Care Package from Home & VeganMofo Ends

My wonderful auntie send me a care package to Canada. I love receiving mail and parcels, so this was a nice surprise to come home to. Among some chocolate and other non-vegan things that were passed on to the house mates, it included all of these wonderful things:

It included:

• pistacchios
• macadamia nuts
• dried figs
• dried plums
• dried apricots
• and vegan energy bars!

So many dried fruit! I have to admit, I got through the bags of macadamia nuts already They’re just so good! But does anyone have any suggestions on what to do with all the dried fruit?

Also today marks the last day of Vegan Mofo 2011, so I would like to use the opportunity to emphasize again how much fun I had! I tried out so many new recipes – it was just such a good motivation to know that hundreds of other vegan food bloggers were cooking and writing out there, at the same time!

These were some of my favourite recipes to try:

• Miso Soup
• Homemade vegan reese’s cups
• Tofu “Egg” Salad
• and of course Sm’love Pie from Veganomicon

I also stumbled upon many new favourite fellow vegan blogs through vegan mofo. You need to check these out!

• Vegtastic.net
• The Vegan Butcher
• Veganitäten (in German!)
• Hot Vegan Chick…peas!
• Healthy Kitschy Vegan

… and so many more! What is your new favourite?

Have a spooky Hallowe’en everone!

Peanut-Tofu-Chickpea Fritters

These I threw together from various leftovers I found in the fridge. They were surprisingly good!
I won’t say any exact measurements, firstly because I don’t have any and secondly because the texture wasn’t perfect, so there I’m gonna leave some room for your creativity. Either way, here it goes:

Mash up tofu, peanut butter (melted), soy sauce, red pepper flakes. Let it sit. (Sorry for the lack of aesthetically pleasing pictures for the first steps)

Add green peppers, some diced onion, chickpeas, cornstarch and some more soy sauce.

Put it in the oven and bake for 10-15min.

Serve with roasted asparagus.

Almost the weekend. Have a good Friday everyone!

Almond Milk: My new Love

Until a couple of months ago, I’d never even tried soy milk. Now that I’m over in Canada, there are so many more options! Almond milk? Rice milk? Oat milk? Yes, please!
So I tried it a couple of weeks ago and fell in love with it. I had some again last night and decided it’s finally time to let the world know of this new love of mine: Almond milk <3

Check for the nutritional stats on Feed Me I’m Cranky and find out how to make your own almond milk over at hipster food. Make your almond milk? Sounds like a great plan to me!

Either way, this stuff is great. It is dairy and soy free, and lower in calories than dairy or soy milk. Apparently, the “combination of potassium, magnesium and calcium found in almond milk makes it ideal brain food meaning that daily consumption of almond milk is recommended for enhancing and retaining memory”. And it tastes great. The only let-down is that it can be quite expensive, sadly. What a cruel world. But when you have an excuse to buy it, such as to make Chocolate Pudding Pie, always go for it!

Which is your favourite non-dairy milk?

Vegan Chocolate Pudding Pie

Just to let you know, I am writing this post while still on a chocolate pudding pie – high. So please forgive for any indecencies. Blame the pie.

So anyway, it is my dear house mate Mieke’s birthday today and of course, this wonderful occasion calls for pie! After some consideration of my options and recent pie inspirations, I decided to try the simple, but delicious looking Old fashioned Chocolate Pudding Pie (click the link for the recipe!) from The PPK. After all, you can never really go wrong with Isa Chandra’s wonderful concoctions!

So I made it. And we ate it. All within less than 3 hours.

Veni

Vidi

Vici

To make up for the horrible pictures (by the time I remembered to takes some, all but the last piece was gone. I guess we can call that a success though ), here is a much prettier one from the original recipe:

The PPK – Old fashioned Chocolate Pudding Pie

This is what it’s meant to look like. Haha. I am fairly sure I should have stuck to the 3 hours chilling time that Isa suggested. However, if you make a pie at 10:30pm and happen to celebrate a birthday at 0am, this is what the result will look like. Oh well, who cares about the looks if it tastes good?!

Happy Wednesday everyone!

Chilled Beet Soup with Coconut Milk

Chilled Beet Soup with Coconut Milk

This weekend was another time for a stroll on the Farmer’s Market. I recently remembered drinking some excellent beet juice a while ago, so I thought I should try this again. One of the booths had a few beets there, so I picked up a small basket.

After some considerations, I decided to make raw beet soup.

I started by chopping up some beets.

I chopped them up and blended them nicely. And then I found this…Coconut milk!

I blended in the coconut milk and tasted with a little bit of salt. As you can probably tell from this picture, it is not completely smooth. There are still some small chunks. I didn’t mind it too much – our blender just isn’t great. It would probably be really nice if the texture is smoother, though.

Done! I put in a fridge to chill for a while, put you could eat it right away, too.