Long time, no see...

Well, it has certainly been a while since my last post but finally exams have finished and I am free! I am absolutely raring to get back into the kitchen! At the moment a lot of my cooking time goes into making food for my 8 month old Little Miss. Because of this I have created a new blog about vegan baby-led weaning so please check it out if you are interested. You can find it at http://forminiveganfingers.blogspot.co.uk/. However I am still going to be updating this one with recipes and ideas too so don't abandon this blog!

On Sunday we went to the V-delicious show in London which was also in the same hall as the Allergy and Free-From Show. There were plenty of vegan options and stalls to look at and so many people and products it was hard to know where to start. There were also plenty of samples to try. So much so that we did not need lunch at all!

Some of my favourite vegan products were there such as the Nakd bars which had the new crunchy bars I had been struggling to find in shops but there was every flavour to sample at the show (and I think I did sample every one! Yum!). On the same stall were the Trek bars. I have previously only had the peanut and oat bars but there were several other flavours at the show which I had not tried. Unfortunately not all of them are vegan but the ones I found which were included original, banana, oat and raisin and morning berry. There were great offers on so I bought quite a few (and enjoyed the morning berry one after my dinner tonight).

One of my favourite things that we bought from the show were some gluten free cookies from Against the Grain. I think they are my favourite shop-bought vegan cookies ever. They are so crumbly and delicious. We tried the chocolate chip and hazelnut, the chocolate and orange, the ginger crunches and also the almond cookies and all were incredible. They were doing a deal for 3 packs and I can tell you it was really hard to choose which one not to get! http://www.againstthegrainfoods.com/

One stall we came across had samples of this delicious new product called Rita's Fugasun. They are not all vegan but the one we tried was and it was amazing. It is a vegetable and rice pie-like thing but not with pastry. It is actually really hard to describe but if you ever get the chance to try some you must. Not only is it delicious but it is very low fat and also low calorie! http://www.ritasfugasun.com/

Another new company we came across was Dee's. Dee's food includes some vegan sausages, burgers, veg pots and quinoa pots. We got to taste two types of sausages which were the leek and onion sausages and the roast garlic and mushroom sausages. My sister and I both had different favourites and an even bigger surprise was that my sister's favourite was the mushroom ones as she hates mushrooms (the moral of the story being you have to try these even if you hate mushrooms!). We were also very kindly given a pot of the Tex-Mex veg pot to take home. My sister took that so I will update you on the verdict of that. I am really excited about finding these products in the shops as the sausages we sampled were delicious and looking on the website it looks like everything else is going to be just as good. Check it out at http://www.dees.ie/#1

Now, lets talk marshmallows! One of my favourite samples of the day (and then HAD to purchase a bag) were the freedom mallows! There are many delicious vegan marshmallows out there but never have any quite hit the spot for topping a hot chocolate than these little beauties. If a taste test was done between these and "normal" marshmallows I seriously doubt anyone would pick up that these were vegan, they are that close to the real thing. I am really going to have to ration these if I want the pack to last!! http://www.freedommallows.com/

We didn't just look at food though. One of the best non-food stalls we found was for ecozone. Their products are environmentally friendly, effective and carry the vegan society logo. There were plenty of products and from the demonstrations they looked brilliant. I bought some ecoballs (used in place of detergent in the washing machine and last for 1000 washes!), some stain remover and some powder for getting whites white! I haven't had the chance to use them yet but will update you when I do. I will almost certainly be buying from this company again. http://www.ecozone.com/

There were plenty of other stalls with delicious vegan food but I don't have time to write about them all. But here is a picture of part of my haul! I also got a vegan society bag and a chart to put on the wall about vitamins. (I've just realised it is a really poor picture taken on my phone so sorry about that).

The picture just reminded me, if you haven't tried Vive Soy then you should. I had previously only tried the cappuccino flavour (which I love) but got to sample the chocolate and vanilla ones at the show and they are really really really nice! We found them in Tesco but apparently they are soon coming to other major supermarkets. I have heard some people unsure as to whether they are vegan or not because they do not specify the source of the vitamin D but I emailed them and was reassured that they are indeed vegan!

Vegan Fudge

You may have seen that in my Christmas gifts I made some "fudge". Although really delicious it was more of a sticky chocolate sweet and doesn't quite live up to what I consider to be true fudge- the buttery vanillary light brown crumbly fudge that gets sold at seaside resorts with a postcard on the front!

One day after perusing the Internet for baking inspiration, I came across a recipe that looked exactly like the style of fudge I was after and I just had to try it. For some reason I thought I might be disappointed by the recipe and that it wouldn't be up to scratch but it was AMAZING!!

In this recipe it does recommend a thermometer but I didn't have one to hand but if you follow the instructions of how to tell when it's ready it turns out just great without using one. Although I do think I will be investing in one as it would make it easier! I didn't have any vanilla essence in so I used almond instead.

I found the recipe on viciously delicious here,

I sent this in my food parcel for the Vegan Food Swap to Sarah from Vegan Girl on a Mission who really enjoyed it too!

It would make a great gift and I am looking forward to trying some different variations like rum and raisin which I think would taste awesome!!

Be warned: it is very sweet and very addictive.

The vegan food swap

So as you might have seen, there has been a lack of posts recently. I am knee-deep in revision right now and that coupled with looking after the little one means I barely have time to cook let alone blog about it.

Despite having all this work to do I decided to sign up to The Vegan Food Swap run by To Happy Vegans.  The basic idea is every month you send someone a parcel with £10 worth of bought/made vegan goodies and someone sends you one. Awesome!

I got to send mine to Sarah from Vegan Girl on a Mission. The only requirement was no vegan milk chocolate. In the box I sent was: some Zest vegan pesto (my favourite), some gluten free seaweed rice crackers, some dark chocolate with raspberry, an Organica Golden Coconut and Dark chocolate bar, some lovely looking biscuits (completely forgotten the brand but they looked yummy!) and some homemade fudge which I will try and blog about soon. I really hope she liked them!

Crumbly Vegan Fudge

In return I got a box from Jhenn from The Vegan Ronin
In it was:
*Some cherry Pez sweets- I can remember loving the Pez sweets and toys when I was younger so these were a great trip down memory lane
*Some Gianduiotti chocolates. These disappeared into mine and OH's mouths within seconds of opening the box! These are so delicious- a rich chocolate and hazelnut taste and so creamy you wouldn't know it's not milk chocolate!
*A hot chocolate spoon- if you don't know what this is it is basically a nice big lump of chocolate set on a spoon which you stir into hot milk to make hot chocolate. I had mine with almond milk and it was yummy. As I am a chocolate fiend this went within the first few days too!
*Some bacon flavoured popcorn (but definitely vegan!). I was very intrigued by these! I have always been veggie but I do like bacon flavoured crisps so I was looking forward to these. The bacon flavour was quite subtle but it was still tasty
*A buccaneer bar- basically a vegan Milky Way. You definitely can't go wrong with that!!
*Some mushroom flavoured salt. I have to admit I haven't had this yet. I am really looking forward to it though so will blog about it when I have.

Thank you Jhenn!

Yum!

My Gluten-Free Week

I have always dreaded the thought of one day having to go gluten free; I mean I love bread and baked yummies and the gluten free bread I see in the supermarkets always looked so sorry for itself (and I was later to find out almost invariably contained egg anyway). However, my new 10 week old vegan was having a hard time with colic and I had already tried other diet options which hadn't helped and gluten was next on the list. Typically I had just made some awesome looking seitan burgers (if you don't know, seitan is pretty much 100% gluten central!) so my one ended up going in the freezer and I was left salivating over my other half's burger as I ate some baked beans and veg I had managed to rustle up (for some reason I forgot that things like rice and potatoes were gluten free! i blame the baby brain!). Even more typically, that night my little vegan got a lot better and was nowhere near as bad the next day (too early for the diet change to have made a difference; a lot of babies just grow out of it). In spite of this I decided to persevere with the gluten free week challenge as a little experiment to see how hard it was and to see if it made me feel any better like other people often claim it does for them.

My first port of call was obviously BREAD! I looked through quite a few recipes online- there are tonnes and I can't even find the one I made but of the ones I looked at they were all quite similar. My bread didn't rise as much as normal bread does and I also think I must have underdone it slightly as it was still quite doughy inside but I have to say it was actually quite tasty and with a bit of practice would be perfectly adequate to be a replacement for my gluten bread addiction. I think I would have to buy a bread maker if I was to continue as making enough bread for me and my mr (he eats even more bread than me) would probably take half my week up!

Being a new mum, a lot of my daily meals were nothing much to blog about; I had baked beans on my gluten free bread, vegetables and rice, a few soups and the list goes on- when I am only cooking for myself it doesn't tend to be too exciting- especially when I just want something easy and fast.

At the weekend however we were having people round for dinner. I still really wanted to try those stuffed seitan burgers I had missed out on before. I remembered I had seen some gluten-free "seitan" (an oxymoron if ever I saw one!) on pinterest and the mushroom filling would be easy to deglutenise with swapping flour to a gluten free version so I decided to do this. The recipe for the seitan that I used (although there are others) can be found here from Wellsphere and the basic recipe I was making was from The Best Veggie Burgers on the planet. In addition to the mushroom, garlic and onion mixture for the centre I added some fresh spinach leaves and mozarella Cheezly for an even more decadent effect and added some red wine whilst cooking the mushroom mixture. Along with the burgers we served homemade sweet potato and normal potato wedges and salad. The other guests all had a bread roll as I decided my gluten free bread making was not quite perfected enough for guests yet! Everyone really enjoyed these burgers. There aren't proper measurements for the spices in this recipe so it was a bit of guesswork. For me, the end result was a very cumin tasting burger (which in my mind was awesome) and they also can out a lovely dark orange colour. The filling was a little overtaken by the taste of the burgers themselves but it was still lovely and the texture differences really made this burger special.

For dessert I made the most heavenly ice cream I have ever tasted- Peanut Butter Ice Cream!!! I have had a second hand ice cream maker for ages and haven't got round to properly using it properly so this was an awesome excuse. You seriously MUST make this recipe..it is so melt-in-the-mouth perfect! Along side it we had the gluten free cookies I had blogged about in December here.

With timings and people being late I was in such a rush to serve these things I forgot to take photos. Instead, this is the actual seitan burger that I hadn't got to eat taken my my darling other half with as much photographic skill as the next door neighbour's cat (although I can't say I am much better!)

If you look closely you can see the filling but it blends in a bit!

Add a lettuce leaf to boost up the healthiness!!

The next day we had my other half's godson and his mother over for lunch. You might remember that the cookies I had baked before were for a gluten intolerant boy; well this is that boy! We never got to go round and see him for his birthday as him and his mum were ill so we decided to have this lunch instead. For the main course we had homemade pizza and chips. I used a pizza dough recipe from What's Cookin' Chicago? which you can find here. It made a lovely thin pizza base and cooked perfectly. One side was topped with tomato puree, tomatoes and Cheezly mozarella and the other side also had mushrooms, fresh spinach and peppers.

For dessert we had cookies and ice cream again but I made a plain vanilla ice cream by omitting the peanut butter from the other recipe as the little boy had never had peanut butter before (and as it turns out he is not the biggest fan of ice cream- more for us though!). Once again I forgot to take photos *facepalm* but it is my mid-January resolution to do better at this from now on!

At the end of the week I realised I hadn't really felt any different on my gluten free diet so decided to not carry on completely omitting gluten however I will use these recipes again as all of them were successes and went down so well with our guests!

Christmas Gift #4- "Cheesy" Oatcakes

Well, it has now come to the last gift in my Christmas baskets. As the rosemary shortbreads were a little sweet I wanted to cook something very savoury. Oatcakes seemed a good choice but I wanted something a little different. Most recipes I looked at added things like cranberries which would make the oatcakes a bit sweet so didn't fit the bill. I decided to do "cheesy" ones as I am the only vegan in my family and cheese is almost always the thing that people say they would miss most when going vegan.

I took a plain oatcake recipe from delicious magazine website which you can find here. Other than swapping the butter for vegan margarine, the only change I made was to add 1/4 cup of nutritional yeast and then once I had cut out the oatcakes I grated a sprinkle of Cheezly Parmesan on the top of each one.

These were the perfect addition to my gift as they really brought a savoury touch to everything and was the first thing that people commented on with the cheesy flavour. These are really simple to make and I think make a classy present and a talking point for non vegans.

"Cheesy Oatcakes"

Christmas Gift #3- Fudge- Orange & Walnut and Rum & Candy Cane

I was actually looking for a fudge recipe for the type of caramel coloured vanilla fudge you think of when you first think of fudge but when I came across this recipe I had to try it and decided it would be perfect for the Christmas gifts.

The recipe is from Go Dairy Free and can be found here.

The changes I made were orange essence and crushed walnuts in the first flavour instead of vanilla and coconut. On top of the fudge I put one half of a walnut onto each piece that was going to be cut. For the second flavour it was rum flavouring with sprinkled crushed candy canes on top.

I thought the end result looked really impressive and the taste is just phenomenal. Very sweet but perfect for a Christmas indulgence!

Orange and Walnut Fudge

Rum and Candy Cane Fudge

Christmas Gift #2- Rosemary Shortbread

This is one of my savoury gifts in the Christmas hampers but in fact they have some sweetness from agave nectar and icing sugar. Rosemary must be one of my best-loved herbs (possibly even my number one) and coupled with me having a sweet tooth these turned out to be my favourite things in the gift. Now, "shortbread" might be a bit misleading- these turned out as soft, melt in the mouth biscuits rather than hard and crumbly but in my mind their texture was perfect! With the amount of butter and sugar in these they can't be very good for you but well worth it for a treat- and you can always treat yourself at Christmas.

The recipe I used can be found here from epicurious. I substituted the butter for vegan margarine and the honey for agave nectar. For those in the UK confectioner's sugar is icing sugar (that's what I used anyway!)

Enjoy!