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 (:

Any Meal With Salad Is Healthy, Right?

WRONG!! I didn't care though! I have been working out a fair bit lately and I got a craving, just for chips with Nice N' Tasty Chicken Salt, yes vegan chicken salt!! :) :) :)  I figured I couldn't just have that though, so I started looking for seitan recipes, but it was getting a bit late to start making seitan and I was really, really hungry! (When I get like that I tend to get grumpy also, sometimes to the point that hubby tells me that I need feeding :-p)
Any-who, I Google kept directing me to "Southern Fried Chicken" recipes and that's when I remembered that I had a pack of  Redwood Gourmet Meat-Free Chicken in the freezer.
Now I have previously made this recipe and found that the coating was ACE, but that I didn't like the chicken I used as much 1) Because it's quite glutinous and 2) Because it has an Asian BBQ chicken flavour. You can check this out here.
So the recipe I was referring is one that many vegos would 
have come across in their quest to satisfy a meaty, chickey, fried, KFCy kinda craving. This recipe is all over the web, I have found it on About.com and on Yeah, That Vegan Shit, but just in case you haven't seen it before here it is:

Southern Fried "Chicken"

Ingredients:

• 1 tsp salt or seasoned salt 
• 1 tsp onion powder 
• 1 tsp garlic powder 
• 1 tsp black pepper 
• dash cayenne (optional) 
• 1 1/2 cups flour 
• 1/4 cup nutritional yeast (optional) Personally I think this shouldn't be skimped on.
• 1/4 cup prepared mustard (yellow/mild American is where it's at, but you could probably use any) 
• 2 tbsp baking powder 
• 1/2 cup water 
• 1 lb seitan or other chicken substitute, cut into 1-2" square pieces 
• oil for frying

Method:

1. In a medium to large bowl, mix together the salt, onion powder, garlic powder, flour, black pepper, cayenne and nutritional yeast. 
2. In a separate small bowl, whisk together the mustard and water. Add 1/3 cup of the flour mixture to the mustard mixture and combine well. 
3. Add baking powder to the flour mixture and combine well. 
4. Coat pieces of seitan or mock chicken with the mustard batter, then coat each piece with the dry flour mixture. 
5. Fry chunks of "chicken" in the oil on medium-high heat in a large skillet for 3-5 minutes, turning once until golden brown. Drain on a paper towel, serve with ketchup or barbeque sauce and enjoy! 
6. Tip: If your chunks are turning brown or black rather than a crispy golden brown, your oil is probably too hot! Reduce the heat a small amount and try again.

So as you can no doubt tell, this is not a healthy meal, especially when I served it with chips, at least I skipped the bread, but I did have salad with it to make it appear healthy :-P
The Redwood chicken worked really quite well, I did gently defrost it in the microwave prior to coating, and it cooked really quickly.

I highly recommend that the next time you feel like something naughty definitely give this a go, it's quick and easy to prepare, tastes great and you can totally play around with different seasonings and salts. 

So go on, have fun :)

"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!