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.

Damn oven cupcakes*

I should have lots of food pics but don't really, without access to the internet I haven't had the motivation to photograph food.


This is one of the toasted coconut cupcakes with coconut pecan fudge icing from VCTOTW.

It's the first thing I baked in my new oven, unfortunately I ruined them or rather the new oven ruined them. The switch on the oven doesn't sit right so it's hard to tell what temperature it is but I stupidly thought I could figure it out.

These cupcakes were quite crunchy because of the new oven but the icing was good although maybe a little too sickly sweet for some (not me though).

I've since got a oven thermometer so I can tell what the temperature is and have become friends with my oven and can bake properly again.

Off to catch up on blog reading now...

* I take back the 'Damn' now that we are friends. I decided to name them after watching the kooky film waitress

I haven't fallen off the face of the earth

I just still don't have internet access or phone. I have decided that Optus is possibly the worst company ever. It was supposed to be connected on wed (the first available time within a fortnight that was available), then friday and then yesterday but still no internet.

On Friday, they told me that someone would be out between 8 and 1 and so I arranged for someone to be home and about 8 phone calls later including one that escalated to a team leader. I was being assertive not aggressive I promise. And still no real apologies, or internet, and not even a ounce of fake empathy, I know that real empathy is too much to ask for. I finally told the poor person to leave my place at 2.30 and was told at 4.45 by Optus that maybe someone will come out before close of business and that I would just have to wait, yeah right. I asked Optus to call the contractors and find out what time they were coming approximately and was told that they couldn't. I understand that Optus rents the line from Telstra but surely the communications industry can get some communication with the contractor.

Bastards!

Am I really asking too much for my internet and phone that I am paying for to be connected. If It doesn't get fixed soon (like tomorrow) I'm going to the telecommunications ombudsmen.