Sunday, December 23

Curried Tofu

The curried tofu is from Vcon, and I think I essentially followed the recipe. It's really good. Nicely spicy. It's served with sauteed kale, rice, and spicy yoghurt sauce. The sauce started out as the one from Vcon, but being me, I completely ignored the recipe and threw whatever I felt like in it. Good stuff.

Check out my Le Creuset ramekin. I own Le Creuset cookware. Aren't I fancy? Okay, so it's two ramekins, and that's probably all I'll be able to afford for some time, but still, it's nice to say it. I own Le Creuset cookware.

Friday, December 21

I'm a Tweaker...

But not like on Dog! I don't do no ice, brah!

Ahem, yes. What I mean by this is that there is not a recipe on earth that I don't feel the need to change. I don't care if you had forty five million testers working 25 hours a day trying your recipes, I will change it. Sorry bout that. Yeah, so remember how I wasn't too sure about the white bean aioli thing from Vcon? Well, not one to waste food (or eat something I don't really like), i went back and played with it. Now what did I go and do but change a perfectly classy food into something completely tacky. Ha. Anyhoo, you know those gross sandwich filler things that come in various shades of cream, and a whole manner of horrible flavours? Well I turned it into that. Okay, so this one tastes good and I suppose is slightly classier than those shop bought ones, but still...

Anyhoo, here it is on some pumpkin seed and oat rye bread things:
Oh yeah, almost forgot to say what I actually did to it. I amped up the garlic a bit, added some fresh basil, onion, and various other herbs (yeah, like I pay attention). Anyhoo, yum.

Thursday, December 20

Battered Seitan with Roast Potato Salad

This meal was so very nearly doomed. I had intended to beer batter the seitan, and bought a pack of beer specially for it. Alas I couldn't find the bottle opener and I was getting hungry, so I just winged the batter. Maybe the art of batter making is pre-programmed into all Scottish people, or maybe I truly am just a genius, but this was the best battered anything I have ever tasted. Look how golden it is! It was also incredibly light and fluffy, and strangely not greasy, and hasn't left me feeling ill. Yay! It's served with the roasted potato salad from The Everyday Vegan, and the white bean and garlic aioli thing from Veganomicon. The potato salad was lovely, but the aioli could do with some more garlic. Usually I double the garlic in most recipes, but this one warned me it was really garlicky so I didn't. Oh well! I'll know for next time.

Wednesday, December 19

Aerogrow Update and Adventures in Seitan Making

First up, here's the Aerogrow update for week 4:
Everything's spreading out and starting to encroach on each others growing space. It's kinda cute. It's like watching a little artificial community interact.

Anyhoo. This week I made the soy and seitan cutlets from Bryannas Vegan feast Newsletter (which I thoroughly reccommend). The recipe makes loads, so I've mainly been eating those for the past few days. The first night we just had them floured and fried, with potatoes, asparagus, broccoli, and gravy. Delicious.The next night we had them cut up into strips and marinated in a lemony, soy, mustardy, agavey, (you know, all the stand by marinade stuff) sauce and served over stir fried vegetables.
Given the fact that I'm Scottish, you may expect to see some battered seitan in the coming days. Oh my.

Sunday, December 16

Various Stuff from the Land of Lelly

Yeah, so, I totally took the picture for my Aerogrow update, but got distracted by the overwhelming urge to sleep for a week (I had my last exam on Wednesday) so I didn't get around to posting it. So here it is:
So everything's growing great. The dill doesn't seen to be happy with it's allotted space and is trying to invade all the other herbs spaces. Big bully!

This is a pot pie I made the other day when I new I was going to be busy for a few days. I think this was the last slice:
It had potatoes, carrots, brussel sprouts, spinach, cheezly, in a nutritional yeasty type sauce thing. Damn tasty.

This year I told everyone in my family not to buy me presents for Christmas, because well, I hate Christmas. Blah blah blah commercial crap. Anyhoo, Nobody was happy with this, so I thought we'd reached a compromise in that I would make presents, and they could donate money to a charity or buy a very small present if they really felt they needed to. Alas, I just came back from Glasgow with bags of presents. Seriously people, next year, no presents! Anyhoo, here's one of the presents I (mostly) made:
It's a hamper (duh). In the jars are sundried tomato pesto, onion marmalade, and chocolate-cinnamon-almond biscotti. There's also a bottle of chilli infused oil, and the cracker looking things are chocolate chip cookies. There's also some herbal tea and hot chocolate. Oh, and don't you just love the bag the bottle's in? I made that too. It can be reused to transport all your holiday plonk to parties. I reinforced the stitching on the handles to make sure there were no plonk breakage incidents. All in all, I think I did rather well.

Friday, December 7

Trashy Food

Today it was cold outside, and I felt no real need to put non pyjama clothes on and go to the shops. Therefore, I had to make do with whatever I had in the fridge and cupboards. What I had and felt like using was leftover tortillas from the enchiladas, spinach, an onion, potatoes, and all the usual cupboard staples. What I made was trashy food, but tasty none the less.
I took some tortillas and folded them into cones and held them together with tin foil and baked them for a bit until they got crispy. I then made a refried bean mixture with kidney beans, onions, all the usual spices, and added some spinach at the end, and filled the cone thingies and rebaked them for a bit. Served with potato wedges and garlic and herb mayo. I make the worlds best potato wedges. Fact. No, seriously.

Wednesday, December 5

Aerogrow - Week 2


Reporting in for the end of week two. Good growth on everything. The parsley is coming out to play and I'll probably take it's lid off in the morning (you're supposed to do it when the light's off to reduce stress). I had begun to lose hope for the coriander at the back there, but I just had a peek and it is starting to sprout! Yay! The lights started to blink today to add nutrients and water, so I did. It's all highly exciting stuff.

Tuesday, December 4

Procrastination Food

I have exams soon. Like, really soon. Some may say that this would be one of those times when eating frozen/ready made foods would be acceptable/advisable, or generally making simple foods. Not I. Maybe it's a good thing, but I just have a thing about taking at least an hour a day to cook/bake. I can't help it. It does help me relax though, so I suppose I can justify it that way.

Anyhoo, enchiladas.

Made with red kidney beans, onions, spinach, cumin, coriander, paprika, lime juice, etc. Served with home made tofu sour cream. These were delicious, and fairly quick (well, for me).

Now onto the really good stuff, Smlove.
From Veganomicon and sooooooooo good. The only thing I'd change is making more of the peanut butter caramel, and baking the pie for slightly less time, coz mine got a little hard on top, but it was still great.

Now here's a money shot of a slice:
Show me a person who doesn't want that piece of pie, and I will show you a liar my friend.