AWW Polenta Bake.

I've been meaning to start veganising recipes from the Australian Women's Weekly for a while. Some of their recipes are incidentally vegan or easily veganised by the replacement of dairy milks/butters for other less abusive products and some of their recipes depend on meat or eggs as integral players. So be it a little lazy on my part for choosing this recipe, its just so good looking and I hadn't used polenta for quite some time. The major adjustment made was with cheeses and milk as well as completely halving the recipe as I didn't have a whole litre of milk to spare, and my "lamington" tray is small.

The Australian Women's Weekly presents: Baked polenta with tomato and bocconcini (a la vegan).

INGREDIENTS (with my adjustments and substitutions)
2 cups vegetable stock (I use Massel, and had run out of their really good Chicken stock but would use that if I had it)
2 cups soy milk
pinch of sea salt
1 cup polenta
⅓ cup grated cheezly mozzarella
1 tablespoon nutritional yeast
⅓ cup Napoli pasta sauce (we have this around the house sometimes, its a generic mix of tomatoes, tomato paste, and miscellaneous herbs and spices. you could use whatever you see fit, a white sauce or pesto would be nice, or a fresh passata with herbs. as you like!)
6 thin slices of cheezly mozzarella
6 seeded black olives, halved
pinch chopped fresh oregano, optional
flat-leaf parsley leaves, for serving, optional

METHOD
Preheat the oven to 220°C (200°C fan forced). Grease a 20cm x 30cm
lamington pan.

Combine stock, milk and salt in a large saucepan; bring to the boil. Gradually sprinkle the polenta over the stock mixture, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon, making sure the polenta has no lumps.
Reduce the heat to low and partially cover the saucepan. Continue cooking, stirring occasionally, for about 30 minutes or until polenta is very thick and a spoon can stand upright in the centre. Remove from heat, stir in the grated cheeze and nutritional yeast.

Spread polenta into prepared pan. Stand for about 5 minutes. Spread tomato sauce over polenta, top with mozzarella slices and place an olive half in the centre of each mozzarella slice. Sprinkle with oregano.
Bake, uncovered, for about 45 minutes or until cheeze is melted.

Let sit for about 5 minutes or until the polenta is firm to touch and easily cut. Cut polenta into squares; sprinkle with parsley, if desired.

Delicious, warming and I have no idea why some people hate polenta. Its such wholesome niceness.

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.

The Vegie Bar.

Tim mid-Grooming and Cale being.. Cheeky?!

I have food poisoning. I think. I dunno. It's a really bad time. Fuck. I'm so annoyed.

Sophie and Cale invited me to eat with them at Vegie Bar last night because Sophie wants to work there, I guess. I hadn't been there since my accident in 2007 but I had enjoyed it the couple of times I'd been there prior-to losing my teeth and my dad especially likes this place and often reminds me of when I took him there and "What was that bar called?". I invited Tim and Pip and suddenly I was fifth-wheeling (jokes. we're all friends. but couplesville + Lena seems to happen a lot).

Vegie Bar is normally quite busy but there's never been a long wait in getting a tbale and there's pretyt good service and the place has a pretty successful "it's all happening" kind of vibe, y'know? There's a tiled specials menu above the bench seats and a cabinet displaying desserts. Apparetnly the outside area is really nice and once I went to a birthday dinner here and we sat upstairs and it was real homely up there.

My only big complaint is that there was no salt and pepper shakers on the table andw ehad to ask for salt, which I would have assumed would have prompted a "woudl you like some pepper?". MAYBE this is because they're so confident with their own seasoning that they dont ened to provide this service, but COME ON, really?!?!

There's a great amount of stuff on the menu and we fickle vegans deciphered our way through it and ended up with the following.

Sophie had the Gado-Gado, which despite being not Pip's favourite south east asian dish, she approved of the sauce (we all did, I dipped chips in) and I suppose it was delicious enough to get through despite my feeling that disregarding the sauce it looked like a kind of plain meal. It was nice that they served the sauce on the side, but I like this dish for its full-drowning-of-vegetables effect it can have when served with the sauce everywhere. I should have gotten a report from Sophle but I didn't. Sauce Delicious, good amount of veggies and tofu.

Tim had the Vegan Supreme, of which I could not partake so I have no opinion other than Tim's which is that Tim is Supremely Vegan and this pizza was quite Supreme and he ate the whole damn thing and let Pip have A BIT. And Pip is very good at sneaking tastes of other peoples food for her own judgement and for the fun assortment of flavours it provides. Tim likes to eat, and he at the whole thing, no complains. Cale said that they've changed the cheese, so those of you who are on the ball with Vegie Bar, WATCH OUT- THEY'VE CHANGED CHEESES ON THE VEGAN PIZZA. Crazy. Absolutely wild, this place.

Pip and Cale did twin-orders of the Bean Burrito thingy made Vegan. Pip seemed pretty non-plussed about it, but made little complaint. The Guacamole was fine, I guess. I had ordered a bowl of chips with tomato sauce (not pictured- a bowl of hot chips. and a dipping bowl of tomato sauce. use your imagination people, it was very mystical and avant garde looking so if you're lost on this one then maybe I should take a photo of a potato) which was probably what I enjoyed most about eating the things I ate. It looked real cute though, a nice bready parcel of beans on soem rice and corn chips, some guac as a condiment and a nice leafy salad.

And I had this. It is a rissotto of (apparently) three kinds of mushrooms (Pip and I counted one: BUTTON. whatever), white wine and truffle oil. If I were a vegetarian it would have chevre and parmesan. Which may have made this dish more pretty and maybe may have saved it. Complaint the first: They used BROWN RICE to make this risotto. PRetty sure the best choice would have been Aborio, thanks guys. There was a lot of information and the dish was promising but I couldn't handle the intensity or something. I dunno. It really needed saving. I put a fuck load of salt on it, as is now much custom due to low blood pressure + a taste for salty food anyway, but that didn't seem to do much. The best way I could explain the disappointment I had for this dish was the following way.

IMAGINE SOMEONE IS TELLING YOU A REALLY INTERESTING STORY ABOUT SOME AMAZING FUCKING SHIT AND IT HAS ALL THE KEY PARTS TO MAKING A GOOD STORY AND THE LANGUAGE IS REALLY GOOD BUT THE PERSON TELLING YOU THE STORY IS TELLING IT IN A COMPLETELY MONOTONOUS VOICE. I don't know about you but if/when this happens I think I'd want to be listening to the story, and I'd want to be enjoying the story, but the voice is just not engaging me AT ALL and I keep tuning in and out of it and I don't really see the point of the story anymore even though there is the promise of one.

This is the first time in a long time that I haven't been able to finish a meal. I just. Couldn't handle it. I guess. Maybe it's me, maybe the Risotto is fine. BUT I AM prepared to take the risotto accountable for my food poisoning. WHATEVER. Fuck you, risotto.

+++ Also Because I couldnt finish it and I didnt wanna waste it i thought mayeb I could take it home with me and mayeb make it tastier. APPARENTLY Vegie Bar doesn't allow this, which makes no sense.

Pip will back me up. Risotto was annoying and disappointing.

Dessert, however, saved the vegie bar last night.
There were two vegan options available from the display last night. One was an apple rubarb crumble (could not partake of crumble, but I ate some of the berries which was like HOLY FUCK WOAH OMG AMAZING) which Sophie and Cale shared. Lovers.

Pip and I shared the Choc Royale. Pip dug into it before I got a photo but this cake was gluten free and amazing. I've made a similar cake a couple of times, served warm. This wasn't warm but it was damn humungous and damn delicious and layered and rich and ohmygoodness.

My only real excitement about this place was when I discovered, as -ahem- relieving myself in the single-room ladies toilet, was the AMAZING TOILET. Holy shit.
So. The toilet is a water saver. HOW? All a toilet does is flush lots of water and constantly refill its basin and water water everywhere but not a drop to drink and WE'RE IN A DROUGHT, PEOPLE. FUck. So Anyway, the sink is for washing yourself after doing your what-have-you in the loo, and it is attached to the Cistern of the toilet.
So. what you do is, right, You flush the toilet (half or full, whichever appropriate) and then the TAP TURNS ON. OMG. Magic. So the tap turns on and you wash your hands and then you're like OMG HOW IS THIS SAVING WATER THE TAP ISNT TURNING OFF HOW DO I MAKE IT STOP.

but Stop. Hammertime, check yourself. For reals. Because what the tap is doing, is refilling the cistern. HOLY SHIT.

But really, this place?

Not worth the vomit/diarrhea/nausea party that continues to follow.

Sorry Dad (who is 61 today), I'm not taking you back here.