What I Ate Thursday!

I enjoyed taking pictures of everything I ate a couple of Thursdays ago so I thought I'd do it again today. I slept 'till 11.30 & woke up starving so I started my day with this classic, baked beans on toast.

This bread is just cheap wholewheat from the supermarket & my beans of choice are the Co-Op's Organic Baked Beans. This is my breakfast of choice, I'd eat it every day but I sometimes feel like I should vary it so I do!

For lunch I went for a big plate of leftovers. There's barbecue tofu from Sunday's football food feast, an apple, some kidney beans from the can I opened to make hummus, the last of the pilaf from yesterday & as you can see I won the battle for the last slice of quiche!

This was a pretty great lunch, I'm learning to love leftovers and the quiche was still as amazing as it was yesterday.

For dinner I got Nick to grab a bag of mixed lettuce on his way home from work & I threw together a quick salad. There are chickpeas, again from the hummus, sliced radishes, cherry tomatoes, grated carrot and the dressing from Monday's Sanctuary Chef Salad.

That dressing is still SO yummy, I love it! This would have been a dull salad without it, I think it'd probably make the dullest iceberg lettuce amazing though!

After dinner Nick & I made fun dessert plates! They have Roasted Almond Cookies with Fleur du Sel that I made for the Cookbook Challenge on Tuesday, a square of my favourite Rupunzel Nirwana Noir nut truffle cream chocolate (we have to ration it because you can't buy it in the UK), two Sweet Vegan marshmallows and a Bio Bis spelt chocolate sandwich cookie.

It's been a pretty good day for food given that I haven't needed to cook anything...unless heating up beans counts?! See ya'll tomorrow for New Food Friday!

Liebster Award

When Carrie from Vegan For The Win nominated me for the Liebster blog award last Saturday I was super flattered but I also felt like I shouldn't accept it as I have more than 200 followers. Leibster is German & means 'dearest' or 'beloved' but it can also mean 'favourite' & the idea of the Leibster award is to bring attention to blogs with less than 200 followers but when Savannah of In Her Grace also nominated me for the same award I decided that I should definitely write a post about it & pass the award on to 5 more bloggers.

To keep it relevant I'm passing the award along to bloggers who are also participating in Vegan MoFo...

1 Kittens Gone Lentil

2 Tea and Sympatico

3 Vegan Vamps

4 Vegan Gourmet Caravan

5 Vegan and So Forth

If you'd like to pass along the award you just need to pick five blogs with less than 200 followers and then...

1- Show your thanks to the people who gave you the award by linking back to them.

2- Link to five of your top picks and let them know they've been nominated by leaving a comment on their blog.

3- Post the award on your blog.

4- Enjoy the love and support of some wonderful people on the inter-web!

Cookbook Challenge Day VIII

Today the Cookbook Challenge seemed to be insisting that I had friends over for dinner with it's three easy to prepare ahead dishes that would all go together well as one meal. I'm not one to argue with the recipe generator so that's what I did!

My first recipe of the day was the Chipotle Lime Two Bean Hummus from Eat, Drink & Be Vegan. Hummus is usually pretty easy to throw together and this was no exception even though I had to open two tins of beans rather than just one!

The hummus is made from both chickpeas & kidney beans and the chipotle flavour comes from Tabasco. This isn't a recipe I'd have picked, there are a lot of hummus recipes scattered between my many cookbooks and as I never have Tabasco in the house, well, until today, I would have skipped it for a more pantry friendly recipe. I was worried this would be too spicy but even I couldn't really detect any spice, I might even add more Tabasco next time.

My next recipe of the day isn't actually from the cookbook challenge but as I was having friends over for dinner I thought I should pull out the big guns & make 4 dishes. I'm a firm believer that hummus should always be accompanied by pitta bread so I e-mailed one of my bff's for her recipe.

This simple flatbread recipe only contains five ingredients but I realised too late that the recipe calls for fresh yeast rather than either of the kinds of yeast I actually had, I decided to guess at active dry yeast & continue anyway!

These certainly didn't turn out as well as Kip's pitta bread usually does but I don't think they're half bad for a first attempt. They look more like a flat bread roll than a traditional pitta but they tasted great so who cares right?!

The second cookbook I pulled out of the hat for today was the The Complete Guide To Vegan Food Substitutions and the generator chose me page 178, Quinoa Lentil Pilaf.

This pretty dish is flavoured with orange juice and caraway seeds & I love that it uses roasted salted cashew nuts. It's also the perfect accompaniment to recipe number three the Quiche from You Won't Believe It's Vegan. I've made quiche plenty of times before using my go to recipe from Vegan Brunch but I have to admit that I've never made the pie crust myself before. I don't usually cheat completely & buy the pre baked pastry case but I do usually buy the pastry in a block & just roll it out myself & I'll admit that I was tempted to do that today...

...but I reminded myself that I was going to need to make pie crust when Isa & Terry's pie book arrives anyway & I also remembered that Nick & I had received some of those fancy ceramic baking balls as a wedding gift so I stopped being a wuss & got on with it! The crust is coconut oil based which I was surprised by, I was worried that my savoury quiche would turn out, well, coconutty, but it hasn't and the crust was perfectly crispy & didn't crumble when I cut it.

I decided to grate some of the cheese I made yesterday into this quiche & it definitely worked out well. It was really delicious, there's only one slice left and I think there might be some fighting over it tomorrow.

I also chopped up some veggies to go with the hummus & here's the whole spread...

I think I'll be making all of these dishes again and I'm happy that I'm no longer scared of pie crust!

Cookbook Challenge Day VII

The first cookbook that came out of the hat today was The Best Veggie Burgers On The Planet & the recipe, the Inside-Out Cheeseburger Seitanic Stuffer. This is a recipe I've had my eye on since buying the book so I was really excited to have it pop up in the challenge. Now you (well, I) can't really have a burger without a bun so I decided to cheat for recipe two & choose a bun recipe myself. It had to be something new though so I turned to Vegan Diner, the newest addition to my cookbook collection, and picked the recipe for Old-Fashioned Hamburger Buns.

I was a little suspicious of the bun recipe as it didn't include any warm water but of course it was fine. These were great & I'm enjoying practicing baking bread. Tomorrow, I'm going to try my hand at pitta bread!

The Inside-Out Cheeseburgers require a little bit of forward planning, they take an hour to cook but you also need to make the cheese filling which has to set in the fridge for an hour before being used. That said they were pretty simple to make even after I managed to throw in the whole ammount of vegetable stock when I was trying to halve the recipe...oh well, now we have leftovers! I served them on the Old Fashioned Hamburger Buns with mayonnaise & vegi bacon. I realised as I was taking the picture that it would've been prettier with some lettuce & tomato but sadly there was none in the house!

The burgers were both crazy delicious and massive. I thought they were even better than the Bacon Cheeseburgers I made recently for Football Food Sunday. The cheese on the inside was perfectly melty & I loved the seitan patty. I also love how versatile these burgers are, as Joni says in the book she's included her four favourite stuffing recipes but really you could stuff them with anything. I have plans to change the flavourings of the seitan a little and bread these to make a vegan chicken kiev.

My third recipe of the day was from Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar. I was meant to make these Roasted Almond Cookies with Fleur de Sel last week but I got tattooed instead so I made them today. I'll apologise in advance for the terrible picture, it was dark in my house by about 3pm today & apparently no amount of photoshopping's going to fix this shot!

These were easy to make even though I realised at the last minute that I needed to roast my almonds...clue's in the name there Jojo! This certainly isn't a criticism but the cookies didn't turn out how I'd expected, I hadn't noticed that there were oats in the recipe until the last minute & for some reason I'd assumed they'd be a crispy cookie rather than a soft one. I also have to admit that I was suspicious about topping a cookie with salt but as usual Isa & Terry weren't wrong, these are really delicious! I'm about to go & eat a 5th!

Cookbook Challenge Day VI

The cookbook challenge is back for it's third week & I have to admit that cooking three new recipes a day is stressing me out a little. I'm tired & my arms are killing after chopping 8 tonnes of potatoes (slight exaggeration!) & lifting massive pans yesterday and I've actually been thrown out of the kitchen by Nick for being too stroppy! He's made me sit down, listen to Less Than Jake & drink this...

I'm not entirely sure what it is but it's incredibly alcoholic & it has three straws. Awesome. He's currently cooking the rest of recipe three for me so that I can tell you all about one & two.

First out of the hat was The 100 Best Vegan Baking Recipes and page 61, Garden Muffins. I had very high hopes for these, I love both zucchini muffins & carrot cake and these contained elements of both.

Sadly the muffins didn't rise at all, if anything they actually shrunk a bit. They were incredibly gummy too & I actually couldn't eat them at all. Muffins are definitely the thing I have the most trouble baking, I love the spelt zucchini muffins from the Babycakes cookbook though & I think I'll stick to them in future.

Second book outa the hat was The Complete Guide to Vegan Food Substitutions and the generator picked the last recipe in the book, Chococado Pudding.

Now, I have to say that I love every other Celine & Joni recipe that I've tried (Hello Seitan en Croute!) but I just don't think that avocado in a chocolate dessert is for me. I'm not usually a pudding fan (in the American sense of the word) but the texture was beautiful & it did taste great but I just couldn't get over the avocadoey aftertaste. It's a ridiculously quick recipe though so if you have the book give it a try, maybe you'll have a better tolerance for avocadoeyness in desserts than me.

The third book of the day & the book that Nick's currently reading on his chair in the kitchen...yep, he's taken a chair in there, why've I never thought of that, is Appetite For Reduction. Now after yesterday's football food feast I was pretty happy to see this book. It's one of my favourites & I've been cooking from it a lot this year so it took a few tries with the generator to come up with a recipe I haven't tried, we eventually settled on page 28, Sanctuary Chef Salad. Now to be honest I've never made this because I'm kinda lazy and it has a lot of steps. There are essentially 5 recipes in one here & you have to cook & cool the roasted cauliflower, baked tofu & eggplant bacon before you can dive headfirst into your meal. It's definitely not a quick weeknight meal the first time you make this but once you've made it you'll have dinner or lunch sorted for 4 days if it's just you eating.

This salad is totally worth the effort. It's amazing! It's also huge and has a tonne of fun things in it. The eggplant bacon is perfectly smoky & crisp, the roasted cauliflower is better than I'd ever imagined roasted cauliflower could be & the baked tofu was always going to be a favourite. I made a couple of changes, I hate raw onion so there was no point including it & I couldn't find the correct sprouts so I just went for a random mix that I found at my local co-op. The real surprise with this meal was the dressing, I usually hate dill but I was brave & threw it in there anyway and it's really really good, like, really fucking good, eat it with a spoon good. This salad also made Nick like eggplant! Crazy! We can't wait to make this again.

Football Food Sunday, Take 3!

Wow, Football Food Sunday again? I feel like MoFo's moving crazy fast. I spent most of today helping to prepare & serve a Sunday Roast for 30 people to raise money for Sea Shepherd so I needed the Football Food to be pretty low maintenance.

I decided on loaded potato skins, barbecue tofu & avocado fries.

Yeah you read that right, avocado fries! Seriously, go & make these now! Mine don't look as good as Naiomi's, they got totally stuck in my fryer basket & I had to prise them out using two spatulas & a knife. I should have listened to her instruction to nudge them a little during cooking. I served these delicious fries with some of last weeks smoky mayonnaise. I really can't wait to make them again...like can't wait as in I'm considering going back to the kitchen to make more once I publish this! They're AMAZING! And yes, that did need the caps lock!

The loaded potato skins were ridiculously simple, I cooked them for 7 minutes in the microwave before chopping them in half, scooping them out & filling them with Melty Vegusto & Redwood Foods Vegi Bacon. I also topped them with sour cream. Um, yum! I didn't think these could be AS good as they were but they were pretty spectacular. I'm glad I only made two because if there had been more I'd have eaten them even though I already felt kinda sick...I ate a huge Sunday Roast at about 4pm! The barbecue tofu was a bit of a cheat, I seared my tofu, covered it in store-bought barbecue sauce & then cooked it for about 10 more minutes. It was delicious but I really need to try making my own barbecue sauce soon!

Sorry it's such a short one today but I'm super tired and the avocado in the kitchen is calling out for some deep frying...