Vegan Food For Thought

I've Moved!

2009-02-04T10:14:00.002Z

I've moved over the Wordpress as I'm tired of Blogger!

I've not posted anything new yet but have a ton of pictures and a stack of cookbooks out ready to tell you about what I've been making!

Please update your bookmarks, Bloglines, Google Readers etc to find me here:

http://vegfoodforthought.wordpress.com/ (someone had already registered veganfoodforthought and even though they're not using it Wordpress won't let me have it...).

See you there and sorry for being so quiet, I promise to catch up soon!

Carrot Burgers

2009-01-11T10:43:00.003Z

These sounded quite nice and interesting but they turned out to be horrible... Piggle was the only one who ate a whole one, Jim and I had to make a deal that we would eat half of ours each and the leftover 3 were thrown away....

They are made from carrots (duh), onion, garlic, sunflower seeds, firm tofu, miso and tarragon. You basically stick it all in the food processor and the form it into burger shapes before baking them for 30 minutes. The recipe says that these are soft burgers but I think soft is an understatement, they just didn't stay together at all, I think they needed some vital wheat gluten, flour or breadcrumbs to hold it all together or something and give it more of a bite as they were far too soft for my liking. They also had a strange taste, I found them really sweet which was a bit off putting for a burger and I didn't use the sweet miso like the recipe called for but a darker one so with sweet miso they would have been even more awful I think.

I served them with roasted potatoes and roasted brussel sprouts so at least we filled up on other vegetables even though we didn't eat the burgers.... You win some you loose some!

"Beef" and Broccoli in Vegetarian "Oyster" Sauce

2009-01-11T10:37:00.002Z

This was another pretty easy stir fry from this book. I used tvp chunks in it which had been reconstituted using the recipe from another of Bryanna Clark Grogan's books. The stir fry just has the chunks, mushroom soy sauce, broccoli, onion, garlic, ginger, vegetarian stir fry sauce (they're not allowed to mark it as vegetarian 'oyster' sauce over here as it breaks a trading standards rule being as there's no oysters in it...), some stock, a pinch of sugar and some salt (although the sauce is quite salty so that wasn't really needed). It's cooked your standard stir fry way so nothing tricky about it!

I served it over noodles from my Chinese supermarket haul along with some vegetable parcels I got at the same time which I fried. I have to say I wasn't a fan of the parcels at all, the pastry was a bit odd and the filling really wasn't my cup of tea. Jim, however, declared that they were delicious and ate quite a few so at least I know the rest of the huge bag will disappear over time!

We're done with Chinese for this week at least. I was supposed to make fried rice but I had a night where I couldn't be bothered to cook so the boys had tinned spaghetti on toast and I had some toast later on. I do really enjoy Chinese though but after overdosing a little this week I don't think I will ever put so much of it onto one menu!

Tofu and Broccoli with Hoisin-Ginger Sauce

2009-01-07T13:44:00.002Z

Please excuse Blogger and it's odd habit of flipping photos for no apparent reason...

First outing for this new book and it looks like a good one to have, I am a big Robin Robertson fan and am trying to collect all her books when I see them for good prices. I read on her blog that she's finished '1,000 Vegan Recipes' so I'll be keeping my eyes open for a publication date for that. She's apparently now working on a book called something like Vegan on the Cheap which should be a good addition to my collection someday too.

As I said previously we visited a brilliant Chinese Supermarket so there is a lot of Chinese on the menu this week. I managed to find a bottle of Hoisin sauce that didn't have the words 'consume within 5 days of opening' which really annoys me because who the hell will use a whole jar in a week really? I also bought some extra firm tofu as I'd never seen the words 'extra firm' on any tofu before and I wanted to try it out.

The recipe is simple just like most Chinese dishes are. You don't actually stir fry the broccoli, you steam it. The tofu is fried until browned (which always takes longer than it says but was worth the effort) and then you add a lot of ginger and some spring onions before adding the sacue which is the hoisin, some chili paste (I used garlic and chili sauce which I love and it worked really well), water and soy sauce. Once it's all boiled together for about five minutes you stick the broccoli back in and then when it's all hot you serve it up.

I served it over noodles that I also got on our shopping trip and they were really nice. I also fried up some spring rolls that I bought there. It was really funny when I got them out of the freezer and was opening the box as I'd assumed they were quite big spring rolls. I actually laughed out loud when I saw that the box contained 60 of them, they're really small, so mainly pastry with a teeny tiny bit of vegetable in them and some seaweed by the taste of it. I put about an inch of oil in a saucepan and used that to deep fry them as they were so small and it worked out just fine.

My only minor complaint about this recipe is that it says it serves 4. My Mother was around to dinner so I served up 2 medium sized adult portions, a very small portion to Jim who decided to hate tofu last night (and as we all know is not a broccoli fan) and a medium sized portion to Piggle who wolfed it down along with 2 spring rolls. I can't see that this would serve 4 hungry people, I'd say make half again as much as the recipe calls for to serve that many, or add a few other vegetables to it or something as if we'd not had the spring rolls as well we'd not have been filled up by this meal.

It was incredibly tasty though and all the ingredients I'd got from the Chinese Supermarket were wonderful, I've already started a list for the next time my sister gets to go or I get a chance to go (sans children next time though, please, so I can do more label reading) and more of this tofu will most definitely be on my list!

Cabbage and Pasta Bake

2009-01-06T14:38:00.003Z

So, this is what we had for dinner last night! It's a really simple recipe, you boil your pasta, throw in the carrots for the last five minutes and then drain all that. In the same pan you simmer the cabbage with some stock, nutritional yeast and herbs (the recipe calls for caraway seeds but I don't like that flavour so I used oregano). Then you throw in some crumbled tofu and mustard and heat it all through with some soya milk and cornstarch. When that's all thick and bubbly you add the pasta and carrots back in and then bake it all for 20 minutes.

I always find that this book doesn't use enough pasta so I doubled it. Next time I will just add half again as much as it calls for (making it one and a half cups) as there being too much pasta and me adding three times the soya milk to compensate obviously diluted the flavour a bit which didn't occur to me until after I'd cooked it!

It's a really tasty dish, although Jim wasn't a fan of it as he's having a love/hate relationship with tofu at the moment, but Piggle liked it and we both enjoyed leftovers for lunch today. I'll make it again and hope it's on a day where tofu is a yes for Jim!

Winter Harvest Soup

2009-01-05T18:46:00.002Z

As I said in the menu post this was on a previous menu but never got made, but as it contains vegetables that I tend to be getting in the box and I still had the sweet potatoes I bought to make it I put it on again and managed to throw it together last night (yes, I'm caught up!).

There are a ton of vegetables in this soup; onions, swede, celery, yams (I used a regular potato instead), sweet potatoes and bok choy. There are also a lot of herbs and 2 tins of black eye beans, and I only made half the recipe which ended up being enough for about 6 people, so be warned it makes a ton!

It's very simple as most soups are, chop it, saute it, boil it, add the bits that don't need to cook for long and then it's done. I didn't bother thickening it as it was so chock full of bits that I thought a thick broth would make it more a stew.

We all liked this and it reheated well for Piggle's lunch today (he's got 2 more portions in the freezer too) so I'll make it again sometime and maybe try some different beans, the recipe says to choose whatever you like and the black eyed beans were what I had in the cupboard. I didn't add the chopped herbs and didn't read the note to increase the dried herbs if you weren't using the fresh but it came out fine anyway.

Vegetables and Menu

2009-01-05T18:31:00.002Z

Almost there now, I promise! We've skipped a box here but basically what wasn't used for Christmas will be thrown into things this week. My Mother also came over and did a little bit of shopping from my fridge (which is only fair as I've 'shopped at Mum's' for many years now and never failed to return to University without a bag of food!) after Christmas for her turkey broth.

So, this week there was potatoes, onions, leeks, parsnips, carrots, brussel sprouts, broccoli and a huge swede. Off the top of my head I also had a bag of kale, a small butternut squash, more brussel sprouts and loads more carrots and swede already in the fridge.

The menu is for 10 days this time in order to get actually using the box a tad bit closer to it arriving. Previously it would arrive on a Friday and I'd not cook from it until Tuesday at the earliest. I'm only moving it a day earlier by using it on a Monday but I don't like to do my food shopping at the weekend as that means I either have to drag both boys around or I have to go on my own when they're away thereby wasting my 'alone time' in the shops. Also I find that Saturday's are when a lot of stuff isn't actually on the shelves, hopefully they will have restocked by Monday mornings, we'll see, if not I may have to go back to Tuesdays but it will be hard in the summer when the vegetables have a shorter shelf life than the winter ones do.

Anyway, that was a long ramble to get to the list which looks like this:

1. Winter Harvest Soup - Vive Le Vegan (never got around to making it last time it appeared on the menu).

2. Sesame Kale Soba - Get It Ripe (this time with kale rather than chard).

3. Tofu and Broccoli with Hoisin Ginger Sauce - Vegan Fire and Spice (a new book I treated myself to over Christmas) and noodles.

4. Cabbage and Pasta Bake - Table for Two.

5. Beef and Broccoli with Vegetarian Oyster Sauce - Authentic Chinese Cuisine, plus rice.

6. Basic Fried Rice - Authentic Chinese Cuisine, with spring rolls.

7. Fall Harvest - Hugger Food.

8. Carrot Burgers - Meatless Burgers with potatoes and brussel sprouts.

9. Stew and Dumplings.

10. ???? I have just noticed that I am apparently somewhat dim and the numbering on my menu goes 7, 8, 10... So who knows what I will cook on this last night, I guess whatever is left in the fridge and freezer!

The reason for there being so much Chinese food on the menu is that my parents, my sister, the boys and I made a trip to a Chinese Supermarket in Leeds on January 2nd. I went in with a tiny mental list and somehow spent £38 coming away with 2 big bags of stuff! I have a couple of frozen things (the spring rolls being one of them) that looked nice plus a load of noodles and 2 packets each of silken and extra firm tofu (the silken has a really long expiry date on it so I'm not worried about using that up right away). Of course when I got home I realised I'd forgotten to look for some things (as we all had) so another trip is planned in 3 months time, I probably won't be going but I'll be sending a list with my sister and whoever else does go. I also finally got my hands on some bok choy, they had several different kinds there and lots of other interesting vegetables I wanted to try. Anyway, I'm sure I'll visit it again sometime so I can browse again, hopefully without a baby in a pushchair and a 5 year old pushing a trolley willy nilly around the place!

Braised Seitan with Brussels, Kale and Sun Dried Tomatoes

2009-01-05T17:36:00.002Z

This sounded like an odd dish but as I had kale and brussel sprouts out the kazzoo I decided to give it a go and was really pleasantly surprised. It's a really simple quick dish to make too which is even better!

I used the second half of the seitan from Yellow Rose Recipes even though I think this dish would be a little better with a more 'beefy' kind of seitan, the 'chicken' style one worked just fine. You fry the seitan and shallots, throw in the sprouts, chuck in some garlic, herbs and salt and pepper and then add the sun dried tomatoes. Some broth and wine goes in (I think I used white again if I added any at all, I really can't remember now...) and once that is boiling you put the kale in and after 5-7 minutes your dinner is done!

This had a really nice warming flavour and was really filling with the mashed potatoes. Both the boys liked it as well and Jim ate a few more sprouts than he would normally have done had they been served on their own, he's not a big fan of sun dried tomatoes though but I guess they can be a bit strong (although Piggle ate them fine, but if you've been reading for any length of time you'll know that Piggle will eat just about anything!).

When kale and sprouts are filling my fridge I will pull this recipe out again.

Butternut Squash Lasagna

2009-01-05T17:30:00.002Z

Having 2 small butternut squashes in the box and feeling like trying lasagna again this recipe was just right for my needs. It has quite a few steps to it but it's more complicated written out than it is to make, although the 40 minutes baking time does add to the length of time it takes to prepare considerably.

There is tofu in the layer with the squash and you add some of the squash to the sauce too so the whole thing is pretty yellowly orange when you're done. I think if I make this again I will add some different vegetables to it or perhaps some vegan mince or something as it just needed a different flavour in there I felt. Instead of cooking the lasagna noodles first I used the Veganomicon method of pouring a cup of warm water over the whole thing before adding the final layer of sauce and the noodles cooked just fine. Whenever I've tried to cook the noodles ahead of time in the past I just end up with a pan full of noodles all stuck together so it's far easier to do it this way and I'll use the method whenever necessary in the future.

However, we all really enjoyed it and Piggle especially liked it and enjoyed it for lunch the next day too!

Simple Chicken Style Seitan and Crispy Beer Battered Seitan

2009-01-05T16:35:00.002Z

I hadn't made seitan in a while and wanted to keep my hand in, so to speak, so I picked out 2 dishes for the menu that required it and hunted out a new recipe to try. If you recall I'd had some problems with simmering seitan on my electric cooker, I can't keep the heat at a level where it just simmers rather than boils so I decided to try the stick in in the oven method that I'd read about on a few blogs. Basically you follow the recipe up to bringing it to the boil and then instead of keeping it on the cooker you bung it in the oven at 325 for however long the recipe calls for.

The seitan from Yellow Rose Recipes is really simple to put together and it actually had a chickeny kind of smell which was pretty good. I made 8 'steaks' rather than the 10 the recipe said but next time I will go for the 10 as mine were a bit large when it came to the breading and frying process. Once it came out of the oven I discovered that the method works for me and I didn't have all spongy horrible seitan like I made last time I tried the boiling type so I will be using both the recipe and the method again in the future.

I had considered not using beer for the Beer Battered Seitan as I was serving it to kids, but after discussion with my sister we decided that it would be fine considering I was using a Miller Genuine Draft which is less than 5% alcohol anyway and I was frying it off which would get rid of the little alcohol there was. I'm not too hot on the whole frying breading thing and I normally come out with a big mess that looks horrible but this recipe really worked for me and I did 4 lovely crispy steaks. However, due to the size of them before they started and the lovely sticky batter they were absolutely humongous and I only managed about 2/3 of mine and the boys didn't even make it through half before they were full, so next time I will either do smaller steaks or I will do little cutlets instead.

I loved the battered seitan, I won't be making it every week as we're really not used to fried food in this house and it was a bit much. However, as I said if they were smaller then it would be much better. My only gripe with the finished product was that the first layer of batter seems to go a bit soggy when you have applied the second layer and there was almost a tiny layer of uncooked batter around the finished product. I'm not sure if that was to do with my frying technique (ie try not to burn myself or burn the house down) or whether it's just the way using two layers of batter come out.

Anyway, lovely food, will make again, probably enough said!

Paul's Giner Fried Rice with Vegetables

2009-01-05T16:30:00.004Z

I started to cook this one night by cooking the rice but couldn't be bothered to make the whole thing so left it until the next night, which is fine as the rice is supposed to be cold anyway! I used white rice instead of brown as the boys prefer it and I'm also careful not to fill Piggle up on too many wholegrains as that could mean that he isn't getting all the vitamins he needs.

It's a pretty simple dish to put together once you've got the rice cooked, just stir fry the onion, ginger, carrots, courgette, broccoli and mushrooms, add some tamari and you're done. The recipe also calls for bok choy but I couldn't find any at all in the town I shop in so I used shredded cabbage instead and it worked fine. I even added the dash of cayenne that the recipe calls for and it added a really nice hint of heat to the dish so I'll do it again. The only omission I made was to leave out the walnuts as I thought they just sounded odd in a stir fry.

I really enjoy fried rice and the boys seem to like it too so I'm sure this will make a repeat appearance in the nearish future when we have the vegetables to hand, yet another way to dispose of the dreaded broccoli!

Spiced Roasted Parsnip Soup and Sesame Bread Sticks

2009-01-05T16:23:00.002Z

This soup is so simple it's amazing. You roast the vegetables together (parsnips, carrots, onions, tomatoes) with the spices and then after you try not to eat them all you puree them with the stock and a bit of lemon juice and behold, soup!

As the vegetables were roasted the flavour was great and it didn't add any time to soup making preparation time either as I'd have have to peel and chop it all anyway. It also meant that I could do the vegetables in advance and leave them to cool before adding the stock which gave me soup at a cool enough temperature that I didn't have to do my usual shoving of bowls into the freezer to cool the food down so the boys could eat it.

The bread sticks were a bit more work that the soup and they didn't seem to raise very much, but then my kitchen isn't the warmest of places. I thought that there were too many seeds on them and a little too much salt too so I have made a note to reduce those next time.

We all enjoyed this meal, Piggle loved the bread sticks but then he's into feeding himself at the moment (and has doubled his number of teeth from 3 to 6 over the holidays!) so they would appeal to him as they were just the right size for him to hold onto and suck on!

I'm enjoying this soup book a lot and looking forward to trying a few more things from it soon!

Baked Penne with Broccoli and Tofu

2009-01-05T16:15:00.002Z

Please excuse me while I dump out all these things I've cooked in one go! I'm doing them as separate entries so that they are easily found under the right book's label but I'm tired of having a stack of cookbooks on my desk and I want to post about what I make sooner after I've made it. Last year I was writing about five or more entries at a time so by the time it posted and you'd commented on it I'd forgotten what it was I'd actually made! My goal is to bring the blog into more 'real time' rather than having a delay of a week or more between the cooking and the actual post relating to that food appearing.

I also need to apologise for the fact that I took absolutely no food photos over the holiday season! We had some good food and did an awful lot of cooking but I never managed to get the camera and the food in the same place at the same time. The 3lbs I gained back over the holidays should attest to the fact that a lot of good eating occur though!

So here's something I made way back before Christmas!

This was the first outing for this book I believe and it was a really simple dish of broccoli, pasta, olive oil, onion, tofu, tamari, tinned tomatoes, wine (recipe says red, I used white as that's what I normally have in the house), herbs, breadcrumbs and some vegan parmesan.

Basically you cook the pasta and broccoli, make the sauce and then throw it all together in a casserole dish, cover it with breadcrumbs and bake that sucker.

It was really tasty and we all enjoyed it (although Jim is not a broccoli fan and we have to barter how many pieces he has to eat before he can have pudding, I know, bad parenting bribing a kid with sugar but it's healthier sugar than most kids get and I really want him to eat his vegetables!) and I will be making it again without a doubt.

Happy Christmas!

2008-12-24T11:36:00.002Z

I have a load of recipes that I've yet to post about but I will catch up with those after the festivities have ended. I'm also cooking up a storm today getting things ready for the 3 days of eating our family will be doing, I will try and remember to take photos so I can tell you all about it after it's been consumed!

Here's wishing you and yours a lovely Holiday with tons of great vegan food to go around!

Barbecue Baked Tofu with Mushrooms and Bell Peppers

2008-12-18T07:25:00.000Z

I have actually made this dish twice before, as the mess all over the recipe book pages would show you if you could see them, however it was during my period where I couldn't blog so I've never posted about it.

This dish is really simple to put together, you marinade the tofu and vegetables for a while and then roast them for a while before adding the really tasty barbecue sauce and roasting it a little bit longer. The sauce is made from tomato paste, peanut butter, apple cider vinegar, chili powder, mustard, blackstrap molasses, garlic and pepper. It calls for cayenne but I always leave that out and this time I added a little bit of liquid smoke to it which worked really well.

I served it with rice this time, the reason the rice is a funny colour is that I cooked it in vegetable stock to give it a little more flavour, it worked nicely.

Both the boys like this dish and I always enjoy it so it will go around in the menu rotation for a good while yet!

Shopping For Food

2008-12-17T07:15:00.001Z

This week my Mother and I hit up Sainsburys and the health food shop as well as a quick jaunt into Morrisons to get Piggle's formula.

I bought; recycled toilet rolls, recycled kitchen rolls, chocolate soya milks, organic baked beans, organic dried parsley, 2 soya milks, organic vanilla soya milk, organic decaf fair trade instant coffee, white vinegar, organic haricot beans, extra virgin olive oil, fruit squash, organic sugar, macaroni, organic sunflower oil, 3 soya yogurts (one organic), margarine, cereal, biscuits, organic bread, baking powder, a courgette, organic tofu, a green pepper, half a cucumber, organic bananas, organic tomatoes, organic apples, organic mushrooms, scheese, 2 organic puddings, organic banana soya milk, 6 tins of cat food and night time nappies for Jim.

My total in the health food shop was £7.21, I spend £1.99 on Piggle's milk after using my coupons and I spent £37.09 in Sainsburys after using £5 worth of coupons. So with the £12 for the vegetable box that is £58.29 (around $84) and sticks right around my average spend each week recently.

I shouldn't spend that much extra for Christmas food as I am only providing the pizza we traditionally have on Christmas Eve (making home made pizza at my house for everyone) and I am also donating carrots and brussel sprouts from the vegetable box for the meal so those won't cost me any extra. I'm roasting the sprouts here and then taking them to my parent's house to be reheated so my Mother doesn't have to figure out how to fit them in her oven! My Brother In Law (the vegetarian chef) are doing some sort of stuffed seitan roll for the vegan main dish, I'm making the seitan and he is doing the stuffing part of it, hopefully it will come out well and there will be enough left for Boxing Day which is at my sister's house this year (making the most of us living close to each other this year!).

Chickpea Broccoli Casserole

2008-12-16T07:10:00.000Z

I hadn't pulled out Vegan With A Vengeance in ages so searching for yet another recipe to use broccoli in I found this one. I've read mixed reviews of it on the internet but figured I'd give it a go and see what we thought of it.

It's incredibly simple to prepare, you just throw all the ingredients into a baking dish and then put it in the oven for an hour in total. I was a little worried that it wouldn't come out completely cooked but it was fine. I used only 2 tins of chickpeas in mine as I thought that 3 was a little over the top, I also mashed up the chickpeas with the stick blender as a fork or a potato masher never works for me and I just end up with sore hands and frustrated. You also put in an onion, grated carrots, the broccoli, chives (I actually went outside and cut what few chives I have, yay me!), bread crumbs, olive oil, vegetable stock and salt.

As you can see we had ours with a baked potato and it was a really nice filling meal. The casserole is pretty plain, if you're looking for set your world alight flavours you won't find it with this dish, but it is a nice simple filling and tasty meal and I'm sure I'll use it again in the future.

Vegetables

2008-12-15T10:04:00.003Z

I seem to have fallen behind again, I thought I'd posted about most things but the cookbooks seem to have sneaked back onto my desk again so I must be a few meals behind, must make an effort to keep it more up to date from now on!

So, in this vegetable box we got onions, potatoes, parsnips, broccoli, leeks, yet more swede (I'm giving them away now to whoever will take them!) and brussel sprouts.

The menu for the week is:

1. Broccoli Creem Soup with bread from Get It Ripe.

2. Barbecue Baked Tofu with Mushrooms and Bell Peppers from Get It Ripe

3. Baked Mac and Cheese from Yellow Rose Recipes

4. Beans in Leek Sauce from The Bean Book with roastie potatoes and probably swede and carrots.

5. Spiced Roasted Parsnip Soup from Soup Kitchen with some sort of bread.

Not many new things in there to post about but I was in the mood for tried and tested things this week and the mac and cheese is for my Mother to feed the boys while I'm at my knitting group as I know she won't have any trouble getting either of them to eat it!

Fall Harvest

2008-12-12T06:47:00.003Z

This recipe is from the Hugger Food blog. When I looked more closely at what I had presumed to be a small pumpkin in my vegetable box it turned out to be a squash that I don't know the name of so it was even more suited to giving this a go. This recipe appealed to me as soon as I read it so I was looking forward to giving it a go. The entry says that it's a time-consuming dish but I really didn't find it to be that way, next time I will put the pasta on before preparing the vegetables and that will speed it up a bit more as I was standing around waiting for the pasta to cook after the vegetables were ready (I used the pan I cooked the pasta in to make the sauce to cut down on the dishes).

So with the pasta you have some crushed red pepper (I only added a tiny bit because of the boys but it still had a nice warmth to it), garlic, squash, parsnip, sage, nutmeg, allspice, cheese, margarine, flour and milk. The last 3 are to make the sauce which also uses a cup of the pasta water.

I added extra pasta to mine as I didn't think the 8ozs was enough for the vegetables. I probably used 10-12 ozs and I will do the same next time as it came out just the right proportions for us. I used the last of a block of Cheezly mixed into the pasta and Scheese on top of it rather than vegan mozzarella which I think has no taste at all. I think the smoked Scheese would add something to this as well so if I have any about I will add it next time. Also, I think if you don't have a squash in your life at this point that sweet potatoes would work well as a substitution, you just need something a little sweet and orange in it!

You know what I just realised? I wondered why I had only bought 1 red pepper when I was cooking last night and had to use the yellow one instead. For some reason I got it into my head that this dish had a red pepper in it so I added one, I see what it is now, in the instructions it says add the red pepper instead of add the crushed red pepper, easily confused! Anyway, it tasted lovely with the red pepper so I will add it to the recipe and add it next time as well! I also added an onion to mine as I am of the school of thinking that an onion can only make a dish better!

This was a hit all around (although Piggle is still not well and isn't eating well), Jim even had seconds which is pretty much unheard of and had seconds at lunchtime the next day too! This could easily do us 2 meals had I not fed it to them at lunchtime and then frozen the rest for Piggle's lunches. It's a definite repeat again meal for me and I'm looking forward to the time when I can make it again!

Cauliflower and Potato Spice Soup

2008-12-11T06:41:00.002Z

As I said when I posted the menu for the week this book is a collection of soup recipes from different chefs. This one is by Anthony Worrall Thompson and it was obviously written before he went on his diet kick and started cooking healthier food!

Not only does the recipe call for butter but it also has coconut milk, coconut and cream in it, way to clog those arteries AWT! Besides the fattening elements it has cauliflower (no, really!?!), potatoes (what a surprise), garlic, onion, dessicated coconut, chili, coriander seeds, mustard seeds, fenugreek seeds, cumin seeds, pepper, turmeric, paprika, ginger and stock.

It was pretty easy to put together and we all enjoyed it (my Mother was here for dinner and she liked it too). Even after it's blended the coconut still gives it texture. I cut the amount of cream that I put in it but next time I'm thinking that I won't bother with adding it at all as it mellows out the spices a bit too much for me so instead of getting a nice mouthful of taste you get something creamy with a tiny hint of spice.

I'll make this again I'm sure though, we do like our soup around here!

Food Shopping

2008-12-10T07:23:00.003Z

So, as I said previously (I think!) I ordered my shopping online this time and surprise surprise it's the very first time I've done it and had everything I ordered turn up. They did substitute 2 things but they were both acceptable substitutions so I was pretty pleased with it for a change. Also, whichever shop my order came from had a much better organic vegetable selection than the shop I go to as I got all the organic fruit and veg I ordered so I will bear that in mind for the future.
This week I got spring onions, organic soya cheese, organic yogurt, yogurt, organic tofu, organic bread, organic apples, organic bananas, organic peppers, organic potatoes, organic garlic, 2 tins of coconut milk, 2 tins of organic chickpeas, pasta, chocolate soya milk, small strawberry soya milks, soya cream, olive oil, oregano, cereal, high juice squash, eco friendly dishwasher tablets, eco friendly washing powder, recycled toilet rolls, tin foil, 12 tins of cat food and a box of dry cat food.

All that set me back £42.38, I had coupons but you can't use the ones I have with an online shop so I will use them when I go to Sainsburys next time. With the £12 for the vegetables and £1.98 for 2 packs of organic puddings that my parents picked up for me when they passed the health food shop the total was £56.36 (about $81) so it was a pretty good week even without the coupons.

I had read about Alpro (my Mum and I both want to call the company Alpo after years of buying American dog food!) doing new organic vegan products and I stumbled across this soya cheese when I was searching for tofu etc with this order so I added some to the order to try.

It's not as nice at Tofutti, it's much sharper and the texture of it is more like soft cheese than cream cheese I think. I find it odd that it doesn't actually say on the front of it what it is, it's only in small letters on the back that it says it's a dairy free alternative to soft cheese! The container isn't all that big but at £1.29 it's much cheaper than the Tofutti one. Jim didn't seem to like it when I put it on his sandwich for lunch last week but he's on a cheese and cucumber obsession at the moment, perhaps I will try this spread with cucumber this week and see what he thinks of it then.

Pasta with Hearty Lentil and Spinach Sauce

2008-12-09T07:20:00.002Z

I can't really give this recipe a fair rating as we were all poorly when I made it and Piggle threw up on the table halfway through which put me totally off my meal, the joys of having sick children.

Also the ex used up one of the jars of pasta sauce feeding the kids over the weekend (he came here to see them as they were too ill to travel) so I added some water to it instead of all the sauce which made it too watery.

However, the taste was really nice and I will be trying it again, it's basically a combination of lentils, onion, garlic, red pepper (was supposed to be green but the supermarket didn't have any), mushrooms, spinach and jarred pasta sauce. It's supposed to be served over penne but the ex also used up all the pasta shapes so we had it over linguine instead.

I'm always a little befuddled when US recipes call for lentils as I don't know what colour they mean. I'm presuming this one actually meant brown or green as it calls for you to boil them for 30-40 minutes, I used red instead and those only take about 15 minutes to cook. Come on recipe book authors, give us a clue as to lentil colour please!

So you cook the pasta, cook the lentils, saute the vegetables, add the sauce and spinach to the vegetables with the cooked lentils and simmer for 10 minutes and then throw it all on top of the cooked pasta. Pretty damn easy. It made a ton so next time I've made a note to only make half, that will be more than enough for us and for some leftover for Piggle's lunches.

Next time I make this I will try it with green lentils and rate it again to give a fairer review, I only ate half a bowl of it and was too sick to deal with the leftovers so I ended up throwing them away which I hate doing. It's definitely a hearty dish though and perfect for cold winter nights.

The Vegetables

2008-12-08T07:09:00.003Z

So another week another vegetable box. I'm still loving getting these boxes each week and seeing what we've got, Jim also gets excited about them and wants to help me put the veggies on the table so I can take the photo (he also reminds me to take photos of the meals we have before we start to eat!).

This week we got potatoes, onions, carrots, leeks, broccoli, cauliflower, a small pumpkin, swede and mushrooms.

I've just realised that I forgot to put the mushrooms into the menu for the week so I will fry those up and have them on toast for my lunch in a minute!

The menu for this week is as so:

1. Fall Harvest - this is a recent post from the Hugger Food blog, I'm going to use the pumpkin rather than butternut squash.

2. Cauliflower and Potato Spice Soup - Soup Kitchen. I have wanted this book from my sister's collection for ages and she never uses it. This weekend my Mother pulled it out and said how much she liked it and my sister offered it to her, so I threw a mock fit and claimed it as my own instead, on the agreement that my Mum can borrow it now and again to use it! It's a collection of soup recipes from big name chefs and there are some very interesting ones in there that I'm looking forward to trying.

3. Southwestern Corn Pudding with Chile Cornmeal Tofu - both from Veganomicon

4. Leftover Chickpea Patties with potatoes and brussel sprouts.

5. Chickpea Broccoli Casserole - Veganomicon with potatoes

6. Carrot Soup and Biscuits - La Dolce Vegan (may not have this as we had soup from the freezer last night as I couldn't be bothered to cook anything being not so well).

7. Stew with Dumplings - using up all the leftover veg again and some tvp chunks.

I have ordered my food shopping online this week to be delivered as Piggle isn't really well enough to drag around the shops in the freezing weather we're having. The only things I couldn't get were puddings and vanilla soya milk so they will just have to live without those for a week (I think I have some custard in the cupboard that will keep them a few nights). I am hoping that everything I ordered will actually arrive, my bugbear with online food shopping is that they send your order incomplete if things aren't in stock which means that often I've had to go to the supermarket anyway to pick up important ingredients that I need. So, fingers crossed that everything arrives or we may have to live on the soup dishes on the menu until I can get out to pick up what's not sent!

Energy Rice Bowl

2008-12-07T07:37:00.002Z

Front to back small for Piggle, medium for Jim and large for me!

I have read a few reviews for this book along with recipes from it and had it on my wish list for a long time so when I had a little bit of spare cash I added it to my Amazon shopping cart and eagerly awaited it's arrival. I wasn't disappointed I have to say just looking at and reading the book makes you feel healthier and I'm looking forward to trying more recipes from it as soon as I have the vegetables to do it.

This was actually quite a time consuming meal to make, the recipe directs you to a further 4 recipes so you're making 4 different things plus boiling your rice and then you have to assemble it all. It's a layered dish so at the bottom is brown basmati rice, over that is a coconut curry sauce, then marinated tofu, then curried garbanzo filling, then some cucumber, tomato and cucumber, then beansprouts (these were supposed to be sunflower sprouts which I adore but I couldn't locate any) then on top of that is a tahini sauce. I wondered whether the flavours would go together or not but they do work really well and you feel so healthy eating this it's funny.

I will say thought that this isn't really a kid friendly meal, neither of mine enjoyed it at all which was a shame as I'd love to make it again. Also half the recipes was more than enough to feed all of us one main meal and then I had a similarly sized portion for my main meal the next day before I went out (my Mother fed the boys the sausage, mash and beans while I was at the knitting group I'm now attending fortnightly).

There are several other bowl meals in this book that I can't wait to have a go at now and I will make this for myself and try it out on the boys again as they get older. The Curried Garbanzo filling was great and would work in pita or just with rice on it's own and the curry sauce was very tasty, although I did add more flour than it called for to get it thicker as I felt it was a little bit runny.

So, my first outing with this cookbook was positive (for me at least!) and I will be breaking out it again soon, I think the dishes will be great in the summer too as they have a lot of fresh salad etc in them along with the protein and carbs.

Shopping and Pizza

2008-12-06T07:13:00.003Z

So we were supposed to have stew as the final dish of the week but when I checked to see what I had left there was only swede, carrots and brussel sprouts which wouldn't have made a very interesting dish. So I decided to take the boys to the health food shop after school and get some pizza bases and do pizza instead as that's always a hit with Jim.

While we were there we picked up 3 organic puddings, the pizza bases which are organic, organic tahini, a peanut bar, 6 small organic flavoured soya milks, some organic chocolate stars cereal for Jim, some organic soya cream, organic vanilla soya milk and organic peanut butter. The peanut butter is a huge one but when I compared the price it was much cheaper to buy the big jar than to buy 2 small ones and as I have peanut butter almost every day for breakfast it seemed worth the saving. I can't remember exactly how much I paid for this but I think it was about £20. There is also a small tin of pineapple there that we got from Somerfields as Jim likes it on his pizza.

So these are the cooked pizzas, Piggle had some leftovers from the freezer and then a bit of crust to chew on as pizza doesn't work so well blended up and he still only has 3 teeth!

Jim likes his simple and just had sauce, pineapple, sweetcorn and cheese. I added some fresh tomatoes and onion to mine and we both had Cheezly on top. I didn't actually make a proper sauce for these as I was out of tinned tomatoes, instead I mixed some tomato puree with garlic powder, onion salt, oregano and basil and it worked just fine and tasted lovely.

For the main shopping my Mother and I went to Tesco for a change and because I had my vouchers from them. I bought 2 organic chickpeas, seasoning for chicken (to use in the sausages), organic baked beans, white vinegar, coconut milk, organic juice boxes, 2 organic pasta sauces, organic fair trade instant coffee (decaf), 2 soya milks, organic spaghetti, potatoes (they didn't have organic, in fact their organic vegetable selection sucked), 2 yogurts, tomatoes, a cucumber, organic tofu, 2 red peppers, organic bananas, garlic, big rice cakes for Piggle, chili crackers for me, cereal, organic bread and organic bread to go with the soup. I also bought a dustpan and brush, some matches, a baking tray and 7 tins of cat food. All that set me back £31.22 after I'd use £6 of the vegetable vouchers, £2 of Tesco vouchers and a £1 Cauldron coupon!

So, in total for food and the vegetable box I spent £63.22 (around $91) which was about average I think.

Tofu and Kale Spanakopita

2008-12-05T07:02:00.000Z

This sounded like a nice way to use up the bag of kale that I had and we all enjoy pastry and tofu so I gave it a go. Unfortunately it wasn't all that tasty and lacked flavour.

Besides the tofu and kale it has garlic, lemon juice, an onion, salt, pepper and nutmeg, so not very many ingredients really.

It was pretty easy to put together despite having to brush each layer of phyllo with olive oil as you went along. However, I doubt I'll ever make it again as none of us finished off our portions and we all thought it was uninspiring which is sad.

Shepherds Pie

2008-12-04T06:53:00.000Z

I say made it up myself in the tag but this is actually my Mother's recipe veganised and then changed a little bit more to use up the celeriac that I got in the vegetable box!

The recipe is pretty simple, it's just soya mince (I used tvp this time as I was out of the soya mince), a tin of baked beans, some worcestershire sauce, herbs and an onion and then you top it with mashed potato and bake it for 20 minutes. I mashed in the small celeriac that I got in the vegetable box and the boys didn't seem to notice. I thought it added a nice other flavour to it and I'll do it again if I get another one.

Dishes like this are lovely for wintertime when it's cold and frosty outside, it's pure comfort food and nice and warming. I used this recipe almost every time I make shepherds pie now as we all like it.

Cauliflower Broccoi Cheese Bake

2008-12-03T06:45:00.000Z

This was a strange recipe really, you make a sauce for the vegetables but have to double the recipe to have enough. I expected it to be a thickish sauce but it turned out really thin, should I make it again I will add some flour to thicken it up.

You basically saute the vegetables then add some spices, pour the sauce over and bake it for a while. The sauce contains far too much tamari for my liking (with the double recipe called for it was 6 tablespoons, I'd cut it to 2), it was incredibly salty and I cut out the extra tamari and salt that I was supposed to add to the vegetables so I can't imagine how salty it would be if I had used it all.

Saying all that, it's a saveable dish if I cut the tamari in the sauce and add some flour to thicken it up and I'm sure I'll make it again at some point with the changes as it makes a nice change from the other cheese sauces I've made in the past.

Umm, Bit Behind Here

2008-12-02T13:40:00.005Z

I can tell when I'm behind on posting on this blog as I have a huge stack of cookbooks on the desk beside the keyboard waiting for me to comment on the recipes I made.

I also have this picture of vegetables from 2 weeks ago

We got mushrooms, spinach, leeks, potatoes, onions, parsnips, brussel sprouts and carrots.

The menu is as follows:

1. Pasta with Hearty Lentil and spinach sauce - The Vegetarian Family Cookbook

2. Sausages with mashed potatoes and baked beans (using the Everyday Dish recipe again for the sausages).

3. Chickpea Sensation Patties Eat Drink and Be Vegan with parsnips and potatoes

4. Leek and Potato Soup with Bread - Rose Elliots Vegetarian Cookery

5. Energy Rice Bowl - Refresh (my newest cookbook!)

So, I am going to try and catch up now with what I've made, I'll still post the dishes individually as I think it's easier to locate stuff with the tags if they're in individual posts.

Things here have just been a bit up in the air emotionally and now we're all sick and the boiler has been broken since Sunday evening so we're all frozen too. Things have to get better really and hopefully clearing off the pile of cookbooks will make me feel like I've achieved something today!

Stuffed Butternut Squash

2008-11-24T06:43:00.000Z

As we had 4 little butternut squashes we invited my Mother around for dinner. I have used this filling before (carrots, garlic, ginger, onion and flaked almonds) to stuff courgettes which is what the recipe calls for. I thought that the combination of tastes would work with squash and I was right, however it turned out a little bit dry and I'm wondering if I should have baked the squash first and then stuffed them and just heated them through rather than stuffing them raw and then baking them. They took over an hour in the oven to cook through and they were still a tiny bit underdone when I took them out.

The ginger and garlic (I added an extra clove to the 1 the recipe called for) give this a nice little bit of kick without being overpowering. It was perhaps a little bit orange all in one dish but there you do, orange vitamins are good for you!

Does anyone have an recipes for stuffing squash? I looked around and didn't find anything I wanted to make which is how I ended up with this recipe as it was the only one that sounded tasty to me. I'd love to try some 'proper' stuffing with breadcrumbs or something like that if you could point me in the right direction. And do you bake your squash a bit first before stuffing it or do you throw it in raw and hope for the best?

The Shopping Again

2008-11-23T07:34:00.001Z

I didn't get to go shopping until Thursday last week due to the events I've discussed so we were totally out of yogurts and puddings and had I not stocked up there could have been an uprising of short people!

I managed to just go to Sainsburys and the health food shop this week and this is what I bought:

Bread (they were all out of organic), organic vanilla soya milk, 2 alpro yogurts, cereal, organic fruit squash, Piggle's vitamins, organic small strawberry soya milks, organic small banana soya milks, 3 organic puddings, organic baked beans, strong cheddar Scheese, organic raspberry jam (after years of only wanting cheese in his sandwiches Jim now only wants jam...), organic juiceboxes, margarine, almond flakes, organic apples and organic bananas. Not pictured are recycled toilet rolls, recycled kitchen rolls, night time nappies for Jim, 7 tins of cat food and dry cat food.

Sainsburys was £24.89 and the health food shop was £18.40 (£ odd of that was for the vitamins) so in total with the organic box for £12 I spent £55.29 (around $82). I'm happy with that amount and hopefully I can keep spending around that each week now that I have the funds to do so, I think £200 a month for 3 of us buying as much organic as I can is pretty reasonable really and we seem to eat well for that price. In fact I'll be happy to spend £50 in the shops plus the vegetable box really, so we'll see how it works out over the next few weeks.

Vegetable Soup and Lasage Marinara with Spinach

2008-11-22T07:22:00.000Z

We had baked potatoes for lunch on the Sunday that the boy's Dad was here so in the evening after he'd left I whipped us up some soup for dinner as it was too cold to just have a sandwich. I threw in all the leftover bits of cauliflower I had, some potatoes, a big onion, some garlic, some carrots, 2 small parsnips and a small swede and then boiled them in some stock until they were cooked. Once it was done I used the stick blender to puree it which resulted in a really nicely thick tasty and warming soup.

This soup actually fed people for 3 days. Piggle had it for lunch the next day and then on the night I took Piggle to the hospital my Mother and Jim ate what was left for their dinner! Nothing like a big pot of soup to keep you going for ages.

This lasagne is from Veganomicon, it's a little bit burnt as I was talking to my Mum who had come around to check on us all and forgot to take it out of the oven! I made half the recipe which is fine for our small family and gave Piggle lunch the next day plus 2 further meals in the freezer.

How come the spellchecker wants me to spell it lasagna? Is there a difference between the UK and US spelling of the word? The book spells it with an e so I'm going to stick to that spelling.

I've never been a big fan of spinach lasagne, I think it was because when I first went vegetarian the only thing you could ever find in a restaurant (we're talking about 20 years ago now, wow time flies!) was vegetarian lasagne which was always full of strange undercooked vegetables or really watery spinach plus far too much cheese even for the cheese lover I was back then which just made it greasy. This lasagne has changed my mind totally though and we all really enjoyed it.

I made the tofu ricotta from the book but left out the basil basically because I couldn't be bothered to pick it, wash it and chop it, lazy I know but this was the night after we'd come home from the hospital so I was exhausted. I also added an onion to the marinara sauce recipe and doubled the amount of oregano as last time I made it I found it kind of bland and I steamed the spinach over the top of the sauce rather than using another pan. Once it was cooked I stuck the stick blender in the sauce and it came out a lot more tasty so I will keep those amendments for next time I use the recipe. I didn't bother with the Almesan (almond parmesan) and just used the shop bought stuff I always have in the house and I also didn't use the optional Pine Nut Cream, I may try that variation in the future though.

So, all in all a very tasty meal. We were supposed to have it with garlic bread but Jim and my Mother ate the half baguette that I had bought for the garlic bread with their soup the night before!

Well That Was Unintended

2008-11-21T13:10:00.003Z

Sorry for the short blog silence there. I was up to date posting what I had made for a change and was going to post a book review or what I'd made that night and then Piggle and I ended up spending a night in the hospital and it's taken me a few days to find my feet again and get back into the swing of things.

Piggle had Bronchialitis when he was a small baby and ever since he was born has been what the medical community refer to as a 'happy wheezer', which means there is nothing actually wrong with his lungs but he wheezes all the time. However, with the Bronchialitis having weakened his lungs whenever he gets a bad cold or a virus he struggles to breathe and I've been in the hospital with him twice now since we moved here so that he can be monitored overnight, have steroids and use an inhaler regularly. They think that he will grow out of it (and you'd not know it ever happened the way he's back to his usual self now) but for the time being I am now keeping an inhaler in the house with instructions as to when his breathing is considered bad enough to take him in to the hospital again. What with having an older brother bring everything home from school he does get a lot of colds but I hope that we won't have to visit the hospital too many more times, the one we go to is kept far too hot and it's incredibly boring and frustrating for both of us, we waited 3 hours this time for them to write a letter saying that we could go home which after a sleepless night of being woken up by the nurses checking on Piggle almost pushed me over the edge!

I have a load of posts to write now so I should hopefully be back to posting every day once again!

So, a week late here are last week's vegetables for you and my menu!

We got onions, potatoes, 4 tiny butternut squashes, carrots, swede, celeriac, 2 small cauliflowers and some broccoli.

And this is the menu to try and use it up!

1. Tofu and Kale Spanakoptia - Vegan Planet I didn't get to this one last week so I'm still intending to make it.

2. Stuffed Butternut Squash with Carrot, Ginger and Almond Stuffing from Rose Elliot's Vegetarian Cookery with potatoes and the last of the sprouts from last week.

3. Cauliflower, Broccoli Cheese Bake - The Cookbook For People Who Love Animals with mashed potatoes.

4. Shepherds Pie using my Mother's recipe and tvp to replace the meat with potato and celeriac topping and a vegetable (probably carrots looking at how many there still are in the fridge!). I looked and looked for a celeriac recipe and could only find 2 and neither of them sounded appetising so if you have a good celeriac recipe please let me know!

5. Vegetable Stew with Dumplings. Another 'use up the stuff that's been in there for ages' recipe plus in the cold weather who can turn down a big bowl of stew with a lovely dumpling on top? I will add some tvp chunks for a bit of texture.

And that's that. Will now get on with writing the posts for all the stuff I've made and not had time to blog about!

Seven Things Meme

2008-11-17T09:45:00.004Z

I have been tagged twice now for this 7 random things about me Meme. I won't bother posting the rules as if you've not seen it around then you don't read enough blogs!

So, here are my 7 things:

1. I was a US military brat, once my Dad retired when I was 16 I kind of kept moving every couple of years or sooner. At last count I believe I've lived in 29 different houses in my 35 years. The longest I ever lived in one house was in the one I just left, I was there for almost 7 years and lord did it feel like too long, I was itching to move somewhere new!

2. I am over educted in fields that don't help me get a job. I have a BA Hons in Drama and Classical Studies and an MA in Film and Television. I am hoping to soon start a second MA in the Social Sciences as my goal is to do a PhD in some sort of Sociology linked area. My trouble is that I love a subject so I want to study it but once I have the qualification I'm pretty much done with it and want to do something else!

3. I count as I do things. I always count the stairs as I walk up them (as if the number would change from one hour to the next) and I count pegs as I hang up or take down the washing from the line. Apparently my Mother also does this and I don't think she's insane so I'm not that worried that I am.

4. I don't really watch regular tv at all. We had a freeview box (digital tv with a limited amount of free cable type channels for my US readers) purely because it has CBeebies on it and it very rarely ever goes off that channel. I do however download and watch US tv on the computer, at the moment I'm watching all 3 CSI's, The Unit, Greys Anatomy, Heroes, Private Practice, Pushing Daisies and Bones. I also watch Deadliest Catch (not at all vegan but I enjoy it), Weeds, 24, Lost and Medium. I do normally watch quite a lot of films though, but I've been watching less since Jim managed to total our television by pushing it off the stand and I have to watch them on the computer or a tiny portable tv until I can afford a new one...

5. I graduated from an American high school in Germany at the age of 16. I was put a year ahead in primary school when I moved from the UK to the US system and then allowed to move another year ahead to graduate early as my Dad was retiring and I was still going to do another 2 years of UK high school after we moved back to England.

6. As of this morning I have lost 20lbs and 17.5" since the 1st of September. I still have 36lbs to go but I feel really motivated and happy to have got this far. Basically I finally am managing just to eat less and do a little bit of exercise (we're talking 20 mins tops 4-5 times a week). Really, it is that simple. I was an emotional eater, particularly when I was unhappy, thus needing to loose the weight after gaining it during 2 pregnancies and then having my marriage fall apart. It's nice to finally be more in control of it and I'm determined to get to my goal.

7. um.... I'm trying to think of something that you wouldn't already know from reading this blog... I worked on a feature film with Richard Harris, Lynn Redgrave, Louise Lombard and Paul McGann in it. It was one of the worst jobs of my entire life but they paid me £650 a week so I stuck it out. Put me off working in films for the rest of my life and even though it was about 8 years ago now I have still never watched the film, the ex watched it once and called me in at the end so I could see my name go by but that's as much as I still ever want to see. I do own a copy on dvd though.

I won't tag anyone as I think it's pretty much done the rounds by now!

Dense Chocolate Loaf Cake

2008-11-16T06:43:00.000Z

I'm not one for celebrity chefs at the best of times and the programmes we have on over here where people compete to be able to run a restaurant, or try to cook better than one another (although my sister was on Masterchef last season so I did watch the episodes she was in), chefs who are rude to everyone they come across or chefs trying and change the eating habits of the whole nation under some misguided idea that they are somehow important enough to do so drive me incredibly batty. I did used to watch a lot of UKTV food when I had it, Jim loved the Barefoot Contessa (he'd call her the 'big lady') and my two personal favourites are Rick Stein (Jim also loves him, I didn't have the heart to tell him that Rick's dog Chalky died, Jim loves Chalky and he still shows up on repeats) and Nigella Lawson (referred to by Jim as 'the small lady').

Now, Rick Stein is not an obvious choice for a vegan as he specialises in fish, along the same lines Nigella Lawson also isn't the most vegan friendly cook (hell, she's not even vegetarian friendly a lot of the time). What I love about these two people are their huge enthusiasm for all things food. I have learnt an awful lot about cooking in general from watching their shows and while I'd never buy a Rick Stein cookbook as veganizing fish recipes seems a bit complicated, I do own to date 4 Nigella Lawson books and I have enjoyed reading every single one of them (I believe I'm getting her Christmas book for a Christmas present from the soon to be ex Mother In Law).

You can veganize a number of Nigella's recipes and this cake is one of them that is really easily done. I first made this when I was vegetarian but when I went vegan I simply started replacing the 2 eggs with No Egg and the cake comes out a treat every single time.

It isn't much of a looker I know, but it's very rich, dense and moist and hits you with a screaming ************CHOCOLATE***************** feeling whenever you eat it! I am not a sweet snacker, I go for the pretzels, crisps or peanuts every single time, but sometimes you need a little chocolate in your life and this is a great way to get it.

It's very quick to put together despite the melting of chocolate (I use the Nigella method of throwing it in the microwave, no double boilers for me) and adding the boiling water and flour alternately bit by bit. It does have to cook for 45 minutes though and then cool completely before you can take it out of the tin so it's not one to make when you're desperate for cake right this minute.

This one is in order of the ex's Birthday which was ealier in the week. Jim decided that he wants to have a Birthday party for his Dad who is visiting this weekend so I was enlisted to make the cake. I know the ex likes this one and I wasn't in the mood to spend ages making a proper cake and fiddling with icing (seems a little bit too much effort for an ex no?) so this recipe came to the rescue. I will throw a candle on top and call it done and we will all enjoy chocolately goodness for pudding.

It's also wonderful served with vanilla ice cream!

Vegetable and Brown Rice Burritos

2008-11-15T07:35:00.000Z

Ok, so the name of these burritos doesn't live up to the picture you're seeing. Obviously there is no brown rice in there! I told Jim what we were having for dinner and he said that he didn't want rice again (to be fair to him we had eaten it the night before too) so I left it out. This is more a homage to the recipe rather than following it!

I left out the mushrooms and instead used a red and a green pepper, I added an onion as I'm of the opinion that most food needs onion in it, instead of kidney beans or black beans I used a tin of refried beans, no rice as I said and I didn't have any spring onions to put in there either!

However, these were really nice burritos, along with the peppers, onion and beans there was garlic, sweetcorn, cumin and black pepper. On top is some of the Cheezly and store bought salsa.

Jim and I both ate two of these and Piggle had the filling pureed up and chewed on a tortilla alongside it. We all really enjoyed it and perhaps some day I will use the recipe as it's written, but for now this variation has to be some of the best burritos I've made in a while.

Oh, and the reason for no salad in them is that I really can't comprehend the idea of eating salad in the winter, to me it's very much a warmer weather food. Also Jim tends to only eat lettuce and it's hard to puree lettuce into Piggle's so it didn't seem worth it in the end!

The Shopping

2008-11-14T13:20:00.003Z

This is another week where I seem to have used four shops to get everything I needed. I did wonderfully find though that I had more money than I thought I did and things should be much easier for us now which means a move back towards some organic products and being able to buy what I need each week instead of having to push things to the next week constantly which is a real weight off my mind.

First I hit the health food shop and stocked up

I got 2 organic tofu, 3 organic puddings, 1 pack of organic yogurts, 2 soya puddings, some cheezly, 2 single organic yogurts, 2 organic vanilla soya milk, 2 little organic banana soya milks, organic Worcestershire sauce, organic orange squash and a peanut bar to eat on the car on the way home (that's the empty package in the picture!). As you can see from the tiny hand trying to grab everything Piggle was very happy with this haul! This lot was pretty reasonable at £20.04 (around $29).

The next day we went to Sainsburys, another health food shop and then Morrisons for 2 final things. This is everything I bought that day; soya formula for Piggle, fake Bacon bits, tomato puree (yes, I found the other one as soon as I got home with a new one...), 2 organic chopped tomatoes, organic chickpeas, chocolate soya milk, siciliana pasta sauce, 3 soya milks, 2 organic baked beans, organic ketchup, organic peanut butter, dark brown sugar, 2 packets of biscuits (got tired of arguing with Jim to get him to eat the ones I've been making so I've given up for now), a red pepper, a green pepper, 2 bags of organic potatoes, plain chocolate, fair trade decaf coffee, organic bananas, cereal, margarine, organic bread, filo pastry, 2 packs of tortillas (they were on sale half price), frozen sweetcorn, a half baton to use for garlic bread, vecon stock, mozerella Cheezly, parmazano (fake vegan parm), breadcrumbs and organic yogurts. Not pictured are a deodorant and 7 tins of cat food. All of this set me back £40.85 (about $59) after using £9 of coupons.

So, the total for the week with the fruit and vegetables was a whopping £77.89 (about $112). I won't be shopping like this every single week but it's nice to know that when I do have a week where I need to stock up on stuff I'm not going to be restricted as much by funds and it's lovely to see the organic labels poking through too! I didn't get organic peppers because they were horribly expensive (about £2.50 for 3) but I will carry on trying to buy organic veg when I need bits and pieces from the supermarket.

This week will be a little slow on the meal reviews as I'm doing a few things that I've done before and the boys had the leftover patties for dinner last night (fed to them by my Mother) while I was out. I am hoping to get cooking the lasagna soon though, I'm really looking forward to that one!

Leek, Butter Bean and Chorizo Gratin

2008-11-13T07:11:00.000Z

Don't worry, I'm still vegan! I used Seitan O'Greatness in this recipe rather than the chorizo and it worked out really well. I remembered once I had started making the SOG that I can't find the tube of tomato puree I bought the other week despite my having photographic evidence that it made it into the house. I've torn the food cupboard apart but it's just not there so I added 3 Tbsp more of water to the recipe to replace the 4 Tbsp of tomato puree that it called for. I also reduced the oil from 2 Tbsp to 1 Tbsp and it was a lot less greasy and less rich than the first one. I think at the moment I actually prefer this version more than the tomato oily one so I may make it this way from now on.

I can't remember which magazine this recipe came out of, it's either Good Food Magazine or Ciao! both of which my sister has a subscription to and gives me when she's done with them. Anyway, it was very simple and I didn't make many changes to it except to omit the sherry as I don't have that in the house ever and to put less liquid in than the recipe called for as I thought it would be too wet with the full 18fl oz (I was right). It calls for 4 large leeks and mine were medium at best so perhaps that's why it didn't need as much liquid.

The topping calls for fresh breadcrumbs and I was actually totally out of any kind of bread so I used some from a tub and didn't blitz them with a clove of garlic like the recipe said but just put all the garlic in with the vegetables.

This was a really enjoyable meal and very filling and warming on what was a cold cold night. I'm keeping this for sure to make again and again as both the boys enjoyed it as well, especially with the roasty potatoes which are a favourite of them both!

Vegetables and Menu

2008-11-12T06:55:00.000Z

Another vegetable box! Sometimes if feels like a lot less than a week between them and other times it feels like forever, I guess it depends on how much I feel like cooking and how many vegetables I get that are already in my fridge!

This week we got onions, potatoes, leeks, parsnips (yum, I love parsnips), brussel sprouts, kale, spinach, cauliflower, mushrooms and carrots. This seemed like a really big box to me, some weeks it seems like we don't get very much and then there are boxes like this with tons of different things in them, I guess it all depends on availability and the time of year.

I used up the mushrooms in the stir fry I didn't blog about as how interesting can stir fry really be?!? I also used up the leeks in the dish I will post about tomorrow so those didn't need to go into the menu, obviously.

My plan for this week is as follows:

1. Chickpea Cutlets Veganomicon with roasty potatoes (as Jim calls them!) and swede and carrots.

2. Lasagna Marinara with Spinach Veganomicon with garlic bread.

3. Red Lentil and Cauliflower Curry Veganomicon (couldn't seem to put the book away and find another one!) with rice.

4. Vegetable and Brown Rice Burritos Vegetarian Times Low Fat and Fast Mexican. I will be omitting the mushrooms and using double peppers in these instead.

5. Cauliflower Patties from the freezer with potatoes and brussel sprouts.

6. Tofu and Kale Spanakopita Vegan Planet. Yes, I'm going to brave phyllo again. I'm sure there should probably be a side dish with this but I can't think of anything besides salads which the boys won't eat.

I'm looking forward to the lasagna and burritos a lot from the menu, I have a craving for both of them so hopefully I'll still be in the mood once I get around to making them! Only 6 dishes this time as I did pasta one night this week instead of something off the menu so I still have the curry to make from Get It Ripe. I haven't used a lot of the carrots, the parsnips or the many swedes I seem to have in the fridge so I feel some winter soup or stew coming up next week, perhaps with dumplings, to empty out the fridge drawers a little bit.

This is the fruit for the week

I have cancelled the fruit now. We just aren't eating it besides the bananas and I can pick up a bunch of those for much cheaper than I am paying for the fruit I'm watching rot and not being able to motivate myself to eat. Perhaps when it's warmer if I find myself buying a lot of fruit at the supermarket I will go back to getting the fruit with the vegetables but for now it's an extra £5 a week I can spend on something else.

Chickpea and Broccoli Tagine

2008-11-11T06:42:00.000Z

Sorry about the steam in the recent photos, it's really cold here at the moment and it's hard to get a steam less photograph!

This was a recipe from UKTV Food, Liz suggested it to me as a way to deal with being overrun with the broccoli recently. I have to admit that I did my usual look a the ingredients and not really pay that much attention to the recipe itself until it was time to make it! I used dried herbs instead of fresh as I didn't have parsley or coriander to hand, I also left out the cinnamon as I'm not really a fan of cinnamon in savoury dishes.

I was quite disappointed with the way this dish looked when it was done cooking. It seemed a little bland to me and I was surprised that it didn't have tomatoes in it, for some reason I thought it should (good job it didn't as I have run out!). It's basically a combination of chickpeas, broccoli, onion, garlic and herbs and that's it. I used only one tin of chickpeas instead of 2 as that's all I had and added an extra half tin of water to the mix as it calls for the water from both tins of the chickpeas. It was really easy to cook and pretty fast.

So, the verdict? With the harissa on it (yay, I finally got to use it!) it was really tasty and it added a bit of colour too. Piggle however wasn't so sure (I didn't put harissa on his obviously) but I think it may have been one of the rare occurrences where he just wasn't hungry. Jim didn't try it as he was still eating only toast at that point. I will try this one again and come to a more definite opinion on it, but I'm not saying it was bad, just not what I expected!

Jen's Ginger Butternut Lentil Soup

2008-11-10T07:37:00.000Z

This was a really simple, filling and tasty soup that hardly took any time to cook which is always a bonus when you have a sick child in the house and are tired from having been up all night with him but want something warming and comforting for your dinner!

It's a simple mix of onions, butternut squash, ginger, stock, tinned tomatoes, lentils and seasonings. I could have done with adding a little bit more salt to mine but that's my fault not the recipes!

Piggle just had some toast with his as I was too worn out to make any bread with his and Jim just had toast as he was still getting over a stomach bug.

I'll use this recipe again I'm sure.

Yasai Chilli Men

2008-11-09T07:04:00.000Z

No, I've not started to use a tablecloth, you will find that kind of civility at my Mother's house where I cooked this meal for us all before we went and watched the firework display in the village she lives in.

This is the meal I had when I ate in Wagamama in London a few months back and it was lovely which is why I bought this particular book. It's a really simple dish of soba noodles, tofu, carrots, courgette, tomatoes and sugar snap peas with a chilli sauce.

The recipe for the sauce is a separate recipe in the book as you can use it for any chilli style dish that you want to make and it came together in about half an hour and was really simple to make and is very tasty. My sauce wasn't as hot as the one that I bought which was actually a good thing as the bought one was about as spicy and hot as I can take my food. I still didn't feed any of the sauce to the boys though as it did have a good kick to it, they just enjoyed their stir fry and noodles plain and both ate everything they were served.

My Mother and I both really enjoyed the meal and I'll definitely be making this again and again, especially when there's another adult to share it with as the boys won't be ready for this sauce for a few years yet I shouldn't think. A warning about Wagamama portions though, the book says that all recipes make 2 portions, if that's true then they're HUGE even by my standards. The amount I made served 2 adults and 2 children with no leftovers but filled us all up completely, so don't feel like you have to double the portions unless you like a LOT of food!

I only put half the sauce in as I didn't want to overdo it and I wasn't adding it to the full amount, the leftovers I had over pasta the next day for dinner and it was lovely, sort of like a chinesey arabiata sauce, yum!

Crispy Chickenless Nuggets

2008-11-08T06:55:00.000Z

I was really excited about trying this recipe as we all like nuggets and I haven't found a brand that is priced low enough for us to enjoy them with any regularity. This recipe is really easy to follow and it only took about 10 minutes to put them together and then 20 minutes for them to cook.

Sadly, although we all kept trying them, not one of us actually liked them, even Piggle stopped eating them and ate the mashed potato with his hands instead. The taste and texture just weren't what we were after somehow. I think that they were too sweet, the cornflakes combined with the agave inside just made them a little sickly. Also they were too soft inside, I wanted something a bit chewy and these weren't really that. I keep trying to think of ways I can change the recipe to make them what we want them to be; coat them with breadcrumbs instead of cornflakes, leave out the agave, mash the chickpeas in the food processor instead of by hand etc etc. In the end I've come to the conclusion that what I should really do is make the Chickpea Cutlets from Veganomicon and just form them into nuggets coated with breadcrumbs and they may be closer to the taste and texture that we all like.

Anyway, it's not put me off this little recipe booklet and I'm looking forward to trying more. If everyone liked every recipe there wouldn't be so many cookbooks for me to collect or new recipes to try so I don't despair over things that aren't quite right for us!

As you can see I served the nuggets with baked beans and mashed potatoes for a kid friendly meal. Luckily I am terrible at judging how many potatoes I need to do so I always make too much so even though the nuggets didn't fill us up we had plenty of mash to do the job.

Weekly Shop

2008-11-07T07:34:00.000Z

This week my Mother and I took a jaunt to Asda, it's a bit further than the supermarkets I/we usually visit but I needed some new underwear as I've lost 16lbs now and was getting embarrassed having to pull mine up all the time (too much information?!?). Asda are really reasonable for clothing and although I know it's probably not the most ethically well produced stuff I didn't want to spend too much on them as firstly I can't afford it and secondly I want the new ones to not fit me soon!

We had a look in a different Lidl as well but it still didn't offer the soya yogurts that I've been told about in the comments and it had a small selection of food in general like the other one we visited so we didn't buy anything there.

In Asda I got dishwasher powder, juice boxes, 2 soya milks, 2 lots of flavoured soya milks, coconut milk, fruit squash, cereal, lemongrass puree, some soy snacks for Piggle (it was near lunchtime when we finished and he was hungry!), sugar snap peas, organic garlic, vanilla soya puddings, 1 red chilli (it cost me 1p, cheapest thing I've ever bought in a supermarket!), 2 lots of yogurt, organic red peppers, a courgette, a red onion and a loaf of bread (Jim is getting fed up with home made stuff). That cost me £19.52 for the food, not the underwear! They didn't have any maple syrup which was disappointing so I'm still without any and will keep hunting to see if I can ever find any for a reasonable price.

They didn't have 2 things that I really needed so we nipped to the healthfood shop on the way back and I bought vanilla soya milk (Piggle adores it at breakfast time and bangs his cup on the table and then waves it at me when he has finished and wants more) and soba noodles which amazingly cost me £4.30, won't be getting soba from there again! With the vegetable box my food this week cost £40.82 (around $65) which isn't bad at all I don't think with the way prices are at the moment.

Oh, and by the way, I'm happy with the underwear as well, here's to needing to buy the next size down soon!

The Vegetables

2008-11-06T07:27:00.001Z

It's actually Monday now (I write my posts in advance most of the time a few on the trot so I'm not in a mad panic finding something to post about) and I've not made the menu for the vegetables. I will have to do it later though as I'm going shopping with my Mother tomorrow and will need to know what to buy!

This is the box for the week:

Oh no, the broccoli is back!, potatoes, onions, carrots, cauliflower, butternut squash, a small swede, mushrooms and some cherry tomatoes.

So here's the menu I finally put together:

1. Nuggets from Sneak Peak*, baked beans and mashed potatoes.

2. Jen's Ginger Lentil Butternut Squash Soup with bread - La Dolce Vegan

3. Chickpea and Broccoli Tangine - UKTV Food online recipe (thanks Liz!)

4. Yasai Chili Men - Wagamama Cookbook

5. Stir Fry with Tofu (make it up as I go along) with rice

6. Coconut Cauliflower Chana - Get It Ripe, with rice

7. Leek Butter Bean Chorizo Gratin - from a magazine I'll be using Seitan O'Greatness rather than chorizo.

The reason for the two tofu stir fries is that we got 2 packs of free tofu from Cauldron to test for them and we have to cook them the same way.

This is the fruit we got

My fruit bowl is now obscenely full and I had to throw out 2 pears that had gone off so I am now on a mission to get it under control and eat what we get. I had a plum, a kiwi and a banana for my lunch today with some soup and if I'm hungry in the evenings I will try and have fruit as well so that I get through it and don't waste anymore. Although the waste in this house either goes to my Mothers's compost heap or my sister's animals I still hate throwing things away that I've spent money on so I will be munching on fruit as much as I can make myself in the next week or so until it's back under control!

* I got Sneak Peak and Pudge Free Holiday a few days ago. Lindsay will let international buyers pay by Paypal if you cover the fees. Googlecart won't let you order both cookbooks at the same time and you can only pay by credit card if you use it which means the conversion fee from $-£ twice plus interest on your credit card whereas Paypal will charge you in £'s and you can use a debit card. The fees were only 69c for the $10 transaction and at the exchange rate for the day I got them that was £6.89 in total for all these recipes which look great!

I've Made These Before

2008-11-05T07:17:00.000Z

But I thought I would post them again as I'm actually running short of things to post about at the moment, I must have not made as many new dishes recently!

This was some roasted vegetables. I used some leftover butternut squash, swede, carrots, brussel sprouts, mushrooms, onion and some potatoes. I put some salt and agave nectar in with the oil and they were very tasty. We all really enjoyed it, in fact Jim asked me to keep the leftovers for him the next day for lunch rather than giving them to Piggle!

When I was putting the agave nectar in I remembered from my pre-vegan days how I used to do roasted vegetables. I would drizzle them with honey and use Chinese 5 Spice on them and they always had a really lovely taste. I've added the Chinese 5 Spice to my shopping list as I ran out an age ago and never replaced it and I will use either agave or maple syrup next time I roast vegetables and see if I can recreate the taste that I'm remembering.

This is the Cauliflower and Mushroom Potpie with Black Olive Crust that I made before and talked about here

I really like this dish and it's very tasty, I do find it takes slightly longer to make though than the hour that the recipe says (again, I must be a slow cook). I don't bother making a roux for the white sauce, instead I use my usual method of throwing all the ingredients in together and stirring it almost constantly until the sauce is thick and cooked, life's too short to be prying roux from the bottom of a saucepan and trying to get the lumps out of the sauce. I also use only 1 tsp of tarragon rather than 2 as 2 was too much for me the first time I made it. We all really enjoyed this one too and Piggle had some leftovers the next day for lunch. The crust came out better this time without the olives, it was flakier and tastier so I think I will leave them out from now on.

Well, You've Seen The Freezer

2008-11-04T07:06:00.000Z

So I thought I would show you the fridge!

As I said before I love my fridge more than a human should love and electrical appliance. I can finally see what I have in there and put leftovers in it right in the pan (as you can see) which is a silly thing to love I guess but it makes me happy!

The top shelf always has the yogurts and puddings on it, this was right after we stocked up so there are quite a few there. The margarine is also on that shelf. The next shelf has my ground coffee, some leftovers in the Le Crueset (my favourite pot), a tin of cat food and probably some vegan cheese hiding behind the pot. Below that is a wine rack which is sadly empty in this photo, when I first moved it was my goal to keep it full (it holds four bottles) but I just can't afford that now... Under that is the Trex vegetable fat, flavoured soya milks for Jim's breakfasts, some miso in tupperware containers, the roasted peppers and some more leftovers of some sort.

Under that the final two shelves and the drawers always hold our vegetables. I tend to use a shelf for each week so the newer veg is in one place and the older another then I know which bag of broccoli I need to use up first. I do the same with the drawers, the carrots etc go in one drawer one week and the new ones go in the other drawer so I don't get old carrots etc hanging around.

This is the door
The top has curry paste, minced ginger (I'm too lazy to do that myself), mustard, some jam and some chili paste. Under that are some Chinese sauces and my mayonnaise. The next shelf down has jam, tahini, marmalade and the cheese slices. Next down is the ketchup, lime juice, lemon juice, Frenchs Mustard, Piggle's Vitamins, flax oil, sweet chili sauce, capers and jalapenos. The bottom has vanilla soya milk, plain soya milk, mushroom soya sauce, plain soya sauce and a half drunk bottle of wine. Normally there would be some vegetarian stir fry sauce but that was in the wine rack while the wine was in the door!

So, there you have it, the contents of my fridge, this was actually a pretty full day when I took the photo, sometimes there is a lot more room in it than that but once the vegetable box arrives on a Friday it tends to be stuffed until I get cooking with them.

Hope I didn't bore you too much!

Seitanic Red and White Bean Jambalaya

2008-11-03T07:12:00.001Z

I worked away making this big meal (and lord does it make a ton!) only to discover when we sat down to eat that Jim didn't feel well and didn't want any dinner so Piggle and I ended up eating it for several days for lunch!

It's a really easy dish to put together and besides some kidney beans and a green pepper it used stuff that I generally have on hand so it wasn't very expensive to make. I used up the last bit of the seitan loaf that I'd made too so now I can think about what kind of seitan I'd like to make next.

I didn't read the recipe properly (do we see a theme here?!?) so had a slight delay as I heated the oven, I thought it was cooked on top of the cooker but after you've put everything together you put it in the oven for 30-35 minutes which actually makes it easier to make as you don't have to stir it constantly to make sure your rice isn't sticking to the bottom of the pot. The taste was lovely and everything combined really well, I will make this again but next time I will probably halve the recipe and use either white or red kidney beans to save having half a tin leftover of each from the halving process.

As usual I managed to burn myself on the lid of my Le Crueset pot as well, I swear I need to find some heat resistant paint and write on top of it 'the handle gets hot you idiot' as my brain says 'plastic handle' and I always forget to use an oven glove to take the lid off it when it comes out of the oven... Luckily I managed not to drop it and to put it down quickly so my fingertips weren't too burnt. Don't you hate it when you repeat the same mistakes in the kitchen over and over again??

All I Do Is Shop

2008-11-02T07:20:00.000Z

Well, that's what it seems like at the moment! So this is what this week's grocery shopping looks like.

I went to Sainsburys and picked up 2 soya milks, organic vanilla soya milk, pineapple slices, organic baked beans (which are cheaper than non-organic at the moment which is odd), haricot beans, extra virgin olive oil (my oil supplies are back to full now!), organic peanut butter, cereal, 2 plain chocolate chips, plain flour, cashew nuts, freezer bags, 2 compostable bags (bags were 3 for 2 so I stocked up), linguine, organic bananas, margarine, 2 rigatoni, organic plain yogurts, 2 yogurts, teabags for a vegan swap I did (not in the picture) plus the usual cat food and some night time nappies for Jim. All that set me back £23.02 after using £4 in coupons.

Then we went on to the health food shop and got this

Super melting Cheezly in Mozzarella for pizza, strong cheddar Scheese, 2 vegetarian yogurts (Jim takes them to school to have when the other kids have jelly for a treat), tamari (there wasn't any in Sainsburys) and organic agave nectar. This was expensive for the small amount I got, I spent £10.34.

So with the organic vegetable box this week's shopping cost me £50.36 (around $80 as the pound has fallen against the dollar big time recently). Not too bad but I could have done with spending less really. I did find some tamari in another supermarket the other day so I picked it up as it said it was being discontinued so I'll have some more ready to go when this runs out.

I'm hoping for a smaller shop next week but you never can tell at the moment how much stuff is going to cost. I just need to make sure I try and make meals using what I have to hand a bit more so that I don't have to keep buying in. But as I said before, I'm now totally stocked up again with stuff like oils and flour etc that I had run out of totally when I was very broke. I still have no maple syrup in the house as I can't find it anywhere for less than £4 a bottle which I refuse to pay. I'm hoping Asda have their usual £1.80 bottles available when I go with my Mother and if so I will buy a few to keep as we don't go to Asda all that often.

Cauliflower Patties with Braised Carrots with Soy-Peanut Glaze

2008-11-01T07:13:00.000Z

Sorry, Blogger is playing it's stupid tricks again and flipping my photos...

Wow, it's odd not uploading the VeganMoFo banner to each post, I must delete it so I don't randomly apply it to posts when I forget it's over!

So I used two cookbooks I've never used before for this meal which makes me a happy cook. I am feeling much better than previously and this was the first meal I've really enjoyed for a week and eaten a decent portion of.

The Patties were really easy to make, I halved the recipe but did find that there wasn't enough flour and bran listed to make it into something that you could actually make a patty (ie?) with. In the end I put in 3 extra handfuls of flour and 2 extra of the oat bran and it was still a sticky mess when it went on the tray, but as they baked they did firm up and they didn't taste too bland so it was ok.

I have made notes in the book to halve some of the ingredients but keep the thickeners the same as if I were making the whole recipe rather than the half I did make. It says it will make 24 patties out of 2 cauliflowers but I used one and made 8 patties from it. I have loosened the leftovers on the tray and put it in the freezer so if I remember I will post to say whether they freeze well or not.

I was shocked to see Jim wolf his down because he knew it had cauliflower in it as he'd mashed it for me and I'm sure I've mentioned over and over again that he won't eat cauliflower normally. Perhaps making it into a burger shape works, I will have to try it again with other things he won't eat in the future!

The carrots were glazed with soy sauce (I'm still out of tamari), peanut butter (didn't actually have as much as the recipe said but it was enough so I've amended the recipe), brown sugar (as I am out of maple syrup and didn't read the recipe properly until I was cooking from it), water and olive oil (I used regular instead of extra virgin as I don't have any). I omitted the cayenne pepper as per usual. So, does that mean I actually made this recipe or did I make something that was sort of like the recipe but not, who knows!

Piggle enjoyed it all, especially the roasted potatoes on the side which he loves to feed himself and Jim enjoyed his too, he wasn't hugely impressed with the carrots but he is hugely impressed with the idea that carrots will make him see in the dark so he makes sure he eats enough to help his night vision (white lies work with 5 year old boys who want superpowers!).

I'll definitely make both of these again in the future and I want to try more from the People Who Love Animals book, it's final printing was 1981 but it still has some tasty sounding things in it and uses a lot of vegetables which is what we need to get through our vegetable boxes. I was impressed at how much of this meal was vegetable based, in fact besides the thickeners and tahini in the patties we just ate vegetables which can never be a bad thing.

Sahib's Split Pea and Roasted Parsnip Soup and some shopping

2008-10-31T06:52:00.004Z

I had been emailing a friend about split pea soup when I found this one a day later so I decided to give it a go. The recipe is very simple and uses stuff I tend to have in the house besides the parsnips which were the only ingredient I had to buy. I pureed it as you can see as it's easier for kids to eat soup that way and also I added less water than the recipe calls for as thicker soup means less on the clothes and more in Piggles mouth which both he and I appreciate.

I didn't have the energy to make bread to go with this so I just served it with toast made from the last home made bread I'd thrown together using white and kamut flour. Jim says he doesn't like the bread but he keeps eating it so I think he's just trying to wind me up or something!

I'll definitely make this again, the roasted parsnips give it lovely flavour but even without them it's a good hearty soup that fills you up and keeps you warm which is just what you need in the weather we're having at the moment here. Jim said he didn't like it but he didn't actually eat it which was probably because he was full from the Halloween party they had at school (he went as a house, don't ask, it's a 5 year old thing...), I can't believe how many snacks and how much food they feed those kids during the day, it's no wonder some nights he doesn't want what I've cooked him, he's not hit the 'eating everything but the table' phase yet and gets full quite fast.

Piggle and I had it for lunch (I had it twice, he had it once) and it reheats and keeps well which always adds to my liking of a recipe.

So, I got a lovely letter in the post telling me that we are going to get a nice chunk of extra money each week which when added to the previous letter I was also happy about saying that we were getting an additional small chunk each week means that my financial worries have lifted a bit and although I won't be able still to go fully organic as I need to try and pay down my credit card and pay back my parents the money I borrowed when I moved, does mean that we can afford to get what we need. In celebration we hit the health food shop and I allowed Jim to throw what he wanted in the basket. The result was £32 spent (around $56), and this haul coming home with us.

We got 2 organic chocolate puddings (still 99p), 2 organic vanilla puddings (again 99p each), mocha puddings, 2 packets of Whizzers chocolate beans, Tofutti Cheese Slices, 3 Soyage puddings for Piggle that Jim insisted he have as he's not had them for a while, 2 small organic strawberry soya milks, 2 organic small chocolate soya milks, 2 organic small banana soya milks, popcorn, organic vanilla soya milk, organic vanilla soya custard, Piggle's liquid vitamins and chewable children's vitamins for Jim.

The boys ran out of vitamins over a week ago and I'd been stressing over how to afford to buy them more as they set me back £15. That will last Jim 60 days and Piggle about 3 weeks so it's a big chunk of change to have to come up with but I think it's important and it makes me feel like I'm giving them as much to keep them healthy as I can. I didn't buy myself any more vitamins even though I ran out about a month ago as the ones I had from the health food shop were horse pills and I didn't like them, they didn't seem to have enough of the vitamins I wanted in them. Should I come across a Holland and Barrett I will get myself another bottle of their vegan multivitamins but I've no plans to go to one for a little while at least.

We finished off our shopping trip by putting more diesel in the car and buying me 2 bottles of wine. I also treated myself to some books off Amazon and Play, only one cookbook though which was odd for me but I couldn't pick what I wanted and they all seem to have gone up in price even secondhand so I will wait until the prices fall a little bit.

Can you believe that VeganMoFo 2008 ends today? This month has flown by and I managed to post every single day, something I intend to keep trying to do as I really am enjoying it. I did mean to make some more posts about elements of veganism such as vegan children and eco friendliness but I never got around to it, so those posts will come when I am having a week where I repeat dishes and don't need to post reviews.

Thanks for all the wonderful comments I've had during this month, it has really made me happy to know that people are reading and enjoying what I'm writing enough to tell me their thoughts about it. Please stay with me now the month is over, I promise to keep moving on to bigger and better things and I will definitely keep reading the blogs I've discovered this month too and sincerely hope that the friends I've made through this will last a long time to come.

Here's to VeganMoFo and long may it continue to be a yearly event, I'm already looking forward to next year, aren't you?

The Fruit and Veg

2008-10-30T06:39:00.003Z

I thought I'd mix it up a bit this week and show you the fruit first, aren't I a rule breaker?!? I still have too much fruit in the house and did consider cancelling the fruit bag but I do still *want* to eat fruit and so having it around makes that easier, now I just have to get into the habit of actually picking it up and transferring it to my mouth...

As I mentioned I've not felt like eating this week so it took me a few days to come up with a not very inspired menu for this lot. I am feeling a lot better than I did so hopefully I will at least start enjoying the cooking a bit more even if I am still forcing myself to eat it.

This week we got spinach, brussel sprouts, swede, cauliflower, mushrooms, onions, potatoes, carrots and a leek. Did you hear my scream of joy when I saw there wasn't any broccoli in this box??!! I still have half a bag to get around to freezing and I cut up, blanched and froze two whole swedes as well as we're not keeping up with them, but at least they are to hand when I do need one as there will be a time no doubt (although it doesn't feel like it at the moment) when we won't be getting swedes for a while and that is always when you find the perfect recipe for what you don't have!

So, this week (no boys at the weekend) we will be having

1. Pizza at Jim's request, I will have some mushrooms on mine and he will just have cheese and pineapple with red sauce as he calls it. I'll use the recipes from Vegan With a Vengeance for the base and sauce like I always do.

2. Roasted vegetables - told you I was uninspired. This will use up some sprouts, swede, carrots, potatoes and the half a squash I have in the fridge still from last week, I think there's also a forgotten green pepper for some dish I didn't get around to making that I can use up too. I don't know what I'll serve it with yet, I'll figure that out on the day.

3. Cauliflower and Mushroom Potpie - Veganomicon. I will do the crust for this but I won't be adding the olives this time as I don't have any, they always go off when I buy them as I don't use them fast enough and Jim won't touch them so it's a bit of a waste really to put them in!

4. Carrot Soup - yes, the usual fallback for when I have a fridge full of carrots, but Jim is really into carrots at the moment, we all enjoy this soup and it's easy so it will be ok to do on the Sunday morning before I go out for lunch on the way to pick up the boys.

5. Mac and Cheese Florentine - Fresh From The Vegetarian Slow Cooker. This is basically mac and cheese with bean and cashew sauce with some spinach thrown in. Jim loves mac and cheese and I've had great success getting him to eat green leafy veg of late so hopefully it will be a winner.

There will be some leeks leftover which I will have with pasta over the weekend and also half the sprouts which I will enjoy roasted probably with one of the leftover seitan sausages out of the freezer the other night I'm on my own.

Samurai Seitan with Broccoli and Garlic

2008-10-29T07:33:00.002Z

I have been off my food this week and really not in the mood for cooking because of it which is, as you might have guessed from reading this blog, really not normal for me. Usually my emotions drive me towards the food rather than away from it but this time they have made me queasy which has made the whole getting dinner ready thing, and even picking what to make, very hard and eating it even harder.

This is one of those recipes that when you read the ingredients you assume you're making one thing and when you actually cook it you realise it's something different. I thought this was a stir fry as my brain didn't pick up the cup of water you add to it which means it's actually a stew. However, despite it not being what I thought it was and despite having to force myself to eat it it was a tasty dish that I'm sure I'll make again. It was really quick to cook (14 minutes cooking time plus prep) which was also good with my not having the energy to mess about in the kitchen.

It's got seitan (1lb of the big loaf I made), green pepper, onion, mushrooms, garlic, broccoli, peas (should have been snow peas but I didn't buy any because they're expensive), soy sauce, mirin and worcestershire sauce which I thought sounded odd but actually worked ok.

As I thought it was a stir fry I served it over rice noodles but it would actually work well with potatoes, grain or rice too. Piggle really enjoyed it and Jim picked out all the seitan and ate it along with some peas!

Green Pea and Lemon Risotto with Roasted Red Peppers

2008-10-28T07:27:00.003Z

It looks a little runny in the photo but I was so determined not to forget to take the picture that I took it before it was completely cooked I guess!

This was a tasty risotto that the boys and I enjoyed. I did find it a little bit lemony but I think that I taste lemon a bit more strongly than most people for some reason as I can taste even the tiniest bit in any dish it's in.

Instead of buying and roasting the peppers myself I used roasted peppers from a jar and put them in with the peas and lemon to heat them through, that tasted just fine so if I make this again while there are still peppers in the jar I will do that again. I did have to add a little bit more water than the recipe called for and I also had to cook it a bit longer to get the peas cooked through, I will add them earlier next time if I remember.

I enjoy risotto, I should probably make it a bit more often than I do but Jim isn't a huge fan. He did eat this but I wouldn't say he really totally enjoyed it even though Piggle did so perhaps it's one to come back to in six months to see if his tastes have developed a bit more.

Another Big Shop

2008-10-27T07:22:00.004Z

After thinking about it hard I have made the decision that at least until after Christmas I am letting the organic thing slide and going with non-organic for the majority of my shopping. I will still be getting the organic vegetable box and buying whatever vegetables I need organic if possible, plus getting organic yogurts and puddings for the boys from health food shops, but beyond that I just need to mind my budget until after the holidays are over and I can't do that by buying organics unfortunately.

So, this week as I new it would be a bit cheaper not buying organics I decided to stock up on everything that I'd run out of in one go rather than spreading it through the month like I would have needed to previously. I also ended up shopping in 3 different shops to get all but 2 items on my shopping list, so this is what I bought from the places I got it.

These photos are actually in reverse order to the way we visited the shops!

This was from the Co-op, who I found out don't accept Luncheon Vouchers that I get for filling out online surveys but they did take my vegetable voucher so I got £3 off my shop. I got organic onions, garlic, a lemon, 2 green peppers, garlic, frozen peas, golden syrup, organic mushrooms, 2 packs of juice boxes, 2 soya milks, white bread flour, brown bread flour, margarine, 2 lots of flavoured soya milk, 2 tins of chickpeas, a roll for Jim's lunch the next day so I didn't have to make bread when I got in, onion salt, a parsnip, cereal, crisps (on special offer for 2 packs so I bought 2), some pretzels that I adore, a bottle of wine and some vegetable oil. In total this lot cost me £30.57 after the coupon and including a long handled fair trade cotton shopping bag, I have a short handled version but with pushing a pushchair a long handled one is much more useful.

This is from the health food shop; 2 lots of organic yogurts, 2 lots of organic puddings, some malt extract rice cakes for Piggle, chocolate soya custard, thyme, organic lemon squash, Tofutti cheese slices and maldon salt. This cost me £14.51.

We started off in Lidl after the suggestion in the comments. Unfortunately as you can see they didn't have much that I needed off my list and no soya yogurts or soya milk to be seen. I was actually quite disappointed in the shop as there seemed to be more non-food stuff for sale than food. My Mother says there are a few more in the area though so next time she and my Dad go past one she'll check for the soya products for me. I still managed to spend £13.11 buying plain flour, fair trade organic coffee (very reasonable price at £1.75 a jar), fair trade brown sugar, kidney beans, olive oil (also a bargain for a big bottle at £2.49), sugar, 3 tins of tomatoes, biscuits as a treat for Jim and to let me off the hook making some, tomato puree and white rice.

So, in total with the shopping and organic vegetables I spent a humongous £75.19 this week on food (around $128). Like I said though I now have everything but 2 items that I had run out of back in the house again so my subsequent shopping trips will only need to be what I need each week rather than stocking up items as well. I probably should also add £4 for 2 tubs of Simply Eco washing powder that my sister managed to locate for me in her local Co-op as I couldn't find it, but it was on sale £1 off so I thought I would get her to pick up 2 so I'd have some for a while.

I'm sad about the lack of organic shopping but I am trying my best and at the end of the day it's best the boys eat healthily, even if it's not organic rather than trying to buy organic and not being able to afford what we need. Hopefully I should have a bit more money coming in in a few months so that may mean I can buy a bit more organic, but until my finances are firmly under control I will have to keep the shopping budget as low as I can.

PS Thanks to Becks for googling flour and telling me that all flour in this country is unbleached. (also Liz for commenting the same). So, I will now stop swearing at recipe books and flour companies and enjoy my baking a little bit more!

Sweet and Sour Pumpkin (Khatta Meetha Kaddu) and Chapatis

2008-10-26T07:15:00.004Z

...Imagine a Picture of a white bowl with

mashed Butternut Squash in it here
with chapatis on the side...

I have had a rough week and the day I made this was particularly busy and rushed as I needed to feed us all dinner (including my Mother) on time so that I could get to Jim's Parent Teacher meeting on time. Therefore when it came time to serve up I totally forgot to get my camera out. It wouldn't have been a very interesting photo but I do like to try and post something, even if it's just a visual reminder for myself in case I'm thinking of making this again in the future.

This dish is incredibly simple, the only vegetable in it is pumpkin, however I substituted butternut squash for that which worked out just fine. Besides the squash there are lots of spices, some oil, some sugar and some water. The recipe says you can use up to 2 cups of water depending on how mushy you want it, I used half a cup and that was plenty for us.

The only thing I need to remember about this dish is that it doesn't make a whole lot. I think it's meant to be part of a spread rather than just a main dish on it's own and I'd say it makes 3 adult sized portions whereas most of the recipes in this book feed more.

The chapatis I have made before and luckily I examined my chapati flour before using it as once again I was struck with bugs in the flour. The chapati flour was really old, I only bought it because I'd made chapatis and saw specific chapati flour in a shop so I got it. I used 2/3 white flour and 1/3 wholemeal flour and it worked out just fine (I always halve the recipe in this book or else it makes 12 chapatis which is far too many for us). I used my cast iron griddle for the first time ever and once I'd figured out how to get it heated properly on an electric stove it worked really well and the bread puffed up and browned nicely.

This is definitely a keeper.

Spiced Apple Walnut Muffins and Spicy Italian Vegetarian Sausages

2008-10-25T07:02:00.003Z

I needed something easy to make for breakfasts before I could go shopping again so I decided to see what muffin recipe I could come up with that used stuff I had to hand. I used a cup of applesauce as per the suggestion in the recipe rather than grated apple and I also used spelt flour instead of regular flour.

Just as a side note I get all irritated when I read in recipes 'unbleached all purpose flour' as you just can't find unbleached flour over here, our only options are white or brown flour. Just a pet peeve there!

Anyway, these muffins were tasty enough but they came out a bit dry for some reason. I would have thought that a cup of applesauce would have been wetter than a large grated apple but I guess not and if I make them again I will try them with white flour and maybe a little more applesauce or some added water in them.

This was another foray into the world of seitan making. I used the recipe from Everyday Dish that has been circulating blogland for a while now. As I know that Jim isn't into the spicy stuff I cut out the chili flakes from the recipe. I also left out the fennel seeds for some reason, just decided at the time I didn't want that flavour in them. We can't get Bills Best Chik'Nish Seasoning (I have no idea what that is anyway!) so I used half a tablespoon of Mrs Dash plus some salt and cut the ground pepper down to a few twists as Mrs Dash is pretty peppery.

My only other change to the recipe was totally by mistake. I was talking to my Mother on the phone while I was putting these together and although I thought I have double checked the recipe when I came to form the mix into sausages I couldn't figure out why they were so wet until I re-read and discovered that I'd omitted the quarter cup of chickpea flour. It was too late to mix it in then as the gluten strands had already formed so instead I just steamed them for an extra 10 minutes and they came out just fine.

We all really loved the taste of these sausages and are happy that there are more of them in the freezer now. The taste was great and the texture was lovely, I don't think I will bother with the chickpea flour next time as it didn't seem to need it, I will just cut the water by a tiny bit so they don't need to steam as long. Piggle kept putting bits in his mouth as he obviously liked the taste but it was a bit too firm for him to gum (3 teeth don't get you very far with chewy things) so until he has more teeth I will have to blend his up a bit for him. I'm definitely keeping this recipe as my standard sausage recipe, it was much cheaper to make than to buy a bag of vegan sausages and it has much less fat than the Real Eat ones do too which is great.

I served the sausages with mashed potatoes and swede and carrots. The sausages were so big that we only needed one each.

The Vegetables

2008-10-24T07:30:00.004Z

I'm running out of good titles for these vegetable box posts, perhaps I will think of one title and label them all that way to save the brain power of trying to think of something to call them!

This week we had another cauliflower, a huge bag of broccoli (can you hear the mental scream from having to find yet another broccoli dish?!?), swede (which gives me 2 and a half of these in the fridge), carrots, onions, potatoes, another huge butternut squash and celery.

So the menu for this week looks as so:

1. Sweet and Sour Pumpkin (using the butternut squash) with chapatis - Spicy Vegan

2. Samurai Seitan with Broccoli (yay, broccoli!) and garlic - Vegan World Fusion Cuisine (never used this book before) with rice noodles.

3. Sahibs Split Pea and Roasted Parsnip Soup - Vegan World Fusion Cuisine with bread of some sort.

4. Cauliflower Patties - The Cookbook For People Who Love Animals (another first time usage) with Braised Carrots with Soy-Peanut Glaze from Peanut Butter Planet (third first usage) and potatoes of some sort.

5. Seitanic Red and White Bean Jambalaya - Veganomicon

6. Green Pea and Lemon Risotto with Roasted Red Peppers - Veganomicon

7. Chickpea and Spinach Curry - Vegan With a Vengeance and rice (using the frozen spinach I have and the fresh I grew in a tub)

There is a lot of rice on there this week, sometimes I do that and end up using one ingredient an awful lot, I remember shopping trips before the vegetable box where I would buy 6 red peppers as they were in everything I had planned for the week! I didn't use the leeks in anything or any swede so I am going to have to freeze some of this swede this week before it takes over the house, the leeks will last another week and hopefully we'll get a couple more which will be enough to make something (perhaps leek and potato soup). There is also quite a bit of spice in there but if I space it out with the non-spicy stuff I should be ok. I must remember not to attempt those cauliflower patties on a weeknight, it's definitely a Sunday kind of meal doing the carrots as well and something nice with the potatoes (probably roasted as we like them that way).

I'm also using up both pieces of seitan that I have in the freezer so next week I get to make some more, yay!

And this is the fruit for the week, not fair trade bananas this time, I guess they buy whatever they find at a reasonable price for the fruit bags. I must make some orange juice or do *something* with the four oranges I now have in the fruit bowl, I'm not an orange eater and neither is Jim. Besides the oranges though and some apples which are getting past their prime I am trying to eat a few pieces of fruit a day to keep the bowl under control. The grapes from last week were lovely but they had seeds in them so Jim wouldn't eat them and I couldn't give them to Piggle without having to mess about too much.

Indian Cauliflower and Kidney Bean Stew with Coconut Milk

2008-10-23T07:22:00.003Z

I broke out the slow cooker again and enjoyed the accomplished feeling I got from having dinner almost all cooked by 11.45 in the morning!

This stew was really easy to put together, I did ignore the first instruction to puree the onion and spices and cook them in the slow cooker for a few minutes as this never works for me, instead I fried them in a pan with the garlic (there is nothing worse than the taste of slow cooked garlic that hasn't been sauteed first) before adding them in. There was also kidney beans, potatoes, chopped tomatoes and stock in there and I added some of my pickled jalapenos as well (the recipe calls for fresh) which gave it a nice bit of heat but not so much to put the boys off it.

You cook everything together for 6 hours (I started off on high to get it boiling and then turned it to low when I remembered to) and then you add the coconut milk and cook uncovered for 15 minutes or so. I only had coconut cream which is thicker than coconut milk but it worked well in this and smoothed out the spices and heat for the boys. I didn't drain my chopped tomatoes like the recipe said and I have made a note in the book to make sure I do this next time as the stew was very thin with that extra juice in there. I added some arrowroot to thicken it up a bit which made it better.

I served it over brown basmati rice and Jim even ate some cauliflower (he says he will only eat baby florets so I must remember to break his up into tiny pieces next time I serve it to him). Piggle and I had leftovers for lunch and there is also a portion for him in the freezer. I will make this again in the future, it's a nice different kind of curry and you can never have too many easy curry recipes tucked away!

Butternut Squash, Corn and Cilantro Phyllo Rolls with Teryaki Quinoa

2008-10-22T07:39:00.003Z

I haven't used The Real Food Daily Cookbook much before, in fact I think I only have made one thing in the past from it and that was the fake cheese and I wasn't that impressed. I find the recipes call for a lot of things I don't tend to have to hand and can be a little complicated for weeknight cooking. It's a beautiful book though so it's a shame I don't use it more.

These phyllo rolls were pretty annoying to make. Dinner was really late as the phyllo pastry was a real pain in the ass to work with, when it defrosted parts of it stuck together and it was completely ripped down the middle. I always intended to make bigger rolls than the recipe called for, these are in the starter section and the recipe says it make 24 small rolls, I made 3 big rolls and 4 smaller rolls from it and that worked out fine as my Mother, Piggle and I had the leftovers for lunch the next day.

The filling mixture is lovely, the butternut squash, corn, carrots and cabbage work really well together. I used dried coriander (cilantro) as there wasn't a fresh plant in the supermarket and it worked fine. I did have a minor cock up when I discovered that I hadn't read the recipe properly and it called for tofu ricotta cheese. When I looked at the recipe in the book I knew there was no way I would be making it, not only did I not have any firm tofu in the house but it requires 2/3 of a cup of miso (yellow, which I didn't have anyway) and 1/2 a cup of tahini which makes it incredibly expensive in my book. Instead I used soft silken tofu as that was all I had in and the recipe from The Ultimate Uncheese Cookbook but didn't boil the tofu as it was soft enough. I drained it in a sieve before putting it in the rolls as it was very wet but the taste was really nice and my Mother said it did taste like ricotta so that was good as I can't remember what ricotta tastes like anymore.

I will make these rolls again in the future but not on a weeknight as it was just too much work.

The quinoa on the other hand was a complete disaster. I'm not sure what I did wrong but mine looks nothing like the pictures online from other people who have made it. I did use mushroom soy sauce instead of tamari as I didn't have enough tamari but instead of absorbing the liquid it just came out all wet and sloppy (as you can see in the photograph) and it was far too salty (and would have been with the tamari as well I think). Not sure if I'll give it another go in the future or not but it doesn't help my enthusiasm about Eat Drink and Be Vegan, I'm not a big fan of the book and don't think it's as good as her previous two.

Spinach and Mushroom Calzones and Melty White Cheese

2008-10-21T07:17:00.003Z

I used the recipe in Vegan Italiano as a reference while making these but didn't use frozen pizza dough (I've never seen it in this country) and I added the pizza sauce from Vegan With a Vengeance (the dough was from there as well using half spelt and half white flour as I'm low on white).

The recipe says to put the onion, spinach and onions in uncooked but I hate what uncooked mushrooms do to pizza (they go dry and all the water from them makes the crust soggy) so I cooked the onion and mushroom for a bit with the garlic before putting it in. I did put the spinach in uncooked as I figured it doesn't take long to cook anyway so it would be fine, and it was. I made 5 of these from the ingredients and had one for lunch the next day. We all enjoyed them (my Mother was around for dinner that night), Jim even ate all his spinach after I reminded him that he liked leafy green vegetables.

I served the melty white cheese on the side for dipping rather than putting it inside the calzones and it was a nice accompaniment, it's one of my favourite cheese sauces and I use it far too often!

What's In Your (Vegan) Freezer?

2008-10-20T07:08:00.004Z

I was tagged by Becks of I Am Not a Rabbit to show you all what I have in my freezer at the moment. This is my fridge and freezer

I've not bored you all before with how happy I am with my big fridge that I bought when I moved. Before I had a tiny under the counter fridge that wouldn't hold everything that I needed it to. This fridge holds it all and is big enough that I can put the saucepan with the leftovers in it rather than having to decant things all the time, I adore it as much as any reasonable human being can adore an electrical item! The freezer I've had for a while, it looks like it's really big but I can fill it up no problem, at the moment it's probably about 2/3 full though and here's what's in it.
Um, ok, so it could probably do with defrosting again, but it's such a messy job and I only did it in May when I moved so it's annoying that it needs it again already... This top section appears to be full of ice cream! There are 3 Swedish Glace ice creams in there; chocolate, vanilla and wild blueberry. I didn't actually know I had the blueberry until I moved the others for the photo! The other brand I really don't like and it's only in there until I can get someone else to eat it. It's made using water rather than soya milk and you can really taste that it's water, it's not creamy at all. Very disappointing considering it was really expensive.

Next compartment down holds pulses and a bag of tvp chunks. I cook the beans and reconstitute the tvp chunks in my slow cooker and then freeze for later use (freeze the chunks on trays so I can grab a handful rather than having to hit them with a mallet). There aren't as many beans in there as normal, I must do some more soon, the compartment is usually full but as I've been using what I have I've lowered my stores.

Next down is the ice cube and ice pack tray. I could probably empty this now considering that summer is most definitely over and we won't be having a picnic anytime soon or really needing an ice cube in a drink but I probably won't get around to it.

This drawer is mainly Piggle's meals from leftovers. The Pure container is actually food for him, the little round containers are getting too small so I'm saving my margarine tubs to freeze stuff in as I don't want to buy more plastic. The pink stuff to the back is cooked rhubarb which I froze in ice cubes for Piggle but will use for other stuff too and the container with the white lid is leftover soup. The two bags to the front are what's known in our household as 'scoff'. My sister is a smallholder and has pigs and chickens (along with sheep, a horse, some turkeys and 4 goats). Instead of throwing away any leftovers from plates and bowls I freeze it in bags and then take it to my sister for her animals (they also get the crusts from Jim's sandwiches which he kindly brings me home from school for some reason...). Not particularly vegan but more eco friendly than it ending up in landfill. The scoff name came from my telling Jim that if he didn't eat his food the pigs would scoff it down!

That's my bread drawer (in case you're blind!) and it needs a bit of a clean. I ran out of bread flour and it was cheaper to buy a cheap loaf than more flour so that's what I did. Usually there are rolls and pita bread in here as well but we've cleared them out.

This is the hold-all drawer. There are 2 bags of apple sauce in there. I make the apple sauce and then freeze it in 1/4 cup measures in my muffin tins before putting it in bags. It makes it easier to get out just what I need for recipes that way. There is also some puff pastry (the red bag), 2lbs of seitan, a bag of cranberries from last Christmas that I've never used and two bags of soft fruit from my Mother's garden destined for jam when I can afford the sugar and can be bothered.

The final drawer is the vegetable drawer, there is some sweetcorn, peas, edamame, green beans and the spinach from the vegetable box that I froze.

Hope that wasn't too dull! I'm supposed to tag 5 people but as I'm late posting this everyone has probably done it already. If you've not posted your freezer contents and wish to go ahead and say I tagged you!

Depressing Shopping

2008-10-19T07:02:00.000Z

Things are very tight this week as it's the week my rent goes out and drains my account of any available funds. I had to go around Sainsburys adding up everything that I was buying as I knew my funds were limited. Even making this shopping list was depressing as I had to cross off so many things that I ended up re-writing it and then crossed off still more things from it to get it down to something I could actually afford to buy.

I also couldn't go organic this week which I don't like. I really feel responsible for getting the best possible food into my boys as I can and organic is a part of that for me. My only consolation is that almost all the vegetables they will eat are organic and the food I buy doesn't tend to be overly processed or full of additives. Plus it's healthier than what about 95% of other 5 and 1 year olds are eating, but still, I felt the guilt when I had to look longingly at the organic and then pick up the non.

So, I bought apple squash, organic vanilla soya milk (it only comes as organic), 2 plain soya milk (I did discover that Sainsburys own is cheaper than the Alpro by 20p so I will stick to this brand if they have it in stock, I'd not seen it before), cereal, vanilla custard (instead of the vanilla puddings I normally get Piggle), yogurts, organic plain yogurt (for Jim's puddings), 2 chopped tomatoes, kidney beans, margarine (the Pure in there was extortionate so I went with the own brand stuff which we've never had before so I hope it's nice) and then using my £3 coupon I got organic garlic, organic onions, a courgette and a cabbage. There were also the standard 7 cans of catfood.

In total I spent £14.25 which with the vegetable and fruit box is £31.25 (around $54, the exchange rate is terrible at the moment).

I include the organic fruit and vegetables in my budget for each month so that money is always set aside, it's just the additional stuff that I run out of that I need to budget better. I will need to spread my stocking up over the month though, I am low on flour, sugar, coffee, oil etc so I will buy a few stocking up items each week instead of getting them all at once like I did last month. Trouble is that things get pushed further and further along and I end up not getting them which means that I can't make things that I'd like to. I need to make some more biscuits for Jim's lunches but I can't find a recipe that I have even the majority of the ingredients for at the moment. I'm still learning to balance my budget but the price of food is definitely rising, I could have bought a lot more for my money a few months back. I noticed today that the organic cereal I normally buy was priced at £2.20, when I got some last week it was £2 and when I started buying it in May it was £1.60. Oil is also very expensive, thus the price of margarine rising, regular Pure used to be 79p and today it was priced at £1.19 which is what the organic one used to cost....

Times are definitely getting harder so I will have to figure out ways to keep saving money. I discovered that we do have a Lidl near here so after the comments last week about their soya products I will check them out and see if I can save some money along the way. How are you all finding the rising prices, are they stopping you from buying what you want or need to make what you'd like to?

Broccoli Cheddar Cheeze Soup and Leek and Bean Cassoulet

2008-10-18T07:47:00.001Z

I seem to be lucky with Table For Two, it's a pretty old book (1996) but the recipes have held up well and are very simple to make. They also make just enough to feed a grown up and 2 children which means that there's no waste and we're not eating leftovers for days on end.

Blogger again making you turn your head to the side....

This soup is potato, carrot and onion boiled and then you add firm silken tofu, nutritional yeast, dried garlic and onion and soya milk to it and blend it all up. I used the whole package of tofu as I don't have anything to use the extra 2ozs that would have been left for. I steamed the broccoli over the vegetables as they cooked and instead of putting the florets in whole like the recipe suggests I pureed them as well, again so there were no arguments about what Jim would or wouldn't eat. Jim helped me make the crackers from Everyday Dish again and he loved them and had fun doing it.

The soup is really nice and cheesy tasting and very rich and thick, I could have thinned it a bit more with soya milk as it was a tad thick but we all enjoyed it anyway and Piggle had the leftovers for lunch the next day.

I've blogged this Cassolet before but I am proud of the way it turned out so I will show you a picture of it anyway!

I used canellini beans as they were what came out of the freezer first. The biscuits came out really well this time despite the mixture being too wet and my having to add a few more handfuls of flour into it to thicken it up as I went along. This would be such a nice dish to serve to guests, putting the cast iron pan on the table looking like this would impress anyone, and I'm looking forward to the leftovers for lunch on this cold day (I'll have to share with Piggle but there's plenty left so I don't mind).

Veggie Box

2008-10-17T07:15:00.002Z

So last week the veggies came late and this week they arrived a day early! This is what was in the box this week

onions, potatoes, cauliflower, spinach, carrots, broccoli, cucumber, swede and mushrooms.

I am still getting used to eating seasonally as this is on the second season we've been doing it (and we only had a week or so of summer boxes) and I know that we will get a bit tired of things (broccoli being the main one around here!) but on the other hand when new things appear in the box it will be more exciting and we will appreciate them more for not eating them every week.

So the menu for this week (where I don't have the boys for the weekend) is

1. Spinach and Mushroom Calzones - Vegan Italiano - it doesn't call for sauce but I will be using the sauce from Vegan With a Vengeance and probably putting some Melty White Cheese or similar in them.

2. Broccoli Creem Soup - Get It Ripe - I have decided that I will do soup for our Sunday evening meal (they have a main meal with their Dad) rather than just a cold sandwich. It will keep them warm and also stop there being leftover vegetables. Soup is something I can make before I leave to pick them up and then reheat when we're ready for it.

3. Butternut Squash, Corn and Cilantro Phyllo Rolls - Real Food Daily - these will be cilantroless as there wasn't any in the supermarket, I may throw some dry in though. The butternut squash we got in last week's box and the pastry I've had in the freezer forever. I've only used this book once before so I'm looking forward to trying more from it.

4. Indian Cauliflower and Kidney Bean Stew - Fresh From The Vegetarian Slow Cooker - not used the slow cooker for a meal in a while so it's due for a run again.

5. Italian Vegan Sausages - Everyday Dish blog with swede and carrots and potatoes. Yes, seitan again, but at least it's only once this week!

This is the fruit for the week, organic fair trade bananas which are great and the first time we've had the fair trade.

Wheat Meat Stroganoff and Basic Gluten Log

2008-10-16T06:58:00.001Z

In my quest to find the perfect seitan I came across this recipe on Cake Maker to The Stars which sounded really tasty so I gave it a go. This recipe makes a huge loaf, 3lbs worth of seitan in one go, and I finished off my first bag of vital wheat gluten making it (still got 3 more to go so no panic just yet!). It calls for Creole seasoning but there is a link in the recipe that takes you to a Google search for recipes, I used the one from Gumbo Pages and just made half in one of the little jars I keep my spices in. I realised after I'd used it that I'd omitted the black pepper, but it was plenty hot and spicy without it so it was fine.

You steam this seitan and I only just got it crammed into my steamer pan. It does seem underdone when it's finished steaming but the notes on the recipe says that's the way it's supposed to be. It did get a little firmer overnight but I think if I wanted to use this without cooking it further I would steam it for an hour and a half to make sure it's fully done, it just seems oddly wobbly to me!

Next time I will puree the onion mixture in the blender rather than the food processor as my onions didn't get completely blended (as you can see) and I think it would be nicer without bits of onion floating around in it. I had enough to make our dinner and I also have 2 1lb pieces in the freezer for future use so it was well worth the little effort it took to be stocked up on seitan for a while.

Anyway, I made the seitan to go in this lovely Stroganoff from Vegan Planet that I've made before using tinned seitan. Apparently I've not blogged it before though so here it is!

It's a really simple recipe with not that many ingredients but lord does it taste lovely when it's done. I used vegan plain yogurt and a little bit of lemon juice instead of vegan sour cream as I didn't want to make any and you can't buy it anywhere I've seen. Instead of just putting the seitan in at the end to warm it through I put it in for the full 25 minutes simmering time and it firmed up really nicely and was very tasty.

As you can see with your own 2 eyes I served it over tagliatelli. Jim ate mainly pasta and seitan (brown bits or fake meat as it's called in our house, he goes to a Catholic school and I'm not sure how well it would be taken if he went to school and said he had satan for dinner!) and Piggle and I ate all of ours and enjoyed it a lot. The leftovers reheated well for my lunch the next day too.

Just In Case

2008-10-15T06:53:00.000Z

Again, blogger is being a pain in the ass and flipping photos however it feels like it...

You think that I always stick to my menu and cook interesting meals every night, behold a night where I really would have ordered a pizza were such a vegan thing available in this area but as it's not (and we don't have the funds for that kind of thing anyway) we ended up eating Macaroni cheese with cauliflower.

I was supposed to be making the Cauliflower Lentil Curry from Veganomicon but I couldn't get myself motivated and I knew that if I just made cauliflower cheese I would have to endure a meal full of 'I don't like cauliflower' comments from Jim which would have sent me over the edge, so I just mixed in some macaroni and only made him eat 2 small pieces of cauliflower and the breakdown was avoided.

The sauce is once again from Yellow Rose Recipes, if I have vegan cheese to spare this is by far my favourite cheese sauce to date.

So, a quick and easy meal and Piggle and I enjoyed the cauliflower!

Almost All-American Potpie and Simple Seitan

2008-10-14T07:18:00.003Z

Carrying on with the seitan obsession I made some of the Simple Seitan to go in this pie. The recipe itself is very simple, however the cooking of it on my electric cooker turned out to be anything but. The seitan needs to be simmered gently for an hour, but on my cooker if I put it on 3 it doesn't simmer at all, switch it up to 4 and it boils... Therefore the texture of my seitan was less than wonderful, a bit spongy on the outside which wasn't what I was going for.

I have since read in blogland about simmering the seitan in the oven in a covered dish so I will try that next time, at least the oven can maintain a constant heat. My other option is to try another pan and see if that works, but after turning the heat up and down over and over again for an hour I think it's easier just to bung it in the oven! The taste of the seitan is lovely though, but I do want to try and find some chicken flavour stock cubes (we don't seem to have them over here) so that my seitan doesn't taste like vegetables from the stock powder.

I'd noticed that this pie said it took an hour and twenty minutes to make. Remembering that the last recipe I made from this book took me that amount of time before getting it in the oven I set to work as soon as I got Jim home from school and I was glad I did because once again I seem to be the slowest cook in the world and it was just ready in time for dinner even with the early start.

I made the filling first thinking that I would leave it to rest and then have a break before making the pastry. I had to throw away my first lot of chickpea flour as I managed to burn it, the second time I set the heat a lot lower and it all worked out fine. Once I'd finished the filling I looked at the clock and realised I needed to get it in the oven pronto so I went right on to making the crust. My crust was a little bit sticky, probably because I didn't have time to put it in the fridge to rest before using it.

Next time I will make the pastry earlier in the day so it's not so much work all in one go. I will also use a taller dish so that I can have thicker pastry as I think the size of this dish made it a bit too thin. However, even with not being cold when it went into the oven the pastry was still very flaky and the pie filling was lovely, just the right combination of vegetables and the gravy was very tasty.

Blogger is turning some of my photographs sideways for no reason again....

I served it with some runner beans and we all really enjoyed it, my Mother came for dinner and she really liked it to and no one commented that the seitan was a little bit spongy which was a relief!

Beans In Leek Sauce and "Ham"

2008-10-13T07:36:00.007Z

This may not be the most photogenic meal I've ever cooked but wow was it tasty! It was a very simple combination of haricot beans, cheezly vegan cheddar and leeks in a white sauce. The boys both wolfed theirs down (first time Jim's not complained about eating leeks) and I really enjoyed it as well, it was really cheesy and the leeks were just the right flavour to do with that.

As you can see we had roast potatoes with it, the recipe actually suggests this so you have a bit of crunch in your meal. I managed to cook them long enough this time, however the pan I cooked them in seems to be loosing it's non-stick coating so there were a few potatoes that has to have bits cut off them before they could be eaten, will have to remember not to use it again for this kind of thing and it's annoying as it's one of my newest tins too...

I should use this book more often really, there are some really good recipes in it and lots that I would like to try, I will move it to a better position on the shelf so I remember to check it!

The "ham" was made seperately just as an experiment to see if it would be nice in sandwiches. I found the recipe on Just the Food. The smell was great, the flavours really worked well together but the texture really wan't nice, it was very dry and just not the type of seitan that I enjoy eating. I think I will hold onto the recipe and next time try 3/4 of a cup of vital wheat gluten and only 1/4 of a cup of chickpea flour and see if that makes the difference or not. I fried some of it up and had it with the heated up leftovers of the Beans In Leek Sauce and it wasn't too bad that way but I couldn't think how to use up the rest of it. It was develoloped to go in a soup so I'm wondering if when you put it in the soup it soaks up the juices and is less dry. One to play around with anyway.

Seitan O'Greatness with Mashed Garlic Potatoes With Kale (plus some Apple Butter!)

2008-10-12T07:22:00.012Z

So now I finally have my paws on some vital wheat gluten I thought it was about time I joined the Seitan O'Greatness parade and made some of my own. If there is anyone out there who *hasn't* heard of this recipe yet it can be found in the PPK forums and is basically a spicy baked large seitan sausage looking as so:

I only made one change to the recipe and that was to add less black pepper than called for as I was intending to serve it to kids. I even used the recommended amount of cayenne, although when I make this again I will leave it out as Jim found it too spicy (Piggle gummed away at it though and seemed to enjoy it!). I will also only use 1 tbsp of oil in it as I found it a little greasy and there were plenty of other liquids in it to keep it moist.

I made it the night before I wanted to use it as you need to let it fully cool. When it came out of the oven it was a bit spongy when I poked it but by the time it was at room temperature it was much more solid and the next day it was totally solid.

This is how I served it:

I just fried it in a little oil for a minute or so on each side to heat it through. We all really enjoyed the mashed potatoes, they were a nice change from our usual plain ones and can I just say once more how lovely it is to see a 5 year old munching away on green leafy vegetables, perhaps I will give cabbage another go soon and see if he'll eat it now (Piggle likes it but Jim isn't so keen). I didn't make any changes to the potato recipe except perhaps to use a little more kale than called for as I wanted to use up the whole bag I'd had in the vegetable box. The butternut squash was the remainder of the one I used for soup and I just baked it in the oven with a little oil and a tiny sprinkling of brown sugar as I'm out of maple syrup. Piggle absolutely wolfed down the squash (I just cut his squash and seitan up in to little cubes so he could feed himself and I pureed the potatoes for him as gums don't work so well on leaf vegetables) and Jim ate all of his as well.

On Sunday when I picked the boys up from my sister's house (it's where we meet their Dad to do the handover) she and I went out and picked this huge bag of cooking apples from one of her trees

I know I'm going to make some mint jelly from it (which is apple jelly with mint added) when I've bought some more sugar but I also had a little craving for apple butter which you can't seem to find over here. I had a Google and found a recipe on Recipezaar (recipe number 11492) which had 33 positive ratings so I figured it must be ok (a lot of those reviewers had made it multiple times as well). So, I filled up my slow cooker with apples (the recipe says to fill it this full)

There were 17 of them in there (and the bag is still full). I put it on overnight and came down the next morning to nicely cooked down dark brown applesauce (you add vinegar to brown the apples) to which I added a cup of white sugar, a cup of brown sugar, 4 tsps of cinnamon and 1/4 tsp of nutmeg. The recipe calls for cloves rather than nutmeg but cloves are the work of the devil and don't live in my house so I subbed a flavour I do love. Also, the original recipe intends to put whoever eats this into a diabetic coma as it calls for *3 cups* of white sugar plus the brown... I wanted a little tartness of the apples to come through as well as the apple taste rather than just the taste of sugar so I amended it to suit.

Not very photogenic really!

I boiled it for a few hours with the lid off to get rid of most of the water (I had put it on on high overnight and it should have been on low but it didn't seem to matter) and the resulting texture is a nice thick one that's not quite set, just how it should be from my taste memories.

This is what I got, 4 jars of lovely apple butter which was wonderful on my toast this morning!
The fourth jar would have been totally full had I not overfilled the other 3, so I'm calling it 4 jars rather than 3 and a bit!

I have given my sister a jar and my Mother a jar so as soon as I find some kilner type jars for canning I will be making a few more batches of this (apple butter won't keep like regular jam, especially as I used less sugar so it should really be canned/bottled) as it's so easy to make the results are just amazing.

Still thinking about what to do with the rest of those apples. If I had spare pie dishes I might make a few and freeze them ready to be used later but I think I only own 1, maybe I will pick a few more up when I go shopping next week along with some pre-made pastry if I'm feeling lazy!

A Weekend Alone

2008-10-11T07:10:00.000Z

I eat differently when the boys aren't here. Obviously when I am feeding my children I feel that I need to give them a balanced and healthy diet but when I'm alone I tend to use up whatever leftovers there are and do quick and simple food that I can throw together and eat in front of the tv or computer (we eat together at the kitchen table for our meals, I grew up doing it and insist upon it), it also gives me a chance to eat stuff that the boys wouldn't like.

Friday evening I came home and whipped this up (after I got the bread going),

Leftover wholemeal tortillas, my last tin of seitan, the sweet peppers I bought during the week and a large onion fried together for a few minutes and then a bit of hoisin sauce mixed through. Very very tasty meal.

I got the bread cooked and left it to cool overnight before slicing it and putting all but 2 slices in the freezer (we don't use bread fast enough to keep it out).

Saturday breakfast was a more leisurely affair than usual, no yelling or crying hungry children, no one to feed cereal to and the time to make what I actually wanted for my breakfast. I had fried mushrooms on home made toast with fresh coffee.

After breakfast I went and met my Mother and Father and after a little shopping with them and some lunch (more mushrooms this time with tomato and basil on a panini and more coffee) I went and did the shopping as I didn't need much and it's easier to rush in without having to put a baby in a trolley.

I bought 2 packages of organic puddings, organic chocolate milk, cheezly cheddar, organic yogurts, soya cream, tagliatelle, soya milk, an organic green pepper and parsnips. I also got 6 tins of cat food and a packet of night time pants for Jim. In total I spent £8.68 in Sainsburys and £7.70 in the health food shop which is a pretty good £33.88 for the week including the vegetable box (around $60).

After a bit of sewing I made some biscuits for Jim's school lunches. This was a really simple recipe and they've come out really well, I adore the taste of cooked sesame seeds. The recipe is called Sesame Seed and Oat Crunchies and they are actually crunchy which I'm pleased with! There are 3 kinds of oats in them as well, rolled oats, oatmeal and oat bran, seemed a little excessive to me but as I had them all I gave it a go. I have to say though that I much prefer American recipes for baking where you measure things rather than English ones where you have to weigh everything. I find weighing very annoying and time consuming.

Now we just have to see if Jim will eat them or not.

For dinner I did my favourite standby which is caramelised onions over pasta. It's such a simple dish but oh so tasty. Although both the boys like onions I don't think they're ready for a meal that only contains onions as the vegetable so I will carry on enjoying it on my own!

So, that was my Friday night and Saturday on my own... Sunday afternoon saw the return of the noisy duo in the afternoon and back to cooking full meals on Monday (they eat their main meal with their Dad on a Sunday so I only do them a sandwich when they get home).

And The Veggies Of The Week Are.....

2008-10-10T07:00:00.002Z

My veggies didn't arrive before I left to drop the boys off with their Dad so I didn't get to spend my Friday afternoon in the usual lovely pursuit of recipes to use for the week. However, I did spend Friday evening doing that instead and finding ways to use these vegetables.

We got another huge butternut squash, onions, celery, carrots, yet more broccoli (!), potatoes, leeks, cauliflower and one ear of sweetcorn.

So, I came up with the following (7 meals as I have the boys next weekend):

1. Red Lentil Cauliflower Curry - Veganomicon - with rice

2. Leek and Bean Cassoulet With Biscuits - Veganomicon - with runner beans (from last week's box)

3. Broccoli Cheeze Soup - Table For Two - with bread of some sort

4. Almost All American Seitan Potpie - Veganomicon - with runner beans

5. Wheat Meat Stroganoff - Vegan Planet - with tagliatelle

6. Beans in Leek Sauce - The Bean Book - with roast potatoes

7. Hearty Winter Roots Soup - Vegetarian Soups for All Seasons - with bread of some sort

I realised that I didn't find a use for the butternut squash, but it's not going to go off anytime soon so I'm not worried about it. I just couldn't face soup from it again 2 weeks in a row and none of my recipe books gave me anything else interesting to do with it (besides risotto but I didn't fancy that for some reason). I just hope we don't get another one next week or I'll be over run with them! I didn't put the sweetcorn in anything either, I'm thinking perhaps I'll have it for lunch one day.

This was the fruit for the week:

I am thinking of plum crumble one night to use them up and I used up some apples from previous weeks plus some that my sister gave me off the tree from her garden to make a huge pot of applesauce which I will freeze in 1/4 cup portions for future use.

Garlicky Broccoli, Corn and Bean Burritos with Melty White Cheez

2008-10-09T07:49:00.002Z

I didn't think I'd ever meet a burrito I didn't like, but with this dish I met my match. I really didn't think that any of the flavours in this dish worked with each other, it was just a terrible mish mash of tastes and not enough of any one of them for the taste buds to have anything to work with. Even the broccoli seemed out of place, which was odd considering it was the main ingredient for the filling. I wondered if perhaps I'd done something wrong, missed a flavour that would have pulled it all together or something, but looking at the recipe I actually didn't change anything except cutting the amount of curry powder in the beans (and I think stronger curry flavoured beans would have made it worse instead of better).

Strangely enough Jim said he liked it, but I think he mainly ate the cheese (I used this recipe a lot and we all really like it), tortillas and sweetcorn and ignored the rest!

It was impossible to get a decent picture of these cut open, this was the best of the bunch. I did like the beans in the recipe, although if I use them again I'll use chili powder rather than curry powder in them.

It's been a while since I cooked something I really didn't like and didn't want to finish. Luckily Piggle isn't so picky yet and maybe it tastes better all blended together anyway, poor boy has the leftovers for two lunches to come!

Questions Questions Questions

2008-10-08T07:25:00.001Z

Liz of Food Snobbery is my Hobbery posted these VeganMoFo questions so I've decided to try and fill them out.

1. Favorite non-dairy milk?
I buy Alpro unsweetened, it's fortified so the boys get extra vitamins and calcium and it's also only 80p a carton which makes it amongst the cheapest around which is a bonus. I also adore Alpro organic vanilla soya milk (as do the boys), I have to make sure I don't drink it all up before they get any.

2. What are the top 3 dishes/recipes you are planning to cook?
That all depends on what my organic vegetable box contains this week. I know there will be more seitan to be made (Seitan O'Greatness to be made over the weekend ready for Monday's dinner) but beyond that I'm really not sure, I'll post my menus as usual as my veggies arrive.

3. Topping of choice for popcorn?
Soya margarine, salts and nutritional yeast.

4. Most disastrous recipe/meal failure?
I tried to make some lentil burgers from a Rose Elliot recipe once that went so badly wrong I got incredibly angry and actually broke the pen I was writing 'DOESN'T WORK' with in huge letters across the recipes. Besides that things go wrong all the time really, I just keep cooking and hope there's enough good things to balance out the mistakes.

5. Favorite pickled item?
ummm, not really into pickles although I do like bread and butter pickles.

6. How do you organize your recipes?
All my books are on shelves, I have a notebook where I write or stick ones I've tried from online or magazines and have liked and I have a folder full of stuff I've printed off the internet or ripped out of magazines and want to try (but some of it has been in there for years...).

7. Compost, trash, or garbage disposal?
yes, yes and no. We don't have garbage disposals in this country and the kind of freak me out anyway, the seem kind of dangerous and why would you want to put your rubbish down your sink rather than compost it or throw it away?

8. If you were stranded on an island and could only bring 3 foods...what would they be (don't worry about how you'll cook them)?
Hmmm, seitan for sure as I adore it, peanut butter and lots of veggies (cheating I know but I really can't think of anything).

9. Fondest food memory from your childhood?
Going out for huge pizzas when we lived in CA. There were 6 of us so pizzas were giant. We also always had a traditional Sunday lunch and Christmas dinner and those were always lovely meals.

10. Favorite vegan ice cream?
vanilla or chocolate Swedish Glace.

11. Most loved kitchen appliance?
My food processor, although I use my stick blender more.

12. Spice/herb you would die without?
basil

13. Cookbook you have owned for the longest time?
The Cranks Cookbook, it's actually in pieces as one of my sister's dogs ate it when I lived with her and I've not used it for years but I won't throw it away, it was my first vegetarian cookbook.

14. Favorite flavor of jam/jelly?
marmalade.

15. Favorite vegan recipe to serve to an omni friend?
The only omni's I cook for are my parents and my sister so I just make them whatever I feel like and they can live with it! My Dad has even stopped complaining now which is amazing!

16. Seitan, tofu, or tempeh?
Seitan all the way, I can't stand tempeh, ick.

17. Favorite meal to cook (or time of day to cook)?
I don't mind. I am not that good at lunches though, they throw me. I like a good brunch but little kids tend to want to eat as soon as they get up.

18. What is sitting on top of your refrigerator?
all my jars of flour, paper napkins for Jim's lunches and all my tin foil, baking paper, sandwich bags etc.

19. Name 3 items in your freezer without looking.
bread, frozen peas and Swedish Glace ice cream.

20. What's on your grocery list?
cat food, tamari, night time nappies for Jim, yogurts...

21. Favorite grocery store?
Mattas International Supermarket in Liverpool, but I don't get to go there anymore so a good Sainsburys will have to do.

22. Name a recipe you'd love to veganize, but haven't yet.
I can't get yorkshire puddings right, I'd love to figure it out.

23. Food blog you read the most (besides Isa's because I know you check it everyday). Or maybe the top 3?
I have 82 vegan blogs in Google Reader and I couldn't choose.

24. Favorite vegan candy/chocolate?
dairy free chocolate buttons, can't remember who makes them but they're in a purple packet.

25. Most extravagant food item purchased lately?
organic vegan chocolate spread.

And the second one!

1. If you have to choose between locally grown or organic, which do you usually choose?
I always go for Organic if I can, of course being local and organic is better but you can't always get what you want.

2. Favorite way to prepare potatoes:
Roast with some sea salt.

3. Do you press your tofu before preparing/cooking it (if you eat soy)?
sometimes, depends what I'm doing with it and if I've planned ahead.

4. Name your favorite recipe that is a tradition in your family:
can't think of any traditional family recipes.

5. Any food allergies?
No.

6. When you want to go to a fancy dinner, where do you go?
There's nowhere around here that I can eat out easily so I go to my kitchen.

7. When you have a cold, what do you crave?
usually noodles of some sort.

8. What kind of water do you drink? (Filtered, spring, tap, etc.)
tap, bottled is a waste of resources and a waste of money. My water is spring water too so it's free. I should probably filter but having to remember to refill it annoys me and I always worry it'll be a little staganant from standing there.

9. Name a flavor of soda you'd love to see:
not into fizzy stuff really.

10. If the recipes you ate as a child were compiled into a cookbook, what would the title be?
150 Ways to Feed a Family of 6 With 1lb of Hamburger and a Pudding.

11. If you were allowed to grow one food that can't grow in your climate, what would it be?
bananas

12. Favorite type of mushroom?
I'm not a mushroom snob, I like them all.

13. Most frustrating part of your kitchen?
It was built by a man who didn't cook. The piece of counter beside my cooker has a join in it which means that your chopping board doesn't lie flat. It's the most logical place to chop your vegetables so you can put them right into your pan but obviously he didn't think of that as the counter the other side of the sink where a join wouldn't have mattered at all is a single piece of counter top. (I will say though that he didn't have his cooker where I have mind, although where mine is is the most logical place, he had his freestanding which I detest, where do you put your spoon down and how do you avoid throwing everything on the floor as you walk back and forth to the cooker?). There are also only 3 plugs in my kitchen that I can use (there are 2 that the microwave, fridge and freezer are plugged into too). I don't mean 3 double plugs either, I mean 3 plugs, so they all have multi-plugs in them. There isn't even a plug under the counter top for the washing machine and dishwasher, I have an extension cable running from one of the ones above the counter to behind the machines so they can be plugged in. I obviously have some repressed kitchen rage going on there as I went on for quite while huh?

14. Last food you burned?
some garlic last night, but not so badly I couldn't use it.

15. Usual response to a veg*n's favorite question, "But where do you get your protein?":
you know, I've never ever been asked that question.....

16. If you were baking your own birthday cake today, what flavor would it be?
carrot cake, and I do have to bake my own cakes if I want one....

17. Favorite brand of chocolate chips?
I can only find one kind over here and I can't remember what they're called now...

18. You have $200 of your tax return reserved for Williams Sonoma- What do you buy?
what is Williams Sonoma?

19. Do you plan your menus in advance? Any tips to share?
yes, each week when my vegetable box arrives. I try and use what I have to hand already so I don't have to shop for much and I tend to try and have one soup, one mexican or chinese meal, one pasta meal etc to give some variety. I mainly cook stuff that stands alone and doesn't need side dishes as it's faster in the evenings when the kids want to eat, but I also put in meals that need bread on the side or a vegetable if I have some that needs to be used up. I also try not to make chili two weeks in a row etc and I get out books I've not used for a while to see if they can offer us anything new rather than sticking to the same cookery books over and over again.

20. You have 3 minutes before you have to leave the house and you're starving- What do you eat?
toast and eat it on the way. I *should* grab some fruit from the fruit bowl but I always forget it's there even though it's in plain sight....

21. If Martha Stewart, Paula Deen, and Rachel Ray got into a fight, who would win and how?
I don't know who Paula Deen is and I've never seen Martha on tv so I don't know how tough she is. However I have seen Rachel Ray and I think she could probably stand up for herself if need be, all that laughing she does has to suppress a whole lot of rage.

22. If you eat oatmeal, what do you add to it before serving?
milk and brown sugar or maple syrup.

23. If you got to travel to one country and learn all the traditional dishes there, where would you go (ignore commitments in your current place of residence)?
Mexico

24. Favorite late night snack?
popcorn

25. Favorite springtime food?
god it's so cold here I can't even think of spring or what food is available then! lol

26. Favorite food-related magazine?
don't have one, although I think I'm getting Vegetarian Times for my Birthday.

27. Which do you prefer: shoyu, tamari, conventional soy sauce, or Bragg's Aminos?
never used shoyu, I think all three have their place and you can't just sub one for the other willy nilly.

28. What vegetable or fruit do you dislike the most?
I don't like oranges and I'm not a big aubergine (eggplant) fan either.

29. Name a holiday food you look forward to all year long:
can't think of one, I tend to make what I want whether it's a holiday or not.

30. If you could convert anyone to veganism with your magic wand, who would you convert?
The Pope

And the third one!

1. Name a song that involves food in some way.

Ani Difranco Come Away From It 'Do you gotta have a tripledecker super fudge sundae with a goddamn cherry on top?'

2. What criteria do you use when choosing a new cookbook to buy?

It has to be at least mainly vegan (or vegetarian if it's by someone like Robin Robertson who gives vegan subs)! I'm really not picky, I may not use all of my books but they have all inspired me in one way or another to cook which isn't a bad thing.

3. What did you eat today?

Only breakfast so far, large cup of coffee from my cafetiere and 2 slices of homemade bread toasted, both with Pure margarine and one with peanut butter, the other with chocolate spread (it's a Sunday! Normally I'd just have one slice and not the chocolate!). About to go and pour the second cup of coffee and once I've drunk that I'll get on with my day.

4. Name a vegan food that you know exists but you have never tried.

ohhh, that's a hard one.... Ummmmmmm......

5. The Food Network just called and needs you to start your new show tomorrow. What will the title of the show be?

I don't think they'd give me a choice would they? They'd come up with something corny and silly. I think simple would be best, something like Anna Cooks Meat and Dairy Free...

6. Favorite hot sauce or other spicy condiment?

I love the chipotle Tabasco, it's actually the only hot sauce I own! lol

7. How old were you when you became vegetarian/vegan?

16 vegetarian, 31 vegan (I also was mainly vegan for about 3 years when I was 18-21)

8. Favorite vegan cheeze?

I'm not a big fan really, I buy Cheezly because Jim likes it and it's cheaper than Scheese. I did like the smoked Scheese but that stuff is pricey.

9. Cutest baby animal?

kittens, although lambs are pretty damn cute too.

10. Favorite type of jam/jelly/marmalade/preserves?

I like lime marmalade, but I've not found an organic one yet.

11. Do you take any vitamins/supplements?

yes, I take a multi-vitamin and both the boys do too, Jim's is chewable and Piggle's is liquid.

12. What food/dish most embodies the Fall season?

Butternut Squash Soup and pumpkin muffins (must bake some soon)

13. What food would you have a hard time living without?

there's so much! lol I'd hate to be without onions.

14. Coffee, tea, or hot chocolate?

all, depends on the time of day and how I feel, only decaf though.

15. It's 10PM and you're starving. What do you eat?

popcorn or toast

16. If you have an animal companion, what is his/her favorite food?

My cats just get tinned cat food with boring dry food on top, they seem to like it, there's hardly every any left when I wash the bowls out.

17. Worst injury you've gotten in the kitchen?

I burn myself quite a bit, I have a scar on my arm from touching the oven rack whilst trying to get something out of it. I also cut myself quite often, sharpen the knife up and then cut my finger instead of the vegetable, I'm not known for my co-ordination it has to be said....

18. When you have a food-related question, who do you call?

My Mother, My older Sister and Google

19. Summer is ending- What food will you miss most?
salads, although I was really fed up with them by the end of the summer, but I'll be waiting eagerly for the first huge fresh salad next summer.

20. What snacks do you keep in your purse/backpack/desk at work?

I stay at home all day so I can nip into the kitchen whenever I want, which isn't always a good thing!

21. Favorite soup to make on a rainy day?

butternut squash, sweetcorn chowder or carrot soup

22. What's your favorite combination of fresh vegetable and/or fruit juices?

I like V8, besides that I don't drink a lot of fruit or vegetable juices.

23. Favorite brand of root beer?

I like the Bulldog one, you can't get it over here so I don't drink a lot of it but when we were on holiday in Oregon I wasn't without one for long.

24. Make up your own question!

how many more questions will there be to answer this VeganMoFo?!?!

Hope that wasn't too dull.....

More UK Vegan Products

2008-10-07T06:43:00.006Z

This is just another photo dump with pithy comments about vegan products available in the UK. I'm hoping again that it might help anyone who's not sure what's out there or what vegan product they can buy to replace a non-vegan one and that posting the pictures of them will give you an idea of what you're looking for when you go shopping.

Pure is the main vegan margarine available in supermarkets. It comes in sunflower, soya or organic and is priced anywhere from 90p to £1.10 depending where you find it and which one you pick (I remember that I used to pay 79p for it when I first went vegan, guess those prices really are rising). I don't use Pure all that regularly anymore as I find that it doesn't always work that well in baking and cooking. Once you've softened or melted it it will never go back to being solid again which makes it pretty useless for biscuits that you refrigerate before rolling out. I bought it this time as it's cheaper than the regular marg I use and I was trying to save a few pennies, but I think it's pretty popular stuff which as it's so easy to get your hands on.

This is actually the first time I've bought the chocolate custard, I normally get the vanilla flavour but decided to give Jim a treat (not sure if Piggle will eat is as he's not a chocolate fan). The vanilla custard is really thick when it's cold but goes quite runny when warm which I find annoying as I'm from the 'slice of custard' fan club, but it still has a great taste and my kids love it.

I know most peanut butter is vegan but this one contains no palm oil and is organic, and it's also the best tasting organic peanut butter I've tried. I like my pnb crunchy and despite avoiding the types with too much sugar in them I do like a little bit of salt in it, I think it stops it from being too plain. Yes, this type is expensive so I wouldn't use it for baking anything that called for a cup of pnb, but as it's just peanuts a little goes a long way and the taste is just lovely.

This is the chocolate spread I found in the organic farm shop. I'm a fan of Plimal egg free mayonnaise so I thought I would probably like the texture of their chocolate spread and I was right. I'm really looking forward to having this on hot toast and Jim was ever so excited when I told him that every now and again he could have chocolate on his sandwiches!

These are Jim's favourite cheese slices for his lunch. They basically have the rubber texture of all processed cheese but they do have a nice flavour and they also melt well if you should run out of any other cheese to put on top of something. I try to always have these in as they seem easier in the mornings than trying to slice cheese off a block, although with the extra plastic packaging they're not as eco-friendly.

As I said in my shopping post I normally buy Alpro yogurts (see below) but I do like to mix it up a little and make sure that Piggle isn't eating the same stuff over and over again. The single yogurts are a bit pricey at 59p each but the flavours are really nice (he particularly likes the guava and apricot one) and it's a nice thick creamy yogurt. My favourite is the lemon one which is tangy and sweet all at the same time. This plain yogurt is only 79p a tub and the smaller size means that you won't waste any if you can't get through the big Alpro one (see below).

Alpro are usually the only soya yogurts that you will find in a supermarket. They're the same company as Provamel but Provamel are only found in health food shops and all their products are organic. There is more and more organic Alpro about now that the companies have merged though such as these peach and blueberry (not mixed, 2 of each flavour!) yogurts. We go through 1 or 2 yogurts a day in this house and Alpro are usually about £1.49 for 4 organic but they are often on special offer and the expiry dates tend to be quite long (although the date on these isn't I've just noticed from the picture, but he'll eat them well before then) so I tend to stock up whenever they're on sale.

I love Mirin and was convinced by my health food shop in Liverpool to try the Clearspring one rather than the synthetic one they had in stock even thought it was more expensive because the taste was better and I'd never buy another brand now. This organic version is even more expensive but I've never used more than a tablespoon at a time in a recipe so it lasts a long time.

I couldn't be without a box of No Egg. I am not the type to happily blend down a few flax seeds for an egg replacer (all that washing up and picking them out of the grinder) and it's hard to find an unclaimed banana in this house so No Egg always comes to my rescue and has never let me down. It's not too expensive when you consider that a box will last me over a year, I've not tried to make quiche from it like they show on the box, maybe one day I'll get up the nerve!

This agave nectar is available in most Sainsburys stores . Jim likes this on his plain yogurt when we don't have any maple syrup and I've used it in all kinds of recipes (Dreena Burton seems to use a lot of it in her recipes) to great success. A little goes a long way so I only need one about every six months or so which spreads the cost quite nicely.

I can't remember now why I bought harissa, I know I saw it in about 3 recipes in a week but now I can't find any of them. I picked this up from the health food shop for a couple of pounds and I will use it one day!

My household is split on Marmite, as anyone in the UK will know the advert says you'll either love it or hate it and Piggle is on the love side and Jim most definitely on the hate! I wasn't a fan until I was pregnant with Piggle and had to get my B12 up as much as I could as my test results came back very low (perhaps that's why he likes it, I ate a ton of it!). It adds a slightly meaty salty flavour to things and you can bung it in stews and soups or just have it on toast or sandwiches. The jars might be small but they seem to last forever, I buy perhaps 1 a year if that.

I've found this soya cream in supermarkets now and again and you can now also get a Provamel organic one from health food shops. Not only is it nice over deserts but it also doesn't curdle in hot liquids which means you can use it in soups and also in your coffee if you're so inclined. It's pretty reasonably priced as well and you don't have to refrigerate it until it's open so you can keep it in the cupboard until you need it or find a use for it.

This is the margarine I normally use as it's fortified and the Pure isn't. It's got a really nice taste (I am not a fan of their sunflower marg, it's got an odd flavour) and will also solidify again after it's been creamed in biscuits or whatever. I pay about £1.64 for it which isn't cheap but it's worth it to me to get the extra vitamins into the boys however I can. The organic one is nice as well but like all organic things they're not allowed to fortify them.

This is what you want if your recipe says Vegetarian Oyster Sauce. It's what it used to be called before Trading Standards made them change the name as there was no oysters in it. This is of course great in stir fries but I also just mix some through some noodles for lunch and it's lovely. I have bought it from health food shops and Chinese supermarkets.

I found these in Asda and had to have some as I make so much Mexican food and had never seen jalapenos in the UK before. They're pickled so they will last an age in the fridge and they taste really nice, giving that little bit of heat to a dish without blowing your head off or making your eyes water.

This is the usual brand of plain yogurt I buy for Jim and I have also baked with it and made dips and spreads from it and it works well in all things. It usually has a pretty long use by date and you can have it opened in the fridge for quite a while without it going off too which is useful when you have a 5 year old who wants some one day and then won't touch it again for a week and a half. It's available in most supermarkets and won't cost you a ton. They've also changed the packaging recently too so you can peel off the cardboard label and recycle it which always amuses Jim!

Anyway, I hope some of that has been useful to someone somewhere and I'll keep doing posts with new products as and when I find them.

So Much For a Small Shopping Trip...

2008-10-06T06:57:00.002Z

My Mother and I went to Pickering as she wanted to show me an organic farm shop that she and my sister had come across. Besides a wide range of organic vegetables (quite reasonably priced) it also had quite a lot of other organic products, many of them vegan, on offer. I did really well in there and only bought one thing that wasn't on my list, but we've agreed to try and go back there perhaps once a month if we can as they have a good range of organic herbs and spices, cleaning products and lots of other bits and bobs I'd like to try out when I have more money.

I was impressed with the £15.70 I spent for quite a large bag of stuff but then we moved on to Morrisons for the rest of my list which also wasn't too bad and only cost another £20.99. Then, as Morrisons was lacking on a few things, we went onto a health food shop where I found nutritional yeast for the first time in this area. It was actually on my list for this week but I picked up 2 of them while I was there just to be sure I always have some to hand. They also had cheese slices for Jim's lunch (on my list) so I picked up 2 packages of those which will last 3 weeks but in total that set me back £7.76. There were still a couple of things that I needed though (which is why I'm not a Morrisons shopper most of the time, they don't ever have everything I need) and I went into the Co-op and spent another £6.55 on coffee, flavoured soya milks and more of the recycled toilet roll which was on special offer at 99p a pack (I now have 16 rolls which will last us a really long time!). So, in total I spent £51 (around $91) plus the £17 for the fruit and vegetables from the box is a total of £68 (around $122) and about double what I had actually wanted to spend.

However, I still have enough money left to do a small shop next week which should hopefully be all I need if I plan my meals right and I did pick up some really good stuff this week which will last me a long time.

I bought 2 tins of nutritional yeast, 2 packets of Toffuti cheese slices, 4 organic Sojasun yogurts (a bit more expensive than Alpro but I like Piggle to have a variety rather than the same brand all the time), organic Sojasun plain yogurt, 2 packages of recycled toilet roll, 2 boxes of organic cereal (one was half price and although I didn't need it this week I probably would have needed some next week), chocolate soya milk, strawberry soya milk, organic chocolate custard, 2 regular soya milks, wholewheat tortillas, organic orange squash, 12 packets of crisps for Jim's lunches (on special offer with a pretty big discount), fair trade ground coffee (25% off, I would obviously prefer organic fair trade but the only stuff I saw in the farm shop was £2 more than I paid for this), white vinegar, scouring pads, organic sugar, 2 lots of organic juice boxes, 2 organic puddings, 2 lots of organic mushrooms, organic peppers, organic onions, organic bananas, tin foil, organic Alpro yogurts, organic chickpeas, organic chocolate spread (my big treat from the farm shop!), organic peanut butter, olive oil, organic margarine, lime juice and organic white flour.

The vegetables were bought with vouchers called Healthy Start that I get from the Government each month. They give them to low income families who have kids (I think up to the age of 3) and you get £12 a month (around $21) which you can spend on cows milk, baby formula, fresh vegetables or vitamins. I used to use mine up no problem but since I've had the organic box (and they don't take the vouchers for that unfortunately) I don't need as much. I also used to use half of them getting Piggle's formula each month (it meant it only cost me £1.99 instead of £7.99) but now that he's only having it on his cereal in the mornings as he decided to drop his evening bottle a few weeks back I don't use a whole one each month. So, I treated myself to some mushrooms and peppers that I will cook up over the weekend while the boys are with their Dad. I also got the bananas as we can never have too many and onions as the same goes for them, I seem to go through them really fast. I also got my Mother some fresh corn with the £6 in vouchers I used today so the vegetables in my list actually cost me nothing which is always nice!

So, pretty pricey but also a ton of food, I seemed to be unpacking the bags forever and could hardly fit it all on the kitchen table. I have stuff in there that will last me a long time and I also have replenished the things like squash for the boys that I ran out of when I did my tiny shops a few weeks back. I'm hoping that now my cupboards are more stocked with the necessities that I can go back to smaller shops again, mind you I said that last week didn't I?!?!?

Oh, and I've posted my review of Chickpea Cutlets before but these are the ones I made for dinner tonight (I baked rather than fried them) along with some roasted potatoes (which could have done with another half hour in the oven but I didn't have the time) and the mashed swede and carrots which was really lovely and both the boys enjoyed.

I used the new vital wheat gluten for the cutlets and was a little worried as Becks of I Am Not a Rabbit has posted that her seitan comes out puffy using this brand and we were discussing seitan by email the other day as well and I sure hope me Seitan O'Greatness doesn't end up going bang like hers did! I did notice that when they were cooking they did puff up and they were still that way when I took them out of the oven. However, as they were ready before everything else (have I mentioned how bad my cooking timing can be?) they had time to cool before we ate them and by the time they were served they were no longer puffy and the texture was just perfect. There's a spare one I may have to fight Piggle for for lunch tomorrow, he managed really well gumming his to death as I just cut it up into little pieces for him!

Curried Squash Pear Soup and Rosemary Focaccia

2008-10-05T06:44:00.000Z

Yet more soup, I do adore it though and the boys seem to enjoy eating it so I will carry on making soup at least once a week. It's just such a simple dish and you can make it from almost any vegetable which is always handy.

Butternut squash soup has always been a favourite of Jim's so I try and make sure it shows up every now and again for him, but to keep it interesting for me I like to try out new recipes and I found this one in Extra Vegan Za which is one of my 'go to' books at the moment.

It's a combination of carrots, butternut squash (I used just over half the huge one we got in the box), pears, onion and spices and had a really nice taste and texture. I could only fit 6 cups of water into my largest saucepan rather than the 8-10 cups that the recipe calls for but it was still thinner than I would have liked (it's hard to feed thin soup to a baby, just goes everywhere!) so next time I make it I have made a note to just use 4-5 cups of water. Besides using less water the only change I made was to puree the entire soup with my stick blender rather than just part of it. Jim prefers smooth soups and Piggle can't get the hang of a mixture of liquid and lumps just yet so it's easier just to puree the lot.

The bread was really easy to make but I halved the recipe as we didn't need a huge loaf of it for just the 3 of us. I also used half white and half brown flour in it and only let it rise for 45 minutes the first time rather than an hour and about 20 minutes the second time instead of 30 as I was running out of time. I also didn't add any rosemary to the top of the loaf as 5 year olds and 'green bits' on their food can sometimes be a problem (he asked me to take the salt off the top of his second piece as it was too much for him). It still seemed to work quite well and the taste was lovely. The only downside of it for me was that it was a bit too bready, focaccia that I've bought before now is always thinner than mine was and not as fluffy. I'll definitely be making it again though as we all really enjoyed it and it worked well with the soup.

Carrots and Peas (Gaajar Matar)

2008-10-04T07:31:00.001Z

This is yet another really tasty dish from this book, I'm really getting into trying new things from it and was a little cautious about this one as it only has the two ingredients (not even an onion added!) and besides that is just spices and some grated ginger.

It was really simple to cook, just heat the spices in some oil, add the carrots and peas and then cover and simmer until they are cooked. It did take a little while as carrots are such a hard vegetable, I put on the brown basmati rice just before I started cooking it and everything was ready about the same time (which is a miracle for me as I'm the Queen of bad cooking timing!).

I didn't put any chilies in it as I didn't have any and my boys can't take the heat but I did add a tiny bit of crushed dried red chilies to it for just a hint of heat. Piggle really enjoyed it as did I but Jim didn't actually eat anything as he'd been to the after school club while I had a meeting with his teacher and they had fed him spaghetti on toast so he was full up from that (I wonder if any of the other kids eat dinner after having a snack like that there, it seems a bit much to me...). It also reheated well for lunch the next day.

I will definitely make this again if I'm over run with carrots and hopefully Jim will enjoy it when I do!

If you're reading me in a feed reader rather than at my actual blog you won't see that I've added a box to the top right hand side showing a random selection of my cookbooks. If you want to see my (almost) complete collection of cookery books which took me an entire morning to upload you can find them here. I'd been looking for somewhere easy online to keep track of what I already have as I can get a little confused shopping for new cookery books online as to whether I already own something or not. This site is great as it has pictures for most of the books which means with a glance I can tell whether something is already in my collection.

Curried Pasta with Cauliflower and Chickpeas and Gingerbread Cut-Out Cookies

2008-10-03T06:41:00.001Z

I've made this meal before but it was during my no internet period so it didn't get posted. It's basically a very simple combination of pasta (I used wholegrain macaroni as I have lots of it), onion, garlic, cauliflower, tinned tomatoes, curry powder, chickpeas, peas and some milk and flour to make it saucy.

Jim really enjoys this dish except for the cauliflower but for some reason this time Piggle didn't want to eat it. Perhaps it was a little to curryish (although he likes curry) or perhaps he just wasn't hungry, who knows, but it's unlike him not to eat so we'll see next time I feed him this if it was just this version of it or the dish itself that he doesn't like.

It makes a ton of food this recipe, there will be plenty of meals for Piggle (which we'll see if he eats or not!) plus some for lunch for me too which is good now the weather is getting colder and I want something warm for lunch (I'm not a sandwich person unless it's something special so lunchtimes can be hard if there are no leftovers and it's too cold for salad).

The only changes I made to this recipe were to add less curry powder and to leave out the raisins as I'm not a big fan and Jim isn't either. The book says to serve it with salad and flatbread but I personally think this is enough of a meal on it's own and it doesn't need anything on the side.

These look a bit burnt but there aren't, it was just a bit dark in the kitchen and the flash made them look terrible so I didn't use it!

I made the dough for these cookies in the morning ready for Jim to roll them out and use the cutters we have in the afternoon (you have to refrigerate the dough for a few hours to let it stiffen up). It was a very simple dough to make and it only has quarter of a cup of sugar in it which is pretty damn good for cookies. It does have one third of a cup of molasses in it but that's still better for you than lots of sugar.

Jim enjoyed cutting them out although the dough was a bit sticky and we had to use a lot of flour to stop it sticking to the counter. He was very pleased with the results and enjoyed picking out which animal he wanted to take to school today. Piggle enjoyed them as well (I made sure we used some smaller shapes for him).

A winner that I'm sure we'll use again and again as Jim is a big fan of gingerbread men!

Sesame Kale Soba

2008-10-02T07:33:00.002Z

Again this is the whole amount, not a single serving! I had the serving dish out still so I decided to use it again.

This is such a simple dish to make it was almost untrue! You boil the noodles for a few minutes, add the kale (or in this case rainbow chard) and cook until the noodles are done. Drain it and then pour a very simple sauce over the top and call it done!

I didn't add the arame as I didn't have any and I used kale powder rather than dulse as that's what I had in the cupboard. Oh, and my sesame seeds weren't unhulled, but I don't think that made much difference!

It was such a tasty dish, the dressing is really tasty and the boys both enjoyed it as well so we'll be having it again. It was wonderful to sit and watch a 5 year old trying to find the chard in his dish and chowing down on it, it makes me happy when he finds new vegetables that he enjoys eating, especially ones as healthy as that.

If you have the book give this one a go for sure on a night when you've not got much time to cook, it's lovely and I'm looking forward to the leftovers for lunch!

My Vegan Story

2008-10-01T07:06:00.003Z

So, for my first post for VeganMoFo I thought I'd post my vegan story in case it's not in the archives somewhere or people can't be bothered to look (I actually can't be bothered to look so why should anyone else?!?).

I first went vegetarian in 1989 when we moved from Germany to England. I was an American Military child so had been raised mainly eating American meat from the Commissary and when we moved to England my Dad had retired and we were eating English meat. Something about the meat, perhaps the way it was cured who knows, really upset my stomach and I was quite unhappy eating it so decided, actually with my parents approval which I know a lot of 16 year olds don't get, to give up meat. The last thing I ate on purpose with any dead animal in it was kedgeree, I don't know why I remember that but I do!

I didn't get into animal rights or the ethical side of vegetarianism until after I had already stopped eating meat. My first cookbook was The Cranks Cookbook and my Mother used to help me batch cook meals that we would freeze so she could just pull something out for me when she was making dinner.

Two years later I went to university and decided to go vegan. I can't remember now what my reasons were now but I did pretty well on and off considering it was 1991 and there wasn't much vegan stuff around. I got a few vegan cookbooks and cooked a lot from scratch, especially in my second and third years of university (we only do 3 years over here) where my flatmate and I did a lot of cooking. During my finals I slipped into the pizza and ice cream binging whilst revising and then went back to being vegetarian.

I was happily a vegetarian for the next 9 years without thinking of going vegan again, as a lot of vegetarians say, I loved cheese and couldn't have imagined giving it up.

I had Jim in 2003 and we had issues with breastfeeding. Wanting to do the best for him I hired a professional breast pump and expressed milk for him for 3 hours a day for the first 5 months of his life. I had post natal depression as well (after having had antenatal depression, something people don't talk about much. It is perfectly possible to be happy about having a baby and incredibly depressed at the same time.) which wasn't helped by being tied to a pump all that time. I used to either surf the internet or read whilst expressing and I was reading Fast Food Nation at the time. In a strange bit of timing I was suffering from my second bout of mastitis whilst reading about the milk industry in the book and how (in America at least) there is 'an acceptable level of puss in milk'.

Right then I decided that I no longer wanted anything to do with milk and his chapter on slaughterhouses, particularly the image of the cows walking slowly towards their death, cemented the idea for me. It did take me a little while to actually go fully vegan, I thought about it and read about it here and there online for several months and in books and tried on and off to give up the dairy, eventually deciding to phase it out slowly, using up what I had and then only buying vegan replacements.

My then husband wasn't supportive (and actually never was, he had a *huge* problem with my veganism for some reason he could never explain) and I didn't know anyone vegan to help me along. Even though I was reading blogs it didn't occur to me to look for vegan ones until after I was fully vegan...

We took a holiday with my parents when Jim was about 15 months old and I was trying hard to be vegan and not quite reaching it as it was hard to find stuff that I could eat when we were away from the house we'd rented. I remember eating a salad with goats cheese in it and thinking that I'd had enough of eating cheese and feeling guilty about it and made the decision that when we got home I was done with dairy. A phrase that occurred to me at the time was that the difference between vegetarianism and veganism (to me) was doing what was easy rather than doing what was right.

When we got home I became totally vegan and I have been ever since, so that's just over 4 years now, of course with the minor slip-ups here and there when you find out after you've eaten something that it had milk etc in it or you order a vegetable spring roll only to find after 2 bites that it's actually got meat in it....

I have never looked back since becoming vegan and the idea of eating milk, cheese etc really makes me feel queasy now. The husband was vegetarian (as is Jim about 10% of the time) and I used to make him grate any cheese that was needed when I was making pizza etc. Near the end of our marriage I was cooking for myself and Jim and he was cooking something totally different for himself and he refused to eat vegan food....

Although I am 100% vegan in my diet, like every other vegan on the planet I am still working on being 100% vegan in my life. There are so many hidden things in what we buy that I don't think it's possible to be 100% vegan unless you grow your own food and produce your own clothing and household items. I do make a concerted effort though and as far as I know I am doing an ok job at it. There are always compromises though, like buying leather shoes for Jim to wear to school as he needs good shoes that will allow his feet to grow properly and breathe and synthetic just doesn't cut it....

So, all in all I'm a happy proud vegan, I enjoy cooking for my family, learning more about a healthy diet and talking to other vegans online (I've still met very few in real life, my younger sister is the only vegan I can actually think of that I know!). I can't imagine ever going back to being vegetarian, and after 19 years of not eating meat there is no way on earth I'd ever be an omnivore again.

Is there anything I miss? Well, pizza has always been my favourite food, and that smell of a hot pizza with lots of cheese still makes my mouth water. However, once I've looked at the pizza and seen all the grease on it and I think about the milk that went into the cheese there is no way I could ever take even one bite, the idea makes me feel quite ill, so you won't see me falling off the vegan wagon that way!

I look forward to reading other's vegan stories during VeganMoFo and hope I didn't bore you too much with mine!

Garlicky Cream of Celery Soup

2008-09-30T07:24:00.000Z

Again Blogger is spinning my pictures for no apparent reason....

I read on a blog the other day (I really must write down where I see these things as I read to many blogs to remember and I'd like to link to them) which said that they'd always had luck with this book. I have to say I'm not in that camp, I haven't been that successful using this book and although I adore soup (as you can tell from the weekly menus) it's not a book I grab all the time to see what I can make from it.

This soup wasn't too bad. I used dried parsley instead of fresh and omitted the dill as I hate it. Besides that and adding less milk than it called for as I like a thicker soup I made it exactly as the recipe called for. I shouldn't have added more pepper as the Mrs Dash that I used was really peppery which made the soup quite hot.

I will admit that perhaps it isn't just the book in this case as I'm not a huge fan of the taste of celery and was just trying to clear out what I had before it went bad. My Mother ate this with the boys (I had to go to a meeting at Jim's school) and said that they both liked it and she had 2 bowls. By the time I got home I was past wanting to eat much so just ate some of the biscuits that I'd made to go with it and this photo is of my lunch the next day, so perhaps it doesn't get better with age like some soups do.

So, it was a winner with the woman who loves celery soup, eaten by the kids but not one that I'll be raring to make again soon.

Perhaps with the review that the other Blogger gave this book though I should visit the book a bit more and give it a fairer try.

Here's The Veggies

2008-09-29T07:03:00.000Z

So the fruit and veg arrived again and it's another lovely box full of goodies to cook with. This week we got leeks (very excited to see these, I've been waiting for them!), broccoli (I hope broccoli season is almost over as we're getting a bit tired of it), potatoes, onions (some good sized ones this time), carrots, kale (of course since I used the kale recipes last week with the chard!), another swede (I still have half the last one left, good job these things keep for ages!), some baby tomatoes and a giant butternut squash.

I don't have the boys over the weekend so I only needed to come up with 4 dishes which would use as much of the veg as possible.

I also got this in the post:

I saw Liz from Cooking The Vegan Books was making her own seitan and as she's a UK blogger I questioned her about where she was buying her vital wheat gluten and she put me onto The Low Carb Megastore who have it for £2.80 a kilo. Their postage is £4.75 though so to make it worthwhile I ordered 4 bags and am looking forward to no longer having to discount recipes because I don't have any vital wheat gluten!

So, bearing in mind the vwg and the veggies this is what I came up with:

Chickpea Cutlets - Veganomicon with swede and carrots (a very English dish, probably invented to use up all that extra swede, basically you just mash them together, I'm hoping the boys will eat it!) and some kind of roast potatoes.

Curried Squash and Pear Soup - Extra Vegan Za This will only use about half the squash, it's a huge one! Also a good way to use up some of the fruit and some carrots.

Garlicky Broccoli, Corn and Bean Burritos - Eat Drink and Be Vegan. Again hiding the vegetables inside Mexican food to get Jim to eat them, I'm going to chop it up small so he can't tell it's broccoli!

Mashed Garlic Potatoes and Kale - How It All Vegan with butternut squash (will probably roast it) and Seitan O'Greatness from the PPK Forums. I'm probably one of the last people in the blogosphere to try this and I've wanted to for ages so I'm excited to give it a go.

I will use up the leeks when I'm alone over the weekend by caramelising them with some onions and having them on pasta, one of my favourite dishes but a little bit plain for the boys.

I will have some swede and some carrots leftover (along with potatoes and onions) but all those keep well and will come in handy for future meals so I'm not too worried.

This was the fruit for the week:

and my lunch from the other day in an attempt to get the fruit bowl under control!

The Birthday cake I ate after the fruit probably didn't make it as healthy a lunch as it looks.... Blogger is being odd and has turned the picture on it's side for some unknown reason...

So, here's to anther week of good cooking, hopefully it will be as tasty as it sounds and it will be nice to make some more 'traditional' meals with vegetables on the side rather than my usual stews, chilis etc which seem to be my staple.

Stir-Fried Savory Noodles and Vegetables and Cake

2008-09-28T06:43:00.000Z

It was my Mother's Birthday so we invited her over for dinner, let her pick off the menu what she wanted to eat and made her a cake!

This photo is of the whole amount I made, not one serving!

The stir fry was very easy and very tasty, as are most things I cook from this book. I used 2 tins of mock duck, some french beans my Mother brought with her, broccoli, onion, mushrooms and celery. I used rice noodles rather than the flour and water noodles called for in the recipe, again using what I had to hand, and they seemed to work well. I do find with the rice noodles that although the package says you can just soak them in boiling water they never cook properly so they need to be boiled for a few minutes to make sure they're cooked right through.

Everyone enjoyed the dish and we ate all the vegetables but not all the noodles as there were tons of them. One to be repeated for sure!

Jim said that I had to make a cake rather than cupcakes as 'no everyone likes cupcakes'! I decided on the vanilla cake recipe from How It All Vegan (which I've used several times before) and doubled the recipe to make enough to fill my newish cake tin which I'd never used.

The cake is really nice but it's not a light and fluffy thing, it's pretty dense and nice and moist and it weighs a ton. I ended up cooking it for 45 minutes to get it cooked through in this size tin and all but one little bit of it came out of the tin perfectly.

The icing is the lemon buttercream from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World and it does somehow taste buttery even though it's got margarine in it. It's a great combination of sweet (from 2 cups of icing sugar) and sour and it has lemon zest in it too for a little bit of texture. Jim said that we had to colour the icing and after talking him down from bright pink we decided that as it was lemon we should use yellow (thus buying the yellow food colouring earlier in the week and the lemon). He wanted to add sprinkles but after I went through the whole cupboard I discovered that I was totally out (they must have gone out of date and been thrown away when I was packing to move). Jim helped with the icing and did a really good job with the electric hand mixer, he didn't lift it out of the bowl once, I had visions of a yellow icing splattered kitchen but luckily it wasn't to be!

I was really happy with the results and my Mother really enjoyed it which was the whole point. Now I just have to get her to take most of it home next time she visits so I don't end up eating it all!

Potato and Kale Enchiladas with Roasted Chile Sauce

2008-09-27T06:59:00.000Z

This photograph shows why I am a home cook and not a food stylist. I tried to get it on the plate nicely so the presentation was good but it just wasn't having it! The plate in the background is Jim's, he insisted that 'wrappers' (his name for Mexican food in general) weren't proper wrappers without cheese.

This recipe has been doing the blog rounds of late (Veganomicon is the cookbook that would not die, usually the buzz about a book has calmed down this long after publication but this one is still going strong a year on and with good reason) and I admit to being inspired by a photograph I saw on a blog (sorry to say I can't remember which one now, but their picture was much better than mine!) and when I got rainbow chard in my vegetable box this week I knew that I was going to give these a go.

The recipe says that it takes 1 hour to make this dish, but it took me 1 hour before I even got it in the oven and is perhaps the winner of the title for the most pans and dishes ever used by me to make dinner on a weeknight (4 pans, a pie dish and a baking dish).

However, saying all that the taste was lovely, the vegetables are really limey and the sauce is so tomatoey that it tastes really really rich even though there is no reason for it to be. The combination of the sauce and the vegetables with the corn tortillas is great and the pumpkin seeds were a nice touch, giving them just a little crunch here and there. It was enjoyed by all for dinner and then lunch the next day for Piggle and I (and I have frozen one for a future Piggle meal).

So, what did I change besides the kale to chard (I know I'm guilty of not following recipes to the letter even the first time I make them, I just can't help myself!)? I used about half a jalapeno rather than 3 green chiles as I didn't see any in the supermarket and I'm still trying not to buy too much as you know. I used 3/4 of a tsp of chile powder rather than the 2-3 called for (but didn't add any coriander like I was considering in my last chili powder musings as I was so caught up with all my pans it slipped my mind). The only other thing I changed was to roll the tortillas individually instead of in pairs. The recipe calls for 12-14 tortillas and over here they come in packs of 8 so I made 8 smaller ones knowing that the boys were going to eat them and probably could only manage 1 each (and I was right). Oh, I also didn't save any sauce for serving with them, instead I just dumped it all in and it worked out ok, I may put more underneath and less on top next time though so I get more crunchy bits on the tortillas as that's my favourite bit.

The chard worked really well and amused Jim as he'd never had something pink for his main meal before. This is actually a pretty healthy dish although it sounds and looks like it may not be and I was happy that both the boys enjoyed it.

I will most likely make this again but I am prepared now knowing how long it takes me to make it (perhaps I am slow with the vegetable chopping or something) so I won't attempt it on a night when I'm pressed for time.

Go on, give it a go, you know you want to!

A Big Shop

2008-09-26T07:44:00.000Z

I knew this week would be a bigger spend than the previous weeks because 1. I actually have some money again and 2. I had put off buying things like cat litter and instant coffee to save money in previous weeks. I actually don't think I did too badly for my money though, here's what I got (Sainsburys and Health Food Shop combined):

organic chick peas, 3 tins of organic chopped tomatoes, 2 packs of organic juice boxes, chocolate soya milk, organic tomato puree, organic fair trade instant coffee, 2 soya milks, organic vanilla soya milk, organic cereal, organic plain flour, 3 packs of yogurts (one organic), yellow food colouring, organic soba noodles, corn tortillas, organic pasta, rooibos vanilla tea, organic garlic, recycled toilet rolls, organic onions, organic bananas, organic frozen peas, a lemon, cat litter, 8 tins of cat food (I had to borrow one from my sister so I got 1 extra to give back to her!), dry cat food, soya margarine, baby formula for Piggle, cheezly, 2 packs of organic puddings and organic tropical squash.

I spent a total of £50.69 (£10.29 in the health food shop, £1.99 for the baby formula after coupons and £38.41 in Sainsburys, around $91). So with the fruit and vegetables that's £67.69 (around $121). Next week I can go back to a smaller list again as I won't have so many 'basics' that need stocking up on and hopefully we won't eat all the bananas by Tuesday meaning that I have to get more or deal with the wrath of a 5 year old who doesn't have a banana in his lunchbox! The coffee, tea and cat litter alone set me back £8.50 and all of those will last me over a month and won't run out all at the same time.

Oh, I should probably add the additional £2 I spent on recycled toilet tissue as after complaining to my sister that the price had gone up by 20p a pack (it's the first price rise I've noticed in what I've bought) she said that her local supermarket was doing it at half price (only £1 for 4 rolls) so I had her pick me up two packs which means we won't be buying any toilet rolls for a couple of months I shouldn't think!

So, one week to get all the bits that I ran out of and now back to the buying as little as possible each week. I am actually enjoying the challenge of seeing how much I can make from what I have (and I've not bought bread for weeks in case you've not noticed!) and I'll keep it up until I run out of things to use, which could be quite a while looking at how many pulses alone I have in the kitchen!