Lemon Muffins

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.

Pear and walnut salad with stinky tofu dressing

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

1. Make a bed of torn lettuce leaves.
2. Remove the seeds from the pear and slice it lengthways.
3. Toss pear and walnuts on bed of lettuce.
4. 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?

French food dinner & Julie and Julia

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

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees centigrade.
   
2. 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.
3. Sprinkle the sugar and spices over the sugar.
4. Add apples. Return to oven for 20 minutes or until apples are just tender.
5. Remove dish from oven. You can leave it to cool if you wish to serve the pie hot later in the day.
   
6. 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.
7. Return to oven. Bake at 180 degrees centigrade for 30 minutes or until the pastry is puffed and golden.
8. 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.

Z's guest blog: Amazing Mango Iceblocks

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

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