Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh Marzipan

Home made marzipan (my million dollar eurotrash addiction that I've begun to budget down on by making my own) rolled in an organic dark chocolate ganash, set in the fridge and then jarred and kept to the bedside for easy comatose access! My up-coming debut into diabetes and possibly a premature death will be filled with almondmeal and blisss. Excuse me, I'll have another, alone. ta.


I tried to get a good shot of what the inside looks like, to show off my brown unhulled marzipan and how much it makes these little babies look like roo-poo but I kept eating them and got too excited to get a good focussed shot after this one.

ATT: MELBOURNE VEGANS

We made a quick dash to melbourne for a brief holiday. Staying with our beautiful friends Fjorn & Sean in Thornbury, after an 11hr drive from the mountains we were rather peckish and took a walk down from their part of high street to get some take-aways.

As we walked there we noticed a cafe that was covered in GLUTEN FREE, WHEAT FREE, DAIRY FREE, EGG FREE proclaimations in the window. The name of the place was memorised and Alex promised to let me go there in the morning. Could it be, a place where I COULD EAT EVERYTHING??????

Yes.

Tart'n'Round were a well received feature table at World Vegan Day last year. I fondly recall eating a whole caramel slice in one go (yes, I believe I ate the whole thing!) and others smartly ate theirs in portions, and devoured the peanut butter (which are not all disimilar to some i made for TJ's pot luck last year) and cherry bliss balls. They've opened this cafe last week (we visited them on their 2nd and 3rd days of business -twice on the 3rd!!-) in the Thornbury end of High street that seems to be growing more and more in new shops and new interest past Naturally on High, every day. The balls are outstanding and the slices are exactly what you want them to be. The biscuits weren't too impressive (the one we got seemed far too dry and kinda tasteless) but the lentil burger patty and salads were filling and colourful and fresh.
At the time we visited they didn't yet have a coffee machine but were making sounds of expecting one ASAP. The menu also features vegan ice cream choc tops and cheeses, so it's worth checking out, IMO.

Usually I try to be kind of critical/skeptical of places I eat, especially when they seem kind of too good to be true (even if it is super exciting that a place offers vegan food or is a vegan restaurant it's more exciting if the food is delicious and interesting. just cos somewhere's a vegan restaurant doesnt mean we have to love it), but I was being lusted away by my old hometown and I don't know if you realise how amazing it is to be so limited in your diet against your own will and find a palce where you can eat EVERYTHING. If the cookies were a bit less shit and the balls a little less expensive I'd probably move under a table here.

Tart'n'Round
839 High st in Thornbury 3071
Tuesday- Sat 9.30am -5.00pm
Sunday 10am- 3.00pm

Martha-Choke

What you see here is a veganization of a Martha Stewart Recipe - Roasted Chicken and Jerusalem Artichokes that was the most interesting and appetizing recipe I could find when looking for ideas of what to do with the "sunchokes" as I've never had them before.
I pretty much prepared the recipe verbatim, replacing the chicken with my beloved smofu lightly pan-fried before roasting and some soya chicken slices in a marinade of tamari, umeshu, and lemon zest.

It's a really big dish and I was probably a bit too ambitious with the servings I made for just Alex and myself. I'd like to try this again for more people or with some other veggies as Al made a comment of it being extremely tastey but a bit heavy on the soy products. Otherwise, I found this recipe to be quite encouraging of my veganizing skills and am looking forward to more adventures with Martha and other meat-relying uberchefs.

I wish I'd taken a photo of this one coming out of the oven, it looked fucking fantastic. You can see a version of a vegan Martha-Choke on What the Hell does a Vegan eat anyway? where they appear to enjoy this dish quite regularly and I coincidentally happened upon whilst writing up.

I served mine with leftover brown rice, roasted potatoes & gravy, and a garnish of some of our dwindling watercress.

x

Your Dad Curry

Last night I attempted a vegan variation on trotski & ash's my dad chicken curry using what I had around. It turned out extraordinarily well and I'll make it again next week maybe to shoot a photo of the actual curry and recipe and my very first chutney.
These photos are of a reheated late lunch I had this afternoon. I love it when I successfully veganise things, it makes me feel so accomplished as a feeder, and a little bit gloaty about what I like to think of as my told-ya-so on the few people I know who still insist all I can eat is lettuce. For those interested, I'm working on a recipe for an even-better Butter Chicken, am still unemployed, and forgot to take photos of an orange and almond cake with home made marzipan that I made for the winter solstice weekend.

Tuna Baked

As I mentioned below I bought a package of Vegetarian Tuna from Vina's on Thursday after being tricked by my loving partner (because clearly I have no will of my own and blah blah blah who gives a shit, I bought some fake tuna).
I get excited about mock meat because I LOVE MEAT and mock meat is commonly made from gluten products which, because I HATE THE A.W.B., I don't partake of (this is a lie but being a coeliac is BORING) but will happily munch down on any "meaty" product that I can.

Tuna however, I never ever ever ate as an omnivore because I don't eat things that smell like yucky (see: Vegemite -maybe YOU like it, whatever) unless they look good or I'm given a reason to believe I'll enjoy it.
So it would only be a case of trickery that I would venture into untouched meat territory with this purchase, and with a waste-not-want-not policy of purchasing I set out to use it. I was not going to be making some sort of tuna dip or soup or spread for a sandwich (gluten free bread is too expensive for yucky risk taking) and the Vegan Tuna Bakes had been making the rounds through Melbourne's Vegan blogging and pot lucking scene with great success so I thought I may as well give it a go. (ZB also did one recently with tempeh, so maybe there is a national wave of mock tuna happening)

I'd never eaten a tuna bake before, but I do enjoy a macaroni cheese casserole (which is essentially what this is) whenever it's on offer so I figured the only risk was that I'd have to pick out the bits of tuna if I didn't take to it.

I went by Harriet's basic formula of Pasta + Beschamel + Veggies + Tuna topped with Breadcrumbs (naturally gluten free's crunch loaf is what I have around at the moment) and some grated Cheezly Edam in the oven for half an hour and seasoned servings with the good ol S&P, savoury yeast and some home grown parsley.

The veggies I used were red capsicum, mushrooms and broccolini.

The Beschamel/Cheese sauce I make is based on Karina's "Best Cheesey unCheese Sauce" and I combined it with some of Kingland's soy mayonaise on a whim and popped it into the oven at 180c for half an hour which was enough time for the dishes to be done and for Alex to come home with some cola he snatched from his pizza delivery job up here.

The Result? A warming, nourishing meal that had my trickster of a love making incredibley happy "as good as my mum's" noises which (considering the fact that his mum is all about meat and cheese) is enough to satisfy my checklist for a good meal, despite what I think about a certain fish.

I'm not convinced that I'm going to run out and buy another packet of this stuff unless tricked again but I did enjoy it quite enough to eat two servings and feel happy. If you ever liked tuna but can't eat it anymore, this stuff probably does everything you want it to.

Vina, Newtown.

Just blogging to let Sydney-siders and Sydney visitors know there's a new vegetarian restaurant in Newtown. I should have brought my camera to blog it but didn't, oh well.

Vina is a Vietnamese restaurant on the Southern side of King Street, a couple of shops down from the Sandringham hotel (for a point of reference landmark, this is a big pub). The place had the same song on a loop the entire time we were there (about an ahour and a half in total) but the decor was simple and peaceful and the staff were very sweet and happy.
Meals were well sized and you could control the heat of your soup with additional red chillies, if you so wished. Alex had a spicy rice noodle soup and I had a "Pork" hot pot with eschallots and veggies. Friends we ran into there were having a good time with a bowl of Tom Yum and some lemongrass "Chicken".
Prices are okay with the big soups at $12 and main meals going from there but averaging $16 each, there was a great choice of entrees if you go that way. There were some sharing options on the mains menu that looked like they'd be fun for next time ($35 between two or $60 between four) sort of viet rice paper roll style and possibly a hot broth fondu?
The Dessert menu looked delicious but we had to pinch our pennies a LITTLE as well as make time to get back up the mountain to sleep.
There were complimentary lychee and taro (favourite!) jellies at the counter and the restaurant also sells a few vegan condiments and mock meats for you to buy and take home (large range of tartex, some tuna that was quite cheap that I got -look forward to a potential blog on using it!- and many different kinds of lamyong brand mocks...).

decent food, casual and comfortable.

Vina, 393 I THINK King Street, Newtown 2042