cat pics, dinner, easy meals, recipes and food, vegan mofo

Vegan Democracy Sausages: for the people… but hopefully not made of the people… #snagvotes #soylentgreen?

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Vegan MoFo –
Week 4: 21st-27th November 2016 Memories & Traditions
22nd: Silly food – What are some silly food traditions/memories you have?

DEMOCRACY SAUSAGES.
Content warning: strong language and silliness.

When I was a kid, primary school fetes and fairs were the domain of the gourmet af “sausage on a piece of bread” but that traditional classy food seems to have shifted to polling booths on election days.

In recent times, a website for locating Democracy Sausages has emerged and it has a function to help find polling booths that have vegetarian options! In Australia, democracy is for everyone, even filthy vegan socialists.

The western shift towards fascism and humouring bullshit-spewing fascist/capitalist asshats has been getting a lot of my friends down… and fair enough, too. Being a hypocritical, nasty fuckwit with the worst hair implants of all time is not okay. For tips on insulting your less-than-illustrious political leaders, and I know some places in the world are less familiar with this concept, please consider viewing these Australian demonstrations for beginners: “dickhead” and “bunch of wankers”

If you think capitalism doesn’t work – hell, if you think democracy doesn’t work because the free market is a violent class war being waged against middle-to-lower classes by the filthy rich – remember: in Australia at least, we get a greasy snag to calm our nerves on election day, if not from a polling booth, then we can fry up our own sausage-on-a-piece-of-bread comfort food in our own homes with our dearest Comrades… and it certainly helps that vegan sausages are almost universally amazing these days. I hope some of our Comrades in other lands will consider adopting this delightful election day comfort food!

It is quite a tricky food to master, so here’s a step-by-step pictorial guide…

1. Get a piece of shitty floppy soft bread. The whiter, the better. Cheap supermarket “wholemeal” bread is also acceptable providing it’s gluten-rich, soft and pliable. Do not toast it or try to do anything clever with the piece of bread. This is neither the time nor the place. The beauty of this food is in its simplicity.

bread and bonus cat

Bonus kitteh!

Optional: if you’re feeling fancy, put a spread on it: plant-based margarine. But that’s it. Don’t go any fancier than that or you’ll ruin it. No bean dips or any such nonsense. This isn’t cocktail hour at The Ritz.

2. Fry or BBQ some vegan sausages. You’ll need tongs for this. If you don’t have tongs, don’t bother. Tongs are essential, even if they’re shitty salad tongs like you see here… shameful, I know, but it’s the best I could do after moving. Tongs, mate. That’s how you turn a snag on the grill.

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3. Put the browned sausage on the bread.

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4. Tomato sauce. Do a line of it. Nothing more, nothing less.

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Okay, an optional addition: well-browned, maybe slightly-burnt fried onion, but if the political situation is dire, you might not have time for that.

5. Pick it up, rolling the bread slightly. (If you’ve toasted the bread or bought fancy sourdough like some kind of wanker, at this point you’ll be fucked as.)

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Don’t be a dickhead. There are lives at stake. Eat it while it’s hot and vote as far left as possible. “Is this left enough?” you may ask… probably not, Comrade. Got any lefter? Maintain the rage. Perhaps even break out a ouji board and try to summon a spectre to haunt Europe — the spectre of communism. You have nothing to lose but your chains.

Okay, that’s fine, you’ve been rereading Marx, we get it, quit embarrassing yourself… but what if it’s not an election day? Can I still do democracy sausages? Can I mix it up?

Well, alrighty, I suppose it’s okay to go a bit wild and add some other bits and pieces… apologies in advance for the heresy… but if you’re okay with a bit of tweaking, read on.

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Served with French fries – aka hot chips that are way too skinny – and some Asian spinach topped with sauerkraut and miscellaneous salady bits.

… and here’s where it gets really wild…

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What… what have I done?

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Oh, the horror. I can only hope that my children will forgive me some day.

Yeah, nah.

Democracy sausages are silly as hell, we all know it.

Australia, my dear, my home – free medical care* aside, you are bloody ridiculous.

🎶… For those who’ve come across the seas
We’ve boundless plains to share…🎶
#bringthemhere
#safetyforall
*for now…

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dinner, easy meals, lunch, vegan mofo

All things far away… mashed together…

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Vegan MoFo –
Week 2: 7th-13th November 2016 International Week
November 8th: Far Away – If you dug straight down, where would you come out? Make something from that country!

Oh, this will be exciting! she thinks.

*gets on Google and finds free map tools: tunnel to the other side of the Earth*

*lands in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean*

Bugger.

*checks for closest country*

Western Sahara. Well, at least I covered that when I taught my kids some geography last year, and we read a cool kids book called Africa Is Not A Country – great read, that one… So, Western Sahara borders Morocco… so chickpea tagine? Yum. But I broke my fancy tagine pot last time I moved, oof, sadness.

*twiddles thumbs sadly for hours*

*looks at MoFo blogs*

Kittens Gone Lentil has already done a tagine! Looks great! Hmm, I better do something else…

So, I’m in the ocean… Maybe I’m on a boat (no, don’t start singing that, shut up, brain). What am I going to eat? Seaweed? Yeah, why not? And the UK is in the Atlantic so I could go Anglophile and do some fish’n’chips – ie. seafu (tofu wrapped in seaweed) and baked fries… something I do fairly often as an easy meal that my kids enjoy… but hmm, I’m much more of a ruddy Scot so I’d best mess up that Sassenach food a bit, it’s too simple otherwise…

*grabs some cookbooks*

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*mashes them together*

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Voilà!

I made nori tempeh fish from Japan (well, an adaptation, clearly, so Indonesian-Japanese fusion..?) baked in Indian aloo bonda chickpea batter with sweet potato fries, North American style… to make a not-very-classic version of a British dish for this MoFo adventure in the north Atlantic Ocean… I also made some soy Greek yogurt-based tartare sauce… which is possibly of French origin. There’s chopped up capers, mustard, and other seasoning guff in it. Worked out pretty nicely!

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Have I destroyed the timeline sufficiently? … wait, what? No, not that.

I’ve tried to tear down some foodie walls between nations instead of building them. It tasted pretty good, the kids were happy with it. The tempeh fish-bondas would have been nicer deep-fried than baked, but I ain’t gonna do that on a hot day at lunchtime. The oven was bad enough!

I know a fusion day is coming up later in the week… but this is commonly how I roll in the kitchen: throw everything in the air, see where it lands… and apparently, today, it was far, far out to sea. ⛵

Or possibly in outer space. 🚀

Just having one of those days!

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dinner, vegan mofo

Food indigenous to South-east Queensland, Australia… with some imported additions…

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Firstly, over the weekend I was travelling and preparing to move, so you’ll have to forgive my lack of MoFo blogging, but over on my Instagram and Twitter you may have seen some brief updates for Late Night Snack day, a meal at Tea Master in-between, and Comfort food day. Now we’re on to –

Vegan Month of Food –
Week 2: 7th-13th November 2016 International Week
November 7th: Close to Home – Make a food from your own country, state, or hometown.

I could’ve gone with something colonialesque like a cheerful sugary pavlova or chocolatey lamingtons… but nope, delicious as those are, I’ve got my Nope hat on today – the Nope is strong in this one. Soooo rather than rant and rave about the various horrors of colonialism and the many white lies Australian history books tell (further reading: Black Founders) instead I’ll share some photos of when my family harvested some indigenous food – bunya nuts!

The food had great significance to Aboriginal Australians who held an enormous bunya harvest, feast, and trade festival every few years that thousands of people would attend… terra nullius, indeed. :/ The last gathering was held around 1902 before a great deal of the bunya trees were felled to make way for timber plantations.

Bunya nuts, found predominantly in South-East Queensland, are found inside enormous football size (at least!) cones from enormous 30-45m (98-148ft) bunya trees, each spiky cone weighing up to 10kg and containing 30-100 nuts… As you can imagine, it’s best not to stand underneath these trees when their cones are approaching maturity! Lots of enormousness. Coconut palms don’t seem so dangerous any more, huh? Australia: where even the trees are trying to kill you.

Spiky murder balls aka bunya cones
Spiky murder balls that fall from the sky aka bunya cones

Traditionally the nuts were often ground into a flour or roasted and eaten like chestnuts – and they are fairly similar to the roasted Japanese chestnuts I’ve eaten: delicious, nutty, and a bit starchy.

Pulling apart the bunya cones
Pulling apart the bunya cones

A wheelbarrow full of nuts... but wait, there's still more to pull apart!
A wheelbarrow full of nuts… but wait, there’s still more to pull apart!

My husband’s family has a property west of the Gold Coast with a few trees on their land, so I was lucky enough to get to try lots of nuts a few years back.

We left them in their shells to dry out a bit... yes, there are multiple hullings to go through. These trees don't make it easy.
We left them in their soft woody shells to dry out a bit… you can’t just crack these babies open, they require some hacking with a knife… yes, there are multiple hullings to go through. These trees don’t make it easy.

In modern times, urban foragers typically roast them, or parboil and pan-cook them with salt and garlic or toss them in a curry… They reminded me of wee potatoes, so I thought I’d have a go at cooking them in a garlicky pasta sauce, a bit like gnocchi.

De-hulled and simmering away in a big pan of garlicky marinara sauce.
De-hulled and simmering away in a big pan of garlicky marinara sauce.

Served over pasta.
Served over buckwheat spirals.

The bunya nuts are quite smooth so they don’t hold sauce well, but all together it was still quite delicious. Starch served over starch: can’t go wrong!

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dinner, easy meals, lunch, recipes and food, salads, vegan mofo

Baked beans gone wild

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Vegan MoFo –
Week 1: 1st-6th November 2016 Treat Yourself (and others)!
3rd: Treat yourself… to a break – What’s your “easy cook” meal? That you make when you can’t be bothered to cook much?

*puts loaf of bread on plate*

*slams down tin of beans and peels back lid*

DONE. Gourmet af.

bread loaf and tin of beans

That’s homemade gorram sourdough. If I want to eat half a loaf, I bloody well will. It’s delicious.

At this point in the process of throwing together an easy meal I get to thinking, what if I warmed up the beans and toasted the bread? That shit would be lit.

pot of beans

With the bread in the toaster and the beans warming on the stove, I realise I have some leftover pressure-cooked white beans in the fridge and I add about 1.5 cups worth to the saucepan to extend the baked beans – the sauce to beans ratio is always too damn high – and I’ve just doubled the tin for a few cents. Suck on that, Heinz.

Then I get to thinking, but if I’m having beans, surely I should have some greens as well! Beans and greens all the way, baby. So I pull this out of the fridge…

salad and pickled cabbages

Pairing kim chi with baked beans on toast is a legitimate lifestyle choice. Don’t judge me, Anglophiles.

beans and stuff

See? Look at that. Beautiful. I even went a bit fancy and fried a couple of tofu sausages I bought at the stupormarket. And again –

beans again

Glorious.

food arial view

And a bit of sauerkraut for the kids because that kim chi is peppery.

Sure, you could say a proper easy meal would be just beans on toast and not accompanied by a handful of salad, a scoop of fermented cabbage, and a splatter of balsamic, and a sausage on the side… and maybe you could also say I shouldn’t mix cuisines with quite so much reckless abandon… but you’d be wrong. Sometimes in life you have to take risks. I, too, like to live dangerously. May the force be with you. Live long and prosper. I might have had a strong cup of coffee this morning, who knows.

One starts off preparing a quick-and-easy meal always with the best of intentions, and one always lets things get out of hand… if only a little bit.

Kim chi is life. Peace out.

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dinner, pizza, recipes and food, vegan mofo, vegan travel

2016 in pizzas… Australia, Vietnam, and beyond!

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The Vegan MoFo topic for November 1st is:
Your favourite food – What is your favourite food? Make it and share!

My favourite food is… ALL THE FOOD. Seriously, how does one choose? I haven’t a clue. Among my many beloved foods is pizza. I usually eat it at least once a week.

I’m going to post some Insta-spam shots of a few pizzas I’ve eaten this year… those that I remembered to photograph before eating, because usually face-stuffing is usually prioritised over food photography around here.

🙂

Today’s pizza! Just some wheat tortillas with some delicious toppings and a tiny bit of shredded Biocheese and olive oil+nooch dressing. Nice, simple, reliable lunch… but it’s Spring in Australia and starting to get bloody hot already. Might have to stop using the oven at midday soon… but first, pizza.

The first all-vegan pizza outlet opened on the Gold Coast this year – Feed The Earthlings. The pizzas are beyond compare, the best takeaway pizzas… of all time! Generous veg and Tofurkey toppings, plenty of cheese. And they’re about to open a second outlet closer to my place!… right when I’m about to move to another city. Oh well! I’m so happy that business is booming though. They also do amazing burgers and great fish’n’chips.

What do vegans eat in Hanoi? A lot of delicious Vietnamese food from the many, many fab vegan restaurants around the city… and also pizza. Of course. After we’d been in Hanoi for my partner’s work for a few weeks, I was craving beans and bready products. Don’t get me wrong, I love, Love, LOVED all the many varities of seitan and vegetable stirfries, noodles and rice… but sometimes a gal just wants basic beans and a starchy pizza, y’know? So we sought out a western-style vegan eatery in a more heavily-touristed part of the city – we were renting an apartment in a building closer to the CBD with local Vietnamese families and a few US marines… Anyway, that delicious mushroom pesto pizza was worth the trip!

Pudla + pizza toppings = srsly delicious. If the pic didn’t look so much like vomit, I’m sure more people would try it… Maybe someone else out there can make it look less scary than me…?

Okay, this isn’t pizza. But I did my best to make this lasagna as pizza-ish as possible!

Lasagna & an interested fat orange striped cat courtesy of the 4yo.

A photo posted by Renée Grrrl (@tahinikill) on

Rainbow pizza! With an unconventional gluten-free crust composed of food processored beans and grains – a nifty base style based on the pizzas in Brendan Brazier’s Thrive Diet.

Leftover pizza for breakfast, lunch, and dinner… another with a Thrive Diet style base. It’s not pillowy and soft like a good wheat base but it’s very more-ish… and helpful if you’re trying to up your iron intake. Both the base and the cheese sauce are bean-based!

A couple of pizzas made it into my 2015 best nine as well… of course. Who doesn’t double tap pizza? <3

#2015bestnine🌟 / 2015deliciousness.

A photo posted by Renée Grrrl (@tahinikill) on

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