'I fear, to thy peril, my good Annette,' said Emily; 'for it seems his verses have stolen thy heart. But let me advise you; if it is so, keep the secret; never let him know it.'
- The Msyteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe
So you want to make your own ginger crunch? So you want it to be awesome? So you want it to be so gingery that it knocks your socks off?
We went to a potluck round the road last night and poor M had to carry steaming hot vegan lasagna fresh out of the oven. It was delicious so therefore worth his hard work.
Anyway, back to talking about ginger, being the awesome person that I am, I had made a super gingery ginger crunch, braving the use of the oven despite ridiculously hot temperatures (what was with that? It's back to being grey and cool today). I still think I can make a better ginger crunch (I've mainly been focused on the icing and not the base which needs some work since it's mostly just the Edmonds version) but here we go since some people have been getting impatient!
Ginger Crunch*
125g vegan margarine, softened (olivani is good)
1/2 cup sugar
1 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
2 tsp ground ginger
Ginger Icing
150g vegan margarine
2 Tbsp ground ginger**
7 Tbsp golden syrup
3 cups icing sugar
crystalised ginger, chopped
Cream the margarine and sugar until light and fluffy (or as long as you can be bothered especially if you only have egg beaters which are tedious). Sift the flour, baking powder and ground ginger together and mix into the creamed mixture. You might want to use your hands to get it all mixed in nicely. Press the mixture into a greased 20 x 20cm cake tin or something similar. Bake at 190C for about 20 minutes or until light brown. Just try not to overcook the edges as I did. Top with ginger icing as per below...
Ginger Icing
Melt the margarine, ground ginger, golden syrup and icing sugar together in a saucepan and mix well. Then pour over the base and sprinkle the crystalised ginger over the top (it will sort of sink into the icing). Chill until firm before cutting into pieces (a hot knife works best). I cut mine into about 20 pieces*** but then again I was trying to feed the masses at the potluck.
Eat.
*It's pretty hard to get this recipe wrong...let's just say I was baking in a kitchen where I couldn't find any measuring cups or scales so I improvised. It worked out fine.
**Just as a note, New Zealand tablespoons (Tbsp) are 15ml whereas I think Australian ones are 20ml.
***This way you can eat several pieces without feeling bad! Not that you should feel bad anyway...ginger is good for the stomach.
"The world is lighter," he said, "because of you."
- Winter Of Fire by Sherryl Jordan
I am off to Christchurch tonight. Exciting!! Anyway, while I was starting to pack the other night I thought it was ridiculous just how many pairs of shoes I had to pack for this trip (umm, 6 pairs of sports shoes including climbing and cycling shoes, a pair of jandals and some sneakers - it's a busy trip). I'd only just unpacked from going to Rotorua last weekend...some days I think I should just live out of a bag. Oh wait, I've done that before too. If you are getting the idea that I am pretty much never home then you might be right!
Anyway, like I said, I was in Rotorua over the weekend for a race. M flew up on Thursday night and, after feeling too lazy to make our own breakfast we headed off to find food. I heard via the grapevine (well, you know, through an auckland vegan's blog) that the Vegan Revellers was back on the menu at Revel and since I remember it being delicious and I hadn't been to Revel in ages anyway I thought I'd drag M along there for breakfast.
It is slightly different to the old version in that it has fried tofu in place of the falafel but otherwise I can't think of anything different about it. Still delicious. Still awesome. Still super filling. Yay!
But we still needed dessert (yes, even at breakfast time). I sent M up to the counter to get me a slice of their peanut butter pie...
...but he also came back with something else, vegan mint slice. Oh man, this was so amazing we debated going up and getting a few more pieces but since the guy serving us already thought we were crazy for eating so much sugar we decided against it but I really wish we had!
Unfortunately the ginger crunch at Revel (pictured in the background) isn't vegan so that was for M but I will definitely be stocking up on it when I get to Christchurch!
The drive to Rotorua takes several hours so we had to stop along the way for a picnic lunch. I'd made big Blueberry Ginger Spelt Muffins from Vegan Brunch but with extra crystalised ginger 'cause we both love ginger.
I'd also made some sweetcorn and bean fritter things roughly adapted from the Edmonds sweetcorn fritter recipe (using cornflour instead of normal flour, a mixture of ground flaxseed and water instead of the normal egg, added sweet chilli sauce and a tin of cannellini beans, mashed up). I served this with a random chutney we'd bought at the supermarket and a whole lot of grapes. Much healthier than our car food!
I had no idea what we were going to have for dinner so we just wandered round the supermarket in Rotorua hoping stuff would jump out at us.
In the end I cooked up some pasta with a box of Fry's Vegetarian Chicken Style Strips ('cause it seemed amusing at the time) with some veggies and a bought pasta sauce. It was surprisingly good.
"Because you killed him and put him in the cold, cold ground?" Actually, it hadn't been all that cold but I felt I was due a little artistic license. My mind soared and swooped, way above everything. I could see so much! I felt like God. This was fun.
- Dead in the Family by Charlaine Harris
How come it feels so good to get home again and yet it sucks at the same time? Why do some of my most favourite people have to be so far away? And why does my backlog of photos never stop growing?! Oh well! We'll get there...eventually.
Anyway, you might be pleased to know that I am still in one piece. I did not fall down a 12 metre cliff and neither did I get a stick through my front wheel and come off breaking my sternum or ribs. I left those adventures to others in the team!
I did, however, ride for 25 hours (that's 9 days in a row of racing and training), get some wicked cuts and bruises from crashing into rocks, fell off my bike in a bog and got completely submerged and spent more than 2 hours cleaning the mud off my bike and shoes only to find NZ customs in a relaxed mood.
I laughed so hard that I thought I might explode, got attacked by a magpie (seriously...you can see where the beak of the bird wedged into my helmet!), lazed in the spa pool and learnt more about bikes in 9 days than I ever had in the last 3 years of riding. When I finally get a chance, there'll be more info about the trip up here if anyone is interested.
Oh, and I also managed to eat some pretty good food. I didn't photograph most of it (like the awesome vegan lasagnas that got whipped up for us non-meat eaters one night) because I am a bit slack but rest assured, you will not go hungry even in small towns in Australia (I found tofu, both plain and marinated, veggie burgers, oat milk and all sorts of other staples in every supermarket I went to).
This is the only photo of food that we actually cooked. This was our second night in Mt Gambia and there were three of us girls cooking together in our little unit. We were lazy and bought pre-prepared stir-fry veggies since we were traveling the next day.
Next stop was a farmstay not far out of Carisbrook. It had the most awesome kitchen where we would cook up communal meals each night. Down the road in Marybourgh there was a cafe (Legendz) that could make soy milkshakes. After a hot day out in the forest I couldn't think of anything better!
It was thick, cold and delicious...and I drunk it so fast that I got a headache!
Food-wise, Daylseford was when it got exciting. We'd just arrived and were mulling around town whist some people were sussing out somewhere good for coffee when one of my team mates spotted a sign outside one of the cafes saying it was vegetarian and vegan.
My first trip (we went twice) to the Himalaya Bakery I got a mini chocolate cake and organic cola.
I also got an apple and cinnimon scroll to take away with me too (oh, and later on I got one to eat on the plane home too...they were big and deliciously filling).
Our first night we all went out to dinner at the Old Hepburn Hotel. I got a veganised version of the vegetable and kidney bean nachos which was pretty good but I could have done with more bean mix and less corn chips. It didn't last all that long though (riding every day makes you hungry...and incredibly tipsy on one bottle of alcoholic ginger beer and therefore your table's entertainment for the evening)!
Saturday night was the social function at a pub down the road. Food was catered but I'd organised in advance for a meal to be provided for me. They ended up changing their vegetarian dish to make it vegan which I thought was pretty cool...green curry with tofu and tempeh. Not anything flash or amazing but it filled me up and, quite frankly, I was hungry so as long as it was edible I wasn't really fussed.
And for dessert they served me a big bowl filled with grapes and strawberries. Everyone else at my table was jealous and I had to fight them off!
After our final race we went into town again for lunch and boy did I need food by then...desperately (after nearly 3 hours of mountain biking I was pretty desperate)! I managed to convince over half the team to join me at the Himalaya Bakery again! Everyone had to agree the food was really good.
I got the open veggie burger (I think it was made from lentils). It was good. So basically, if you find yourself near Daylesford, go here. I really recommend it.
For our final night we went out to the Jasmine Thai Restaurant in Hepburn Springs. Items on the menu that could be veganised were clearly labelled which was super cool and my meal was delicious. Of course I was pretty forgetful that evening and forgot my camera again. Typical...
...but after over 2 hours of cleaning my bike and bike shoes (I don't think either have ever been this clean since they were brand new - look how sparkly it is!) I was completely exhausted.
So all in all it was an awesome trip (and this is a ridiculously long post). Plans are already underway for next year...
