Taco-Burritos

Our friends Tim and Caroline have been telling us about their burrito-taco combo for some time and when they invited Mr T and I to try them we jumped at the chance.

The taco-burritos were awesome, they combined the excellence of a taco in a non messy burrito. Pure genius! I will certainly try to recreate it at home. Here is Tim showing us how to do it.

And then you wrap the burrito up around the taco.

Here are all of the fillings: cheezly, avocado, salsa and chili (with beans and tofu).

I took along some chewy chocolate chocolate chip cookies and chocolate peanut butter chocolate pretzels. I decided after watching the US office (which I am addicted to) that I had to combine my fav salty product with sweet things. I melted some choc chips with a tiny bit of margarine and dipped the pretzels in and then I melted the peanut butter with a tiny bit of margarine and tried to drip it over the chocolate coated pretzels they didn't look very pretty but I made them in a rush. I think they tasted pretty good but I'm a bit pretzel fan so I might be biased.


Dan made tasty rose water biscuits (pictured above-right) and a yummy salad with apple, cheezly, red onion, beans and I forgot what else, but it tasted great!


We also had some soy ice cream and tried to combine all of the sweet things, here is a chocolate chip cookie, topped with a preztel and chocolate soy ice cream.

I'm sorry about the quality of the pics. I still don't have a camera and rely on Mr T's phone camera which is not the greatest.

Just a quick note to say:

That the 'bacon and cheese' burgers at East Brunswick Club rock.

And I will try not to post for a couple of weeks, or comment on other blogs. I have one more massive essay/project left of my masters, not including my thesis. But it's horrible and boring so I need to use all of my time to work on it.

I also don't have a camera because I dropped mine and broke it and I'm arranging a film fundraiser for Burma and China which requires more of my time than I expected.

But maybe, just maybe you might start hearing from Mr T at his blog. If it happens, I'll let you know.

Yo!

When we got 2 large passionfruits in our food co-op box I knew that I had to try the recipe for passion fruit melting moments or yo yos over at Veginity.

I don't have kitchen scales (yeah shoot me) so had to convert everything into cups. I did so and also doubled the cookie recipe and somewhere along the line stuffed up and ended up with way too much flour and not enough margarine so I added more margarine, not even measuring and forgetting that baking is a science and you can't just play around with it like you can regular cooking. But some how it worked. They were super yummy. I doubled the passionfruit which as you can see made the icing too watery but extra passionfruity and still great.

Mr T modeling one for me. My camera broke so this was taken with Mr T's camera phone.

Buddha's Day equal vegan food

Thanks to Cindy for reminding me about the celebration this year, I managed to sample lots of yummy things. Unfortunately I didn't get to photograph all of them before my camera died. But here's the few I did get:

Radish Cake covered in soy sauce! I was super excited to see this here. I used to love turnip cake (which is basically the same) in Hong Kong but so rarely see the vegetarian variety in Melbourne. It wasn't as good as the HK varieties but was still good. It's called cake but it's a savoury slice made from rice flour. One day I'll have a go at making it if I can find a vegetarian recipe.

Peking 'Duck' Wrap, this was great but a little pricy for $5 for one tiny one.


Not food related obviously, but I loved the look and the idea behind these bodhi tree leaves. Basically you can buy a leave write a wish on it and it will prayed for.

I also enjoyed red bean sesame balls, lemon leave chicken skewer and dumplings.

Spicy Moroccan Pumpkin and Chickpea soup

I was super excited to get my hands on the second Aussie vegan cookbook from Aduki Independent Press- Soup For All Seasons. Every recipe has a colour recipe and the authors Lia Vandersant and Liam Davies are from Las Vegan Bakery which sells yummy vegan muffins, calzones, burgers and soups. I never get to go because it is open tue-fri for lunchtime which is when I am sadly at work but I have eaten many of their yummy muffins and Mr T and everyone else in the vegan community raves about their other dishes.

The first recipe I tried is the Spicy Moroccan pumpkin and chickpea soup which is chocked full of flavour even though I didn't add the fresh mint it asked for. It's nice and chunky, pretty damn healthy and easy to make. What more could a gal ask for? Here's a pic of my ugly version and the more photogenic version in the cookbook.


And it only costs $11.95, you can order a copy here.

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3 posts in one day! I probably won't post for a week now.

Kolios-Nistisimo Is Vegan!!!!


Edited to add: no it's not see comment from Emily!

You might be reading that thinking wtf?

Lydia over at More to Love to Love along with Emily from Aduki told me about this Greek fasting cheese which is vegan and you can get from the "Jim's deli" section at the Vic Market. I went along on the weekend and got a tiny bit to try. But hesitated eating it because I wanted to be 100% sure because deli people tend to say that another type of cheese called minichol is vegan and it's not and I like to be able to read labels and I couldn't! I also searched the Kolios website which says that even the pure vegetable fat and cholesterol free cheeses contain cows milk. So I hesitated some more. To double check the translation was right I asked a Greek speaking friend to translate it thinking that maybe the English translations of the website were not accurate and she confirmed that both those varities also had cows milk in them.

I was determined so I sought out a vegan living in Greece who said he has never heard of it in Greece but then later confirmed that it is actually vegan, it's only available during lent in Greece but is exported overseas to us lucky vegan Melbournians.

In the meantime, Lydia found it "Hellenic Deli" section at vic market and there was a sign in front of it that said "suitable for VEGANS".

How come it doesn't have greater exposure?

So what is it like, texture wise it reminds me of cheddar cheese but taste wise it is mild but yummy like a cross between mozzarella and tasty, and basically what I remember cheese to taste like. Now I just need to try the feta variety.

Here's a pic, sorry it's not used in a more exciting way but I was eager to try it after waiting so long for confirmation.
Btw, it's not normally that difficult to find out if something is vegan. It's the first time in 5 years that I have needed to do more than read a label and after a tiny period (about a month) you just tend to know what is vegan and what's not so I don't even have to do that much unless there are new products.

Is it just me?

Or does the future that you hoped for just seem so impossible?

Mr T and I were talking hypothetically (don't get too excited!) about having kids in about 3 years time. But before we have kids we need to go back to Hong Kong to see his family and our friends, we also need to go the US for my brothers wedding and we should try to buy a unit/flat. Am I asking too much, really? I'm not asking to buy a house, just a small flat/unit. I think it's best for us to go back to Hong Kong when we don't have to take small child/ren and don't have a mortgage or super expensive rent.

We can't afford to buy anything now or anywhere in the near future, I'm still working part time while I do my Masters which now looks like it is going to be dragged even further into the future thanks to my bloody thesis which I still don't have a topic for. Mr T is starting his second career in a new country which takes lots of time and we are poor, poor, poor.

It's overwhelming. Even if we just want to rent a bigger place (bigger than our cardboard box sized place) we can't afford it right now, or anytime in the near future. We can't exactly have a baby or two in the smallest 1 bedroom flat in the world. I don't think it's even fair to have another cat here, its too small. And even if I could afford to buy, how is one supposed to pay for a mortgage with just one income even for a tiny period of time while I give birth?

Oh yeah, we are also supposed to have a wedding, yeah right!

My family keeps trying to encourage me to move to places like Hoppers Crossing, but honestly I would prefer to rent in the smallest flat in the world then buy a huge house in Hoppers Crossing for lots of reasons. Besides, living in the outer burbs is pretty difficult if you are like Mr T and don't drive or like me and don't want to depend on a car.

Ahhhhhhhhhhh I kind of wish I was 20 again and didn't have to think about this stuff for a while.

Bad Lord of the Fries

I had a bad day today and decided to treat myself with lord of the fries 'chicken nuggets' which Mr T tells me are tasty. I went to the Elizabeth st store and they had sold out. So I went to the Flinders st store and they don't sell them at all. So I went back to the Flinders st store because it is closer to my tram and ordered the french Canadian fries with gravy and asked for vegan cheese in place of cows milk cheese and they had run out of that too.

But Mr T knowing that I had a shitty day bought me home a piece of yummy vegan chocolate and sour cherry cake from Organic Food and Wine Deli, did I mention that I heart Mr T?

I found him, i found him!

I'm not talking about a long lost lover or anything but much much better. Vegetarian Orgasm's cake chef Mark, well I'm pretty sure it is him. If you have never been a fan of Vegetarian orgasm or VO as I called it (when it was on smith st) or you have never been there than you should just stop reading now because this will just bore you.

I have tried to check out a new site called Veginity but unfortunately you need to sign up and pay to see the recipes or so so I thought. I discovered that some recipes like the strawberries muffins you can see for free and their are little youtube videos attached too. I watched one, and saw the ponytale and thought it's got to be him. I contacted him because I'm like a cake groupie or something (No Mr T that's a joke) and he confirmed it.

Since it's him, i'll fork over some money to subscribe to his website or get his book. His cakes like the original nougat cake which had layers of soy cream and whatever fruit he felt like using were amazing, as was the peanut caramel nougat. He is a genius. He would replicate all sorts of other amazing cakes/desserts too. The brownie sundae was pretty awesome too.

VO was such a huge part of my veganism, I swear I turned vegan after discovering that the I could have the best cakes in Melbourne and still be vegan and I used to eat there about once a week until they moved to Gertrude and when downhill (after he left). It's been years since it happened and there is still no one making amazing vegan cakes in Melbourne. Don't get me wrong there are good vegan cakes, but not fall out of your chair, amazing, rich, with several layers cakes.

Nachos

I had leftover cheezly from the cheezy muffins I made. So I set out making my standard chilli (with added cocoa) only to discover that the cheezly had gone bad. I had my heart set on cheezy taste and it was too late to get cheezly, so I decided to make this Vegan Cheese Sauce from post punk kitchen and added some garlic and onion powder to it. As you can see in this picture texture wise it was quite good like melted cheese, taste wise I was pleasantly surprised, it didn't replace cheezly or cheese but it satisfied my need.

Have a great weekend!

We live in a screwed up world!

Extract taken from age article about interviews conducted with men who use prostitutes:

Nonetheless, most men said they viewed their interaction with prostitutes as a business contract in which payment entitles them to treat the women any way they like. Women surrender the right to say no to anything once they accept a customer's money, many said.

"Prostitutes are a product, like cereal," said one man. "You go to the grocery, pick the brand you want, and pay for it. It's business."

Sharing the Not-bacon love

I read about tofu bacon over at have cake, will travel and had a look at the glowing reviews of the recipe at vegweb and decided then and there that I had to make it.

With one tiny problem, where to get liquid smoke? I eventually found it at Leos in Kew (at the end of isle 1 or 2 down past where the kosher foods are) and I've also heard that you can it get at USA foods.

It doesn't taste like Bacon, but it is AMAZING! Like smoked tofu but a thousand times better. We are having in sandwiches tomorrow but the possibilities are endless. Here's a ugly pic of it:

Ok so I can't bake

I stupidly said on fri night that I am good at baking. Then I made the apricot glazed almond cupcakes from VCTOTW to take to the vegan brunch that buttons was hosting on sat. And this is what happened with my my baking efforts:

* I accidentally turned the oven up high and when I went to check on them they were really burnt
* Thankfully I made a double batch of batter so I put the second batch into the tray only to discover that it only filled about 8 cupcake liners.
* Even though I turned the oven down and waited for it to cool down and monitored the second batch they were still slightly overcooked again.
*Taste wise -Almond extract SUCKS! I don't get it, I love almonds, almond meal, almond milk and yet almond extract is really horrible. It is overpowering and kind of takes over everything else.

It's such a pity because I love putting the apricot centre in the cupcakes, it was actually fun to make them and they looked pretty and they aren't as sugary at the other cupcakes recipes. Here's a pic:



To make up for the baking issues, Mr T decided to make the peanut butter banana cupcakes that I made last week. While he made them I got them out of the oven too early so they were undercooked and I burnt my finger.

I think I'm going to take a break from baking for a little while.

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The brunch was great, with all sorts of yummy foods and lots of people. My fav savoury dish were cute little vegan pies and the vegan love pie was AMAZING. It reminded me of the cakes at vegetarian orgasm. You'll have to check out Button's blog for pictures when she updates.

Ok, so i'm really slow to have tried Fry's vegetarian burgers. But why hasn't anyone in blog world told me that they rock? I just discovered that fry's products only seem to be sold at Safeway which is why I never see them at Coles where I normally shop. I tried one of the burgers and even burnt it and it still tasted great, just like how I remember hamburgers to taste. I finally found my replacement for sanitarium notburgers which are sadly no longer vegan. Now I just need to try their other vegetarian products.

Edited to add: the sausages are crap!

Also, the aduki award winners have been announced, no surprises there with the ice cream and cheese, but a NSW restaurant one best veg restaurant!