McGonnagle - Friend to the Molluscs

We have a standing joke in our house about Bubba Ho-Tep and his bizarre affinity for snails, or as he calls them - 'h'nails'. He got a Sally the Snail story book for Christmas, he keeps making me look up snail porn on Wikipedia and I'm even going to make him a h'nail birthday cake this July as I'm sure the fascination will have abated by next summer and, well, how can I resist the chance to make a snail-shaped cake?!
McGonnagle was never really impressed by our slimy cousins in the veg patch, until a chance encounter with a baby snail in the garden last weekend had her completely converted. Yup - this was a cute snail, not a big, slightly threatening one. She could handle snails now - why, they're almost like humans!

Here's a picture of the kids 'rescuing' a snail from the Great Outdoors. Luckily, I persuaded them to put it back outside on a lettuce leaf. They were very disappointed when - after they bolted their teas down and raced back out to see it - it had somehow mysteriously disappeared!

And what a tea, btw! After McGonnagle tripped over on her way out of the school playground tonight, banging herself up pretty well, I decided comfort food was in order - Mac n' cheeze, roasted squash, potatoes and red onion seasoned with cajun spice mix and smoked salt and steamed mange-tout.

Delicious and easy.
Me and the boy had been baking again earlier in the day - it's fun, easy to engage him in and it makes the kitchen nice and toasty!

We made the chocolate peanut butter cupcakes from 'La Dolce Vegan!' again as they are delicious, quick to make and I always have the ingredients on hand. Ho-tep helped me measure everything out, mixed the flour, switched the food processor on and off while shouting 'IT'S NOISY, MUMMAY!!', bashed the dark chocolate into chunks and sprinkled the chunks onto the cupcake batter -

well, most of them...

And what do you know? This little cupper of sweetness really did help to take away the hurt of a sore knee. Perfect!

Cooking-With-Children Thursday?!

That's right, I'm crossing the beams and pushing our usual Friday afternoon session in the kitchen a day earlier. It's rainy but mild, we have a busy, decorating-focused weekend ahead so today seemed the perfect opportunity to enlist Ho-Tep in the kitchen to prep-up some food for the weekend.

We did a bit of baking - wholemeal bread and rolls for our lunch today and various breakfasts and meals over the weekend. Ho-Tep looked very fetching in his kitchen pinny and was a dab hand at kneading ('it's like Play-Doh, son, bash it!') and brushing on the soya milk-vegetable oil glaze.

We used the above four simple ingredients to whip up a batch of guacamole and had kick-ass guac and plum tomato sarnies for lunch, on still-warm rolls - yummeh!

We made the best tempeh meatlessballs I have ever tasted.

They passed the acid test - McGonnagle, seitan and soyfoods hater extraordinaire, told me I could make them again while making loud 'nom-nom' noises. I served them with flat noodles, onion gravy, corn-on-the-cob and mangetout. They were an unprecedented hit!!! Fantastic - one more thing I can now make myself instead of buying at the supermarket! And so much tastier than your usual TVP meatballs - I can see meatlessball subs for lunch tomorrow...
And last but not least, as a special treat for SVD, we made chocolate-covered flapjacks.

2 easter eggs worth of chocolate went into these babies... hence the thick, bittersweet layer of chocolate on top of the chewy, oaty goodness. Mmmmm... look at it... so good!

Coal is... The Future???

Yes, apparently it's time to prepare ourselves for black snot outside of the M25 corridor.

http://tinyurl.com/cjpxhq

I'm Steaming!

Bread, that is! I made garlic bread to go alongside our freezer-emptying pasta sauce last night and having watched an episode of children's' favourite 'Come Outside' the other week - where Auntie Mabel and Pippin went to now defunct supermarket Safeway to see how bread is made - I noted they proved their bread in a giant steamer.
Tying in with my current obsession with Singaporean food blogs - where most cakes and buns are made from some kind of starch and steamed rather than baked - I began to develop a cunning plan...
Now, as I don't have the wherewithal to purchase a giant commercial bread steamer, I made do with proving my bread in the oven on the lowest possible setting with a big pan of boiling water at the bottom.
Half an hour later I had a big, warm soft ball of garlic and herb-flecked dough ready for shaping and its second prove. I formed it into a rectangular slab, pinched-it all over, brushed with hempseed oil and sprinkled with herbs, black pepper, smoked salt, nooch and red pepper flakes.
Twenty-five minutes in the oven and we had a lovely, soft, flavourful bread to accompany dinner. Thanks a lot, Pippin!

Pasta freezervera with garlic bread

It also went very well with our dinner tonight, my version of this soup, adapted round what I had in the store cupboards. I added green pepper, butterbeans, sliced Charlotte potatoes, a dash of liquid smoke, smoked paprika and substituted chipotle powder for chilis as that's what I had. After twenty minutes in the pressure cooker and a big spoonful of red jalapenos to top the adult portions, this soup was SOOOOO yummy! It hit the spot perfectly when we were all a bit jaded and I didn't feel like food per se.

Smoky Split Pea and Butterbean Soup

In Other News: Ho-Tep makes like a white person and - ignoring the cooling weather - wears at few clothes as possible to celebrate the fact it's not raining spring.

I hope the Spring is slightly less underwhelming wherever you are!

Sunny Sunny Day...

And a perfect excuse to not only sit-out tidy the garden but to make some of Susan V's delicious Goddess Lite dressing to smother all over one of our fledgling spring salads.

A mix of iceberg and curly lettuce with beef tomato, cucumber, celery and avocado. I sprinkled cashew nuts over the top for extra protein - though, with a whole block of tofu hiding there in the dressing I hardly think it's necessary!
I was also inspired by Megan's sick soup post to make-up a big, garlic, ginger and chilli laden pot of noodle soup.

I followed her recipe suggestion, throwing in some lemon thyme and rosemary from the garden, a bit of wakame, heavy on the lemon juice and thick vietnamese noodles rather than vermicelli just cos, hey, that's what I had on hand!
The plus side is - this soup tastes way too good to be kept for sick days only!
The down side - I'm going to be sweating garlic like some kind of human doner kebab for the rest of the week!

For dinner I reheated leftover mushroom rice, squash mash and savoy cabbage and - in an effort to empty our freezer so we can defrost the beast - I slapped a few Linda McCartney veggie roasts on the side. I had bought these in anticipation of Christmas dinner but never got round to actually using them.

'I shouldn't be alive! Godamn you food technologists!!'

Holy crap, these tasted shiteous! I'm so glad they never made it to the table for Christmas lunch! Dry, suspiciously crunchy due to dehydrated vegetables and I think either raw potato or water chesnut, with a predominate flavour of butternut squash and chalky kidney bean, I made a mental note never to let these cross my freezer's path again. Now I'm throwing in a disclaimer here - I don't really think freezer-burn and a temperamental, constantly self-defrosting freezer helped any - but the only way we could finish them way by drowning them in onion gravy and swallowing after minimal chewing. Don't get me wrong - I LOVE a Linda McCartney sausage, they are in my opinion far tastier than any other veggie sausage on the market and most meaty ones, but these rounds of veggie gruesomeness were just inexcusable!

Thankfully, soft bananas and my thoughtful mother's over-enthusiasm when buying us Easter Eggs -

Thanks, Mama!

- had led to the perfect conditions for whipping up a healthy banana loaf for pudding.


Studded with dark chocolate chips, walnuts and brown linseed and enriched with hempseed oil, this wholemeal loaf was just sweet enough to be enjoyed as a treat after tea but virtuous enough to leave us with a clear conscience.

Clear Conscience Banana Bread

Ingredients for A
5-6 bananas
1 cup unrefined sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp cinammon
1/4 cup water
2 tbsp hempseed oil

Indredients for B
2 cups wholemeal flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 cup walnut pieces
1/4 cup dark chocolate chips/chunks
1/8 cup brown linseed

Preheat oven to 180^oC/350^oF/GM4.
Grease and flour a loaf pan.
Combine all A ingredients in a blender or food processor and blend until smooth.
Combine all B ingredients in a large mixing bowl and stir until well-mixed.
Add A to B and fold-in until 'just mixed'.
Transfer batter into the loaf pan and bake in your preheated oven for 50-60 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean.
Allow the loaf to cool for ten minutes in the pan before turning out onto a wire cooling rack.
Enjoy warm, cold or iced with either nut butter frosting or melted chocolate and rainbow sprinkles!

Still Chillin'...

My daughter has confirmed my worst fears about kids and technology...

don't bother me, mummy, I'm trying to get the panda out of the maze...

i.e.' give 'em a Nintendo DS and they turn into an antisocial MONSTER!!'. Yes, I know it wasn't a Nintendo DS, just my laptop and one of those free retro 2D platform-style games that any idiot could download and play, but by God, we saw four seasons of Miss Stroppy-Pants in one day with that alone. Re-considering my intention for a Wii - maybe I should just buy some skipping ropes and Theolonius Monk CDs to exercise mind and body at the same time...
Thank goodness Ho-Tep was there for some Mummy-baby loving to remind me I'm not obsolete in ONE of my children's' eyes.

Mums and Sons - I was having this conversation with one of my multi-syblinged friends the other week - it's a special relationship... isn't it? isn't it??? Maybe because it's so fleeting... you know, that precious few years before they become 'MEN'! *wistful sigh*

Let go mummy, I have to live my own life sometime!...
-But I can't Ho-Tep, I can't!!!!

Not Posting, but Drowning...

Well, I was in the beautiful Lake District for a little while...

Where the HELL have I been???
I mean, that's even a question I found myself asking after realising I hadn't posted for almost a whole month!!!
Well, I may not have been 'on-line', but I have been doing all the same old things I've always done... cooking - especially from the 'Eat-To-Live' stable as I valiantly try and shift my fat ass. This could explain the uninspiring lack of food posts... for anyone who's read 'EtL', you'll know exactly what I mean - it is what it is. Healthy, nutritious, but... you know... Is it Me, or is Melody really the only self-professed lo-cal blogger who consistently comes up with the most insanely tasty-looking food? Like, not just lentil sludge or 'salads-up-the-wazoo' kind of healthy-eating blogging? Must try more of her recipes!!! Plus her photos are always so tantalising!
I've been paring-down my commitments - OMG, did you all notice I had two kids? Because I must admit, the amount of mundane stuff I was saying 'yes' to, it felt like I kind of forgot? They were kind of slotted in behind the sponsored crochet for Jesus and the bakesale for Vegfam... plenty of time for these things once they're a few years older, berating me from behind their dayglo leopardskin print hoodies for being an inadequate mother. Yes, I feel sure I'll be VERY keen on extra-curricular activities - for me - when they're busy forming slash-punk bands and trying to persuade the neighbours to buy them alcohol underage (oh, the shame...)
I've also decided to sign my bored yet over-obligated ass up to a course of study this September to try and re-light that spark I used to have back when I used my brain to work out things other than optimum time you can leave a baby in a nappy for without changing them. For anyone interested, the formula is as follows:


(baby + x nappy) = number of hours till wet clothes
pints of juice


where 'x' is the kind of nappy i.e. real or disposable.

I also went camping in the scenic Lake District with my two bffs... and a good weekend was had by all...

and I'm very excited as our raucous weekend away (yes, that's right, we did get 'shushed' by a bunch of strict fell-runners at eleven o'clock at night for being 'rowdy' !) has the potential to become an annual trip!

Oh, and have obviously been watching lots of horror films, some good, some baaaaaad...

And getting very animated about the idea of a new Chinese takeaway in Livingston serving vegetarian duck and chicken and the like on their veggie takeaway menu! As opposed to the usual West Lothian favourite of chicken, duck, chicken, pork, chicken... etc... I'm definitely looking forward to placing my first order at Ying Chinese Takeaway at Deans.

Well, that's what I've been up to, I'm off to see what you guys have all been up to now, and I'll be back with a food post before you can say 'oh no! not more raw greens!'.