Back now, October 16th 2015 ~ Dinner

I’m finally back , mainly because I remembered I meant to post more frequently and I realised I hadn’t been. This time I’m going to be posting a dinner I’ve made myself completely at my new student flat. It isn’t the first one I’ve made of course (I was cooking all last year) but it’s the first one I’ve actually bothered to photo so it’s the first “student” meal I’m posting. As you may have gathered this post was origonally meant to be posted 3 days ago but I’ve only just got round to finishing it.

The day I cooked this from scratch was one of those days where I got back and really really didn’t want to cook, but didn’t really have a choice in the matter (not if wanted to eat) I actually cooked this a few days ago, but I made enough to last 4 days.

So this is what I had, pasta (very typical student), vegetable & bean sauce/stew, broccoli and fried aubergine. On Wednesday and Tuesday (when I cooked this) I had it slightly different. (I was at home on Thursday night so didn’t have this)

This is how I had it on Tuesday and Wednesday: pasta, vegetable & bean sauce/stew and green beans.

basically on Tuesday I cooked it then stored the pasta  and sauce in tubs in the fridge to reheat then cooked fresh greens each day.

So onto the cooking. I knew I was going to do a sauce/stew with all the veg I had in the fridge in it. I know from past experience that carrots take a lot longer to cook than other veg so it’s best to steam them so till they’re nearly cooked first then add them to the sauce or everything else gets over cooked. So to start off I sliced up the carrots, I had fairly thin carrots so i just cut them into circles but if you’ve got larger ones you could cut them smaller, once these were cut I putt them in the steamer to steam through while I got on with the rest of the sauce.

I began with a base of a carton of cut tomatoes with chilli, I then added a tin of borlotti beans (for protein) I used these cos I had 4 tins of them but you could use whatever beans you wanted. I then sliced two medium onions and half a pepper into cubes and added these to the mix. I would have added more veggies but these were all I had. I then thought I’d better put in some Flax Seed Oil, this stuff is disgusting, but in a vegan diet, if you don’t want to take supplements, this is one of very few sources of Omega 3’s and 6’s which are very important to stay healthy. As I said it’s disgusting but if you put it in a sauce you usually can’t taste it, I however did put too much in, which lead to a mad dash to try to mask the taste with other stuff, all I had was salt, ground pepper and mixed herbs, I added a very tiny amount of salt (I usually wouldn’t add any to a sauce) and more ground pepper and mixed herbs than I’d usually add, as I could still taste the flax oil I then decided the best thing to add was tomato ketchup as it was all I had that I could use (I would NEVER normally put this in) but I squirted some in and mercifully it did mask the taste of the flax oil. By then the carrots were steamed through to nearly cooked so I added them as well. It was at this stage I put the greens on to steam, as I mentioned earlier I had green beans on Tuesday and Wednesday, then I had broccoli Friday. Now green beans take a lot less time to cook then broccoli, but broccoli is more of a “typical” green (and it’s very healthy) but I didn’t have any broccoli till today and I had green beans which were open, so they needed using up. for the beans I took of the ends then sliced the longer ones in half then dumped them in the steamer, for the broccoli I cut of a few florets I sliced the largest in half (so it takes less time to cook then placed them in the steamer. You could have whatever greens you wanted I like these so it’s what I have.

Once the greens were cooking (and heading towards finished) I put in the pasta (as it hardly takes any time to cook) I put it in the boiling water I’m using to steam the greens (to save on washing up) while it’s going I’m continually stirring the sauce so it doesn’t burn to the bottom of the pan, once it’s bubbled up I usually take it as cooked and remove the pan with the sauce in from the heat, or turn it down to a very low simmering heat just to keep it warm. The greens are usually done before the past so I put these on the plate and then once the pastas done I use the steamer to drain the pasta. Once the pasta been drained I tip it back in the pan and put in a drizzle of olive oil and mix it round. Then put out however much pasta I want and add sauce and it’s done.

When it comes to fried aubergine, it’s totally up to you if you do this, but I love aubergine which is why I did it. It can be a bit finicky to get right, first slice the aubergine, I say about 5-7mm thick is best but if they’re ticker or thinner that’s fine just alter cooking time. Heat some olive oil in a frying pan, then place the aubergine slices in (be careful as it will spit), sprinkle with a very small amount of sea salt then turn over and sprinkle again, then leave these sizzling. They do need to be watched very carefully or they will burn and you will have carbonated aubergine. When they’re done they should be browned all over and still slightly mushy, make sure you cook both sides too. Then serve immediately.

So that’s it that was tea for most off last week!

Been a while!

Yes it has been a while, I’ve been really busy lately what with Uni work and my personal life. But now I’ve finished my exams and consequently finished my first year of Uni (it really has flown by) I aim to become more active again.

For the time being I just wanted to share this great post I found. I don’t completely agree with EVERYTHING said but I do agree with most of it. It certainly made an interesting read and I think it gives some very good answers to questions people have on vegans and veganism.

http://thevegantruth.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/response-to-typical-comments-vegans.html

So till next time, which hopefully will be sooner rather than later! 🐱

Saturday 6th December ~ Dinner

Yes, today I am actually posting the dinner on the actual day I ate it. Today for dinner I had risotto and broccoli. As I was still at home this was cooked by my mum.

To make the risotto first cook the rice, in this risotto there is carrot, peas, (green) pepper, onions, sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds. But this is a thing where you can put in anything really, mushrooms (if you like them) and raisins,work well in risotto. The only reason why we had green pepper in this was because when my parents went shopping my dad bought a bag of peppers which consisted of 5 green peppers and 1 yellow pepper, rather than looking for a bag with red and yellow peppers (which are much nicer). Cut the vegetables up in to small pieces (cubed or diced).

Once the rice is cooked place in a frying pan or wok on a low heat. The vegetables, seeds, e.c.t. can be added straight in with the rice. When it comes to the cheese we use Cheezly Mozzarella Style, my mum has used a variety of ways to add the cheese. The quickest is to just add a lump and stir it round till it’s mixed in or you could grate it all on top then stir it in again. Today my mum went with grate some cheese over mix that in, then grate a little more and stir in, and keep going till there is enough cheese in the risotto, which really comes down to personal taste.

As for the broccoli this is easy, put a pan of water on to boil, place steamer over the top, cut the broccoli into manageable pieces and place in steamer. The broccoli will be cooked when you can easily put a knife into the fleshy part of the stalk (well that’s the method I use when I cook broccoli and it is the ‘greens’ I cook most) and that’s basically it.

So concluding today’s dinner!

Thursday October 2nd ~ Dinner

I know it’s ages since I last put a post up on here but I re-sparked my other blog (Life is Truly Random) at the end of November and have been posting on there regularly and today I “re-found” some photo’s of dinners. So I decided I might as well put them up, since I carried on taking photo’s of my dinners even though I wasn’t posting them, there are probably quite a few on the family computer (where I do final downloads of photo’s) but they will come up as and when I find them. They probably won’t really be in any order either, it’s just when I find them.

On a side note I have started at University now and moved out so I’m cooking for myself, I haven’t taken any food photo’s since I started at University though (I might start though – to show vegan ‘student’ food) but today’s post is a dinner I found from back in October, but it was when I was home for that day so it’s my Mum’s cooking, not mine.

Dinner October 2nd: homemade burger, with tomato sauce, broccoli pasta and ‘experiment’.

Since it was so long ago I have completely forgotten what was in the burgers, I know it wasn’t one of the vegan burger mixes though, but I really can’t remember what was in them. Upon asking my Mum (I’m home for weekend) she said they were probably black eye bean burgers, with carrot and fried onion and breadcrumbs. My mum said she usually just put’s in what she has around, but ‘mushy’ stuff which can be mashed together. She usually uses no-egg to help them stick together then fries them with a little olive oil.

The tomato sauce was (most likely) made with pasata, a pinch of salt, a pinch of sugar, 1 clove of garlic and some chopped basil or dried oregano. these measurement’s are for enough sauce for a family of 5 so you can adjust them to suit your needs.

The broccoli breadcrumbs pasta is a great (and pretty easy) recipe. First put the broccoli on to steam, you can use the stem for this as well. Cut the pieces up as this will cut down the time and make your life easier later on.

While the broccoli is steaming it’s time to prepare the breadcrumbs. My mum buy’s breadcrumbs from Sainsbury’s but you could also make you’re own by toasting bread then crumbling it up (before we brought bread crumbs, we did this with a hand machine which crushed the bread) then you could put the toast in a bag then bash it with a rolling-pin to make the bread crumbs. The breadcrumbs are then lightly fried, this needs constant supervision as they will burn really easily then the whole lot might be ruined, so don’t put them on then leave them.

Check the broccoli, it needs to be really well cooked to mush well. When it’s done you can put the pasta shells into the water, which you were steaming the broccoli over. Tip the broccoli into a bowl (you will need quite a big bowl) and mash into tiny pieces with a potato masher, when it is all mashed up add the fried breadcrumbs and mix well. When it is all mixed up together, drain the pasta and add it to the broccoli and breadcrumbs and mix it together, try to cover the pasta equally. If the bowl is full before the pasta goes in (or you have way more broccoli and breadcrumbs than pasta) tip some into a separate bowl before putting the pasta in, you can always add some back in if there isn’t enough. When it is all mixed together that’s done, finished!

Finally the ‘experiment’, this was invented by my Mum a few years back and since we all liked it so much she has made it many times since and slightly refined the recipe. First you need to put the oven on to pre-heat (on about gas mark 6). Then you need ‘Jus Rol’ puff pastry sheets (though it would probably work with any puff pastry sheets). Lay the pastry sheets out on a baking tray. Then cut a large tomato (you’ll probably need 2 for one sheet of pastry) into slices and lay them on the sheet so the whole sheet is mostly covered. Then sprinkle some dried oregano over the top and drizzle a small amount of olive oil on as well. Finally grate a little vegan cheese (we use Cheezly Mozzarella Style) over the top. Then put in to oven following the cooking guidelines for your pastry, I’m not entirely sure how long it will take as we have a useless oven which takes twice as long to cook as only one half of the top shelf cooks so you have to turn it round halfway through. Just make sure it doesn’t burn, it is done when the pastry is lightly browned and the cheese has all melted. Then cut up and serve!

That concludes October the 2nd’s dinner recipe!

Eating Out – Dinner at the Graze Inn (Sheffield, UK) ~ Tuesday June 24th

I’ll just quickly mention this at the start, I’m now back, hopefully back blogging every day on here. I have a back log of meals to put up, which will be coming up over the next few weeks. Some might have dates, but not all of them will. To find out where I’ve been, it’s posted on my other blog ‘Life is Truly Random’ under “I’m back”, I don’t see the point of posting the same thing twice, when the blogs are linked so that’s where I’ll post where I’ve been.

Now on with today’s post!

Eating out when you’re a vegan isn’t always easy, unless it is a vegan/vegetarian (which can often be modified) specific menu. Over the past 1 ½ years that I’ve been going out with friends for meals (by that I mean not with any family members) we haven’t been to any vegan/vegetarian specific restaurants (if there are any is Sheffield) but it hasn’t ever been a problem. Until last night.

Last night we went to the ‘Graze Inn’ on Ecclesall Road, there are quite a few restaurants up and down Ecclesall Road, but this was our first time going to the Graze Inn. As I have with all the other places I hadn’t been to before I checked the menu beforehand. There was not one single item on the menu listed as vegan, there were a few “vegetarian” options listed, all (except one) contained mozzarella cheese – which is NOT actually vegetarian, it contains rennet which is from a calf’s stomach so therefore is not vegetarian. I was dubious but thought, it is my best friend birthday, and she’s booked a table, so I’d better ring to make sure beforehand there was something I could eat.

So I rang them up, I was informed, they had no idea what was in the dough’s so the pizza (with cheese removed) and the bagels were all out. There were two options, a salad with cheese removed and a spicy noodle dish. I have never been a liker of salad I just don’t eat it and a salad is not my idea of a meal, it is a side order at most. So I decided on the noodle dish, this was the only item on the menu which was vegan (though not labelled). This seemed like no problem, okay there’s only one option, which is worse than what I’ve come to expect nowadays. Most places at least have two or more options which are vegan or can be easily modified and you are still left with a good meal. But there is an option.

We arrived and were shown to our table, they asked us if we wanted to order drinks. Now they were the first restaurant I’ve been to with friends who have Coke on the drinks list. This impressed me as I know Coke is vegan (maybe if you go into the ethics, rights of workers, environmental impact and healthiness it is not very good, but on ingredients it is vegan, and I like coke too much to not drink it, I just try not to drink too much) Sadly this was the only impressive thing about the evening.

When it came to the food I check the noodles weren’t egg, they were udon noodles which don’t contain egg so they were fine. So I ordered the spicy noodle dish with chunky Asian vegetables. The dish itself was branded as “FRAGRANT AND CREAMY, SPICED CURRY” –“coconut, lemongrass, lime leaf, green chilli with thick udon noodles, basil, mint and coriander plus: Chunky Asian vegetables”

They were right on one thing only – the creamy part. They use coconut milk (which is vegan) to make this creamy gloop, which they then dump on the noodles and everything else. Without the cream gloop it could have been a fairly palatable meal, except their version of “Asian Vegetables” consisted of 3 vegetables only: courgette, carrot and pepper. In this ratio Courgette 80%, Carrot 10% and Pepper 10% and these vegetables made up about 1/8 of the meal I had 3 pieces of pepper and 3 pieces of carrot then about 20 pieces of courgette. I don’t even like courgette, hate it (almost as much as spinach and mushrooms). I would have just eaten the carrot and pepper and noodles but they were all covered in the creamy gloop, which was actually disgusting, it was just too much coconut it was meant to contain spices I could not taste any, all I could taste was coconut. I say about 2/3 of the meal was the creamy gloop and 1/8 was vegetables and then the remaining part was noodles.

I tried discreetly scrapping the coconut stuff of the noodles and vegetables I wanted to eat, but in a bowl this is a hard thing to do when they are completely coated, so after every bite I had to take a swig of drink to rid myself of the taste. Usually I only order one drink in a restaurant then make it last the whole meal, as they always over price the drinks, yesterday I had to order a second drink, this is never good. The lime leaf turned into half a lime somehow and of the green chilli, lemon grass, basil, mint and coriander there was no sight or taste off, from which I can only conclude they were not in the dish. In the end I could not even finish the noodles, though I did extract all the pepper and carrot, as it was such a disgusting dish, this is very bad sign for me. I always finish my food in restaurants. I have paid for that food, so I will eat all of it, yesterday I physically could not as I was starting to feel sick from the taste.

That has got to be the WORST eating out experience I have ever had. Yes the waitress was friendly and the food arrived quickly and there was no problem getting new drinks or the bill. But I have had that service at other eateries which have also managed to sever very good food at a fraction of the price. The dish I order was £9 and the drinks £1.85 each. I knew it would be a little more than some of the places I’ve been considering its Ecclesall Road, but I was expecting food that I might have wanted to eat! All in all I will not be returning unless they add some more veggie options to the menu and stop labelling dishes with mozzarella cheese vegetarian. A very poor dining experience.

(Since this post turned out quite long I can’t post my other eating out experiences but I will be posting them too all have been better than yesterdays. I don’t have a photo as I don’t take photos of my food in restaurants)

Saturday March 22nd ~ lunch

Sorry this post is very late, but I was going to post it sooner but lots of stuff happened and I’ve been very busy.

Finally a lunch post! (mostly in the week lunch is just sandwiches) Lunch was beans on toast, with fake sage and marjoram sausages. Because there were potatoes left over from Thursday and chips left over from Friday, a potato and a few chips each as well.

Toast was toasted and reheated the left over chips and potatoes. The sausages were cooked in the beans, which is nicer than cooking separately (sometimes). Usually I have 2 pieces of toast, but because there was left over chips and potatoes today I didn’t. This is the standard Saturday lunch.

Sorry this is so short as well (I don’t have a photo of the sausages if we have them next Saturday I’ll post a photo then)

Friday March 21st ~ dinner

Sorry this post is late, it was written on friday, but then I stated watching Sport Relief and so it didn’t get posted, but here it now!

Today, because it’s a Friday it is quick and easy (aka minimal cooking) day. So dinner was chips, beans and fake fish fingers.

So yeah it isn’t very healthy but it is what we have just about every Friday. Basically oven chips, cooked from frozen with a bit of olive oil on, so they don’t get too dried out. beans heated up and fake fish fingers fried up. Unfortunately (for me) the beans were the Sainsbury’s basic ones, shown below, which I’m not so fond of (I prefer the organic ones we get from the vegan food specialist wholesalers)

Here are the fish style fingers we get ‘VBites Making Waves Fish Style Fingers’ we buy these from the vegan food specialist wholesalers, and I haven’t seen them in any supermarkets yet, but holland and barrett also sell them.

Thursday March 20th ~ dinner

Tonight’s dinner was roast potato with left over caponata and salad. The caponata stuff was put in the fridge so it was still okay today (see Monday March 17th ~ dinner post for instruction on making caponata). First it was reheated on the stove then as there wasn’t loads left mum bulked it up with some kidney beans in water. And left it to boil then simmer so it stayed hot while the potatoes cooked, it did need stirring occasionally though so it didn’t burn to the bottom of the pan. For the potatoes mum washed then rubbed in olive oil then a little sea salt before baking at gas mark 9 for a few hours, on most ovens you would not need to bake them for this long at this temperature, but our oven is useless and only cooks the front half of the top shelf really slowly so that was why they were cooked for so long. When they were put on the plates mum cut across the top so the potatoes were in four pieces, then added vegan margarine (Pure) on top, before putting on a few scoops of caponata. The salad was ready washed stuff, I didn’t really want any salad (I’m not a big fan of salad) but I had a bit so I was having some greens. Below are the kidney beans we use, as they were mentioned in yesterday’s post too, so I thought I’d just post which ones they were up on here.

Tuesday March 18th & Wednesday March 19th ~ dinner

Tuesday was minostroni soup (which I put pepper and a little bit of soy sauce on). The one below is Tuesdays.

While the soup was good it wasn’t the best that my mum’s ever made (and my grandmas is the best I’ve ever had). Hence why I’m not posting a ‘recipe’ of sorts, like I did last time. I think the problem was that too much water was added and so the soup became to watery, then to try to rectify this my mum sieved flour on and stirred it in which then turned into flour lumps and then they had to be removed, so yeah not the best today!

Wednesday, minostroni soup again (which I put pepper and a little bit of soy sauce on – again), because there was two days worth so we had I yesterday and today. Today was better than yesterday because mum put the left over pasta in the soup pan, so the pasta absorbed most of the excess water (which was the main problem) so today it was more solid, but it wasn’t as liquid as it should have been. And mum cooked more pasta, which I don’t think was really necessary as there was so much left over in the soup. But it was still good, hopefully we’ll have a more successful minostroni soup and then I can post a recipe version! Below is todays soup, as you can see it is less watery, but it is also very pasta heavy!

Sunday March 9th ~ Snack

This snack was actually from Sunday March the 9th (not today) but it was going to be the first post (had the blog gone up sooner) so it has to be posted.

So my snack was (as-well as being incredibly unhealthy) hot chocolate – made with plain coca powder, sugar and boiling water –  and a variety of biscuits. The biscuits in question were:  1 bourbon,  2 Oreo’s, 2 jammy dodgers and 2 pink wafer biscuits. There should have been 2 of each but one of my brothers ate 3 bourbon’s so I only got 1.

These biscuits are all vegan! The Oreo’s are relatively newly vegan in the UK as they only took the whey power out a year or so ago (longer ago in the US), but bourbon’s and pink wafer biscuits have been vegan for a long time, jammy dodgers have been vegan for longer than Oreo’s but less time than the bourbon’s and pink wafer biscuits. I can’t be certain the ingredients will be the same for all, but the ones we get are all vegan. So there are some sweet biscuits that are off the shelf items which are vegan. I think also the addition of Oreo’s and jammy dodgers does show a bit of the sign of the times changing and more products becoming vegan.

As a side note, while this was incredibly unhealthy I had done a long bike ride that day so it’s not like I had been sitting round all day doing nothing then had a snack, I had done a lot of exercise beforehand.