I may be the laziest blogger alive.

Ok, no, that's an exaggeration. Still, it's pretty pathetic. And it may very well get worse yet - I will be departing on a 9-month volunteer-youth-service program in 2 weeks, and have no idea what this will do to my opportunity to update, but it's unlikely to improve.

Oh well. I'll flood your screen with pictures now instead...


I eat at work a lot. Mostly it's soup with couscous or tabouleh, because we have a decent variety of delicious vegan soups, or a falafel.. but not always. This particular concoction is rye toast with hummus, tomatoes, onions, banana peppers, eggplants, tahini and parsley. So good.



For some reason, anything with a bunch of veggies and some sort of potato grilled together is referred to as a "hash", though it's really more of a scramble. This is my take on the vegan breakfast "hash" we serve, which usually comes with yams, potatoes, tomato, green pepper, and onion, and to which I have here added mushrooms, eggplant and banana peppers, on grilled tabouleh. Also covered in tahini sauce, because I'm a tahini addict.



This is tomato soup from Celine's upcoming zine, and while I can't remember the exact name of the soup, it is delicious.



Another test recipe from her zine, a creamy pumpkin almond sauce, served here on whole wheat pasta with a grilled broccoli on the side.



I admit it, I am a bit of a reuben snob. I learned to make reubens as a cook in a restaurant renowned for their reubens, and even though I don't eat those ones (they aren't remotely vegan) I have high standards for any reuben that is now going to enter my mouth. I have only recently given in to the addition of avocado, because it's actually really good, if not traditional. The rest of this reuben is made on rye bread, with tofutti swiss cheese, seitan, homemade thousand island and sauerkraut, and is fully endorsed by me ;).



This is what I am referring to as "breakfast pudding", meaning it's unsweetened, aaand I ate it for breakfast. Plain vanilla pudding, delicious fresh blueberries, what more can you ask for?



This was Siobhan's birthday pie, the VwaV Black-Bottomed Peanut Butter Silk Pie (whew). I think I'd like it with less sugar next time, but it was still excellent. Even the tofu-phobic person loved it, and I do enjoy sneaking tofu on people.



Boston Cream cupcakes, for another friend's birthday. I screwed these up a bit (way too much vanilla) but the flavour mellowed out by the second day, and they ended up quite delicious in the end.



After visiting a local gelati place with an incredible vegan selection, I noticed they had bricks of green tea ice cream (not vegan) in their freezer. Naturally, I had to go home and invent my own. I froze it into star-shaped bricks because I had been.. inspired.. and served with raspberries which complimented it nicely.



the recipe:

2 cups cashews
2 cups plain almond milk (could probably sub. water, but I haven't tried it)
1/2 cup maple syrup
1/2 cup brown rice syrup (again, could probably use all maple syrup if you wanted)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon almond extract
4 teaspoons machta green tea powder

Blend cashews in a food processor until crumbs. Add liquid ingredients slowly, pulsing and scraping down the sides often, and continue to process until mixture is creamy and no longer grainy. This is important, because once the ice cream freezes any graininess will become more noticeable. Blend in green tea powder until well mixed. Chill in the freezer until cool, then make according to ice cream maker's instructions. Will probably need to set in the freezer overnight, unless you like your ice cream very soft..

You are probably sick of hearing about how busy I am, but it's the truth. This is what I've managed to squeeze in the past week..

An attempt at "omelettes". In defense of the recipe, I didn't entirely follow it - I was supposed to pour the egg in with the veggies, but that's not my definition of an omelette, so I tried to keep it separate. It ended up more like a veggie filled pancake. Next time I'm going to try my own thing instead, I have some ideas. This was still tasty, just.. not even close to what it was imitating.



Quinoa custard and date-toffee pie, with a quinoa-coconut cream. Though it had been chilling for twice as long as recommended, it wasn't completely set yet when I ate this piece. Lots of unusual flavours mixing in this.. coffee, carob, lemon and lime, coconut milk, banana, soy and rice milk, quinoa, dates, molasses. You can't tell here but there's three layers to the pie. If I made it again, I would leave out the banana, which overpowers everything, and add more coffee.



Some cauliflower curry soup I threw together last night, using whatever I needed to use up in my fridge.



Mocha "vice cream", with a couple of chocolate covered coffee beans on top. Sooo good.

Surprises and mishaps

I picked up a jicama at the grocery store a while ago, for the sake of trying something new. I had no idea what a jicama was, but looking at it, I guess it was something that one would want to maybe roast, boil or turn into a soup. I mean, look at it:



That's not something you'd want to eat raw, is it?
The recipes I found via google said otherwise, after I'd brought it home.
I let it sit there for a while.. not quite knowing what to do with it.. it started to go bad, finally, so I gave in and cut it up. Figured that before I made any plans for it, I should taste some, and.. hey, it was actually pretty good.. reminded me of a starchier, milder apple or even pear, though less grainy. It was crunchy and slightly sweet. Instead of doing something interesting with it I threw it in a salad with some mango dressing because I had a bunch of veggies that needed to be eaten anyway..



The mysterious white sticks are the jicama.

Then, I decided to make some mango summer rolls (it was a mango kind of day, I guess.) Alright.. cooked some rice noodles, cut up some cucumber, cut up my mango... it was brown inside (even though I only bought it two days ago). Ok, no mango. Fine. I steamed a bit of yam for some colour, and got out the rice paper from the cupboard... which turned out to be in pieces. Literally, every piece was broken. Out of a package of at least 50, I managed to get 4 usuable (though still ripped) pieces, and the rest was garbage. Huge let down..



So, I successfully made a total of 4 summer rolls, pictured above. I cut them in half to fool myself into thinking it was more (haha).

I consoled myself with a "Vice Cream" Sundae, as the other thing my sister & I made on saturday was black forest ice cream. Soo good.

New journal! First post! Woo, etc.

This is mostly to save the people who are totally uninterested in my food-related posts on lj. I frequently hold myself back on there, anyway, just because I know that not everyone thinks this is interesting.

Those people clearly have no taste.

For the rest of you, well, you can add this blog. This is so that I can a) talk about food without feeling stupid b) have an excuse for taking pictures of what I'm eating all the time, which I do anyway and c) be able to direct people here when they ask "So what DO vegans eat, anyway.."

Yesterday I decided to make latkes. I have been craving them for quite some time, since summer at least. It doesn't help that I prep, cook and/or serve non-vegan potato pancakes every day at work. I based my "recipe" loosely on the one in ExtraVeganZa, and by recipe, I mean I mesured nothing, just sort of threw in flours and oil and soymilk until I thought it was ok. I don't think ami even knows what measure IS, and his latkes are beautiful every time, so I just sort of went with what I do there and it worked quite well. Except without eggs.

The final product, with applesauce and tofutti sour cream:


I also bought some of that celestial seasonings "tea dreams" ice cream from eat it yesterday. It's a rice-based ice cream, which I am typically all about, and is vanilla hazelnut fudge flavoured. I'm not sure exactly what this has to do with tea, but I decided to try some and damn am I glad I did. Here it is, in all its frozen glory, with the snow blowing around outside:



I need to figure out how to get my homemade ice creams to remain scoopable like this. I tend to take the frozen block out to soften, forget about it, and come back to find it softened.. to liquid. Not good.