VeganMofo 2013: Day 3-in which I succumb to the deliciousness that is sugar

Dear Reader,

There are two things I love about being vegan: the first is carbohydrates, the second is sugar (yes, I know carbohydrates convert to sugar in the body).

While spending more than a few hours reading vegan blogs on the weekend (for the first time in forever), I decided that I should, nay must, make a cheezecake.  A work colleague had gifted me a medium quantity of home grown limes and lemons.  The lemons have almost all been consumed in Mexican food (I got them last week and there was 8 of them, which gives you an idea of how much I make burritos for dinner!) but I hadn’t touched the lemons.  Normally I stay away from lemons – a childhood of lemon scented dishwashing liquid leaves me incapable of smelling lemons without thinking of dishes – but I really wanted cheezecake.

Alas, I had no biscuits in the cupboard (I generally make ours and SOMEONE consumes them all within 24-36 hours of them leaving the oven) so it had to be a mousse.  I saw the Little Lemon Mousse Pies in Vegan Pie in the Sky and figured that the filling would work on its own (and I’d been able to successfully hide the raw cashews from Cam for nigh on three weeks!).

I also had an embarrassment of strawberries.

Here’s the result:


It was of a goodly and delicious quality.  I’m definitely making it again!

VeganMofo 2013: Post 22-Simple dinner

Cam cooked a lot this week (he had days off and I’m generally super tired after a day in court).  He definitely has really good instincts for what goes well together.  I had my doubts, but this was definitely good.
Lemongrass ‘chicken’ (Explore Asia Soybean Chicken from Green Edge) on baguette with a side salad.  The Lemongrass was a lemongrass sauce Cam got from a Thai grocer in the valley.

This was really good.  That soybean ‘chicken’ is pretty tasty.  If I’m correct, it’s the stuff they use at Green Edge for the fake bacon for breakfasts.  Yum!!!

Oh, had to add this.  It's been doing the rounds on Facebook and is freaking hilarious! I'm The Masked Hummus.  Cam's The Almighty Nooch.  Lol.

VeganMofo 2013: Post 21–Super quick post of last night’s dinner!

Photo from my phone!  From the bottom right in clockwise direction: Fry’s Schnitzel with bottled Ariabiatta sauce and notzarella, leftover tempeh “fishsticks” from the Unfishwiches and green salad.  The Schnitzel parma was pretty damn good.

The ice-cream maker arrived!  I’m waiting for the bowl to fully freeze to make the first concoction.

VeganMofo 2013: Post 17 - Unfishwich

Amy tried another recipe from Vegan Sandwiches Save The Day this evening. It was great! Not as fishy as I expected, but still delicious!

VeganMofo 2013: Post 15–The “MacShroom”

This WAS meant to be for Mac and Cheeze Mondays, but of course the week’s gotten away from me already!

While looking through Vegan Sandwiches Save The Day I found the MacShroom recipe.  Given my love of carbs with carbs, I thought I’d try it on Monday night.  Of course I didn’t leave work until 7pm, so this was eaten at about 8:45!

Cam thought it was the best version of Mac and Cheeze he’d ever had.  I thought it was freaking delicious, but not my favourite Mac and Cheeze.  The recipe makes a LOT of barbeque sauce, so we had it two days in a row!

Monday’s edition:

Tuesday’s edition (Cam used a different lens this time – it’s meant to be better for food photography?):

This is definitely going to enter the permanent dinner rotation.  Wow. It reminded me of the kind of stuff you get at the Homegrown Smoker in Portland.  Someone needs to convince them to release a cookbook!!!

I’m tempted to make this week Vegan Sandwiches week.  That, and I’m out of recipe ideas!  Thoughts?

VeganMofo 2013: Post 12-Little Lemon Mousse Pie

So I forgot and put brown sugar in the glaze.  Was still awesome.  Something this good doesn’t require description.

VeganMofo 2013: Post 11–Mac and Cheeze Monday take two

Last week I asked you for Mac and Cheeze recipe suggestions.  I took Susan’s suggestion and made the Mac and Cheeze from Vegan Diner.  I added in liquid smoke, powdered mustard and didn’t include the sweet paprika (only because we didn’t have it in the house).  It was so creamy – probably due to the cashews.  I only got three servings out of it because I’m a pig when it comes to pasta.

Mac and Cheeze is impossible to photograph well. I think it’s because it’s all one colour.

 

I hadn’t made a nut based mac and cheeze before.  It’s an interesting method that requires patience!  I soaked the cashews in hot water for half an hour while I rode the exercise bike (and watched the newest episode of Dance Academy).

 

I might try the Mac and Cheeze recipe from Veganomicon next week.  Stuck for ideas for the rest of the week though.  Hopefully Cam will come up with something!

VeganMofo 2013: Post 10–Lemongrass Banh Mi and Strawberry rum thing

So in the hunt for Golden Mountain Sauce I went to Genki Mart at Stafford.  They have daikon radish, an essential ingredient in Banh Mi!

 

My go to Banh Mi recipe is this one.  It’s pretty damn good.  I pureed up the marinade this time so it was amazingly lemongrassy.

 

To go with dinner I found a way to use up some of the strawberries: Strawberry Mojito (from here).  YUM!  I used a lot of strawberries, so it’s basically alcoholic strawberry puree.

 

 

I cut up the rest and have them in the freezer.  I seem to want to plan for the apocalypse at the moment – my freezer is full of sofrito, black beans and strawberries.  Anyone else find that they seem to buy in bulk by accident a lot?

VeganMofo 2013: Day 4.1 - Wherein Cam duels salmonella... and wins!

For dinner tonight, I decided to use up the out-of-date Redwood Chorizo we've had floating around at the back of the fridge for a while. Since we haven't yet experienced explosive diarrhoea, intense nausea or projectile vomiting, I'd say we got away with it. Used-by dates are for suckers.

I basically grabbed everything that seemed Italian and threw it in the frypan together. I dug out a few other ingredients after I took that photo, so it's not complete.

Mmmm... expired small goods. Delicious!

Raided the booze cupboard for some leftover wine.

When I tasted the sauce near the end, I realised some olives would go great in it, but alias, none were at hand. Not to be discouraged, I hunted right at the back of the cupboard - you know - the neglected dusty bottom shelf with the baby beetroot and creamed corn. And I wasn't disappointed - the universe provided! Sliced black olives, probably only a couple of years past their prime too. After a find like that, I wasn't brave enough to check the expiry on them. Gift-horse, mouth, all that.

Off camera - Amy's pro wooden spoon tilting skillz.

This fake parmesan is awesome.

Amy's pro grating skillz in action.

Please excuse my gratuitous overuse of aperture in the photos... I just got my first SLR and I'm still in that early stage that every new SLR owner goes through where everything looks better with a blurry background and half the subject out of focus.

VeganMofo 2013: Day 3.1 - Wherein Cam attempts to destroy the kitchen with jets of boiling hot TVP-lava

In preparation for my forthcoming 135km Cape to Cape Hike in WA, I decided I'd do a few posts this month while testing out some recipes for my newly purchased JetBoil Flash.

There really aren't many options I've found in Australia for dehydrated camping food. For the last hike I did, I took mostly canned soup and beans and used solid fuel and a mini camping saucepan to heat, but that approach is way to heavy for the 5 day Cape to Cape. Enter the Jetboil! 400g of high powered cooking fire that can be used to rehydrate meals right in the cup.

After browsing around hiking sites on the web for a while (a few of which were run by vegan hikers), I decided that recipes based around TVP, red lentils, couscous and quinoa were probably the best way to go. I figured TVP would be a good place to start. I found a few recipes to blatantly steal take inspiration from.

I assembled the ingredients below and started the JetBoil up with two cups of water.

I discovered the JetBoil has a handy indicator on the side of the insulation that turns to yellow when it's hot. It is, however, a little redundant, as once it starts to boil, the huge volume of skin-scolding steam raging from the top of the cup is a bit of a give-away.

After my water was boiled, I turned off the heat (most recipes said to put it on low, but there really appears to be little difference between "low" and "full raging inferno" on this thing. I am using the large 230g gas cylinder and it is full, so perhaps the gas flow rate is a little higher than with the usual 100g cylinders. 

Into the cup, I placed to rehydrate:
1/2 cup TVP
1    tsp vegan "beef" stock
1/2 tsp garlic powder
pinch of salt

After 2 minutes of standing, I realised that there was not nearly enough TVP for the volume of water, so I decided to heat it a little more, both in an attempt to boil off some of the water, and encourage expansion of the TVP. In retrospect, this was where it all started to go horribly wrong.

While hunting through the kitchen cupboard looking for other tasty ingredients to add, the JetBoil erupted into a volcano of molten TVP lava. The handy sipper lid served as a funnel to eject said lava in a geyser directly over the gas control (as well as the floor and cupboard). I initially ran over and stuck my hand into this stream of boiling lava to turn off the gas, but a quick brush with the erupting contents made me realise that this approach would see me returning to work on my day off to have some ED intern bandage up my arm and make a referral to the Burns Unit.

 By the time I grabbed a tea towel and went back after the gas control, the volume of water left in the jetboil had diminished to the point that the raging torrent of TVP-steam was now just a trickle.

In the delirium that followed my near death experience, I didn't get any decent pics of the soggy TVP strewn marsh the kitchen had become. After cleaning up the mess, I threw some of the olive oil, chili powder, tomato paste and nutritional yeast into what remained of the TVP in the JetBoil - it actually wasn't too bad, though I'm not entirely sure it was worth the collateral damage to the kitchen and to my pride.

Mofo 2013

So I signed up for Vegan Mofo again this year.  I have time for once (I'm not travelling, and I'm not studying)!  I'm hoping to do 5 posts a week.

I was thinking of a theme a week, and the only one I have confirmed in my mind is: one woman, one kilo of beans - I'll take one kilo of dried black beans and make five or so meals with it.  I'm hoping to not do Mexican for every meal (must Google other bean recipes!).

I might also do the Mac and Cheeze Monday idea (I have a fantastic recipe that I eat FAR too frequently, so it's a good chance to try other recipes).

Hopefully someone will read this - otherwise hello sounds of silence!

Day 5: Santa Cruz to Berkeley

We started in Santa Cruz and had the 'free' breakfast at the hotel (which had the worst shower ever made).

We headed into San Francisco.  We stopped at the Legion of Hono(u)r.  We thought it was going to be some sort of war memorial.  Turned out to be a pretty good art museum.  We spent about 90 minutes wandering through.  We really enjoyed it - despite the fact that neither of us know about visual art at all.

We drove down the hill to Baker Beach and got some awesome shots of the Golden Gate bridge (isn't Cam getting good at the artsy shots? :))

We then headed over to Berkeley.  Stopped at a little vegan cafe for a super late lunch.  It wasn't particularly good, so I won't waste your time with those photos.

For dinner we headed to Herbivore - The Earthly Grill.  It was really freaking good. 

Started with cocktails:

We had the vegan nachos:

I had the quesadillas:

Cam had the orange pepper chicken:

We headed to the Albatross Bar for a few drinks after dinner (it was just down the road from our hotel).  It was a pretty cool bar.  They had games, so we played a round of chess, connect 4 and boggle.  I only won at boggle (Cam whopped me at the other ones).

On day 6 we headed into San Francisco on the train. That's for another post!

Day 4: Pismo Beach to Santa Cruz

We headed out of Pismo Beach at the crack of dawn.  We stopped at a little cafe in San Luis Obispo called Linnaeas.

We had an orange and pomegranate muffin.

It was pretty good.  It was not a flavour combination I would have guessed would work.

We drove north along the Shoreline Highway most of the day.  Saw some pretty incredible views.  (I'll add more photos from Cam's camera when we get home).

We stayed the night in Santa Cruz.  We stayed across the road from a super depressing casino.

For dinner we went to the Saturn Cafe.  We had shakes to start.  I had the mint chocolate chip and Cam had the vanilla.  They were basically melted ice-cream.  (not pictured because we inhaled them so quickly).

I had a 'chicken' burger and Cam had the jalapeno burger:

We split a short stack of pancakes to finish.  NOM!

Day 1 and 2: Los Angeles

Howdy  everyone!  This is our belated beginning of Vegan Mofo.

We arrived in LA at about 6am yesterday morning.  The hilarity started when we were lining up for customs.  Their air-conditioning had broken down, so the nice woman from delta was having issues with her colleagues on the walkie-talkie.  I guess you had to be there.  They were complaining that it was hot.  They haven't been in North Queensland in February, so they really have NO IDEA.  Lol.

Anyway, after picking up the car (and getting used to driving on the other side of the road), we headed to Veggie Grill for lunch.

Buffalo Wings

WOW. This place is relatively new as far as I'm aware. It was so good! I had a Chikin' Burger thing, Cam had the Bayou burger, and we shared Buffalo Wings.

Pretty freaking awesome. probably only We managed to stay awake all day (despite not getting much sleep on the plane). We headed to the Snake on Mullholland Highway. Cam tells me it's some sort of motorcycle thing. There were lots of bikes winding up and down the road. Pretty cool.

After checking in to our nice hotel in Santa Monica, we walked down to the pier. So cool! We took a ride on the Ferris Wheel and watched the sun set. Cam got a pretty awesome photo:

We then headed to Real Food Daily for dinner. We've had the Real Food Daily cookbook for many years (and have only made one recipe from it - I'm lazy and a lot of the recipes seem to be pretty long). We started with the Lentil Walnut pate:

I had the Supreme Burrito (it was deliciously cheezy and yummy): 

Cam had a taco:

We shared the brownie bowl for dessert.

This morning we discovered that there's a Trader Joe's right on the next block. So we had Hickory Smoked Tofurkey on sourdough (OMG, that Tofurkey).

Lunch was at Native Foods Cafe in Westwood. This place was so cool! I had a meatball sub. Cam had a bacon cheeseburger.

I'm running out of superlatives to describe how good the food was. We thought we should start a goodly meter for the food. (This was actually the conversation at Native Foods)

Dinner was takeaway from Vegan Thai in Santa Monica. We had Tom Yum soup, Penang Curry, Pad Thai and Mango and Sticky Rice. It was spicy but good.

We're heading out of LA tomorrow, up to Pismo Beach. Woo!