Strawberries!

Recently, we were given hundreds and hundreds of beautiful, organic, freshly picked strawberries. Strawberries are one of my favourite fruits and they make me so excited that warm weather is on its way!





We originally planned to make them into jam, but soon decided they were much too beautiful and chose to live off strawberries for the next week! I'm so glad we did!

My new favourite morning tea treat is strawberries on toast! Simply some buttered (well, nuttelexed) wholegrain toast, some fresh mint, a few squished strawberries and a teeny drizzle of pure maple syrup. Amaaazing.

Fourteeeeen

Happy Birthday Siena! I can't believe my lil sisty is 14 already! I made a big ol' vegan chocolate berry cake to celebrate. So good! I might pop the recipe up tomorrow.

Goin' Raw!

At the beginning of a new season, I often find myself making a little mental list of things I want to do or change in the new season - a new season’s resolution. At the top of my list this Spring is eating more raw food! Lately I’ve been trying to eat at least two raw meals ever day. I’m planning on making the shift to completely raw sometime soon! I think I will make certain little allowances - maybe eating non-raw food when I’m out to dinner or at someone else’s house. I’ve stocked up on some good books and am really enjoying trying out all the new recipes. Spring seems like the perfect time to make this transition, and I’m feeling rather excited!

oh my gosh yum: sun-dried tomato pesto!

One thing I do miss a teeny bit about my pre-vegan days is delicious spreads and dips. Most supermarket varieties are packed with either parmesan or cream cheese. And wellll.. hommos can get a bit old. So I thought I’d have a play around at creating my own! This semi sun dried tomato pesto is delish!

Here’s what you need:

- A small tub of sun-dried tomatoes - I think mine was around 220 grams
- ¼ red capsicum
- I used 3 lil home-grown cloves of garlic, but maybe just one if it’s the bigger, supermarket variety
- 30 grams pine nuts
- A few tablespoons olive oil
- A few fresh basil leaves
- A little pepper, and maybe some salt if you’re not saltaphobic like me

First, I chopped the capsicum into medium-sized pieces and roasted it, with the garlic and a little olive oil, until it was cooked through.







Now of course you could just pop it all in the blender and it would only take a few seconds, but I rather like any excuse to use a mortar and pestle, so I went with that option. It’s also a bit more chunky too, which is nice. I put the capsicum, garlic, basil and tomatoes in and smooshed them around until they started to turn into a paste.



Then pop in the pine nuts and keep bashing, until most of them are broken up. Stir in some olive oil, until the pesto is the right consistency.



Yum!

I popped mine in a wrap with nothing but salad and avocado and it was deeelish! It’s equally good alone as a dip, or mixed through pasta.

Peanut Butter Pillows

Yesterday, we went on a little hunt around Melbourne to find the book Vegan Cookies Invade your Cookie Jar. I already have Vegan Cupcakes take over the World. It is definitely my faveeee vegan baking book. The cupcake varieties are delish and the recipes are fool-proof, so of course i was pretty keen to find its cookie-counterpart! Sadly, we were unsuccessful, so I ordered it online. Hopefully it comes soooooon! While I wait, I decided to make these Peanut Butter Chocolate Pillows! Me oh my, they are so good! i tried them once before, but accidentally burnt them a little. This batch was perfect! Crispy on the outside and soft and chewy on the inside!




They are by no means healthy, and are rather fiddly to make, but they are such a yummy treat!



You can find the recipe over here!

oh my gosh yum...

Yesterday I made these raw brownies from the blog My New Roots. What an excellent blog, and what amazing brownies! They are made from nothing but nuts, dates and cacao! It's amazing that something so healthy can taste do decadent and delicious! They're sweet and chewy, as all good brownies are!

I have loved fresh dates forever. Fresh medjol dates are so sweet syrupy! They've always reminded me of caramel or something. I'd never thought of using them as a sweetener though! Such a good idea.





These brownies would be so great for vegans, raw vegans and the gluten intolerant.



My poor ol' blender didn't do too well with the mixture though. I would recommend dividing the mixture into two and doing them separately if your blender is not the best.

If anything I think these brownies are a little too full on. I think next time I might put in a few less dates and not as much cacao.

On the whole though, AMAZING! Such a decadent and amazing treat!



xxx

Peachy!

Recently, I have been craving all things peachy. Sadly, it’s the beginning of winter, so fresh peaches are not easy to come by! I’ve been satisfying my craving with Schweppes “Peachee” soft drink. Yum! And last night I thought I’d have a shot at making my own vegan peach cupcakes!



I was a little disappointed that they weren’t quite as peachy as I was hoping. BUT they were still delish! The mashed peach makes them more moist and dense which is ratherrrr nice.

I got my original basic cupcake recipe from Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero’s book Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. Such a great book! I changed it a little too. And this time, I peachified it!



Peach Cupcakes

2 cups soymilk
2 teaspoons apple cider vinegar
2 ½ cups plain flour
4 table spoons cornflour
1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
Pinch of salt
2/3 cup of neutral tasting oil
1 ½ cups of sugar
4 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 whole peaches

Pop the soy milk and vinegar in a mixing bowl together. Give them a good whisk with a fork and set them aside. The mixture will go all stinky and curdly, but don’t worry, this is meant to happen. Then beat in the oil, sugar and vanilla extracts. Now pop your peaches in a blender, til they’re nice and smooth. They should be somewhere between juice and puree. Mix the peaches into the mixture. Then sift the dry ingredients in and mix it all together. Line your muffin tray with patty pan liners; I didn’t do this as I’d run out, so you can just grease the tray if need be. Fill them up to about ¾ full and pop them into a moderate oven. It should take between 20 and 25 minutes for them to be ready.

Peach Icing

2 cups of icing sugar
1 tablespoon vegan margarine
½ peach

Pop the peach in the blender (or do it along with the cupcake peaches, then put it aside). Beat the margarine while slowly adding the sugar. Then add the peaches sporadically until the icing is the right consistency.

When the cupcakes have cooled, stick the icing on top of the cakes and enjoy!

xox

vegan?

A few days ago, I was sitting, having lunch, with a girl from my art history class. She is a bit of a fundamentalist vegan. She knew I was a vegan too. She complemented me on my boots, saying how hard it is to find nice fake leather shoes. I was like “ooh thankyou. I know, it’s impossible. These are actually leather, I bought them in an op-shop.” She looked aghast. “Oh I thought you were a vegan,” she said. “Well I eat a vegan diet, but I do wear wool and leather if I buy them second hand.” She clearly didn’t agree.

I’ve always been a bit hesitant to call myself a vegan. I tend to say things such as “I’m on a vegan diet,” or “oh I don’t eat eggs or dairy.” But recently, I’ve just started saying “vegan” because it’s so much easier. I’ve been a vegetarian all my life, but for the last year or so, I very, very rarely ate eggs or dairy. I think I was just too scared to label myself.

 

My thirteen-year-old sister doesn’t eat meat, dairy or honey. She will, however, eat the eggs that some from our chooks. Our chickens are ex-battery hens. My mum got them from a battery farm that will let people take their hens when they are considered too old. If someone doesn’t adopt them, they are killed. So my mum go these yucky, featherless chickens with their beaks chopped and their feathers clipped a few years ago. While they were considered too old to lay eggs then, three years later, they are the happiest, healthiest chickens I ever saw and each lay an egg every day. Siena knows that they have a good life, and if it wasn’t for us they would have been killed, so she doesn’t have a problem with eating their eggs.

I think that it is more important that we tailor our diets and lifestyles around our individual beliefs, rather than adhering to a strict vegan lifestyle. I don’t want to support the leather or wool industry, so I would never buy new wool or leather. But If my money is going to charity, and I am making use of something that someone else is throwing away, I think that it is better to buy second hand leather than new plastic boots.

Sally, xxo