Thanks everyone!

Thanks for letting me rant in the last post, it felt good just getting that crap off my chest.

And it felt even better having lots of new places to try and ideas with all of your awesome responses.

I'm feeling a lot more confident about getting it all done, so a massive thank you to you all, you all rock!

Btw, I've already found a new ring.

And Happy New Year!

Food posts to recommence soon.

Arrrghhhhh

What was I thinking planning a wedding party (albeit a casual nontraditional party) right in the middle of the last 6 months of my thesis (hopefully!) and the crazy festive and socialisation period with new years eve, BBQs, parties and festivals everywhere. Also note to self: yes do it yourself parties save you money they also leave way too many decisions and responsibilities with us. I'm discovered that i'm not a big fan on party planning and much prefer just going to other peoples parties!

I think both Mr T and I have been a little too laid back up until this point and we woke up after xmas (which was quite distracting) and thought SHIT it's less than a month and we have done NOTHING and between all of the parties and deadlines for my thesis and All Tomorrow Parties (festival in Mount Bulla) and both of us being back at work we don't actually have that much time to do everything.

Things I need to find, but that are proving to be not that easy and time consuming, and so I'm throwing out to the blogworld to possibly help with:

* CHEAP biodegradgble cutlery sets (i found plates yay)
* finding cute recyled napkins (ie: not brown-ish ones)
* hiring cheap tables and chairs
* finding a ring that I like and actually want to wear all the time and that is not environmentally or socially evil and if made locally. Damn eg et al for being closed.
* choosing flowers to decorate with (I could easily go without flowers and am not having a bouquet but it's my friend contribution). I'm not really into flowers but know that I DON"T want roses. Anyone know any cute small-ish flowers? I'm clueless!
* finding cheap vegan wine that everyone will like
* choosing to make something that will feed 70 (including some really big eaters) or so people and that omni's will like
* finding the biggest food mosquito net to cover lots of food
* finding somewhere to hire large speakers etc
* finding cheap cute vegan silver (or white if it has to be) shoes with a tiny bit of a heel because I can't walk in high heels
* helping Mr T to choose lots of music that most people will like and hopefully dance too

I'm sure there is more that I can't think of right now because my brain is dead from working on my thesis for over 12 hours straight. Thanks for letting me rant!

Truffles

So apparently making several dishes for xmas day and last minute wrapping wasn't enough for me. I stupidly decided to make not one but three types of truffles and box them as extra gifts for all of my family on xmas eve. Instead of going with my tried and tested truffle recipe, I decided to explore others.

First I went with should you eat that's peanut butter truffles which I think would have been perfect if I used crunchy peanut butter and NOT used sweet williams 'milk' chocolate. It has an obviously soy taste that lingers even after you add the other ingredients. Still out of the three types of truffles these ones were the easiest to work with since the mixture is less liquidy. I think if I used dark chocolate they would have probably tasted better than the oreo peanut butter truffle version I made last time.

Next I followed Vegan chef's recipe for very easy vegan truffles and divided the mixture into two. The first batch was just plain white chocolate. I was going to coat them in shredded coconut but it sucked so decided to just coat it in white chocolate. I was pretty happy with these.

The second batch also contained white chocolate and I decided I wanted a raspberry flavour. There are quite a few under-aged kids in my fam so I couldn't just add liquor though, so I stupidly decided to add raspberry jam (st dalfour expensive sugar free jam mind you). I added little by little until I could taste it and I ended up having to use a whole jar. Then of course there was too much liquid and they were too soft, so I added in one and half packets of oreos. I then rolled them in ground oreos. These were still too soft though and didn't keep there round shape at all. Also the jam contained raspberry seeds which were slightly annoying. These were probably my family's fav. It's strange that my accidental truffle that went wrong in several ways was their fav. To say thank you for a friend, I decided to use the remainder mix to make into balls and coat in white choc, which overpowers the flavour a little but keeps much better shape and texture.

Anyway this is my very public reminder to myself to not make truffles for a very long time. They take too long and I don't have the patience for the constant rolling into small balls. They especially shouldn't be done the night before xmas when you have a thousand other things to do.



Pics were taken with a camera phone because my camera battery died.

Correction

Turns out Mr T was wrong about free public transport on boxing day. It is however free on new years day.

He apologies for any inconvenience.

Dianne's cheezy broccoli/cauliflower

I made it again for xmas day and Dianne gave it the tick of approval, so here's the recipe as promised. I can't believe how easy it is, although it's not healthy. I tried reducing the margarine but it didn't work. My mother normally adds moroccan spice mix and vegie salt both but I substituted other spices because I don't have them.

1 large broccoli
1/2 large cauliflower
2 large tablespoons (more like scoops) of margarine
3 tablespoons of flour
3 cups of soy milk
pinch caynenne pepper
1 teaspoon paprika
1/4 teaspoon of cumin
1 1/2 - 2 teaspoons of chicken style stock (I love this stuff)

Preheat oven to 180 degrees. Steam or boil cauliflower and broccoli until tender when pierced with a fork. Put to the side.

In a non stick frypan add the margarine and melt, then add the flour. Stir and cook over med heat for a couple of minutes.




Then add herbs and stock and add half a cup of the soymilk and stir it together until the flour/marg mixture absorbs the soy milk. Continue to stir and add the rest of the soymilk half a cup at a time until it is gone. Taste at this point to ensure it doesn't taste like soymilk and is full of flavour. If not, add more spices/stock. Bring it to a stimmer for about 5 minutes until it resembles a very thick paste, kind of like this (although the pictures doesn't really show it but it changes appearance from a normal looking sauce to a glue like texture).




Pour sauce over broccoli/cauliflower and bake for 20-30 minutes.

(This is a precooked pic).


Next up: truffle recipes.

Vline day trips?

On boxing day vline and all transport is FREE!

So Mr T and I are thinking about doing a day trip to take advantage of it, the question is where should we visit? Any ideas? suggestions?

Xmas Potluck

Claire and Reece hosted the latest potluck at their place and it was awesome. I however was much more of a eater than a food blogger and forgot to take pics of many of the dishes but I can share what we made and I'm sure some of the other bloggers will post their pics. I made not one but 2 dishes this time.

The first dish was 'Dianne's broccoli with white sauce'. My mum (Dianne) veganised her version a while ago but unfortunately just makes it up each time and never writes down what she does so I really pleased to come up with something that tasted almost as good with super vague instructions. I will remake it for xmas and write down as I go and then post the recipe.



I also made candy cane cookies following eat me, delicious's recipe for candy cane bark and Isa's recipe for chocolate chip cookies. The cookies took triple the time that the recipe asked for but that's because my oven sucks and were still soft, thankfully I like soft cookies. They were however a little too oily but that may have been because I made the dough and then refrigerated it for a few days. I was however happy with the taste.




Mr T made his signature dish. The bean balls from veganomonican with a twist, he used orange rind instead of lemon which tastes even better in my opinion and I forgot to to get a pic sorry.

Anyway on to the other dishes. I didn't get pictures of the svaoury dishes because I was starving but I can tell you that Erin made the meatloaf from Real Food Daily, Claire made up her own recipe for meatloaf, Rachel made a tuna bake, Recce made vegetarian dim sims/dumplings, and Rebecca made sausage rolls. I did however get pictures of the sweets:

Rebecca made Churros



Craig made peanut butter and banana springrolls with chocolate sauce



Claire's friend (whose name I have forgot) made white chocolate and macadamia nut cookies



Lisa made a nobake cake with coconut,cashews and with a couscous base.

Happy foods

You know how some foods make you happy: chocolate, mashed potatoes with gravy, cupcakes etc. Well I have another food to add to that list: Onion Rings.




These are the Coles onion rings which paired with a tiny bit of salt and tartare sauce are a match made in heaven. I can't wait to try the Aldi onion rings and compare them.

Candy cane cookies

I had every intention of bringing some baked good to the pizza party and so decided to follow this recipe for chocolate chip candy cane cookies. Unfortunately despite following the direction I ended up with dry dough that wouldn't stick enough to make into small balls, so I added a bit more egg replacer and put them in the oven and they were way too soft. I blame the egg replacer, I don't trust it! It's such a pity because the candy canes softened in the cookies and were a great slightly soft texture and they actually tasted great just texture wise sucked. I left them at home and thought I would try again, but no matter how long they baked they will still too soft.

More vegan pizza options in the west?

On Sunday a large group of people(including lots of veg*n bloggers) went to Emily's to sample pizza from a new pizza place which has both vegan cheese and pepperoni. I had one piece of each of these:


Roast veg pizza which I believe is called vegie delight


Veg one with the lot plus pineapple


Cherry tomato and basil pizza


Garlic pizza


Veg pepperoni pizza

So what were they like? As a regular eater of Plush I was pleased to see they were super generous with the cheezly. The bases were wholemeal and remind me a little of the pita pizzas that Mr T and I regularly make. The topics were not quite as unique as plush toppings and were just like regular pizza toppings, only vegan. It was all delicious though and I am sure that I will be back for more again and again. I can't decide what my fav is, it's a toss up between the simple cherry tomato and basil pizza and the one with everything. Look out for proper blog posts from the usual veg bloggers and some not so blurry pics.

We also enjoyed cookies from Emily, cupcakes from Rachel and cherries from Lisa but I forgot to take pics.

Eat Pizza
44 Raleigh Rd
9317 7977
Website

Edgars Mission

On sat a small group of us went to Edgar's Mission. It was AMAZING! I sadly didn't take any pictures but am hoping that either Caroline or Theresa will blog with their pictures. Pam took us around to meet all of the animals and we fed and patted them and she told us about their stories and personalities. I think Pam is just amazing looking after all of those animals mostly by herself. It was so great to see all the animals and getting alone so well. She as well as the animals are so inspiring. I strongly encourage you to support Edgar's Mission however you can. There is carols by barnlight this sat. Also, if you are looking for christmas or birthday gifts you can get the animal lover in your life a best buddy with one of the animals for a year. You get a large photo, quarterly updates and you can visit it and the prices vary depending on the animal. Don't tell the other animals but I think Timmmy was my fav. Although one word or warning if you plan on visiting make sure you bring lots of weetbixs and be aware of the sheep they will surround you all wanting some and then you might not have any left for the poor cows or horses.

Bodhi

I went to and blogged about Bodhi quite a while ago and I kind of forgot about it until recently. We went to Bodhi several weeks ago and discovered that there were new owners, in fact they had only been managing the cafe for 2 weeks. We had to explain what vegan meant but they were quite nice and the food was great. They also explained that they don't use MSG which is great.

We shared tasty spring rolls, and wontons:



I had some longan wolfberry tea, which was sweet and tasty and the staff and Mr T informed me that is supposed to 'be good for women'(translation: it's good for menstruation issues):




This was the mushroom don (which the mushroom fans raved about) and the ginger duck which was probably my fav:



And then we has some tasty noodles with a smoky flavour but i can't remember what they were called.


One of my favourite things about Bodhi besides the food and their teas is the cute decor and 'zen' feel about the place:



I want to go back and try their new menu that they have probably introduced by now.

Looking for Vegan food in Frankston?

Well there is a vegetarian restaurant, but when we found ourselves there on a monday afternoon a few weeks ago and the vegetarian restaurant was closed we were determined to find something to eat ASAP. One of the first places we come across turned out to be pretty great. Dan suggested this noodle place but I was hesitant because I've had a few 'vegetarian dishes' from asian omni places and then discovered small pieces of meat and I know that asian places tend to love chicken stock or fish/oyster sauce. I knew we were on to something good though when I started to say to the guy in this place that I wanted some noodles without chicken stock, fish sauce and he said 'no animal products' someone who speaks my vegan language! You can order from the menu or just choose specific ingredients. Choosing is much more fun as you can choose your favorite vegies, sauce and noodles.

Dan ordered tofu and vegies with chilli-soy sauce combo, and I ordered tofu and vegie noodles with satay sauce and we shared some vegetable spring rolls, it was all tasty and cheap and fast. What more can a girl ask for? I loved that the tofu was cut in to small chunks and absorbed the sauce unlike other noodle places that have bland cubes of tofu.






Noodle Jone
9a Thomspon St Frankston
11-9 (7 days a week)

Away

I doubt anyone cares but I thought I better share that I will be away for a week or two from this blog while I devote most of my free time to getting a bit chunk of my thesis done.

I will hopefully have lots to blog about when I get back.

Accidentally vegan products

The other day I was given e a small pack of Guylian Solitare chocolates as a thank you gift from someone who doesn't know that I'm vegan. I said thanks and then read the ingredients even though I was sure they weren't vegan and discovered that they were actually vegan. There are 3 types of chocolates in the packet: asian dark, aztec gold, and african ebony. They all vary in the percentage of cocoa and taste and I can't pick a favourite but they all taste great. I found a small pack at coles, but would love to get a bigger box as I think they would make great gift for people who like dark chocolate.

It got me thinking how much I love food products that are accidentally vegan. Here are a just a few others that I enjoy:

* Praise fatfree mayo
* Oreos
* Masterfoods traditional tatare sauce
* Masterfoods Bacon flavoured chips
* HomeBrand ginger nuts biscuits
* Cottees thick and rich chocolate topping
* Coles brand strawberry topping
* Arnotts raspberry shortcake biscuits
* Arnotts lemon slice biscuits
* Arnotts nice biscuits
* Hob Nobs biscuits
* Guylian Solitare chocolates
* Eskal scottish shortbread
* Birds Eye Corn Fritters
* Quick set Aeroplane Jelly
* Skittles
* Starburst Jellybeans
* Coles and Audi brand onion rings
* Coles choc mint crunch lollies
* Pez bonbons
* Coles salt and vinegar chips
* Sherbies (lollies)
* Aldi spekulatius biscuits
* Safeway brand garlic bread


What are your favorite accidentally vegan products? Peta has an American list but we really need an Aussie one.

*Edited to add: I will all of the foods to the list above as you leave them in the comments section. So keep up the suggestions. There has been quite a few that I didn't know about.

Canberra

This weekend we celebrated caroline and tim's wedding with a picnic in canberra. There was so much yummy vegan food including dhal, pasta salad, bulgar salad, tofu veg skewers with peanut sauce, avocado sushi rolls, mini onion tarts and much more:


These mini choc cupcakes went very quickly for good reason:

As did these mini lemon and poppyseeds muffins:
I love the vintage bear wedding figure:


After that we had our first attempt at Au Luc. Mr T and I were not impressed with the meals. The lemongrass chicken dish was too spicy for me but everyone else seemed to love it:


The rice paper rolls were ok:
And the Vietnamese crepe was just boring:

Thankfully we decided to give it another go and we got there in just enough time before they closed for lunch at 2.30. We loved the basil chicken:


And I normally hate mock fish , but I loved the lemongrass fish which was mild and light and delicious:

This dish was in the noodle section and was called something like BBQ meat noodles and was not at all what I expected. The noodles were like a weave of noodles and you put a small bit on some lettuce with sauce, the BBQ meat which was covered in peanuts and mint and it was nothing short of amazing.
The shredded tofu rolls were jam packed and yummy:
I also loved their spring rolls which had small amounts of seaweed in them but I forgot to take a pic of them. Au Lac definitely gets my thumbs up.

Tim also introduced us to the accidental vegan zucchini puffs (Kabak) from Kismet:
Caroline shows us an inside look of the yummy bready zucchini goodness:

Spritz cookies

On the weekend I was feeling a lot better and thought I would go to a party and make some cookies to bring. I decided to give my cookie press a try and make spritz cookies. I followed Kittee's recipe minus the food colouring. It took me ages to figure out to use the cookie press and as you probably tell from the pic below some were prettier than others. Now that I have figured it out though it will be easier in the future and I plan on experimenting with the other shapes and with different flavours. The trick is to make sure the dough is just started to peek out of the disk and then press the handle. Also you need to make sure that the cookie press is actually pressed up against the liner on the tray. It properly sounds really simple, but when you have no idea what to it's not that easy.




They tasted fine, but just a little bit simple. So I coated the back of the cookies with melted white chocolate and covered them with chocolate sprinkles (from rishons.) I didn't coat them completely because it would have taken away from the detail in the front (as you can see in the above pic). I think this worked out better too the white chocolate didn't over-power the taste of the biscuits.



Sadly the cookies didn't get to the party because my energy levels were still really low and I ended up having an early night but I found lots of people to happily eat the cookies the next day. Next time I am going to try spritz cookie sandwiches.

World Vegan Day

Sunday's celebration of world vegan day was great, it was great to see so many friends there. I also managed to convince not 1 but 3 people people to enter the vegan speed dating and while I don't think any of them had perfect matches they had fun. It was also great to see it held closer to the CBD. The two small downsides were that there were not many food stalls selling lunch items and those that were there are regulars (enlightened cuisine, coco loco etc) and that it felt a little cramped especially when it rained in the morning. I also missed the soul veg food stall.

I did however discover two new food product sellers though:
Tart'n' round where I walked away with a brownie, caramel fudge slice and cherry bliss balls. The brownie was good but the caramel slice and cherry bliss balls where amazing. They are not cheap, but are gluten free.

I also enjoyed some of the dips from vegie gourmet. It's good to know that you can get even more dairy free dips and pestos from our local coles. I sampled a whole heap but especially enjoyed the pestos. Photo taken from their website.



There was also a person with a range of new vegan patties which I've already seen in my local safeway. I didn't get to try them though.

Speaking of non-food items. I like the look of the shoes from: artic vegan but can't find the website, anyone have it?

I must be getting better as I can actually discuss other food items, although am far away from eating them.

Food/drinks when your sick

So I've had this horrible gastro for the 24 hours and looks like it is going to stay for at least another 12 hours or so. Don't worry I won't go into details just wanted to blog to distract myself from how bad I'm feeling.

Growing up my mum would always feed me toast with Vegemite and flat lemonade when I was sick and I still love those things when I'm sick. Ok maybe not love, but I still eat them except I replace the Vegemite with sanitarium's marmite because it's not made by kraft and has more minerals in it. She also used to feed me poached eggs on toast which I obviously no longer eat.

I've also started having peppermint tea, ginger beer and salada's with marmite and margarine when I'm sick. In Hong Kong everyone swears by eating plain congee, but I couldn't get into having it but have eaten plain white rice in desperate times.

What food/drinks do you eat when your sick?

Vegan yum yum equals surprisingly enough yum yum food

Everyone, seems to be talking about vegan yum yum and so I thought I would join in the fun. I love that blog. I think it's one of the few where every recipe is guaranteed to be yummy indeed. Recently, I'm made not one but two recipes from there and both were super easy and quick and delicious. First up was the smokey miso tofu which we had in sandwiches with mayo. Mr T thinks they should have another condiment, but he's not a mayo person. I think it was perfect. I also made the soy mirin tofu over rice with broccol and peanut sauce . I did made some tiny changes with this, I had it with noodles instead of rice and doubled the soy-mirin glaze and tripled the peanut sauce, because I like my dishes to be saucy. I love the glaze idea with the tofu and might start using this with other dishes. And because I'm the worst blogger in the world. I didn't even take pics, so you will have to trust me or you can just look at the pics over at vegan yum yum. I promise to actually have pictures of the next dishes that I post about.

See you all at world vegan day tomorrow.

BBQ Potluck

Emily from aduki hosted a BBQ potluck yesterday and it was awesome, I also think it was the healthiest potluck I have been to. I didn't get pics of everything and I ate and then took pics, so I'm hoping that one of the many bloggers who were present, got the rest. Speaking of bloggers, I think most of the veg*n bloggers in Melbourne were there. I have no idea what most of the dishes were called or who made them, so apologises in advance for the lack of labels and names. Please feel free to leave details about who made what and what it's called.

The prettiest lookest savoury dish: has to go Craig's nacho pasta dish and it was damn tasty too


Salad's seem to be the fav dish to make, here are some of them:

I think this was pips, I forgot what it was called but it was tasty


Christie's pasta salad


Lidia's potato salad


I think this was Lisa's colesaw


Rebecca's lentil salad with preserved lemons

This was pip's, but I forgot what it was called


Salad in a pretty bowl from Vietnam, but I forgot the name of both the salad and the woman, sorry!


Rachel made asparagus tart.

On the BBQ, there were Lidia's mushrooms and Rebecca's marinated veggies (as well as fry's burgers and sausages which I didn't photgraph)

Mr T made mushroom, chickpea, sesame patties which he was dissapointed about.

I think this was a bean dip.


There were also these patties which sadly I don't think I tried:

And on to my fav part of the potluck, dessert:

Chocolate crackles

Choc cupcakes with peanut butter icing made by Rachel's sister. The icing was so good!


Cindy and Michael's amazing cherry slice, I had lots!


Fruit skewers, such as great idea made by Janice


Fruit salad with yummy balasmic sauce made by Jo


Lemongrass cupcakes made by Pip


And my contribution, ice cream cookie sandwiches:


I made choc cookies with both dark and white chocolate chips and then put a thin layer of peanut caramel and then ice cream. I followed the recipe for chocolate ice cream but used white chocolate, I think the vanilla essence kind of overpowered the flavor and it didn't taste like white choc. These are a work in progress, next time I need to make thinner cookies and put more ice cream but they still tasted ok.

I'm thinking about hosting the next potluck in a park, a picnic potluck since we have a small place and can't host one here.