Vegan MoFo 2014 - New (to me) foods from Tesco

I spent most of today running around.  This included a pointless trip to Real Foods - pointless because I forgot they closed at 6.30pm on Saturdays, and I got there at 6.45pm.  Derp.  So today I'm just gonna talk about some new things that have popped up at Tesco, and one new-to-me thing that I got today.

First up, Tesco's new dairy-free ice cream.  It's £2 for 500ml of coconut-based vanilla ice cream.  It tastes alright, but it falls on texture, which I felt was a bit grainy.  It's a great option for a soy-free vegan considering how much other coconut-based vegan ice creams cost (I saw one at Real Foods a few weeks ago that was around £7 for the same size).  But compare that to £2.20 for 700ml of soy-based Swedish Glace.  I loves me some soy, so I'll stick to deliciously creamery Swedish Glace.

A new-to-me thing I got is their garlic sauce.  It's in that wee section of house-brand specialty spices and sauces, which actually seems to have quite a few vegan items.  Garlic is one of my favourite things, so obviously I had to get this.  I'd been eyeing it for a while, but yesterday's weird dinner, and the leftovers produced, pushed me to buy it.  I tried it on my casserole, and it was alright.  By itself, it's a little sweet, but it works on things.

Next up - Amy's breakfast sandwich!  I searched what felt like every health food shop in NYC looking for these things, but couldn't find them, so I was pretty excited when someone else posted they'd found them.  I had to go out to the big Tesco to find it (as well as the next thing), but as soon as I got home, I popped it right in the microwave.  Well, I hate to say it, but it wasn't great.  The microwaving made the bread really weird and tough in parts.  For £2.49 and having to spend an hour on the bus, I wouldn't make the trip just for these.

Finally - A few years ago, I went to Brighton VegFest and met up with some European PPKers, one of whom brought me some Speculoos pudding made by Alpro in ... Belgium, I think.  Earlier this year, during Tesco's Healthy Living Fair (or whatever it was called), they sold some gingerbread man-flavoured Alpro desserts.  They're hard to find, but they're still around.  If you look at the package, it actually lists Speculoos biscuits as an ingredient, so these are pretty much the same thing.  The TL;DR of this is - Speculoos pudding at Tesco.  Do I even need to tell you that these are good?  These are good.  If you like any of the other Alpro puddings (well, I think they're just called desserts), and you like Speculoos, then you'll like these.

Despite the pretty crap free from stuff (most of it has milk or eggs in it) and the fact that they label next to nothing, I'm pretty impressed by the expanding selection of vegan items.  I hope they keep going this way (and maybe improve their own-brand stuff by taking out the milk and eggs).

Vegan MoFo 2014 - Chili Cheese Dogs

When Mike and I went to Mono last week, we were there on a Thursday.  They do daily specials, and the one for Thursdays is £5 for a chili dog and a beer.  I fully anticipated getting that, but it turned out that the only beer option was Heineken*.  I don't actually like beer so was hoping we could substitute for, say, one of their microbrewed drinks.  But even if we could have, the only one available was ginger beer, and I wasn't in a ginger beer mood.  And since they wanted £4 for the dogs, I just said, I can make that at home.

And so I did.

I made chili cheese dogs with fried onions (which you can't see because they're under the chili and cheese).  And in case you were wondering, yes, I did cover my broccoli with cheese sauce after I took the picture.

I used Fry's hot dogs, Asda meat-free chili (I can't remember the exact name), to which I added some of the leftover weird non-Latin passatta, and leftover Basic Cheese Sauce from Cookin' Crunk.  Served with Tesco beer-battered onion rings and steamed broccoli.  They were pretty damn good.  Though the onion rings were surprisingly bland - most things have too much salt, but these had too little.

*So, that's another complaint I have about Mono, though not referring specifically to Heineken.  They have a lot of alcoholic beverages that are known to be non-vegan, e.g. Guinness and Strongbow (and I think they stock Rekorderlig or Bulmers).  Yeah, they say all their food is vegan, so they can get away with saying they never said they were a vegan establishment, but they're listed in Happy Cow as vegan.  I wonder if, when a customer orders a non-vegan booze option, they tell them that it isn't vegan or just assume the person knows what they're ordering.  I dunno, it just feels sketchy to me.

Vegan MoFo 2014 - Filthy Toxic Hot Chocolate

Last night, Mike wanted to make hot chocolate. I'm not the best at remembering ratios and stuff for how I like my hot chocolate, so I looked up some recipes to jog my memory. And boy howdy did I not like what I saw. Yes, there was a how to that took 10 steps even though it called for hot chocolate mix and a microwave. But then I saw a recipe that called for cashews (with an hour+ soaking time) and dates. And then I saw some of my most hated words - paleo, no refined sugar, clean eating.

Nope.  Nope nope nope.

Friends, these are not words and ingredients to be used in connection with hot chocolate.

Hot chocolate is a treat. It should have sugar. It should not have dates. And it sure as shit wasn't around in the palaeolithic era.

Instead of my righteous rant against food policing and woo peddling, I give you a recipe for hot chocolate rich in most of the things that are freaking people out right now (I don't have any MSG so couldn't include everything).

Filthy Toxic Hot Chocolate

Serves 2

Handful of chocolate chips

1 c soy creamer

1 c soy milk (more/less depending on how you like it)

1/4 c cocoa (I used Hershey's to make it extra dirty)

1/4 c sugar (more/less to taste - probably less for most people because I like mine super sweet)

1/4 tsp vanilla extract

Pinch of salt

Mini marshmallows

Place the chocolate chips and a couple tablespoons of the creamer in a small saucepan over medium-low heat and stir until melted. Slowly stir in the remaining creamer. In a separate small bowl, make a paste of the cocoa powder and sugar with some of the soy milk.  When it's as lumpless as possible, add it to the pan along with the rest of the milk. Add in the salt and heat to your desired temperature. Remove from the heat and stir in the vanilla.

Pour into two mugs and top with mini marshmallows.

I used the new Freedom micro mallows, which contain both carrageenan and hydrolysed soy protein! In case you're keeping track, that's non-organic processed soy, fat, sugar, salt, and carrageenan all in one delicious cup of hot chocolate. It was like drinking a melted candy bar.

Sorry about the terrible picture - it was late when I made it.

If you're even remotely familiar with me, you know that I'm all about comfort and convenience foods, so this ramping up of food shaming (which, let's be realistic, is mostly aimed at and hurts women, and disproportionately restricts non-animal foods) is really pissing me off.  Luckily I'm not the only one.  PPKer MissMuffcake's theme is about vegan finds at Target and was spurred by a series of posts about food shaming.  And really, the PPK is great for calling out food policing and woo.  Because veganism is about the animals, first and foremost, and restricting yourself until you have almost nothing to eat doesn't help the animals (especially when you decide that veganism is the problem and go back to eating them).

So, fuck food shaming.  Eat what you want and do the least harm possible.

Newsday Tuesday – Waitrose soffritto passata

It’s Newsday Tuesday, where I make/have food that’s new to me!  For a minute I thought I’d failed at it – I forgot that I actually have made the recipe I was gonna talk about.  But then I realised that one of the components is new to me, so it worked out!

I was at Waitrose the other day stocking up on frozen stuff (I got garlic and ice cream, but they didn’t have shallots) and happened upon a new item – jarred soffritto.  I quickly scanned the ingredients for anything non-vegan, not bothering to note the bizarre stuff some British person decided was supposed to go into sofrito, and, seeing that it was safe, bought a jar.

It wasn’t until I got home and had a good look at it in comparison to a recipe in Viva Vegan! that I realised that this is some kind of Euro-sofrito.  Sorry, soffritto.  It contains carrots and celery instead of peppers*.  I don’t know what’s wrong with me.  Regardless, I used it in a couple of recipes, and it was actually pretty good.

I made the Viva Vegan! Latin Baked Tofu with it, but due to the lack of Latinness, I added a bit of cumin to it before I poured it over the tofu.  I also made the Cuban black bean soup, which saved me a ton of time standing at the stove (but not much in the actual cooking process, which took FOREVAH).

Mike and I really liked it over the tofu, and we really liked the soup, so I can’t really say it’s a terrible product.  It just wasn’t what I expected.  But I guess I should’ve known, since I got it at Waitrose and not Lupe Pinto’s.  Still, I would give it the seal of approval – even though it was different, it was still tasty!

And since I don't have a picture of any food, here's a kitty tongue:

*A quick search tells me that this is Tuscan-style soffritto.  So I guess my Latin baked tofu was actually Italian baked tofu.

Review - Zen Zen vanilla ice cream

Image from the Zen Zen website

I'm always willing to try new ice creams (as long as they aren't made from ingredients that will hospitalise me), so when I saw that Real Foods had Zen Zen ice cream, I grabbed a wee 125ml container of vanilla.  I never get to buy the wee containers because the only ones they usually sell are dairy ice creams or Booja Booja (made with cashews = hospitalisation).  They're so cute, with their little flat spoon/scraper things right in the lid.  Fun times.

Anyway, I love the concept of a non-dairy but also non-nut based ice cream that was slightly healthier than my beloved Swedish Glace.  I'm hard to please with vanilla because I almost never eat it straight up (without any toppings), and the only one I've ever been happy to do that with was Swedish Glace.

The Zen Zen ice cream just isn't the one for me.  The coconut flavour was really pronounced and overwhelmed the vanilla.  I think a coconut milk base is just too much for a vanilla dessert.  I'd love to try the chocolate (the only other flavour Real Foods had was the nut one) because I think chocolate is a strong enough flavour to power through the coconut.  But vanilla is just too subtle for it.  And considering that the 125ml tub was the same price as a 700ml tub of Swedish Glace - still undefeated as my favourite vanilla ice cream - I think I'll stick with the stuff I like, even if it is full of chemicals and gums and precious sugar.

Cookin' through Cookin' Crunk - curried sweet tater fries

Oh man, I'm so used to only blogging during VeganMoFo that I almost went to find a MoFo banner to top my post!  Unfortunately I no longer have that to fall back on.

So, yeah, as most people who know me are aware, I usually only post during VeganMoFo.  But one of my 40 Before 40 goals is to cook through Bianca Phillips's book, Cookin' Crunk: Eatin' Vegan in the Dirty South (to give it its full title).  One reason is because I've never cooked every recipe in a cookbook before.  Another reason, which I may have mentioned already, is that it's like it was written for me - a book full of recipes for classic Southern dishes.

Today I made the Curried Sweet Tater Fries.  I bought one giant sweet potato instead of 2 normal-sized taters.  I baked instead of frying, which took a lot longer than I expected (about 90 minutes, I think).  I think I might not have had the heat up high enough.  We ate them with some Sainsbury's LoveVeg Indian spinach and lentil burgers and the tahini sauce in the book.

They came out a bit floppy, but Mike and I really liked them.  The sauce was the perfect accompaniment.  I left out the cayenne because I've become a bit of a spice wuss, but they could've used a touch of spice.  I should've thrown in a bit of chipotle powder.  Regardless, they were super tasty, and I could definitely see myself making them again.

I went to the farmers market today and bought green tomatoes, spaghetti squash, and loads of tofu.  I've already started marinating two blocks of tofu - one for Tofu Chicken and the other for Sweet and Spicy Tofu.  I'll fry the tomatoes and use them and the S&S tofu in the Fried Green Tomato sandwiches for my lunch tomorrow.  I'll use the spaghetti squash later in the week - it's a big bastard so I can probably get two dinners out of it.

Sundae Sunday - We're gonna need a bigger bowl.

Today is the final Sundae Sunday of Vegan MoFo 2013, so I thought I'd make it a pretty epic sundae.  My inspiration was classic glutton Homer Simpson.  In the episode where Homer intentionally gains weight to get on disability, he and Bart are at the diner.  Homer has a banana split, and Bart tells him to eat around the banana - it's just empty vitamins.  So tonight's sundae is a banana-less banana split!

Sorry about the shadow - I had to work fast before the toppings oozed off the ice cream.

The components of this sundae are:  Swedish Glace vanilla ice cream, homemade chocolate ice cream (using my variation of the V'con chocolate), raspberry jam ice cream (using the method I mentioned in this post), fudge sauce left over from making the Dublin Mudslide, Lyle's Squeezy Syrup butterscotch syrup (which has "suitable for vegans" right on the label!), marshmallow sauce using this recipe and Sweet Vegan marshmallows, and zero bananas.

I think traditionally a banana split would have strawberry rather than raspberry ice cream, but I hate all things strawberry (with the exception of Rekorderlig Wild Berry cider because the strawberry is sufficiently masked).  And, obviously, it would have a banana.

I have to admit, my sundae was a bit sad.  The marshmallow topping was a complete failure - I spent  £3.49 on the biggest, fluffiest, most delicious marshmallows I think I've ever eaten (I took a bite of one) and wasted it all on this gross, gloopy, chewy sauce.  The flavour was alright, but the texture was awful.  I actually pulled the whole thing off of my ice cream.  Speaking of which, the chocolate ice cream was also kinda naff.  I think my chocolate kinda seized up when I put it into the mixture because it was really bitty.  So basically that third of the triumvirate was a bit crap.

The rest of it was delicious.  I still love Swedish Glace vanilla ice cream.  I even prefer it over the French vanilla I made for Mike's birthday party.  I've never eaten a better vanilla ice cream, and I anticipate I never will.  I also love that butterscotch syrup, and I love Tate & Lyle for making it vegan.  The raspberry jam ice cream was good, and the fudge sauce worked well with it.

I have loads of ice cream and sauces left, which is probably the best part!

New stuff from Sainsbury's and another Cookin' Crunk recipe down

I found a new thing at Sainsbury's today!  They have their range of meatless alternative frozen foods, and they've recently come out with an Indian Lentil and Spinach quarter pound "burger" (along with a bunch of other stuff that wasn't vegan).  I pretty much couldn't resist, so I bought a pack and had some for dinner.

I served them with some spinach (cooked from frozen with lemon juice, salt, and garlic granules), boiled new potatoes, and Creamy Tahini Sauce from Cookin' Crunk.

The burgers were pretty tasty, and I could see myself buying them again.  I might try to make my sides with more Indian-style spices the next time I make these.  I loved the tahini sauce - it's slightly similar to Isa's Classic Vegan Caesar dressing - but I had to add a lot of water to get it to sauce consistency.  Regardless, I would absolutely make this again.  It went really well with the potatoes and spinach, and I imagine it would work in loads of other applications.

Oh, before I forget, in their wee Jewish section, Sainsbury's sell these chocolate wafer things (like the inside of a Kit Kat but twice as wide) that are vegan!  They're super delicious.  Now they just need to bring back the mini-latkes.

Granny's Corn Casserole

I went to my local hfs, Real Foods, and spent ages trying to decide if I wanted to buy any delicious, delicious processed convenience foods because I could not figure out what to make for dinner.  I had already decided to buy some cream cheese (Sheese brand, fwiw), nooch (finally replenishing my stock), and marshmallows (more on those at a later date), but that obviously didn't help with dinner.  Then Mike called to ask me something, and while we talked we figured it out.

We decided on chickpeas and broccoli - I already had frozen chickpeas, and he bought broccoli.  When I got home and started cooking, I decided to use the cream cheese I'd just bought to make Granny's Corn Casserole from Cookin' Crunk.  It turned out super quick and easy - apart from chopping the roasted red pepper that stood in for the pimento, there was almost no work required.  It took about 5 minutes to throw together, which is always a bonus.

It tasted alright, but I think that was down to using a lesser cream cheese.  I bet it would've been great if I'd bought Tofutti, but the only one they had was the herby one (which probably would've been fine).  I liked it, but I think I would've preferred the version she mentions in the intro.  I might see if I can recreate that one myself!

Taco Tuesday - lentil tacos

It's Taco Tuesday!  I had some lentils left over from a few days ago that I wanted to use up, so I decided to make lentil tacos.  But the recipe I have calls for chili powder, which I didn't have, so I first had to make chili powder.  I used this recipe but doubled the quantities, used chipotle powder instead of cayenne pepper, and added a bit of allspice and coriander because the old bottle had those in the ingredients.

These are topped with Tesco smoky cheese, Uncle Ben's Mexican rice, Joya plain soy yogurt, Tesco mild salsa, and iceberg lettuce (in no particular order).  They were super delicious.

Lazy day post - cheap but delicious eats from Lidl

A couple of weeks ago, Mike and I were trying to buy ramen at Tesco, and we couldn't find any flavours that were vegan.  I learned shortly after this trip that Lidl has these tarts that are vegan, so I decided to divert to Lidl on my next shopping trip (since we have a Lidl on our way home from the Tesco we usually shop at).

So, this is what the tarts look like:

These consist of a shortcrust pastry, seedless raspberry jam, some type of cream filling, and a raspberry fondant.  They're so freaking good!  They also have pineapple, which aren't as good but would do in a pinch.  A pack of four small tarts is 99p (or if you're lucky, they'll be a little smashed and only run you 69p).

Lidl also have packets of ramen for 18p each, and the ones I looked at were vegan.  Now, I can't vouch with certainty for every flavour, but the ones that are vegan are labeled as such.  Score!  The chicken and barbecue beef flavours are definitely vegan, and they really hit the spot.

My dinner tonight was the chicken flavour with an extra bit of miso and some frozen peas.  It was great.  One of these days I'll use the noodles to make some decent ramen a la Mo.

Lidl has a few other bargains.  I found organic carrots for £1, and they have a big jar of red peppers for £1.79.  I mean, all of their stuff is cheap, but some of it might be worth making the trip for (especially since the trip for me is a couple of steps out of the way).

Vegan MoFo VII - Cheater ingredients

I used to cook from scratch a lot more than I do now.  It's a combination of laziness, lack of time, and lack of will that keeps me from doing it more often.  Most of the time, I'll buy something fresh and it ends up going off before I can summon the will to cook it.

I've found a few items that are sort of transitional between prepackaged and from-scratch.  These are the things I fall back on to keep my food a little bit fresher without wasting money on ingredients that go off and saving time on cooking:

Sainsbury's frozen chopped spinach:

I love this stuff.  I use it almost exclusively for tofu scrambles, though I've used it for other things as well.  It lets me get some green in my food without spending stupid amounts of money on things that go wilted and slimy in a couple of days.

Karyatis roasted red peppers:

 

Do you know how much red peppers cost?  Those fools are expensive - about 80p each for fresh, conventionally grown red peppers.  I rarely use fresh red peppers anyway, and this jar is £2.39 for 4-5 roasted peppers.  And they last a lot longer.  So really, that's just good sense.  I use these peppers in my Almost Zatarain's Red Beans and Rice.

Frozen chopped onions and minced garlic:

You'd think most people would be able to use onions before they go off because they last so long.  Not me.  I don't even know how many rotten onions I've thrown out because I just couldn't bother using them when I actually remembered I had them.  And I've had some bad luck with garlic sprouting before I get a chance to use it (I mean, within a week - I need to remember to stop buying garlic from Tesco).  I usually get frozen onions and garlic (and occasionally shallots) from Waitrose because they often have them on special.  It seems like such a lazy thing to use until you realise that I just wouldn't use them at all if I had to chop them myself (well, and remember to have them on hand).

Sainsbury's ready-rolled light puff pastry:

Every once in a while, I want a savoury (or sweet) pie, but I don't want to faff with making crust.  Enter the pre-made, pre-rolled crust.  Yes sir.  I've used this to make porkless pie and chocolate parcels and probably some other stuff that I can't remember.  This will feature at some point this month - I think I might make another bean-based pie or a tofu-based savoury pie.

What are your favourite convenience ingredients?

Latke breakfast pie

I was standing at the bus stop after work trying to figure out what to make for dinner.  I was visualising what I had in the cupboards and fridge, and I remembered that I had a box of Manischewitz latke mix that I bought when I was in NY last year.  Then it hit me - breakfast pie with a latke crust.

I started making it as soon as I got home, because my projects tend to take a while.  I blended some Vegg to mix with the latke mix to bind it and spread the mix into the bottom and up the sides of my pie plate.  I baked this for a bit while I made the filling.

For the filling, I blended some of the haricot beans that I'd cooked in the slow cooker with more Vegg, then poured the mixture into a bowl and stirred in some sriracha, garlic granules, onion granules, salt, chopped frozen spinach, and diced roasted red pepper.  I poured the filling in and threw it in the oven while I made some Tempeh Sausage Crumbles from VwaV.

Once the pie had baked for a bit, I threw the crumbles on top.  Here's where it started to go wrong.  The crumbles were more of a mush than crumbly, and they didn't go on very well.  But it wasn't a complete disaster.  I put it back in the oven thinking it would take another 20 minutes or so.

About an hour and a half after I put the pie in, it still isn't finished.  I got a slice out before I realised this.  I put it back in the oven minus that slice (which wasn't exactly slice-shaped at this point), and I ate that bit.

It was actually pretty good.  The flavours worked well together, and nothing overwhelmed.  Even if it doesn't entirely firm up, it's still edible, and I have lunch for a few days!  It's not perfect or pretty (hence the lack of pictures), but it's tasty!

Bean failure

My intention for today was to make a bean-based quiche-type thing.  I threw some beans in the slow cooker and left them while I was at work (so, about 8 1/2 hours).  When I got home, I tested a bean, and it was still kinda hard.  Dammit.  So, no bean-based quiche-type thing tonight.

I was already suuuuper hungry when I got home.  I was gonna just have some toast, but then I realised that I didn't have anywhere to put the toaster because the slow cooker was in the way.  Then it hit me - grilled cheese.  Even better - grilled cheese with V Bites (formerly Redwood Foods) garlic sausage slices.  Holy crap, I love these things.

Here's a not-very-attractive phone pic of my delicious sammich:

I used Allinson's high fiber white bread, Tesco smoked-style cheese (or whatever the hell it's called), and the aforementioned V Bites garlic sausage slices.  It was one of the best sammiches I've ever eaten.  In fact, I'm really tempted to eat another.

Mike will be eating a Tesco value pot noodle for dinner because we're classy like that.


I'm ... gonna go make another sammich.

Omelets and Injuries

Day 2 and I already have a cooking-related injury!  More on that later.

Keeping with my budget theme, today's dinner used several pantry/freezer items - chickpea flour, frozen spinach, jarred roasted red peppers, and frozen chopped shallots and garlic.  I'm actually gonna have a post about some of my favourite convenience foods, so I won't go into how much I love those things.  Anyway, I also finally used a bookmarked recipe that I'd been thinking about making for ages - Chickpea Flour Omelets from Vegan Richa.

The recipe calls for fresh veg, but I'm lazy and used the aforementioned frozen/jarred veg.  I defrosted the spinach in the microwave, then threw the shallots and garlic in with it to heat up a bit before dumping everything into the batter as directed.  I also threw on some Tesco smoked cheese near the end of cooking.

The directions on the recipe aren't very clear, but once I figured out what to do, it came together pretty quickly.  I served with buttered toast because I was in the middle of another project while I made dinner.  I really liked these, but Mike ... well, he said I didn't have to make them again, which is his way of saying never ever make this again.  So I guess I'll save it for a day that he's not here, because I thought they were delicious.  Luckily, I made a double batch, which made 3 decent-sized omelets, so I'mma make a sammich out of the leftovers for my lunch tomorrow.  Woo!

On to the other project and my injury!  In line with my Sunday theme, I decided that, rather than make straight-up coffee ice cream, I'd make hazelnut latte ice cream.  So I decided to make my own hazelnut syrup.  Everything went fine - I toasted and skinned the hazelnuts and cooked the mixture down with no mishaps.  Well, there was a slight mishap in that I accidentally overcooked it and ended up with candied hazelnuts and a chunk of hazelnut-flavoured sugar or something - I'm not even sure what it is.

You know when you make something, and you want to taste it - it was hot, but you think it's cooled off enough.  It hasn't cooled off enough.  I stuck my finger in molten sugar (essentially).  It burned like hell, and despite running my finger (my little finger!) under cold water for ages, I still have a wee blister right on the pad.  So I'm kinda typing with my fingernail to avoid touching the blister.  It could be worse, but I still feel pretty stupid for doing that.  And that's why I don't have pictures - I was trying to minimise my injury (also it was already pretty dark when I finished cooking).

Vegan MoFo VI, Day 27 - Still sneezing

I've been sneezing since about 3pm yesterday, and I slept really badly.  I kept waking up with my tongue feeling like sandpaper because I couldn't breathe through my nose.  At least Zebby let me sleep in a bit.  Anyway, all this is to say that today I'm just gonna review some products that I've had recently.

First up are Redwood's beef-style and turkey-style roasts, which I really like, but they're usually a bit more costly than I like to spend on what is essentially a big seitan sausage that I could make myself.  But when they're on sale (like during one of Holland & Barrett's sales or marked down at Real Foods), I kinda can't help myself.  They're not meant to be cooked in anything other than an oven, so I bought some months before I could actually cook them because they were on sale.

It turns out you can cook these in a slow cooker (there are ways of doing so that I found at the time, but I'm too lazy to google them now), which is what I did with these when I didn't have an oven.  In the oven or the slow cooker, they come out moist and tender and taste remarkably similar to what they're mocking (though the texture isn't the same, but that's probably a good thing, especially for the beef).  The only issue I have is that the turkey-style roast really stinks when it's cooking.  I made one a couple nights ago and I thought I was smelling the cat's room (which is at the other end of the flat).

Both varieties work well as an actual roast, i.e. with potatoes, carrots and onions, or with mash and veg on the side, or with vegetable rice (which is how I ate the turkey-style the other night).  However, my favourite way to eat either of them is to slice into strips and put in a wrap with boiled potatoes and carrots and a bit of gravy.  So good!

Next up is Prewett's chocolate creams - gluten free chocolate biscuits with a chocolate cream filling.

From Amazon - which doesn't actually sell them.

I bought these at Real Foods today when shopping for nice things to take to people in the States who are letting me stay with them (and trying to figure out what happened to my tea, which they seem to have discontinued).  The photo is a little misleading (they don't have nearly that much cream filling), but they were really good - a bit crumbly, but good flavour and nicely crisp without being hard.  I also like that they don't have a gluten-free feel to them - they just have a regular old biscuit texture (and taste).

Finally, Tesco has a range of juices called Juice Bar.  They look to be mostly vegan - they're juices, but I've found fish oil in juice before, so I'm not gonna issue a blanket all-clear on them.  Mike used to get them often from the Tesco near his office, but he thinks they may have stopped carrying them (or that they moved to another part of the store and he can't be bothered looking for them).  I had my first try of them tonight with the Virgin Sangria - grape, apple, and orange juices.  I really liked it - it obviously didn't taste like real sangria, but the flavours worked surprisingly well together (I was wary of the combo initially).  Mike had the Rootin' Fruitin', which was a combo of pineapple, mango and carrot.  I wasn't impressed with this one, and he didn't love it either.

They usually have them on offer - 3 for £3 or 5 for £4 (I think) for 250ml bottles.  They're not massively great value for drinking from home (I usually have oj and get it on offer for 2/£3 for 750ml of Copella, the best oj I've ever had), but they'd do in a pinch if you didn't want to buy an entire 750ml bottle of juice for drinking on the go.

Here's a bonus picture of my cat being super adorable:

FYI - That is not an invitation.  He will cut you.

Vegan MoFo VI, Day 26 - British Food Friday - Sausage and Mash

I'll be honest - I'm a little burned out, but I've also been really tired this week, hence a lack of posts for the past couple of days.  And today's post is a bit of a cop-out (again) because I only came up with it around 5pm today.  Also, I'm having another allergy attack, so I'm doubly tired and can't stop sneezing.

That said, at least I can talk about something new.  As I said, it occurred to me that I didn't plan anything for BFF (I kept thinking I'd do a roast in the slow cooker, but I never remembered in the morning and was always too tired to prep in the evening) when I was standing around the office trying to decide what to do about the fact that it suddenly started hailing out of nowhere (the forecast for the entire day was sunny).*  I decided to go to Tesco to figure out what to buy for dinner while I waited for the bus, and I suddenly had a brainwave that I could do sausage and mash.

It just so happened that Tesco had a new variety of Linda McCartney sausage (red onion and rosemary) on offer for £1 for a packet of 6.  Combined with the fact that the regular LM sausages were both more calorific and more expensive, I decided that it might be good if I talked about a product I've never actually talked about before.

I wasn't really sure about them, but they turned out to be really good.  They had a nice flavour and texture that were completely different from the regular LM sausages.  And they were really tasty even though I burned them!  I could see myself buying these again.  I served them with some noochy Smash and microwave-steamed veg.  It was quick, easy, delicious, and filling, which is exactly what I needed.

I might try to get some extra entries in over the weekend if I can get over this allergy attack and find the energy to do anything.  And I'll definitely post next week, since it's nearly the end of MoFo (*single tear*).  I'm hoping to at least be able to do Sunday baking (especially since one of my co-workers asked me why the baking had stopped) and some more cookbook challenge stuff.  And there might be another restaurant review since Mike totally owes me dinner.  We'll see how it goes.

*That was some crappy sentence structure, but I can't be bothered fixing it.

Vegan MoFo VI, Day 23 - Soup!

Today's post is gonna be another cop-out because I realised that I don't have anything for my lunch for tomorrow unless I buy another can or carton of soup.  I'm a little tired of store-bought soup, so I'm gonna make some scramble, which I've blogged about extensively.  So instead, I'm gonna talk about ... store-bought soup!

It's proper soup weather in Edinburgh, and that was especially true today.  It was a pretty crappy day to start with, and then the haar rolled in.  It's been misty and dreary all day.  Today was the kind of day where you can't imagine eating anything other than soup.

Since I'm trying to lose weight, I've also been relying on soup for my lunches when I don't have anything to bring from home.  I don't know of any store-bought vegan soup that's particularly calorific, if only because they aren't loaded with meat and cream and stuff.  It's also pretty easy to find vegan soup at the store, whereas you're less likely to find sandwiches or other ready-made lunch-type foods that are suitable.

The only problem I have with store-bought soup is chunkiness - I'm a big fan of pureed soups (generally, though I also love a soup full of barley).  It's pretty difficult to get a smooth vegan soup from a can, so I've gone through a bit of trial and error trying to figure out which soups have the right chunks (e.g., potatoes, beans, carrots) or are smooth enough to not put me off.

My go-to brand is usually Baxters - they make quality soup and (usually*) label them if they're vegan.  They're also sold in pretty much every big-box store in the UK.  I think I used to like one that had butternut squash, but I kinda went off it last year, so I'm not even sure if they make it anymore.  My current favourite of theirs is the Carrot and Butterbean.

I also like Tesco's tinned lentil and veg soup.  I'm not sure if that's exactly what it's called, but it's in their low-cal range, and an entire can is, I think, 180 calories - not bad.  Tesco have also just released a couple of vegan soups in their fresh cartons.  I'm 99% certain that the Lentil, Bean and Barley and the Mexican Chili Bean soups are both vegan.  I tried the first yesterday and really liked it, though I would've preferred more barley and fewer chunks of tomato.  I tried the other one today, and it was just awful.  The potatoes were so undercooked that they crunched.  Tesco is getting a strongly worded email from me.

This is obviously not an exhaustive list of store-bought soups.  I mainly buy soups for lunch, and I only have a Tesco nearby, so I can't really speak to the options at Sainsbury's, Morrisons, M&S, etc.  Maybe I'll do another soup review if I get another job that happens to be near a different shop.

*I picked up a revamped can of Carrot and Butterbean today that didn't specify, so I'm wondering if they've changed that practice.  That would suck since it's the quickest way to determine if I need to bother reading the ingredients.

Vegan MoFo VI, Day 5 - British Food Friday

Yay, I stuck to my theme today!

For the first British Food Friday, I made the classic Bakewell tart.  According to Professor Wikipedia, the Bakewell tart hails from Derbyshire and consists of a shortcrust pastry, jam filling, and almond sponge layer.

I've only ever eaten Bakewell tart once - I think it was during the Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale this year.  I actually got the train to Glasgow and built a day out around going to a bake sale.  That's what not having a working oven does to a person.  I really, really liked it, but it wasn't quite jammy enough for me.  I swore I would make one myself one day when I had a working oven, but I'd have a massive jam layer.  So, naturally, this was the first thing I thought of for this theme (in fact, I think I decided I wanted to make this and treacle tart and built the theme around that).

Last night, before I met Mike for dinner, I bought a block of frozen Jus Rol shortcrust pastry.  I figured it would be thawed by the time we got home.  Not so much, but I just defrosted it in the microwave.  But because I'm a genius, I decided that it would be awesome if I made 2 tarts after 10pm and take them in to work when only 13 people were in the office that day.  I mostly made this decision based on the fact that you're meant to use the crusts within 24 hours of defrosting and can't refreeze them.

I decided to make what I always thought was the standard - cherry Bakewell.  I thought cherry Bakewell meant that the jam layer was cherry, but apparently it's just cherry because it has almond icing and a glace cherry on top (what?).  But, whatever, whatever, I still used cherry jam.  That was my first one.  I decided to get a little experimental with my second one, so I made a PBJ Bakewell - raspberry/cherry jam layer (because I had extra cherry jam but not quite enough raspberry) with a Freenut butter cake topping.

For the sponge on the classic, I made a half recipe of the almond cake in Have Your Cake and Vegan Too (which I think I talked about in my first post).  For the jam layer, I used some reduced sugar cherry jam from Sainsbury's that, because it had whole cherries, I blended until smooth (I don't like bits).  I topped it with a simple water glaze (icing sugar mixed with water - I didn't even measure it).  For the PBJ, I made the PB cupcakes in Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, and I used the last of my seedless raspberry jam mixed with a bit of leftover cherry jam.  I melted some chocolate chips in the microwave with a couple of splashes of soymilk to drizzle over the top of this one.

These weren't quite the hit that the almond mocha cake was, but I think that's partially down to the office being half empty (there were 3 people working away from the office, 5 PT people who don't work Fridays, and 4 who were on holiday).  The people who ate them loved them, though the classic was the clear favourite.  I think people here really just don't do PBJ.  I ended up coming home with a full pan (half of each).  But I think it was a success for the first attempt!

I think I'm gonna try to make something savoury for the next BFF because I think my co-workers are gonna be a bit caked out after too long (especially since I'm taking something in on Monday and another person said he'd bring something on Tuesday).  Also, I think I'm PMSing, because even though these weren't as good as the almond mocha cake, I wanted to cram both of them in my face all day, so I need to personally lay off the cakes too.

So, any ideas for what I can make next week?

Still hungry

Oh hai!  I haven't blogged since the end of last year, so, just over 6 1/2 months.  Part of it is, as I'm sure you'll realise, laziness.  However, in fairness, I did move house, and the oven in our new(ish) place doesn't work.  So most of the time, I barely feel like cooking, let alone blogging about it.

However, I felt the need to blog about this.

This

...is a single serving of Mornflake Chocolatey Squares cereal*.

Look at that!  You can almost count the number of biscuits in the photo!

I wanted to title this blog post "People at Mornflake are on crack", because clearly there are drugs involved when you think that amount of cereal is gonna be filling for a grown-ass adult (the box is brown and doesn't have any cartoon animals on it, so I'm calling it an adult cereal).  Also, if you were to taste this cereal, you'd know that it's next to impossible to eat that little.  It's so good.  So. Good. The only cereal better than this is Speculoos cereal.

One 30g serving (dry) has about 143 calories.  And I've been eating probably thrice this amount plus milk with every bowl (and I like a lot of milk in my cereal).  I guess at least I'm getting a lot of extra vitamins and iron.  But this solves the mystery of why I've been gaining weight even though I'm working out 5 times a week.

I think I'm gonna go back to oatmeal** in the morning.

*Though not verified with the company, who would probably give me the "traces of milk" line, several thorough readings of the ingredient list assure me this is vegan.

**I recently bought 2 slow cooker cookbooks, and one of them, The Vegan Slow Cooker, has a few oatmeal recipes.  The author, Kathy Hester, has loads on her blog as well.