Lashings of cashew-licious cream!!

As the importer and distributor of the only dairy-free cream available in New Zealand, why on earth would I come up with a delicious recipe for cashew cream that people can make at home?!
Well, Christmas is coming up and lots of people want dairy-free cream to go with their Christmas desserts, and the Soyatoo cream has been selling so fast that I'm going to be completely out of stock a couple of weeks before Christmas.
And I like to be helpful.
And I know that no matter how much people love this recipe, there will always be plenty of people who're happy to pay for the convenience of buying dairy-free cream in a box.

Cashew cream

1 cup raw cashews (pieces or whole)
1/3 cup water
1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence

2 tablespoons icing sugar

1. Put the cashews in a pot, cover with water and bring to the boil. 
2.  Turn the heat off once it’s come to the boil and leave for about an hour (but at least 30 minutes).
3.  Drain and rinse the cashews, and put them in a food processor with the rest of the ingredients.
4. Blend until very smooth. Depending on the gruntiness of your food processor, you may need to add a little more water.

It's luxuriously creamy but very healthy - so healthy, in fact, that I'm enjoying some on top of my quinoa-and-fresh-fruit breakfast as I write!!

'tis the season to be thankful

I'm pretty excited to be going to my first Thanksgiving celebration this Friday. I'll be one of a few Kiwis amongst a gaggle of Americans at an event organised by a friend of Billy's.
I love the idea of having a specific time of the year to acknowledge the many things we have to be thankful for. So I made a list of some of the things for which I'm grateful:

• Nico and Mack, my beautiful sons
  
• Billy, my lovely husband
  
• Angel Food, my vegan business
• The miniature rosebud I found on the footpath last week, which opened into this lovely flower

• Found-on-the-footpath item #2: a brocade dress which was in a pile of free stuff left over from a garage sale at the Buddhist Centre! It was, ahem, a little tight on the hips, so I've made it into a top and I think it's going to serve me well.

• Which reminds me, I'm grateful for the sewing machine my parents gave me 20-plus years ago and which is still going strong!
  
• I'm grateful that the gathering on Friday will be vegetarian and vegan.
• I'm grateful that I have so many things for which to be grateful, AND that I know when to shut up about it!! So that's all for now!!
  

Recipe: polenta crisps

I love polenta. It's versatile, healthy, cheap, naturally fat-free and delicious! Last night I tested out an idea for using it to make crisps. I swear the idea was original, although a quick internet search revealed that I wasn't the first to have this original idea... never mind!

I'm not really happy with the light in this photo but it's too late, because I've been snacking on the props while writing this! Yum.

Baked polenta crisps

3 cups water
1 tablespoon stock powder (I use Rapunzel)
1 tablespoon dried basil
2 teaspoons savoury yeast
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1/8 teaspoon chilli powder
1/2 teaspoon whole cumin seeds
1 cup polenta (coarse cornmeal)

1. In a large pot, bring the water and seasonings (i.e. everything except the polenta) to the boil.
2. With the heat still on high, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon, pour the polenta into the boiling water.
3. Turn the heat down so it's simmering but not splattering too much (do watch out for the splatters - they hurt!).
4. Simmer for about five minutes, stirring occasionally. 
5. It's done when it's thick enough that the path cleared along the bottom of the pot by the wooden spoon doesn't immediately fill in with polenta. Make sense? (Must take a photo of that stage next time I make this.)
   
6. When it's done, divide the gloopy goodness between two baking sheets and spread it out as thinly and as evenly as possible. Allow to cool.
7. Cut into squares (or other shapes if you're feeling a little crazy) and bake, on baking paper, at 180C for about 30 minutes. How long it takes and how crispy they get is determined by how hot your oven is and how evenly you managed to spread the goop. Either way, it'll taste good!!
   

Being pushed beyond the Comfort Zone

I've been vegan for more than five years now and making delicious vegan food just seems completely easy and normal to me. I have to admit to a twinge of impatience when people say to me things like,  "I'm too busy to be vegan" or "I'd love to cook you something vegan but I have no idea what to make".
So it was a humbling moment when, invited to a couple of raw vegan potlucks (are there raw potlucks that aren't vegan?), I had to step out of my own comfort zone.

This is a green pea hummus I made for Colin's raw potluck. I used frozen peas (I hope they're considered a raw food? Not sure though!) blended with lemon juice and garlic and a little salt, decorate with red capsicum.

For Barb's potluck, I kept delaying thinking about it, so ended up with very few options (and I suspect many an omnivore intending to make a vegan dish might do the same and therefore be less than satisfied with the results, and prove themselves right that vegan food just ain't that good...!). I ended up cutting spinach leaves in half and making mini taco-esque munchies filled with matchstick carrots, asparagus, guacamole and karengo (NZ seaweed which = yum).

They tasted good, but the guacamole meant it was too fatty for Billy to eat. I think raw food tends to rely more heavily (no pun intended) on fatty foods like nuts, seeds and avocado. Or maybe that's just the 'treat' food that people make for shared meals.

Truffles of gratitude

A tray of truffles I made for a wedding a few months ago.

Every year I intend to thank various people whose input makes my life run a little more smoothly: the people who print my packaging, the people who make sure my car is safe, the people who do my accounts, the people who work at the local library.

And each year I leave it too late, get too busy and miss the boat! Not this year, no sirree.

Last year I felt particularly bad about missing the boat the previous Christmas, because the lovely old guy who'd been my accountant for about 15 years passed away. And I probably never told him how much I appreciated him. The year before, the guy who'd been fixing my car for almost 20 years retired, and I felt bad about having had the 'thank people with Christmas goodies' idea but not having acted on it.

So this year, I'm making chocolate truffles for all those important people. People will be thanked!

This is the recipe I'll be using.

Chocolate truffles

¾ cup raw cashews
¾ cup water
500g dark chocolate

Blend cashews and water to a smooth cream.
Melt chocolate in a double boiler.
Allow to cool for about 10 minutes, then fold in the cashew cream slowly (you don't want to create bubbles).
Cool in the fridge for a couple of hours, then roll into balls and roll in various coatings.

Best eaten at room temperature.

Very more-ish.

Walking and eating

Pumpkin millet bake

Tonight's dinner was a tester for this week's Northcote class. It's a pumpkin millet bake that's very easy to put together... except for chopping up the pumpkin! I love pumpkin but I'd use it more often if it wasn't so time-consuming to chop and peel. Anybody have any good pumpkin-wrangling tips?

We're having it for dinner again tomorrow night, as I want to make some tweaks to the recipe. I'll post it here after Wednesday's class!

I walked home from meeting some friends this afternoon on Vegan Society business (sounds important, huh?!) and I saw this subtle graffiti on a bus-stop advert:

The Lotto promoters assume that yachts and plane travel are what people want, but a low-key graffiti artiste added a more sensible request:

Unfortunately it'll take more than NZ$5million to achieve that, but I love the subtle subversiveness.

Yay, World Vegan Day!!

Yesterday was my sixth World Vegan Day and it was the best yet! We organised a barbecue for 60 people and I'm happy to report that it went fabulously well. Phew!
Everything went according to plan (or near enough), including the weather - and that's saying something for Auckland, where 'changeable' is the only safe weather prediction to make.
To make it easy for catering purposes, I insisted that admission be by prepaid tickets only, and limited space meant we could only fit 60 people in. The tickets sold out so fast, with scarcely any promotion, that we'll be looking for a much bigger venue to sell out next year. Looking forward to it already!

My husband Billy, my boy Mack, and me.

 

The highlight of the day for me was the moment when I announced that we were relaunching the Vegan Society of Aotearoa New Zealand. Yes!! After a couple of comatose years, the society is up and running again. We've got big plans and we're aiming to make a real impact and save lots of lives.

Thanks for coming, people! Come back next year, and bring your friends.