Yummy food!

This bowl of pasta here is covered in tahini sauce from Easy Vegan Cooking by Leah Leneman. It's really easy to make, and the tahini gives it a nice creamy yet nutty flavour. Some nutritional yeast sprinkled on top would work well too.
I made this for dinner the night before, and had leftover tofu ricotta the next day, so I made pizza with pesto go faster stripes on toast with the leftovers! Mmmm!
Last but not least, these are dry roasted chickpeas from Alternative Vegan by Dino Sarma, and they are very yummy indeed. The coriander seeds give it a lovely flavour. I never had any curry leaves but they are fine without.

Tofu nuggets!

Inspired by the gorgeous stuffed tofu recipe, I used a similar marinade to Lelly's one* and baked nugget size pieces of marinaded tofu, breaded in a 1/4 cup nooch, 1/4 cup wholewheat flour and a pinch of gatlic salt, at 220 C for 30 mins, turning halfway.

* for marinade use 4 tbsp marge, 1 tbsp dijon mustard, 1 tbsp nooch, 1 tbsp garlic puree (or 4-5 crushed cloves) or equivalent 1 tsp each basil and oregano. This makes plenty to marinade a 250g block of tofu.

I've served these with potato rounds from Alternative vegan and broccoli. They were yummy!

Vegan omnisub junk food- but still healthier than the omni equivalent!

Lelly made us some of this at the recent meet up, and very kindly let me copy down the recipe. It's mac n cheese from the new farm vegetarian cookbook, and it's proper, greasy junk food, but by god, it's gorgeous, and Jay and I both went back for leftovers! I've tried to minimise the damage by serving it with nice healthy broccoli and using wholewheat fusilli.

Still though, no cholesterol, or cruelty, unlike cows' cheese! :)

Cupcakes!

I halved the recipe for fauxtess cupcakes in Vegan with a vengeance to make just half a dozen (because a full dozen cupcakes would be really naughty!) and iced them with Sarah's Nut butter icing from How it all vegan.

For nutty, chocolatey, maple-syrup-ey tastiness this combo cannot be beaten! :)

Lelly's Stuffed Tofu and Dino's Venn Pongal

This is Venn Pongal from Dino Sarma's Alternative Vegan. It's the perfect comfort food for a cold winter's day, with a nice amount of spice through it to warm you up. I've not used curry leaves, but it tastes fine without.
This is Stuffed Tofu from Lelly's Kitchen, and it is absolutely gorgeous- you must try this!

I've served it alongside roast baby potatoes with whole garlic cloves, rosemary and olive oil, and Alternative Vegan's steamed, but not angry, vegetables.

My health food store didn't have any firm tofu in stock, so I firmed my Cauldron stuff up by freezing it so it didn't crumble to bits and it worked okay, although obviously firm tofu would have made life easier.

Party food!

So, I went to the joint bithday party of Weeg and Lelly of Lelly's Vegan Kitchen this weekend, and since they were having a potluck, I brought some party food in the form of mini sundried tomato and onion tofu quiches, and rainbow cookies.

The quiches are a miniature variation of the recipe for larger quiches I posted earlier. I used an upside down cup to cut out the mini flans from the rolled pastry, it makes about 18.

Crust
120g wholemeal flour
50g margarine
pinch of salt
cold water

-rub margarine into flour with your fingers
-add salt, and a little water at a time, gradually adding till it forms a dough
-roll out dough, and cut into use an upside down cup or pastry cutter to cut out the mini flans from the rolled pastry, it makes about 18.
-you can either grease the baking tray or put them in cupcake papers- as I did- to make them easier to transport.
-Bake for 6-8 mins at 220 C then set aside to cool.


Filling

1 onion
8 sundried tomatoes, presoaked and sliced into bitesize pieces. (Use kitchen scissors, it's the quickest and easiest way to chop up sundried tomatoes! ;))
2 tbsp olive oil
4 cloves garlic, crushed
200g tofu
4tbsp unsweetened soya milk
3 tbsp soy sauce
2 tsp chives
pinch of basil and oregano
3tbsp nutrional yeast (optional)

-put tofu in blender with soya milk, soy sauce herbs, and nutritional yeast if using and whizz
-fry onion and garlic in olive oil and garlic for 5 mins
-add onion, garlic and sundried tomatoes to blended tofu mixture, mix in, then spoon into mini flans
-bake in 220C oven for 8-10 mins
~may be served hot or cold~

I also made rainbow cookies, similar to those seen here. Mine are inspired by the VWAV choc chip cookie recipe, but with a few changes.

Lower-fat lasagne and my fridge

Here is a ginormous potion of my lower fat lasagne served up with some broccoli. All I've done here is layer this sauce and tvp veggie mince with wholewheat lasagne sheets, cooked to al dente, and my old favourite, tofu ricotta from Vegan with a vengeance, then baked at 220C for 25 mins. It was yummy.

As I've noticed a lot of vegans in blog-land and youtube doing it, here is a photo of my fridge. Points of interest include the 7 boxes of cauldron tofu (it was buy one get one free, and is good till 5 december, so I stocked up!). The white boxes at the top of the fridge door are Jay's insulin. The bag behind the broccoli is ginger root, and garlic bulbs, the bag on the bottle holder is green leafy salad. There's a bag of mixed bell peppers under the bag of onions. The tupperware tub has Mozzarella cheezly in it, and there are Redwoods sage and onion vegideli slices behind it. The pink bottles are Raspberry Ripple sugarfree diluting juice from Morrisons, and a bottle of Rose wine behind it. Blue cartons are unsweetened soya milk, green cartons are apple juice. Jars include vegenaise, peanut butter, tahini, diabetic jam, curry paste, vegan pesto, yeast extract and mango chutney.

My new toy!

My lovely boyfriend bought this as a present today, it's a 24 jar spice rack from BHS complete with spices, it's really pretty and cost £25. I've been looking for one for a while to keep my spices neat and tidy and handy to reach, plus a lot of my spices were running out, so it was just ideal. It's also got really posh stuff in it like whole cinnamon sticks, bay leaves and fennel seeds... click on the pic for a close up look. :)