Sausage and Bean Casserole

After another super hectic day I'm just managing to squeeze this in before bed. My garden is looking great but I'm shattered again! My super cutie pie doggie is visiting at the moment too and loves to wake us up just a little too early with a lick to the face. Yum.

When I saw some Linda McCartney sausages on offer in the fridge section of Sainsbury's I knew exactly what I wanted to make. Sausage and bean casserole. I just went with my gut with this, not following any recipe, and used what I had available.

Ingredients (4 big portions):

1 pack (6) Linda McCartney Sausages

1 onion

2 cloves garlic

1 bell pepper

2 handfuls of mushrooms 

1 can chopped tomatos

Half a can of baked beans

Half a can of kidney beans

2 tsp Paprika & 1tsp Cayenne Pepper

(more if you like it spicy)

Cook sausages as per instructions on pack.
Meanwhile fry the onion and garlic until soft.
Add mushroom and pepper. When soft, add 1tsp paprika and 1tsp Cayenne Pepper.
Add all cans. Add more paprika. Leave to simmer for ten mins or until sausages are ready.
Taste test! more paprika needed? a bit of salt perhaps?
Now chop the sausages and add them to the mix. Simmer for a further 5 mins and serve!

This is a really versatile dish. We had it with some toasted wholemeal pittas on day one and in wraps with rice on day two. The ingredients can be altered easily too. A great way to get something a bit different into your weekly menu without needing anything special - I'll be making this again!

A day's grace.

Good evening loyal readers!
Please accept my apologies but today's post is being delayed till tomorrow on account of my parents visiting and keeping me busybusybusy!
Here's a little sneak peak to whet some appetites:

Curry Club

I'm a little addicted to cooking shows - I've got a little better now that I don't have a tv with food network to gaze at for hours and I actually have to chose an on demand show to watch, but I'm still quite fanatical about them. I like imagining how I could transform recipes, to veganise them, and how they might work with things I already eat. So it happened that this week whilst watching an old Nigel Slater's Simple Suppers episode I decided I to attempt this Korma. I'm an absolute curry novice - the processed stuff in a jar is usually adequate - so this simple one seemed an ideal place to start.

My ginger looked like a bunny!

I didn't have aaalll the spices - still working on the new kitchen's supplies! However it turned out really well and I felt very brave adding sultanas to a savoury dish for the first time ever(!)
My substitutions were:
Butter -> Vitalite
Yoghurt & Creme Fraiche -> One tin of coconut milk
I also added some cauliflower which worked really well.


A great simple way for beginners to experiment with spices, and hazelnuts in curry!

Unfortunately it wasn't a very appetising colour, perhaps it needed more turmeric?

Apologies for the late post, I've spent the day tending to my newly sprouted salad veg (So this is how it feels to be a proud mother!) in my new garden. Advice on how to deter a horde of snails anyone?!

Beer

...Well I did promise a post about something other than food!

I've got to start with a confession. I have not been seriously considering the manufacture process of the alcohol I drink. There are some drinks that I don't drink for obvious reasons... (Bailey's etc...) and others that I have been enlightened about and can remember (Guinness, Fosters, Crabbies Ginger beer - a recent discovery) but I have cowardly shied away from this important issue within veganism for too long and I'm ashamed of this.

Anywho, before I get too morose I'll get practical:

'Many alcoholic beverages are fined (filtered and clarified) using things like isinglass (the swim bladders of fish), albumen (egg), geletin, bone char, or contain non-vegan ingredients like cochineal (crushed up bugs, yes, seriously) pepsin (pork),casein, lactose, and more.' - Vegan Freak: Being Vegan in a Non Vegan World. Bob Torres & Jenna Torres pg 173 

So there you go, if you ever wondered why vegans don't drink all beers, that's why!
Bob (or maybe Jenna) goes on to explain that it's actually quite easy to find vegan drinks - I'll paraphrase:
-There are vegan finding agents (wahey!)
-A German law from 1516 means that all German beers are vegan.
-The majority of North-American brands are vegan too.
-Most spirits are vegan though red ones are probably coloured with cochineal.

The obvious difficulty is that bottles don't usually include ingredients lists and even if they did, they wouldn't necessarily mention their fining agents. Luckily there are ways around this. Barnivore is probably the best place to look to check specific drinks. It's really easy and quick to use - with just one quick search I found out that Harvey's (One of the big local breweries in East Sussex) use isinglass on all their beers. It's also worth mentioning that Sainsbury's, M&S, Co-op and Waitrose label their own brand products as vegan to save us time and get us to part with cash. One last tip comes from the vegan society website  ' If a beer is labelled suitable for vegetarians it should normally also be suitable for vegans as long as it does not contain honey.'

So my plan (In the short term) is to make use of Barnivore to search for the drinks I have most often and download one of their suggested apps for my phone for when I'm on the go. I'll keep you posted on how difficult or easy this turns out to be.

Apologies for what has been the least jovial of my posts, and thanks for reading and giving me a reason to be honest and thorough. Here's a picture of a smiling fish (swim bladder still intact!) for your trouble.

Gizza kiss! - http://fabricating.rssing.com/chan-2060920/all_p6.html

Peanut butter, banana and chocolate chip cookies.

Hello, hello.
Sorry it's a late one today. Also I promise I will try to post things other than recipes soon. There is more to veganism than just food and this isn't just a food blog (...is what I tell myself.)

Anyway, I made some really great cookies yesterday. Remember when I was going to make cookies for my new housemates in third year at uni? Well I've finally made cookies for my housemates... One and a half years later. This is another recipe from allrecipes.co.uk - The ingredients will all be knocking around the kitchen so it's another (almost) no-effort yum fest!

I use dark chocolate from aldi and cut it up into small chunks. The 200g bar is vegan but the 100g bar is not... wierd. Anyway it works really well and I think it actually tastes better once it's been in the oven. These will still be tasty without the chocolate too.

Another sweet treat this week was a tub of ice cream from BohoGelato. It was reminiscent of ben and jerry's with little chunks of moreish dough but the ice cream itself was verging on sorbet and at £2.50 a pop I probably won't be having too many more!

Should perhaps have included a coin for scale!
FYI It was the size you would usually get at the theatre.

Adieu x

Fennel?!

A super quick post this week. What with being the birthday girl AND having just moved house it's all rather hectic.

After doing a little exploring on Saturday morning I came across a great little fruit and veg shop at my local market (Brighton Open Market). Feeling brave I bought myself some fennel and set about experimenting. I'd actually only had fennel once before and wasn't impressed so this was it's last chance!

I used this recipe after a quick search and was sooooo impressed! There were points during the cooking process when I thought we were doomed but it all came together into a really wholesome dish. I served mine with seeded toast but this is a whole meal in itself really. Half of the stated ingredients served two of us with a tiny potion left for my friend to try (and love!) .

That's all I've got time for tonight - Lots more to tell about all the places I've been eating out recently but that will have to wait till next time. Till Sunday x

Polenta.

This week I had lunch at The Gladstone, Brighton. Only one vegan option but a tasty one at that! Veggie sausages (the vegetable kind, not the fake meat kind) with polenta mash and an average vegetarian gravy. This was my first taste of polenta and I was impressed, the texture made for a more interesting mash and the seasoning was spot on.

I stumbled upon this recipe on - by now you know it's my favourite food blog - Chocolate-Covered Katie (She does savoury food too, who knew?!) and decided I should give polenta a shot in my cooking.

I changed the recipe to be one big pie rather than single serve and bought ready made polenta from Sainsbury's - way less aesthetically pleasing! I also used a tin of mixed beans in chilli sauce rather than pinto beans. I cooked up a few matchstick fries which added a nice crunchy texture on the plate. Overall though, I don't think the polenta added anything to the dish, perhaps I did something wrong (sliced and laid on the pie, how wrong can that be?) but the chilli filling was great and would perhaps have worked well with rice or nachos. If anybody has any polenta related stories, success or otherwise, I'd love to hear. Or if you want to tell me how much you love my blog or that it's super boring you can do so now - ANONYMOUSLY! The comment box is working yipee.

Warning: Moving to a new kitchen (and house) next weekend so my next post could be early - or, more likely - late.