Pot Luck

A couple of weeks ago I went to my very first Pot Luck picnic. It was lovely. The weather was great, I met some new people and the food was fantastic!

My contributions were "Hedgehogs", an old family recipe that is kind of like a little potato rosti, and a beany pasta salad. Both of these recipes are perfect for a BBQ, picnic, or a party (maybe not a fancy party in terms or the hedgehogs).

I'll start with the salad first.

Sooo much vegan goodness!

Even the locals liked it ;)

Beany Pasta Salad.

Ingredients:

• 1 tin of mixed beans (or any legumes of your choice) drained and rinsed
• 350-500g of pasta your choice of pasta,  (I used 500g, but next time I'll only use 350-400g)
• 1 tin or 3 fresh chopped tomatoes (I prefer to use fresh for this recipe)
• 1 red onion (optional, and not used this time)
• 3 cloves of garlic, crushed
• Olive oil
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 1/4 C chopped basil leaves
• 200g (or more) of baby spinach leaves
  

Method:

1. In a large pot Boil enough salted water to cook a whole bag of pasta. Whilst water is boiling/pasta is cooking do everything else. When ready drain pasta and pop it back in the pot, set aside off heat. Cover with lid until ready to use.
   
2. Whilst the pasta is doing its thing chop tomatoes and onions, if using them, drain and rinse the legumes, wash and spin the spinach leaves.
   
3. Heat a little olive oil in a pan and gently sweat down the garlic, and onion if using, and basil leaves.
   
4. Add beans and tomatoes to just heat up a little bit and to get some of the garlic, basil and onion flavours. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
   
5. Once the beany mix and pasta are both ready combine the two gently, being careful not to mash the beans or tear the pasta. Drizzle the pasta with a little extra olive oil.
   
6. Add the spinach last minute, just before serving or walking out the door, so as to prevent it from wilting too much.

The salad is lovely warm or cold and great to take for work/school lunches also.

Hedgehogs

Ingredients: 

• 4 large potatoes
• 1 brown onion
• Replacement for 3 eggs, I use Orgran's No Egg
• 1 C frozen corn
• Plain white flour to mix (this could be substituted for a GF flour)
• Oil for frying, enough to submerge the Hedgehogs in
  

Method:

1. In your food processor or by hand, grate the potatoes (peeled or not is your choice) and the onion. If you don't have a food processor grating onions sucks big ones, so I recommend slicing fairly thinly instead. If you are doing it by hand use a large bowl, if doing it in the food processor make sure your chopping blade is not in there.
   
2. Heat your oil, either in the deep fryer or on the stove, keep an eye on it!
   
3. Mix in the No Egg and frozen corn kernels.
   
4. Mix in enough flour to bring everything together. Start with about 1/4 C at a time. How much you will need depends on how wet your potatoes are. You could squeeze the liquid out of them just after gating, but I have never worried about that. Don't mix in too much as you will probably need to add more to soak up the moisture from the mixture as you are cooking as the corn will start to defrost.
   
5. Now get your hands into it. Scoop out handfuls, if you have big hand make the little handfuls, mold them together by gently, but firmly squeezing them until formed.
   
6. Place in your hot oil and cook until golden brown. I don't have a deep fryer so I just cooked them on the stove. I found about 2 minutes on each side (I flip them over) worked fairly well, but the first batch took longer, despite the oil being hot *shrugs shoulders*
   
7. Drain on paper towel and enjoy! 
   

These are great hot or cold, sprinkle with salt, squirt on some tomato sauce, whack 'me between two slice of "buttered" bread and totally eat the shit out of them!! These are also frickin' awesome as a hangover food, vegan, greasy, amazeballs, hangover food. They are also great to eat with beer. They just friggin' rock no matter what your doing!!

Another long time between posts!

OK so yet again I have been busy as all hell! I started 2 new jobs in as many days and LOVE them both! I am SOO much happier than I was when I was working at the shelter. I have now returned to veterinary nursing and also started teaching animal studies at TAFE. Both of these jobs keep me really, really busy and I have been putting in A LOT of long hours at nights and on my days off to keep up with my workloads. Seriously not at all complaining, I never thought you could really be truly happy at work, but now I know you can! (:
AND a week ago my sister, brother-in-law, niece and nephew moved down to Tassie as well, they join my folks in muscling in my mine and hubby's "territory", at least the live like 40 minutes away!!!

So with all of this wonderful craziness going on I have really not had time to cook, let alone blog! Thankfully though hubby has kept my belly full as until last week he has been unemployed since Christmas, just one of may casualties from the Tasmanian state government not being able to budget properly. Luckily he now has a part-time job at one of the local collages, which is awesome because it it super close to our house and he's only entering his 3rd teaching year and and we expected about another 7-17 years before he got such a position. So, yay for us, we both have income, something really handy when you have a mortgage! And him only being part-time (at this stage) means I still get a house-hubby for half the week, SCORE!! :-p

We were, however, able to take a mid-week weekend recently to Melbourne. It was awesome, I had never been before and really I had never before had any desire to go to Melbourne, why would I when I had previously lived 1-3 hours south of Sydney? Plus Canberra, believe it or not, had plenty of advantages, and after they got a DFO there was even less reason for me to care about Melbourne!
So what was the reason for this life-changing (stay tuned) trip?

SYSTEM OF A MOTHER EFFING DOWN!!!!!!
At Rod Laver Arena

Oh man I loved this gig, I was head banging like I was a good 10-12 years younger than I am, and even though I'm only 28, I found out the next day that I was WAY out of practice for such activities! I didn't care though, I also didn't care that I screamed and threw my right arm around so much that I was barely audible and my shoulder was competing with my neck for sympathy! 

Now it wasn't just  SOAD that had me all excited, since going vegan I have wanted to visit Melbourne, and in the end I was actually getting more excited about food than I was the band! This was actually the 2nd time I saw SOAD, but only the first time that I had gone to Melbourne, and as a vegan at that!
A couple of days before I left I asked "the Facebook vegans" where I should go for meals and to stock up on vegan junk food to bring back.

I was directed to some great places, THANK YOU to everyone who made suggestions for me, including one of my fave places in Melbs: 

The Radical Grocery Store

I spent $100 here on junk such as Dandies, various Bonbarr chocolate bars, jelly, toffee, coconut ice, tofutti cuties, AND:

Mister Nice Guy Cupcakes
This was a Peanut Butter Cup and it was SOOO moist and chocolatey
and peanut buttery!!

I also ate at Enlightened Cuisine where we had:

Crispy Duck with Plum Sauce.

And

Kung Po Lamb.

AND on my way back to my plane I made my way to Chan House where I had:

"Honey" "Chicken" with Steamed Rice and Veggies.

We also visited the Australian Centre for the Moving Image which was really great AND FREE! Well worth a look if your hanging out around Federation Square.

But I think the place that got me more excited than ANYTHING else was visiting Lord of the Fries my new favourite place on earth, SERIOUSLY, I'm even spearheading a campaign to bring them down to Tasmania, not just for me, but we NEED more veggie choice down here!
LOTFs was my first stop on my whirlwind trip and then I had breakfast there the next day for breakfast as well. 

This was my breakfast meal, a big original burger and fries with vegan cheese and gravy
I have recreated these fries a few times over the past few weeks with
Redwood's cheezly and Redwood's vegetarian gravy, YUM!!!

Nuggets, onion rings and fries munch box with BBQ sauce .

Mini original burger

The best OJ I have ever had!

Now I can't wait until the next time I get to go to Melbourne, and I plan on spending more than 36 hours there!

Stay well,
Love SJ (:

Winter Warmer.

This time of year it's only natural to want a meal that doesn't just taste good, but to also soothe you, comfort you, give you a culinary hug!
Well last night I did just that. I made potato and leek soup, and believe it or not, it was the first time I had ever had it, let alone made it before! It was a total hit.

Potato and Leek Soup

Ingredients (serves 8):

• 1 tbs olive oil
• 2 leeks, pale section only, halved, washed, dried, thinly sliced (I only had 1 leek so I used a lot of the green as well)
• 2 garlic cloves, crushed
• 1kg desiree potatoes, peeled, coarsely chopped
• 1L (4 cups) chicken style stock
• 250ml (1 cup) water
• 250ml (1 cup) Carnation Evaporated Soy Milk
• Fresh chives, finely chopped, to serve

Method:

1. Heat oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add the leek and garlic and toss to coat. Reduce heat to low. Cook, covered, stirring occasionally, for 18-20 minutes or until soft.
   
2. Add the potato, stock and water to the pan. Cover and bring to a simmer over medium-high heat. Reduce heat to medium and cook, partially covered, for 25-30 minutes or until potato is tender. Set aside for 10 minutes to cool. (I didn't worry about cooling it much, maybe I should have(?)!).
   
3. Transfer one-third of soup to the jug of a blender. Blend until smooth. Transfer to a clean saucepan. Repeat, in 2 more batches, with remaining potato mixture. ( I just stuck my stick blender straight in).
   
4. Place the soup over medium-low heat. Add the Carnation and cook, stirring, for 5 minutes or until heated through. Season with salt and pepper. (Because I didn't let mine cool very much I didn't cook it any longer I just stirred it through and served).

The original recipe can be found here.

Enjoy :)