Millet and Mushroom Concoction

Check this recipe out.  It's really good.  I love millet, and I have made a mushroom and gravy concoction for ages that I usually have with wild rice mixed in on wilted greens.  This is like that, kind of- only with millet!

I made it my way- just normal mushrooms, no idea what crimini mushrooms are!  Used a bunch of obscure Chinese greens, instead of kale.  And I added one of my awesome vegan sausages (recipe from post punk kitchen- will blog about it later!).

Very yummy, heaps of leftovers.  I have had about 3 lunches as well as the initial dinner.

Vegan "alfredo"

When I visited my friend Ann last year, I nearly died laughing at this book:

and at the image you see above in particular.  I'm not really a grammar po-lice, honestly I don't understand the intricacies of English grammar well enough to join that force.  I do however get kind of stabby over abused quotation marks and their sadly misused cousins, the apostraphes.  I just thought I'd share that fun fact- since when I typed "alfredo" up above I started thinking about fresh brown "eggs" and giggling.  Because I am 5.

Anywhoo.  My stepmom An anonymous vegetarian emailed me some time ago a recipe (I really wanted to type "recipe") for a vegan alfredo based on cauliflower (look away, K-dog).  Caulis are cheap or seasonal or something here at the moment and I find myself with 4 in the fridge.  I like cauli, but 4?  It could be time for a Big Roast Up.  The recipe, as written originally would have been pretty bad, but heroically I managed to diddle it into something quite good.  It wasn't very photogenic, but I did take a pic of an empty bowl with about 6 green peas in the bottom.  That was all that was left after one of the dogs cleaned up a portion that I couldn't store.  I figure that if my hounds ate the pasta and sauce, and carefully licked the peas clean before spitting them out, it wasn't too bad.

Here I "present" for you- Pasta "Alfredo":

-1/2 cauliflower steamed until very soft (I threw mine in the slowcooker on HIGH with some boiling water- an inch or so while I went to kid-ballet for about a hour)

 
-an onion (I used one red onion and a few spring onions.  Don't think it matters.  Onion flakes would have been ok too)

1 stock cube (I used Massel "chicken" (see what I did there?)).

- garlic (to taste.  This was pretty bland so I ended up using about a teaspoon of the dried garlic stuff).

- parsley

- salt, pepper

- nutritional yeast

- flour

- pasta

brown onions, add stock, simmer

put cauli, onions and stock into blender (I used a stab blender because that's all I have) and blend it all up.  Taste it- add salt, pepper (lots) and about 1/2 cup of nutritional yeast.  I added some arrowroot flour to get rid of the slightly watery consistency, and simmered it while adjusting seasonings.  When it tastes the way you like it, add some frozen peas- it was so bland looking I had to and even though the dog wasn't impressed I think it was a good move.  The consistency when I served it was like a thick soup, and in fact it would not make a bad soup!

Served on pasta, and it was indeed good.  They way I remember Alfredo is a lot richer and this wouldn't fool anyone, especially cauli-haterz.  But if you like cauli this is a nice, very light pasta sauce.

"enjoy"!

I am actually here

After a recent stint of writer's block, I feel I have to finally force some words out. "It's a blog, not War and Peace," I'm reminding myself. I don't have to be as good as that bloke who wrote that big book but more importantly, I just need to get some practice in to be as good as my blogmate taueret. So I say to myself, "I just need to START something". [Note: I am not a person who normally talks to herself, I just like the way it looks when I write "I say to myself"...]

I do sometimes have a problem with getting things done. Like, tidying my house. I look around at all the mess and think "too hard", and promptly sit down and read a book instead. I know that the theory is to just break big things down into smaller chunks but I tend to get paralysed by the enormity of things like baskets of clothes and papers in piles everywhere. And empty boxes, what's with those? I seem to keep them in case I need them for something later...well, if I ever move again, at least I will have that juicer box to help me out. But I digress.

Our idea here was to blog about the foods we are making and therefore prove that it's not very difficult to be vegan after all. Of course, we'll blog about other stuff too.

So, in my first official entry to this journal, I want to talk about the stir fry I made last night.

In the wokIt was delicious! I have not had much to do in the past with stir fries. I never really was confident so most things I made in my wok were dreadful. However, I have gotten renewed enthusiasm for trying new things and re-trying things so in the last few weeks my wok creations have been really quite amazing, considering all the past failures!

I cut up some veg - baby bok choy (I really love this stuff - its moisture just busts out when I chew it up), capsicum (my favourite food for the last 6 months or so, after HATING it my whole life - who would have thought?), a spring onion, broccolini, celery. Started the stir fry off with some crushed garlic and then added the veggies to the wok. After about 5 minutes I added magic SEITAN (which I had marinated for about 10 minutes in some light soy sauce). And some ketjap manis too, for good measure.

YUM!

The magic seitan stuffSo, it ended up being a giant bowl of veggie and gluten goodness. I ate it all, pretty sure the calorie count was minimal, hooray! 

Served!Nomnomnom.