Dal.

I love Indian food, but it often gives me heartburn, though I find that with a lot of tomatoey dishes. This is my tomato-free Dal. It is so good, yes, I know I am biased, but it truly is! (: And I promise it tastes a LOT better than it looks ;)

Ingredients: 

• 400g tin lentils drained and rinsed
• 400mL coconut milk, plus extra IF required
• 1 tsp Garam Masala, cumin, ground coriander seeds
• 1 brown onion, diced
• 3 cloves/tsp crushed garlic
• 1/2 tsp minced ginger
• 1/4-1/2 tsp salt
• Sugar as needed if too salty
• Splash of Braggs (optional, but worth it)
• 1 Tbsp Coconut oil
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
  
• (I've given measurements, but really all the spices are to taste.)

Method: 

1. Melt coconut oil in a saucepan. 
2. Add diced onion and sauté gently. 
3. Add garlic, ginger and all other spices and allow them to ft off a little. 
4. Add lentils and coconut milk. Allow to simmer until thick, about 30-40 minutes. If it gets too thick thin out with a little more coconut milk. 
5. Serve with steamed rice, roti and veggies, or as part of a banquet. 
6. Enjoy (:

Strawberry Sauce

At work we have a rule that on your birthday you have to bring in the cake. I kinda think that's a bit mean, but being vegan I find it easier to cater for myself anyway. Plus it gives others a chance to see that vegan food isn't just "rabbit food". My go to special occasion cake is "my" (not my recipe) Chocolate Mousse Cheezecake  I made it yesterday for my birthday today. It's great with berries on top and that was my plan today, but when I looked at my punnet this morning they were a bit squashed and bruised. I decided I couldn't possibly serve them like that so I whipped a batch of strawberry sauce instead.

Ingredients:

• 1 punnet of strawberries (or other berries or soft fruit, thinking mango next time) 
• Agave nectar or white/raw sugar to taste A little water
• Corn flour 

Method: 

1. In a saucepan squish fruit with a masher or fork and add a little water. Heat up on medium heat slightly. 
2. Transfer to blender, food processor or use a stick blender to liquify the fruit. 
3. Transfer to a metal sieve and strain to remove any seeds or pulp. 
4. Put back in saucepan and heat gently, add nectar or sugar to taste. 
5. You can leave it as a runny syrup or mix up a little cornflour or arrowroot (about a tablespoon) with some some water and add to the mix. Heat gently until it has thickened. 
6. You can now serve it hot/warm or allow it to cool. 
7. Store in the fridge, but it will go quite thick, so you will have to let it come back to room temperature if you store it in a thin mouthed bottle like I have, or just scoop it out with a spoon if in something wider. 

I plan on making this next time I make scones too.

Enjoy! (:

Hummus

I have never really been a hummus fan and I realised on Monday, after having some totes amazeballs hummus, that's because I'd only ever had shitty store bought stuff. The hummus I had on Monday came from a gourmet deli (Alps and Amici I think, for those in Launceston) and it was just so good that I wanted to eat the lot! I was asked if I had ever made it. I hadn't because I didn't think I'd like it, but upon realising I had all the ingredients in my pantry I figured why not?!

So here is my hummus recipe. I hope you like it :) It may not be quite as good as Alps and Amici, but I think it is pretty damn good! ;)

Ingredients:

• One can of chickpeas drained and rinsed
• Juice of 1/2-1 lemon
• Salt to taste, about 1/4-1/2 a teaspoon
• A couple of flags of olive oil
• Shake of paprika (optional)
• 1 tablespoon of tahini
• 1-2 small cloves of garlic

Method:

1. Put garlic, chickpeas, juice of half a lemon, one good glug of oil, tahini, salt and paprika in bowl of food processor, whizz until everything sticks to the side of the bowl. 
2. Scrape down the sides of the bowl. Whizz again to get it smooth. Keep scraping and whizzing as required. 
3. Add extra oil, lemon juice, salt or even garlic as required or to taste. 
4. Once you have the desired flavours and consistency pop the mix in a jar or other air-tight container, drizzle with a little extra olive oil and a dash more paprika. 
5. Store in the fridge or just serve and eat it straight away. I love it on bread rolls! :)

Cheeses (plus pizza and chocolates).

I think the response I hear most when I tell people I'm vegan is "I could never give up cheese"! I get that, cheese is mighty tasty. I loved eating cheese too and found it hard to give up, and most vegans I speak to say that cheese was the last thing to give up. I have tried various (vegan) cheeses, mostly the Cheezly varieties, some are better than others. Recently I tried the Vegusto Melty, everybody says it's great, not me! I thought it was ok, again, better than some others, but not *that* good. And the other 2 that aren't *too* bad are the Tofutti American and Mozzarella, again, ok.

So I decided to bite the bullet and shell out a shitload of cash to try the 4 cheese varieties I have heard everybody rave about: Daiya, Notzarella, Bio Cheese and The Loving Hut Aussie Vegan Cheddar. 

I have tried all of them raw.

The Daiya was not great raw, and despite it being soy-free I felt it smelt quite soy-like.
The Notzarella didn't really taste like anything, which I thought was good as mozzarella doesn't really have much of a flavour.

The Bio Cheese was fairly good, still had a mild soy taste, but much better than most others. I can see why people have been going crazy over it. I really liked the way it cut, it is nice and firm and that was a nice change.

An finally the Loving Hut Aussie Vegan Cheddar. this one I was the most skeptical about, but I found it fairly decent actually. Not as firm to cut as the Bio, but not much softer.

All blocks grated fairly well, especially the Bio, the Notzarella was a bit soft and more difficult to grate, but that didn't really surprise me.

The Bio and Loving Hut cheeses will be pretty good in toasties and on crackers, so that is a win and the Daiya was much better cooked than raw, though I was disappointed that it didn't melt that well and did not go stringy as promised on the pack. The Bio seemed to melt the best.

So to test all of these guys I made pizzas, something I'm not normally that in to, but in the interest of testing new products I figured this would be a great way to do it. The Daiya was definitely my fave in this regard. Now I will have to find some other cheesy recipes to test and use all of them before they go off.

Now for the chocolate.
Go Max Go chocolates are some of the best I have ever tasted, vegan or not, I love them!! Cleo's are peanut butter cups, Jokerz are a Snickers style and the Thumbs Up are a Butterfingers style, my favourite! The others I like of theirs are the Twilight (Mars bar) and Buccaneers (kind of like Milky Way). At around $4 per bar they aren't cheap, but they are so incredibly worth it! The only problem is I just want to eat them al, NOW!!

I got this haul form Vegan Online, my favourite online vegan store. They do ship cold products over night express which costs around $27, again, not cheap, but worth it if you REALLY want stuff!

If you live in the Launceston area and shop at The Organic Grocery Store on Hobart Road at Kings Meadows they order vegan produce from Vegan Perfection and these guys have started stocking Go Max Go Bars (YAY!), the Organic Grocer will order in stuff from VP for you so you don't have to pay for shipping (DOUBLE YAY!!). VP were going to stock Daiya, but so far this hasn't happened, hopefully they will start stocking that and Bio Cheese, this is my hope :)

Cheese overload pizza.
Top left: Daiya
Top right: all 4
Bottom right: Notzarella
Bottom middle: Bio
Bottom left: Loving Hut

Notzarella and Daiya with mushrooms, capsicum, pineapple and onion.

Evandale Markets

For those of you in Northern Tassie, you no doubt know about Evandale markets. Lots of great food (especially if your not vegan :-/ ), plants, bric-a-brac, video games, hats, clothing, etc, etc. Also a couple of great vegan goodies. Goodies such as Sudanese doughnuts.

And today Higher Taste Bakehouse had a stall and they are planing another before Christmas, depending how swamped they get with orders in the lead up to then. I grabbed 2 bags of cookies today; Chocolate Fudge Brownies and Sticky Date. They are so yummy!! And the great packaging makes them great gifts too, and they have a farm sanctuary also! (:

You can check out Higher Taste Bakehouse on Facebook or online here. And she does post around Australia! (:

"Bounty" Slice

Yesterday I made these gorgeous fingers/bars by Karly at Clean Eating Survival Guide. They taste so much like Bounties it is crazy!
It's not my recipe so I won't publish it, but here is where you can find it, on Karly's Vlog.

I will say that I used agave as my sweetener and I didn't have enough dark chocolate, only about 40g, so I topped up with Sweet Williams choc chips which was fantastic!! 

ChocNana Bliss Balls

I got a new food processor today and I am stoked, it means I can finally make all sorts of awesome new treaties! Its first job: bliss balls. 

I have found various recipes that I like on the intertubes, but I decided to wing it today, not something I normally do when I haven't ever made something before. So I came up with ChocNana Bliss Balls. I realise banana might be a little odd, and you can totally leave it out if you want, but I had it lying around after my little dude decided he wanted one and then promptly decided that actually he didn't! *facepalm* So I just whacked it in too. 

SJ's ChocNana Bliss Balls

Ingredients:

• 2 cups of pitted dates (mine were pretty dry, so I soaked them in boiling water for about 2 minutes)
• 1 C rolled oats
• 1 C raw nuts, I used cashews, but whatever you want
• 1 banana
• 1/2 C coconut, I used moist flakes, plus extra coconut for rolling, I used dedicated. 
• 2 Tbs vanilla protein powder, optional
• 1/4 C cocoa

Method:

1. In food processor roughly chop the nuts and oats.
   
2. Add and chop the dates, banana and coconut. Scrape down the sides of the bowl as required.
   
3. Add protein powder and cocoa. Mix until everything form together in the bowl.
   
4. Scoop out tablespoons of mixture and roll into balls. Roll the balls in the extra coconut or you could use extra cocoa or chopped nuts.
   
5. Place balls in an airtight container and leave to firm up in the fridge for one hot before eating. Store in airtight container in the fridge for about 3 days. 

For a GF option take out the oats (or use GF oats) and use extra nuts.  

I popped the recipe into My Fittness Pal and here is an approximate nutritional analysis from the mix. My mix made 17 balls. 

Approximate nutritional value per ball based on 17 balls.