegetables. The rest of use enjoyed it very much. It is a naturally vegan traditional Indonesian dish (vegetarian if you include the traditional boiled egg), so it is something that can easily be served without scanning as too weird.

Z's guest blog: Amazing Mango Iceblocks

2009-10-13T17:23:00.006+10:00

I hand over to guest blogger Z who says:

At school, for a homework assignment on inventing, we to invent our own iceblocks, so I made Amazing Mango Iceblocks. I invented them all by myself. I made mini ones for school, in little cups and ice cube trays. We had some big ones for our family.

Everyone that ate them said they were 10 out of 10, even the teachers. They are delicimundo and healthy. Children will love them as snacks.

Here is the recipe:

Amazing Mango Iceblocks

Makes 8 ice block size and 28 large ice cubes

Ingredients

1 cup Weis Mango Sorbet
800g mango slices in juice (you will need both the mangoes and the juice)
1 cup Vitasoy Soy Milky Lite soy milk
1 tablespoon sugar

Method

Put all ingredients into a large jug (if using immersion blender) or blender.
Blend everything until it is smooth and there are no lumps.
Pour into ice cube trays or containers. Put toothpick in each iceblock.
Freeze 24 hours in your freezer.
Pull carefully our of mould and enjoy!

Crumbed Mushrooms

2009-10-12T18:39:00.002+10:00

I like crumbed things. You will have seen from my earlier posts that I have crumbed a cauliflower gratin and mushrooms. Here is my recipe for crumbed mushrooms.

Crumbed Mushrooms

Serves 4 as a side dish

12 - 16 small - medium mushrooms
1 egg worth of egg replacer
1/4 cup milk
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 cup crumbs (Pictured are cornflake crumbs, which is why they are so gold, but panko or normal bread crumbs are good)
1-2 teaspoons nutritional yeast (more if you are a fan)
1/4 teaspoon each crushed dried rosemary, paprika and salt
1/2 teaspoon each dried thyme and dried sage
Dash pepper
Cooking spray or olive oil to drizzle

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees celsius.
Clean the mushrooms.
Mix the egg replacer, milk and olive oil together.
In a separate bowl, mix the remaining ingredients, other than the final oil.
Using a wet hand/dry hand method,* dip the mushrooms in the egg replacer mix and then toss until well coated in the crumbs.
Put slightly spaced on a oiled or parchment paper covered baking tray.
Spray with cooking spray or drizzle with oil.
Bake for 30 minutes or until browned.

These mushrooms are succulent, slightly moist and crunch. I adore them. Mr BrisVegan and J also like them, though my younger two are not mushroom fans.

* Wet hand/dry hand means that you use one hand to put the item in the wet ingredients. Using the wet hand, you take the item out of the wet mix and drop it into the crumb mix. Using your dry hand, you toss the item in the crumbs. This is easier if you use the dry hand to cover it in crumbs before touching it. You then lift the item out with the dry and and put it in your cooking implement.

Dinner at the Loving Hut

2009-10-11T12:49:00.003+10:00

Yesterday, we had a crazy, hectic day. It included shopping for new school shoes, looking for some summer clothes for children, a visit to the orthodontist and delivery of Z to a birthday party at Lazerforce (an indoor lazer shooting game place). We snatched snacks and drinks on the run, but didn't really have a proper lunch.

So, we decided to have an extra early dinner (just before 6.00pm) at Loving Hut, a wonderful vegan restaurant at Shop 2, 1420 Logan Road, Mt Gravatt. Loving Hut has excellent food in a simply decorated casual restaurant. The staff are friendly. As it is affiliated with Supreme Master Ching Hai, there are televisions playing her news channel around the restaurant. However, they are not overwhelmingly obtrusive.

The food is always top notch. Here are some of the dishes that we tried:

This is the dumplings (one missing already, thanks to Mr Brisvegan), a little bolognaise on my plate and the 10 Wonders dish, which is rice with salads, gluten and a delicious sweetish mild chilli sauce.

This is the Loving Wrap, a yuma (bean curd) skin roll with tofu, mushrooms etc inside, served with rice and stir fried vegetables. This was savoury and light, with a texture almost like omelette. It was Mr Brisvegan's favourite.

This is my iced coffee. If you go to Loving Hut, you need to try the iced coffee, chai, mocha or coffee. They are just like the ones I had to give up when I become vegan. The "cream" is coconut based and surprisingly delicious with the soy milk. There is also So Good ice-cream lurking under the cream. Z said his iced chocolate was better than "real milk", which is high praise, since he does not like soy milk as a rule.

Not pictured are a deep fried mushroom cutlet and inari sushi. I forgot to photograph them, as I was very hungry and we ate them quickly. The mushroom was a big portabello mushroom crumbed and deep fried, served with a salad that included some tangy pickled vegetables. I am on a mushroom kick at the moment, so the crispy coating and succulent mushroom was my favourite part of the meal. The inari had tofu, and vegetables mixed through the rice. I liked them, but M said that she prefers plain inari with simple sushi rice.

We took slices of strawberry and chocolate vegan cheesecake home. They were also delightful. The strawberry is lightly fruity with a jellied strawberry coating, which is tangy and sweet, but not sickly sweet. The chocolate, which J requested, was much better than most chocolate cheesecakes. I usually find the tanginess of the cheese conflicts with the chocolate bitterness. The Loving Hut version is creamier than usual, with a rich ganache glaze that works very will with the cake. M kept trying to help everyone eat their piece of it.

Loving Hut is probably the best vegan restaurant to use to introduce Brisbane omnis to vegan dining. It is very good value. It has both exotic dishes and familiar items like bolognaise and sweet and sour. The deserts are luscious and The bolognaise is wonderful and is probably the best vegan spaghetti bolognaise that I have ever had. It is child-friendly, with child palatable food like the spaghetti, nuggets and fries and a small play area for toddlers in a back space. However, don't expect fine dining.

Cauliflower Gratin

2009-10-10T18:30:00.003+10:00

How do you get young children to eat their cruciferous veggies? Crumb them!

As you will have seen from this blog, I make this gratin regularly because the kids love it. It is a special favourite of Z's. He usually takes seconds and thirds of this one, despite the fact that he usually dislikes most green vegetables.

Cauliflower Gratin

Serves 6 - 8 as a side dish

Ingredients

1/2 cup strong vegan stock (I use 1/2 Massel large chicken style cube with 1/2 cup water)
10-12 large cauliflower floret or equivalent smaller pieces (enough to fill a medium casserole dish)
1/3 cup crumbs (Pictured are cornflake crumbs, which is why it is so gold, but panko or normal bread crumbs are good)
1-2 teaspoons nutritional yeast (more if you are a fan)
1/4 teaspoon each crushed dried rosemary, paprika, dried sage and salt (if using unsalted stock)
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
Dash pepper
Cooking spray or olive oil to drizzle

Preheat oven to 180 degrees centigrade.
Place cauliflower in casserole dish with stock.
Bake covered until cauliflower is just tender, about 1/2 to 3/4 hour. To speed up the dish, you can microwave it for 10-15 minutes at this stage.
Mix remaining ingredients other than the oil. Place on top of the cauliflower.
Spray well with cooking spray or lightly drizzle with olive oil. You want to just moisten the top layer or crumbs to assist it to brown. You do not have to have all of it covered with oil, especially if you are drizzling with oil.
Return to oven. Bake until golden, about 20-30 minutes.

This is very good as a side dish, especially with other roasted or baked items.

Z's chocolate pretzels

2009-10-09T18:06:00.008+10:00

Last week, my children were on school holidays. Z decided that he wanted to bake. He checked out his cook books (my children all have several cookbooks of their own). In one called Cook for Kids by Jean Pare, he found some Chocolate Cookie Pretzels.

This is not a vegan cookbook, but Z is creative. He showed me the recipe and suggested that we could replace Nuttelex for butter, Tofutti cream cheese for cow cream cheese and dark chocolate for milk.

Here are his masterpieces:

Of course, the shape and consistency of the dough did lead an almost 10 year old boy to suggest some other shapes, that you can see lurking in this picture:

I laughed at them, because apparently I have the sense of humour of an 8 year old.

They were delicious and unusual. The use of a full tub of tofutti cream cheese meant that they were rich and delightfully soft and chewy, but not overly sweet. Very good baking from Z!

Z is watching me blog. He says to tell you "It was fun!"

Roast Medley

2009-10-08T18:57:00.004+10:00

This was a medley of roast potato, cut into wedges and sprinkle with vegan "fry sprinkle" carrots cut into battons, green beans, capsicum, onion wedges, a few vegan sausages and stale sourdough torn into pieces and tossed with olive oil and garlic.

It was served with Massel vegan gravy, cauliflower gratin and a quick toasted spinach and vegan cheese pita. It was pretty good on a cold night a few weeks ago. It also made 7 sausages stretch into a meal for 5 people, without the kids noticing that they didn't get 2 full sausages each.

Potstickers

2009-10-07T20:39:00.004+10:00

My dumplings from yesterday's post also make good potstickers. I had not encountered potstickers before I started reading American blogs. Some chinese restaurants have fried dumplings, but potstickers are a rare product here.

Potstickers

Makes 15 potstickers

15 dumplings (see recipe in previous post)
1 tablespoon neutral oil (vegetable, canola or rice bran oil is good)
1/2 cup vegan stock (I used Massel Chicken Style stock)
1/2 cup water
1 teaspoon say sauce
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon white wine vinegar
1 teaspoon sugar

Heat oil in non-stick or cast iron pan on medium heat.
Add dumplings to pan. Reduce heat a little. Fry on one side until that side is browned and crisp.
Mix remaining ingredients. Add to pan with the dumplings.
Bring gentle to boil.
Reduce to a fairly fast simmer.
Simmer until broth is absorbed (about 10 minutes).
Serve.

Everyone in our family enjoyed these. I could happily have doubled the recipe. I liked the crisp/chewy/simmered texture. I can see why they are so popular in the US.

Making dumplings

2009-10-06T18:26:00.005+10:00

I love Asian food, as you have probably noticed. I frequently buy pre-made dim sum from asian supermarkets. However, I recently decided to make my own. So here is my take on dumplings. I think that next time I would use tofu or seitan in them.

Dumplings

Makes approx 30 dumplings

Take these ingredients:

200 g Vegan roast pork (Seitan, tofu or TVP mince would also be good)
2 Spring/green onions
3 mushrooms
1/4 small wombok (chinese cabbage)
dash each powdered ginger and black pepper
Dash soy sauce
Vegan wonton wrappers

Dice all vegetables and roast pork into a small dice.
Fry gently.
Once the vegetables have softened and liquid has been absorbed, remove from hear and allow to cool a little.
Place a small spoonful of mixture onto each vegan wonton wrapper. Fold and seal with a touch of water. I got lazy and simply folded them, but you could crimp them into a ruffled shape or an upright wonton, if you prefer. Place aside on a tray in a single layer:

5. You may now cook the dumplings or freeze them. The dumplings may be used in
wonton soup, fried, deep fried, steamed or used for pot stickers.

Wonton Soup

3-5 dumplings per person
Vegan stock (vegetable or chick'n style are good) (this is a liquid soup, so you will need 1-2 litres for 4-8 people)
pinch dried ginger
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon sesame
Asian style vegetables, including bock choy, sliced mushroom, and carrot (optional)

Put all ingredients but dumplings and green leafy vegetables in a large pot. Bring to a boil and reduce to a simmer.
Add wontons. Return to boil and then reduce to a simmer.
Simmer for approximately 5 minutes, or until dumplings are translucent and cooked.
Add green bok choy leaves to wilt.
Serve

The dumplings were good, but the char sieu style "pork" was a bit dominant in the recipe.

Spinach and Cheezely Pastries

2009-10-05T08:53:00.004+10:00

This is what we had for dinner last night. You can see spinach and cheezely pastries, corn, asparagus, baked mushrooms and potatoes with punk rock chickpea gravy, from Vegan With a Vengeance. (If you have VWAV, you should make this gravy. It is seriously good!)

Spinach and Cheezely Pastries

Makes 8 pastries

Ingredients

250g frozen spinach
1 loosely packed cup grated mozzarella style Cheezely
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 onion, finely diced
pinch of salt and pepper
2 sheets Borg's vegan puff pastry (Aldi puff pastry is apparently also vegan)
little water to moisten pastry

Preheat oven to 180 degrees celsius.
Defrost frozen spinach. Drain well.
Lightly fry onion in oil until translucent.
Mix spinach, onion cheezley and seasonings.
Quarter each sheet of pastry.
Put 1/8th of the spinach mix on one side of each square of pastry.
Moisten edges of pastry lightly. Fold pastry over filling. press edges together.
Bake for 1/2 hour or until golden.

M was helping me roll the pastries. She suggested that we should make rolls. You can also make rectangles, triangle or any other shape you fancy.

Everyone liked this one. Puff pastry is usually popular with my kids. They also love spinach and cheese. The younger two children took the last few rolls to school today in their lunchboxes, with cold icepacks to keep them fresh.

This is a handy dish to serve non-vegans. Omnis find it familiar (cheese and spinach triangles!). You can make small versions for parties. For a lower fat version, you can substitute filo pastry for the puff pastry.

Quick Pizza

2009-10-04T13:36:00.005+10:00

This is a quick pizza that we had for lunch today. The base was a small pita bread. They are a convenient, low fat, thin base, with a bit of a crunch, if you bake them right.

I used Mediterranean relish for a sauce. It is tangy and a bit sweet. I then topped it with olives, mushroom, roasted pumpkin, fresh oregano and some small chunks of Cheezely garlic and herb vegan cheese.

It hit the spot. The children had variations on this. J had the same as me. M had only sauce, olives and cheese. Z had only sauce and olives. It was gone in no time.

2009-10-03T21:17:00.003+10:00

The other day, I had this simple toasted sandwich for lunch. It was toasted with only Cheezely herb and garlic vegan cheese. After toasting, I added the fresh tomato, rocket (from my garden) and avocado. On the side, there are kalamata olives and pickled onions.

Cheezely has the best vegan "cheese" that I have eaten (out of the admittedly very limited options available to Australian consumers). While it does not taste exactly like cow cheese, it does fill the desire for cheese with a savoury flavour and cheesy texture (whough some are a little floury if not melted. Their super melting options melt reasonably well for pizzas or anywhere else that you crave melted cheese. My favourite is the herb and garlic, which is the only vegan cheese replacement that I would eat on crackers.

My subconscious likes salads

2009-10-02T21:15:00.003+10:00

Last night, I had a wonderful dream. Other people dream of world peace (which is a good thing) or dates with George Clooney (a date with George would be a good thing for sure), but that was not my dream. I dreamt that I was making a salad. It was beautiful. I created a new dressing and was raving about it. I had perfect butter lettuce leaves and buttery avocado.

Why yes, I am a complete food nerd and probably need to get out more. Why do you ask?

I woke up happy and hungry. I wrote down my subconscious' dressing recipe and resolved to make the dream salad for dinner tonight. I did and lo, it was good. So here it is:

Dream Salad

Makes 4 servings as a side salad. Double or quadruple for larger groups.

Butter lettuce (around 8 large leaves)
1/2 avocado, in 1-2 cm dice
Tomato, sliced in wedges
3 cm cucumber, sliced
2 radishes, sliced
1 large mushroom, sliced

Dressing Ingredients
(Makes 1 cup, enough for several salads, halve or quarter for smaller serves)
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1/4 cup good fruity extra virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon maple syrup
4 good pinches salt
2 pinches black pepper
enough white wine vinegar to make up to 1 cup

Put the all but the last dressing ingredient in a 1 cup (or more) measuring cup.
Add white wine wine vinegar until there is 1 cup of dressing.
Whisk dressing until oil is emulsified.
Put all salad ingredients in a salad bowl.
Add enough dressing to salad to coat (about 1/4 cup for the amount of vegetables above).
Toss until well coated.

You can refrigerate the remaining dressing. I imagine you would be able to keep it for several days.

Now I'm off to bed. I may even dream the secret coke recipe...

Green Mango Salad + Welcome to VeganMoFo

2009-10-01T21:04:00.001+10:00

October is the worldwide Vegan Month of Food or VeganMoFo. It is an annual blogging event, created by Isa Chandra Moskowitz (cookbook author and creator of the amazing Post Punk Kitchen online community). VeganMoFo is now in its third year. The aim of VeganMoFo is for bloggers to write posts about vegan food each business day, or more, for the month of October. It is a celebration of the amazing range, creativity and geographical spread of vegan food. The list of participants is apparently more than 320 people. The amazing Kittee is doing most of the organisation for the event this year. You can find more information at her blog, Cake Maker to the Stars.

On to the food! As you have probably noticed from other posts on this blog, I love Asian food. It is delicious, easily made vegan, and relies on fresh vegetables, which are a big favourite for me in any meal. I also love salads in hot weather.

The two came together in a tangy green mango salad. I have been curious about green mango for years, since I had a student who had grown up in north Queensland and who raved about them. I had looked at many different recipes for green mango salad on the net. When I saw green mangoes at the Asian supermarket, I had to get them.

Here are the ingredients that I planned to use for the salad:

Ignore the carrot. I decided not to use it after trying the green mango and dressing. I used herbs from my garden, plus some nasturtium flowers for decoration. Use fresh store-bought herbs or minced herbs, if you don't grow them. I wouldn't use dried herbs for this one.

Green Mango Salad
Serves 4 as a side dish

2 green mangos, grated or julienned
2 spring onions, chopped
1 tablespoon of sugar (I used half palm and half white, but brown, all palm or all white would be good)
2 tablespoons of lime juice
1/2 - 1 tsp vegan balachan shrimp paste (Depending on your preferred saltiness. Replace with 1 tablespoon of soy sauce if you don't have balachan)
2 tablespoons of sweet chilli sauce
Small bunch of vietnamese mint (use mint if you don't have vietnamese mints), chopped
Small bunch coriander, chopped
2 tablespoons crushed peanuts
Nasturtium flowers or extra mint and coriander to garnish

Dissolve sugar in lime juice. I put them both in a cup in the microwave and heated them until the sugar dissolved.
Add the shrimp paste to the lime juice. Mix until dissolved.
Add sweet chilli sauce to dressing and set aside.
Mix the mango, spring onion and herbs well. Mound in a serving dish.
Pour dressing over salad.
Sprinkle nuts on centre of salad. Add garnish
Put salad in fridge for 1/2 hour to develop flavours. Serve.

I bought the vegan shrimp paste from the Cruelty Free Shop. It has the pungent scent and strong salty flavour of traditional shrimp paste. This was the first time that I used it. It worked very well. I have yet to try it in a Thai curry, but I suspect it will work very well.

Goodbye OzNZVeganMoFo & Bush Tucker

2009-09-30T22:17:00.004+10:00

Today is the last day of OzNZVeganMoFo. Tomorrow there will be the start of the worldwide VeganMoFo, in which I also plan to participate.

So what is the ultimate Aussie food for the final Australian MoFo post? I haven't covered so many foods and traditions. (Oh well, there is always next year.) However, I do want to mention a very important and overlooked Australian food tradition.

Tonight, I thought I would mention bush tucker. I am not an indigenous Australia, so I am not familiar with much of Australia's food history. Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islanders have food traditions that reach back over 40,000 years. Their land use, including the use of fire to encourage favourable plants, changed the Australian landscape in a form of land management which preserved the land, resources, flora and fauna far better than European settlers have managed in the last 200 odd years.

In parts of Australia, Indigenous people traded over hundred of kilometres (central Australia, evidenced by rock items displaced by almost the length of the continent). Aboriginal people sent carved message stick invitations to other nations, over similar distances in a form of recorded communication. (The writing-like nature of these permanently recorded messages have been ignored in a privileging of written forms, by many European discussion of Aboriginal culture.) Some groups hosted food festivals like the Bunya nut celebrations for groups from all around their region.

Other than the ever popular macadamia nut, it is only in the last few years that non-indigenous people have paid much attention to this rich tradition. It is now possible to buy wattle seed and lemon myrtle based seasoning. You can also buy bush lime and other traditional fruits in jams, chutneys and sauces.

Well, here are my approaches to bush tucker plants, from my garden. They are all native to the Brisbane area, as well as other areas of Australia.

Midyin berry (Austromyrtus dulcis) amongst my beans and nasturtiums. This low shrub will have red sweet, ginger-flavoured berries later.

Native ginger (Alpinea Caerulea). This tall quick-growing plant will have blue edible berry and leaves which can be used to wrap food for cooking.

Lilly pilly (Syzygium australe), which is a small tree/large shrub with more edible berries.

I haven't had any crop from these young plants yet, but I am hoping for fruit this season and will blog about them if I get them.

Goodbye Aussie MoFo!

Aussie Burger

2009-09-29T07:01:00.002+10:00

We have burgers for dinner about once a month at the BrisVegan house. It is a quick and easy dinner. The children like burgers. It is a great way to get the younger two to eat salad. They are made with whatever burgers I buy at the shops, which are often Frys or Sanitarium products. Occasionally, I will make chickpea cutlet or bean burgers.

So what makes this an Aussie burger? Beetroot! It seems to be an Australian thing to eat tinned, sliced beetroot on burgers. I love it.

You will also see a Sanitarium NotBurger, which until recently contained egg white. I used to love them as a vegetarian. Fortunately, there has been a change of recipe and they no longer list egg (or dairy) as an ingredient. They are a vaguely meaty texture and flavour, though not as close as a Fry's product. They are a light, savoury flavour, with sesame seeds for a pleasant nuttiness.

Sanitarium is an Australian company, owned by the Seven Day Adventist church. All of their products, including their popular breakfast cereals are vegetarian. Some of their products contain egg or milk, but some are vegan. Their tinned and cold items are widely available in supermarkets and come to the rescue of many hungry vegans.

The burger is made with a white bun, onion, the burger, beetroot, tomato, lettuce and BBQ sauce. It was served with McCain Original oven chips. This is my type of junk food!

Sausages and Vege

2009-09-28T11:15:00.001+10:00

Growing up, my parents lived a very Anglo lifestyle. My father was a meat and 3 vege man, which, due to the very sexist dynamic in my family, meant that almost every dinner was meat and 3 vege. I obviously don't eat that way any more!

However, occasionally I feel like the stereotypical protein and 3 vege Anglo-Australian standard. Here is my version, which is bangers and mash with onion gravy, corn, cauliflower gratin and garlic sauté spinach.

The sausages are Sanitarium BBQ sausages. The mash is potato, Nuttelex margarine, soy milk and a dash of onion powder, salt and pepper. The onion gravy is Massel premix, with onions, a teaspoon of soy sauce, teaspoon of tomato sauce and a pinch each of sage and rosemary. The spinach is baby spinach sautéed in a dash of good olive oil and couple of cloves of garlic. I will feature the cauliflower in a future post. It is such a family favourite it deserves a post of its own.

Yes, I did add tomato sauce before eating. What?! It's traditional!

Marriott Breakfast

2009-09-27T09:07:00.002+10:00

On Friday morning, I attended a breakfast for the University of Queensland's Justice and the Law group. It was a very well run, well attended event. The speakers were interesting and topical, with Stephen Keim SC as the main speaker. (Mr Keim SC was the barrister for Dr Mohamed Haneef, in the well publicised scandal of Dr Haneef's arrest on terrorism charges with almost no evidence.) The JATL group, which includes the amazing Amy of Iron Chef Vegan, did a great job, securing interesting speakers and illustrious attendees, planning the event and running it. They are to be congratulated.

The breakfast was at the Marriott, which I blogged about for another recent function. So, was the vegan breakfast any better than the vegan dinner? Unfortunately, not really. I had hoped it would be good, so that I could balance my earlier review with a better one. In all honesty, I can't.

While omnis were served a first course of waffles (admittedly with oddly brown bananas), vegans and gluten free folks had the ubiquitous fruit plate. This was 3 types of melon, pineapple and strawberries. It was mostly tasty and fresh (one piece of strawberry had an unpleasant large bruised/off mark on it), but arrived at our table after the omni's plates for the first course were being cleared away.

The second vegan course was baked beans. No toast, no sides. Just a bowl of beans. They were obviously not just from a can, as there were a few pieces of carrot and celery in them. They were nice baked beans. However, they were a bit bland to be an entire course. It appeared that vegetarians were served the beans with egg and mushroom. I am not sure why the two vegans at my table could not have had a few mushrooms, tomato or greens sautéed in olive oil, to go with the beans. The beans also came out significantly after the other meals for the table.

So, once again, the meal was a bit bland and lacking in imagination. There was also no need for the food, especially the fruit plate, to be served much later than other meals. As we had booked well ahead, with the dietary needs of guests well explained, it was not like the chefs had to make something at the last minute.

I regretfully have to advise vegans against expecting great food at Marriott Brisbane functions. This is not a whole Marriott issue, as I have seen an Irish poster on the PPK be offered amazing food at a Belfast Marriott. However, it appears from the two functions I attended, that the kitchens at the Brisbane Marriot simply don't know what to offer a vegan guest. As there are so many other Brisbane venues that can do amazing food for vegans, I would not have a function at the Marriott.

However, the rest of the function, the company, speakers and organisation more than made up for an unimaginative breakfast. Thanks to Amy and the whole JATL organisation for inviting us to a very enjoyable function!

Food at Mt Tambourine

2009-09-26T09:15:00.002+10:00

What can a vegan eat at the mountain holiday resort town of Mt Tamborine? As you saw from my previous post, the food at our B&B was plentiful, fresh and delicious.

However, the vegan options for the rest of the town were varied.

(Please forgive the poor quality mobile phone photos, but our camera died.)

On our first night, we ate picked up takeaway pizza at Tamborine Mountain Pizza. They make small, medium and large pizzas. We had a small pizza each. I had a vegetarian pizza with no cheese. The chef confirmed that the base was vegan. They also offered to use a clean cutter for my pizza, without being asked. The base was splendid, crisp, light and chewy all at once. The toppings were plentiful and fresh. The sauce was a tangy tomato sauce. I would have liked a bit more sauce, but it was a very good pizza. Mr BrisVegan had a similar opinion of his non-vegan option.

On Tuesday, we cruised gallery row, which is the main craft sales area of Mt Tambourine. I found a lovely little spice store, Gourmet Spice Blends, where I got some Szechwan pepper, sea salt, dukkah and other items. We visited a few winery outlets. We also went to the MT brewery, which had a tasting platter for $10, which gives 4 small beers.

I had the Mountain Bitter (a Yorkshire style with caramel overtones), the moderation pale ale (US style with fresh citrus and tropical fruit scents), the 0909 Cuvee Blonde (Belgian style with raisin and hops notes) and the Katya Imperial Stout (black stout with chocolate flavours in a full bodied yeasty stout). I loved the Mountain Bitter and Moderation Pale Ale. The others were also very good. There are many other options to try.

On Tuesday night, we went to the local Thai restaurant, Eagle Thai. They were happy to give us a list of menu items that did not contain fish sauce. They had quite a few vegan and vegetarian options. We had the deep fried tofu, followed by a Thai tofu salad with peanut sauce and a green curry, with steamed jasmine rice.

The deep fried tofu was firm tofu, deep fried and served with a nice sweet chilli sauce. The tofu was firm, rather than soft, which I have had deep fried in the past. It was nice for a tofu lover like me, but not the best tofu for the dish.

The curry showed some heat and the fresh spiciness of a green curry. However, it was not particularly full flavoured and did not show the full coconut creaminess that you would expect from this type of curry. It also had a lot of wombok, which was an odd vegetable for a Thai curry. The salad had very little tofu and a lot of iceberg lettuce. The peanut sauce was sweet, nutty and good.

I really wanted to like all of this. I love Thai food and the staff were very obliging. However, after dinner, Mr Brisvegan said "Would you recommend the restaurant to your friends?" We both had to answer "No." We have both had better Thai food at a lot of other places. However, the staff seem to understand the concept of vegan food and have a lot of vegan options, so you know that, as a vegan, you will have a lot of choices.

There are a lot of other restaurants at Mt Tamborine, many of which had vegetarian and maybe even vegan options. I would like to explore further in the future.

Mt Tambourine Getaway

2009-09-24T16:46:00.007+10:00

Back to food blogging!

On Monday to Wednesday this week, I used some of my time in lieu to take a short break. Mr BrisVegan and I had been given a voucher for Witches Falls Cottages B&B, which is named for the adjacent Witches Falls National Park. We left the children with my sister (school holidays!) and went to Mt Tamborine for a few days.

If you follow the link, you will see the lovely cottages and accommodation packages. We found the owners, David and Daniella to be welcoming and kind, but not obtrusive. The cottages were clean, cosy, very private and comfortable.

Best of all, they were very excited to provide a vegan breakfast. Their accommodation comes with a breakfast package. You can have either a gourmet hamper or a BBQ hamper, to cook on your own BBQ in the secluded courtyard of your cottage. Usually the options for vegans are confusing for small B&B providers or scanty. David, however, was very excited to put together a vegan hamper. He asked me what I like and understood veganism very well.

We opted for a gourmet hamper the first morning. I had the vegan option and Mr Brisvegan, an omni, asked for the non-vegan version. Here is the vegan food which was provided:

There was cereal, soy milk, fruit, nuts, avocado (yum!), jam and a loaf of pumpkin seed bread fresh from a breadmaker, which was still warm. There was also juice, an apple, mandarin and banana, which is not pictured, plus dairy yoghurt and deli items for Mr BrisVegan. There was instant and fresh-ground coffee and teabags in the cottage kitchenette. This was delicious, and was so much food that we had leftovers for lunch.

The next day, we had the BBQ hamper. Here is the vegan portion:

And here is my plate of BBQ'ed goodness:

There is tomato, cooked with a little sugar, salt, pepper, and parsley. On the right is lightly blackened capsicum, cooked with sparkling wine and orange juice and sprinkled with dukkah, from the Mt Tambourine spice store. There is also mushroom, grilled apple wedges with a little sugar and toast, some with avocado from the previous day. It was all cooked in the extra virgin olive oil spray which was in the cottage kitchen.

Vegans will find a warm and tasty welcome at Witches Falls Cottages!

Dust storm

2009-09-24T16:31:00.004+10:00

I interrupt my usual obsession with food to show you the dust storm that blanketed south-eastern Australia yesterday. Strong winds lifted dust from the central deserts and carried it to the coastal regions, in a once in a life-time serious dust storm. It covered Sydney in the morning, stopping flights and ferries. By lunch time it had made its way to Mt Tambourine, where Mr Brisvegan and I were finishing a short holiday. Here are some images:

This is the road ahead of our car:

A shot of the sun, directly overhead:

The high tension power lines leading away from the road. You can barely see the next tower, which was less than 100 metres away:

We drove back to Brisbane through the dust storm. It was like driving in fog. Visibility was less than 50 metres.

The dust blanketed south-east Queensland for the rest of the day. Everything was an eerie ochre twilight. However, the air was mostly clear today.

While this was rather dramatic, there was little lasting damage for most people. The wind may have damaged a few trees (not near us, thank goodness). However, some people suffered respiratory distress, which can be dangerous for asthmatics. I hope all the east Australian bloggers, readers and their loved ones are OK.

Carnival of Flowers

2009-09-21T10:23:00.004+10:00

On Saturday, I went to the Carnival of Flowers, in Toowoomba. Toowoomba is a beautiful regional city, 120km west of Brisbane. It is situated on the top of the Great Dividing Range. Though it is only 1 1/2 hours west of Brisbane, the climate is milder, due to its mountainous position. By Queensland standards, it is relatively cold, though it has only lightly snowed on around 3 occasions in my nearly 40 years. The cooler climate means that many English and European plants, including bulbs, grow beautifully there. It is famous for its beautiful spring floral displays. I grew up in Toowoomba. My mother, sister and extended family members still live there.

Each spring, in early September, Toowoomba hosts the Carnival of Flowers. This week long festival commences with a street parade of floats decorated with live flowers.

Parade float decorated with fresh flowers

My sister was walking with the Child Protection float, (which is not pictured, for protection of the children riding on it, including my niece and nephew). Hi H, B and Mini-J!

There are also garden tours and spectacular gardens in the city's many parks.

Gardens including random strangers

In the largest central park, Queens Park, there was also a sideshow ally, classic car display and food and wine show.

After the parade, the food and wine show was our destination. After all, I am all about the food! Unfortunately, the food and wine show was not all about the vegans. The food was a bit of a disappointment. There were not many food displays, though there were a number of food sales tents, some from local restaurants and some the usual food carts from markets/festivals. Only a couple had anything vegan. I had plain Langos, vegan Dippin Dots (apparently, the ice is vegan, but not the sherbet or ice-cream), Byron Bay fresh ginger bear (yum!) and later, soy coffee. It was all pretty good. Non-vegans also had a range of Thai, Indian, Spanish and mod-Australian food, some of which was vegetarian.

There were many local wineries, from the Granite Belt. Several of those had good, vegan wine. The most easily available for Australian consumers was the Ballandean Winery, which has wines sold in many outlets and at some very good restaurants, including Melbourne's Vue du Monde. I spoke to the wine maker. He said that they did not use fish, insinglass, gelatine, egg or milk products in any of the whites, though there is an allergy warning on them, as there is a small chance of traces of such products getting into the wine from some of the reds. They apparently use a plastic polymer to fine some of the whites. They want to phase out allergens as much as possible. The SSR (a semillon, sauvignon blanc blend) was very nice, herbaceous and fresh, with a good acid balance and hint of fruit.

There was also a great jazz bland playing and a large play area for children. The kids enjoyed the play area, which included a DIY area with supervisors who led them through painting chairs, walls and play equipment for use later in the week.

If you get a chance to visit Toowoomba, it is especially beautiful in spring and well worth the visit. There are no purely vegetarian or vegan restaurants, though several restaurants have vegan or vegetarian options, that can be made vegan.

Pumpkin

2009-09-19T06:08:00.003+10:00

I have heard that Australians eat more pumpkin than any other nation. It is a common vegetable on many Australian plates. We eat it in soups, roasted, roasted and cold in salads, in pasta and risotto, on pizza, in tempura batter, etc. Australian pumpkins are often smallish, with thick sweet flesh. We also tend to call winter squash, like butternut, a pumpkin.

Most Australians would use fresh pumpkin, though you occasionally see frozen prepared pumpkin in the freezer section of the supermarket. I have never seen canned pumpkin of the sort which seems to be common in the USA. Oddly, pumpkin pie is only occasionally seen on Australian menus. I think I have only eaten pumpkin pie two or three times in my life (love it though!).

I have posted pumpkin soup in the past and will post more in the future, I am sure. However, today's dish is a pumpkin side dish that I made a few weeks ago.

Maple Glazed Pumpkin

Serves 4 as a side dish

500g (approx) pumpkin cut into 5cm chunks
2 tablespoons of maple syrup
1/4 teaspoon each paprika and sumac (you could use other spices like coriander for different flavours)
1 1/2 tablespoon sweet fruity olive oil or neutral cooking oil like canola

Heat oven to 200 degrees centigrade.
Mix all ingredients but pumpkin.
Add pumpkin and toss until pumpkin is coated with maple syrup mix.
Bake pumpkin on a tray lined with baking paper for approx 45 minutes to 1 hour or until pumpkin is soft and lightly browned.
Serve with your savoury dish of choice.

As usual, my two youngest children (not vegetable fans) did not particularly like this. Neither likes pumpkin, so that was no surprise. J, Mr Brisvegan and I loved it.

Now, I am off to Toowoomba to attend the Carnival of Flowers celebrations. I grew up in Toowoomba, which is 120 kilomoters west of Brisbane, on top of the Great Dividing Range (mountains which stretch down most of the east coast of Australia). Some of my family still live there. Each year there is a garden and flower based festival in Toowoomba, with parades, garden tours and a major festival in a large park. I haven't been for years and am quite excited about going this year. I will report back tomorrow.

Striking and Scones

2009-09-16T08:36:00.006+10:00

Today I am on strike. Academics around Australia are striking today after stalled negotiations at many universities. The National Tertiary Education Union is concerned about class sizes (some over 500 people for lectures), increased casualisation of workforces (with the attendant job insecurity, lack of decent conditions, leave or superannuation, often going on for many years and with over a full time person's workload for less pay), workload issues, job security, the rights of unions to represent workers in disputes and issues around the workload and classification of administrative staff.

Academics are not paid well compared to what many could earn in the private sector or doing research for private companies. (By the way, we also usually only have 4 weeks holiday a year, not the full uni holidays, as some people assume. Research, teaching preparation and social service requirements take up the time when students aren't on campus.) If the conditions of their employment erode so that the workload is unreasonably high and there is no proper respect and job security for a casualised workforce, there is little incentive for good people to stay in academia, where they benefit all of society by making the fruits of their research public and by teaching the next generation of graduates in all disciplines and professions.

I have a good boss and am not disadvantaged by many of the problems mentioned. But I am a member of the NTEU and support the right of my fellow university workers to decent conditions. So, I am on strike, to support the action.

On a happier note, let's talk about food!

The Australian version of scones is much more old fashioned and plain than the version that I see in American recipe books. They are a round, plain, slightly sweet, heavy bread-like product, a bit like an American biscuit. (By the way, biscuit in Australia = cookie in America). In fact, Australians explain American biscuits by saying "They are a bit like a savoury scone."

Australians put very few flavourings in scones. Common flavours are plain, raisin, date or pumpkin (usually unspiced). Anything else would be viewed as a gimmick. You certainly don't see the wide variety of flavours that Americans seem to put in the wedge shaped sweets that they call scones. Australian scone are also usually round on top, though they may have squared sides from being cooked together. They are also tall, compared to the pictures I have seen of American scones. They are usually served with butter or jam and cream.

So, here are the Australian scones that I made last weekend, served with strawberry jam and Soyatoo canned whipped "cream":

The recipe is again from The Australian Women's Weekly Original Cookbook by "Food Editor Ellen Sinclair" (as it says on the cover).*

Here is the recipe, veganised from the cookbook. Other than vegan ingredient substitutions and the words "half and half", it is transcribed from the recipe in the cookbook.

Scones

2 cups self-raising flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
30g (1 oz) vegan margarine, very cold
3/4 cup mixed soy milk and water [half and half]

Sift flour and salt into basin, stir in sugar. Rub in margarine until mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Pour nearly all the liquid in at once and mix to a soft dough. (Flours vary in the way they absorb liquid; if the mixture is not soft enough, add remaining liquid.) Place on floured surface and knead lightly. Pat dough out to approximately 2 cm (3/4in.) in thickness, and, using a 5cm (2 in.) cutter, cut into rounds. Place onto a greased oven tray or into a lightly greased 28cm x 18 cm (11 in. x 7 in.) lamington tin, glaze with a little soy milk. Bake in a very hot oven** for 10 to 12 minutes or until golden brown.
Makes approx. 12.

*This large omnibus style cookbook is an Australian standard. It covers many basic traditional Anglo-Australian recipe, with a few intermediate or simplified international dishes. I was given a copy pregan, when I first moved out of my parent's place over 20 years ago. It is a handy source of veganisable basic recipes for me.
** 270-190 Celsius or 525-550 Fahrenheit

Lamingtons

2009-09-14T21:01:00.005+10:00

Lamingtons are claimed as an Australian invention, though apparently some New Zealanders would dispute that. According to Australian legend, these little chocolate coated cakes were created by a cook employed by Governor Lamington in Queensland at the end of the 19th century.

Lamingtons are a white cake (either sponge or butter cake) dipped in thin chocolate icing and then rolled in coconut. I have also seen strawberry versions where the chocolate icing is replaced by strawberry jelly (jello for the US readers).

I decided to bake on Saturday and Sunday, and made these lamingtons:

To make them, I used the recipe for Basic Vanilla Cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. I made a 1 1/2 size batter. I reduced the vanilla by about 1/2. I poured the final batter into a lamington tray lined with baking paper. (For non-Australians, I think you would use a rectangular 12" x 18" brownie tray.) I then baked it for about 35-40 minutes.

I left the cake in the fridge, covered, overnight. Waiting overnight is important, as it stops the cake from crumbling when you cut it.

The next day, I cut it into 24 squares. With the assistance of M and my niece, I then dipped each square into thin chocolate icing and the shredded coconut. The icing was the lamington icing from an old copy of the Women's Weekly Original Cookbook. It was 500g (1lb) icing mixture (you could use icing sugar), 1/3 cup cocoa, 30g melted Nuttelex margarine (Earth Balance would work) and 1/2 cup soy milk (you could use whatever "milk" you like). These were then whisked until smooth.

Dipping was messy but fun. As the first lamintons that I have had in almost 3 years, they were pretty darn good. They were even better today, with the icing well soaked into the cake. They could easily be given to omnis as a great treat. You could also make cupcakes and just dip the top into the icing and coconut.

My niece helped because she and her brother stayed with us overnight, while her parents went to a wedding and then spent Sunday moving house. The girls asked to help while the boys were playing outside - I didn't make a sexist selection.

I gave lamingtons, scones and jam on a pretty platter to my sister's family as a housewarming present. Scone pictures will follow in the next few days.

Soup for an incipient cold

2009-09-12T17:39:00.004+10:00

Ok, this post is not technically an "Aussie food" post. Last night, I felt like I was coming down with a cold. You know the deal, that almost a sore throat, runny nose, almost a fever kind of feeling.

I don't know about you, but when I feel a cold coming on, I want a nice hearty soup. I like ginger, garlic, miso and greens to boost immunity. So I cooked this:

Asian Inspired Tofu, Rice and Vegetable Soup

Serves 6

2 tablespoons rice bran oil or other mild cooking oil
320 g extra firm tofu, cut into 1 1/2 cm cubes
1 small onion
4 cloves crushed garlic (I cheated and used the stuff from a jar)
1 cm piece fresh ginger, minced
1 cup rice
bunch Asian greens (I used choy sum, but you could use gai lan, bok choy or wombok)
2 medium tomatoes, chopped into 2 cm pieces
4 sliced mushrooms
2 sliced carrots
5 tablespoons soy sauce
3 tablespoons cooking sherry
4 tablespoons miso paste
Water

In a large soup pot, heat the oil. Add the tofu and onion. Fry over a gentle heat until onion is translucent.
Add garlic and ginger. Fry gently until ginger is fragrant.
Chop the Asian greens. Separate the stems and leaves. You will be putting them in at different stages.
Add all the remaining ingredients, other than the miso paste and leaves of your Asian greens.
cover with water to about 5 cm above the other ingredients. To speed this up, I boiled the water in a kettle and just poured over the boiling water.
Bring to boil and simmer for 10-15 minutes or until rice is cooked.
Add the leaves of your green and cook for 2 minutes.
Remove from heat and add miso paste. Stir well to combine.
Add more boiling water, if you want more liquid.
Serve and enjoy.

It was very good. You could add chilli if you like spicy soups. Did it work to cure my cold? Well I don't feel too bad today, so maybe it helped.