NEW COOKBOOK!!

A couple of months back I pre-ordered a copy of Vegan Pie in the Sky which was co-written by Isa chandra from the amazing Post Punk Kitchen and Terry Hope Romeo.
It's the first time I ever bought a book without having read a review, seen a preview of recipes or before it had even been released for sale! I knew, however, it would be gold, especially considering her other books I own (pictured below) sure as heck are!

I can't wait to bake my first pie, though it will be tough choosing which one to start with, but I will post a report and pics when I do :)

It's Monday and I still Have 2 Days of my weekend Left!

On Saturday I blogged about the awesome weekend I was planning and the amazing tofu scramble I was loving for breakfast. I loved it so much that I planned on having it for breakfast on Sunday as well, but instead I got too busy cleaning my house before my family came over to worry about a silly little thing like sustenance!
Apart from the great flavours, and not actually tasting like tofu in the end, I figured out through Saturday just how fantastic HIGH protein meals are. I ate my breakfast at around 10 am and didn't even feel slightly peckish until 3 pm!
So I decided to get up and do it all again, only smaller this time, simply because I had a massive craving for a veggie dog for breakfast, bad I know!
So today I changed things a little, I made my scramble the same, but this time added kale, thyme, chives and oregano, I nearly added onion, but I didn't feel like crying this early in the morning! Also instead of toast I wrapped it in a flour tortilla and spread on some Tofutti, Better Than Cream Cheese.

It was even better today. I never liked cream cheese as a spread before I was vegan, and now I love the Tofutti stuff!

And after having had 2 boxes of chocolate soy milk, a veggie dog and a scramble wrap, I don't want to eat for the rest of the day!

Who am I kidding? I'll want a late lunch then dinner for sure! :-P

"Meat"balls.

A few nights back I was hungrily plodding around the kitchen trying to think of what to have for dinner. As I had had my weekend cut short by being called into work last week, I didn't have any really meal planner prep time, which I try to do!

Then I happily remembered that in the freezer I had a box of Redwood's meat free meatballs in the freezer which I get from my most favourite store in the world Vegan Online.

So I quickly grabbed them out and heated up my oven and made a kick arse marinara sauce and boiled some pasta.

Marinara Sauce

Ingredients:

• 1-2 tsp olive oil
• 1/2 - 1 onion diced
• 4 cloves garlic, crushed
• 1 500g jar pasta sauce, I like Raguletto's Venitian herbs
• 1 400g tin diced tomatoes
• fresh oregano, fresh basil, salt, pepper and dried mixed herbs to taste 
• Pasta 

Method:

1. Heat oil in a saucepan.
2. Add onion and saute for 2-3 minutes.
3. Add garlic and saute fror 2 more minutes.
4. Add tomato paste and let it cook off, another few minutes.
5. Add fresh herbs, tomatoes and pasta sauce, mix thoroughly and let simmer until heated through.
6. Add salt, pepper and fresh herbs to taste, you may also want a little bit of sugar in it, depending how acidic it is. Let simmer for as long as you like, when you're happy with it serve.

You could also add red or white wine to the mix as well.

This was a really great base the next night for a pizza sauce, SOO YUMMY!

But here was the dish I made

There is easily 4 serves here, you really only need 5 or 6 meatballs per dish, especially when eating with pasta, bread and salad like we did. Actually we didn't have bread, we didn't need it! And they were a great lunch of leftovers as well :)

Now I think these are gluten free, but I can't be 100% certain, just (obviously) check the ingredients first.

I can't wait to put in my next order for these, I loved them so much, even just dipping them in BBQ sauce!

Not Quite Meatloaf.

Whilst I was busily blogging about my awesome breakfast this morning, I saw on my blog roll a new post from The Vegan Stoner for Lentil Loaf. I've 
been thinking about veganizing meatloaf, but was basically just too lazy! So when I saw this recipe this morning I got VERY excited!
My changes are bolded in this colour.

Lentil Loaf

Ingredients:

• 2 cups of cooked lentils (from 1 cup of dried)
• 1/2 an onion, chopped
• Hand full of walnuts, We don't like walnuts, so instead I used 1/2 a large apple, chopped
• 2 handfuls crushed crackers, I used 4 whole saladas                  
• 2 cups frozen veggies, I used a mix of peas, corn and spinach
• A sprinkling of garlic salt
• 4 Tbs apple sauce, I only had 3 Tbs worth, which is the other reason why I decided to use fresh apple as well
• 2 Tbs tomato sauce, I used 3
• I also added 1 Tbs of yellow/American mustard
• Ketchup is supposed to go on top, but I used sundried tomato chutney

Method:

1. Cook lentils.
2. Mash in onion and walnuts/apple and crackers.
3. Mix in all remaining ingredients.
4. Pack into a loaf tin.
5. Spread with tomato sauce/ketchup/chutney and bake for 40 minutes at 180oC.

Simple, easy and quite tasty.
My loaf pan was a bit small, so the remaining mixture got turned into patties.

A Weekend at Home!

I normally work on Saturdays, but this week I swapped my shift to help out a friend, which means I get FOUR whole days at home!!
At the moment I am thoroughly enjoying Rage, especially because it's very Hip-Hop heavy today. I'm also loving the fact that I had time to make a totally KICK ARSE breakfast of tofu scramble, not the prettiest thing to eat, but DAMN it was good!!
The rest of my plans for this wonderfully long weekend are gardening and FINALLY setting up my little veggie/herb garden, AND going to the shelter and picking up a little of baby foster kittens. Also catching up on all of my forgotten blog posts, AND LOTS of cooking!! 
Seriously, could it get ANY better?! Well I will also be popping down to the Evandale markets and catching up with the folks and my Grandmother who is staying with them this week as well, so a totally jam packed awesomeness-filled few days, WOOT WOOT!!

 Tofu Scramble.

Ingredients:

• 80-100g firm tofu, crumbled, I use Simply Better Foods Organic Tofu.
• 3-4 button mushrooms, sliced
• A good chunk of capsicum, sliced into small/bite sized pieces
• 1 Tbs nutritional yeast
• 1 Tbs American/yellow mustard
• 3 Tbs tomato sauce
• 2 slice of toast, I like Helga's Soy & Linseed bread,, or GF toast.

Method:

1. Prepare ingredients.
2. Heat pan med-high, u may want a little spray of oil just to coat your pan.
3. Toss all ingredients in, cook till mushies are wilted and flavours have infused the tofu.
4. Cook toast, dish scramble on top of it and if you like, as I very much do, have with a glass of chocolate soy milk. 

For anybody who thinks that vegans don't get enough protein, tell them to suck on this, it's 30g worth, that's approx 1/2 your daily protein requirement, HELLS YEAH BITCHES!!

Chinese Roast Duck with Steamed Rice and Lemon Stir Fried Veggies.

When I went to Hobart recently stocked up on various awesome food stuffs, including frozen fake meats by Lamoyng. I was so stoked at my finds at the Asian grocer Wing & Co., then I ate too much fake meat too quickly and the thought of eating anymore made my stomach turn. So all this food has been taking up room in my freezer and tonight I decide I had better start making a dent in the stocks so as I can restock it with other meals I want to make. 
Because the fake meat is quite glutinous, and I still don't know how to go about preparing it, I wanted to try and make it crispy, which I have tried before and failed, but tonight it was a success.
Check it out :)

Chinese Roast Duck with Steamed Rice and Lemon Stir Fried Veggies. 

Serves 2.

Ingredients:

• 200g Lamyong (Sayur) Vegetarian Roast Duck
• Vegetable oil (I used Canola) for shallow frying
• 2 packets of Lee Kum Kee Lemon Chicken sauce (from the Asian section of the supermarket)
• Mix of your fave veggies to stir fry, I used capsicum, snow peas, carrot, onion and broccoli
• 1 tsp olive oil for cooking veggies
• Steamed white rice

Method:

1. Start steaming rice, I just use a rice cooker.
2. Cut up veggies and have them ready to go.
3. Heat the oil for frying the the "duck".
4. Whilst oil is heating cut duck into thin strips. Fry when oil is hot, this only takes a few minutes, I did it in batches. I also drained the "duck" on a cooling rack over a baking sheet and then kept the strips warm in the oven set to 160oC whilst I was prepping everything else as I wasn't overly organised, watch them though, mine dried out a little too much.
5. Heat oil in a large fry pan or wok and stir fry veggies.
6. When just about cooked to your liking add the packets of sauce, you may only need 1 pack, I like things a bit saucy though.
7. When everything is cooked put the "duck" into the saucy veggies and coat it all with the sauce and dish up with the rice (which I happen to think is the way to go) or do what I did and dish the "duck" up on the rice and the veggies on the side, as pictured above.

This did not turn my stomach at all, as even though it may not be the healthiest method of cooking out there, shallow frying the "duck" took away the spongy glutinous feeling of the product and left it very crispy and let the flavours shine through!

My Favourite Dessert.

Recently I made a chocolate "cheese"cake which I originally got from a newspaper website, but I didn't copy down the link.The recipe comes from a young lass by the name of Kamina who lives in Brisbane, she has a website called Kamina the Vegan and can be found on Facebook also.
Anyway I love this recipe, and I haven't met anybody who doesn't like, but it comes with a VERY RICH warning attached!
I call it chocolate"cheese"cake, but technically it's called Kamina's Chocolate Mousse Tart. This can easily be made gluten-free, I do this by using Orgran's amaretti biscotti.
Oh, and it is totally packed full of goodness as one of the main ingredients is tofu. Yep that's right TOFU! And trust me, you would never know!
So the original recipe follows with my changes in this colour :)

Chocolate "Cheese"cake :)

Fills 1 x 24cm fluted flan tin with delicious goodness.

Ingredients:

For the crust:

• 300g sweet biscuits - these can be vegan or gluten free or a simple plain sweet biscuit like I said I use Orgran's amaretti biscotti
• 125g vegetable margarine or substitute I prefer Nutelex olive lite

For the filling:

• 1/3 cup corn flour
• 1 cups soy milk ( rice milk or almond milk) can also be used
• 300g 50-60% dark chocolate - organic or vegan I generally use a mix of chocolate, usually 1 block of Sweet William's dairy free "milk" chocolate, sometimes a block of 80% cocoa dark (dairy-free) chocolate and 1-2 blocks of 50-70% cocoa chocolate, depending of course whether or not I use an 80% block or not. Each block is 100g
• 300g drained silken tofu - Kamina recommends the Japanese firm tofu, Morinaga Brand available at Asian or Japanese grocers on the shelf, I don't know the name of brand that I have used, but since moving to Tasmania I have only seen one type/brand of silken tofu, it has a black label and I have found it at Coles and Eumarrah.
• 225g soy cream cheese - Tofutti brand or king land soy available from health shops or supermarkets in the dairy cabinet, I WAS using the Tofutti brand, which I really liked and could buy at Coles, but now they have decided to stop stocking it (GRRRR!!), thankfully they have started stocking the King Land brand. 
• 2/3 cup raw organic or rapadura raw sugar I use organic raw caster sugar.

Method:

• To make the crust, place the biscuits into a food processor or crush them in a blender until rough crumbs, transfer into a bowl and using your hands mix the crumbs with the melted margarine until the crumbs are moist and keep their shape when squeezed. Wipe out the processor or blender to use for the filling.
• Press the mixture into the tin until the bottom and sides are well covered and extremely compact. Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.
• For the filling, in a small saucepan whisk some of the soy milk with the corn flour until smooth and then add in the rest of the soy milk. Simmer over a moderate heat bringing the milk to a boil and stirring until it makes a thick smooth custard. Melt the chocolate over a double boiler or in the microwave at 30 second intervals mixing in between until smooth.
• Strain the custard through a fine sieve (this NEVER works for me properly so I don't waist my time with this step anymore!) into your blender or food processor and add in the tofu, melted chocolate, raw sugar and cream "cheese" and blend until smooth and runny. The mix will have the texture of melted chocolate.
• Pour the filling into the prepared base and refrigerate for at least 2 hours until firm to touch. Serve chilled with fresh berries. The first time I made this I served it with a raspberry coulis.

Making it is a lot of fun!

Mmmmm melted chocolate *drools*