Carrots!

Blueberry Muffins

2011-10-23T17:40:00.004+01:00

I think this is the easiest recipe I'll ever post! And damn they are tasty, I made a batch of 12, and am currently down to 9 as I write this, with still plenty of evening left for more to be demolished...

Lemon+Blueberry Muffins

Ingredients

1½ cups (180g) plain white flour

½ cups (70g) wholemeal flour

1 tbsp wheatgerm [optional]

½ tsp salt

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)

½ tsp baking powder

Zest of two lemons

1 tbsp poppy seeds [optional]

¾-1 cup (180g) sugar

1 cup (235ml) soya/oat milk

½ cup (78ml) sunflower oil

2 tsp (10ml) lemon juice

1 tsp (5ml) cider vinegar

1 tbsp ground linseeds

1½ cup frozen blueberries

Preheat the oven to 200ºC. Mix together all the liquids with the sugar and linseeds, until the sugar is dissolved. And the flour, baking soda/powder, salt and zest, and mix to incorporate (but don't overmix, just enough to wet the flour). Coat the blueberries in a teaspoon of flour, then add them to the batter, and fold in. Fill a greased muffin tray with the batter (should make about 12), and bake for 22-30 mins, until a wooden skewer comes out clean. Leave to cool for 5-10 minutes before attempting to turn out onto a wire rack.

Good luck saving them for your friends, and not devouring as soon as you get them out of the oven. Warning: Hot blueberries hurt.

All You Can Eat?

2011-09-06T14:35:00.001+01:00

As always, the highlight of my travels is the food, and this time is certainly no different. Vegetalia is cute cafe tucked away in the back-waters of Fuengirola. Once through the labyrinth of alleys it revealed itself like an oasis in the desert. And if you manage to find it before the end of lunchtime, you'll be rewarded with an all-you-can-eat buffet, where almost everything was vegan. For the few things that weren't, the lady was happy to bring out a customized version especially for us.

Plate one of five. I walked away from this place delightfully stuffed with mounds of food. Much like one of the stuffed peppers we ate. Well you are what you eat, as they say...

Vegetalia
Santa Isabel 8
Fuengirola

Next in the agenda was the amusingly named Bombay To Goa, which we stumbled upon in La Cala. The guys here understood our request for no dairy, and happily bought us out a veg-friendly biryani, channa massala, aloo gobi and brinjal-something-or-other, and it was all delicious! Good indian cuisine seems harder to find in Spain, although I suppose the bar is set relatively high living around Birmingham.

Costa del sol

2011-09-02T16:53:00.001+01:00

Its not even midday, but as they say,"when in rome". I'm sat on the balcony, overlooking a stunning panorama of the mediterranean, with a bowl of olives, monkey nuts and a glass of cool beer. This is the life!

Later we are heading to Vegetalia for an all you can eat buffet.

Where Megatron and Rapunzel Collide

2011-08-28T22:52:00.005+01:00

Today I woke up in a bit of a daze, was it all a dream? Or did I really see Cinderella dancing with a Pokemon?

The top hat and goggles on my bedside table brings me back to the harsh reality that Ayacon has come to an end, and that for another year, I have to endure the monotony of the real world. Okay that was pretty bleak, but if you've ever spent an entire weekend at a cosplay convention, you'll probably know what I mean! I've been reliably informed that this glum feeling has a name: Post Con Blues.

Aya, where do I begin? Its a 3 day convention for the anime and manga fans. Its a weekend of comedy, informative lectures and dressing up. Its a party.

A three day party, from which I still haven't quite recovered.

Cosplay chess, watching karaoke, buying merchandise, getting my butt wooped at Bleach fighting game, watching hobbits play DDR, learning about steampunk, hearing about how to plan a trip to Japan, live bands, a violinist who played some of my favourite tunes whilst sat outside relaxing in an open-air amphitheatre... I could probably go on for a while!

But it wasn't perfect, not far from it, but I had set my expectations too high by time it came around to the final event, the Ball. I've never been to a ball, I missed graduation ceremony at uni, and wasn't around for the school proms either. So my idea of a ball had been mostly modelled by the picture painted in hollywood. I was hoping for that scene in FF8. I was hoping everyone would be dressed like Kayleigh in Firefly, and the dance floor would be full if people waltzing in big flowery ball gowns. I was hoping a beautiful princess would come and sweep me off my feet.

Well there was definitly no dancing, at least not by me, which maybe was a good thing in hindsight, as I've never waltzed before, and I was wearing big boots that might've trampled the unwary. And actually, there were a handful of impressive ball gowns being worn, and a few people were dancing to the slow romantic songs. And I did get talking to a lovely woman with the prettiest steampunk outfit. So some may wonder what I'm complaining about... To tell you the truth I'm not even sure, I'm guessing the post-con-blues is to blame.

Ladybird Challenge

2011-08-13T11:32:00.001+01:00

All through summer I longed for an effective way of dealing with common garden pests. Slugs and snails have decimated my beans and courgettes, cats have defaced my soil, and ants have been teaming up with aphids in an attempt to ruin my tomatoes, chillis and herbs.

Whilst there's certainly no silver bullet (although these would definetly be effective against cats...) I certainly welcomed the arrival of these little guys.

How many can you spot?

Soft kitty, warm kitty

2011-07-05T17:30:00.004+01:00

First off this post has nothing to do with cats, and secondly this is an experiment to see if blogging from a phone actually works, so forgive me for any predictive-text-related screwups!

I'm currently sat in bed, when I should be I work, drinking cups of tea and nursing a stinking cold. So I thought I'd share my getting-over-a-cold-quickly routine.

First in my toolbox, is a spoon if manuka honey... I know I know, not entirely vegan, but the bees will have to forgive me with this one, as I swear it works wonders. You can literally feel the tea tree antiseptic qualities burn the back of you throat as it cleanses its way down.

Next is tea, and lots of it. I like to boil up a batch of yogi tea, as you can make a couple of pints of the stuff in a saucepan, leaving more time to sit in bed.

And if this doesn't work, I don't know what will! Boiled potatoes, with garlic and ginger gravy, boiled cabbage, and wild rocket garnish.

Ingredients
6 medium potatoes, sliced thickly
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tsp flour
1 tsp smoked paprika
1 chilli, sliced thinly
4 cloves garlic, minced
2" piece of ginger, finely chopped
3 giant cabbage leaves sliced thinly
Chopped rocket to garnish

First get a saucepan half full of water up to boil (a bit of salt helps), and throw in the potatoes to boil, they'll take between 10-15 minutes to cook. Check then with a fork to bake sure, then drain the water, and put the lid back on to keep them hot.

Meanwhile, make the dressing. Heat the oil in a cast iron skillet, and add the flour. Cook for a few minutes, until the flour starts to brown, then add the paprika and chilli. Cook for another few minutes, then add the garlic, ginger and about two cups of water. Now is a good time to add other nice things to the gravy, like a dash of soya sauce, some mustard, or seasoning, but if you're not feeling 100% like me, then this will still do nicely! Simmer the gravy down to a nice consistency, around 3 mins should do, then pour onto the cooked potatoes.

Throw the cabbage leaves into the now-empty skillet, add some boiling water, cover and cook for 5 minutes.

Combine everything together, and garnish with the chopped rocket.

Minimal washing up afterwards, quick and easy, and made up of things you might already have in your cupboard, (especially if you have wild rocket growing in your garden like I do!)

New Music Strategies

2011-06-21T22:28:00.003+01:00

After watching the livestream for New Music Strategies (#ampnms) I feel inspired to have a rant.

The Record Label
The "music industry" is working overtime to try and keep its stronghold on consumers money. The reason why? The industry focus way too much on stuff like piracy, and not nearly enough on satisfying their customers' needs.

For instance, not that long ago, it was almost impossible to buy a digital copy of music without it being riddled with some kind of DRM, rendering it useless and annoying to the end user. Why? Why would the music industry insist on its precious music being distributed in such a way as to make it more irritating to its intended audience?

And even now, they are still trying to impose silly restrictions to the customer - you can't buy a song on its own, you have to take the whole album. Or if you can buy a single song we'll make you pay the same price as an album. People don't like being ripped off - we're not stupid. If you say the CD costs £5 then a digital copy should cost maximum £3.50, otherwise we'll know you're trying to extort us.

And then there is the other end of the scale...

The Real Indy Musicians
These guys and girls and the lifeforce of music today, they are constantly battling the stereotypes of what music is and how it should be enjoyed. Employing such tactics as social media, twitter, facebook, blogs, soundcloud, bandcamp and others, to keep their fans up to date, and bypass the middlemen in distribution, marketing and the like, going directly to the consumer.

Whilst this is an excellent idea, it puts a lot of the workload on the artist to maintain their social media updates, working very hard with not a great deal of visibility to their intended audience.

And also on the consumer, who has to work out how to use proprietary websites and payment schemes, sign up to lots of different websites, and really work quite hard to "discover" new music.

The Missing Cog

I personally think there is a massive niche in the audio market at the moment. A tool that can deliver content as effectively as Spotify, that can recommend music in the same way as Amazon, and is as free as free can be to use, with no adverts, DRM or other stuff to drive the consumer crazy. It must be easier to gain music through it than torrents, and there must be no disadvantages to using it, over Usenet, or whatever the current flavour of "illegal" downloads happens to be.

We must accept that the pirates will always be ahead of the game, and so trying to stop them is a waste of time. Its the consumers we want to win the hearts of. The ones who are downloading music from ThePirateBay, simply because its the easiest (or only!) way to get music onto their Android phone, using their Gentoo Linux based system.

A distributed peer-to-peer system, where once paid for, a tune can be downloaded as MP3 locally as many times as needed, but can be listened to online easily too. Where the 100% of the money goes straight to the owner, not through the tool.

burfdaaay!

2010-11-08T14:34:00.004Z

Saturday 06/11/2010

Today marks the birthday of a legendary* drummer (*May not be legendary in all corners of the globe. Hey wait, do globes even have corners...?). To celebrate such a momentous occasion, a rather unusual activity had been chosen: Paintballing...because nothing says happy birthday like being shot in the ass with paint.

You really couldn't have picked a better day in the midst of autumn for running around in the woods, armed to the teeth with rifles and smoke grenades, as the sun was beaming merrily down upon us, and the chill in the air was barely noticeable with the adrenaline pumping through my veins. 500 tiny spheres of pain were handed out, along with some very fetching jump suits that looked like they had been washed a few too many times to qualify as camouflage.

2 teams, us vs "them"... the other team was composed mainly of kids, one was even on crutches, but this didn't lessen the satisfaction of tearing through their ranks to destroy them. I was willing to show some mercy at the beginning, and offer a painless surrender to any close-up encounters, but after one of the little rodents shot me multiple times in the butt after I had already been eliminated, my compassion evaporated as quickly as a cluster of stinging bruises appeared.

Paintball came to end and only a few injuries had been sustained. I'd been shot in the neck, directly between my mask, and clothing, which was quite unfortunate, being the only bit of exposed skin, but what hurt more were my feelings when I saw that the origin of the shot had come from a rogue teammate.

After freshening up a bit, we went to see the bonfire and fireworks, which was a nice surprise - I'd almost forgotten about celebrating people trying to blow up the parliament buildings.

Next up on the agenda was Sabai Sabai, a Thai restaurant where I had some very tasty Thai Green Curry, with rice, but not before a pint in Voodoo. After coming to terms with the impressive half a grand bill, we headed straight for somewhere slightly easier on the wallets. Satchwells was as cheap and cheerful as ever, more so because of the beer festival, where I got an interesting pint of vanilla flavoured beer.

Finally, we ended up in a random house party, hosted by Jim, Motorcade's front man, where we met people from all over globe, including drunk French people, Spanish people, crazy swedes (actually he was with us...!). I ended up watching Motorcade play into the early hours of the morning, which rounded off the evening very nicely.

If only every day was as fun as this one! Happy birthday tor :)

Cake in the Making

2010-09-25T12:36:00.002+01:00

My next project is to master the art of cake. The particular cake I'm aiming for requires a whole new baking discipline that I've never really experimented with before - icing.

My first few attempts at icing have usually ended up with a slurry of sugary grease, but there are plenty of awesome cake chefs out there to show us that decorating a cake isn't impossible. I still thought I'd better get some advice of a real pro before starting though, and now, armed with some sugary wisdom, I'm preparing for Cake Mark II.

You may be wondering what happened to Mark I? Well, this particular cake adventure is a top secret project, for a good friend's birthday, and I thought I better not post my preliminary findings in the unlikely event that he somehow stumbles on the page and ruins the surprise! But here it is now!

Icing/Frosting
Here are some potential recipes I've found so far:
Rich Vanilla Frosting Not so keen on this one, as it uses soya milk powder, which is sold here at a whopping £10 minimum. Creamy White Frosting interesting looking recipe here - vinegar seems like an odd addition though...

In Other News
Other than cake, here's a few other things I've made in the last couple of weeks:

Coconut custard pie and tarts

Left over custard, decorated with one of my cute borage flowers from the back garden, dessicated coconut, and chocolate ganache

A Night In The Caribbean

2010-08-15T13:39:00.002+01:00

"Carribean Food". That's what I promised for my next poker evening. So now I've got to work out exactly what that is, before I go to the supermarket in a few minutes, to inevitably realise that supermarkets don't have yukas, plantains or any other carribean items that my recipes call for!

So far my research is leading me to some kind of rice and beans combination as being a fairly traditional. Apparently the trick to this kind of dish is in the "sofrito", which is a sauce made from frying together finely chopped onions, garlic, pepper, corriander and oregano in olive oil, for around 15-30 minutes. Mix that with some precooked kidney/black beans, and serve mixed into some plain rice, and thats that. Dish #1.

Allspice seems like an essential flavour too, the spice of the carribean. So does rum. But how can I incorporate those things with the quinesential plantains and pineapples to create some kind of stew to go with the rice? Sounds more like a cocktail so far! (Well, that's certainly one way to make sure I win the poker!)

Merry Christmas!

2009-12-19T10:06:00.002Z

As I have been extremely lazy with my poor blog in the past couple of months, I thought I'd wish the world a merry Christmas!

Hopefully in the new year, I'll be back to gourmet cuisine, rather than eating meals out of a can, as with any luck, the game I'm working on will be finished!

Soughdough Bread

2009-07-25T12:22:00.004+01:00

So you've been feeding your sourdough bread for the past week, and are now wondering "what now?!" Well for a start, you can add some of your starter to any bread recipe, to make it more interesting. Every time you use it, make sure to replenish what you take, so you've got some for next time!

But for something special, look to the classic soughdough recipes. Pane All'olio is a tasty Italian bread, with its distincitive sour characteristics combining nicely with the olive oil. The secret to a great crust on your bread is to cook it in a very hot oven, on an unglazed terracotta tile, and make sure to mist the sides of the oven with water during the first 10 minutes of cooking. If you're lucky, your local tile shop may simply give you one of their tiles. To transport your dough onto the hot tile, its useful to have a "bakers peel" - a thin flat shovel, either wooden or metal. Also a large piece of unbleached linen cloth is a useful item to get hold of, for letting the dough rest in, to give it its shape. Dough tends not to stick to linen, if its well floured. (A tea towel would also work)

Down to business! Here's how to make another Italian favourite:

Ciabatta
¾ cups / 160ml / 6 fl oz Sourdough Starter
1 cup white flour
¾ cup water
325 g / 11½ oz / 3 cups white flour (I used "brown" for added nutriants. Probably half wholemeal/white would also work, but you may need slightly more water to compensate)
200 ml / 7 fl oz / 1 scant cup tepid water
¼ tsp active dry yeast
½ tsp sugar
30 ml / 2 tbsp soya milk
30 ml / 2 tbsp olive oil
1½ tsp salt

Put the ¾ cups soughdough starter into a large bowl, making sure to replenish your remaining starter with equal amounts of white flour and water.
To your bowl, add the 1 cup white flour and ¾ cup water, mix well for 10 minutes, folding the mixture using a spoon to try to capture as much air as possible.
Cover your bowl and leave overnight (at least 12 hours) at room temperature.
The next day, your soughdough should be healthy and bubbling a little, ready for some leavening action.
Add the remainder of the flour on top of the starter, and make a well in the centre. Add tepid water to the centre, and then the yeast and sugar, stirring a little to dissolve, and leave the yeast to activate and start to bubble, (15 mins)
Add the remainder of the ingrediants, and mix into a fairly wet dough. Continue to knead for 10 minutes, trying not to add too much more flour if its too sticky - the dough should be like this.
Leave in a warm area for 1 hour, until trippled in size.
Divide into 2 portions, and, trying not to expel too much air, tip dough onto a well floured piece of linen, and gently shape into loaves.
Preheat your oven, with the baking stone/tile, to 220 degrees celsius.
Leave to rise for a further 30 mins, then tip each loaf in turn onto your peel, and into the very hot oven, onto your baking stone/tile.
Mist the sides of the oven with water, and again every 3 minutes for the next 10.
Bake for a total of 30 minutes, then remove from oven and leave to cool on a wire rack. The underside should sound hollow when tapped.

So, armed with a litter of freshly baked ciabatta loaves, I set off this afternoon to a friends house for a Sunday roast. My loaves were promptly cut into slices, and served up with some olive oil and balsamic vinegar, and didn't last long, as we waited for the main dish to be served.

Amy had done a fantastic job with the main course, and I was extremely well catered for. I had roast potatoes and parsnips, stuffed portabello mushrooms, with boiled carrots and french beans on the side, and applesauce on top. For dessert, I had a fruit salad all to myself, full of strawberries, kiwi, orange and apple. Simply delicious!

Cheers!

Loafing Around

2009-07-04T19:22:00.004+01:00

Walking down the streets of London, a breath of fresh air is an unexpected pleasure, but as I wondered around, past Le Pain Quotidien, I was greeted by the most sensational aroma. Fresh sourdough bread being baked. Its just one of those things that instantly makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside.

For the past couple of months I've been trying to get into bread baking. I've learnt quite a few things, one being that it ain't easy. Baking bread seems to be more science than art, a long way off from my normal kitchen craft of throwing things together, and fixing the taste as you go.

To me, Sourdough bread is the cordon bleu of the breads, so I decided that if I was going to get into baking bread, I may as well aim for the best.

It gives bread character - plenty of aroma and flavour
It is essential when trying to make loaves with high percentages of rye flour, good for lower gluten recipes
The bread last longer, being more resistant to other molds
Soughdough bread is cheaper to make, as you can reduce, or even remove the amount of yeast the recipe calls for

Making The Sourdough Starter
The goal here is to make a batter from flour and water, which is full of yeast and a strain of good bacteria, which can live happily together for years to come, as long as you keep it active.
Start off with a bowl that can hold around 4 cups.

The Chef
0.6ml / 1/8 tsp dried yeast
50g / 2 oz / ½ cup organic white/rye flour
45ml 3 tbsp dechlorinated water

Flour natually contains microorganisms that can help create a good culture in your starter. To give it all the chance it needs, organic flour is best. Rye flour is also a good way of introducting good bacteria to the starter, so substuting in small amounts of rye at the start is a good idea. Tap water contains quite a lot of chlorine which can defeat our good bacteria, allowing bad ones to take hold later on, so either boiling, or leaving water in sunlight for a few hours will help (chloramine is unaffected by these methods, so if you live in one of those areas, it might be harder creating a good starter from scratch).

To make the "Chef": Mix the yeast and flour(s) together in your bowl. Gradually add the water with a metal spoon, and mix to a stiff dough. Cover with oiled cling film, and leave in a warm place for 2 - 3 days.

Break open the crust on the Chef. The middle should be aerated and sweet smelling. Add the "1st refreshment":

The 1st Refreshment
65ml / 4½ tbsp water
115g / 4 oz / 1 cup white flour

Mix in the water and flour to form a fairly stiff dough. Replace film and leave for 2 days in a warm place.

The Levain
115ml / 4 fl oz / ½ cup water
115g / 4 oz / 1 cup white flour

Add water and flour, and knead into a "basic dough". Leave for 8 hours with a damp dish towel to cover, at room temperature. The sourdough starter is now ready to be used in a loaf. Don't use all of it, mind! Whenever you use some (between ½ and ¾ of the starter), you should replenish what you take with equal parts flour and water (by weight)

Using The Starter
When its time to make some bread, take your starter out of the fridge and leave to warm up to room temperature (if storing in the fridge, which is a good idea if you don't make bread every other day or so). Take the quantity needed for the recipe (no more than ¾ of the total), and note the weight that you've removed. Replenish this with equal quantities of water and flour (by weight), and mix into a smooth batter. Leave the starter mixture until it starts to bubble, before returning to the fridge, anywhere between 3 - 8 hours should be fine.

Well, that should keep you busy for around a week, so I've got a bit of time to perfect the best sourdough loaf recipe ever! Stay tuned...

Barcelona Days 1 and 2

2009-06-27T17:51:00.002+01:00

Day 1
Monday morning starts a little hazily, probably as a result of Anke's delicious Baileys-style cocktails that we were drinking into the early hours of Sunday morning. It is still technically the morning after, as 3 hours sleep in a cheap and cheerful youth hostel in the centre of Camdon doesn't really count as a good night's sleep.

There are last minute preparations to be made, before I head out. Water the plants; check passport; learn Catalan; decide what we should do for this upcoming week... I didn't manage to do everything on my list before heading to the airport, but at least the plants didn't feel neglected.

I found out in the airport that politics is about as taboo as talking about the ethics of food, and the best thing to say about nationalism when surrounded by foreigners is nothing. Hypothesizing what would happen if lightning struck a plane in middair seemed to lighten the mood, until torrential rain delayed our plane from taking off.

And then we were off!

There weren't many hours left in the day by time we'd settled into our awesome apartment in the middle of Gràcia, so we didn't stray far for our first round of Estrellas, followed by some food from a place called Ugarit. There seemed to be a reasonable selection of Middle-Eastern-style food here, including falafels and cous cous, and I ended up with a wrap filled mostly with houmous, which is what you get when trying to stress how much you don't want any other sauces, "only houmous". The free shots of beer was a nice touch.

Day 2
We were all up bright and early in the morning, which was a nice change, and the first port of call was the supermarket for some supplies. We'd decided to do a bit of cooking in the apartment, to save on money, and also to accomodate my taste buds, which I definitely appreciated. It was either that, or drag my friends to a vegan restaurant (of which there are plenty in Barcelona), and have them complain about "organic tasting" or "bland" food, or worse, go to a regular restaurant, where I would inevitably get given genuinely bland and organic-tasting food, or simply food I couldn't/wouldn't eat. Cooking at home was definitely the best option, although I was slightly concerned about how much they really cared, when one of them decided to get some unsuitable pasta, saying it was probably OK because it didn't have pictures of eggs on the packaging like the others...

After depositing some extremely heavy shopping, and a quick mid-afternoon snack to keep us going, we headed back into the city making our way from the fountains at Catalunya Square to the Gothic Quarter.

Barcelona is a beautiful city to walk around. Each quarter has its own personality, and to me, the Gothic quarter is exactly how I imagined Barcelona to be, with its narrow cobbled alleys snaking their way around old churches, unique architecture, cafés and bars. Amongst the plethora of artisan bakeries, delicatessens and pharmacies, there just isn't any need for supermarkets. Buying from these tiny shops is a much more tangible experience than self service in a supermarket, or worse, internet shopping.

We walked all the way down to the port, and all the way back on La Rambla, stopping off along the way for refreshments, including beer at a microbrewery. Wearing my big clunky boots may have seemed like a stupid idea in Barcelona, but at least this long walk left me unscathed. One of the others with less sensible footwear wasn't quite so lucky, and by time we got back I was thinking we might have to amputate his foot, or at least feed him some beer, to ease any pain. The second option seemed to be more favoured, and went well with the spaghetti we'd thrown together for dinner.

Milk

2009-05-25T23:58:00.002+01:00

"Why don't you drink milk?" and "Where do you get calcium from?", because of course, everyone knows that cow's milk is packed full off goodness... [1]

Calcium is an important mineral, essential for maintaining healthy bones. Cow's milk is usually cited as the number one source of calcium in a person's diet, thanks to some good advertising from people who make a lot of money off of the dairy industry. However it is the advertisment companies who encourage the population to make the leap from "dietry calcium is good for bones" and "milk contains calcium", to "milk is good for healthy bones". The paper that the Got Milk advertisment company cite for their heath claim linking milk to healthy bones makes no claims at all about the relationship between drinking milk and fending off osteoporosis. [2]

In fact, it is becoming increasingly obvious that cow's milk is a poor source of calcium among adults [3]. Cow's milk is slightly acidic, with a pH of 6.4 - 6.8[4][5] and contains various substances which create an acidic environment in the blood. Milk isn't the only substance that does this; fizzy drinks, caffeine, refined sugar, and most animal proteins all have the same effect. To re-balance the bloods pH, calcium from the blood is used up, causing more calcium to be leached from bones to correct the levels.[6][7] Calcium "buffers" the blood's pH, to make sure it doesn't leave the acceptable range between 7.35 - 7.45. Prolonged ingestion of foods which form acidic inorganic compounds, if not balanced out properly with alkali forming foods, can cause all kinds of health complaints, including long term calcium definitency.

As infants, milk plays an important role in development, including the growth of bones. Cow's milk is unacceptable at an early age, due to its composition being suited for young calfs, and not human babies. As the child grows older, and starts eating solid food, the production of the enzyme responsible for breaking down lactose slows, and in many people, stops altogether, leaving the sugar undigested in the intestines. This can lead to a range of digestive complaints, as the micro-organisms living in the gut feed on the sugar, and producing unwanted toxins and byproducts due to fermentation. 75% of the world's adult population are lactose intolerant to some degree.[8]

Unsurprisingly, calcium is abundant from all kinds of different vegetables. After all, cows and other herbivores have to get it from somewhere right? Dark green leafy vegetables (except spinach, due to high levels of oxalic acid), broccoli being one of the best sources. Sesame seeds are another great source of calcium.

Ignoring milk's "niché" nutritional benifits, we are left with a questionable beverage. High levels of cholesterol and saturated fat, and a splattering of somatic cells (aka pus, which is found naturally in all mammal milk, but increased if that mammal has mastitis, as is often the case with dairy cows). To top all those unique selling points, Posilac, a hormone used to increase milk production in cows pushed the dairy industry into uncharted waters. As far as we know, milk may or may not contain byproducts due to this artifical hormone, which may have an effect on human heath. May. Who knows? Luckily its now a banned drug in the UK, but what will they come up with next to squeeze more money out of the dairy cash cow.

So the question should really be "Why would I want to drink milk?"

References
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calcium#cite_note-Weaver-17
2. http://www.gotmilk.com/pdf/715_s.pdf
3. http://www.thehealthierlife.co.uk/natural-health-articles/osteoporosis/calcium-rich-foods-00467.html
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milk
5. http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/116/4/921
6. http://www.fresh-network.com/acatalog/calcium-in-a-nutshell.html
7. http://www.trans4mind.com/nutrition/pH.html
8. Suarez FL, Savaiano DA: Diet, genetics and lactose intolerance. Food Technol 51:74-76, 1997

Back To Basics

2009-05-24T10:10:00.002+01:00

Most people go for ice cream, others go for a bottle of wine. My comfort food is a big bowl of noodle soup. Whether it be cold winter nights, long uni days, or just getting home from work at 9pm, a bowl of this never fails to hit the spot.

Soba noodles are my favourite, mainly for their taste, but also because I prefer to not eat wheat based staple for every meal. Clearspring do some nice 100% buckwheat noodles.

Noodles (serves 2)
1 bundle soba noodles (80g)
3 dried shitake
1 tbsp sunflower oil
1 onion
1 chili
3 cloves of garlic
1/2" piece of ginger
1/2 carrot
few slices of daicon
1 courgette
handful of broccoli florets
1 tsp soya sauce
1 tsp dark miso
1/2 tsp rice vinegar
2 tsp mirin
1 tsp sesame oil
Dried seaweed

- Rehydrate the mushrooms in a cup of hot water.
- Fry the onion, garlic, ginger and chili in the oil, for 4 minutes
- Finely slice the root vegetables, and add these with the soya sauce
- Add the chopped courgette, and broccoli, along with the liquid from the mushrooms. Bring to the boil.
- Add the miso paste, and stir until dissolves, then add the noodles.
- Bring back to the boil, then cover and simmer for 10 minutes.
- Add the vinegar, mirin, sesame oil, and seaweed, and stir in.

Dinner Party

2009-03-22T10:34:00.002Z

I woke up with a feeling that today was something to look forward to, and after eagerly checking my calendar, I discovered that dinner at a collegues's house was on the agenda. Not just any collegue, but the only other vegan in the entire of the company I work for.

Dinner with friends is one of my favourite activities for sure. I like food, and I like friends! But having friends cook for me, a rare occasion in itself, can sometimes be less than inspiring if they are having to cook differently to how they normally cook, just for me.

And its to be expected - I wouldn't expect a Mexican to be able to cook up a great bit of sushi for a Japanese guest, but he'd sure know how to make a damn fine burrito. Although don't get me wrong, I have had some truly delicious meals cooked up for me by some of my closest omniviouous friends.

Having a vegan couple cook up a dinner party is a different kettle of fish. Vegans know how to cook vegan, what tastes good, and what doesn't. How to make traditional dishes without just leaving out any non-vegan elements, but substituting in something that will work. How to get the most flavour out of food, without simply throwing salt it. Thats the advantage of eating healthily.

Enter the vegan dinner. This wasn't just your average one-pot meal for 6. This was a 3 course banquet, with printed menu and everything - the whole nine yards. And it was superb! For starters, we had falafels with tahini dressing, and salad, with pina-colada and puppodums to wet the appetite further. Then came a thai curry for the main meal. Followed by the simply wonderful chocolate torte, served with raspberry coulis and soya cream. We also had one of my quinoa and almond muffins that I'd baked earlier, which looked a little out of place amongst such royalty, but actually went quite nicely with the sauces!

So there you have it!

The Queen Of Tarts

2009-03-04T00:11:00.005Z

Not to be outdone easily, by the food venues of London, I decided to try my hand at one of my favourite desserts. This recipe has been optimized over the years by my Mum, originally coming from a big not-even-vegetarian hardback cookbook, which is so old that the front page has been bleached colourless by the sun.

Bakewell Tart
(makes 12)

For the pasty

6 oz (170 g) Plain Flour
¼ tsp Salt
1 ½ oz (40 g) Solid vegetable fat (Trex)
1 ½ oz (40 g) Margarine
1-2 tbsp Water

For the filling

4 oz (110 g) Margarine
4 oz (110 g) Sugar
1 oz (30 g) Ground almonds
3 oz (90 g) Rice flour
½ tsp Almond essence
1 tsp Baking powder
1-2 tbsp Soya milk
4 tbsp Blackberry jam

To make the pasty, rub together the flour, salt and fat, until it resembles breadcrumbs. Add gradually water to form a dough.

Roll out dough, and cut into 12 circles. Place in shallow muffin tray, and bake at 160ºC for 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, make the filling. Melt margarine, and add the sugar. Cook for 1 minute, then leave to cool slightly. Add all the other ingredients, except the milk and jam, and combine. Add enough milk to get a dropping consistency.

Into each pastry case, add a teaspoon of jam, and cover with a tablespoon of the filling.

Bake for 25 minutes, at 160ºC, until golden brown.

Whats For Dessert?

2009-03-03T22:27:00.002Z

Like a rollercoaster, the past few months have flown past, with plenty of ups and downs, and barely no time to stop and take stock. Wheeling and diving around the office has taken up most of the time, on this bumpy ride. Spiraling up towards the final milestone, there are still a few revolutions to make before it'll be finished, and I can jump off onto something a bit more relaxing.

All the extra time spent in the office has meant I've had to be a little more creative with my food, as dinner at home is becoming a luxury that I'm starting to miss.

On the flip side, being so busy during the week makes you really appreciate your spare time. Saturdays and Sundays are no longer spent idle, which would be a waste of such a precious commodity. Even staying in bed past 9 in the morning seems like a waste of time. Travelling to London is my favourite way of spending my weekend. There are so many nice places to look round, interesting people to meet, and plenty of restaurants that serve way more than the ubiquitous salad ala chips.

I've discovered that a slice of cheesecake is an activity in itself. I've never liked the sound of this particular dessert. Two seemingly incompatible things rolled into one word, sounds about as appetizing as curry flavoured fruit smoothie. However, not wanting to judge a book by anything less than the words within, I took the plunge, starting with a slice of Inspiral's rasberry cheesecake.

And oh my! It's cool velvety berry filling melted instantly in my mouth, like icecream. Not too sweet, which made it quite easy to knock back, and it sure hit the spot.

Next up on the hitlist, from the same venue, was the tiramisu:

This had a distinct coffee type flavour, and is apparently one of their most popular numbers. Personally, it was my least favourite of the bunch - the white layers tasted a bit like raw sugar mixed with margarine, sandwiching together damp coffee infused hobnob crumbs. I'm guessing that's probably what it was, which was slightly dissapointing at £3.20 a slice.

Finally I made it to Mildreds for the somewhat pricier Chocolate and Raspberry Truffle Torte, weighing in at just under £5.

This one was totally worth every penny, and blew the others out of the water. Similar in texture to the rasberry cheesecake, but with a much more intense chocolate flavour, it was the clear winner. My only complaint with this one, besides the inevitably slow table service, in this ever-busy restaurant, was the icing sugar. Made it look pretty, sure, but made every bite quite treachourous, if you accidentally breathed in too much whilst eating it. Icing sugar in the lungs isn't the most pleasurable of experiences.

Work Christmas Party

2008-12-22T15:17:00.002Z

The Christmas Party is something to be enjoyed or endured by the whole of the working class. It could be a quick beer down the local with a couple of colleagues, or it could be a fancy 5 course meal in the most expensive restaurant in town. Whether you look forward to this annual occasion, or dread it, it will inevitably come crashing down on you like a ton of elves around this time of year.

For me, the menu is usually the biggest worry, as there is rarely anything even remotely vegan on it. And I've heard some truly horrific stories about how badly a Christmas meals can turn out if you aren't careful.

So it came as quite a relief when I was asked to email the chef with exactly wanted. I had to think long and hard about this, as I wanted to get the most exciting meal possible, without pushing the boundaries so far that the chef decided that a salad would be easier. Its like trying to pick your lowest price when trying to barter.

I don't think I was adventurous as I could've been. I chose a rocket salad for starter, stuffed aubergine for main, and I left the dessert option to the chef's imagination, forwarding on my favourite blog as reference to some awesome desserts that would've been great. Turns out his imagination wasn't as far reaching as mine, and I ended up with the ubiquitous fruit salad.

All in all though, the chef did very well, and I'm looking forward to my next opportunity to create my own personal menu. And after a sufficient amount of drinking and gambling, and a fair few chocolate truffles that I'd brought along, the fruit salad had been forgotten.

Budapest

2008-12-08T15:18:00.003Z

Continuing on with the Eastern European exploration, my latest adventure was to the capital of Hungary. There is something charming with these countries that is hard to quantify, but always leaves me with a thirst for more. Maybe I've gotten used to going to all the touristy areas with my parents, but it feels refreshing to being in a place where you feel like you are walking amongst "their" world, rather than a world that has been retrofitted for tourists.

Okay so Budapest has its fair share of tourist shops selling a plethora of scarfs, Russian dolls, magical boxes and bottles of the local beverages, but on the whole, most of the restaurants, pubs and parks seem to be tailored for and used by the locals. Which is what I want when I'm on holiday - I want to have my beer in an authentic Hungarian cellar bar, not an English bar!

And conveniently, such a bar was right on our doorstep, which is where we ended up on quite a few occasions! Ever since returning from Prague I've been longing to having more of the Bavarian style dark lager, and Hungary certainly didn't disappoint. And to my delight, this delicious malty drink was served in whopping one litre Maßkrüge glasses.

Traditionally, Hungary is perhaps the least vegan friendly city imaginable, and it really was a struggle to find something to eat in a regular restaurant. I had come prepared with a piece of paper describing exactly what I could and couldn't eat, in Hungarian, and it helped to drive the point home. However, I wouldn't stake my life on everything I ate being entirely suitable for vegans. Good thing I'm not allergic to anything.

Luckily the abundance of tearooms made up for the lack of restaurants, I think I must've drank my body weight in tea! And there were a few vegan restaurants that I got to try during our stay, Darshan Biopont being the most memorable, where I had a sampled some extremely delicious cake!

So, I will now reveal what my new toy was: A camera! My purple friend was actually "Pain" from Hercules, but I've had him for years - he was simply modelling for me. So I've finally managed to get my hands on an awesome photo-taking machine in time for this holiday, allowing me to take much better photos than my mobile phone would allow. I just have to learn how to use it now!

A New Toy?

2008-10-25T20:14:00.002+01:00

And so halloween is again descending upon us. Trick-or-treating and bonfires aside, there are a few things looming ahead, which need a bit of preparation. Firstly, a scarey costume, so I don't stand out from the crowd next Friday. Next is a pumpkin, with eyes and a mouth, because lets face it, a halloween without pumpkins with faces is like christmas without presents. Lastly, I need to get my lazy butt into gear, and make me some halloween themed treats, possibly involving said pumpkin, killing two metaphorical birds with one big stone, or in this case, big orange gourd.

10 cookies if you can name my new toy :) The clue is in the photo.

Dealing with the Masses

2008-10-24T23:30:00.002+01:00

"You just have to this party, it'll be fun!", my sister told me a few weeks ago. Only after I'd agreed to trek down to London, did she mention that she actually wanted me to cater for it! Apparently, the host had actually requested my sushi. I'm sure he must've read about the legendary last batch which turned out so well...! Or maybe he just likes sushi. Anyways, I like a good challenge, so I went for it.

I planned to go to the Japan Centre for essential sushi-making supplies the day before, but after a slight detour to a pub, followed by a salsa club, and then a quick kip for a few hours, it seemed like my day of preparation had dissappeared, and had been replaced by a few hours before the next party in which to improvise up some much-anticipated sushi. A quick trip to the local supermarket didn't yield a lot - no special sushi rice, not even any tamari! I had to make do with plain old shortgrain rice. I even ended up buying some placemats, which looked a bit like something you could use to roll sushi. Luckily I had bought the nori with me, which was a good thing, else it would've had to have been nachos...

With all the ad-hoc cookery going on, I was expecting a bit of a disaster, but by the end of the afternoon, I was the proud owner of a several plates of delicious looking sushi! My single previous sushi session must've been a good enough training experience to let me loose on a sheet of nori and some rice.

They didn't last long I can tell you. A success!

An Excerpt

2008-09-24T23:05:00.002+01:00

"We will eat," I told him. "Good," he said, holding the photograph very near to his face. Sammy Davis, Junior, Junior was persisting to cry. "One thing, though," the hero said.
"What?"
"You should know..."
"Yes?"
"I am a...how to say this..."
"What?"
"I'm a..."
"You are very hungry, yes?"
"I'm a vegetarian."
"I do not understand."
"I don't eat meat"
"Why not?"
"I just don't"
"How can you not eat meat?"
"I just don't"
"He does not eat meat," I told Grandfather.
"Yes he does," he informed me.
"Yes you do" I likewise informed the hero.
"No. I don't"
"Why not?" I inquired him again.
"I just don't. No meat"
"Pork?"
"No."
"Meat?"
"No meat."
"Steak?"
"Nope."
"Chickens?"
"No."
"Do you eat veal?"
"Oh, God. Absolutely no veal."
"What about sausage?"
"No."
"No sausage either?" I told Grandfather this, and he presented me a very bothered look.
"What is wrong with him?" he asked.
"What is wrong with you" I asked him.
"Its just the way I am" he said
"Hamburger?"
"No."
"Tongue?"
"What did he say is wrong with him?" Grandfather asked.
"It is just the way he is"
"Does he eat sausage?"
"No."
"No sausage!"
"No. He says he does not eat sausage."
"In truth?"
"That is what he says."
"But sausage..."
"I know."
"In truth you do not eat any sausage?"
"No sausage."
"No sausage," I told Grandfather. He closed his eyes and tried to put his arms around his stomach, but there was not room because of the wheel. It appeared like he was becoming sick because the Hero would not eat sausage. "Well, let him deduce what he is going to eat. We will go to the most proximal restaurant."
"You are a schmuch" I informed the Hero.
"You are not using the word correctly,", he said.
"Yes I am," I said.

"What do you mean he does not eat meat?" the waitress asked, and Grandfather put his head in his hands. "What is wrong with him?" she asked.
"Which? The one who does not eat mean, the one with his head in his hands, or the bitch who is masticating her tail?"
"The one who does not eat meat."
"It is only the way that he is." The hero asked what we were talking about.
"They do not have anything without meat," I informed him.
"He does not eat any meat at all?" she inquired me again.
"It is merely the way he is," I told her.
"Sausage?"
"No sausage," Grandfather answered to the waitress, rotating his head from here to there.
"Maybe you could eat some meat" I suggested to the hero, "because they do not have anything that is not meat."
"Don't they have potatoes or something?" he asked.
"Do you have potatoes?" I asked the waitress. "Or something"
"You only receive a potato with the meat," she said. I told the hero.
"Couldn't I just get a plate of potatoes?"
"What?"
"Couldn't I get two or three potatoes, without meat?"
I asked the waitress, and she said she would go to the chef and inquire him.
"Ask him if he eats liver," Grandfather said.

The waitress returned and said, "Here is what I have to say. We can make concessions to give him two potatoes, but they are served with a piece of meat on the plate. The chef says that this cannot be negotiated. He will have to eat it."
"Two potatoes fine?" I asked the hero.
"Oh, that would be great"
Grandfather and I both ordered the pork steak, and ordered one for Sammy Davis, Junior, Junior as well, who was becoming sociable with the hero's leg.

Everything Is Illuminated, by Jonathan Safran Foer

I started reading this book a week ago, and am really getting into it now! I found this passage really rather funny, and familiar at the same time, after some of my previous debacles in Prague. Which is particularly appropriate to mention, now that I have just booked a flight to Budapest for late November, and expect to go through a similar trial when my friends inevitably drag me to one of the more traditional restaurants that Hungary has to offer.

Incidentally, my boss is from Hungary, and had a great(!) story to tell of one of his experiences of eating our there with a vegetarian. Him and some colleagues, including the poor unsuspecting veggie guy, had a table booked in one such traditional restaurant. On arrival, to the guy's horror, goose was the only thing on the menu. Goose pie, goose steak, goose soup. You name it, it was made out of goose. So when the vegetarian asked the waiter if there was anything at all that he could have, the waiter went away and asked the chef, and came back excitedly, saying that it could be done. Eventually, the food was bought out, and it turned out that the chef's idea of a good dish suitable for such a diet was some bread soaked in goose fat.

Anyway, read the book! Its great - a really compelling mixture of humour, mystery, tragedy and love.

Social Food

2008-08-24T10:17:00.003+01:00

I like food as much as the next guy, but more often than not, I find myself throwing my ingredients into a saucepan with only my hunger to drive me. Sometimes I won't have even decided what the final meal will be until half way through cooking it, as they all start of the same, relying only on the herbs/spices and the staple they are served with to define them. Cooking for one just isn't very inspiring!

So when I get the chance to cook for friends or family, I always jump at the chance! Having real people appreciate your food is a lot like giving presents at Christmas - you get that same warm and fuzzy feeling of satisfaction, any time of the year.

Yesterday it was sunny enough to coax me outside, and I ended up walking along the canal for about an hour, ending up in the neighbouring town. The local fruit and veg market was on, and I couldn't resist - I ended up buying kilos of tomatoes, avocadoes, courgettes, mushrooms, strawberries, cherries and a couple of interesting breads that I've never tried before - chive ciabatta and a rustic looking round loaf of sourdough.

One of my oldest friends was back here for the weekend (known him since I was 3!), so I invited him and his girlfriend over for dinner. There was only one thing I knew to do with a kilo of tomatoes, so pasta it was. To go with it, I roasted some mushrooms, an onion, courgette, and marinated tofu in the oven, and also toasted some of my ciabatta bread. It was a feast, (ie I was stuffed!).

A close second place to cooking for other people, is being fed by other people. This is a much rarer event, as most non-vegans are usually fairly convinced that without their favourite ingrediants, food is impossible to make. I'd probably be the same if I had to cater for someone on an even more resrictive diet: "How can I cook anything without heat?! Here have some lettuce" I would say to a raw vegan...!

Anyway, the other day, one of the veggie guys at work took the vegan challenge and had a couple of people round for dinner. He did very well! Potato and leek soup for a starter, vegan burger, with roasted potatoes and parsnips, brocoli, cauliflower and spinach, and a kind of nut roast. It reminded me of a typical Christmas meal in my parents house! And as if that wasn't enough, there was also dessert:

Some oat cookies I made earlier in the morning for everyone, loosely based on VCon's Chewy Oatmeal-Raisin Cookies, which went down well, and also:

Which we also made earlier that day, from my friend's German cookbook. I couldn't read any of the recipe, or even the name of it, so she had to translate it for me as we cooked it. It was a kind of sweet lemony rice pudding, with grapes and pine nuts. I was sceptical at first, as it sounded very bizarre, but I was pleasently surprised! The lemon counteracted the sweetness of the risotto rice quite well, and any recipe that involves a bottle of wine in the making can't be that bad!

Crafty!

2008-08-02T20:06:00.004+01:00

Programming doesn't sound particularly creative does it? But working in the games industry sometimes surprises me with opportunities to release my creative side. In a way, games programming is a lot like cooking - creating something fun from pretty much nothing. The satisfaction I get from getting my friends to play my latest game, or eat my food is all I need to make it totally worth it!

Somewhere inside me is an artist trapped, and trying to escape, inspired by such creative blogs as Hannah's, and random friends who like to make their own clothes. A while back, fuelled by this inspiration, I invested in some new tools to help turn a ball of wool into whatever my imagination demanded, and started to learn the basics. Several weeks later, this is what I ended up with:

Any budding crochetters can find the recipe here: Melon Ball the Kitty. He's the only thing I've made so far, and made a nice present for the same person who encouraged me to try out crochet in the first place.

Making such personalised presents for people is also really satisfying, so I didn't stop there - for my sister's birthday, I managed to make these funky pillows:

I'm looking forward to my next crafty adventure!

My New Favourite Rock

2008-07-22T23:44:00.002+01:00

Returning from Ibiza, I bought with me a mere two souvenirs - a stick, and a rock. I feel more compelled to talk about the rock, as its not just any old rock. (Although I did find it on the beach). Its my new multi-purpose kitchen tool.

I've found it to be useful breaking up giant bricks of frozen chickpeas into more manageable sizes, pounding whole spices into dust, hammering nails into walls, and most recently, reducing linseeds into powder in under 10 seconds flat. Which is a lot speedier than last time. So with the help of my new igneous friend, I whipped up a batch of quinoa muffins in whirlwind speeds, and they turned out great!

What other applications will I find for my rock I wonder? I bet it would make a great cookbook-keeper-opener...

Eivissa

2008-06-19T21:50:00.003+01:00

Having to wake up at 2 in the morning, it hardly seemed worth going to bed at all. I was tempted to play computer games into the early hours of the morning, knowing that it would be the last opportunity for a whole fortnight, but a small part of my brain must've kicked in at around 10, overriding my sense of tiredness, and before long, I was fast asleep.

Fast forward 24 hours, and here we are, sat in an Indian restaurant in a different time zone. My first impression of the island was much the same as what I expected: shops selling beach gear, English pubs, and of course, lots of tourists. The whole metropolis seemed to have been built for the sole purpose of catering for travellers, but at that point, being catered for was exactly what we needed. No matter where you are in the world, you can almost always rely on Indian cuisine to feed a pack of hungry vegans, providing they A. Cook it themselves, and B. Understand what the hell you are talking about, and luckily the place we had stumbled across seemed to fit the bill.

This particular plate of food was nothing to write home about, (you may even wonder why I'm even writing about it at all...) But I managed to get a non-blurred photo of it, which is more than I can say for some of the others, which were mostly gobbled up so quickly that by time I thought about taking a photo, the empty plates had already been take away.

We sampled food in every Indian restaurant that we found (which oddly wasn't that many), although one of them we wish we hadn't. The scenario will be all too familiar to your average vegan. We arrived at the Curry Club, and were drawn in by the impressive garden that we would get to sit in. However when they bought out our food, my spider sense started to tingle. The bowl of insipid green sludge descended onto our table like a dark cloud, and after exchanging looks of suspicion, I began to probe the sorry excuse for a curry with my spoon. The consistency and appearance of pesto and its dubious aroma confirmed my suspicions, but it was too late for my parents, who had carelessly doled it out onto their plates. The waiter assured us that it was fine, but I knew from years of cooking experience that they would have had to work very hard to produce such food without the aid of an awful lot of dairy products. Needless to say, it ruined the meal.

After that, we tried several pizza restaurants out, and no one had a problem producing a cheese free pizza, but in general we tried to steer clear of gluten-filled dishes (Mum's preference). For lunch, it was mostly home-made sandwiches made from pumpernickel bread, rather than the freshly baked baguettes whose scent filled the air around the local grocery shops. Not that I minded - I love the taste of rye bread, providing that the rye flavour hasn't been usurped by caraway seeds.

Out of all the restaurants we had stumbled across that could make a worthy meal for us, not many were left once bread-based foods were removed from the equation. In fact, it pretty much just left curry.

So for a bit of a change, I made a meal back in the apartment. Creating a meal out of nothing was indeed quite a feat, as there was no oil to fry in, no condiments (save a couple of sachets of black pepper saved from a previous holiday), and no herbs. Improvisation was on the menu.

Amazingly it turned out to be quite tasty indeed! I managed to fry up some onions in enough crushed garlic to sink a city full of vampires, threw in some courgettes, a red bell pepper, some unduly expensive mushrooms, and a jar of some unidentified precooked white beans, and simmered the whole lot in some tomato juice. I even managed a side-dish of fried tofu pieces, as I had previously found some plain firm tofu on sale, which I had pressed dry, and then marinated in the juice from a jar of artichokes, some wild rosemary and more garlic.

On our last day, we found the most amazing town, called Sant Joan, which for some reason had been populated by an unusual amount of German hippies. A good handful of vegan-friendly restaurants and shops had sprung up here, which was a very welcome sight! I bought myself a cute little almond macaroon from one place, a nice treat, but the best place was called ECO, which from the outside looked like any other shop, but inside, was a little health food store, and hidden in the back, a restaurant called "ACT".

Home Made Vegi-Burger and Chips

Dragon Bowl (Disclaimer: No dragons went into the production of this meal)

Thai Style Rice Noodles - Tofu, Peanuts and Coriander Phad Thai

Excitedly we took up positions and put in our orders from the friendly German guy with impressively long dreadlocks. We each opted for something different, and it took the chef guy a while to sort them all out (we could see him slaving away in the kitchen!), but when the food came, we were all pretty impressed! My choice was the Thai noodles, which was really rich and filling, with a nice crunch from all of the various sprouts (the lemon wedge was quite welcome, to even out the sweetness of the dish). Not much to say for the Vegi-Burger, but the Dragon Bowl from their specials menu was delicious! Jasmine rice, with a coconut curry, loads of fried tofu, and even more tempeh!! (I've never seen anywhere that had tempeh on the menu!), and a healthy dose of sprouts/raw veg on top.

On top of all that, we managed to fit in a glass of "ABC" juice: A smoothie made from apple, beetroot and carrots, with a bit of raw ginger thrown in as well.

All in all, the island surpassed my expectations. Yeah, it had its fair share of drunk English tourists, and it had a good deal of characterless Wimpy Bar style bars with plastic furniture, but on the whole, all of that was localised to one area. Most of the other towns were typically Spanish, where we found a lot of culture, with local crafts such as basket weaving and pottery still being practised. I was even inspired to one day retire from the world of computers, and start up my own vegan café there, as there was definitely a gap in the market.

Footnote: the island was Ibiza

Ittadakimasu!

2008-05-20T22:26:00.003+01:00

Eeekk, its been far too long since my last entry! And I'm still without a proper camera - so these blurry grainy mobile phone pics will have to do. As you may have already guessed, sushi was on the menu at the weekend, and despite being a big fan of Japanese culture, I've never really succeeded in making proper sushi... Until now!

Okay, so I had the help of some sushi masters. We even had a rice cooker to cook the rice to perfection! There were all sorts of fillings, ranging from the traditional avocado and pepper, to the more unusual tofu and grapes! I cooked up some tempeh with a bit of homemade tofu dip, which made quite a juicy filling. The recipe came from the "Spicy Tempeh Rolls", in my newly acquired copy of Veganomicon!

To go with all the sushi, one of the guys cooked up a giant pan of Soba noodles. These are Japanese noodles made from buckwheat, traditionally served cold with a dipping sauce, so that's how we had 'em. The plate on the bottom right was a bit of an imposter, and was actually a Korean dish called Kimchi, a kind of spicy fermented cabbage (Korea's version of Sauerkraut), and was tasty, although a bit too salty for me. Also from my new cookbook, I grilled some asian-style marinated tofu, which turned out really well, even though the smoke alarm disagreed.

And there were plenty of leftovers, so for work the next day, I got to show-off with an extremely colourful lunchbox. I was certainly the envy of my team that day!

Das Abendessen

2008-03-26T22:22:00.002Z

This week has been packed full of culinary adventures, with more tasty curries served up to friends, now I'm getting into the swing of having people round for dinner. But cooking for others is nowhere near as fun as combining our cooking skills and helping to make dinner together. It then becomes more of a social activity, rather than an essential part of eating, and is exactly what we did on Monday.

We set off to make two meals, but in the end, the first one was enough for us - wild mushrooms in a cream sauce, with cous cous. This is the first time I've ever used soya cream in cooking, and I've got to say I was impressed! It deserved a photo, but I'm still without my camera. I would've also liked to post the recipe, but it came out of a German cookbook, and I only got a rough translation! It went something like this:

Roast some cashew nuts
Fry wild mushrooms in oil
In a separate pan, fry some garlic
Make a basil paste with fresh basil, olive oil and water, then add this to the garlic
Add the cooked mushrooms to the basil
Add a carton of soya cream and 1 tbsp english mustard, and simmer till reduced
Season, and serve on cous cous, topped with cashews

It was delicious! Hopefully later this week we'll have a go at the main meal that we were going to do, and this time I'll try and get a proper translation, and some pics.

Okay, here's five things you probably never knew about me:

1. I make computer games for the Xbox 360 and PS3, which is a long way away from where I started out programming, on a graphical calculator in my maths lessons.

2. I have always wanted to move to Japan - their culture fascinates me, although their food does not.

3. I've never been to a hairdresser. (This might change soon though - it really is getting too long).

4. Broccoli and aubergine are amongst my favourite vegetables; okra and bitter melon are my worst.

5. Me and my sister once made experimental ice cubes with milk, marmite and black pepper. They were pretty gross, but apparently not quite bad enough to chuck in the bin - we had to have them in our tea...!

Thanks to DJ (The Skint Vegan) for the tag.

A.F.K

2008-03-18T19:45:00.004Z

Well, I've had some mega down time in the blogging world, and indeed the internet in general, on account of some extremely inconvenient moving of house. On top of that, I've only got my mobile phone to take photos on at the moment, so my photos don't really do the food justice! I'm going to buy a shiny new Canon G9 to replace my beloved 1 megapixel A10 (RIP!).

So there are my poor excuses for not keeping up to date! I've only cooked a few meals at my new house, but a very welcome addition of a gas stove to the kitchen has put a lot of excitement into cooking with my cast iron pan! I'm convinced food tastes better if cooked on a gas stove.

I've had a pretty busy couple of week, but one particular day was notable in the food department, as one of my good friends made me dinner. Not many non-veggie people know how to cook up something tasty and vegan, and so having friends cook for me is quite a rare experience. I think she did a pretty good job of cooking up a pasta bake - she'd even gone to the trouble of buying some "super melting" vegan cheese to put on top, but as you can imagine, it refused to melt, as is the tradition with pseudo cheese. For dessert, we had strawberries and grapes, with some soy yoghurt, which I think proved that not all vegan alternatives are as bad as soya cheese!

The following day, I returned the favour, and made us a curry. Curry is my speciality - I live on curries!

Curry
1 tsp Whole Coriander Seeds
1/4 tsp Fenugreek Seeds
1/4 tsp Cumin Seeds
1 tbsp Sunflower Oil
1/2 Red Chilli
1 Onion
1 Carrot
1 Potato
1/4 inch Ginger, peeled
1 tbsp Garam Masala
5 Brussel Sprouts
1 cup of Broccoli
1/2 Courgette
3 tbsp Tomato Puree
1 tsp Dark Miso
2 cloves of garlic
1/2 cup Frozen Peas
1/4 Red Bell Pepper
1 cup of Spinach
Small Pinch of salt

Heat up large cast iron pan, and dry roast the coriander, fenugreek and cumin seeds for about 2 minutes, until they start releasing their aroma, then transfer seeds to pestle and mortar for a good bashing.

Heat up oil in pan, and add onions and chilli, and cook for 3 minutes, with powdered seeds. Add root vegetables and finely chopped ginger, Garam Masala, and sprouts (quartered). Carry on cooking on a fairly high heat. If it gets a bit dry (which it will) add a 1/2 cup of water, and carry on stirring; as its a cast iron pan, you don't have to worry much about things sticking. If it dries out again, add a few more splashes of water. Continue cooking for 5 mins.

Add the broccoli and courgette, tomato puree and a few more splashes of water if needed, along with the Miso, which should help thicken up the curry. Simmer for another 15 mins, adding more water if necessary to get the right consistency. Add the peas, spinach and garlic, and season if needed.

Serve and enjoy!

I love how dark this curry gets, all the iron-y goodness going into the food, but you can't taste it. I managed to find some suitable naan bread in the local supermarket to accompany the meal, which turned out to be really nice! I also cooked up a pot of rice, but I'm so used to cooking for one, that I forgot to double the quantity of water...! Oops! I wish I had have got a photo of the smoothie that she made whilst I was doing the curry - it was so green! Spinach, ice, orange juice, tomatoes and cucumber. It tasted healthy :)

Food from the Heart

2008-02-09T23:42:00.000Z

Spring is almost on the verge of making an appearance. The sun is reaching higher and higher into the sky, with every day that passes, and mornings are no longer met with the dismal grey fog, but the sound of birds going about their daily business. Flowers are peeking their heads above the ground, starting to fill the air with their sweet scent.

I spent a good few hours photosynthesising in the park today. Sat on a park bench, absorbing all that the sun had to offer. I could've stayed there for hours, but alas there was work to do - it was time to focus all my sun-inspired energy into the kitchen.

I had decided to partake in Susan's Vegetable Love challenge. The rules were simple - come up with a recipe for a dish of seductive vegetables. A dish that says "I love you, but I don't want to see you keel over with a heart attack!". A quick bit of research on goggle had led me to a list of food related to valentine's, and so I started to design my dish.

One quick trip to the greengrocers later, and it was time to make Roasted Asparagus, with Fruity Rocket Salad

I served up my vegetables with a healthy portion of quinoa.

Roasted Vegetables with Rocket Salad

For the vegetables:-
10 spears of Asparagus
1 Courgette (Zucchini), sliced lengthways
1 Carrot, sliced lengthways
2 Portobello mushrooms (or field mushrooms), sliced 1cm thick
2 Cloves Garlic, finely chopped
3 Tbsp olive oil
1 Tbsp Vegan Margarine
2 Tsp Balsamic Vinegar
1 Tsp Dark Soya Sauce

Steam carrot for 5 mins, then add asparagus and steam for a further 3 minutes. Meanwhile, put the mushrooms, courgette and garlic into a large casserole dish, and add the olive oil. Add the steamed vegetables, and mix to make sure everything is covered in oil (add more if necessary), the put the dish into oven, and cook for 15 minutes at 200 C, stirring now and again.

Whilst the vegetables are roasting, make the dressing - simply melt the margarine in a pan, and then add the balsamic vinegar and soya sauce. When finished cooking, and the asparagus is tender and starting to brown, take the casserole dish out of the oven, and pour the dressing on. Return to the oven (now off) and leave until ready to serve.

For the salad:-
3 cups of Rocket
1 cup of Spinach
1/2 cup Raspberries
1/2 cup Strawberries (halved and stem removed)
2 Fresh Figs
1 Avocado, peeled and sliced
1/2 cup Pine Nuts
Juice of an Orange

Wilt the spinach (in the casserole dish for five minutes should do the job). Prepare the avocado. After slicing, pour over the orange juice, so it doesn't start to brown. Once the avocado is coated in juice, drain and reserve the juice. We will use it in the dressing later. Add all the other fruit to the salad bowl. Add the rocket and wilted spinach. Transfer all the roasted vegetables to plates, reserving any liquid at the bottom of the casserole dish. Combine this liquid with the orange juice, then pour over the salad. Toss, and finally sprinkle with the toasted pine nuts.

Serve with love.

Memories Of A Mango

2008-01-28T22:01:00.001Z

Wednesday
Its been five days since we were unpacked from our shipping crates. Such a relief to be in the open air again - there was barely enough room to swing a coconut in my crate, and I had to spend the entire trip squashed up against mouldy joe. We're all OK now though, sat in nice neat rows opposite the pineapples and oranges *waves*

Thursday
Still here! I don't know where joe go to though... Bit bored to tell you the truth, I'd much rather be back in the Indies, ripening in the warm sunshine. This England place is cold! brrrrr!

Friday
Its awful! Me and two others were sold today, and taken back to a house, where I witnessed one of the others being flayed alive, and fried with garlic! I tried yelling at the top of my voice, but only my sweet pheromones came out.

Who would do such a thing! I don't know what is to happen to me but I fear the worst!

Saturday
I watched as the cleaver neared me, frozen with terror. The last thing I remember seeing before the blade struck down on me were those little blue faces peering down from a nearby bowl, then I must've blacked out.

Sunday
I awoke today with an odd feeling. Am I still here... wherever here is exactly, I don't even know...!? It sure is dark - is this the fabled melon paradise, where the others told me joe ended up? Not very paradise-y I've got to admit. The only thing I could sense was a feint noise in the distance; the quietest of murmuring that seemed somehow familiar. Could I be imagining things, or was it the sound of my two good friends..?

I thought about it for a moment, then spoke:

hello????
(muffled) hello!? who's there??!
its me!!!!
hey! you made it too!!

Well, you live and learn I guess, its all part of the growing experience.

London, Baby!

2008-01-20T22:02:00.000Z

Someone else's birthday is definitely cause for celebration, and a couple of days ago, one such event was brewing down in London. I knew I wanted to bake some sort of sweet treat to take with me, but after my cake shenanigans, I thought it would probably be best to make something I'd made before, something that had turned out good.

Therefore, it was time for another batch of Korova Cookies. This time, I measured out everything with surgical precision, with my new set of spoons. I even used the correct ingredients this time, with no substitutions (except for my carob bits!). The end result was a cookie even more delicious than I thought possible. I had a go at making icing to go on top of these cookies, but I didn't have the right kind of sugar, so it didn't work too well; well enough to stick my chocolate buttons (aptly named "whizzers") to the top.

London is a great place to discover new fooderies, especially around Soho. I took my camera with me with the intention of trying out as many of them as possible, and posting some of the photos here. Unfortunately, every time a bought myself a plate of delicious food, I completely forgot about my camera and all that was on my mind was devouring the food!

Beetroot was first on the agenda. Usually I like to get myself a box of food from here, but I am always too full afterwards for desserts, so on this day, I went straight for the chocolate cake, and a cup of soya chai to wash it down with. The chocolate sauce topping the cake was gorgeous, although the cake itself wasn't as good as I'd hoped, tasting a bit too salty (the now familiar sign of too much chemical leavening).

Chips in the Montague Pike were certainly nothing to write home about, so moving swiftly on to my evening meal, I opted for an all-vegan Tai buffet. This food is about as filling as it gets - for £4 you can pile on the tofu until you can barely move. Bargain. The curry dishes all tasted pretty much the same - there are only so many ways you can dress up tofu and TVP. I've got to admit I'm not even a fan of giant lumps of protein, especially when they have been doused in soya sauce for hours. Too salty for my taste.

Another place I visited during my weekend was Vita Organic. This was a new venue for me, as I didn't even realise it was suitable until I asked, but everything there was delicious - lots of nice chunky vegetable dishes, albeit quite pricey.

I didn't make it to Mildred's, which is a shame, as it was the main one I wanted to try out. I also didn't get time to sample any of the goods at Neil's Yard.

On the cooking front, I've made a couple of dishes in the last week, including an this impromptu curry.

Today I went to a cook shop that I've never seen before, and found myself a nice cast iron pan for a bargain price of only £10! Not bad for a couple of kilos metal. I tried it just now, to make Isa's Punk Rock Chickpea Gravy, to go with some spinichey garlicky mashed potatoes, and some fried mushrooms and courgettes. I was expecting everything to taste of rust, but luckily it all tasted fine. It didn't look pretty though, so I didn't bother with a photo!

Cake Wars: Attack Of The Cupcake

2008-01-14T22:36:00.000Z

It was all going so well in the kitchen. Saturday morning, I woke up bright and early, and skipped down to town to buy some veggies from the local grocery store, then happily bounced my way to the bookstore. Browsing through the cookbooks, to my delight, I spotted a single copy of Vegan With A Vengeance - I snapped it up lovingly, and carried on walking gleefully around town.

Flicking through my shiny new cookbook for ideas of things to cook, (and the ingredients I would need to buy), I decided on scrambled tofu for lunch, also then saw the recipe for Blueberry Coffee Cake, which sounded so delicious that I would have to make it immediately! So I set off to buy the things I would need.

Scrambled tofu is pretty hard to get wrong. Even frying tofu, mushrooms and onions with a bit of tamari tastes pretty good, so I wasn't surprised that my first dish from the cookbook was quite good.

Afterwards, it was cake time. Flour...measure...soya milk, ok...soya yogurt, check. All was going well. Baking powder...seems like a lot, but ok....check. I filled my cake tin with the mixture. Hmm, seemed pretty full, but it wasn't going anywhere. I proceeded to make the walnut topping....but something was wrong. I had created my breadcrumbs, and was ready to add the walnuts, but the ratio of breadcrumbs to walnuts seemed very wrong. I had almost a full cereal bowl of breadcrumbs, and only a handful of nuts. In the back of my mind, I knew something was definitely amiss, but I carried on, and put the finished cake into the oven.

And waited. 45 minutes later, I came back to my cake, as instructed, toothpick at the ready, but to my horror...

...my cake had grown into a giant muffin!

Reeling from the sight of such a monstrosity, I slowly edged forwards and probed it with my stick. The stick vanished into the cake with no effort at all, and when I pulled it out, some of the doughy cake monster was still attached, topping and all. Radical action had to be taken - I whacked the temperature up as high as it would go, in an attempt to petrify the beast. Another 20 minutes of probing, and finally it was done. The topping was charred and my nice expensive walnuts had been reduced to ash. The ones that had managed to survive the incineration, buried beneath the floury rubble on top of the cake tasted like popcorn.

What had gone wrong? I immediately consulted the PPK forums for answers. It turns out that Americans don't use the same sized spoons as the British. Maybe because we drink so much tea, its more efficient to use a bigger teaspoon, I don't know. And the tablespoons I grew up with were more like serving spoons, akin to a ladle. Either way, I think I must have put waaaaaaay too much baking powder in it, as it tasted kinda salty...

Today, on the top of my list of things to do was to go to the cooking store and buy a new "tool"

Hopefully I will be able to measure out American quantities with confidence now (better stop using my mug to measure out cups as well I guess).

I'd like to say that I'll be getting straight back onto the baking wagon, but first I've got a giant 10 kilo blueberry flavoured cupcake to get through.

Quinoa, in a Muffin!!!!!

2008-01-11T00:24:00.000Z

I've been desperate to try out my shiny new recipe ever since it arrived in my inbox! A muffin, made from quinoa?? Sounds like a winner, and the results have previously been shown to look delicious.

First things first though. A quinoay dinner was on the horizon, so I scoured the PPK site for a suitable dish to make. In the end, I settled on Alreda Sauce, so that I could give my new tub of nooch a real test run. After combining the sauce with some quinoa I prepared some potatoes and a pepper for stuffing. After a quick session in the oven, the result was pretty pleasing.

After dinner, it was straight back to the kitchen for the muffins. The first thing I needed was flax powder...All I had was a bag of whole black linseeds and it turns out, linseed is a hard nut to crack. You'd think a cast iron pestle and mortar would make short work of these tiny seeds, but you'd be wrong, (as I was). Almost an hour of hammering it took me to make an impression...eventually, teaspoon at a time, I finally reduced my seeds to dust. I'm fairly sure that a good amount of iron made it into the mix as well - these little guys are as hard as nails.

Making a right meal out of the linseed

All the hard work paid off in the end though, as the muffins were great! I was a little concerned once they had gone into the oven, as the aroma was a very familiar one, which I usually only expect when I'm making a curry, but before long, the sweet cinnamon flavours were filling the kitchen.

Thanks to Ruby Red Vegan for sending me the muffin recipe!

Cookie Cravings

2008-01-08T23:39:00.000Z

After a hard day's work, a cookie is always welcome. Cookies can work miracles. They even make the world go round. So after stumbling upon the BitterSweet blog, I was eager to find a nice easy cookie recipe that even I could make! And I did!

Here's my attempt at the Peace Cookies, with a few modifications - I didn't have any dark sugar, so I used 1 tablespoon of molasses instead, and I also used carob shards instead of the chocolate pieces. I had to use a splash of rice milk to coax the cookie mixture into a dough too, but that was probably my fault for not knowing how to measure stuff in cups.

Wow what a treat they are! The molasses did change the flavour of the cookies, but they still tasted nice to me, and certainly added to their nutritional value.

Yum! Thanks to Hannah for that recipe!

Tempeh, Isa Style

2008-01-07T21:07:00.000Z

Today I was feeling adventurous, and went and bought a whole bunch of things I've never used before. I've been searching for nutritional yeast flakes (aka nooch!) for ages now, and finally found a pot of it! It looks like a pot of tiny cornflakes. My new tempeh looks pretty odd too. Once out of its packet, it smells pretty odd too... But I thought I'd give it a go anyway, and so armed with Isa's recipe for Tempeh Sausage Crumbles, I fired up the stove and started chopping. To go with my tempeh, I whipped up a batch of pasta, and a pot of Mushroom Marinara Sauce, another of Isa's recipes.

It probably would've tasted better had I not been looking at the spice list for the tempeh dish whilst I was making the pasta sauce - it came out pretty fennel-y! I've yet to be won over in the nooch department - maybe I need to try mac+cheese, once I find out what the hell it is!

I'm looking forward to my next cooking adventure - I'm determined to make something that uses my new ingredients that I bought: Apricots, molasses, almond flour and carob pieces! Should I jump on the cookie bandwagon, or join the cupcake revolution. .. (or perhaps a quinoa cake?!)

Quinoa Salad with Oyster Mushrooms and Avocado

2008-01-03T23:35:00.000Z

Right then, down to business. After some recent inspiration, it occurred to me that eating potato curry everyday is not as satisfying as it used to be! Its time to try something different. Something new. Something that is quite likely to go wrong!

So here it is, recipe adapted from Rose Elliot's Vegan Feast.

Gomasio is a Japanese seasoning that is quite nice as a healthy substitute for salt. Usually made by dry-roasting sesame seeds until golden, and then seasoning with a tiny bit of salt. For this dish, I'll try something a bit different!

2tsp sesame seeds
2tsp pumpkin seeds
2tsp sunflower seeds
A splash of dark soy sauce

Dry roast the sesame seeds in a hot pan for about 2 minutes, then add the pumpkin and sunflower seeds. Roast for a further minute or so, until the sesame start to turn brown (be quick to reduce heat - within seconds they go from a beautiful golden brown, to a somewhat unappetising black)
Add the splash of soy, and stir in. Remove from heat and let cool.

1/2 cup dry quinoa, washed
1 cup water
1 tbsp olive oil
2 cup oyster mushrooms
1/2 cup buttom mushrooms
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
Black pepper
1/2 cup broccoli florets
1 avocado, prepared and sliced
Juice of 1/2 a lemon
1/4 red pepper, chopped
1 tomato, chopped
Chopped parsley and chives

Cook quinoa with 1 cup of water in a small pot, bring to a boil then cover and simmer over low heat until soft, about 15 minutes. Meanwhile saute the mushrooms and garlic in olive oil for about 4 mins. Season with black pepper. Toss the avocado in the lemon juice (to stop it from turning a mangy brown colour and ruining the photo!). Finally, steam the broccoli for 6 minutes. Combine the cooked quinoa, the mushrooms, avocado, broccoli, red pepper and herbs together, and top with the roasted seeds.

Eat.

The good thing about this dish is you can make a cauldron full, and make it last a long time! Its good hot or cold, so if you feeling especially lazy one day, you wouldn't even need to reheat those left overs that are still in the saucepan. And unlike rice, I don't even need to worry about poisoning myself! Yey!

Of course I won't get to test that theory, as hopefully I'll be making something different and exciting, a lot more often! So I'll leave it upto one of the lucky readers to tell me how long a bowl of this stuff lasts, before sprouting legs and running away.

Survey

2008-01-02T22:00:00.000Z

I've just been surfing the web, and come across a whole world of vegan bloggers! So, in the spirit of blogging, and vegans, and also because theres nothing on tv, I thought I'd fill out this survey :)

1. Favorite non-dairy milk?
Alpro soya is my favourite, but the Tesco's own is cheaper, so I usually have that instead. I've also started getting into my rice dream, although its far from pleasant in tea :(

2. What are the top 3 dishes/recipes you are planning to cook?
Chocolate and brandy truffle torte, off the back of a Viva Veggie leaflet. Although I'm not sure if I could bring myself to use 4 and a half bars of chocolate AND a pot of glucose syrup in just one dish!
Also, a japanese buckwheat noodle soup with tofu and broccoli
And lastly, some sort of cookies!

3. Topping of choice for popcorn?
Usually a tiny bit of salt, but I'm interested to try these yeast flakes on it - sounds intriguing.

4. Most disastrous recipe/meal failure?
I tried making icecubes with my sister when I was little, with marmite and milk, which you can imagine were pretty nasty, but mum made us use them up in our tea!

5. Favorite pickled item?
Pickled onions, or chilis. I don't tend to eat pickles much though, as I can feel them dissolving my teeth...

6. How do you organize your recipes?
I've got a bunch of loose bits of paper, a few books, a few leaflets, and theres a few on this laptop. So, not very well, is probably the answer.

7. Compost, trash, or garbage disposal?
Trash or the recycling bucket.

8. If you were stranded on an island and could only bring 3 foods...what would they be (don't worry about how you'll cook them)?
Broccoli, basmatti rice and a bag of mixed nuts/seeds.

9. Fondest food memory from your childhood?
Making bread buns with sisters on a pull-out table surface - getting to choose the shape of the buns, and then the smell of the baking bread...!

10. Favorite vegan ice cream?
I'm not an ice cream person - too cold for my teeth!

11. Most loved kitchen appliance?
Knife. Can't do much without one of those, and I've got a nice razor sharp japanese chopper.

12. Spice/herb you would die without?
Garam massala. Even the simplest of foods are made tasty with this. It can turn "stewed onions", into "5 minute curry".

13. Cookbook you have owned for the longest time?
Rose Elliot's Vegan Feasts. Stayed faithful with this book all through uni. The fruit cake is especially fun, with its strangely effective vinegar to make it raise.

14. Favorite flavor of jam/jelly?
Blueberry spread. Jam is too sweet, and jelly is just wrong.

15. Favorite vegan recipe to serve to an omni friend?
Potato curry, 'cause its the only thing I know I can do well, although I've almost got my chocolate/expresso cake up to a reasonable standard.

16. Seitan, tofu, or tempeh?
Tofu. Never tried seitan and only tempeh once, but would like to use them more to see what they are capable of.

17. Favorite meal to cook (or time of day to cook)?
6pm. I'm a dinner person.

18. What is sitting on top of your refrigerator?
Some empty tupperware.

19. Name 3 items in your freezer without looking.
Frozen peas from the previous tenant. And some of my housemate's random frozen lumps of stuff. Ohhh i saw a stalegmite growing in there earlier. I don't really use the freezer.

20. What's on your grocery list?
Quinoa (inspired after reading ruby red vegan's post and seeing the picture.
Also either some "Good Oil" (hemp oil) or linseed oil, as I hear its pretty healthy.

21. Favorite grocery store?
I'd like to say Gaia, the local health store, but its too expensive for me, so Tesco...

22. Name a recipe you'd love to veganize, but haven't yet.
Ramen. Naruto always eats it and it looks pretty darn good.

23. Food blog you read the most (besides Isa's because I know you check it everyday). Or maybe the top 3?
I've only just discovered the world of food blogging, but so far I've enjoyed (and subscribed to!) these:
Vegetable Japan
VeggieGirl
Ruby Red Vegan

24. Favorite vegan candy/chocolate?
Greens+blacks ginger. The darker the better, but this one with the added ginger mmmmmmm. The Maya version (orange+spices) is a close second, with the regular plain dark as a runner up.

25. Most extravagant food item purchased lately?
I shop for my food on the cheap, so it was probably an aubergine.

26. Worst three vegetables?
Okra! Whoever thought eating a chewy mucusy gross vegetable shaped like a ladies finger was a good idea?!
Bitter melon! I got a can of these from an asian supermaket the other day, and they were probably the vilest things I've ever had the displeasure of ruining my meal with. I later read that the seeds in these things were actually pretty toxic, and known to induce all kinds of badness, which is probably why they tasted so bad...
Grapefruit. Okay, not a vegetable, but there's something about them that isn't quite right.

Prague Day 2

2007-10-28T18:54:00.000Z

Now, where did I get to... ahh yes, ring of fire - pub - another pub - bed.

Day two begins fuzzily, with no memories of pub #2. Its not that I had one too many in pub #1 either. I blame it all on ring of fire.

If you are not familiar with this game, then read on - once you can identify the game, it is a lot easier to avoid. Basically, all 52 cards in the pack get laid down, and one by one, are picked up be the unfortunate players. With each number on the card is a special meaning, much like switch, except that pretty much all the meanings associated with the cards involve one or all the players drinking some or all of their current beer.

For example: any player that picks up a 10, initiates a "waterfall". Player starts drinking, followed by players to his left, creating a Mexican wave of drinking. Drinking continues until the initial player stops (which is entirely voluntary, but more often than not, the madness continues until the player finishes his current beverage or passes out).

In summary, everyone drinks. A lot.

After hours of getting ready, we are all ready to investigate Old Town, but first on the agenda is lunch. Being the most picky about what I can and can't have, I jumped at the chance to have my first proper food in a nice vegan-friendly canteen called Country Life.

View Larger Map

Most of the others stuck their noses up at such "healthy" food, and decided to carry on looking for fodder with legs. I had already anticipated having to eat alone to get a half decent meal, but I was still surprised at how quickly it was dismissed. George offered to eat with me, which I was grateful for, so I didn't get completely abandoned.

Enough ranting. Country Life was cheap and the food was nice. It was a shame that me and George saw the salad first and piled it on our plates, only to realize the crowd of people in the corner were busy piling on extremely yummy hot food. We ended up pilling on both, and ended up with a lot of food, although after weighing, it only cost 135 koruna (about £3.50) each.

Gee, outside of the woodcraft shop, next door to Country Life.

After eating, we decided to have a quick look around before meeting the others. I felt compelled to buy myself a cute falling-over zebra from a nearby woodwork shop, which I was convinced had been specially hand-crafted right there in the shop.

It didn't take us long to bump into one of the most famous attractions in Prague - the astronomical clock, which neither me nor George could make head or tail of. We stared at it for a good 10 minutes, and it didn't move an inch. Jack later explained that it showed which constellation the sun was in, and we would've had to have waited a month or so before noticing that it did indeed move.

Cobbled alley between Country Life and the Astronomical Clock

Astronomical part of the Astronomical Clock, in Old Town Square

The clock - it really was that sunny!

We all met up, and had a long walk around, absorbing the culture, and taking in the sights of pointy buildings. We reached Karlov Most and lined up to touch the shiny piece of the center statue like everyone else, although at the time, we had no idea what it meant, or what luck it was supposed to bring us.

By this time, Chris, the builder of the group, was desperate for a cup of tea, so we made our way to a suitable venue. On the way back towards Old Town, I noticed a sign advertising a classical music performance. I'm not really into my classical, but it is what Prague is famous for, so I asked the others if they fancied it. The response was similar to the one in country life, with the majority eager to get back to the apartment for another round of Ring Of Fire. I was still feeling the effects of the previous game, so that was the last thing I wanted to do! Dave being the sophisticated one of the group, and Jack, who is usually up for anything, were also up for hearing some live classics. After much deliberation, the others decided that seeing a show at the theater would be enough culture for one holiday, and so they went on back to the apartments.

The venue for the string quartet was a large church opposite the bridge. I hadn't really realised this until we were ushered in. The whole place had an uneasy atmosphere of silence, every noise we made echoing around a million times for everyone to hear. We sat down on our creaky pews, and waited. Being surrounded by effigies and murals depicting scenes that didn't look so pleasant, added to the uneasy feeling, but eventually the silence was broken by the appearance of the musicians.

It was worth it though. The performance was amazing and the acoustics of the hall were perfect. I even recognized some of the songs (they were classics after all). I had a pretty sore backside by the end of it though, those hard wooden seats are about as comfortable as sitting on a cold rock. We slowly made our way back, in no particular hurry, (until it started raining of course). We decided not to spend any of our culture points as we passed the Erotic Supermarket, on the way back, and arrived back in our apartments for around 7pm, to find the others drinking away on Czech Pilsner and plum favoured vodka. It was about dinner time, and so we set off to find a restaurant, that was both vegan friendly, but served enormous lumps of meat. It quickly became obvious that the two don't mix, so they chose an authentic Czech steak house to dine at. I was tempted to go and eat alone, but I'd already had my quota of segregation for this day, and decided to stick with everyone else, and just drink beer instead. Rosh made a good effort in communicating to the staff to see if they had something more interesting than "salad" that would be suitable for me, but as nice as the waiter was, he had no clue what we were on about, so I ended up with a salad, with boiled potatoes.

Despite the lack of interesting food, the place was actually really nice. We were sat on an indoor balcony overlooking the rest of the restaurant, and in the next room were a group of girls who spent all night practising their choir singing, which for a while was quite novel, but did get a little irritating! And this was the first time I experienced and fell in love with "pivo tmavý", a type of dark beer brewed in Czech Republic, which is rich, malty and full of flavour, compared to the regular pilsner which we'd been drinking up until then.

Too much salad?

Too much meat...!

Afterwards, we made our way back to Wenceslas Square. I wasn't really feeling up to a club, still feeling a bit groggy and tired, so I called it a night, whilst the others went to Duplex Dance Club, which was conveniently opposite our apartments. I'm told it was pretty good...

Prague Day 1

2007-10-27T21:54:00.000+01:00

Well, the purpose of this blog, was in fact to record my recent holiday to prague, partly so I have a record of what I did that won't be forgotten, as my memory is worse than the fish from Finding Nemo.

The time is about 5am, Wednesday 17th October 2007. I'm starting to stir in my bed, my brain attempting to preempt the horrendous wakeup call that is alarm clock.

6am, am rudely awakened by wretched clock, and roll out of bed. You might wonder what I was doing up so early in the morning, but it is tradition with Rach to allow an extra 30 minutes for every stage in any journey. I wasn't about to sacrifice any of my sleep for such shenanigans, so I casually ate my bowl of cereal, and took a slow stroll down to their flat where the others would be.

Arrived at Rach's door with a good 30 min to spare.

As planned, George and Dave had come up the night before from London, and made themselves at home. Rach and James were busily making breakfast, although looking rather tired compared to the normal 11 o'clock start. We met Chris and Kev outside the train station, and our special guest Rosh soon after. A short bit of standing-on-a-train later, and we had made it to BHX.

A first hurdle was to make it passed the NBC girls without ending up with another credit card, which we all manage fine, although making it passed Subway without an enormous sandwich was too much for some. One quick plate of beans on toast and coffee later, and we're away again. With only a mere 40 minutes to go, Rach insisted that we hurry to our gate...

For entertainment on the plane, we had snagged ourselves a copy of the aptly named WTF magazine, mainly because of the girl in orange spandex on the front cover. Sadly it wasn't the most exciting of magazines, and before long, I was heartily enjoying Rach's copy of Glamour (again only made interesting due to the numerous photos of good-looking girls, and not the articles on how to be a better person...!)

We touch down in Prague on schedule at 13:20, looking forward to the rendezvous with Jack, only to find out that the plane he was supposed to be on was still in Paris. Well, he'd made it that far alone, so we thought we may as well crack on and meet him at the apartment. One free taxi courtesy of our hotel later, and we're in the center of prague.

Upon leaving the taxi, it is now becoming apparent that the weather is not getting any cooler, and is in fact, quite warm. Which was a very nice surprise, but nevertheless a surprise that we weren't prepared for, having only packed huge woolly jumpers and giant coats. No one complained though!

Our apartment was also a nice surprise - a big master bedroom, and two other bedrooms kitted out with single beds (except for one other double bed, which Kev proudly claimed for himself, not quite realizing what this meant when trying to fit 9 people into an apartment that sleeps 9...).

By time Jack reaches us we've already stocked our fridge with Pilsner Urquell, and before long, we are all sat down with a beverage. Who the first one was to suggest the infamous Ring of Fire, I'll never know, but before long we are all incredibly merry.

We ended up in a bar that night, drinking extremely expensive beers and cocktails; to be expected for a bar that was 2 minutes away from the front door, right in the center of Prague.

Hello World!

2007-10-27T21:09:00.000+01:00

Here it is, my first blog.

For those of you who don't know me, why the hell are you reading this?! Ok ok, so hi world, this is me: I'm a games programmer, graduated from a uni in dundee a year or two ago now, and now I work in a pretty big company in the midlands doing what I'm supposed to be able to do best.

As a trained geek, I have a theory that you can tell more from a person by looking at their desktop, than you can by reading a blog, so with that in mind, I'll post mine:

From this you should now be able to tell that I am in fact an anime fan, from the giant picture of Chobits' Chii, and numerous unwatched episodes of Ghost In The Shell.

You are also probably thinking I look at a lot of dodgyness on the interweb, thus need quick access to a killCookies shortcut, but let me put that one straight right now: I use www.cbfsms.com a lot more than I send texts on my mobile, and if it knows you've sent more than one text, it will do everything in its power to foil your next attempt. I've since produced a much better way of dealing with this deterrent, but thats another story.