For my first time making spring rolls, I think I did pretty well. Me and Gary made these together in a fit of nice, clean, organised fun (my favourite kind). We stir fried up some onions, carrots, cabbage, and spring onions in some vegan oyster sauce. Rolling them was fun.
Colcannon is a traditional Irish dish which is basically mashed potatoes with cabbage and leek. I used onion instead of leek because it's what was in my veg box. I also mashed some celeriac with the potatoes because it too was in my veg box. I formed my colcannon into patties, coz that's just how I roll. The sausages are the redwoods vegi deli ones, which in my opinion are the best vegan sausages around. Gary eats them straight out of the pack because he's gross like that.
For some reason I had never before ventured into the land of green curries before, but now I think it will be a stand by staple. So quick and easy and tasty! Oh my! I'm a bit afraid of coconut milk so I didn't put as much in as is probably normal, but I liked it that way.
(Yeah, yeah, I know battered tofu and potato wedges does not a healthy meal make, but I was feeling like slobbing out, okay?)
Just a quick post!
No really I do. This sandwich started out as I had made a huge bowl of coleslaw to use up some of my cabbage. there's also carrot, onion, and spring onion. delicious.
I got two massive carrots, a head of cabbage, a cauliflower, loads of potatoes and onions and leeks (oh my), mushrooms, tomatoes, and a bag of fruit (apples, pears, oranges, and bananas). All organic, and delivered to your door for a tenner. Take that "organic food is too expensive" people! Ha!
The sauce had a nice spicy kick to it which was complimented beautifully by the subtle sweetness of the tofu. Topped off with some parmezano, and home grown parsley and basil.
As soon as I saw Bryanna Clark Grogans stuffed seitan roasts in her newsletter, I knew I had to make one. This one is stuffed with a sage and onion stuffing and dear lord it was divine. It carved beautifully and was so tender. It is big though, so we were eating it in sandwiches for about a week, but we're not complaining. Here it is all sliced up and served with usual roast dinner things:
Next up are the chickpea cutlets from Vcon. I like them, but I don't love them. I think I'd make them again though and tinker with the seasonings. You can actually barely see the cutlets in this picture because they're drowned in onion gravy. Served with roast potato salad (currently my favourite way to eat potatoes... Mmmm... Balsamic vinegar....)
And, as promised, an Aerogrow picture:
I've started to harvest everything, and I'm really enjoying the constant access to fresh herbs, plus it smells lovely.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
It had potatoes, carrots, brussel sprouts, spinach, cheezly, in a nutritional yeasty type sauce thing. Damn tasty.
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.
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.
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).
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.
Show me a person who doesn't want that piece of pie, and I will show you a liar my friend.
I made this kidney bean curry with seasoned rice to satisfy my craving. I also made some spiced flatbread thingies. There was no recipe for anything, I just used stuff i had lying around. Brilliant.
The Aerogrow was all set up a week ago so I thought I'd post the progress. I may do this every Wednesday, or I may get bored. I make no promises. Anyhoo, the italian and purple basils, dill and chives are sprouting up nicely. The chives appeared in like an hour and seem to be growing bigger by the second. Not that I sit and watch it or anything, not at all... The mint has sprouted too but not enough to remove the lid thingy yet. The coriander and parsley aren't due to sprout until the 8-15 day mark, so it could be tomorrow, it could be next week. I know I'm on the edge of my seat!
