Truffles, anyone?

Flash!!! I remembered that one of the reasons I began blogging about my vegan adventure was to develop a menu plan which I could recycle every four weeks, and never have to worry about meal-planning again. So WHY then, did I find myself at 6 p.m. on a Friday evening, on facebook SPECIFICALLY because I DID NOT know what was for dinner?
I can't answer that question.
However, it did prod me to look over the meals we'd had in the last month, and I managed to put together a passable dinner of Potato Parlsey Pesto Salad, carrot sticks and sautéed mushrooms. Wonderful stuff. My next task is to take all 30 days of Vegan Adventure posts, and actually CREATE the four week menu plan to work from. No problem - sure I can fit that job in somewhere.
Last night I also made Almond Milk in the Vegan Star. The recipe needs tweaking, as the resulting milk is quite runny. It left me with some almond pulp though, and I didn't want to throw it away, so....

Almond and Walnut Truffles

About a cup (maybe less...) of almond pulp
1/3 cup walnut pieces
1/3 cup almonds
1/3 cup sultanas
1tbsp agave syrup
coconut for rolling

Use a food processor to chop up the walnuts, almonds and sultanas. Mix these with the almond pulp and agave syrup. Roll into balls, and roll in coconut. Put in fridge for 1-2 hours. Yummy, and dare I say it?...a little bit FANCY. :-)

Time for a Still-Vegan catch-up post

Wholemeal pasta with broccoli and herbs

Stir-fried cabbage with miso and cider vinegar

Big fresh mixed salad

Vegan Scalloped potatoes, baby! 

And a big pot of lentils.

Well, hi there! It seems like ages...but really, it is just a few days. A few very packed days. However, we're still eating well, and it is still a grand adventure. The best way to catch up is by looking at the above photos. I think the highlight so far has been the scalloped potatoes. Made with vege broth, garlic, herbs and nutritional yeast - it really looks like parmesan on top there, doesn't it? They were so creamy and delicious.

And today, my newest shiny appliance arrived...I've already made the first batch of soy milk. I soaked the soy beans for 4 hours (recipe said 1 hour, but it was dance night!). I wasn't sure how long it was going to take, perhaps an hour or something like that - 25 minutes! It took 25 minutes to make 1.5 litres of creamy soy milk. I'm so excited to try almond milk and rice milk now.
Well...not right now...tomorrow now or the day after tomorrow now, if you get what I mean. NOW now is all about DELTA Assignment Number Five...getting it sent in before midnight.

Night night.

Good food day.

I was at home, studying today. I finished Assignment/Task Four, and sent it in. Then I made lunch for daughter and me. We had wholemeal pasta with a tomato/cannellini bean sauce.
And I made dinner while I was at it, because I had to take daughter to dentist in the afternoon, do the shopping, run an errand for a friend, AND SEND MY BOOK to the competition (which I did! Great feeling!).
So dinner was grilled eggplant slices, and then I made up a vegetable stew kind of thing.
Olive oil, sautéed two leeks, added some garlic, then added eggplant, diced small, some sliced zucchini, then some sliced mushrooms. I then added some miso, tomato paste, oregano and basil, and some red wine, and let that stew for some time...then added some cooked cannellini beans, put the lid on, and turned off the heat. I reheated it at dinner time. All the flavours had melded, and the texture was wonderful - creamy, tasty, herby, warming. The photo is dreadful ;-) We had that with the grilled eggplant slices, and some Valeriana  salad greens (apparently known in English as Lamb's Lettuce) - they were on sale at the market today, and looked so pretty! I just dressed them with a little olive oil...didn't even need salt.
And that was today as it happened...

The other news is that my volcano in Iceland (I say "mine" - I mean the one my book is loosely based on) just started erupting! Which would be super marketing, if my book was ready to be published!
Iceland volcano...again

The first chance I get....

I'm making THIS!!!! raw blueberry cheesecake (a great blog to visit for recipes. She's amazing!)

Today was a looooooong one! As are all Thursdays - and from the 24th they're going to get so much longer...but I'm not going to think about that just now.

Knowing I'd be home late, and tired, I asked Saint M-I-L to make minestrone for dinner - and she did with a vengance. Lentils, borlotti beans, carrots, silverbeet, potatoes, rice, and all manner of vegan goodness. Followed by lots of fruit (kiwifruit and apples).

Lunch - I was halfway to work when I realised I'd forgotten to make any...which shows where my brain is right now...well, shows that it is AWOL, anyway!  So I popped into Café Ripasso before work, and asked the lovely Carlo to have grilled vegies ready at 12.30...and because he's such a sweetie, when I went back at 12.30, not only were my vegies ready and waiting, but he'd ALSO set the table for me! It really made my day. I can't imagine the people at Café Grandori extending the same friendly hand! Yay for Café Ripasso, I say.

That's all, folks. No photos, but we'll get back to them when things calm down a little. I have the day off work tomorrow in order to prepare last part of DELTA Task 4 (due at midnight), so will have a little more time to do something interesting with the vegies I'm going to pick up from the market in the morning - although I do have to take Daughter to dentist in the afternoon, so am not sure WHAT I'm going to make. Watch this space!

I missed a day! That was awful!

Am now an official blogging addict :-)
I spent some of my yesterday working on the DELTA, some of it working on lesson plans, and the REST of it (until *ahem* 1.45am) EDITING THE BOOK! Finally! The The Clendon Award deadline is fast approaching, and nothing makes me focus more than a looming deadline. Hated not having time for a blog post!

Of course, woke up dazed and confused this morning, checked the fine print, realised what I THOUGHT was meant by "ARC Format" wasn't what it was at all...much cursing and gnashing of teeth, and frantic "well, if I do this, race here, duck over there, and squeeze that in here" - upshot was that I DID NOT GET IT IN THE MAIL today...nor even printed out! I did, however, get it whipped into what I believe is ARC format! I compared it to a published paperback, and it looks pretty similar :-)

Yesterday's meals were great! Still vegan...my m-i-l made pumpkin risotto for lunch, so I nabbed a plate of that (she's very careful to let NO cheese near it now - poor thing, I think she's terrified), and then for dinner, I finally made Veganomicon's chickpea cutlets! Wahoo! They are AWESOME. And as there is a slight snarky note about how the recipe has appeared on blogs all over the 'net, I'm NOT going to be one of them! You'll just have to google ;-)

 Don't they look just like schnitzel?
While making the chips, I managed to totally wreck my food processor bowl! I guess one of the spuds was too heavy - the blade buckled, the plate support snapped clean in two, and the plastic bowl cracked all over the bottom, and up the side! Gave me one heck of a fright - luckily, most of the chips were cut. And I can get replacement parts...no-one was injured, and that's the most important thing.

Today - first time I've had lunch at the bar since Day One (thanks, Heather, for making me GET OUT MORE!). Carlo from Cafe Ripasso in Viterbo is such a honey (can I still call people honey now I'm vegan?), and made me a super plate of grilled eggplant and zucchini, with olive oil and garlic (apologies to colleagues at meeting afterwards), and mini bruschette...yummy!

Dinner was the rest of the split pea soup from Monday, which I padded out with wholemeal pasta stars. And lots of fruit to follow. Gotta have that fruit!

Right, back to the DELTA, and lesson planning I go...but relieved in the knowledge that I have finished the book (Novel One, finished first draft, haven't finished editing. Novel Two, haven't finished first draft. Novel Three - contest ready, baby!).

The Thirty Day Vegan Challenge ends here - being a vegan doesn't.

It's been a very satisfying and educational thirty days. I'd like to start by thanking those readers who have followed the blog, checking in every day, leaving encouraging comments and suggestions on facebook (Leslie, Pea, Rowena, Kate, Ushka, Ken, Cathy and others I may have missed for now), and in person (Anna, Heather, Naomi...) and keeping me honest (and honestly reporting).
Perhaps I entered into this lightly, a little bit tongue-in-cheek, a little bit like making fun of my earlier self (I do remember saying so clearly, when I was a vegetarian, years ago, "Oh, being a vegetarian is easy...but vegan is a full-time job. I couldn't do it!")

Guess what? Being vegan isn't hard work, really.  It does take a little planning,  perhaps I haven't been at it long enough to really understand all the nutritional side of things yet, and I'm yet to try eating out as a vegan, but it has opened up a whole new vista of cooking, a new way of approaching food, and I'm feeling the love in the kitchen again.

At the beginning I said that I wasn't going to make my kids go vegan, and I stand by that. School lunches are what they are here in Italy, and with me being at work so much, there is no way I can pick them up, take them home, feed them good vegan food, and take them back to school (perhaps if I was a more militant vegan, I'd be marching down to the mensa, DEMANDING a vegan option for my kids...). BUT...I must say that because my attitude towards preparing the evening meal has had a bit of an adjustment, and perhaps because they can see that I'm back to cooking with joy, the children are eating better. That's a fantastic side-effect.

I wish for the last blog post of the 30 day challenge, I had some pretty pictures and a great menu plan. Instead, it was one of those days! A Monday - dance night. Also the day my daughter got her mid year report, which meant a trip to her school and a queue (not for long, luckily).

My lunch was leftover spaghetti puttanesca from yesterday (way too much, but no-one else was going to eat it, and I hated to waste it - and therein lies the main reason for my well-cushioned posterior!), and dinner was supposed to be a flavoursome split-pea soup...and it was, for the children. Hubby and I instead had salad and fruit. I was stuffed full from lunch still. I even managed to fit in a walk between feeding son, and feeding daughter (not my week to take the girls to dance).

Thanks once again for following...not too sure where this blog is going to go now...perhaps I need one more week of menu planning - I always feel better with five weeks instead of four (and I hate to stop blogging!), or perhaps I'll now get back to the teaching/DELTA blog this is technically supposed to be!

Only tomorrow will enlighten us. Until then, thank you again, friends and strangers, for your eyes on this writing. I appreciate your visit here, to Stitchery Dell.

Jo

Day 29...WOW!!!

One day off completing the 30 day Vegan challenge...but certainly not one day off going back to "normal". Vegan is my NEW NORMAL. There are still some things which need tweaking (one of them being QUANTITY). In the first two weeks, I lost a kilo...in the second two weeks, I put it back on. Looking back over the four week menu plan, I'd say this is because of the amount of grains I started adding (like bread, which I don't usually eat at all), and is probably also due to the amount of sitting and studying I'm doing - no exercise gives Jo a big tummy...

The spring weather seems to have arrived (whether it lasts or not remains to be seen), so I might be able to slip in a few more walks during the week now. I'm thinking of either recording all my notes as a podcast, or else downloading some discourse analysis podcasts, and listening to them while I walk - so I don't feel so guilty about stepping away from the desk.

Okay, on to what we ate and made today.

Breakfast - the usual.
Lunch - the usual for Sunday - wholemeal pasta alla Puttanesca! Yummy as always.
Dinner - I had the left-over left-over pumpkin from yesterday's lunch, reheated, smushed up and spread lavishly on toast! Wonderful...then fruit.


I also made RICE MILK today, after scaring myself by reading too much about soy...I used the recipe from my new favourite blog vegan reader and one cup of rice made A LOT of milk, so I'm hoping I won't be the only one using it.

It's that funny brown colour because I used maple syrup to sweeten it. It isn't too bad, but the real test is coffee tomorrow morning! 

And because making rice milk creates nearly 3/4 cup of rice bran (from one cup of rice), it was time to make rice-bran/raisin/oatmeal cookies! And they are wonderful! 

You can just SEE the goodness, right? 

I feel like tomorrow should be a celebration, but I'm working, then picking up daughter's school report (a two hour mission last year...), so not sure that dinner is going to be out of the ordinary. I'll be dancing in bliss all day though! 30 Days a vegan...

Day 28. That's Four Weeks. Not a month.

Another Saturday, another wonderful lunch from my mother-in-law, who hasn't realised she's now cooking vegan at the weekend :-) Well, once a weekend, anyway.
We had her wonderful spinach risotto (and I wanted to take a photo, really...) - spinach from our garden, so all the more special. White rice, but hey, let's not rock her boat toooooo much!
Then followed by the (by now standard, but by no means boring!) roast pumpkin, cardi and oven baked potatoes with fennel seeds. Yummy!

For dinner, all I did was re-heat the leftover cardi and pumpkin, and added some beans on the side, dressed with olive oil and garlic smoked salt. Super! The kids had carrot sticks and apple slices instead of the vegies, and also stewed pears for dessert (slightly sweetened with agave syrup, as a special treat).

I feel all virtuous today. The pumpkin looks like a big smile on my plate :-)

Day 27 - still going strong.

Today was the second seminar for DELTA, so I got up at 5.30, got ready, had my yummy overnight oatmeal (ooops, not so overnight today, because I forgot to put it to soak...), then headed out to catch the train. It was only once I got on the train that I realised I'd forgotten to do anything about lunch! Double oops.

Never mind! The train station Termini in Rome has a lovely little supermarket (Despar) which, owing to its high tourist traffic, stocks all sorts of wonderful things for the hungry vegan. My lunch (on the train on the way back home) was the following: four small mandarins, 2 bananas and a packet of mixed nuts, with a bottle of water. Very fruitarian, I thought, even though a real fruitarian would only have eaten the mandarins, or the bananas...

Tonight I tried to do something with tofu. I cut it into slices (which, in hindsight, were too thin), and marinaded it in a mix of red wine, garlic, sage, basil, olive oil and a touch of shoyu. I turned it after 30 minutes, then left another 30 minutes. Then I laid the slices on a baking sheet, and baked them at 200°c for 20 minutes, turned them and baked them for another 10 (I was working from a recipe...). They tasted quite good, but were very tough - so next time I'll leave thicker slices, and perhaps bake them for less time. I am also going to experiment with different brands of tofu, until I can make my own. (that is for a future post...)

I served it with oven-baked potato wedges (yes, that is a repeat from earlier this week, but they were so good, and the kids asked for them...), and another type of braised kale, this time with spring onions, garlic, zucchini and red wine. Very tasty.

Fruit to finish and that was Day 27. I had a chat with mother-in-law, and she's promised not to put cheese anywhere near the risotto for tomorrow's lunch :-)

Off to write assignments, plan lessons, edit book, and hang out with hubby now...Rugby 6 Nations starts tonight!

Day 26 - A guilty vegan...

... but only guilty of missing a blog day! I was just so tired last night, all I could do was go to bed...so sorry!

However, I need to fill in the menu-plan gap for my own benefit, so today is almost two for the price of one...almost, but not quite, and I will explain why.

On Tuesday night, I put some beans on to soak. It was a mix of kidney, black, cannellini, and borlotti beans, and I soaked them all together. Yesterday morning, I rinsed them, brought them to the boil, then changed the water, not once, but twice during the cooking time (to avoid socially unacceptable side effects - and I must say it worked!). Then I left them to drain.

(Lunch was spaghetti with a simple herbed tomato sauce and nutritional yeast).

In the evening, I sautéed some spring onions, garlic, diced celery, carrots and zucchini. I added a little miso, then some red wine. Once that had reduced a little, I tipped the beans in, added some tomato paste and a little water,  some dried basil and oregano, and let that all simmer. I also made some wholemeal bread, as the carb/comfort on the side. It was a great rib-sticker of a meal for a cold evening.

Today I took the standard pasta, carrot and broccoli mix to work for lunch. There were plenty of beans leftover for hubby and I for dinner tonight (see, two for the price of one!), along with a mixed salad courtesy of mother-in-law (who also made her rabbit stew for the kids. Was I tempted? Only by the green olives she puts in it...I have a tin of green olives in the cupboard, and thought about opening them, but it wasn't worth it...) I think she put in some fresh garlic shoots or spring onion shoots (in the salad I mean) because it was powerful strong! :-) I apologise in advance to all those I must speak with or sit near tomorrow!

I feel like I'm ending the 30 day challenge with a whimper rather than a bang, but I realise that I've learned so much these past four weeks. The most important lesson is that, with planning and a little effort, being vegan is quite easy, very tasty, and hugely satisfying.

...the next four days will decide whether this is a more permanent change ...but I believe it is.

Day 24...

Menu:
Overnight oatmeal (with ginger for a change, yummy!) - breakfast.
Lunch - kasha (toasted buckwheat) with steamed broccoli and carrots, plus fruit.
Dinner - yummies! Chickpea, olive and sundried tomato salad, oven-baked chips with basil, sage and garlic, and seitan with mushrooms and black curly kale. Fantastic and satisfying meal.

Off to hit the books for DELTA, and edit MY novel....