Finality.

So here we are on the 30th and final day of VeganMofo 2013 and as I write this I am sipping a cup of tea whilst having dinner cooked for me, bliss.

Today I was on the lucky end of a RAK (random act of kindness), a friend at work had been visiting London at the weekend and called in at Inspiral. I've yet to visit as every time I'm in Camden I'm drawn in by the sights and smells of Camden Lock! Anyway he randomly handed me a pack of their 'Raw Cacao & Cinnamon Kale Chips' this morning which definitely perked me up.

Unfortunately I've got to say I wasn't bowled over once I actually opened the packet. There was too much kale taste to call them sweet and too much cinnamon cacao taste to call them savoury! So although they definitely beat your average banana/carrot sticks/other healthy snack, I can't see myself heading all the way to Camden to get them again any time soon!

I hope you've enjoyed my contributions to VeganMoFo and I haven't rambled too much. It's been so great hearing your thoughts in the comments and sharing my own on other blogs too, some I'm addicted to now! In the future I'm hoping to spend more time improving my photography and photo editing whilst trying out some of the many, many incredible ideas I've seen throughout the month from all over the world. Come back and visit!

Eating out

A busy weekend in London and Brighton with some snazzy eating fitted in.

For dinner on Saturday my friend and I went a-hunting for something to eat nearby to Euston Station. Our first attempt was Hummus Bros on Southampton Row however Mrs. Brains here failed to notice their opening times 'Mon-Fri'! Luckily it wasn't much of a walk to our next option, Orchard. This was located in quite a charming 'Edwardian arcade' and we took advantage of the mild weather and sat outside.
After a little confusion regarding how much bread was available, I ordered the soup of the day, leek and potato with a drizzle of chive oil, and this came with some yummy salty and nutty bread, like nothing I've ever tried before!

The menu also included a vegan sandwich and about 5 out of the ten 'plates' (of which they say you should buy 2-3 per person) were also vegan. The staff were very friendly if a little unclear about their bread situation! Prices were reasonable and we both felt lovely and full for just under £18 between us.

On Sunday another friend (hey little miss popular ay, 2 friends!) popped down to Brighton for a catch up and so we headed to one of my favourites, Wai Kika Moo Kau for lunch. I have always got the mini vegan breakfast here, it's just consistently great and a steal at £3.50. This time, however, I decided to break the mould and went for the bang-bang tofu wrap which was amazing noms. Baked tofu with coriander and lime and sweet and sour sauce on lettuce in a toasted wrap, mmmmm.

Cauliflower Broccoli Bake

Thought I would do a little twist on our usual mac n cheese with broccoli yesterday and instead utilised the oven, and a cauliflower. This is by no means a recipe, just an experiment that I though I'd share.

1.First I boiled one head of cauliflower cut into large florets in salted water for 3 minutes before adding a head of broccoli cut into equal sized pieces for a further 2 minutes. (Preheat the oven ~180 degrees)
2. I then drained the veg well and used kitchen towel to soak up any excess moisture.

3. I laid the veg into a casserole dish and poured over the sauce from our favourite mac n cheese recipe (Chef Chloe's duh!).

4. After sprinkling some paprika over the top I baked it for approx 20 minutes.

In retrospect I think this would make a better side dish rather than main, and perhaps a higher sauce to veg ratio with slightly more soy milk in the sauce. Still a yummy & healthy dinner :)

Banana bread - like an edible hug.

As I mentioned in my last post I'm feeling under the weather today. And, despite spending most of the day in bed/on the sofa under a blankie, I managed to create a wonderful banana bread which made me feel better for at least ten minutes.

I stuck to this recipe exactly and didn't add the optional nuts/fruit. It was so easy and made an impressive bake. I used a 6" round cake tin and this would make 8 nice sized slices (Although half the recipe disappeared between two of us in the space of half an hour). My top tip would be to use a whisk when mashing the bananas, works much better than a fork IMO.
Queue banana bread montage:

And the winner is...

Tracy P!

Two tickets will be winging their way to Tracy very soon, watch that letterbox!
Thanks everyone for taking part, give-aways are so fun, might have to do another in the future.

In other news I'm an ill one today. Been snuggled up in bed watching Great British Bake Off but I think it's now time to get down to the kitchen and get some feel good baking going.
I think I'l attempt this recipe for banana bread, with all those good reviews how could I pass it up!
Will be back with the low down later today.

Cooking for one.

It's not as sad as it sounds, I almost never eat alone so this was a great chance to try something that Josh is overly suspicious of, zucchini pasta!
I picked up a few zucchini tips from A Girl Called Jack, a never ending source of ideas.

Start by frying half an onion, then add a large, finely chopped mushroom. Once soft, add half a tin of tomatoes and 1/4 tsp crushed chili. Leave to simmer.

Whilst the sauce is reducing, slice zucchini (courgette!) lengthways and then slice each half lengthways again. Then use a potato peeler to peel thin ribbons. Crush one clove garlic and fry garlic and zucchini slices in a little oil. These will be ready after just a few minutes.  

Add a little s&p to the sauce to taste and ladle over the ribbons.

This pic is actually only half a  zucchini, I struggled getting my portion size right to feed just me, plus I'd been snacking loads! Usually we just hoover up whatever I make unless we make looooads in which case it gets tupperware-d.  Any tips for portion control?

VegFest Tickets Giveaway!

Sooo, now that we are over halfway through VeganMoFo, I'm starting to notice how much I repeat meals!
Tonight I'll be having the tofu scramble I blogged about last week and I tomorrows dinner will likely be puff pastry pizza again. I think it's time I started trying out some new tricks so will be browsing blogs and books for some fresh ideas.
In the meantime I have a give-away for you!
Remember when the lovely folks at The Mighty Fork ran a competition and I won tickets to Vegfest? Well the tickets have arrived and they've sent Saturday as well as Sunday! Unfortunately I can't make both days so I have two tickets for Sunday 6th October to give away, hooray!a Rafflecopter giveaway And just incase Give-aways aren't your bag, here's a piccy of the bread I baked last night.

Apologies for the aaaawful phone pic!

Tofu Scramble

Been a long while since I've posted a proper recipe, this isn't exactly proper but it's what I did to make my lunch so I'm going to say it counts. It's a bit of a throw everything in the pan kinda meal, but it's delish, easy and quick so ticks all my boxes.

Ingredients: (in brackets is what I used today but can be varied to different tastes/fridge contents)
Onion
Garlic (2 cloves, minced)
Peppers (half a red pepper and half a cup of frozen mixed peppers)
Mushrooms (about 3/4 cup)
Broccoli (about a cup)
Frozen peas and sweetcorn (half a cup of each)
Tofu (I used half a pack of Mori-Nu firm)
Soysauce (a heavy handed shake)
Turmeric (a good sprinkling)

1. Fry onion in veg oil in a large fryingpan/wok until translucent.
2. Add approx 1 tbsp soy sauce and all veggies inc. garlic
3. Let sizzle for a couple of minutes until mushrooms have softened.
4. Add tofu. I fork it out of the pack into the pan to get a good scramble consistency.
5. Sprinkle turmeric, salt and pepper into the pan and continue to stir for 5 mins.
6. Enjoy (with extra soy sauce to taste).

Cupcake quiff.

Hullo me again,
Wanted to show off my first attempt at piping icing which I attempted a few weeks ago:

Quite pretty huh?

I can't say I reeeally loved these cakes, they were nice but I soooo prefer savoury to sweet and these were super sweet! They did get glowing reviews from my 3 taste testers though so definitely worth a shot if you have a sweet tooth. I used the recipe from Scrummy Inklings.
This is how I filled my piping bag, not sure if it's how everyone does it?...

My brother is coming to visit for the weekend so I'll will be attempting to wow him with some vegan treats (and of course the sights and sounds of Brighton) and the remainder of this afternoon will be spent creating my almost famous peanut butter banana cookies to perk him up after a 4 hour train journey to get here!

A Contributors Contribution

GUEST POST

Thought it was time I gave someone else a go, so I'm handing the keyboard over to my boyfriend Josh. Josh lives with me in Brighton and has just finished a Masters degree in Literature & Philosophy. He often gets sidelined in the kitchen but tonight he had his chefs hat on and created a masterpiece!

Thank you to the lead rambler for asking me to do this; thank you to the rambler audience for listening to me doing this. The idea for the recipe first came to me in a dream, some two years ago, and, not knowing how to act on it, the idea (for the recipe) slipped back into my subconscious. There it stayed – until now, today, when it mysteriously surfaced again via a daydream. Who are we to understand the (mysterious) workings of the brain? Who are we?

I began by taking the pizza base from its transparent envelope (I slipped it off, like a garment (underwear)) and set it out flat on the kitchen surface, like a corpse. I then took a jar of pasta sauce and, sensing the sauce’s potential for flexibility, used it as pizza topping. About half of a small jar (as to the precise weight of the jar: your guess is as good as mine) was adequate. I spread it all over in equal measure, with all the sensitive - and professional - touch of a masseuse spreading oil 'pon a back (and here I don’t allude to prostitution: I actually mean a masseuse). With that accomplished, I took just under half a packet of  cheese (Vegusto - ed.)and cut it into thin slices. This is where I really came into my own; I didn’t just directly lay the cheese onto the base – like flowers onto a grave – but instead worked to massage the cheese (that again!) into even thinner and wider pieces: thus covering as much of the base as I could.

I should say that, whilst this was going on, I had sent a couple of Sainsbury’s vegetarian sausages into the oven for cooking. After 10 minutes I removed them, cut them up, and added them on top of the base, sauce and cheese. I tore them into reasonably small pieces, thus allowing them, like the cheese before it, to spread out across the field. I added a little oil (don’t know which), placed the whole thing onto a baking tray and then into the oven. I left it for 20 uneasy minutes before removing, slicing up, and eating. 

Winner Dinner!

You know when you spend all day thinking about a particular meal and how you can make it perfect and then when you eat it it's just heavenly? That happened to me today.

I got 4 more tomatoes from my plants in the garden yesterday and was wondering how to do them justice; simultaneously we got a big delivery from Sainsbury's including Meridian Vegan Pesto. I also had a little of the Vegusto melty cheese left and all three combined to make a real winner.

Before I forget, UK readers may or may not be aware that the Sainsbury's website now has the filter 'suitable for vegans'. This was definitely useful for some searches (breakfast cereal anyone?!) but I did notice there were items that I know are vegan which did not appear under the filter. The website has only just changed so hopefully over time it will become more accurate.

Back to the delicious dinner,

I couldn't even joke about calling this a recipe but here's what I did to create my yummys.

1. Cook spaghetti in boiling water - add olive oil at boyfriends request

2. When spaghetti has 2 mins cooking time left add tomatoes, quartered.

3. When spaghetti is cooked, drain and stir through half the jar of pesto.

4. Sprinkle tiny chunks of cheese over pasta.

How cool is this 'Pasta Pig'?!

Another  part of the Sainsbury's delivery was kale. I don't think I've ever eaten kale before... Suggestions for it's uses very welcome, will attempt a green smoothie tonight, fingers crossed!

Brighton & Hove Food and Drink Festival

Quite a mouthful...literally! (oh I'm cringing at the awfulness of this pun already)

We took a delightful wander up and down New Road, Brighton today perusing the many stalls of the Food and Drink festival. Mushrooms, cider, jam, sausage, falafel, fish, all colours of the food spectrum represented.

Spied this awesome salad from a distance, I've never eaten flowers/petals before and it's something I really want to try! With so much food available though, salad wasn't going to cut it for lunch.

We then came across Titbits catering who had some really tempting nibbles on offer. They run a pop-up restaurant just down our road every Friday which we've been meaning to visit for ages but it's quite pricey and the right special occasion just hasn't arrived yet.

I went for a sweetcorn fritter with fresh tomato salsa and Josh opted for a sundried tomato sausage roll.

They both tasted sooo good and were presented so nicely, I almost don't want to mention that josh found a pebble when he tried a bite of mine! Luckily there were no broken teeth so we moved on unperturbed.

There were a few freebies on offer along the course of the road. I tried some delicious olives, if only my purse could stretch to such whims as my stomach demands!

We finally decided on trying this for lunch:

I was drawn in by the words 'banana curry' and thrilled to find out everything was Vegan. The kind lady working the stall talked me through everything. (I've got quite a low spice threshold!) Then she filled up my tub with mixed 'stir fried veg', layered on banana curry, added chili bean sauce and then topped with avacado and lime on top. We added a tiny bit of lime pickle at the corner too.

Fortunately we were less than a minutes walk from the pavilion gardens so sat in the sun having a munch! One portion of this was enough for both of us but we still had space to share a slice of Chocolate cake from the Vbites stall! (no photo as we were in a rush for the cinema, guess I'll just have to go back again!)

Is this my longest blog post ever? Big hug for sticking around. xx

Puff pastry Pizza

This is Joshs, he's far better at cheese spreading than me!

We used to make this aallll the time at our old house, since we moved we've just stopped for some reason, possibly because we mainly have the kitchen to ourselves now so I can spend longer 'slaving'. over the hob ;) anyway I was reminded of it by one of @kitsunesuki's recent instagrams and it tasted even better than i remembered.
 This is such a good no brainer meal. Just a pasta sauce/pizza sauce/tomato puree base, whatever veggies you've got in the fridge or freezer and optional cheese. We used the ready rolled puff pastry from Aldi but have also used jus-roll etc before. Equally good.
Today ours included broccoli, onion, mushrooms, frozen peppers and frozen sweetcorn and we topped it with Vegusto melty cheese. Vegusto is the best vegan cheese I've ever tried, unfortunately it's mightily expensive

(like all the good cheeses I guess) at £7.50 for 400g so I don't buy it too much. - And I try to stop the other half buying it all the time too!

(I made it really big to make up for forgetting so far this month!)

P.S. I just snuck to the kitchen for a couple of spoons of late night peanut butter hehehe.

Work with it, erm, Thursday!

Helloo, So I'm totally mixing up these themes ay?!
I did try to think of something I really don't like but to no avail, as long as it's prepared properly I'll love it! Instead I thought I'd try something that I've been wary of for a while, Green Smoothies.

You've got to admit, the thought of yummy milkshake + spinach is totes gross... until you've tried it! I'd seen hundreds of instagram photos and decided to give my own a go. This was the one I recreated although the banana I used wasn't frozen and it worked just fine. I now know the recipe by heart as I made it 4 days running! For anybody who has never tried a green smoothie it's important to know that you add the greens to be healthy, and you can't taste it. I was imagining some weird savoury sweet mush before I took my first gulp.

Now that I've run out of spinach I'll be looking for a new recipe to try out (even if I need to buy more spinach!) so if you know of any spectacular ones please let me know in the comments!

Je suis occupé

These past few days have been mental and today was my last french lesson eek! Tomorrow onwards I will have time for some proper posts (including some Mac n Cheese lovin' don't you worry).
Lunch today was garlic-y mushrooms with parsley on toast and for dinner it was the ol' faithful stir fry with a bit of stem ginger thrown in as I was feeling a little wacky in the kitchen. Made a nice change but will be sticking to proper ginger root in future!
What's a blog post without some piccys?:

Also, I have to say I am lurrrving VeganMoFo! I've only had time to see a few blogs and there's so much on my to-read list, can't wait! Plus it's so great to see everyone leaving comments and getting involved!

Oh and one last thing. I won tickets to Vegfest London!!!! I've been meaning to buy tickets for ages but thought I'd just give this competition a go when it caught my eye on The Mighty Fork facebook page (mmmm you gotta check out those hot dog pics, foodporn at it's finest!) and I got lucky! Who else is going? Anyone travelling any long distances? I'm lucky as we're super close to London in Brighton! (And we get our own VegFest of course!) If you haven't done so yet, buy your tickets here.

Monday Lunch

This is (don't quote me on this) the easiest of all the packed lunches - a salad comprising solely of chunks of red pepper, carrot and cucumber. With a little pepper and olive oil to boot.
I ate mine in the sunny park this lunchtime with some bread and butter and a library book that I'm whizzing through. Here's a rubbish photo taken with my phone!

Colourful non?

Sorry about the short post today, It's dissertation deadline day meaning there's some celebrating to be doing!

Cheesy Birthday Biscuits

Every one of ChefChloe's recipes that I've tried I've absolutely loved. Remember those mexicali sliders?!!! Mental note to buy her book next time payday comes around.
So today was a certain little guy's 3rd birthday party and after trying out these cheesy style biscuits a while a go I thought they'd make a great addition to the nibbles - especially in teddy bear shapes!

To make approx 2 cups little biscuits:
1 cup flour
2 tbsp nutritional yeast
A good sprinkling of turmeric
1 tsp salt
Pepper (to taste)
5 tbsp Marge (I use Aldi's Solesta Sunflower Spread)
1+tbsp cold water
Vegetable oil

1. Mix dry ingredients with a fork.
2. Work in the marge - best in a food processor but I don't have that luxury so I got at it with the fork again!
3. Add 1 tbsp water and combine, add more water until a good dough is formed, shouldn't need more than 3 tbsp.
4. Grease 2 baking trays with a little vegetable oil and preheat oven to 180C.
5. Roll out half the dough on a floured surface to about half a centimetre (I have tiled kitchen surfaces now, nightmare!)
6. Use either a biscuit cutter or a knife to cut your shapes, between 2-5cm long work well.
7. Bake in the oven for 12 minutes and check, might need a few more minutes but once the biscuits start to develop a more golden colour, they're ready!

I hadn't realised how simple this is before writing it down, a great alternative to crisps and I'm sure there are quite a few flavour combinations possible too. Different flours, a little paprika in the mix perhaps?

ALSO, I read that Turmeric + Pepper = cancer prevention! Sooo, it's ok that I ate 2/3 of a batch in one sitting last week?...

Vegan MoFo

Vegan Month of Food starts on Sunday and what better excuse to get blogging again! Throughout the month of September I'll be blogging as regularly as poss. As you can tell by now I tend to dip in and out of things quite a bit but I'll be making every effort to commit for this special event. I'll be taking a lot of cues from here as well as a few things I've been meaning to post for a while.

In the meantime, here are some updates from me:

Wednesday marked the 1 year anniversary of living in Brighton with my BestfriendBoyfriend Josh. It really is the most fantastic city, exactly what I'd hoped for and there is still so much more I want to explore!

 I've just harvested my first red tomato! It was deelish and I'm looking forward to plenty more along with the odd sweet pepper if I can coax them to ripen. Last week I downloaded Instagram for our Ipad and that rosy beauty was my first upload. I'm not posting too much at the mo, (taking photos in public with Ipads looks weird doesn't it?!) but there are a few foodie snaps tentatively testing the water!

Till Sunday x