Monday 27 August 2012

Carrot noodle salad


I love raw vegetable noodles. The first time I had them was when my sister and I went out for a girly dinner to a vegan cafe and we both had a raw zucchini pasta with tofu bolognese. Needless to say it was delicious and we have both been talking about recreating it at home for sometime. One thing that had slowed us down was not owning a spiral slicer. I tried the julienne setting on my food processor but the strips where very short and not very "noodle like" and I just couldn't justify the $40 plus it seemed to cost to buy a spiral slicer. Further more, I wasn't going to attempt cutting the noodles by hand either as Kev has to sit in the other room when I cut things as he constantly fears for my fingers (needless to say knife skills are not my strength). Then I was browsing on the beautiful blog oh she glows and saw a great post where she made raw noodles using a julienne peeler! So I went on the hunt for one of these and found the same brand mentioned in the blog for $15 and it works a treat. 

Friday 24 August 2012

Peppermint mango smoothie


I love peppermint tea, in fact I love all things peppermint.  I drink peppermint tea constantly through out the day from my first one in the morning with honey lady honey to last thing before I go to bed. In march when I was at Womad I had a delicious mango and mint green smoothie at a raw food stand. I have been trying to recreate it ever since, but no matter how much fresh mint I added I couldn't get the same intense mint flavor. I recently also invested in a peppermint plant while at the farmers markets, and although for the first two weeks it looked like I was going to kill it, my plant has now perked up enough for me to enjoy brewing fresh peppermint tea. That when I started to think, if the flavor I want is so much stronger when I brew the leaves for tea, why not put peppermint tea in my smoothie. And it worked, and it is delicious. 

Ok, so it is really cold here at the moment, and mango and bananas are not in season, but I couldn't resist trying out my idea. I bought a packet of frozen mango cheeks and a bunch of Queensland bananas and set about making a peppermint smoothie. 


Sunday 19 August 2012

Cupcake day for the RSPCA

Blueberry and coconut cupcakes


My work is holding a fundraiser for the RSPCA this week as part of their cupcake day and I of course volunteered (or was volunteered) to make some cupcakes to sell. I wanted to make something healthy, but not too unfamiliar so they would actually sell (we need to raise money for the animals after all!). They had to be vegan, no animals were going to be hurt to raise money for the other animals, that just doesn't make sense. So I decided to make a blueberry cupcake, I loosely based the recipe on the cupcakes in Veganomicon, with a few tweaks. The result was a moist cupcake that was not too sweet and had a mild coconut and toffee flavor. They even passed the Kev test! 


Saturday 18 August 2012

Finnish Whipped Porridge



I love weekend breakfasts. Really I just love breakfast but I am always short of time in the morning for anything too fancy so weekends are the times to try new things. Often I like to start with a smoothie, as I am often waiting to see if Kev will want to go out of brunch when he wakes up, but this Sunday I felt like something fresh and light but more than a smoothie and that's when I found this
I can safely say I know absolutely nothing about Finland and absolutely nothing about their food. But I have been reading this blog for a while now and have been very intrigued by the mix of Finnish food and Australian ingredients. So when I saw this recipe I had to give it a go. I love porridge and I love semolina so it seemed like a match made in heaven. I couldn't find any nice looking rhubarb but I did get some strawberries, and since I had just invested in some coconut sugar (yes, it was a financial investment) I decided to use that instead of the stevia. Here is how it went.


Friday 17 August 2012

Sleepy weekday breakfast



I've always been a morning person, but lately getting up and out the house is getting harder and harder. Not really a surprise given it is cold and wet outside and I'd rather sleep an extra half hour than get up and go for a run or get to work. In order to entice myself out of bed (and to get out the door on time) I have been preparing a delicious breakfast the night before. The breakfast of choice has been a kind of bircher muesli, but kept really simple. The best thing about it is the soaked oats become really creamy and almost milky. If you didn't know this was dairy free you would assume they had been soaked in milk.