The Modern Housewife Series Vol. I

Pumpkin Soup for Halloween

Happy Halloween/Samhain/last day of Vegan MoFo!

Yesterday started with this:

Looks something like the shape of that hill in Close Encounters of the Third Kind right? Some sort of unexplained phenomenon was, indeed, occurring. It was 8.05 AM on a Sunday morning and I was kneading 3kg of flour into bread dough. I don't know what madness had taken hold. It would have been equally miraculous if it was still 9.05AM, the clocks not having gone back...

Things then got a bit messy...

Now it may look like a giant pan of crusty custard but it was actually scrummy rich soup made thus:

Scrape the flesh out of two pumpkins. Place in pan with 2 onions, lots of garlic (8 cloves in this case) and a little curry powder. Cook up with plenty water and some sea salt. Add a handful or two of cashew nuts and blend. The squashes in question yeilded so much flesh that it had to be blended in instalments.

Served with rosemary and garlic bread - just add some chopped rosemary and garlic to the dough as you knead it. Onions and other herbs also work really well. Poppy seeds would have been a perfect addition too but I didn't have any.

Don't be scared if the pumpkin fixes you with a hypnotic smiling stare. It is your friend really.

growing my own

I just typed a post and lost it so I'm not best pleased here. The condensed version is that I try to grow my own veg but it all dies or gets blight or rots or gets destroyed by moles, except the kale. Always the kale survives. The other post was funnier though...

Vegan MoFo - Vegan Black Metal Chef Pad Thai

A few months ago a friend sent me a link to this Vegan Black Metal Chef video:

(Watch out! He swears!)

He doesn't give any measurements which intimidated me but I finally tried it tonight. I am terrible at judging quantities and added too much sugar and too little water. It ended up quite sticky and sickening. I think it could be delicious though if I cut the sugar down a lot and upped the tangy tamarind. Maybe some fresh veggies would help too (I didn't use any bean sprouts). My friend's father has made it and it worked for him so I guess I just need to practice until the flavours are balanced.

The video is quite amusing anyhow. If anyone tries it and it works, send me the measurements, please!

Vegan MoFo - Spooky Scary Bad

Halloween approaches, so what better than a trip to an creepy themed pub for lunch?

I had to actually climb up onto these seats and then sit with my little feet dangling as if sent back in time to be a toddler in my parents house or possibly awaiting bone grinding in the Giant's Castle... which was the more frightening prospect? *unsure*

But accompanied as I was by staunch and heroic companions, all was well... menus were browsed.

No quinoa was ordered. Deep fried badness... yum.

A dark and mysterious, caffienated, sugar loaded beverage...

*throws head back and laughs demonically*

*strains neck, sits back up faintly abashed*

Baked potato with bean chilli... wait a minute, that's a bit wholesome... quickly moving on...

Salad - NO! No, no, no... though there in the background are statues of Vlad the Impaler and Dracula (look hard, really hard) so all is not lost...

Toilet door. Note the creepy, blurred special effects of the photo - no effort was spared in the making of this post.

A poor little demon in a cage... we should start a campaign to free it or something...

*sugar rush of mysterious drink wears off*

*stares dismally at pumpkin and considers next post*

Vegan MoFo-a link

It's been one of those days, busy to the point of ridiculous and all with a clingy baby. So no photos, all you are getting is a link, but it's a good one!

Nigel Slater's apple shortcake : imagine it as something between pastry and a cake. Use vegan margarine in place of butter and I use a splash (about a tablespoon) of soya milk instead of the egg. I simply slice the apples and mix them with the sugar and lemon juice and place them in the bottom of an oven dish. I never use the pastry to line the dish just roll it out thick and place it all on top of the apples. I never cook the apples first either. There's no need. Chill the dough before rolling and be warned, it is very soft so be prepared for it to break up but just patchwork it together.

Off to get a very tired baby to bed.

Vegan Mofo - Grey days

Although yesterday was a crisp autumn day with blue skies, today was just the opposite. It's been dark and grey all day - very uninspiring. We were both at home at lunchtime but there was no bread and no leftovers so we used up bits and bobs in the fridge which happened to be some small potatoes which I smothered in ajvar, a handful of salad, a few mushrooms (fried with some oregano), a yellow pepper, a tomato and some of those pickled asparagus. Neither of us can decide if we really like the asparagus. I always feel like I'm eating salamander like one of these cute little axolotls.

For dessert, I had an apple cooked in some margarine and brown sugar with some raisins thrown in and a bit of oat cream to top it off. It was a bit like eating a toffee apple but nicer.

Dinner was left to Jonathan. He based the meal around what could be bought at the nearest shop which has a limited selection. We had more potatoes (this time boiled then fried), with a sort of dahl and a green salad. Mmm, potatoes. It was good and very filling.

chilly days... hot chocolate...

Cold may be starting to set in but there are still chances to walk down an Autumnal and sunny cobbled street:

and enter a graveyard (don't be put off) armed with your Costa Soya Hot Chocolate:

yes, I slopped mine about during the walk... so focussed was I on the delectable beverage that the gravestones are barely discernable:

...and better than a cold snap or perhaps good to accompany one? A chocolate sesame snap:

Autumnal eating

(a banana cake with lemon 'butter' icing and brambles)

 Nothing too exciting today. It's so cold today that my mind has gone numb. Gone are all the thoughts of potential MoFo posts that have been swirling round my head the last few days. All I can think of are things like spicy hot chocolate to slurp by the fire and foods full of ginger, chillies and garlic to warm and fend off colds. I want fatty foods such as pastry, crumble and dumplings to create an extra layer on my body to keep me toasty on the daily walks. I don't want a salad anywhere near me...too cold, too light, too refreshing. I want toast and crumpets made on the open fire and eaten close enough to the flames that they also toast my clothes.

It makes me realise that seasonal eating is not just about eating food which is in season.

(On another note we have suddenly become a family that has pudding every night...or cake...or some sort of baked product. I'm putting this down to seasonal behaviour too and not a sudden bout of greed!)

Vegan MoFo - Seitan

Last week I made seitan from flour for the first time. I've never made seitan from wheat gluten either, only sausages, so it was a whole new adventure. I used this recipe because it seemed straight forward enough and had a video to go with it. It was quite fun to make. The dough gets all slippery and slimy when it first gets wet then it starts breaking up into weird blobs then it all comes together again. It seemed a little pointless to add spices and soy sauce before washing it but I did it anyway and then washed it all out. A tasty broth to boil it in would probably be enough.

As it took a while to make the seitan, I used it in the first recipe I came across which was a mushroom stroganoff also from Delectable Plant's website. It was pretty good. Jonathan didn't even notice that there were beans in it, but they had been blended to a cream so how could he? We ate it with lots of spaghetti which had been cooked in a tiny pot. One day we'll get larger pots and I won't make everything in a wok.

With the rest of the seitan, I made an autumn stew from Cooking Vegan Food Up North. Fanny also happens to live in Hallsberg and even supplied me with the dried chanterelles. It was a really cosy stew, very suitable for the cold, rainy weather. It seems to be quite a traditional Swedish dish as I saw a similar recipe in a supermarket magazine only it was called "the hunter's wild stew" and was filled with elk meat and the like.

vegan mofo - fairy cakes

little chocolate ones dusted with icing sugar... with a good book, what bliss...

vanilla ones topped with chocolate and photographed with retro camera app...

Those were recent, now we delve into faery of the past...

raspberry nipples

with fresh blackcurrants smooshed into icing sugar

and finally with rosewater icing at the bottom of a mountain which we had climbed three times that day (really!!) and made by a friend :)