Rachel's Blog

I have so many pictures of food on my camera but today I’ll just tell you all what to do with leftover silken tofu! I used to have no idea what to do with the squidgy white stuff leftover from quiche recipes or chocolate brownies, but now I have found the perfect thing to do with it! Add cocoa and sugar to silken tofu, blend and viola! Chocolate pudding. In a matter of minutes.

The recipe is from a vegetarian pack from peta.

Put all your ingredients in the blender..

Blend until smooth!

Blending is loud and I have an office underneath my flat oops..

I added some almond essence, I’m thinking of trying a vanilla version also. It tastes better from the fridge, so stick it in there for a while before you want to eat it, but it still tastes good straight from the blender, just remember to take out the blade!

Apparently I was too busy eating the pudding to take a photo of the finished product, sorry! I’m pretty sure you can find the recipe online at www.peta.org

Enjoy!

I seem to have become a bit of a restaurant critic for the past post and this one, I’ll be cooking for myself soon I promise.

This weekend I visited my very meat eating and vegetable avoiding brother near Birmingham. He surprised me and had researched nearby vegetarian places to eat 🙂 We went into Birmingham centre and just a few minutes away from the Bullring shopping centre, tucked away neatly in a side street, was the Warehouse Cafe, an organic vegetarian/vegan cafe. Next door was also a nice little vegetarian health food shop. Upon entering the Warehouse Cafe, we were a little confused, as the cafe itself is up some stairs that are surprisingly well hidden! But halfway up the stairs you can start to smell the familiar smells of chips and “normal” food. The place is quite casual in its setting, the table and chairs don’t match etc but on the walls were some art that was for sale and a small bookshelf on which were various mainly vegetarian recipe books. The menu was rather small, and I must say probably doesn’t offer much for non-vegetarians. My brother chose a nice sounding refried bean soft taco that he said was very nice, but it looked more like a flat quesadilla that didn’t look very much on the plate. The small side salad that it came with he said was very tasty, with a lemony dressing he liked. I chose a simple burger that came with homemade potato wedges and a small side salad. It was very nice and I welcomed being able to choose most of what was on the menu and not having to worry about what might happen in the kitchen. The burger was very substantial although my greedy mind would have preferred a few more wedges. There were a selection of drinks including milkshakes with a vegan option and fresh desserts. Overall I enjoyed the experience and appreciated the short distance away from the main eateries it was. If you’re ever in Birmingham, it’s definitely worth a visit, you can visit their website here www.thewarehousecafe.com.

Here is a belated picture of my burger, I forgot and its from my phone again..

And my brother’s..

I may have had one of the yummiest pizza’s on earth this week. I’m not sure whether it was because I was quite hungry, because it is any pizza, any time, any Thursday that you get a pizza for only £4, or that it was just something different, but this pizza was good!

I didn’t have my camera with me, so this picture is the best I could take with my phone, but it was good! The base was thin but not overly crispy and the toppings were amazing. I went for the Melbourne pizza from the Australian section on the menu. It had roasted butternut squash, balsamic roasted red onions and pumpkin seeds. I omitted the cheese but my friend didn’t and here’s a picture of his just because..

I also had a lovely drink of peach sirop and fizzy water and the waiter offered us condiments, that never happens in other pizza selling places.. It was such a lovely day, sunny and warm and we chose to sit by a window that opened up onto a quiet street, they open the windows by sliding them across and it was almost as if we were sitting outside but in the shade, which also helped the experience. I think mostly though the menu showed some consideration to the vegetarian options and it was executed wonderfully and there was no quibbles with asking for no cheese, some places serve pre-made pizzas and can’t offer a no-cheese option.

Check them out 🙂

So after my hefty salad yesterday I didn’t really feel hungry when it came around to the time I was supposed to eat dinner, I was going to the cinema and needed eat before that, so I made a  really simple bowl of veggies that was really tasty, I think I’ll be having it more.

It was a bit of onion and garlic sauteed for a bit, then added handfuls of kale (around a cup or more, its wilts down!). Then added a small tin of tomatoes with herbs and half a 400g tin of haricot beans. Heat and serve!

Another way to get your greens.. salad!

Today I had a large salad with pea shoots, some of a bag of mixed leaves including spinach and some leftover cos lettuce I had along with cucumber, roasted red pepper and cherry tomatoes! I also made some chickpea burgers from Leah Leneman’s Vegan for One cookbook. Very yummy I made a double batch to eat more in the next few days! They’re made of chickpeas, onion (the recipe asks for spring/green onion I used red), breadcrumbs (I whizzed up a bagel I had hanging around), soy yogurt, soy sauce, tomato puree and marjoram! Very Tasty.

Okay, so like almost everybody, I’ve been reading about green smoothies and juicing etc and the wonder of greens for years now, and have either thought, eww that’ll taste horrid! Or, that’s for those skinny hippie freaks! But since becoming vegan and struggling somewhat for new ideas to increase my green intake, I turned to the idea with a new perspective.

I recently bought Kris Carr’s Crazy Sexy Diet and was seriously considering her 21 day cleanse, and still might, however this morning I tried her recommendation of starting with cucumber juice.Unfortunately, we didn’t mix. I just didn’t like the taste, even though it tasted like cucumber.. I think i will have to revisit him another time, maybe mixing him with some other flavours.

So, instead I tried a green smoothie, aka green monster thanks to Angela Liddon over at the fab website OhSheGlows which I may have a slight obsession with, even giving my friends her christmas present ideas of blondie ingredients in jars (so cool they thought I’d bought them!) anyway, you can find recipes for green monsters over at her website here greenmostermovement and her suggested recipe for a newbie, is the one I am currently drinking. It tastes just like a banana milkshake, very nice, and an amazing green colour. So good in fact I had to share immediately!

I will still be reading and hopefully adopting many of Kris Carr’s advice, it really is an informative and enlightening book, however at the moment I think I’m going to explore the world of green monsters some more before I try drinking straight vegetable juice.

(I should probably mention that Kris Carr does also praise green smoothies, she just encouraged me to try the juices more)

Tell me if you have any juice recipes that might be good for a newbie to veg juices like me or any green monsters. Thanks 🙂

So the weather is insane, one minute I’m making soup and wearing fifteen layers and the next I’m gorging on early season strawberries and getting sunburn. Don’t forget your sunscreen! I did.

So to make use of some seasonal raspberries and strawberries and not so english blueberries I made some almond fruit tarts. I love fruit tarts. Whenever my mum would buy cream cakes I always wanted the fruit tart because I don’t like fresh whipped cream (and that’s before I was vegan) So I really wanted to try replicate the kind of store bought fruit tarts that you get but I added a bit of a twist with the almond.

I made a basic pastry crust, but took out two tablespoons of the flour and put in three tablespoons of ground almonds. (Yes I know they’re not the same measurement). Rub in shortening and add water to make the dough, then refrigerated for an hour. I then rolled it out, (badly! I had nothing to use as a template 😦 ) I used two yorkshire pudding trays that were a really good size.

When they were cooked I cooled them on a rack and then spread them heated apricot preserves, so that the custard didn’t make them soggy.

I then made an almond custard, made really simply with cornflour, a bit of sugar, milk and almond essence and spooned it into the tarts.

I then had fun decorating them with fruit and then glazing with more preserves but mixed with some water.

I need a new camera so apologies for the shoddy pictures. If anyone can recommend a good digital camera I’m up for suggestions!

rough around the edges

Neater and glazed

They turned out quite yummy 🙂 I think next time I will put some lemon zest into the pastry but that’s probably it. And make some vanilla ones..

x

Reading the new coalition programme I am happy to read that they “will end the testing of household products on animals and work to reduce the use of animals in scientific research.”

I am happy that they are on the right track 🙂

Although not on the possible repeal of the hunting act..

I have a few pictures of food lol a bit of a sandwich fest.

To start with I tried some alfalfa sprouts and avocado. The sprouts tasted kinda funky, not sure if it that’s what they always taste like, but I didn’t like them much.

sprouts :s

I tried a chickpea sandwich, called by a lot of people a tuna salad? I think if you add hijiki or some seaweed it makes it a bt sea/fishy tasting but I didn’t, just a bit like the egg salad, but instead of tofu, chickpeas!

chickpeeeeee

And good ol’ hummus. Thought I’d just add this picture cos it was sandwich related!

And an alternative lunch from a few weeks ago maybe.. (can’t remember when..) Good old cous cous, roasted veggies, butter beans and toasted pine nuts and sunflower seeds. I would like to mention that I thought I never liked sunflower seeds until recently and try to find excuses for putting them in stuff..

AND finally Engllish Strawberries. I’m not sure if it’s because they are possibly picked ripe or just the variety but I LOVE English Strawberries. They just don’t taste the same as Spanish or others.. So here are some strawberry related foods..

Strawberries and alpro vanilla yogurt (love that also..)

Porridge! (which I made myself in a saucepan and everything)

And PANCAKES 😛 I made the banana pancakes from Sarah Kramer’s La Dolce Vegan So yummy with choc chips and raisins and minimal pecans, they were thick and fluffy and all yummy.

So that’s some yummy fare there, now you can realise why I’m called FATrachel haha

Rapid topic change..

Today I went shopping and bought some new nose studs, I have been wearing a straight one since I got it pierced really, I tried bent ones but they were painful to put in and awkward to get out so after a few years I have tried again and successfully! I think that it’s finally healed properly and putting the stud in was easy, I did it in the car with no problems, yay 🙂

I also have a bit of a rant about ink cartridges. I bought an XL cartridge from Argos. Which cost £38. Just a black cartridge. Granted it is an XL one and supposedly prints 5x more than the normal £20 one but still expensive! and  WHSmith was charging £48.99. I’m not kidding! Craaazy.

That’s about it for now.. How am I doing? x