Stewed Tofu and Potatoes in Miso Gravy

**slightly off track*** We all ate the sushi I made last night for lunch today and it was so so so good! The flavours worked so well together. And usually I am not a big fan of sushi, so that is saying something about how good it was! Just incase you forgot what it looked like...

For dinner tonight I tried the Stewed Tofu and Potatoes in Miso Gravy from Vegan with a Vengeance. Another success!

YM gave it 10 out of 10, Baby wanted to know why we weren't marking it out of 100 (and ended up giving it 100-out-of-100) and Tweenie gave it six-and-three-quarters! I rated it about 7 (which probably influenced Tweenie's scoring slightly!)

I went to work today and a few of the teachers had trouble recognising me with my hair cut short (and very curly!). I noticed the Principal kept on walking past the class where I was teaching and having a puzzled look on her face (sort of like she didn't know who I was!). Eventually she must have clicked, because she stopped in the door and asked why I was curly today. I told her that I was trying to embrace my curls after 35 years of self curl-hating.  She nodded a few times and as she turned to walk away she quietly said 'It looks nice' as an afterthought. Not convinced. I've had that most of my life. I get the feeling a lot of people find curly hair messy and unruly.
At lunch time another teacher in the staff room said 'Wow, you've cut off all your hair and permed it.' I get this all the time too!!! People ALWAYS think my hair is permed (my question - who would PAY for a bad 80's perm???).
So you can see with reactions like this, it is not hard to understand why I have hated my curls most of my life. But a few weeks ago, I decided to ignore what people say and learn to love my curls. I'm actually pretty happy with my curls - they are becoming very well defined. I now need to find a magic potion to help my hair grow faster! (BTW - for anyone interested- I have started using the product 'Jessicurls' from USA. They have been stocked in Petra shops but unfortunately they are choosing not to stock it anymore :( It is not tested on animals and it is Vegan!) I have found some amazing websites that have enlightened me about how to maintain curls. I still have a little bit left on the ends of the dead chemical straightened part of my hair, so I will need to cut it again in a few months to be totally back to all mine.

Going a little curly...

Tahn

My day in food

Breakfast! I discovered this Chocolate Avocado Pudding from Green and Crunchy (loving this site - still got so much to find!). Actually, it was more like brunch (about 10.30am) by the time I got to eat it.

Lunch. Tweenie and I found these section plates at the cheap shop next to La Panella (so sorry, world, for the plastic but I have found it tricky to locate stainless steel ones and the price was just right for me - about $2 each). Lunch consisted of left over pineapple, a spoonful of nut butter (ya know, I actually HATE peanut butter - even the smell - and refuse to make PB sandwiches for YM because of it, but this is soo very delicious), a mix of seeds, goji berries and dates and a sandwich of eggless egg salad from The Vegan Table which was yummy.

After school snack. Green smoothie. This one consisted of a few beetroot leaves and stems, water, ice, a couple of peaches, a couple of pears, cacao powder, freshly ground LSA(home made), 1 blood orange &  2 navals, and coconut. Thick, gluggly and delicious.

Dinner. Tonight's dinner actually consisted of left overs - choice of yesterday's lunch of cauliflower soup (sooo good!), or an Ethiopian Stew both from Vegan Lunchbox (last night's dinner of Ethiopian Stew also had Injera Bread - although I had no teff flour, so used plain- but none left today as it was awesome and eaten all up!). Before we all helped ourselves I was flicking through the internet (Planet VegMel) and copied the Tofu Balls from It Will Taste Better Tomorrow's post today (I'm going to try your couscous one day too, Amanda!). They looked delicious on her post and I thought- I have everything to make that, I'll give it a try. They WERE delicious! I actually just dipped a few balls into some sweet chilli sauce...mmmmmm. Next time I will try it with spaghetti and sauce (my  kids love this!) and may put the rest into sandwiches tomorrow. Just a hint though, squish them into balls rather than trying to roll them. The original post is from PPK.

Dessert. We made these last night. We blended some fruit up and poured it in and froze it. Now a confession on how foolish I am! I have never eaten cherries before but yesterday I found a nice looking batch at Aldi (all their fruit and veges are so cheap but they are FULL of packaging!) and decided to try them to put into our smoothies. Little did I know that they required de-pipping and I just blended them up straight! Needless to say, we were picking out small chopped up cherry pips from both yesterday's smoothie and today's fruit icipole.

Lesson learned!


Tahn

Mushroom pies and tofu spinach salad

Baby decided yesterday that she would like to make mushroom pies. I asked her how she was planning on doing it and her idea was to just chop up the mushies, chuck them in some pastry and wack them in the pie maker. Err, mmm, no. Good try, Baby!


So I was on a mission last night, as a good **cough, cough** mother, to find a mushroom pie recipe that Baby would like.
I found this recipe (scroll down to heatherq's recipe)and this morning I made the mix and left it to cool. Because I made the pieces of pumpkin and potato quite small, I didn't need to cook it in the oven for 30 minutes tonight. Instead I put them in the pie maker and made little individual pies.

I thought we would need some protein with this meal, and in my quest to try (and love) salads I made a tofu spinach salad. It was quite nice, although I would use baby spinach or mixed salad leaves next time as the spinach (all that I had in my fridge) had a slight bitter taste.

On Tuesday, my mum went down to Seaford to stay with my sister for the night. We met them at Mordialloc Beach which was nice. Here is a photo of my nephew, R. Tweenie, Baby and YM buried him and Tweenie drew a pair of boobs and a g-string on him!

When we wanted to come home we got to the train station at 9.05pm and had just missed the train by 5 minutes. It was a 25 minute wait for the next one. When it finally arrived, a few stops later we had to wait for some dickhead to stop forcing the doors for 10 minutes! The Epping line at Flinders Street Station was then 10 minutes late and we had to go by way of the city loop adding ten minutes to the trip. We finally opened the door of our house at 11.15pm! My poor babies feel asleep on the train! Gotta love public transport at night!


So the next day I kept them home. Tweenie already had an orthodontist appointment to get her plate fitted anyway. We did some learning about Remembrance Day and the kids wrote a poem. Here's YM's (he used my computer so that is why I have access to put it on here!):

Remembering The Dead

Poppies covering the grave

The dead under the crosses

People screaming, getting shot 

Sadness for the dead     

The blood of the wounded people

There should be no wars.

Anyway, so on the way to the orthodontist, Baby found a REAL poppy which they thought was great.

After we went to the Art Gallery again and completed the water trail before stopping off at the AC/DC exhibition at the Arts Centre. The kids rocked out with the guitar!

It's my birthday tomorrow! We are heading out to Shakahari so expect a heap of photos on my next post with my friends and family celebrating with me. I am so looking forward to tomorrow night's dinner!

Tahn

Silverbeet Pizza and Chocolate Banana Mousse

WTF?? Is it midnight? Am I sick? How come I'm posting so early??

Actually, I'm not really sure why I am able to post so early today, as opposed to other days when it is almost midnight before I get a chance to write.
I'm just extremely happy that I can!

So earlier in the day I made some basic pizza dough and left it to rise. I found a recipe for swiss chard, onion and tofu pizza to use up the silverbeet I had. The recipe combination sounded weird, but I thought I would give it a go anyway.

The recipe requires the pizza bases to be pre-cooked for 15 minutes but I don't recommend this. Have a look why:

Mine blew up like a balloon and here in this photo I have removed the top and now it looks like a pizza bowl! Luckily I had two lots and I pre-cooked the other one for only 5 minutes.
The rest of the recipe was really easy. I like how it turned out. The kids enjoyed it also. It's a very interesting way to use up silverbeet!

Before I made the pizzas I made this Chocolate Banana Pudding. It needs about an hour in the fridge. It requires 2C of silken tofu. So after I picked up the kids from school we walked to Woolies (well, Safeway, but I'm from W.A and some things you just hold on to!) to pick up 2 pkts.
So I stick one packet into the blender, all fine and dandy. Then I go to put the other one in and it looked like this:

It didn't smell too good either! And it was FULL of water! Its expiry date wasn't until the 25th of November! This is definitely not right, is it?
Anyway, I chose not to add it to the blender, so our dessert only had about 1C of silken tofu. And lazy me didn't scrape down the sides of the blender and a lot of the cocoa was still dry on the sides. I didn't mind, though. I thought it probably balanced out the lack of tofu.

Tweenie and Baby had a couple of tinned mangoes on top. It was delicious and I would definitely make this dessert again. It was so quick. About 3 minutes!

I'm feeling a little better today. I did manage to get up and at 'em, although it was a bit later in the day. I organised for a real estate agent to come around and appraise my house for renting and I have another coming tomorrow morning. It's an exciting, yet nerve-wracking time for me. I know I have made the right decision but...

Tahn

Tofu and Vegetable Pie

This afternoon I sent Tweenie into the fridge to see which vege she wanted as the main ingredient for tonight's dinner. She came back with 'Cauliflower'. Hmm, not my favourite, although I am learning to love it through the fantastic recipes I have been trying in the last 6 months.

So I googled, and I Supercooked and I googled some more. I wasn't finding anything that tickled my fancy. Nearly gave up and thought about telling the kids to make toasted sandwiches! Anyway, thought I'd have to rethink the main ingredient. And I came up with a Tofu and Vegetable Pie (I wanted to use the fresh tofu I picked up at the Asian Grocer), plus I used up the rest of the corn on the cob and steamed some cauliflower and add the Instant UnCheese-it.

The kids really liked it and it was nice, but a little boring tasting - like it was missing a little something (I didn't use the 'chicken' seasoning, maybe that was it??). I liked the taste of the fresh tofu though!

Ages ago, my friends A & C ( who took us out for lunch at Soul Mama) lent me The Uncheese Cookbook. That's where I had made up the instant uncheese. I made it up in a snap lock bag and it has sat in the cupboard for a while. I pulled it out tonight and realised that I couldn't remember how to make it so I just boiled some water in the kettle and added a few tablespoons to it. It worked out well, and Tweenie even steamed herself some more cauliflower in the microwave so she could have some more cheese sauce.

Yesterday I posted that I had four days work this week. I went in today, and after school I got a call saying that they didn't need me for the rest of the week as they had finished all the testing they needed me for. Shame :( Was looking forward to that cash. I have also picked up something from the germy kids and I am feeling like absolute CRAP for the FIRST time this year :(
I may just spend the day in bed tomorrow. I wish Popeye was here to look after me - I am really missing him tonight.

Tahn

Lunch at Soul Mama

A while back my friend invited us out to help celebrate his footy tipping win. We were going to head to Shakahari, but his wife, who is a vet, returned to Saturday work recently. Unfortunately Shakahari are not open on Sundays, so we went to Soul Mama in St Kilda. I have never been there before either so I was looking forward to it (he was shouting so that was even better!).

The kids and I took a tram into St Kilda that took 1 hour. This apparently was quicker than the other couple invited - they drove in and it took them about 1hr and 15minutes! (Bumper to bumper on Punt Road) Yay, public transport! Anyway all 3 ladies chose the main meal/dessert option while the blokes went down the large 5 mains and rice without the dessert path. Our meal came cramped in a bowl with 4 small main choices with rice in the middle (I totally forgot to take a picture, even though I purposely kept the camera on the table! Doh!). The boys came on a tray that had separate sections for each of their large mains. I took a photos of A's just as he had started to eat.

This was a good idea as it kept all individual dishes separate. Although the food was nice, I felt that my bowl turned into one big mush pit, with all the flavours mixing in because they were not segregated. I also felt that the food was perfect for new vegetarians or omni's dipping their toes into vegetarian food. Without sounding like a food snob, I feel like I have made better dishes in my home. I was hoping for something that would blow my socks off I suppose.

For dessert the 2 other ladies chose sticky date pudding but I wanted something a bit different so I picked  Raspberry Truffle Cake.

AGAIN (!) I forgot to take a piccy, so I had to get one through the glass as we were leaving. Very nice, but VERY rich! I don't remember the raspberry that much either. I really liked the soy cream!

There was a lot of people there so the atmosphere was excellent (and what a fabulous day for being near the beach!). I found that it was really hard to hear each other talk and it seemed as though I was shouting to be heard. Near the end of the day (we were there for nearly 4 hours!!), people left and the place was getting empty, but the music got louder and I still had to shout!

Besides all of that, the food was good and the company was even better!

Anyway we came home and I started to get us ready for school/work tomorrow. I made us all a salad and crumbed some tofu in polenta and cooked it in the oven. We'll add it to the salad in the morning.

We also had blueberry banana sorbet that we made yesterday for dinner/dessert.

Yesterday after we made it, we stuck it in the freezer for only a couple of hours and I like the taste of that -soft and smooth. So 24hours later, and it was a lot more icy, but still delicious.

Blueberry Banana Sorbet

1C Blueberries
1-3 frozen bananas
1C milk/water/a mixture of both

Chuck it all in a blender and blend until well mixed. Can be eaten straight away; after a few hours in the freezer; or leave overnight to really freeze.

Well off to work for me tomorrow. Looking forward to it but a little nervous as I have stayed away from the classroom all of this year. I'm sure it is like riding a bike...

Tahn

Flowers and Rice

Look at the beautiful flowers Popeye sent me today!

I wish this was smell-o-blog as they smell sooo good! And I miss him sooo much :(  76 days to go.
I've got them sitting on my dressing table so I can see them when I wake in the mornings.

Anyway, back to food. I tried to make a few things today from the same website, although not all were spectacular. The website is jeenaskitchen.blogspot.com. She has quite a list of vegan recipes and each one has fantastic step-by-step photo instructions. I firstly tried the vegan vegetable fritters recipe and they were ok, but took so long to cook. Luckily I had a visitor over so that helped to take my mind off standing in front of the stove. Next I tried Jeena's coconut ice recipe which was all going well but when I  was cooking the coconut with the sugar syrup it went way too dry and it ended up being 'sweet, fruity coconut'. Which we all still ate, but it wasn't coconut ice.

For dinner tonight I tried the vegan sweetcorn rice recipe which was DELICIOUS!

It wasn't quite fried rice because the rice was still soft and tender and it barely had any flavour added into it, just garlic and ginger. I used fresh corn on the cob as suggested and I just LOVE fresh sweetcorn! I cut up some tofu and just fried it in a pan, but it occurred to me that I maybe could have crumbled it in with the veges before adding the rice. Anyways, it was very yummy and the kids are taking left overs for school lunch tomorrow. Beats a boring sandwich!

She (Jeena) also has a Mango and Coconut Cake recipe that uses polenta that I would love to try. I have some fresh (well they are frozen now, but not in a tin) mango that I would like to use but I could only find advice (on Google) on how to score and cut a mango into small cubes (which I knew anyway). Anyone know the best way to get slices (like peach slices)? The recipe calls for tinned mango, but I would like to try using fresh (ish). Imagine the flavour!

Today after the kids got home from school we all went for a ride to the velodrome. We nearly didn't go because as we walked home from school it started to spit and it was freezing cold. We went anyway, but I decided to ride as I didn't feel like jogging in the cold, fresh wind. So we all rode there, zoomed around the track for a while and then came home. We had barely been home for 5 minutes when is piss-isted down and hailed! It only lasted a few minutes but we were lucky to get home dry!

I'm posting early tonight as I have a tax appointment tomorrow (finally!) and I need to sort out the piles of paperwork I have sitting right next to me. I hate doing my tax - I am always scared I will have to owe some back (I never have, so the fear is unjustified!). I am hoping to get a bit back to be able to fix my bathroom up. At the moment there are two options. Option 1 - Replace the tiles in shower and maybe the window and wooden frame (that gets wet every time you shower) with some of those glass bricks and rent out my house. Option two is to do it up for me to enjoy and continue living in. Option 1 is winning 80% to 20%. Although I ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT HERE, moving would mean living with Popeye and being able to see & be with him most nights of the week instead of just the weekend. Yup, you read it correctly, moving in with the boyfriend! oooooo!
More discussion on this topic needs to occur first though!

Ponderland...


Tahn