Fish Fingers??!

Nope! I have managed to replace a British institution with sticks of cauldron firm tofu, marinated in a mix of Sea Isle Jerk BBQ sauce and dark soya sauce before being breaded with some Jamaican spicy flour mix and fried in a helluva lotta vegetable oil. Served over a relatively bland creamy mushroom pasta dish this tasted AMAZING!!!! Mcgonnagle ate every last mouthful, though between these and Dan and Jessy's tempeh meatless balls, I think she may be growing out of her soyfoods aversion - finally!!

This is a very dark picture of an amazing smoothie I had for lunch! Rocket/arugula with strawberries and limes, basil, 2 cups mixed fruit salad, 2 tbsp ground flaxseed and 4 pre-soaked dates. Delicious and refreshing with the peppery rocket, sweet strawberries, tart and juicy limes and flavourful basil making a remarkable combination! I think I got this idea off Swell Vegan's blog but I can't remember exactly as it was a while ago now. I do remember thinking at the time how good it would be - and it was!

Pictures from the Potty.

A pic mainly for Jeni Treehugger to illustrate my 'Longstocking' reference. Taken by Ho-tep - obviously!

This is how we make popcorn...

... at Skint Vegan Towers. Yeah, that's right - no pussying about, we just make it in the 5 litre pressure cooker. Shake of mexican salt, drizzle of hempseed oil and lemon juice and voila! Just enough to get us through a viewing of the Rugrats Movie!
With the warmer weather, potty training my youngest has begun in earnest. As I am the laziest mum on the face of the planet I prefer to leave my young to the point where they can change their own nappy before attempting potty training. Some mums consider this scandalous - don't forget, certain areas of motherhood are a competitive sport - but I always think: in twenty years time, who's gonna give a shit? (Pardon the pun.)

So, my son is currently wandering around the garden wearing a t-shirt, a pair of my multicoloured stripy knee socks and a smile, while I pack-up the terry nappies ready for resale on ebay. To all the mums out there - he knows when he wants to go when he is half-naked from the waist-down, but the minute I slap a pair of pants on the young man, all he wants to do is pee in-situ. Any hints or tips on how to overcome this issue? He starts nursery in August and I would hope that at that point I'm not sending him there still looking like a Pippi Longstocking-inspired flasher.
As I'm preoccupied with wiping-up misses, and general chaperoning the sprinkle-happy Ho-Tep constantly, I don't want to spend too long in the kitchen. Food has been easy.

Stir-fry with tofu puffs, cauliflower, chinese spinach, carrot, onion, ginger, celery and lots and lots of rice noodles. I seasoned it with hoisin sauce, veggie oyster sauce and dark soya sauce and it was delicious!

I roasted a whole butternut squash chopped into large chunks, 2 onions and a head of garlic drizzled with truffle oil, smoked salt and my mum's home-made extra spicy garam masala. Meanwhile I simmered a cup of lentils in about four cups of water until tender. Once the veggies were tender (about an hour and a half as I did have a school run in the middle!) I blended them together with the cooked lentils and water and about 1/4 cup soya sauce.

This soup was CRAZY good!!!! And it practically made itself!!!

I made mini-pizzas topped with redwoods pepperoni, sliced black olives, a really good marinara sauce and Sofcheez crumbles from 'The Ultimate Uncheese Cookbook'. These got the big thumbs-up from the kids which was great as it was a really easy topping to whip up - firm tofu, salt, miso and lemon juice and you're good to go! I subbed red wine vinegar for lemon juice as I'd ran out of the fresh stuff and it was still really good! We had this with curly fries - yummy!!
The following day I used some leftover pizza dough and marinara sauce, sauteed onions, sliced black olives and a shed-load of grated cheddar-style cheezly to make the world's ugliest stromboli. It was absolutely delicious, but such a mess I just couldn't bring myself to take a pic!!

And I think this has been helping me keep my head between spillages and fights and laying laminate flooring in the midst of a hayfever resurgence - Pukka's harmonise tea. It's my new favourite tea - I love it so much I've bought a couple of packets for two of my friends! Sadly, this is the tea that Tesco has decided to discontinue just as I've discovered it, but you can buy it at healthfood stores and also online - and upon browsing the site I felt a bit abashed that I'd never before realised how much stuff Pukka did apart from from tea! A lot of commercially-produced fruit and herbal teas are a bit insipid for my taste but this one is lovely - the vanilla adds a hint of sweetness, the rose and shatavari are lovely and fragrant. I've been drinking this in preference to my regular sweet milky builder's tea it's so good! So that's been a round-up of our busy weekend - hope yours has been slightly less hectic!

Rehome a Hen!

Ever fancied a couple of chooks scratching about the back garden? Do you have an omni or vegetarian partner who'd love the idea of the odd fresh egg from a truly free-range hen? Or would your parents fancy a few to indulge their dream of a small-holding? Well now is the perfect time to get one! BunnyHuggers.org recently alerted me to the fact that there are 10,000 chickens needing rehomed from a battery farm that is closing down in Norfolk. They need rehoming before the 28th June or the remainder will be slaughtered - an outcome that it would be brilliant to avoid if possible!!!
If you or anyone you know might be interested, then please email littlehenrescue at googlemail.com. And if it's not for you - pass the word on!

Wet.

These things are wet:

Smoky Split Pea and Butterbean chowder.

Just a few ingredients - sliced Charlotte potatoes, sliced carrots, sliced celery, onion flakes, pre-soaked split peas and butterbeans - simmered with soya milk and vegetable stock and seasoned with black pepper, chipotle chili powder, liquid smoke, smoked paprika, thyme, rosemary and basil. Served with home-baked bread and marmite.
Hot chocolate made with cocoa, carob, cinnamon, malt extract and soya milk - soooo goood!!!
The rainy, blustery Bathgate weather!

These things are juicy:

Corn-on-the-cob grilled with a glaze of reggae-reggae sauce thinned with water, before being buttered with vegan marg and served-up with a big, juicy salad!
A big juicy salad of baby spinach leaves, baby plum tomatoes, celery, cucumber, grated carrot, new potato, brown lentils and cured red onion smothered in delicious,, moreish raw vegan ranch dressing. This recipe is from the sunny raw vegan kitchen and is absolutely lip-smackingly good! The boy licked the spatula clean after I'd finished blending it and as I'd pre-soaked the macadamia nuts, it was really rich and creamy!
Green woodruff jelly made-up with the juice from a can of pineapple chunks (that's one of those thrifty tips I picked up from my mum as a child to make jelly juicier!). Yummers!

And sadly, this thing is rubbish.

We don't normally buy vegan cream cheese apart from special occasions as it's prohibitively expensive for what it is, but Toffuti never lets us down - two steps away from Philadelphia in taste and texture it is just lovely. I really, really wanted to like this spread, not least because it was half the price of the cheese we normally get and stocked in our local Tesco - a first!! Also, we buy Pure soya margarine and find it good for general butter-substitution and baking - creamy, good fat content, good flavour. Pure soya spread, however, tastes like a bad homemade uncheese - beany, with an unpleasant sweetness which is explained by one look at the ingredients list - the third largest ingredient is dried glucose syrup!!! Why??

HOW much sugar?!

This would make a good base for a cream cheese frosting, but that's about it. This vegan isn't for turning. I'll save up and slather tofutti garlic and herbs cheese on my toasted bagel at Christmas, while pointedly walking past the Pure cheese spread in the supermarket - with an air of quiet disappointment - the rest of the time.

MayDay Bank Holiday...

One boy and his kite on West beach, North Berwick

...was spent in the picturesque seaside town of North Berwick on the South-East coast of Scotland. Camping old-skool style with the tent.
We spent two blissful days away with the weather defying the forecasts and being outrageously sunny yet extremely blustery. Rain stayed off until we were tucked up nice and cosy in our nest of sleeping bags and duvets each evening.
We did some extremely early morning hill-climbing -

McGonnagle and SVD halfway up North Berwick Law - 9.30am Saturday morning!

Some kite-flying -

and some eating of blue, bubblegum flavoured ice-lollies.

We wrapped-up warm but forgot our sunscreen, hence we're all sporting the blush of T-zone sunburn now we're at home.
We ate A LOT of refined carbs. :((
But back on the range we're eating healthier food again. Red thai curry with rice for dinner, followed by a slice of (almost) sugar-free apple coffee cake.

This is sweetened with chopped dates, a couple of tablespoons of agave nectar and - of course - the crunchy cinnamon sugar topping. Really yummy and super-filling due to the wholemeal flour used. I also baked a sugar-free date and pecan cake but I really need to fiddle with both recipes a bit more before I can post them. Their original versions are in Leah Leneman's 'Easy Vegan Cooking'.
Last Thursday, McGonnagle and I baked some chewy chocolate chocolate chip cookies for her to take into school on Friday.

After initially intending to make the classic Dreena B. choc chip cookie, I saw Jessy's post about these bad boys and instantly decided to make them instead. I mean, the only thing a class of seven-year old punks like better than chocolate - is more chocolate - right? The other kids sporadically bring home-baking into school for sharing out amongst classmates and McGonnagle often goes without because the goods in question contain eggs or dairy. She was very excited to be taking some goodies in with her that she could enjoy as much as her classmates. Verdict? These were the bomb! Chewy, chocolatey and delicious - these were so popular she only had a couple left by the end of the morning. Just enough to fortify me as I packed the car with our camping gear...
I hope you all had a great May Day too!