I wish I had remembered, as she taught me, that it is easier to unleash evil than call it back again. Any fool can blow up a wind, but who can know where it will blow or when it will stop?
- The White Queen by Philippa Gregory
Sometimes all you feel like is a big, hearty dose of vegetables. It is a weird thing. You see, it doesn't feel like all that long ago that the only vegetables I liked were carrot sticks and frozen peas (yes, only if they were frozen!). In reality that was well over a decade ago but sometimes I don't feel very old and wonder where the time has gone. Nowadays though, I adore vegetables. If there is one thing that I crave it is a huge vegetable stirfry or similar.
What about carrot sticks (harking back to my childhood), grilled eggplant, wild rice and barley (care of my flatmate), panfried tofu and a mixture of in season stir-fried veggies to help with those cravings?
I think that photo is making me hungry just looking at it. Tragic and probably also a sign my breakfast just didn't cut it this morning.
Most weeks my veggie box has had some kind of leafy green (various different types of kale, silverbeet, some other random one that I'd never heard of before and promptly forgot the name of but was delicious...) and I discovered my favourite way to cook them up was to chop them up and stirfry them with some onion and, maybe, some other vegetables I might have sitting around and served on a bed of brown rice. My new favourite comfort food.
As you might have noticed from the last two photos, I also have been having a lot of plain (well, salt and pepper) panfried tofu. I think because so much has been going on and I've been a bit stressed plain food has been the kind of thing I've craved the most.
Another way to get a whole heap of veggies is to whip up a curry...although with this one I think we ended up with too much coconut cream so it was super rich. I was eating leftovers for days afterwards though which was awesome.
Oh, and in case you didn't know, leftover curry is also great on toast and you can mop up the extra sauce with bread. Delicious!
How about a sandwich stuffed full of veggies and tofu? Especially good after a long mountain bike ride with some monster hills. Another good way to pack in those vegetables.
A few weeks ago I was on a real sandwich kick and was making these pretty much every day. The thing that makes them even more awesome is chutney and my current favourite is sundried tomato and olive. Mum made a couple of different feijoa chutneys too (feijoa and ginger and feijoa and chilli) but I haven't opened them yet.
Another sneaky, but delicious, way to get some veggies is in these awesome muffins from The Damn Tasty Guide to Vegan Baking. I use this book so much that it is falling apart and some pages have stuck together from when I've spilt stuff on it!
These are even more delicious slightly warmed with margarine and a salad. Ooo, this is making me want to bake up another batch!!
Even in the world of today we can see how mighty powers can come apart at the seams when confronted with simple demands for peace, love, food for the poor, and amnesty for the enemies of the state.
- Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder
I know, I know. Blah blah blah...
Anyway, before I race off to bed (before racing off before dawn tomorrow for the national orienteering champs in Hawkes Bay...scary!!) I thought I'd just quickly tell you something. Kris's new vegan cake book is out and it's called have your cake and vegan too. It arrived in the mail at my parents the other day which was super exciting!! I was a tester for it so I can tell you that it is awesome. Actually, her cake recipes are pretty much the only ones I ever use.
I whipped up one I hadn't tried for my cousin's birthday last weekend, Bubbie's Chubby Tuxedo Cake. It seemed fitting after how much she adored last year's cake (the oreos got her very excited).
As usual for Kris's recipes it was simple, reliable and worked out perfectly (well, it took a bit longer to cook in our ancient oven and my baking always seems to turn out a bit more moist...not that anyone would complain about that).
It went down a treat and my flatmates gave the leftovers I brought home 5 stars (5 michelin stars actually!). Awesome :)
Anyway, I promise to post more once life settles down and I also promise to post about my exciting (terrifying) news soon!! Oh, and if you were wondering about the title watch this.
The consequences of our actions are always so complicated, so diverse, that predicting the future is a very difficult business indeed.
- Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J. K. Rowling
So, last weekend (just to clarify, not the one that's just been but the one before that!) I decided to treat Mum to a special afternoon tea at the Heritage Hotel...any excuse to try their vegan high tea!! It was a pretty miserable day which meant our plans for a walk were dashed so we took the bus into town early and spent way too much money on shopping...although Mother and daughter shopping these days is more to the likes of Macpac (I know some of the ladies on the homepage - just a little shout out to the Macpac Girls On Top!!) and Bivouac!
Anyway, after all that shopping it was time for food especially since I hadn't eaten lunch (I had a late breakfast in preparation!). I had called ahead so when we arrived it only took them a few minutes before we had this placed in front of us...
First up you've got to have sandwiches.
We've got wholemeal sandwichs with avocado, hummus and cucumber and white bread sandwiches with tomato, basil and vegan cashew cheese
Next up, we all need some sweet treats in our life.
We've got brownie bites, fruit tartlets, vanilla macaroons and chocolate dipper apricots.
But for the main event, and probably the thing I was most looking forward to, scones.
Cranberry, orange and ginger scones to be more precise, served with strawberry jam and soy cream!
Oh, and there was tea...because what is High Tea without, well, tea?!! It came in a teapot. No photos. Use your imagination.
Basically I think the photos pretty much speak for themselves. Mum loved it and I thought it was totally awesome although I did leave on a bit of a sugar high. My favourite was definitely the scones with cream and jam. Definitely a combination worth repeating. And it has inspired me to go out and buy some more soy cream and do "stuff" with it...what kind of stuff I don't know yet but I'm sure I'll come up with something!
It was always there, just out of sight, waiting.
But what was it waiting for?
- The Tangle Box by Terry Brooks
I have been doing a lot of eating out lately, which is not to say that I haven't been cooking (which also happens a lot...and in case you started to feel concerned, I have still been cooking way more than I have been going out) but just that, well, there are reasons. But anyway, what you really want to see is some food and, with my crappy camera in tow, I have some...
So on Wednesday morning I met my cousin D at the Heritage Hotel Lobby Bar for breakfast because I'd managed to score a 2 for 1 voucher off Moira's blog. Well that wasn't the only reason but it helped! We both ordered the pancakes (there wasn’t a lot of choice in terms of larger meals although there are several small options) and fresh juices.
I have a favourite juice combo - carrot, apple, beetroot and ginger so naturally when I saw that on the menu (Liver Lover) I knew I had to order it and I have to say, this was the best version I've had. I loved how super thick and super gingery it was.
The menu was new and for some reason (of which I can’t remember now) we got one plate of pancakes before the other. To make up for it though they brought us out another dish as well, the soyurt parfait with cranberry muesli, grated apple. I thought this was really awesome but D thought the yogurt tasted a bit too much like soy (I'm pretty sure it was the Kingland Soy yogurt).
We both ended up ordering the pancakes (there wasn’t a lot of choice in terms of larger meals although there are several small options). To be more precise, berries, macadamia and buckweat pancakes served with maple syrup and grilled banana.
The pancakes weren’t very sweet which I loved and had an awesome nutty texture (both from the buckwheat and the macadamias). They tasted healthy...but in a good way if that makes sense. Plus they kept me full all morning and into the afternoon which was fortunate as I was so rushed off my feet at work I didn't get to have lunch until quite late.
I will be honest here and say that I didn't exactly expect that much when I went but I came away feeling very excited. Our waiter was excellent and the manager came over to have a chat with me and he seemed genuinely passionate about their new menu and the direction the food at the Heritage is going in. You've gotta love that.
But come back next time (or at least some time in the future) for an even more exciting meal at the Lobby Bar...
He shook his head sharply in the hope that it might dislodge some salient fact which would fall into place and make sense of an otherwise utterly bewildering Universe, but since the salient fact, if there was one, entirely failed to do this, he set off up the road again, hoping that a good vigorous walk, and maybe even some good painful blisters, would help to reassure him of his own existence at least, if not his sanity.
- So Long, and Thanks for all the Fish by Douglas Adams
Hello!! I have been floating around on another planet but tonight I have briefly touched down to give you a post (and a recipe!!!) and just say, well, there is some big stuff happening soon which is all terribly exciting but terribly scary at the same time but you'll have to wait.
So...food.
For the last few weeks I've been getting a fruit and veggie box from Ooooby (you can see Moira's posts about Ooooby here) which has been really cool because not only does it save me trips to the shops where I ultimately end up buying the same thing every week but it has also led me to try things I don't normally cook with. My goal each week is to finish the box and try everything. It's not a very hard goal but it's fun!
Anyway, each week they include a piece of paper that tells you where everything is from and if it's organic or whatever. They also include a few recipes which normally I ignore because I'm not very good with recipes but one week they included a red cabbage in my box and I had no idea what to do with it so I thought I'd give the recipe a try...and was pleasantly surprised! Perhaps I should do it more often!
Cabbage, Avocado and Pear Slaw
I ought to say here that this is not quite the recipe that was included because, well...but it is pretty much the same.
Sesame Dressing
1/4 cup cider vinegar
1/2 cup olive oil (or rice bran oil but I used olive oil so therefore that's what I've put!)
1 Tbsp sugar
1 Tbsp sesame seeds
1 tsp sesame oil
Salt and pepper (which I think I might have forgotten to put in but I can't remember now
Salad
2-3 cups (approx) finely shredded red cabbage (or sort of chopped as thin as I could be bothered if you are like me)
1 pear, cored and sliced
1 apple, cored and sliced
1 avocado, peeled, de-seeded and sliced
Make the dressing by whisking all the ingredients together and set aside. Toss all the salad ingredients together, pour over the dressing and serve.
You might not want all of the dressing but it is quite nice! The slaw is quite good on the side with almost anything but even better with slices of fried tofu on top.
