Foodie Friday_ Spanakopita!

Recently when there was nothing much on TV (like, the whole of Christmas!) we stuck on an episode of "Dinner Date".

On of the guys cooking made a vegetarian menu, with Spanakopita starter and stuffed peppers (!) for main.  I think he cooked veggie food cuz he wasn't a very good cook and less stuff could go wrong with vegetarian courses??  He tried one of his Spanakopita and said it was like eating PVA glue, mmm.

Anyways, for Christmas I got Jerry "Vegan with a Vengeance"; a cookbook we used to have, but it the course of our many house moves it has either been lost, or remains in storage at a parent's house. We would occasionally wonder what had happened to it, so it seemed to be a nice re-purchase item.

So, one of the recipes in it is for Spanakopita! This seemed like the perfect excuse to make it... hopefully edible ones too!

This was not a recipe I had made when we used to have the book previously; here are my substitutions:

- I used frozen spinach, not fresh
- I picked up fresh dill in the supermarket (pretty amazed that they had it in there!), but somehow it did not make it's way thru the checkout?? I blame the cashier!
- I made a special trip to 8th Day to buy nutritional yeast- it seems to be about the only place I've ever seen it ++ mental note, perhaps email Holland & Barrett to ask them to stock it  ++
- I also got nice greek black olives, and extra virgin olive oil in 8th Day (should have bought tofu in there too, but that's a different story)

The method was fairly similar to the 'tofu ricotta' she makes in the Pizzas section of the book.

You cook the spinach & spring onions etc. in a pan, but then she directs you to do the tofu/nutritional yeast part in a big bowl; tipping the spinach into this after.  As soon as I started doing this I was like "uh, why = extra washing up" but it was too late by then, so further mental note for future reference ++ just do it all in the same pan eh?

The quantities she gives make 30-triangle shaped pastries, which I wasn't up for- I made nine I think, but they were really easy (and my little girl especially Loved 'painting' the oil all over the filo pastry!), and I have leftover ingredients to make some more- this time with Dill in - for my Monday working lunch.

I served this with Jamie Oliver's Greek salad recipe (which was also supposed to have Dill in it!), hummus and pitta breads.

Items due for return 9/01

Thursday is Library day!

Today I had these due back:

I had got "Are you my mother?" (graphic novel) out for Jerry, he'd been asking if the library had "Fun Home" by the same author; at the time of checking they did not, but this caught my eye on the shelves instead.  He did not like it, oh well.

I also returned "Ms. Cupcake- The Naughtiest Vegan Cakes in town!", although technically this was not due until Monday.  I got this out aaages ago; in work they were having a Bake-Sale (one they gave us decent notice about), so I ran a search on the library catalogue for 'vegan' for some inspiration.  

I made two recipes from this: Red Velvet cupcakes, and the Bakewell Tart Cupcakes. They both had a similar- easy - method and produced tasty results. CONFESSION TIME: I'm not actually vegan, Jerry is, but I daydreamed about the Bakewell Tart cupcakes after they were all finished.  Raspberry plus Almond is one of my ultimate combinations!

I was sad to return this to the library, and would be happy to add this cookbook to my collection... if only it was a little cheaper on Amazon!    

Let the countdown commence!

One of the Christmas traditions in the Homer household is the making of the Christmas pudding - see "Monday munchies" entry last year
http://pugginaround.blogspot.com/2008/12/monday-munchies.html

this year was no different, and over the weekend preparations began. First the dried fruit was soaked in alcohol overnight. Then the rest of the ingredients were added. And the most important part? The stirring! For 'good luck' everyone in the household has to give it a stir and make a wish:



Yey!

On TV tonight was Delia's Classic Christmas. I loved it! It made me start to feel a little bit excited about Xmas this year. She was saying that sometimes people think they don't like Christmas pudding, but that's because they've only ever had shop-bought ones, and that if you have a homemade one it's miles different- better!

Sunday snacks

Here are the pics of Jerry's birthday cake from last week:
Vegan Black Forest Cake

We didn't have any birthday candles, so I used sparklers- which I think look better !

I tried a piece and it was sooo rich, like a chocolate fudge cake!

Today we've made Vegan Spiced Ginger Cookies. I was thinking that they might be nice stuck together with some of the leftover buttercreme filling from the cake :)
The spicy flavour is nice especially at this time of year when the weather is starting to get chilly.

Sundal Sunday

(I can see on my Dashboard that I'm getting close to 100 posts, which I really want to achieve (and beyond!) but some evenings the last thing I want to do is sit down in front of the PC again ...)

Anyway, here is a recipe I made last weekend: Sundal
It is supposed to be a snack of chickpeas, peanuts, coconut and other bits and pieces to spice it up ! We ate it as a meal instead with basmati rice. It was very filling !

Anyway, the best part was probably the fresh coconut. Jerry broke it open- the water inside was really sweet ! Then we had to prise out the flesh. I generally don't like coconut things- cakes at least, but I think that's because dessicated coconut is so dry, ugh! But the fresh coconut was really creamy. I also loved the contrast between the coarse hard hairy shell and the perfect white flesh inside- like snow !

Of course at the end we gave Pepe one of the halves of the shell to play with (after we took as much of the hair off )... and it has become her new favourite toy
1. it is nice and hard to chew on
2. it is noisy if she scuttles it along the floor-

3. if she has it the other way up it can make a handy crash helmet :)

Tuesday review- Lush

Well we have all recently celebrated Easter, but for some this is easier than others.

Jerry is a Vegan, so rather than getting him a dairy-chocolate egg I thought Vegan-friendly shop Lush might have some fun Easter items for him. We went into one of their shops here in Manchester, where they had bunny and egg shaped Bath Ballistics, but none of the labels said they were Vegan :(
I asked one of the staff who said that the ones that had a sweet on them might not be suitable - the sweet contained gelatine... but I was a little disappointed overall about such an oversight.

I emailed the Customer Services for advise if Any were suitable, and they got back quickly telling me which were- including one called "Honey Bun" which I thought was silly because Honey is NOT Vegan.

Anyway the customer services rep said "give me your address and we'll send you some Vegan stuff to make up for Easter" ... and this is what we received:
1x Ice Blue soap.
I'm not sure if we've had this before, but it has a lovely zingy smell. Peppermint flavour.

1x Uluru Bath Ballistic.
We've not used this one before, but look forward to doing so. It has a sandalwood scent- the most expensive essential oil which caused a massive cock-up on last week's Apprentice !

1x Handy Gurugu hand cream.
I am a complete hand cream addict, so am well pleased this was in there !

1x Olive Branch shower gel
I tried this last night and am not too keen on the 'musky' aroma. It reminds me of The Body Shop's "White Musk", which was popular when I was in secondary school. My fave shower gel from Lush is Sonic Death Monkey.

Also it was all very cutely packaged, and rather than polystyrene briquettes, they'd used popcorn to stop the contents from getting damaged ! Pepe was very curious about this, but I didn't let her have any incase it had any soap or fragrances which might have made her sick :P

Christmas pugging- recipe

Here is my recipe for Christmas Pudding, 2008 style. It is a loose adaptation of Nigella Lawson's in "How to be a domestic Goddess":

• 100g currants
• 100g fresh cranberrries
  
• 50g each raisins & sultanas
• 50g glace cherries, chopped
• 50g prunes, chopped
• 50g flaked almonds
  I wanted whole almonds which I'd have then chopped into slivers, but flaked was the closest they had in the supermarket
  
• 150ml rum/ Cointreau mix - I ran out of rum so maybe 100ml rum topped up with 50ml Cointreau- I thought an orangey flavour would be nice :)
• 1 Euro coin/s, cleaned
  
• 90g self-raising flour
• 125g white breadcrumbs
• 150g suet
• 1medium cooking apple
• 150g dark brown sugar
• 1/2 tsp mixed spice
• pinch of salt
• *** 3 large eggs. I have made my pudding vegan (so suitable for Jerry) so I have replaced the eggs with 3tbsp soy flour mixed with 3tbsp water, mixed to a paste. I have not tried to vegan-ise the recipe in this way before, so fingers crossed !
• zest of 1 orange
• 1.5 litre pudding basin

Nigella's recipe also includes dried blueberries, marron glace pieces and candied peel, but I don't like or just didn't get these from the supermarket. One of the great things about the recipe is that you can adjust it to your own tastes and what's available.

1. Soak the fruit in the rum overnight
   ***I didn't do this - I put the alcohol with the raisins, currants and sultanas in a pan and gently warmed so the fruit absorbed the alcohol
2. Soak the 1 Euro coin overnight in Coca Cola- to clean it ! Please feel free to use whatever coin you like- maybe bigger ones are better as they are easier to spot - less of a potential choking hazard :) I like using a Euro in the pudding as it's a gift of Good Luck for the coming year, rather than money which can be spent...
3. Mix all the ingredients together in a large bowl and then add the soaked fruit. Add the cleaned coin/s. I also wrapped mine in a piece of greaseproof paper.
   
4. Grease the pudding basin and put the mixture in.
   Now I'm not sure in previous years if I have halved the above quantities, because this year I seem to have enough for 2x 30 oz basins- I guess the in-laws will be getting one!
   
5. Cover with a piece of greaseproof paper in which you have folded a pleat, then boil or steam for 3 and 1/2 hours.
   I think mine got done for closer to 2 hrs as we were going to bed.
6. Rewrap the pudding and store somewhere cool until Christmas, then reheat in the same way- boil/ steam for another 3 and 1/2 hrs.