Thursday 9 August 2007

A mixed bag of vegan goodness (plus a special visit from a friend or two)

Howdy. Hope everyone's doing well. We've been a wee bit boring of late. I've been doing lots of reading for my thesis (trying to make sense of Judith Butler & the notion of gender as performance - long story) & Cam's been doing pre-med study (I'm learning lots of new words).

I finally got around to making the Cookies 'n' Cream cupcakes from VCTOTW - I know, I should have made them earlier (but I'm seriously addicted to the Gingerbread ones). They were AWESOME! And FULL of fat! (The icing is 1/4 cup nuttelex & 1/4 cup copha)

So here's a mini photo essay, plus an idea of what you can do with leftover icing (you do not want to eat too much, I felt SO sick after licking the bowl out!)....
Cookies 'n' Cream CupcakesCookies 'n' Cream CupcakeSuper Stuffed Oreo Cookie

That's right people - a Super Stuffed Oreo cookie. It may not be that original, but dammit, it tasted good!


A batch of foccacia I made to go with Leek & Potato Soup:
Foccacia

I made some seitan on Sunday arvo (let's face it, Sunday afternoons are the best time for baking & seitan making). Firstly, with the recipe 'stolen' from Vegetation, I give you Bryanna's 'Chicken' Seitan!
Bryanna's 'Chicken' Seitan
I know it looks kinda gross, but it tastes good....

I also made a SoG, I mixed it in the food processor, so it was a lot smoother this time. I haven't thought of anything to put in it yet (but Cam's been snacking, so I better be quick about it!).
SoG inside goodness

I'm an avid reader of Lolo's
website & a few months ago she posted a recipe for Crispy Sweet & Sour Tofu. So I made Crispy Sweet & Sour Chicken. So tasty.....'Chicken' Seitan in Lolo's Sweet and Sour Sauce

Finally, I thought I'd take a few pics of our turtle tank!

Here's the mean gargoyle that protects the tank inhabitants (we have three bristlenoses in there that love to suck on him (that's a good thing))!
Gargoyle

Snappy the Turtle (I named him):
Snappy
Snappy2

Mr Turtle (Cam named him - guess who loves My Name is Earl?):
Mr Turtle
Mr Turtle2

Theresa nominated me as a Rockin' Girl Blogger, but do you think I could get the graphic to work? Arrgghhh...

And Vegetation, those 'chicken' nuggets from last post are made of soy, so sorry!

Ruiyi, glad to see you're having fun! When you get back we'll have to bake.

Peace out everyone!

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

oooh, the foccacia! and everything else too, really. feed me?

Vegan_Noodle said...

Great idea for the leftover cupcake frosting! I have both leftover oreo and mint frosting in my firdge from my last two batches of cupcakes and I can't bring myself to toss such sugary goodness. Now I know what I must do...

Anonymous said...

looks so good!

Theresa said...

Such cute turtles. And I saw a clown loach sneaking into a few pictures... do the turtles ever eat the fish??

And as always, your food pictures are making me hungry. I think I see cupcakes in my future...

Amy said...

TURTLES!!!!!!!! (sigh speaking of which I need to clean Tommy's tank again). SOOOOO cute!!! I love them both! (okay no more exclamation marks).

Just be careful. When turtles get big they can/will eat your fishies.

And please, send some foccacia in my direction. Yummy.

Amey said...

yes, what exactly is it about baking in the afternoon?

it's just so spacious and relaxing.

love the turts.

B.A.D. said...

It was extremely evil of you to ploy me into oggling all this amazing food, when I am kitchenless at work.
:drools/cries:

Anonymous said...

I only just came across this blog, it's great! :) I'm a 25 year old vegan woman in Brissie too.

I think copha is really bad for you though, because it's hydrogenated?? Here in Aus I just make the frosting recipes with nuttlex, when I lived in the UK there was non-hydrogenated veg shortening which was much much softer than copha - I only tried copha once and it was a disaster, although I used it straight out of the fridge and it was rock hard (that was probably the problem!). Nuttlex on it's own tends to be overly soft though. I wonder what they use at The Forest because that seems firmer than just nuttlex.

Anna said...

YUM, Amy! Those cupcakes are so cute, and the sweet n sour dish is making me hungry. How do you find working with copha? Last time I used it was years ago, and it was kind of difficult to use--for one thing, it was so hard. I recently bought some Crisco vegetable shortening at an online shop...figured it might come in handy for vegan icings! I guess it's not very good for you, but it is softer and pretty convenient.

Peggy said...

That all looks good, but I love the turtles! So cute. :) Great names too!

Tofu Mom (AKA Tofu-n-Sprouts) said...

Wow - everything looks so incredible! I'm loving the cupcakes too...