For the animals

Yesterday I made six packed lunches for some vegans who were at a meeting at the Auckland SPCA. The regular caterer couldn't provide any vegan food, and I was thrilled to be able to help out.

The sushi contains pickled ginger, kumara (sweet potato) baked in a tomato/chilli/liquid smoke marinade, and crunchy red capsicum.

The pita pockets are filled with cashew cheese spread and lotsa salad veges.

Apparently there were a few omnivores eyeing the vegan goodies enviously...!

If we hadn't just returned from camping the day before, I would have done a big tray of mini vegan cupcakes for everybody, but there just wasn't time.

Also yesterday, Mack and I met up with my cousin Helen and her daughter Alex, and Helen's cousin Mark and his son Joe, at the Parnell pools. The kids swam and swam and swam, and the adults swam and spa-ed and talked. And then we played mini golf!

Lovely welcome-home email

Just got back from a few days' camping and among the many emails in my in-box was this treasure:

"I ordered and made my own vegan marshmallows.  i thoroughly enjoyed the entire process!  it was so great watching the batch grown in size, and taste testing along the way!  I have so many treats i want to make with my marshmallows, I don't even know where to begin!

Thank you for providing a wonderful product that is super easy to make and share."

Nice, huh?!

Just briefly...

... there's a new New Zealand vegan email list been started up, for disseminating important info like events and new products. Also a great place to ask questions and find resources. Email me if you'd like to sign up.
Cheers!

Testing for teaching

My trio of healthy cooking classes, mostly aimed at people eating a 'normal' diet and starting to suffer some of the health consequences, start on February 14 - very appropriate, since we tax our hearts hard with a rich diet! (Not to mention other parts of the body that depend on healthy blood flow...)

I'm in the full flurry of recipe testing for the classes and have had some delicious surprises (check out the choc brownie below) and some disappointments (kumara frittata definitely needs more work).

 This version of the brownies is from www.manifestvegan.com. And they're delicious. But, as usual, I just couldn't resist tweak-ety tweak tweaking... I healthed it up a little, and it's gooood.

And just for laughs, check out the promotional video my friend Hana and her friends made for me. (I'm sure there's a way to put the actual video here, not just a link, but I can't figure it out!)

This Sunday (January 17) Sjaan and I are doing a free introduction to the classes - I'll be demonstrating a couple of recipes and there'll be tasting of those and several more. If you're in Auckland and would like to come along, please let me know! 

Mmmmm, breakfast.

This is what I have for breakfast every day. Half a cup of quinoa rinsed (thanks for the tip Sjaan!) then cooked with one cup of water for 15 minutes. Top with a tablespoon of molasses, 2 tablespoons of ground linseed,  a sprinkling of sesame seeds, a small handful of walnuts, a teaspoon of cinnamon and fresh fruit. Those strawberries are from our garden, yum!