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Things I Love Thursday: A Few of Our Favourite Stores.

October 11, 2012, 7:21 am
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Ah, another American edition of Things I Love Thursday! What can I say, I'm in love with Austin. If moving was as simple as packing a bag and hopping on a plane we'd be there right now. Unfortunately things like immigration laws and visas exist meaning that for now Austin will have to exist without us in it!

I used Lazy Smurf'sAustin Vegan Guide to plan a large majority of this trips eating schedule and one of the most exciting things we discovered was the breakfast taco. We'd never even heard of breakfast tacos, let alone tried them, before this trip and now they're heading quickly towards the top of our list of favourite foods ever.

Thanks to Lazy Smurf we heard that the best breakfast taco in town was to be found at Whole Foods so we headed straight to the North Lamar location to check 'em out. 


The breakfast taco options at Whole Foods include tofu scramble, potatoes, beans, rice, guac', all kinds of salsas, tomatoes and two kinds of Daiya. I went for scramble, potatoes, guac', Daiya and tomatoes almost every time. What a perfect combination. I'm so glad that we brought some tortillas home so that we can re-create these.

Another amazing thing about this particular Whole Foods is that it's huge! It's actually their flagship store and it's full of amazing things like these parfaits which even turned Nick into a food photographer!


We were particularly in love with the chocolate parfait although the peanut butter will always have a place in my heart after Nick dropped one face down, lid off, onto the self checkout causing much mess and mayhem!

One of our other favourite stores was Wheatsville Co-Op. Wheatsville have the nicest most amazing staff in the world. Everyone we came into contact with at every store, cafe, restaurant, food truck and bar in Austin was crazy friendly but the people at Wheatsville were extra special. One wonderful person even shared their vegan chocolate with me whilst we were going through the checkout!

Their deli is insane, if you go you have to try the Buffalo Popcorn Hero and if you can't actually handle spice at all then they'll even replace the Buffalo Popcorn Tofu with regular Popcorn Tofu so that you can experience the creamy deliciousness of their vegan blue cheese dressing without burning off all of your taste buds! The first time we went I chased mine with a Red Rabbit Co-Op doughnut and a root beer.

 


On the second visit I tried the Red Rabbit Apple Fritter. I have to say that this was my favourite of all of their baked goods, I'm a sucker for fruit and a sugary glaze, amazing.


One of our other favourite stores EVER is Toy Joy! 


More amazingly lovely people are to be found working here and as well as being an epic toy store (I spent a shitload of cash!) they also have a vegan ice cream parlour inside!! I don't have a picture of the delicious peanut butter chocolate soft serve we tried but trust me it was awesome. The other amazing thing about this place is that it's open 'till 11pm - it would be the cutest place ever to take someone after dinner on a first date, Nick took me here after dinner one night on what was probably our 8 millionth date and I thought that it was the cutest idea ever!

The incredibly lovely staff are also funny as fuck if this Insane Clown Posse inspired sign's anything to go by!


Austin Books & Comics is also up there on our list of favourite places, as well as this epic photo of me & Hulk I picked up a super rad screen printed Mars Attacks poster and some super cute Jeffrey Brown comic books.


We also loved the bar where you could play air hockey, skeeball and drink Lone Star. Perfect!

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Pie-Day Friday Part Deux

October 12, 2012, 11:44 am
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It's Friday which means one thing during MoFo, Pie! Today I chose the Little Lemon Mousse Pies from Vegan Pie In the Sky and wowzers, I am seriously impressed!

When I was picking this weeks pie I definitely felt a little intimidated by this recipe, the picture in the book's so pretty & I wasn't entirely confident that I could make something look that good! I decided to go for it anyway though and I'm glad I did. This recipe has three parts to it, the Gingersnap Crust, a filling, and a topping. I actually started prepping for the recipe last night, the cashews needed to soak for a while & I knew that it'd be too dark for photographs if I started in the morning! 

I decided to half this recipe both to save money on ingredients (I can't spend as much money on food as I did last MoFo without making a nasty dent in my Vida Vegan Con savings) and I also didn't own any mini springform pans, buying two was obviously half the price of four. That's a saving right there! Whilst the recipe does say that you can make these in a 9" springform pan for me part of the appeal was that they're cute! I love little (and not so little!) individual desserts and I decided that if the recipe turned out well I could justify buying the other two pans!

The gingersnap crust was a snap to put together & it pressed into the springform pans easily. Last Friday I pressed the biscuit base into my pie tin using my fingers but today I decided to find something circular & a similar diameter to my springforms, I thought that this might make the crust firmer & much less crumbly upon slicing - I was right & I'll definitely be using that technique again.

After baking the crust for 10 minutes it was time to whip up the filling. This creamy coconut mousse was easy to put together and it looked amazing as soon as it hit the tins. 


If you look closely you can even see perfect moussey air bubbles. The next step required a lot of patience as it needed to cool for FOUR hours. Bloody hell! Whilst I waited I tidied the ridiculous amount of mess I made... 


...went to a spin class (the instructor played metal and power ballads!), picked the Vegan MoFo Vegusto competition winner and tried and failed to fix my kitchen light. Yep, my kitchen light decided to break during MoFo - nice comedy timing kitchen light, I'm gonna enjoy trying to take pictures only using the light from a single lamp!

The topping for the pie was just as easy to make as the mousse filling and after another hour chilling in the fridge these were ready to pop outa the tins!

I actually took a few pictures whilst they were still sitting on the base of the springform pan; I've never gotten anything with a biscuit base out of its casing without kinda ruining it before but as you can see these came out perfectly. It even looks like the one in the book!


As well as looking totally perfect this pie tastes amazing. The coconut flavour from the beautifully light mousse filling is really subtle, it doesn't overpower the lemon at all, and the gingersnap crust compliments the lemon flavoured pie beautifully.

Todays Pie-day Friday has been an unmitigated success! I don't think I've ever made such a beautifully delicate, fancy looking dessert before and next time I have a dinner party this'll definitely be on the table! 
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Scottish Saturday the Second

October 13, 2012, 1:51 pm
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Last week for Scottish Saturday I made Mince & Tatties, a regular meal in my house whilst I was growing up, and this week we have another classic from my childhood - Kedgeree. In case you haven't heard of kedgeree it's a curry powder spiced rice dish made with flaked fish, butter, parsley and hard boiled eggs...so, not the most vegan thing in the world! It used to be a favourite of mine though and I haven't eaten it since I moved out of my childhood home about 13 years ago.

Apparently the origins of this dish are debatable, some say that it originated in India, some insist that it's Scottish. Despite being a Scot myself I'm inclined to believe the former!

I took inspiration for my version of this dish from a whole lotta places. Firstly I remembered that I'd bookmarked Liz's recipe from a Vegan MoFo post back in '09 and from there I looked at the very fishy recipe she used as a jumping off point. I also checked out Tami's Food Network Friday post over at her blog Vegan Appetite.


Unlike either of Liz or Tami's recipes I decided to use a vegetarian fish product to replace the real fish in this classic British recipe. I have no beef with mock meat products of any kind, I used to love eating fish before I realised how cruel it was and I liked how realistic this was. Nick didn't entirely agree, he actually used to hate both the taste and texture of faux fish so he wasn't quite as into this as I was! I coated the non-nori side of the fish in a mixture of 1TB olive oil, 1 tsp Soy Sauce, 1 tsp Liquid Smoke and 1/4 tsp Smoked Paprika before pulling it apart and frying it in a little olive oil spray until it browned nicely.

For the eggs I took Tami's idea of using tofu and ran with it. I often make McVegans for breakfast at the weekends using this recipe and I used the apple cider vinegar, olive oil & salt marinade from there to coat the tofu before baking for 15 minutes flipping halfway. To make them kinda egg like in shape I used a tablespoon but I'm sure that this is entirely unnecessary, cubed tofu would be fine but if you have a melon baller this is quite fun! I would like to work on this part of the recipe a little more next time as I wasn't entirely satisfied with its eggyness. I forgot to add any black salt despite jotting it down on the piece of paper I had in the kitchen and I would also like to try to create a yolk using The Vegg.

Ingredients:


  • 180g Vegetarian Cod (prepared as above)
  • 150g Tofu (prepared as above)
  • 1 TBS Margarine (I used Vitalite, you can use something else but it can't be low fat!)
  • 1/2 an Onion, diced
  • 1/2 Cup Basmati Rice
  • 1 1/8 Cups Water
  • 1/2 tsp Curry Powder 
  • 1/3 Cup Frozen Peas
  • 1 TBS Parsley, chopped
  • Salt & Black Pepper to taste


Recipe:


  • Preheat the oven to Gas Mark 5 / 190C / 375F
  • Prepare the tofu (as above)
  • Marinade the fish (as above) 
  • Melt half of the margarine in a saucepan, add onion & cook on a low heat until softened.
  • Add rice and curry powder and stir for two minutes
  • Pour in the water, bring to the boil, reduce heat & simmer covered for 8 minutes. 
  • Whilst you're simmering the rice pull apart & fry the fish (see above)
  • Stir in the fish and peas, cover and simmer for about 5 more minutes checking occasionally that the rice isn't sticking, if it is stir in a little more water
  • Remove from the heat, dot the rice with the remaining margarine & let stand for 4 minutes
  • Add the tofu, parsley, salt & pepper. Stir, taste, and adjust seasoning as necessary
  • Serve with lemon wedges and mango chutney if that's how you roll (it was not how my family rolled so no mango chutney here!)
I hope everyone's enjoying MoFo and having a good weekend! I'm looking forward to Football Food Sunday tomorrow and contemplating making more Kedgeree for breakfast!
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Football Food Sunday!

October 14, 2012, 12:48 pm
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I feel like Football Food Sunday doesn't need too much of an introduction any more! We watch football, we eat ridiculous food, that's about it!

Today I picked the recipe in a slightly different way than usual. Ordinarily I just go for whatever seems exciting or whatever we fancy eating but this time I wanted to use a couple of things from my pantry. This is how we ended up making these Barbecue Pulled "Pork" Sandwiches from Joni's blog. Sometime in the last year or two I heard about a new thing in vegan cooking, using jackfruit to imitate pulled pork! Crazy times! Now I'd never actually heard of pulled pork but I was still excited to try something new & I eventually tracked down canned jackfruit in water (as opposed to syrup) at an ethnic grocery store in Reading when I was visiting one of my best friends last summer.

I was pleased to see that this recipe also used a lot of barbecue sauce, we had some left over from a recipe we made months ago and whilst I didn't particularly love it then I didn't want to throw an almost full bottle away!


Obviously we needed to make some buns to enjoy our pulled "pork" in and it only felt right to use a recipe from Celine & Joni's book Hearty Vegan Meals for Monster Appetites. I chose the Scarborough Fair Buns for no other reason than that they sounded good & I had all of the ingredients in the house! Joni also suggests serving these with coleslaw so that's just what I did - nothing fancy here, just grated cabbage, carrot, some Veganaise & a bit of wholegrain mustard. Kinda like the one I made for Come Dine With Me back in April.

The Barbecue Pulled "Pork" was really easy to throw together, it needs to spend an hour simmering but that's pretty low stress cooking if you ask me!

I feel bad saying that we didn't love these but we kinda didn't, we loved the herby buns and we were definitely into the jackfruit-as-pulled-pork thing but that barbecue sauce that we didn't love before? Yeah, strangely we still didn't love it, and unsurprisingly when the sauce makes up the majority of the recipes flavour it's kinda important to like it! On the plus side I still have a can of jackfruit and we will be making these again, we'll just be using a different barbecue sauce!
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Go Go Gadget Coffee Machine

October 15, 2012, 3:24 pm
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I can't decide whether I'm cheating or not by picking a gadget that isn't hidden at the back of an overflowing cupboard but I think that that makes this gadget even more ridiculous. Look at the counter space this thing's taking up? 


Nick & I bought this in mid December last year and d'u know how many times we've used it? Twice. Yes, that's right, twice. My main problem is that I'm kinda scared of it. I don't fully understand how it works and when you're messing around with boiling water and hot steam that doesn't seem ideal. We bought this after getting irritated that most of the coffee shops around us close at 6pm* meaning no romantic late night winter coffee dates. Sadness.

We decided to try to make the perfect hot chocolate this evening and we set about our mission with a few bookmarked recipes & a collection of chocolatey looking things from around the house.


Firstly we decided to to a side by side taste test of our powdered hot chocolates. In the blue corner we have Green & Black's Hot Chocolate and in the red corner we have Zuma Fairtrade Dark Hot Chocolate. We bought the Green & Blacks last year and neither of us remembered being overly impressed, the Zuma is new.


Upon first inspection the Zuma is a fine powder whereas the Green & Black's is a little grainy.


One thing we learnt immediately is that we need to buy a larger milk jug! Ours holds approximately 660ml of non-foamed liquid. Even using only 300ml of soya milk it was overflowing all over the place before we reached optimum foam potential!

We started with the Zuma Fairtrade Hot Chocolate and following the directions on their website made the powder into a paste using a little hot water. After adding the frothed milk and stirring like crazy we had what looked like a very promising hot chocolate. I topped it with shaved chocolate for extra fanciness!


Wow! This was super awesome, we'd both go as far as saying that it's exactly like the hot chocolate we usually order in Cafe Nero. An early winner in the hot chocolate challenge perhaps?

Next up we have the Green & Black's Hot Chocolate. Now what's extra strange about this is that in looking for a link I can only find versions with milk in the ingredient list, I've triple checked mine now & I'm not going crazy, my jar's definitely vegan. Perhaps they knew their product was a bit crap and changed it?! I doubt a little milk powder will help though, this hot chocolate was terrible!


Yeah, I have nothing else to say other than I wish I'd made the Zuma hot chocolate in the big mug!

Finally we decided to see if we could make an equally good hot chocolate on the stovetop. The idea of the gadget challenge is not just to use the gadget in question but to see if it's really necessary by comparing what it can do to what our other gadgets or appliances can do.

I chose this recipe from the blog Maple Spice to test the stovetop method. Mainly because I had some coconut milk leftover from making Friday's pie and also because I liked the idea of chucking some booze in there! I changed her recipe a little and used 75ml of Full Fat Coconut Milk, 150ml of Soya Milk, 50g of Dark Chocolate and a shot of Khalua. You just pop all of the ingredients in a pan, whisk until the chocolate's melted and then let thicken for a couple of minutes. Stir in the Khalua at the end.


This made a wonderfully thick hot chocolate but one that isn't really comparable to the foamy frothy milky hot chocolate you make with a steamed milk and hot chocolate powder. If I was having a serious chocolate craving a small mug of this would hit the spot but it was far too sickly for me to imagine drinking regularly. I also hate to say it but next time I'd leave the booze out, I prefer my chocolate unadulterated and I liked Nick's alcohol free version much more.

This hot chocolate would be amazing if you were camping or staying in a log cabin in the woods (anyone have one of those I can borrow for a weekend?!) but at home the Zuma Frairtrade Hot Chocolate is the clear winner and the one we'll be making over and over again. I'm really looking forward to trying it with Tate & Lyle's Mint Chocolate Syrup and marshmallows, possibly even at the same time, and if you're looking for the perfect hot chocolate the 2kg tin is definitely worth the splurge.

Wow, I'm cutting it a bit fine today aren't I MoFo's?! Also if you've been paying attention during this post you'll have an idea of what one of tomorrows cookbook challenge books is!

* Apparently this has changed, the New York Coffee Club cafe by the clock tower is now open from 7am - 9:30pm Mon - Sat. I've also heard that they have vegan cake but I can't tell ya if they're any good until I investigate myself shortly! I'll keep you updated!
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Cookbook Challenge Tuesday

October 16, 2012, 10:03 am
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I don't think a Cookbook Challenge Tuesday has ever come together as perfectly as this one. The books I pulled out of the bundt pan today were The Urban Vegan, Vegan With A Vengeance and Veganomicon, in that order. As I was picking the pages a plan started to come together...

The Urban Vegan, Page 133, Brussels Sprouts Au Gratin
Vegan With A Vengeance, Page 88, Seitan and Herb Stuffed Mushrooms
Veganomicon, Page 53, Autumn Latkes

...can you see it? All of these things go together!! Unlike the time I made cookies, cookies, and potatoes or french toast, beans, and a burger these are things I could cook at the same time & put on the same plate. Amazing! The other thing about all of these recipes is that I would never have picked them. No chance, I'm meh about brussels sprouts, Nick hates mushrooms and to be quite honest I wasn't entirely sure what a Latke was!

I started by getting all three work areas together...




I was pretty pleased when I realised that each recipe was actually pretty simple and that they all used different cooking methods, one under the grill, one in the oven and one in the frying pan. Win!

The brussels sprout dish from The Urban Vegan was one of the simplest recipes I've ever seen, there are only three ingredients and I could probably have thrown it together blindfolded!

The stuffed mushrooms were the more labour intensive, but really, if you have some seitan knocking about they're easy!

After reading the recipe I quickly worked out what a Latke was, a fried potato pancake not dissimilar to a hash brown. This recipe uses sweet potato, carrot and beetroot in place of potato and I think I made a bit of a mistake here. I've never actually cooked with beetroot before having only recently developed a taste for it and I picked up a packet of cooked beetroot at the store. I think that how runny my latke mixture was means that I shoulda used raw beetroot, there were no disasters though, I just had to be super careful getting them into & out of the pan.


I was super amazed at A, how delicious everything was. I enjoyed everything which given that these were recipes I felt a little underwhelmed by upon reading was quite a surprise. And B, how well everything went together given that they were randomly chosen, from different cookbooks, and not things that you'd immediately look at & put together.

The noochy brussels sprouts were great, I usually save sprouts for Christmas lunch because they're traditional, eat one or two, and leave the rest. These? I ate the whole lot and I'd definitely make them again. The stuffed mushrooms were delicious, as you can see from the picture I decided to do big mushrooms instead of the little ones recommended in the recipe and that worked out pretty well. I really liked the herby seitan stuffing and I'd consider making it to stuff inside almost anything! The latkes were probably the star of the show though, not necessarily because I liked them most but because I was most surprised by them. As I said earlier I'm a new convert to beetroot after years of trying, sweet potato is pretty low on my much loved veggies list, and usually, if something has fennel in, it I'll run screaming in the opposite direction...well, not literally, but you get the idea! I really didn't think I'd like these but I was totally won over by their earthy, sweet flavour and crispy fried outsides. What a great meal!
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What I Ate Wednesday

October 17, 2012, 2:45 pm
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I think I chose What I Ate Wednesday as a theme to give myself a break from my other more labour intensive themes and today I really made the most of it!

Yoghurt & Grapes for breakfast.



Tempeh Bacon & Coleslaw Sandwich on Sourdough for lunch.


Mid afternoon beer.


Breakfast for dinner! Nick recreated the Bouldin Creek tofu scramble perfectly and I whipped up lazy home fries and garlic mushrooms. We ate this with sourdough toast. It was awesome, especially the scramble.


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Things I Love Thursday - Pizza, Pancakes & Panthers!

October 18, 2012, 4:57 am
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Pizza has to be in my list of top 10 favourite foods ever and unsurprisingly Austin has some great options! Yeah, I'm totally obsessed with Austin!

The Parlor is a bar and a pizzeria, cool! The Parlor has a cool dive bar atmosphere & they use Follow Your Heart on their pizzas which is great because Nick is anti-Daiya. They were also happy to half & half the pizza so that I could have veggies - Nick hates veggies on pizza! 


I went for olives and mushrooms, yum! We would have gone for some of their mock meats as well but they'd run out of all of them. Although we usually prefer a slightly thinner crust, this was a damn good pizza. Next time we're in Austin we'll definitely be going back.

Another pizza joint we checked out whilst we were in Austin was Hoboken Pie.


They were right around the corner from our hotel so we ended up eating there on both our first and last nights. Hoboken Pie use Daiya which wasn't brilliant for Nick but their crust is epic and they have homemade mock meat and tofu ricotta.

This was our first night pie - mushrooms and vegan chicken. Perfection.


On our last night I think our chatting with the guys making our pizza made something go a little wrong & we ended up with the most insanely spicy pizza ever despite having ordered the exact same thing as on the first night! We think it somehow ended up with roasted habanero peppers on it. It was no big deal though and it was probably our fault for being super distracting! I washed away the spiciness with this delicious Blue Moon Harvest Pumpkin Ale.


Another favourite thing of mine beginning with P is Pancakes! I looove pancakes! I like to eat pancakes for dinner, brunch, lunch or breakfast - I don't discriminate! In Austin you can get your pancake fix 24 hours a day at the Kerbey Lane Cafe


Their fluffy blueberry filled pancakes were great and despite them bringing us both short stacks when we'd ordered full stacks there was plenty of pancake on our plates. We were actually kinda glad that there wasn't another one!

This P's a little more random and not remotely food related, Panther Fieldhouse! Nick & I love the TV show Friday Night Lights and as it was filmed in and around Austin we did a little driving tour of some of the locations whilst we were there!


If you're into TV and you haven't watched FNL yet you totally should, I think it's one of the best TV shows ever.
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Kinda not pie-day Friday!

October 19, 2012, 2:55 pm
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Yeah yeah, I know, today's meant to be Pie-Day Friday. WTH?! Where's the pie? Um, technically there is no pie. It's okay though, I have loads of excuses!

Today I sold my first cupcakes to WaiKikaMooKau on Kensington Gardens. WaiKikaMooKau is one of my favourite local veggie cafes & I'm super excited to have cupcakes made by my little business on sale somewhere I've been frequenting for years. I last sold my cupcakes in a cafe about a year ago & I had a less than great experience. The cafe shall remain nameless but, long story short, I found out that the owner was homophobic so I refused to sell him any more of my cupcakes! Thankfully that cafe shut down and now I'm excited to be moving on and working with a much more awesome business.

Terrible picture right? But yay, my cakes in a cafe!

If you live in Brighton you'll be pleased to hear that my Peanut Butter Chocolate cupcakes will be on sale over the weekend.

Also (I may aswell keep the excuses coming!) I was selected to take part in the Ms Cupcake "Cakes By Post" trial & the goodies arrived today. We have two cupcakes, a Nanaimo bar and two maple pecan loaf cakes to nibble on. With all of that there's really no room for pie!

This evening Nick & I went out for dinner at Fanny's of Hanover where the Gourmet Girl's Pop Up Restaurant lives on a Friday night. It was Fish & Chip night and the menu looked like this:

Crumbed Garlic Mushrooms (my old Red Veg favourite)
'Cod' n Chips (duh!)
Apple Crumble Tart...

...that's technically a pie isn't it?! I promise to post about it tomorrow!
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Scottish Saturday - Fish & Chips

October 20, 2012, 2:00 pm
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Last night was the Gourmet Girls Pop Up Restaurant at Fanny's of Hanover, a little cafe on Islingword Road. I love the pop up restaurants and this was a theme that I just couldn't miss. The theme was Fish & Chip night and in true Gourmet Girls style they made it fancy.

How does this tie in with Scottish Saturday I hear you ask, well, when I was growing up the only take away we ever got (EVER) was Fish & Chips! We lived in the countryside so nowhere would deliver our take away food but the fish & chip shop was only a 10 minute drive away.

This starter of Crumbed Garlic Mushrooms never featured in our Friday night take aways but breaded & fried garlic mushrooms have always been a favourite of mine; to the extent that the people running the vegetarian fast food place opposite my old workplace actually nicknamed me Breaded Mushroom because I ordered them so regularly. I swear the worst day ever in that job was the day I went across the street to make my regular order only to find out that the supplier had added milk to my favourite lunch, sad times.


These breaded mushrooms were perfect, almost exactly as I remembered them only with a touch more garlic and a little less grease - neither of these are bad things!!

The main was this beautifully plated beer battered tofu cod atop a pile of hand-cut chips.


The plate also included a tomato sauce, salad, tartar sauce, mushy peas and a pickled onion. The fish was unbelievably good, I haven't eaten fish for a really long time but the texture of both the tofu and the batter were spot on. The tartar sauce blew my mind - it was ridiculous, I'd quite like to slather it on everything every day! I have to admit to having never been a fan of either mushy peas or pickled onions though. I did try both (before accidentally throwing my pickled onion across the room at someone but the less said about that the better!) but in the end Nick ate all of the mushy peas. He'd never tried them before but he loved them, given that they're a vegetable this is kinda a big deal!

Dessert was a little apple crumble tart which we both loved. I photographed Nick's because I had mine without the custard (ewww!).


As well as being really pretty this tasted gooooood! Not too sweet which is perfect especially if it's to be served with custard and there was just the right fruit to crumble ratio.

I can't wait to go to another Gourmet Girls Pop Up, I love them and it's really nice to be able to go to dinner at a cosy candlelit cafe on a Friday night, they've gotten the mix of fancy food and a nice but also relaxed atmosphere just right. The pop ups happen every Friday with revolving themes and you can find full details & upcoming menus on their website.
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Football Food Sunday - Dawgs!

October 21, 2012, 5:19 am
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Today's Football Food Sunday was inspired by one of our favourite places in Austin, a bar called Frank's. Frank's shows football, makes a delicious cocktail (or three!) and serves up awesome vegan food. What more could you ask for?! Here's my take on the food we ate at Frank's.


The first thing we had to find to make this meal was a UK version of the waffle fries served at Frank's. Living in the land of no-tots I didn't have high hopes but as you can see we got 'em almost spot on! Looks wise these Supreme Crisscuts were perfect but flavour wise they were a little spicier than the waffle fries at Franks. We also served ours with 1000 island dressing rather than BBQ sauce.


This Frank's dog photo was taken before I added mustard but we topped our store-bought Fry's dawgs with sauerkraut, ketchup & mustard just like at Frank's!


It was so good! I could eat like this all the time but it's probably best saved for Football Food Sunday!
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More Cupcakes & the UK Vegan Food Swap.

October 22, 2012, 11:43 am
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My Monday theme kinda fell by the wayside today, I baked more cupcakes for WaiKikaMooKau this morning - Chocolate Peanut Butter and Speculoos Caramel.



Almost as soon as I'd finished shopping for more ingredients and washing up I got a text from the cafe to say that they'd sold out again! On a Monday! So, yeah, I kinda gave up on my theme and got baking again! I made twice as many this time and I'm really excited that this is going so well. I wish that I had a bigger kitchen so that I could co-ordinate baking and cooking for myself a little better, maybe I'll get the hang of it soon!

My UK Vegan Food Swap parcel turned up today, yay! It was full of so much lovely stuff and a really sweet note with explanations of all of the stuff in the package. I've been meaning to make some spring rolls with soy curls like these ones from Kittee's blog for a while now so I was super excited to find the wrappers in the package. On the right there are nori snacks, these little individually wrapped packets were the first thing I opened - I love nori and these are brilliant.



Also in the package were apple & strawberry fruit crisps, Moo Free chocolate drops, coconut flavoured Sesame Snaps and Seed & Bean lavender chocolate. I've never tried any of these things before and I'm super excited about them all.


Last but by no means least I pulled out a jar of Zest vegan pesto and some GranoVita Shiitake Pâté. I used to buy the Zest pesto all the time when I first went vegan but I haven't had it for ages and shiitake pâté is always a favourite of mine.


I love the UK Vegan Food Swap, I've never received a package I didn't love & as someone who loves both shopping and receiving post it's perfect. The swap is organised by To Happy Vegans & you can find out more information about it here.

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Cookbook Challenge Tuesday

October 23, 2012, 1:55 pm
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It's Cookbook Challenge Tuesday and I feel like yet again the stars have aligned to create something perfect. Last week all three recipes went together perfectly as one meal and today, whilst everything didn't go together, they were all super quick and easy! Exactly what I needed as I have a day of appointment after appointment and won't have time to spend more than an hour in the kitchen at one time.

I started the day with a recipe from Viva Vegan. The generator picked page 182, Savory Fresh Corn Pancakes or Cachapas. I'd never herd of Cachapas before and whilst I think I've cooked a decent amount from Viva Vegan I'd never really noticed this recipe before.


I was a little daunted reading through the recipe as it uses a type of flour I'd never used before, unsurprisingly it turned out that I had it in the house - As with most vegans I can't really stop myself when I see exciting stuff that I haven't tried at the grocery store!

The whole recipe was actually surprisingly simple to put together, until now my experiences with Viva Vegan have all be awesome but almost everything has required some advanced preparation or a decent amount of time spent in the kitchen - I'm beginning to think that these are just the recipes I'm picking though, as I said, these were simple! As well as being simple these were really delicious, OMG, seriously, make these now! When the recipe popped up I was a little dubious about the idea of a corn pancake but now I'm a total corn pancake convert. We just ate them with a little margarine as it was breakfast time but I will definitely be making these with the optional cheese and a side of avocado at lunchtime sometime soon.

The second recipe that came up was the Creamy Bleu Cheez Dressing from The Uncheese Cookbook. The recipes I've made from here so far have been a little hit, miss or meh but I like to try new things and until I've made three terrible things from a cookbook it gets to stay in the random recipe generator! My favourite recipe from The Uncheese Cookbook is the Crock Cheeze, I enjoyed both the Chick Cheeze and the Amazing Mac n Cheeze Sauce (although it needed way more nooch!!) and the Fondue I tried was an unmitigated disaster!


I would say that this falls somewhere near the miss end of the spectrum, nowhere near as inedible as the fondue but unfortunately it's main flavour was vinegar. It was so vinegarey that Nick actually asked me whether I'd messed up the recipe and thrown in a whole load of extra vinegar! Unfortunately that definitely isn't what happened, I added more lemon juice to try to offset the vinegar which made it a little more edible, but still, not great.

The third recipe of the day came from Color Me Vegan. I haven't cooked much from CMV but everything I've tried so far's been great especially the Swiss Chard Pie...

This is where I stopped writing to go to the dentist, I really did intend to make the spinach and potato soup but whilst I was at the dentist my phone got stolen (don't even ask!), I then spent the rest of the afternoon using the 'track my iphone' software to chase the man and my phone around town to no avail as he eventually turned it off. I still have no phone, I'm feeling a little ragey and I have to have my wisdom teeth out! What a crap day. We ordered pizza, garlic bread and cherry chocolate sorbet to make it better though so I am happy that I live somewhere where I can get them delivered to my house even though thieves apparently now hang out at my dentist!
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Sushi Feast!

October 24, 2012, 3:31 pm
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After running around all morning trying to sort out insurance, talking to the police & getting a new phone (mine was stolen yesterday) I wasn't particularly up for cooking lunch. Luckily today is Wednesday and on a Wednesday YumTum Sushi have their stall at the market outside Churchill Square. Last time I blogged about YumTum they were veggie and working towards being entirely vegan, now they're totally vegan. Yay!

YumTum sell a £4.50 sushi lunchbox full of tasty morsels including a wakami seaweed & sesame salad, butternut squash & orange powder maki and the new vegan version of the tamago omelette which is made with tofu and agar.


Everything is always amazing, and, as you can see, it's beautifully presented. This take out would definitely make your workmates jealous.

On my way back home I went past new-to-Brighton takeaway chain Kokoro. As I skipped breakfast I couldn't help doubling back to pop in and grab something else to compliment my sushi lunchbox. As usual in a new place I asked them quite a lot of questions about the ingredients of the things I wanted to try and discovered that the avocado rolls contain mayonnaise whilst the cucumber rolls do not & that the dumplings and the inari tofu are suitable for vegans. Inari tofu and dumplings are two of my favourite things ever so this is when I stopped asking questions! Other possibly vegan things I spotted were the Seaweed Salad, Healthy Spinach Salad & Edamame.


I really enjoyed everything here, the two huge inari tofu's were stuffed full of rice, the cucumber maki tasted super fresh (I hate it when places serve sushi that has clearly been refrigerated for hours and hours) and the dumplings were light, fresh and full of tasty veggies. I also enjoyed the soy sauce that came with them as it has a hint of chilli & sesame.

I got a message from fellow Brighton-based vegan blogger Christina on Twitter after mentioning Kokoro who said that her boyfriend asked a couple of questions about their hot food & was told that even the one's labelled Veg contained fish. Whilst I am 99.9% sure that what I ended up with today was vegan it has made me a little dubious about their idea of what the Veg label means and next time I go I'll be sure to reiterate that I cannot eat fish, meat, milk, or egg!

I spent most of the afternoon grazing on sushi before eating a late dinner of Fry's nuggets, broccoli, peas & sweetcorn. Food wise today has been a bit random, I'm not someone who ever misses breakfast and to be honest I don't know what I was thinking when I left the house this morning without even grabbing a Clif bar - apparently I cannot function without a phone!
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Things I Love Thursday - Even More Austin Love!

October 25, 2012, 12:55 pm
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As it gets colder and colder here I miss Austin more & more! As soon as I find a decent tomato (so, next summer then!) I'll be recreating the amazing Garden Breakfast from Bouldin Creek Cafe. 


This was my favourite out of the three breakfasts I sampled at Bouldin Creek, lovely fresh local tomatoes, noochy tofu scramble, steamed spinach and sourdough toast. Perfection.

Another of my favourite things about Austin was the availability of awesome late night food. Arlo's is an epic vegan fast food truck located outside the back of a bar called Cheer Up Charlie's, so, if you want, you can grab a beer to go with your food.


I actually only ate one thing at Arlo's, the Bacon Cheeseburger, and it was so amazing that I couldn't resist ordering it again the second time we visited.


My crap photo really doesn't do this burger justice, it was insane! It was so like it's fast food namesake that it was almost creepy - in a good way!

Another amazing Austin food truck is The Vegan Yacht, how cool is this truck?! They even had awesome animal liberation stickers on their chairs! They don't stay open very late but it's the perfect place for lunch or an early dinner.


The Yacht has an awesome menu of sandwiches, smoothies, and crazy fun sounding things like Freeto Pie! I tried the Mock Chick'n Sammie which comes with organic shredded carrot and sprouts, lettuce, and organic tomato slices.


This was an amazing sandwich, the mock chick'n was super creamy and delicious and the salad was super fresh. If we hadn't left it until the second last day to visit we'd have definitely headed back there.
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Happy Friday!

October 26, 2012, 1:53 pm
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Happy Friday!

Have a Speculoos cupcake...


...or an alcoholic ginger beer!


I am totally aware that this post is a cop out but I'm tired and I'm gonna be posting twice tomorrow!
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My MoFo Kitchen Tour.

October 27, 2012, 6:39 am
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I love reading about and looking at pictures of other peoples kitchens. It's awesome to get a glimpse into where my favourite food bloggers spend their time and it's also great way to get decorating or storage tips and ideas.

This month loads of MoFo bloggers have shared kitchen tours with us including Mandee, Kittee, Amy, Amey, Amanda, Fanny, Erin& Angel.

My house was built in the 1840's as a workers cottage, layout wise I'm not sure how much it's changed on the inside since then. I imagine that what is now our living room/kitchen area probably used to be two smaller rooms.  This area is right at the bottom of the house & because our house is on a hill it's underground in the lounge area but not in the kitchen. It doesn't get much natural light because of the walled garden so we picked white units when we re-did the kitchen.

I love that these two rooms are joined together. It's nice to be able to do all of our cooking and hanging out in one space, it's great when we have friends over and it saves on heating bills in the winter because the whole area gets nice & toasty every time you turn the oven on!

When we moved in the kitchen didn't look anything like this, we had to rip down & re-plaster all of the walls and put in a whole new kitchen. I still love the units, handles, tiles & worktops we chose when we moved in but at the time I didn't really cook or bake and I didn't even think about replacing the oven. My main problem with it is that the gas heats really unevenly meaning that I can only bake 10 cupcakes at a time because the back corners burn before anything else is cooked and the bottom of the oven is way, way cooler than the middle. It's pretty damn inconvenient and because of the width of the oven we can't get a new one because they don't make the kind I want in this size! I've been searching for a while so if you spot a 55cm, double non-fan electric oven with a gas hob lemme know!


I tidied a bit before I took that picture but there's still a tray of roasted squash cooling on the stovetop!

Just behind the table in the lounge is my cookbook shelf.


The drawers next to the stove have cutlery & knives and stuff at the top (you don't need to see that) and random kitcheny things live in the middle - I love the cupcake tin, it's perfect for all the little things that are super annoying if they're loose in the drawer!


Pans live at the bottom. I've always wanted one of those racks on the ceiling to hang my pans on but as you can see from the first picture the ceiling's way too low for that!


The cupboard to the other side of the stove, below the kettle & toaster, houses my baking supplies, tupperware, baking trays & cake tins. I'd never realised before how much the top shelf is leaning under the weight of all that flour - maybe I need to counterbalance it with a brick or two!



You can see the toaster in this next picture too, so we're panning around to the right!


One of my favourite kitchen gadgets, my stand mixer, lives on top of the microwave. I love it so much, I mix all of my frosting in there and use it to knead bread. It also has a food processor attachment that I use all the time. You can see into my little garden too, that tarpaulin is hiding our barbecue, I think it was warm enough to use it twice this summer! As you can see the draining rack is full. It's always like this, I was trying to wait until nothing was drying to take my pictures but it's been a week so I gave up!

In this picture we pan around to the right again to where I was standing where I took the first picture!

As you can see I have a pretty decent tote bag collection... really, I have way too many - I just can't resist a tote!


As you can see our fridge is in a little porch just outside the kitchen! That's also where we keep all of our recycling - I'm a little obsessed with recycling. We pay for someone to come & collect the plastic the council doesn't recycle and I take my Tetrapak's to a recycling point a couple of streets away. When we first moved in the people living here before us had their fridge where the drawers, blender, coffee maker & scales are now but that left almost no work or storage space and I didn't like the idea of having the fridge right next to the stove.

Next to the washing machine is the dishwasher, and right next to the tote bags is the pantry. I have no idea how people who take tote bags almost everywhere can end up with this many carrier bags but hey, free bin bags, I'm not complaining!

The bottom of the cupboard is where we keep big things like cereal boxes that don't fit on the other shelves and new things that aren't open yet. We always have back-up nooch & apple sauce down there as well as my stash of fun American things like Soy Curls, Chococonut bars & cans of pumpkin!


Last year I added this plastic storage container for my nuts & seeds and the under shelf basket for my herbs & spices. I always buy them in the biggest bags I can find & having loads and loads of little bags floating around the cupboard was getting annoying.


Here's a glimpse inside the cupboard above the washing machine.


We bought all of our white bowls & plates from Ikea when we first moved in because all of my crockery got smashed in the move (don't even ask!) but I've been slowly replacing them with cuter plates and bowls like these!


This is probably my favourite part of the kitchen, I love the silly collage of photos Nick & I put up when we moved in together just over 5 years ago. I love the star shaped fairy lights, my matchy red stuff and my spice rack. The lunchbox is full of all my piping bags and tips. This is kind of a weird space because it goes back quite a long way, I have to really stretch to reach the plug sockets at the back but it's a great place to store all of my spoons, oil sprays, my mini deep fryer and the food processor attachment for my mixer.


This is the wall to the left of the gap leading to the lounge and the pole to the left of the picture is the bottom of the staircase which leads upstairs.


I love this area, it's so bright! We're always adding stuff to the pinboard and we buy a new My Zoetrope calendar every year, they're always so cute! This concludes my kitchen tour, I hope you enjoyed this little peek into my home. Have you done a kitchen tour yet? You should, I'd love to see where you cook!
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Football Food Sunday - Nachos

October 28, 2012, 2:29 pm
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Today is the last Football Food Sunday of Vegan MoFo 2012 and I finally made something I've had on the to-make list since MoFo 2010. Nachos. I tried to think back to the kind of nachos I would get in the pub as a vegetarian, there was always cheese, guac, salsa, sour cream and chilli. I've never been a fan of chilli so I'd order them without. I do however love refried beans so I decided to serve the nachos with them instead.

This picture doesn't really show how much stuff I ended up throwing on these, I was trying to get a pretty picture and I ended up putting loads more toppings on afterwards.


I used Isa's Cashew Queso as my cheese. I'd wanted to try it for ages and the vegan friend we invited over to eat with us this arvo isn't a fan of commercial vegan cheeses. We all LOVED this Cashew Queso. Seriously, it's ridiculous, make it now! It's not even difficult and we just kept pouring more and more onto our ever expanding plates!

I used store bought refried beans but added smoked paprika, onion powder and chilli powder to perk it up a little. The guacamole was just a super simple avo, salt, pepper, lemon juice mix because that's how I like it! The salsa was a store bought mild salsa from Sainsburys which I surprised myself by enjoying. I always, always, used to find even the mildest of salsas too hot but I think my spice-tolerance is finally improving. Yay! I used Toffuti sour cream as the sour cream replacement, I love that stuff. I feel like it's a really good dupe of the sour cream I remember (I did probably only ever eat it twice though!) and it's a surprisingly epic addition to any pizza.

Even after all of that we managed to squeeze in some dessert. Nick & I popped to Infinity Foods this morning and grabbed three of these new Razzle Dazzle Ice chocolate mint sorbets.



These new nut free iced treats taste exactly like After Eights! I love discovering fun new vegan products and I really like that these come in both large and mini tubs. We'll definitely be buying them again.

On Thursday night I cooked a roast dinner with the Field Roast we brought back from the USA & this evening I made a sandwich with the leftovers. Warm Field Roast & Cranberry Sauce. Perfect.


I love Football Food Sunday - it's the one theme that's stuck with me since I first started MoFoing and I expect that it'll be back next year!
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Sunday on a Monday.

October 29, 2012, 2:09 pm
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Because Nick works in retail he often works on a Saturday meaning that our lazy Sunday is often really a Monday! It's kinda fun hanging out when other people are working - it makes you feel like you're bunking off & it's awesome because things like Moshimo Monday exist and everything's quieter - especially the beach in summer or the shops at Christmas time.

Today we slept in, went food shopping, watched a classic Bond movie and made dinner together. I spotted this Roasted Butternut Alfredo recipe on The PPK yesterday and I knew immediately that I'd love it. A creamy cashew based sauce, nooch, squash, sage and wine are all winners in my book. I also happened to have the exact amount of roasted squash needed for a half recipe in the fridge, how serendipitous!


I really loved this dish, the flavours worked perfectly together (no surprise there with an Isa recipe!), it was easy to make and I had all of the ingredients in the house already. Nick hates onions but I refuse to leave something so flavourful out of a recipe so we spent a while picking the onion out of his half quite unsuccessfully! Nick doesn't really like squash either so whilst I'll definitely be making this again I'll probably save it for days when we aren't having dinner together!

After dinner we made hot chocolate & I had mine in my favourite mug...


...it looks like I have a monster hand!! Brilliant! I hope you're having a good Monday? I can't believe Vegan MoFo's coming to an end so soon. It feels like the quickest one yet and whilst I'm feeling a little bit of the infamous MoFo Burnout™ (my theme's have certainly fallen by the wayside!) I'm determined to keep posting and commenting as much as possible right until the very end!
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Vegan MoFo Day 30 - When themes go outa the window!

October 30, 2012, 1:52 pm
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As you might've noticed my theme's have totally gone outa the window in the last week or so. I'm quickly realising that running a bakery from a pretty tiny kitchen and managing to get any other cooking done is really hard! I'm using all of my surfaces, oven, bowls, measuring cups and spoons to bake cupcakes meaning that there's nothing left to cook with!

I'm getting a little better at it now though, I had a mini freakout last week when I felt dizzy and sick and realised that all I'd eaten all day was frosting, Clif bars and a yoghurt. Yuch. After Nick brought me some takeout I calmed down & realised that I just needed to plan a little better. Today I made myself food before starting to bake. Yeah, I'm a genius!

I wanted something simple and what's easier to throw together than a bowl. Isa Chandra Moskowitz is the master of The Bowl so I turned to The PPK for ideas. This Roasty Soba Bowl with Miso Tahini jumped out at me and I even had all of the ingredients in the house... well, kinda!


I used chickpeas instead of lentils, green tea soba noodles instead of regular and I made the roasted cauliflower recipe from Appetite For Reduction instead of the slightly simpler version in this recipe. I looooved this bowl. I was really unsure about the dill, I bought it to try to make myself like dill and it totally worked - it's a miracle! Everything about this bowl was awesome, I love noodles, the miso tahini sauce was amazingly creamy and there are even leftovers for tomorrow. Perfect!
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