Sunday 13 September 2009

Post 5: Product review!

I’m sure my fellow Aussies who have tried Fry’s products are as fanatical as I am about them.  Weeeell, on Wednesday after a horrible day at work I hit Woolworths to procure comestibles for dinner.  I discovered these!
Fry's nuggets
(Don’t worry, they’'ll be well and truly eaten by 13/12/10 – tee hee)  These are super yummy!  So, after my 4.5k jog with Cam (he was nice enough to jog at my pace!), I baked these little beauties and had them with sweet potato mash and salad:
Nuggets, mash and
Damn they were good!  You really must try them if you get the chance.  I made a kebab with these for lunch the next day.
Is it just Cam and I, or are pickles incredibly addictive?  I had to buy a whole jar of pickles on Thursday just so I could have about 6 pickle slices on my kebab.  Sooooo addictive! :)

Monday 7 September 2009

Post 4: Weekend of tasty food

Hey guys!  Hope you had a good weekend.  We really utilized our “Iron Chef” skills on the food this weekend.  I’m drooling just thinking about it.
First – Cam’s ‘healthy’ lunch from Friday.  Just to show off the fantastic Asian snacks we can procure in BrisVegas:
Cam's 'healthy' lunch
Trident Hot and Spicy Soup with ‘Chicken’ nuggets (from Burlington in the valley), Cabbage dumplings (Burlington) and Dim Sims (from the supermarket near the former Magic Wok).  I shudder to think how much sodium was contained on this plate before the soy sauce was added!
I was inspired, after viewing everyone’s blogs on the VWAV cookbook challenge to find a recipe that I hadn’t made in that awesome tome.  I came up with the “Orecchiette with Cherry Tomatoes and Kalamata Tapenade”.  Why did I wait more than 2 years to try this?  It’s fantastic in the original dish (I even found the right pasta):
Kalamata Tapanade Pasta
I added extra parsley for prettiness.
But we also tried it on bread (on Isa’s suggestion in the cookbook).  Witness the glory that is Tofutti Cream Cheese Kalamata Tapenade poppy seed bagels.  Seriously.  You HAVE to try this.  We had this for dinner on Sunday night and I had to have it again for breakfast today.  (I even exclaimed the virtues of it on Facebook).
Bagels of awesomefantastamagoricalness
It’s like heaven on bread WITH OLIVES!  Could I be more excited about a food?
And to finish, even though this was dinner on Friday night, we have pie filling.  ‘Beef’ and ‘bacon’ pie filling.  Cam said he fried an onion and added casserole mince and sliced Sanitarium luncheon.  Then he added ‘beef’ stock and a rather large quantity of liquid smoke (and I think a little gravy powder).  To top it off we added a slice of Toffuti American sliced cheeze and put in the pie maker.  It’s near to impossible to take a photo of a pie without destroying it, so you’ll have to imagine the awesomeness.  Here’s a rather unattractive picture of the filling:
'Beef' and 'bacon' pie filling
It’s really only good when you serve it straight away so you can mix the toffuti into the rest of the filling.
I’m having fun being a MoFo.  Thanks for all of your comments.  They’re a great pickup while I’m writing assignments! 

Thursday 3 September 2009

Day 3: I looooove Mexican / Tex-Mex food!

OzVeganMoFo
Okay, I just love food that centres around tasty carbs (pasta, noodles, tortillas).
I’ve made this chilli once already – only last month!  It is really good, but I wanted more veggies, so when I added in the kidney beans I added in a chopped capscicum, half a can of corn kernels (the half I didn’t use in the cornbread) and the remains of a bag of ‘shrooms.  OMG.  Soooo good.  I had leftovers for lunch today.
I made the cornbread in the muffin tin.  So adorably cute!  And extra crunchy.
Chilli and mini cornbreads
If you haven’t been reading my blog for long, you won’t be aware of my extreme love for making my favourite recipes over and over and over.  (Witness my obsession with Leek and Bean Cassoulet from Veganomicon last year)… The reason why I explain this is that we’re having cheezeburgers again for dinner.  So probably no posting tomorrow.  Besides, shouldn’t you guys be out enjoying yourselves on a Friday night instead of visiting my (awesome) blog? :)
To rub it in – no work tomorrow!  Just uni…

Wednesday 2 September 2009

Day 2a: Not vegan, but feminist

I had to post twice in one day to urge you to read this article in the Guardian “Secrets of the womb by Jacqueline Maybin”.  I read it after seeing the gushing about it on Jezebel.  I’m sure my fellow feminists will enjoy!

Day 2: Kinda lazy vegan convenience foods

OzVeganMoFo
When Cam was cooking this last night, we discussed just how much pasta and tomato sauce we ate when we first became vegan (I became vegan after Cam but I did the same thing!).  It’s funny how much cheap pasta sauce has evolved, thanks to the gentrification of the store brands.  I buy a lot of the store brands stuff – especially ‘cause I cook a lot from scratch.  Plus, why pay more money to the large international conglomerates when you can pay less and get the same thing?
But I digress….
This one was a Puttanesca in the You’ll love Coles range.  It had both green and black olives and was tasteeeee!  It’s fun finding new ninja vegan foods.
And yes, we did use the moose pasta – I think it looks extra evil with the red sauce!
Evil moose pasta
Amy out…

Tuesday 1 September 2009

Day 1: Asian Food – the god of all vegan cuisines

OzVeganMoFo
Heya!  Hyperbole is fun, isn’t it?
A few months ago, on a cookbook purchasing binge, I bought Bryanna Clark Grogan’s Authentic Chinese Cuisine.  It’s a damn fantastic book.
So I looked in the fridge’s contents and consulted the text and made: Stir Fried Tofu and Leeks, and Harvest Moon Stir Fry.
Tofu and Harvest
I wish I had a better picture of the carrots (the moon) mooning you.  The only issue I had with these recipes is that they had dry sherry in them.  We could only find sherry that had been fined with milk AND eggs.  Le sigh.  Anyone found a vegan sherry?
These were REALLY tasty.  The tofu was fantastic.
I really love Bryanna’s cookbooks (witness my use of them in Italian food in previous posts), but I’d love some colour photos in the cookbooks.  But as Theresa said on my facebook pictures, the special lie-flat binding almost makes up for it! ;)
Breakfast the next day was pancakes.  Cam insisted on ice-cream and Soyatoo, so I insisted on grated apple in the mix.  I just grated the apple into the standard Pancake recipe from VWAV and just added milk until it was the right consistency.  This obviously totally made up for the sugar from the ice-cream and Soyatoo!
Apple Cinnamon pancakes So yeah, that’s it for the day.  Cam’s making us pasta for dinner (with moose pasta from Ikea), so that just may feature on tomorrow’s post.
But then again, we know how slack I am with posting!