"B'cous cous I love you", from Vegan Eats and Treats. This was fun and had the advantage of being absurdly easy: make couscous and basic tomato sauce, add spinach and pine nuts and stick in the oven. Me and Pie (my little sis) both liked it a lot, although I felt it needed a bit of spice. In the background you can see a salad with little gem lettuce, chard and rocket (from our garden!). I chopped some avocado onto mine. It was nice to make something veggie Pie would eat (she hates all beans and legumes without exception-well, no, she'll eat peas, but not dried ones), instead of grilling the inevitable chicken breast.
A quick (and blurry, apparently-damn that camera!) snacky of porridge with raisins and walnuts, because I was out at an art show (I help manage a scheme at school which helps students to sell/loan artwork) that evening and I didn't know when I'd get to eat.
My eventual dinner, which was a yummy stuffed pepper that Pie made at school, plus the last of the pointy cabbage we've been enjoying of late (they didn't have any when we shopped this week-boo!). Is it just me, or does anyone else like eating the stalks from the centre of a cabbage leaf? They're not rubbery like the leaves, just crunchy and sweet. I imagine they'd be good with hummus (humus, houmous, humous, houmus-how to spell it today?) or some other creamy dip. Try it!
A speedy packed lunch for my maths trip (nerdy, I know) on Tuesday. A homemade wholewheat pitta with peanut butter (Meridian Foods-not organic but yummy and completely additive free. Interesting the organic brand I tried I didn't like.), grated carrot and raisins (which I put in everything, whether it needs them or not. I can go through a pound in three weeks), plus sticks of raw courgette, strawbs (how I love English summers...well, I love the produce, at least...) and one of Mum's "show apples" (we're trying to sell our house so she'd bought loads of fruit to make the place look attractive...she should have known that if it's in the fruit bowl someone in our house will eat it).
Dunno how to rotate this, so tilt your heads. A packed lunch in my special bento box from Japan (I am a complete Japanophile. I learn Japanese and hope to visit the country as soon as possible-it's not really vegetarian/vegan friendly but I view it as being part of the cultural experience). In the box is quinoa and canned corn (hehe, alliteration) with roasty-toasty sunflower seeds and little red pepper stars. Plus steamed courgette and as much broccoli as I could cram in (we like to eat seasonal and I haven't eaten broccoli for over six months). Plus strawberries! Doesn't the broccoli look cute all snuggled up? There's also some tofu that had been lurking in the fridge. I fried it, added soy sauce to make a sticky coating, then added a hefty sprinkling of nutritional yeast. I then cooked it some more and left it to cool before packing it in my bento box. I swear that by lunchtime it tasted just like chicken. I had to check I was actually eating tofu! A bit disconcerting, but yum.
Rude Health Organic Essential Muesli. Yummy, yummy, yummy, with oats, apples, dates, raisins, apricots, pumpkin, sunflower and hemp seeds, and flakes of barley and rye. Only problem is that it has whole linseeds in it, and linseed needs to be ground for you to get the goodness from it. Grr. I ate it with milk (I am ovo-lacto vegetarian, which makes me feel like a hypocrite, but my mum is concerned about me being vegan and I don't want to rock the boat as it took her months to come around to my not eating meat), and a bowl of cherries, strawbs and raspberries (mmmm!)
Yesterday I went on a little trip to Cambridge. Shopping alone is fun, but I have to take care not to overspend (hehe). I went to the health food shop, which is great, although it doesn't have everything, and usually good for bargains and advice. I got organic gram flour, quinoa and buckwheat, plus some other goodies, which I'll post about another time. I very nearly bought some hemp pasta, which would have been the ultimate in hippy food to feature here, but in the end I didn't. Finally found agave syrup but it was expensive and in a glass jar. Does any make it in a squeezy bottle? I was also sorely tempted by a cold-pressed pumpkin-seed oil, but I had visions of putting down my shopping bag heavily and ending up with a nasty oily mess.
I also got some lovely rye sourdough from the Earth's Crust Bakery market stall. The guy looked at me strangely when I asked if it had animal products in (I think he may have been French [in no way am I extracting the michael, just saying the French don't really get vegetarians]), but I explained and he was able to reassure me. I had some toasted for tea with some split pea soup.
Pie's veg garden is cracking along nicely. Here's the first courgette. We griddled it at lunch and it was super. It really put the store bought one to shame. You can't see how big it is, but it was about the size of my hand (which is unnaturally small) and soooo cute. There's loads more that'll be ready to eat soon. Too bad she's going to Italy next week (mwahahaha, all your courgette are belong to us).
My lunch today was a chickpea-stuffed aubergine from The Bean Book by Rose Elliot. It was super-yum. I added a good shake of veggie Worcestershire sauce (because it's brown, and so are aubergines, so I thought maybe they'd go...they did!) to the filling. I ate it with the best roast potatoes ever (roast some Anya potatoes in olive oil with salt and pepper...simple and soooo good). I have a bottomless roast potato stomach. Dessert? You guessed it! Raspberries and strawberries (plus half a tub of ice cream if you're my dad).
I leave you with the tantalising image of the most delicious vegan cake I've ever made. It's moist, spicy, sweet, and also pretty healthy. I used this apple cake recipe, but subbed pecans for walnuts so Pie wouldn't turn her nose up (she had seconds-result!) and used mixed spice instead of cinnamon, although having tasted it I think actually cinnamon would be better. I also peeled the apples so they'd cook down more. MMMMMM. There's two lonely little slices left (they're getting littler, thanks to my "neatening" the edge every time I walk past).
Whilst making it, I inadvertently discovered an instant vegan caramel sauce. When I've worked on it I'll post it here.
Whew, long post! See you soon!
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