'Can't be arsed' evenings

"You run the risk of a few tears when you allow yourself to be tamed..."
- The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

You know those nights...you get home from work feeling super tired and super lazy and all you really want to do is curl up in bed or in front of the television and have dinner materialise in front of you. I'm sorry, but that ain't gonna happen so you'll have to go into the kitchen and whip something up pronto.

This is one of those meals:


Fry's Vegetarian Chicken-Style Nuggets (I love our convection oven - cooks things like this in no time at all) with cheap and nasty sweet and sour sauce (okay, so it's not nasty but it's, well, bright, toxic orange so it's kind of freaky), steamed veges drizzled with tahini and salad.

A day in the life of your average Monday

There was nothing I could do. There were no precautions I could take. There was no place I could hide. There was no one who could help me.
- New Moon by Stephenie Meyer

It's probably just me but I thought you might be interested in what a "normal" weekday looks like for me. Every day is quite different but you get the general idea...

So the alarm on my phone goes off at 5:10am...welcome to Monday morning. I drag on my gym gear...laid out on the chair the night before so I don't have to use my brain. I try and drink as much water as I can manage and eat one of these...


Off to the gym! There is a queue of us completely insane people waiting outside for opening time at 5:45am. We file in, dump our gear in the lockers and head upstairs and across the bridge over the pool into the gym where I head to the peleton room and claim a bike (this is why I'm here so early...bikes go pretty fast especially as the weather improves...don't know why that is!). Spin class starts at 6:05am and is a 45 minute torture session taken by my friend L. After class I head over to the floor to finish up with some core exercises and stretches.

Time to hit the showers. I only wash my hair once a week (okay, so I rinse it if it gets too icky from sport but that's it) and Monday is the day...the gym showers are great and I don't feel quite so bad about taking too long. Because I have a really sensitive scalp I use this shampoo and this conditioner. These don't make my hair as soft and silky as other products I've tried but they don't make my scalp feel like it's erupting which is rather more important!

It's then off to work where I'll have breakfast at my desk. Yesterday it was a spelt muffin and fruit but sometimes I'll have toast with almond butter and jam. If I'm at home for breakfast it's normally weetbix, fruit and rice milk.


Did I really just take a photo of fruit? Not very exciting...well, as a photo anyway!


Work comes and goes but no doubt I'll spend a bit too much time having email conversations with a couple of my friends as I count down till lunchtime!

Lunchtime has been leftovers lately which is awesome. When I'm cooking dinner I'll often try to make extra 'cause I don't want to have to buy lunch (for a start there aren't that many options near my office).


Yesterday was leftover Pumpkin and Kumara Soup from the freezer mixed with leftover veges and tofu from another night - a double-whammy of leftovers!

Often Monday nights are quiet but last night I was climbing with my brother and his friend at Extreme Edge. We usually climb together about once a week but the night is always different to fit in with everyone's schedules. We are looking at doing a lead climbing course soon which is pretty much freaking me out.




My brother really wanted his arse to feature on this blog so here it is, just for you darling bro!
Anyway, before climbing I will normally snack on a muesli bar of some sort. Last night it was a Cool Mint Chocolate Clif Bar, my favourite.


I just noticed that there is a picture of a climber on the clif bar packet...how appropriate!
By the time I get home I'll no doubt be exhausted as I always fail in my resolution to go to bed early on a Sunday night so very little sleep will have been had! I'll also undoubtably be hungry (if we haven't gone to get Hell Pizza after climbing). Last night I was too lazy to do anything so I had nut butter and jam on toast! Terrible I know but it was after 9pm when I got home and sometimes you just can't be bothered.


This is actually a photo of a previous breakfast but I forgot to take a photo of my dinner...but they looked exactly the same! I also discovered I had a bliss ball in the fridge from The Blue Bird so I snacked on that too. Yummy!


I'll then pack my bags and organise my gear and in the fridge I'll put all my breakfast and lunch food for the next day in a bag ready for me to grab as I race out the door. Then I can finally drop into bed (always aiming for 10pm but not always succeeding!) and look forward to doing it all again in the morning!

Hmmmm, this seems to make my life seem somewhat boring but actually it's pretty cool (well, I think so anyway) and hopelessly busy (Google Calendar saves my life). I often wonder how I'm going to make it to the end of the week without dropping from exhaustion but I always do and am always ready and waiting for the week to start again come Sunday night!

Turning up the heat

The sun sank lower, an orange ball partially masked by the evening haze, moisture coming in from the water. Low clouds presented black faces, with silver, golden, pink, and orange highlights, and the sky was streaked with reds and golds.
- The King's Buccaneer by Raymond E. Feist

My freezer supplies were getting a bit low so a bit of baking was required. One of my favourite things about baking is the way the smells fill up the whole house...always makes me smile. Anyway, first up was a loaf of country-grain bread from a bread mix. I put it in the breadmaker to knead, took it out and let rise in the loaf tin (in the gorgeous spring sunshine) and then baked it in the oven.


Once the loaf cooled I sliced it up and put it in the freezer for breakfasts and lunches later on.

I'd made the berry spelt muffins several times so I thought I'd mix things up a little and whipped up a batch of texas-sized Zucchini Spelt Muffins from Vegan Brunch (I love the taste and texture spelt flour gives to baking). I added chopped dates and walnuts for some extra oomph!


These are really delicious...really moist and lightly spiced. Perfect. It's actually the first time I've ever baked something with grated zucchini but it most certainly won't be the last.

My flatmate has been stuck in the house looking after the puppy day after day for the last couple of weeks and was feeling a little down so I whipped up a batch of Peanut-Ginger-Sesame cookies from Veganomicon for her (I made them gluten-free with the Healtheries Simple Baking Mix as she isn't supposed to have gluten and without crystalised ginger as she's not a fan so instead I upped the amount of ground ginger to a teaspoon).


We had a few girl friends round that night and demolished quite a few (as well as a fair amount of dark chocolate naturally)...they are SO good!

Fueling up

"It's just one of those things people worry about, even if it doesn't make sense."

- Wolf-Speaker by Tamora Pierce

Most mornings I am up super early for training...either running, spin class or a gym session (today, because I'm slightly crazy at times, I went to spin and then went for a training run with a friend...lucky I don't work today so I can go back to bed and have a nana nap!). Although I could never eat a proper breakfast before heading out, I certainly can't train on an empty stomach so I normally have some fruit or a muesli bar. These bars are SO good and keep me going right up until I hit the showers (and then I'm definitely ready for breakfast!).


I've changed the recipe enough that it's probably okay to post it so here it is (although each time I make a batch I end up changing the ingredients a bit anyway...it's pretty forgiving):

¼ cup agave nectar
¼ cup molasses
¼ cup rice syrup
¼ cup almond butter
¼ cup peanut butter
⅔ cup chopped dried fruit
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 cup rolled oats
1 cup wholegrain oats
1 cup rye oats
¼ cup ground flaxseed
¼ cup pumpkin seeds
¼ cup sesame seeds
¼ cup sunflower seeds
¾ cup coconut thread

Heat the agave nectar, molasses, rice syrup, almond butter, peanut butter and dried fruit together in a medium saucepan until the mixture starts to simmer, stirring to make sure the mixture doesn’t stick to the bottom of the pan.

Once it starts to bubble take the pan off the heat.

Mix in the rest of the ingredients (you might need to use your hands here to get it to mix in properly).

Line the base and sides of a 20cm x 20cm baking dish with baking paper and press the mixture firmly into the pan (the firmer you press it in, the better the bars will hold together).

Freezer the mixture in the pan for about 20 minutes and then remove and tip the set mixture onto a cutting board. Slice into bars (I find a bread knife best here). This recipe makes somewhere between 15 and 20 depending on the size you want them but don’t make them too big ‘cause they’re pretty dense!

Wrap each bar up individually and store either in the fridge or freezer.

Crunchy mouthfuls of sweetness

It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes.
- Life, the Universe and Everything by Douglas Adams

As a belated birthday present for my darling cousin D I whipped up a batch of sickeningly sweet granola following the recipe for Caramel Walnut Chocolate Chunk Granola (now that's a mouthful!) from eat me, delicious. I added some almonds too since I had some sitting around so I guess that means I made Caramel Walnut Almond Chocolate Chunk Granola which is a seriously long-winded way of saying yum!


Before sending her off with it I had to give it a taste test. It was delicious but seriously sweet...not really breakfast material but perfect for sprinkling over fruit or soy ice cream for dessert.

Operation presentation

The High Lord was on her side. So why did she want to take the skillet that was still sitting on the counter and smack him over the head with it?
- Dreams Made Flesh by Anne Bishop

Day 2 of (Oz&NZ)VeganMoFo and here I am again...I'm impressed with myself already!

Anyway, it was my darling cousin D's birthday a couple of weeks back so we had to celebrate somehow. Since neither of us had anything planned for our actual birthdays we decided on a belated party (basically an excuse to eat cake). But on her actual day I met her in town for lunch at Raw Power. Neither of us had been there in ages so it all felt new again.

I couldn't resist getting the tofu burger...I swear it has grown since I was last here! So full afterwards I could barely move!


The juice of the day was the Vulcan. I can't remember what was in it other than carrot and beetroot but it was delicious and really refreshing.


A few nights ago I was having a discussion with my friend L and his flatmate about food photographs in cookbooks versus what they actually turn out like. We were flipping through some cookbook and complaining that the pictures always look so fabulous but nothing we did turned out quite like the pictures (not that they didn’t still taste good though).

A couple of days later I found myself in the kitchen putting together the birthday cake for our belated party and, spurned on by this conversation, I felt quite determined for mine to look at least somewhat like the photo! The cake I was tackling was the Decadent Almond Cake from My Sweet Vegan (with a few adaptions - I used a combination of maple syrup, agave nectar and rice syrup instead of straight maple syrup and in the chocolate ganache I used agave nectar and coconut cream because I’ve never seen soy creamer in my life...wouldn’t even know what it was so I just hoped like hell that coconut cream would work!).


I was rather pleasantly surprised with the results (unfortunately my actual photography skills suck though...it looked so much prettier in real life!). It would have been even better if I’d have been less impatient with waiting for the ganache to cool and set a little before icing the cake ‘cause it was a bit runny to start with.


The cake went down a treat with my flatmates and L devouring all the leftovers...lucky I'd eaten two slices on the night otherwise I'd have felt a little cheated!

(Oz&NZ)VeganMoFo: Spring!!

My breathing sped, sounding loud and harsh in my own ears even above the steady rush of the water. I wanted you, wanted you more than anything I had ever desired, although I could not imagine what form the having might take.
- Caliban's Hour by Tad Williams

I was reading Theresa's blog this morning about OzVeganMoFo for September and I thought I'd join in the fun since I just live across the ditch in little New Zealand. I'm aiming for about 4 posts a week which could be a miracle but we'll see how it goes. As Theresa says, no worries. Also, it's the first day of spring today which seems like the perfect way to kick this whole thing off! Yay! We've even managed to turn on the sunshine for the occasion.

I think I've mentioned previously how I've come to adore salad. It's interesting because in the past I used to, well, not hate salads but definitely not enjoy them. There were a few I'd like but on the whole I avoided them. I definitely wouldn't have picked one at a cafe if there was another option. But clearly tastes change and I'm pretty glad they have.

Here are a couple of takeaway salads from Revel...these are only half-size 'cause the full-size portions are HUGE (plus this way you can always justify a sweet treat if so desired!). They may not look pretty but they sure tasted good.


Rice salad with tofu and veges

Barley salad with veges and cashews
Main meal salads are becoming a big thing in my diet too especially as the weather gets warmer.


Here's one using all the veges I could find in the fridge along with hummus, dates, sheese, roasted seeds and temeph bacon from Vegan Brunch.

Now if you live down south, go outside and enjoy spring...it feels like summer is finally on it's way!