The £100 challenge for October
Posted: September 30, 2013 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: £100 challenge, budget, challenge, diet, frugal, money diet, October, Vegan, vegetarian 7 CommentsEvery now and then I like to make life more interesting by setting myself a budget challenge.
I’ve done these before, so I know that it’s possible, but also that it’s surprisingly hard. Lucky me that I have some choice though, I do realise that. Now that I work part time at my main job, my basic salary only barely covers my bills, and the extra work I get offered is what pays for food and fun, but I’ve been fortunate enough so far to keep getting that work.
The £100 challenge for the month of October means that I set a limit of that amount of spending money. This includes:
Food
Drink
Socialising/events
Travel
Clothing
Household goods such as cleaning supplies
It does not include bills which come out via direct debit, e.g. phone and internet, heating and property-related expenses.
At the moment I am supposedly trying to lose weight for a 20lb challenge (everything is easier if you make it into a challenge!), which I totally slacked off of while Vegan MoFo was on, so that’s good in a way, should mean I spend less on food, although salad stuff can be expensive… and I now have a ton of food in the freezer, all those onions, and my boyfriend’s parents sent me a carrier bag full of apples from their tree. Really, I could probably get by not spending much on food at all, but I really like trying new things and buying bargains, so it’s a huge temptation for me.
Tomorrow I’m going to do a cupboard inventory. I’ll be keeping track of my daily spends on here and hopefully posting some frugal and/or low-calorie recipes.
Some friends I mentioned this to are interested in joining. If you are too, please leave me a comment. Misery loves company! 😉
It’s the final Monday (doo-doo-DOO-do….)
Posted: September 30, 2013 Filed under: Baking | Tags: baking, bread, organic, pizza, Vegan, Vegan MoFo, vegetables, vegetarian Leave a commentSo, it’s the last Monday of Vegan MoFo, and with this post I’ve met my goal of a blog post a day. Some have been a bit of a fudge (mmm, fudge), but I’m pleased with some of the stuff I’ve come up with. Can’t lie that some of the ideas I had for themes made me panic a bit and start inventing stuff I wouldn’t cook for myself in the normal way, particularly the amount of pies and scones, however there is some baking I do genuinely do on a regular basis, and that’s bread.
I generally do half white and half wholemeal organic flour because I like the compromise between rise and nutrition this offers.
I weigh out what my scales tell me is 1lb flour, but judging how much more than half a pint of water I have to add (which is what my original recipe told me to add), my scales must be pretty out. I think I’m going to treat myself to some new ones with this month’s pay packet!
I divide my dough in half, then those in half, and then in half again, to get 8 pieces. What I generally do is make a tray of 6 quite flat bread rolls, which are useful for sandwiches. If I’m not going to get through the whole lot, I like to cut them in half and freeze them. Because I’ve made them flat each half can then fit straight from the freezer into my toaster.
With the remaining 2 bits of dough, I vary it according to what I fancy at the time, and if I have anything hanging around that needs using up. Sometimes I might make a spice bread, but I’ve plenty of that at the moment, or I occasionally divide those lumps in half again and make 4 pasty/calzone type things, but today I’m going for pizza-ish.
What I tend to do is slice up an onion with whatever else I’ve got around (sometimes just frozen sweetcorn), put a bit of Marigold bouillon powder and smoked paprika, and a slosh of oil in and mix it up in the same bowl I made the dough in.
The pizza bases are a bit of an odd shape so I can fit them on my baking sheet. And the reason I don’t just do one is because I’d be tempted to eat it all, whereas two means I can have one for lunch and one for another time.
I also made hummus today, another regular staple. I buy giant 5kg bags of dried chickpeas, cook up about a kilo at a time and then freeze most of them in handy sized boxes.
Although the Vitamix is super for making things smooth in super-quick time, I do find it difficult to get the final scrapes of anything thick. Hating to waste things, I tend to plan stuff like this to co-incide with something like soup or stew where I can then add some water and add the watered down last bits of mixture to something else. This time, instead I added fresh rosemary, dried oregano and some flaked almonds to make a sauce for my pizza. This sauce is nothing like cheese but it fulfils the same sort of function in terms of protein and holding the veg together.
And here’s my lunch!
If you’ve got this far, thanks for bearing with my rather boring final day’s post.
I’d also like to thank the Vegan MoFo team for their hard work, and say that I’m looking forward to next year already. Now I know how much work it is I’m going to start planning!
Blogging regularly has been a great challenge and I’d like to keep it up, so I’m going to start a new challenge for October. Watch this space…
Scones on Sunday – potato scones
Posted: September 29, 2013 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: breakfast, potato, scones, Vegan, Vegan MoFo, vegetarian 7 CommentsI’ve been thinking about potato scones almost since MoFo started, they cover so many things I really like: potatoes, carbs, friedness. Yep, the potato scone has it all.
I found several recipes. The common factor in many seemed to be that the flour weighs about 1/5 of the potato. The simplest instructions were at scottishrecipes.co.uk but to a potato-scone-making novice they left out a few rather important bits of information, like whether to flour your rolling-out surface, or grease your griddle.
I knew I wouldn’t get through 500g of potatoes-worth of scones, so I cut it down to 300g, with a corresponding 60g flour. I peeled and weighed out the potatoes, cut them into fairly small chunks, covered them in cold water in a pan and boiled them until they were soft enough to mash. When they were done I drained the cooking water into a measuring jug, being fearful of the instruction that told me not to let them get too dry.
I mashed the potatoes with a pinch of salt and added them to the flour while they were still warm, and added a glug of olive oil. I cut them in with a fork, and the mixture did look a bit on the dry side:
So I added a dribble of the cooking liquid. Not a great idea. It was still a cohesive dough, but definitely on the sticky side. I ploughed on, scooping out half of the mixture and starting to roll it out on my silicone pastry mat. Disaster! (yes, I’m being melodramatic.) The dough stuck to the mat. I scooped it back into the bowl, turned the mat over and floured it, despite lack of instruction to do so, and put a bit of flour on the dough for good measure. This successfully rolled out into a rough circle which I then quartered.
The recipe also doesn’t say to grease the griddle, but I didn’t want to be scraping dough off my recently-re-seasoned cast iron pan, so I poured a good couple of teaspoons of oil in and swirled it around. The seasoning must have taken pretty well this time, because these didn’t stick at all, and in fact came out looking pretty good:
I’m not usually one for a big breakfast, but this is the last Sunday of MoFo, so I decided to treat myself. Beans in tomato sauce (with added chopped onions), mushrooms fried with a bit of oregano and smoked paprika, a tomato cut in half and warmed up in the oven, and some Linda McCartney rosemary and red onion sausages, and the scones as the king of the plate! Jolly good it was too. Since I usually only have cooked breakfasts when I’m on holiday, and because the sun is shining today, it was a great start!
Souper Saturday – sweet and spicy carrot soup
Posted: September 28, 2013 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: almonds, apricots, carrot, ginger, Vegan, Vegan MoFo, vegetarian 6 Comments
I’m not going out until later so there are no pictures of my sociable Saturday yet. Instead, here’s a soup I felt like making.
Sweet and Spicy Carrot Soup
(Probably serves about 4 as a starter)
Ingredients:
150g chopped onions
2 tsps cooking oil
150g carrots, fairly finely sliced
35g dried apricots
500ml-ish water, divided
125ml hard cider – I used Weston’s Wyld Wood, which I got 3 litres of on special offer
100g cooked chickpeas
10-15g root ginger (depending on how gingery you like things!)
1 hot red chilli, de-seeded (optional – think this would still be nice without)
2 teaspoons bouillon powder
To garnish: Toasted flaked almonds
Method:
Chop onions and start frying them in the oil in a medium-large saucepan which you have a lid for.
Once they’re sizzling reduce the heat and leave while you slice the carrots up into thin rounds. Add those to the pan, turn the heat up and mix them up for a minute or two. Add half the water, and the bouillon powder, and bring to the boil. Turn down heat, cover with lid and simmer for a few minutes until the carrots start to soften, then turn off heat.
Put ginger, chilli, chickpeas, apricots, and cider into a blender, then strain the cooking liquid from the pan of carrots and onions into the blender container. If you like a completely smooth soup add all of the carrots and onions as well, but you might need some extra liquid. I wanted some texture so I only scooped half of the carrot-onion mix into the blender container. Blend until smooth then pour back into the saucepan. Add the other half of the water to the blender container and swoosh it around to get the rest of the blended stuff then add that to the saucepan too. Turn heat back on to gently reheat soup.
While waiting for the soup to re-heat, a quick and delicious crunchy garnish can be made by toasting some flaked almonds with seasoning of choice. I squirted my cast-iron frying pan with some Fry Light 1 cal sunflower spray, added a few drops of the liquid smoke I got from a rare visit to one of the few Whole Foods stores in the UK, and a dash of soya sauce for colour and flavour, then mixed them round on a medium heat for a couple of minutes until they started to brown and crunch up.
I probably don’t need to continue with the instructions, really! Put your soup in a bowl, top with some of the almonds, and enjoy!
Pie-day Friday – cauliflower and onion pie
Posted: September 27, 2013 Filed under: Baking | Tags: cauliflower, onions, pastry, Vegan, Vegan MoFo Leave a commentIt’s payday! I meant to make a bad title worse by buying expensive ingredients and then calling this ‘payday pie day Friday’, but you are all spared as I saw a cauliflower for only 60p while I was mooching through the market.
If you read yesterday’s entry you will know that I bought rather a lot of onions on Wednesday.
I’m planning on making something like relish with some of them, but I’ve also been looking at onion pie recipes. I was taken with a suggestion from easy as vegan pie to caramelise onions and blend some into a sauce, although the layering described in the recipe sounded a bit faffy.
I sliced and started cooking 5 onions with a pinch of smoked salt, but forgot to add sugar – 20 minutes later they were still pale, but they had a great flavour.
I made a standard short crust pastry case.
Kinda wish I’d left it with a ripple!
I cut the cauliflower into what I hoped were bite-sized pieces, and fried them in a drizzle of oil with some of the onions. I made a sauce by blending 200g tofu, 2 cloves garlic, most of the remaining fried onions, a couple of teaspoons each of English mustard and bouillon powder and (a mistake!) 2/3 of a dried chipotle, which made it too spicy. I was gilding the lily by adding that as well as mustard. I also added soyamilk and about 3 tablespoons cornflour, as I didn’t want it as firm as last week’s custard, but in fact it could have stood a bit more.
The pie went in a hot oven for about fifteen minute, with a sprinkling of smoked paprika and a few squirts of one-cal sunflower oil spray.
It tasted pretty good, although definitely too chipotle-y, and went pretty well with some of the rhubarb and apple chutney made earlier this year. I have a feeling the flavours will mellow and become tastier once it cools.
Thirsty Thursday – Aronia Berry Milkshake
Posted: September 26, 2013 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: aronia, chokeberries, drinks, fruit, Vegan, Vegan MoFo 1 CommentYesterday evening I went on a supermarket run to get potatoes. They were out of the ones I wanted, but instead I left with 10 kilos of onions (they were on special offer! 2 five kilo bags for only £3.50, how could I refuse??), 3 litres of organic cider (also on offer) and a punnet of aronia berries, marked down at the end of the day from £2 to 20p.
I have never, to my knowledge, eaten an aronia berry before. These were grown in Scotland, so no worries about air miles, but for an unusual ingredient they were sparse on recipe suggestions on the pack, just telling me they work well cooked. So, completely ignoring that, I ate a couple raw. They were a bit weird, I have to say. They have a definite ‘hedgerow’ flavour eaten out of hand. I thought I’d bung some in a milkshake to use them up.
I used around half of the 250g punnet, and to thicken and sweeten it a bit I added 6 dried apricots. Because I forgot to refill the ice-cube tray I used a few chunks of frozen rhubarb, and blended it all up with 3/4 pint or so of unsweetened soya milk.
On first taste the flavour of the berries came through in a rather bitter way, and I thought I’d just wasted a load of ingredients, but I’m glad I gave it a second sip, because once you get used to it it’s fine, rather pleasant in fact.
Aronia are alternatively known as chokeberries because of their astringent qualities, and they do produce a slightly unusual sensation of dryness in the mouth, but it’s bearable, and after a while the taste is reminiscent of black cherries.
Apparently, aronia are sometimes found in ornamental planting schemes on municipal land. I don’t think I would buy these at full price, but now I know what they look like I’ll be keeping my eye on the hedgerows!
Midweek munchies at Mirch Masala
Posted: September 25, 2013 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: deep-fried, fast food, Leicester, samosa, spring roll, take-away, Vegan, Vegan MoFo, vegetarian Leave a commentI got more casual work this afternoon! I’ll be able to afford to eat the month after next, woohoo!
I didn’t have time to go home between my morning and afternoon jobs, so I popped into Mirch Masala on Market Street, a handy 3-minute walk from my workplace.
This place is great if you want to pop in for a hot, crispy, spicy snack (and if I’ve got more time to have a sit-in meal, I really like their spicy bean pizza and chips meal).
Mirch Masala has two branches in Leicester. They are a ‘pure vegetarian’ establishment, which means they use dairy but not eggs. They offer sit-in meals from the menu or lunchtime buffet, and a takeaway buffet counter and option to order take-out on any of their menu items, but I usually just grab a spring roll and/or samosa from their hot counter, as these are always tasty and they’re only 50p each if you just get the ready made ones.
They nearly always have both vegetarian and vegan options on spring rolls and samosas, I believe the veggie ones have paneer cheese in them, so if you do visit don’t be afraid to ask for the vegan ones. The vegan samosas are the classic samosa filling of peas, potatoes and spices. The ones today were very well seasoned with lots of garam masala spices and plenty of salt (I like salt!).
The spring rolls have a filling unlike any I’ve tried elsewhere. I’m not sure if they might not be using a version of sauerkraut, as they have a real tang to them. The innards may not look exciting visually, but when you get a freshly fried one with piping hot tangy cabbage filling they take some beating!
I’ll be going shopping tonight, so hopefully I’ll be posting about something a bit greener in the next few days. I’m from the ‘a little of what you fancy does you good’ school of thought though, and I definitely fancied these.
Booze-day Tuesday – Cooking With Beer
Posted: September 24, 2013 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: alcohol, beer, lake district, lancaster black, seitan, stew, stout, UK, Vegan, vegan dad, Vegan MoFo Leave a commentEarlier this year I went on holiday to the Lake District. We had lovely weather for almost the whole holiday, and stayed in a couple of pretty nice places. The one slight cloud in my otherwise sunshiny sky was that the small independent offies we visited didn’t seem to know which of the bottles were suitable for vegans in their vast arrays of local beers. However, a very helpful man in Booths supermarket was sure they had some, and almost as soon as we started searching I spotted this beauty.
Lancaster Black stout. Apparently it’s won awards. It’s certainly very pleasant to drink. I had one or two after enjoying views like this –
But I also bought a few bottles home with me. Going through my freezer recently led to the discovery of a mystery sausage. Upon defrosting, I remembered it as a take on Vegan Dad’s veggie lunch meat slicing sausage, to which I’d added some dried porcini mushrooms, and thought a beery hotpot might be nice to come home to this evening so between jobs I put some stuff in a pot…
Stout and Sausage Stew
Ingredients
200g seitan sausage
200g cooked chickpeas
90g (Medium) onion – or more to taste. I only had one left.
125g (2-3 smallish) carrots
140g (2 medium) potatoes
1 400g can tomato chunks
150ml (5 fluid oz, or just over half a cup) stout, or a bit more if you like
1/2 teaspoon of salt or more, to taste
1 teaspoon dried oregano or mixed herbs
2 teaspoons cooking oil
Method.
Cut the onion, carrots and potatoes and seitan into chunks. Heat the oil in a large pan and add the onion. Cook it for a few minutes until it starts to brown then add everything else. Continue to cook on a medium-high heat until it starts bubbling, then lower to a simmer until the potatoes are done.
It was dark when I got home, to explain the particular rubbishness of the last picture, but I was very glad to be able to grab supper almost as soon as I got in. It’s not the most exciting stew in the world, and the beer flavour is not pronounced, but it seems to round out the flavour of the broth and mellow the acidity of the tomato. Over all, this was pleasant to eat following an afternoon’s work and a mile’s walk home. I’d have added some garlic if I’d had some, but then I would always say that!
(near the) market monday
Posted: September 23, 2013 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: groceries, Leicester, Vegan MoFo, wholefood 4 CommentsA short walk from the market, in the Lanes area on Loseby Lane, is Currant Affairs. This is my favourite shop in Leicester. It’s pretty small but they manage to cram a huge range of stock in. It’s all vegetarian, and a lot of the groceries and food from the counter is vegan too.
All the people who work there are lovely (and I think some of them might be reading this blog! Hi Karyn, Anne-Marie and Lucy!), and if they don’t have an item you need they can usually get it for you pretty quickly.
First to greet your eyes on a visit is the food counter in the window. They have an excellent range of filled rolls ( known as ‘cobs’ in Leicester), most of these are vegan and I particularly like the falafel and hummus, the nut burger with locally made chutney, or the carrot-cashew salad option. Most of the food in the window is produced in their kitchen upstairs. It’s been a while since I asked but they used to happily make variations on their cobs if you had a special request, such as no spread.
They also have cakes, slices and savoury pasties, mashed potato-and-carrot topped pies with a choice of filings ( all good but the nut one is my favourite), pizzas and puff pastry goodies. During colder months soup with bread is available too.
If you are after ingredients instead of lunch they won’t fail you either. Check out all the useful stuff they cram in!
There’s more…
There’s also a freezer with meat alternatives, pies, ice-cream-type things, pizzas… probably more! And at the counter they have lots of impulse buy stuff. I’m always tempted by the Sweet Vegan marshmallows when they have them, but have heroically resisted so far!
Flapjacks on Sunday
Posted: September 21, 2013 Filed under: Baking | Tags: cherries, chocolate, golden syrup, oats, peanut butter, Vegan MoFo 2 Comments
I’m still feeling a bit sore-throat-esque and also have been offered some casual work tomorrow morning so I’m not sure I’ll feel like getting up early and making potato scones as originally planned. Since I’m aiming to blog every day this month, if something gets posted just after midnight that relieves the pressure for a bit longer than normal!
Instead, here are some rather substantial snacks I made a few days ago based on this peanut butter and golden syrup flapjack recipe
Since my granulated sugar was nearer to hand I used that instead of light brown soft sugar. I didn’t have enough oats by about 65g, so I topped it up with about 35g of oat flour and 30g flax meal. To make up for no brown sugar I subbed one tablespoon golden syrup with molasses, but when I came to mix it all up it looked too dry so I ended up squeezing more syrup in anyway. I also wanted them to be ever so slightly cakey so I put a couple of spoonfuls of water in. I used sultanas and dried sour cherries instead of raisins, and I couldn’t be faffed with the topping they suggest so I just sprinkled 100g chocolate chips over the surface shortly after they came out of the oven. Apart from those adjustments I followed the recipe faithfully!
And yes, I’ve finally decided to try Instagram three years after everyone else.
dropscone 
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