Mmmm Caesar Salad….

So yeah, summer’s over!  Where did my holidays go?
It’s been lovely keeping up with everyone’s blogs.  I think the Australian vegan blogging world is waiting with baited breath for Theresa and Andy’s nuptials (or is it just me?)!
Anyhoooo, uni is back and I’m crazy busy as always.  I’m going to try to do short blogs, rather than long exciting ones this semester.  Four law subjects + 3 days a week of work = Amy gets no sleep!
So, Cam decided that we needed a garden (and I agreed), so we got some mini hothouses from Bunnings (‘cause we have very active possums!).
Checkout the awesome cos lettuce – isn’t this stuff meant NOT to grow so vertically?

So I made Veganomicon Caesar Salad with Fry’s Chickeny Strips (I have no recollection of the name and I’m not linking to their uber annoying flash website!) and Redwood fake bacon.  Damn this was tasty!
Hopefully it won’t be another three months before I post again!
Amy

Tian Ran – OMG, seriously, OMG……

It was pretty damn amazing.  We miss Magic Wok so much.  I remember when I heard about it closing, it was like a part of me died.  Yes, I’m being melodramatic, but as much as we love Kuan Yin and Loving Hut, we really don’t have a replacement for Magic Wok.  Sooooo, we decided to drop into the Gold Coast and visit Tian Ran on the way home from Byron Bay.  Woah – the Gold Coast and Byron are polar opposites! 
Enough ranting, food:

Mmmmmm we’ve become addicted to the young coconuts from Woolworths thanks to Cam’s sister.  They’re probably incredibly bad for the environment, being flown from Indonesia/Thailand, but OMG, soooooooooooo good.
Entree 1: BBQ Pork Buns

Not as good as the Magic Wok ones (they weren’t bright red in the middle), but they were good.  Very ‘meaty’ texture inside.
Entree 2: Crispy Fish Strips

From the taste, Cam worked out that these were probably Lamyong Fishy Strips (no idea what the real name is).  They were really nice (and that’s saying something, ‘cause I’m not a fan of the fishy substitutes).
Entree 3: Chicken and Corn Soup

I’ve had this soup before – Cam brought some home for me when I was writing my thesis and he went to the land of the leather people (the Gold Coast) with friends.  Nom nom nom nom nom nom nom nom nom nom nom nom nom nom nom nom nom !
Side dish: Nasi Goreng

This was delicious!  I don’t know what I was expecting, but it was delicately flavoured (tomato and chilli powder).  And super super yummy.  (I’m going to run out of superlatives soon!)
Amy’s Main: Salt and Pepper Chicken

Deep fried tastiness.  We thought these were Lamyong Soy Nuggets.
Cam’s Main: Black Pepper Chicken

Again Lamyong Soy Nuggets.  It had that tasty cornflour glaze thingy that Chinese food has.  Not too peppery – Cam really enjoyed this.
Cam’s dessert: Banana Fritter

I can’t vouch for the flavour (I don’t eat banana), but Cam had a huge grin on his face the entire time he ate this.
We really enjoyed Tian Ran.  The service was great and not too fast.  The guy who owns it (we presume) was really lovely.
It was a great end to a fantastic weekend.

Byron Bay Food

Howdy!  So the hell of exams is over, so I’ve started back at work 4 days a week and have been spending the Friday doing criminal law research for a lecturer.  It’s actually pretty fun, just hard to do in the heat!
Anyhoooooo, Cam and I went down to Byron last weekend to visit his sister and to generally spend time on our arses at the beach.

Broken Head Beach, Monday morning
We spent Sunday leisurely driving to Byron Bay, stopping at Minion Falls @ Nightcap National Park (best name ever).  Which was fun, except we got caught in a thunderstorm at 2 in the afternoon!  Leeches really are gross…

Funny, I remember it being calmer than this! 
We then spent Monday at two different beaches.  Morning was at Broken Head Beach (the two posts above) and Watego’s – closer to the centre of Byron (not pictured ‘cause we actually went swimming).

Terrible turnout

There’s two awesome vegan health food stores in the middle of Byron Bay – Santo’s and The Fundamental Food Store (Fundie’s – they have a store in Brisbane’s Paddington).

This deep fried tastiness was Monday’s lunch.  The two pastries were yummy (one was a samosa, and the other was delicately flavoured veggies), Cam had the tempeh sushi (ew ew ew), and there was a bean fritter.  Sooooooo good!

Luckily the Woolworths at Byron had Tofutti cream cheeze – so there were bagels for breakfast on both days!  Nom nom nom…

This was from Santo’s various salads and amazing pies.  Plus, in front, a millet ball and a rice ball (we shared).  This was sooooo good!

Byron Bay’s famed unicorn farm sign…
It was a fantastic weekend! 
We visited the Gold Coast on the way home on Tuesday and visited Tian Ran!  I’ve got a whole post’s worth of pics, so they’ll go up soon!

Exams = study = no fun food

Hey guys!
Thought I’d let you know that we’re not dead, we've just buried ourselves in study.  Exams finish on 19th November (yes!  I’ll be able to see the new Twilight and laugh at the ‘acting’!)
Until then, Iron Chef Vegan will not be updated.  :(

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!

(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:

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! :)

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:

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):

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).

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:

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! 

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

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.

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…