28/8

Vegan chilli


Tacos


Berry Smoothie

Made a big batch of vegan chilli- veggie mince fried in Marmite and cumin, tin of kidney beans, onion, garlic, tin of chopped tomatoes, yellow bell pepper, green chilli and chilli powder. Leftovers went into the tacos.

The berry smoothie is fresh wheatgrass juice, beetroot juice, carrot juice and orange juice and blueberries, blackberries and blueberries. The sharpness of the berries sort of takes away from the taste of the wheatgrass, so it wasn't like drinking pondwater.

More from me' garden:


Fuscia


Katydid


Rose


More fuscias


Sky

25/7

Raw chocolate mousse


Mediterranean veg shepherds pie

The raw mousse is 2 tsp chocolate powder (I used Green & Blacks, as I was out of raw cacao but since cacao isn't 'raw' anyway, I'm not sure how much of a difference it really made), 1 tsp raw carob powder, 5 soaked medjool dates, 1 avocado, 1tsp extra virgin coconut oil and water to blend. It was SO sweet. I love sweets, but I could barely eat half of it. Next time, I'd use less dates or leave them out completely. The next time I make this, I'm going to make it into a raw 'pie'.

The shepherds pie is my own little creation. Recipe is here on vegweb.

At the weekend I went to see the comedian Jim Jeffries at Leicester Square. A lot of the material I'd heard him do at the last gig we saw, but he was still superfunny and very tasteless. Yay!




I didn't get to give blood on Friday. They said they had too many walk-ins and made me another appointment for November. They seemed to be turning away quite a few people. It was being held in a church hall, and it was pretty surreal, with people laying on hospital beds, giving blood in the middle of the room. Very weird. I would have thought they would have had makeshift cubicles or something. Oh well. November it is.

22/7

Risotto Primavera


Green Juice


Raw sushi

The risotto was AWESOME. From Everyday Vegetarian (Parragon). The green juice is apple/carrot/cucumber/half a peeled lime/spirulina. The raw sushi is parsnip rice, yellow bell pepper and cucumber in nori.

I'm going to give blood tomorrow, if I can get an appointment that is. Never given blood before, don't even know my blood type, though I might be negative. How emo. :)

20/7

Me' garden:


Wheatgrass


Baby bell pepper!


Rosehips


Clematis


Fuschia


Protein smoothie

Smoothie is 2 bananas, hemp protein powder and soy milk. Yum :)

I've just watched The Secret. I read the book yonks ago. The DVD is so funny, not sure if it's intentional or not! I started reading Wallace Wattle's Science of Getting Rich a long time ago too, but the repetition drove me a bit crazy and couldn't progress past the seventh chapter or so. The Secret is a lot more reader/user friendly. It's nice. I like the idea of it.

Went to a veggie meet at the weekend in Claremont Gardens, Esher. Claremont is a lot smaller than I thought, about the size of Osterley Park. A lady there gave us a tour of its history, most of which went over my head as I don't find the royal family very interesting. I didn't see any unusual wildlife there, but there were lots of geese and mandarin ducks. I took my lunch- Holland & Barrett vegan chorizo lattice pasty, Gourmet Raw cocobanana brownie and some coconut water. The chorizo pasty was very nice, probably the best vegan pasty I've had from H&B. The raw brownie was good, but it was a bit pricey (just under £3) probably because of its chunkiness. I ate the whole thing in one go, but it was easily 2 servings as it was so filling, so maybe if I was less greedy, it would work out good value for money.

(From Gourmet Raw)

I really like finding new raw goodies. I got this from Food For Thought in Kingston- they even had chia!

14/7

Had a few foodie disasters lately. Okay, maybe not disasters. Just... meh.

Made some low fat spinach & potato balls. Given the ingredients, I don't know why I was expecting something tasty. But I was, and it wasn't.

Then, I made Hokkien noodles with black bean sauce from Vegetarian Asian by Lynelle Scott Aitken. I modded the recipe quite a lot- missed out the choy sum, added a green pepper, replaced the black bean sauce with hoisin sauce AND replaced the hokkien noodes with Singapore-style noodles (cheap wheat noodles boiled then fried in oil, curry powder, fried onion and turmeric). It was really hard to manage keeping the noodles warm without nuking the sauce and it ended up looking mushy. It also made my kitchen smell kinda gross. I think I'll stick to the recipe next time. Vegetarian Asian is a nice-looking A4 cookbook, with big colour photos and unusual recipes, like agar-based almond jelly that I've been meaning to make ever since I bought the book. Maybe one day I will do the book justice and make something good.

Yesterday I made a roasted veggie lasagne by Delia Smith. Replaced the milk with soy milk and rice milk, used normal lasagne sheets and omitted the cheese. It came out okay, but was pretty bland. Not very pretty either. I like white sauce, but when I have to wash up afterwards it just reinforces my beliefs in going raw. Seeing that goop harden on plates really puts me off.

My copy of Ani Phyo's Raw Food Essentials turned up.




















(Image from aniphyo.com)

Most of the pictures are in black and white, with a few pages in the middle with colour pix, but the black and green layout is nice, and there are tonnes of recipes. The majority of them are quite heavy on fat, but that's okay. I tend to be an on/off raw n00b anyway. I like how Ani isn't all petty about small amounts of non-raw stuff. I get tired of reading if you eat agave syrup/raw cacao/maple syrup/salt/herbs you're going to die or something.

Some of the recipes get recycled a lot to make other, complicated recipes. I don't envision myself making 3+ different types of raw sauces or cheeses to create a raw taco or making 'bacon' from coconut (my other half's reaction: "what the fuck!?"). But the more simple things, like raw sushi, raw ice-creams and salad-based recipes look pretty do-able. I've done the vegan to raw vegan transitional gourmet stuff before and and the novelty of it wears off pretty quickly when you're constantly washing up blenders, grinders and food processors.

Hopefully the book wont end up getting eBayed like my last raw book, Rawvolution- which was stunning, but every other recipe used a cup of agave or oil so everything I made from it tasted either gooey or greasy.

11/7

Vegetable curry with chickpea pancakes


Spinach and mushroom slice with roast tomato sauce


Banana and papaya raw pudding

The veggie curry is from Everyday Vegetarian (Parragon) and the Spinach & Mushroom Slice is adapted from Viva's Artichoke & Mushroom Strudel. This and the Roast Tomato Sauce are both from Viva's Christmas recipes (I know- it's July!).

The veggie curry and chickpea pancakes were excellent. Tasted reasonably authentic, unlike other curry recipes where the potatoes taste like hot watery mush swimming in oil. The veggies are steamed before being added, which I liked.

The banana and papaya pudding is 2 bananas, 1 banana and 2 tbs OJ blended together. Recipe from Alissa Cohen. One of the best raw puddings ever.

Yesterday I planted a big container of organic wheatgrass. My bell pepper plants are starting to fruit, and even though I only had one survivor each of my heirloom physalis and tomato plants, they're doing well and I'm going to have to repot them again. My goji berry plant still looks a bit skinny, even after about 2-3 years. They're supposed to fruit after 3 years, but my plant is only about 30cm tall and looks wimpy. My strawberry planter is also lacking in uh, strawberries. But, on the plus side, my blueberry bush is looking really healthy. I think I'll nickname it Lazarus, since it likes coming back from the dead.

08/07

Green juice


Vegan farfalle with broccoli

The green juice is pineapple, celery and mixed watercress/rocket/spinach. I've been starting the day with 2 glasses of the stuff after my morning walks. The farfalle and broccoli are mixed in vegan unsweetened cream, mixed Italian herbs and pan-fried with onion.

I like shaped pasta- butterflies, shells, fat tubes. Spaghetti sucks. It always makes me think of going to restaurants where the only vegan option is spaghetti and Napolitana sauce- and repeated refusals of parmesan.

07/07

Haven' t really been very raw lately. But have got lots of sunshine and lots of exercise. Midweek, I do between 1-2 hours of cardio and then I do about 1 and 1/2 hours of walking. I start the day with a 40 minute walk at 7am, and the more I do it, the easier it gets.

I've been doing a lot of cooking lately:


Vegan goulash with dumplings


Vegan paella


Vegan saffron-scented vegetable tagine


Vegan babycorn dahl


Vegan Tiramisu cupcakes

The goulash and tagine are from Louise's Pickford's 200 Veggie Feasts, and the paella and dahl are from Everyday Vegetarian (Parragon). The books aren't 100% vegan, but they can be bought really cheap. The cupcakes are from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World by Isa Chandra Moskowitz & Terry Hope Romero. I didn't have enough soy milk so they were a bit more sugary than usual. I was also out of choc chips to put on top.

To even things out a bit:



Green smoothie

Smoothie is 1/2 pineapple, 2 bananas, 1/2 cup of OJ and 2 handfuls of mixed watercress/rocket/spinach.

I love green smoothies!

I got some Floravital (vegan Floradix- no honey) from Holland & Barrett (who are doing buy one get one half price. yay!), and some PreBio 7v probiotics. I love the taste of Floravital. Am I sick? :) I've never really tried a lot of probiotic stuff. I'd like to make my own kombucha and water kefir one day. I'll stick with the capsules for now.

In general, I'm feeling pretty damn good!



This is an iguana eating papaya from my trip to Costa Rica.