Adaptation may be the reason why, as we age, we believe that in our youth the sky was bluer, summer days were warmer and food tasted better.
- How to Fossilise Your Hamster by Mick O'Hare
For some reason gingerbread always reminds me of Christmas so what perfect way to kick-start the lead up to the festive season than gingerbread waffles.
I used the recipe from Vegan Brunch (but using half and half white and wholemeal flours) and served them with sliced banana and maple syrup. Perfect!
One thing I absolutely love about Christmas time is Christmas cake! This year I found this recipe on The Hungry Vegan blog and thought I’d give it a go.
I ended up over-cooking mine a bit since it needed quite a lot less time than the recipe said (well, mine did anyway...maybe it was my cake pan?) but it still turned out delicious.
We also always have our family Christmas party the last Saturday before Christmas day. Being the only vegan or vegetarian in the family usually (one of my cousins is a vegetarian but she lives in Aussie) I always bring a main dish and my famous trifle (well, famous in our family anyway). I also bought hummus because, well, hummus rocks.
The evening started with my Aunty’s rather strong (at least on an empty stomach) fruit cocktail. I could feel my head spinning after only a few sips!
The last couple of years I’ve been making a tofukey for the main dish which is really delicious but I was kind of a bit on the busy side and figured it was time for a change. Instead I made a nut loaf adapted from a recipe I found in the Australian Women’s Weekly Great Vegetarian Food cookbook. I also made a tomato sauce to go with it.
It didn’t stay together as well as usual but never mind ‘cause taste is more important! Here’s it messily plated up amongst other good food. Mum made this awesome kumara salad after I specially requested it. I really should get the recipe off her. But she was kind enough to let me take home all the leftovers which I steadily ate through over the following couple of days.
Of course, no family Christmas party is complete without trifle! This year my cousin D requested the chocolate version.
It’s really very simple although takes a bit of time to make everything. First I make a basic chocolate cake which then gets sliced up and spread with jam and laid at the bottom of the serving dish. I then mash up a tin of berries and pour this over the top and then add fresh, chopped fruit (strawberries are great with chocolate). Finally I make a thick chocolate custard which gets cooled before putting on top of the dish and then you top that with chopped dark chocolate. Super rich but super tasty!
Here’s my dessert bowl...
...trifle, fruit salad, my Uncle’s apple crumble and my Mum’s Christmas pudding. And now I’m super full which is, of course, all part of the tradition!
It was not that he had lost his will to live. It was that his brain was so exact and cold a thing that when it told him that his life, for this reason, and for that reason, was within a few hours of its end, he had no faculties wherewith to combat its logic.
- Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake
In case you were concerned, I have actually eaten things other than cookies and rum balls (although I must admit a fair amount of indulgence in respect of the rum balls!). So here we go...
My flatmates were away for a couple of weeks not that long ago and left me a package of tempeh in the fridge to use up. I adore tempeh but hadn't bought any in ages so this was the perfect excuse to cook some again. For once I was organised and marinated it in the morning (okay, so I wasn't that organised but I was working from home so was probably trying to procrastinate!) and then baked it in our convection oven along with some kumara chips.
On the side I had some stir-fried veges. I grated some sheese and sprinkled that on top of the veges along with a drizzle of tahini. When such a simple combination tastes so good there's no real need to go making a sauce (in other words, I'm just plain lazy)!
This was dinner the following night. I'd cooked up a double-batch of tempeh and had some leftover kumara chips so I added all of that to one of my usual giant salads.
Yes, there are vegetables under that huge mound of tempeh! Ah, so delicious!
One night I had a girls night with my friend S and her darling daughter and she whipped us up some delicious vegetable wraps.
I filled mine with hummus, asparagus, mushrooms, red onion, lettuce, tomato and cucumber. It was so refreshing that I ate two of them! We finished our night with popcorn, strawberries and a good old chick flick! Oh yeah!
On a recent exploration of the local health food shop I discovered these random tempeh rolls (tempeh and vegetables wrapped in pastry) and, out of the curiosity that sometimes overcomes me in there, I bought a pack to try. I threw the package away before I made a note of the brand but if anyone's interested I can have a look next time I'm there.
They were actually delicious and made a great light lunch with salad but they could have done with more filling and less pastry (or maybe that's just me).
A couple of weeks ago when B was up we decided to invite my lovely cousin D round for dinner. I'd been highly domestic the day before and cooked up a huge saucepan of chickpeas (note to self: I really should cook beans more often) so I decided we were going to have chickpea curry. The only snag was I had no curry paste so I sent B off to the supermarket on a mission to find some vegan curry paste. All he could find were pouches of Thai Kaffir Lime curry paste.
I used 2 of the pouches but it could probably have done with 3 although D still found it pretty hot. I must increase her tolerance for hot food! It was actually delicious so maybe I'll have to buy those pouches again. Pity none of the other flavours were vegan.
No post of dinners cooked at home is complete without a meal of nachos! What is it about nachos that makes them such a staple and should I be concerned?! Oh well, at least B enjoyed them too.
I keep meaning to try these with different beans (preferably some I've cooked myself) just to shake things up a little but I was lazy and used my usual can of kidney beans.
So I rather regularly have pizza as an after-climbing dinner with the rest of the climbing crew but it had been ages since I'd made it myself. I found myself trying to think of meals to make on a recent trip up to my beach house and decided pizza was an excellent idea. Being a little lazy I bought the bases so they weren't as awesome as usual but still pretty good.
I pretty much used any toppings I had on hand (a base of tomato paste topped with mushrooms, capsicum, onion, tomato, avocado and sheese as well as cooked, chopped Bean Supreme burger patties which I'd found in my freezer at home). SO good.
Something was wrong. He could feel it in the air, in the sudden calm, in the way the world felt suddenly as tough something heavy was pressing down on it.
- Nation by Terry Pratchett
A few weeks ago my mate B was up for the weekend to compete in an adventure race with me. Anyway, as a treat for after the race we bought these Leda Chocolate Rum Balls.
They were seriously good and we may have got a little addicted so we decided that next time B was up to visit we'd try and make our own.
Luckily it wasn't too long before he was in my neighbourhood again and bearing rum he'd got from his parent's liquor cabinet. Yay! After searching the internet to find a recipe but not coming up with anything that satisfied me I decided we'd just have to make it up as we went along and they turned out surprisingly well if not a little strong on the rum but hey, they're rum balls after all so I guess it's not really a problem at all!
So, here's the recipe...bearing in mind that I kind of made it up as I went along so the amounts are all rather arbitrary!
1/2 cup raisins
1/2 rum
2 cups toasted, mixed nuts (I used almonds, pecans, walnuts, almonds, cashews and coconut)
1 packet (250g) Arnott's Nice biscuits (or similar)
1 Tbsp molasses
200g dark chocolate, melted
desiccated coconut for coating
Soak the raisins in the rum for a few hours or overnight.
In a food processor, blend the nuts until they are finely chopped. Add the biscuits and process again until finely ground. Add the rum and raisin mixture and blend again. Finally, add the molasses and dark chocolate and blend until the mixture is all combined and holds together (you'll need to scrap down the sides several times).
Put the mixture in the fridge for about an hour so that it's easier to work with and then shape into balls (what ever size you fancy but don't make them too big 'cause the mixture is pretty strong!). Roll in coconut to decorate and store in the fridge.
The terrain about them was as though freshly painted, or rather, as though like an old landscape that had grown dead and dull it had been varnished and now shone out anew, each fragment of the enormous canvas, pristine, the whole, a glory.
- Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake
Life has been pretty hectic and exhausting (yeah, I know I say that a lot but it's been even more than normal if that's possible!) but hopefully things will calm down a little bit by the end of the month...but then again, probably not!
Since I'm so often short on time it's really handy to have super quick things around that require very little preparation and work but still taste good. I often have a container of Turkish Kitchen traditional falafel mix in my fridge for a quick dinner. Scoop out what you want, fry it up and hey presto!
It's a habit of mine to dollop spoonfuls of tahini on top of my cooked veges. I'm too lazy to make a sauce and I adore tahini so it's a win win situation! Add some kumara chips and life is beautiful (or at least dinner!).
Here's another meal using the trusty falafel mix...
Falafel, salad and toast with peanut butter and hazel cocoa malt spread - the lunch of champions!
Believe it or not there have actually been occasions of late I've had time to be more adventurous (not often enough I admit but at least they appear at times!)...
Cornmeal waffles with grilled, marinated asparagas (both from Vegan Brunch) and stir-fried veges and tofu. My waffles hated me and kept sticking to the waffle iron but they still tasted delicious which is the main thing I guess.
Not for the first time she reflected that there were many drawbacks to being a swordswoman, not least of which was that men didn’t take you seriously until you’d actually killed them, by which time it didn’t really matter anyway. Then there was all the leather, which brought her out in a rash but seemed to be unbreakably traditional.
- The Light Fantastic by Terry Pratchett
Training can get a little (okay, make that a lot) exhausting and boring at times so sometimes it's good to mix things up a little and do something a little different...
How about a spin class on the top of a tall hotel/apartment complex in town overlooking the harbour? Oh, and how about adding some rain, wind and sun too?! Yes, it's possible! Last Saturday was Skyspin, a 12-hour event of various different spin classes throughout the day on the top of the Waldorf Apartment Hotel. A friend of mine was taking one of the afternoon classes so a group of us from my gym thought we'd better show up and give some support (oh, and it was for a good cause...hospice). SO much fun (although rather wet and windy!).
Anyway, let me introduce you to my favourite dish of all time, even managing to scrap ahead of Food Alley's claypot. I can't believe I only discovered it a couple of months ago when my flatmate was having it.
So what could it possibly be?
(Tofu) Sausage Salad!!!
Not only is it super quick and basically just uses any kind of salad item you have in your possession but it's also ridiculously tasty. My flatmates and I eat these on a very regular basis that it's becoming a bit of a joke around here.
So how do you make such an awesome meal?! Well it's pretty simple and you can basically use what ever you like but below is how I made the salad above...
Firstly, layer your bowl with a handful of baby spinach leaves then sprinkle some grated carrot over the top. Next, add a sliced tomato and some chopped capsicum (yellow is my favourite to eat raw). Then top with half a sliced avocado and some chopped, dried dates. Drizzle over a little balsamic salad dressing and add a couple of dollops of roasted garlic hummus. Finally, top with two sliced tofu sausages and some chopped walnuts. It just couldn't get any better!
The attendant looks the body up and down and shakes his head. He slides it back inside on near-silent rollers. A heart attack, they say. Extreme shock and terror, they say.So, the attendant wonders, why is the corpse smiling?
- Nonstop from Rite by Tad Williams
Sunday morning did not quite start off as planned (this being last Sunday, not today in case anyone was confused). We had planned to go to The Orange Tree for brunch but it was closed. So off to the art centre market it was for souvlaki from the Dimitri's stall instead! It might not be what I'd typically see as brunch food but you really can't go to Christchurch and not have a souvlaki.
Yep, that's one HUGE falafel souvlaki because B made us both get doubles. Seriously could not finish this but it was delicious. We washed them down with fresh lemonade from the market whilst lazing in the sun. Awesome.
Once we got home we also might have snacked on some chocolate biscuits B had picked up from the supermarket...
Once brunch had settled (which took a hell of a long time!) we headed off to McLeans Island.
While B fitted in some mountain bike training I ran round the walking track and took the detour out to the river. I wish I'd had my camera out there as it was beautiful.
Not much is open on a Sunday night in Christchurch but we did manage to find somewhere, the Dux de Lux, which used to be a vegetarian restaurant/bar but has since added seafood to their menu. They still have a good selection of vegan options though. Both B and I picked options that we could share.
My meal came with salad and I picked the rice and the carrot salads. Very tasty and I had to restrain myself from eating all of it whilst waiting for the rest of my meal to be served.
I ordered the sweetcorn and vegetable fritters which came with a beetroot chutney.
They were huge and delicious with a crunchy outside and a gooey, creamy inside and the chutney went really well. Filled the spot perfectly.
B also picked the rice salad and also went with a couscous salad which we weren't fans of.
For his main B ordered the Indian curry which was served with rice, chapatti, raita and mango chutney.
The curry was pretty delicious and hearty but the chutney was best avoided...tasted like eating a really sweet mango jam which would be fine in some contexts but not this one.
Because we were starving and getting quite good at ordering (and eating) WAY too much food, we also ordered some kumara fries on the side with sweet chilli sauce. I love kumara fries and we polished them all off despite being so full we couldn't move!
Because we hadn't had dessert (which was a requirement for the weekend challenge!) we made brownies (yes, crazy I know)!! Using an Orgran Chocolate Muffin Mix, we followed the vegan version but used soy milk instead of water and added peanut butter and chopped chocolate (I think we got a bit carried away on the chocolate chopping front but hey, chocolate is all good) and then cooked it in a large square cake pan.
It turned out really well especially when served warm with Lite Licks Hokey Pokey ice cream. Just to state the obvious, I was ridiculously full after this again! Hmmm...perhaps the theme of the weekend?!
