Ramblings

The other day I ordered some soap nuts from Green And Nutty - and they arrived (rather quickly) yesterday (or today… I forget.. a package on the doorstep anyway). Kristy (owner) was telling me about the soap nuts ages ago… and I finally got around to giving them a go (otherwise known as “stewart put two and two together when needing to buy washing powder”).

I don’t have an allergy problem to normal soaps and aren’t on some exotic “everything must be natural” trip (although it does have a certain appeal).

One bonus thing (for me) is that I *know* that what I’m using for washing clothes is vegan.

Anyway, first wash with them today and no problems to report. Seemed to produce clean clothes (although weren’t that dirty to begin with). Will report further in future washes.

There’s a 2-for-1 offer for December which I took (1kg for $17.99)… which should be enough to last a year (for the average household… and I’m smaller than that).

Paul notices the “non-dairy Creamer” thing that the US seems to have some kind of if not love affair, hidden addiction to. What’s almost worse than the non-dairy creamer actually containing dairy is that in my experience, sometimes airlines (and others) believe this is somehow Vegan.

Tried a vegan pancake recipe for breakfast (with maple syrup and jam for tapping… and i was wishing i had some soy ice cream around). yum!

The recipe was from Vegan with a Vengeance (a pretty awesome book):

I have purchased exactly one loaf of bread this year. The fact that it’s May is kind of amazing for this…. and it’s not as if I haven’t eaten any bread - I love the stuff. I’ve been making it.

Relatively recently, I bought a bread machine. It’s a breville and was only a couple of hundred bucks. The idea behind this was to still have bread when I was feeling too lazy to do everything by hand (or was time pressed).

I have discovered the following:

The 750g loaf is a bit small, the kneading can end up missing some ingredients in the corners of the bread machine. the 1kg loaf is fine, the 1.25 is freaking huge.

The area of the bread (as in how big a slice is) is much larger than any of the bread tins I use in the oven.

The crust on the side of the loaf is usually nicer than on the top (top isn’t as thick and crunchy).

To avoid using bread improver, instead use the juice of an orange (or I’ve also used about 1/3 cup of fresh orange juice). This gives lovely structure and texture to the bread without adding anything artificial.

Some recipes say add some milk thing, i’ve just ignored it and done fine.

Waking up to fresh bread smell is amazing.

We put on a friends bucks night last weekend, and in the afternoon we did food at a friends place. Sort of a lunch/dinner thing to keep us going with the nights drinking and general revelry. I baked 3 loaves of bread and it went down really well (10 of us finished all 3 off). Got lots of compliments for it too :)

Of course, the majority of bread from everywhere else now just tastes shit (because it is). If you’re going to buy bread - buy it from a *really* good baker. Or, take the hit - buy a bread machine and do it. Cost per loaf for yeast, water and salt is approximately nothing and bakers flour is cheap.

Join the war on bad bread, bake your own today!

Wasn’t feeling like spending a lot of effort on cooking last night, but still wanted something fresh, delicious and quick to prepare. So… I just made a nice, simple stir fry. I here try to reproduce what I did from memory.

Started by heating some oil in a wok, adding a teaspoon or two of mustard seeds. Leave until the mustard seeds start to pop (that gives the oil a nice flavour).

Add a finely chopped onion, a finely chopped chili (this is all the chili i used in this, adds nice flavour, a tiny bit of spice and it’s certainly not too much) and some crushed garlic (I used 2 cloves of some good organic garlic… may want more or less depending on the strength of your garlic).

Basically, you want the onions to start going clear… I also added a tiny amount of turmeric.

I then added some finely chopped capsicum, then some carrots. It’s about now that I added some light soy sauce. Keeps things moist and adds nice flavour.

In a mortar and pestle, I ground up some sesame seeds, cumin and cardamon (not much of each, the aim is to add subtle flavours) and then add to mix. I also added some roughly chopped swiss-brown mushrooms (button mushrooms would work too, I just felt like the swiss-brown as they have a nice flavour). I also added a bit more of the light soy, just to keep things moist.

I also added finely chopped broccoli and at the end snow peas.

Served on rice, delicious.

Was interesting for me as I usually end up using tofu and creating some sort of sauce to go over a stir fry. This was flavoursome (Michael also thought so, ended up coming over for food before we all went out), filling and there’s left overs :)

(I also used my Microwave’s wonderful “Rice” button… I love that. Obviously, put the rice on *FIRST* before you start any prep for the stir fry. Both were ready about the same time.)

This is great news - a beer that everybody knows is vegan is right there (see, even photographic proof). Now if only it wasn’t 10:50am….

Bread looks like this:

now only to find a way to have the sesame seeds stay on…

Sometime in what we laughingly call the past (okay… the last week) I used a (slight) modification to this Basic white bread recipe and baked bread. Today, I’m doing it again. Why on earth I’m baking in hot weather is another question…. but anyway. The only real change to the recipe was using vegetable oil (just normal cheap cooking oil) instead of butter (i.e. to make it Vegan).

Last time I made the bread it was quite good - the crust was totally awesome. Hopefully will be this time too. Maybe I’ll even take pictures :)

I was inspired by this recipe: Best Vegan Choc Chip Cookies! and slightly modified it. Namely, I didn’t seem to have any maple syrup, so I used Golden syrup and i wasn’t sure it was chocolately enough, so added 1/3rd cup cocoa powder.

I quite like the outcome, and so at least does Michael - so it so far gets one friend approval.

The complete recipe (what I did, not exactly what’s at the link):

• 1 1/4 cups plain flour
• 1 1/4 cup oat flour (to make, grind approximately 2 cups rolled oats in food processor until a fine, flour consistency)
• 1 1/8 cups rolled oats
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/8 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 1/2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips (I used some I found that were about 63% cocoa and supplemented with some crush soy chocolate - if making this vegan, check the choc chips - even dark chocolate chips may contain milk)
• 1 cup golden syrup
• 1 cup canola oil (i just used normal vegetable cooking oil… likely canola..)
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 2 tablespoons water
• 1/3 cup cocoa powder

and then:

1. Mix everything together in a bowl. It will be a moist dough, and yummy
2. Put it on biscuit trays
3. 180 degrees C for 18-20 minutes (or a bit longer if your oven is crap like mine)

Arrived early morning, not much sleep, took forever to get to hotel and then had to wait for room (double not happy), got some work done in the office and am now in desperate need of sleep before a way too early start.

(The weird thing is that the reason behind this post has nothing to do with being in Japan)

So I’ve slightly adapted this recipie (Vegan / Vegetarian Recipes - Biscuits - Oat - Oatmeal Raisin Cookies). Using soy milk instead of orange juice (couldn’t be bothered going to shops as I drank all the stuff I bought last weekend) and just olive oil instead of corn oil.

Currently in the oven. The dough tasted good though.

Update: the do taste rather good!

even after you wash your hands, the smell is still there - it’s great! Of course, it’s bad if you’re in public and keep smelling your hands - but Basil does smell really good.

I shall now nervously look around the room to see if anybody is going to see me smell that fresh Basil smell that’s permeated my hands.

I made wikid past sauce tonight.

Okay, I cheated - I used one of the bottled curry pastes. I really shouldn’t have - it’s not that hard to do it yourself. But, I was feeling *really* lazy.

So, ingredients were:

• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 1 block of firm tofu, cut into small (1cm) cubes
• 1 can diced tomatoes
• 1 can 140g coconut cream (this has nothing to do with dairy cream, it’s just squeezed coconut concentrate)
• a bit of chilli powder
• a few cloves chopped garlic
• green peas (i love peas in a curry)
• a red curry paste (i used one that said “butter chicken” on the front) but you could just whack in some spices, herbs and tamarind.

saute the onions, throw in the tofu and cook . add the can of tomatoes and curry paste - in fact, add everything else.

Cook until good and warm all the way through. The tofu I used has a habit of crumbling - didn’t harm the taste though!

This was really yummy. Ate it last night as leftovers and made it the night before. Wish I had more for tonight. Delicious!

dry some tofu (tea towl, paper towl, intense concentration).

marinade of:

• soy sauce
• red wine
• finely chopped garlic
• pinch of salt
• ground pepper

came up yummy - at least with tomato sauce. And really, it’s the only sauce that counts.

Adapted from: http://www.silcom.com/~noster/martofu.html