Portable sociable food

During the school holidays, Mack and I did a lot of visiting and hanging out with friends. Most times, we took along some food to share (and I'm not just saying that to get more invitations!).

Here's a couple of very simple examples.

Peanut rice parcels

Edamame hummus

Peanut rice parcels
1/4 cup peanut butter
2 teaspoons grenadine syrup (or lemon juice)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon hot water
2 cups cooked brown rice
Nori sheets cut into quarters

1. In a bowl big enough to hold all the ingredients, stir the peanut butter and hot water together, then add the grenadine (or lemon juice - I just happened to have grenadine and felt like using it!) and salt.
2. Stir in the rice.
3. Lay the nori squares on a board, so that they look like diamonds rather than squares. Have a small bowl of water handy. Dip your fingers in the water and flick some water on the nori to make it easier to work with.
4. Dip your fingers in the water again, then with your wet fingers, scoop up about a tablespoon of the rice mixture and put it in the centre of the nori.
5. Fold the bottom corner of the nori up over the rice, then do the same with the left and right corners. If the nori is stiff or your mixture is a bit dry, you may need to moisten the corners of the nori.
6. I sprinkled each parcel with a seaweed/sesame sprinkle mix from the Asian supermarket - not necessary, but it dresses it up a bit!

Edamame hummus
This is simply edamame cooked until al dente, then blended in the food processor with lemon juice, garlic, salt and a tiny amount of tahini. Delish! And although you can't tell from the photo, it was a really pretty pastel green. I topped it with some violets from the garden.

Waste not, eat well

I love developing recipes and teaching cooking classes... and both of these activities can mean a lot of leftovers! I also hate to waste food. No point bragging about the environmental benefits of eating further down the food chain on a vegan diet if you're being wasteful!
Even though all our food scraps go into the compost, it's still better to eat the food than compost it... :-)

This is a recent lunch: soup containing some quinoa and some buckwheat, some little white beans, creamy-ed up thanks to some cashew cheese spread and some satay sauce. On top is a nod towards the salad I had intended to eat for lunch - lots of raw red cabbage, plus seaweed sprinkles and dried capsicum flakes. Yum, and very warming on a chilly day. And, as usually happens, the flavours of all the different leftovers blended together very well.

I've been a slack blogger lately. It's been school holidays, and I've been enjoying a change in my routine and lots of hanging-out time with Mack. Back to normal next week!

Now THIS is cruelty-free bacon!

A certain animal-welfare group in New Zealand has started promoting bacon made from free-range pigs as 'cruelty-free'. Ummm, no. If you wouldn't hand over your cat, your dog and your kids to be put through the same process, then it probably ain't cruelty-free.

This fakin' bacon, however, ticks all the boxes. It's made from tempeh, which is basically a healthier and tastier version of tofu, marinated in all kinds of deliciousness, and then baked.
It's tasty (sweet, salty and smokey), free of cholesterol, low in fat, high in fibre, and it's made from plants not animals, so it really is cruelty-free.

And here's the recipe:


Tempeh bacon

4 tablespoons tamari or soya sauce
2 tablespoons sugar (or other sweetener)
2 tablespoons water
¼ teaspoon liquid smoke*
2 teaspoons tomato paste

1. Mix marinade ingredients in a plastic lidded container.
2. Slice a block of tempeh thinly (5mm slices).
3. Put in the container with the marinade, move the pieces around so that each slice is coated.
4. Refrigerate for at least an hour and up to overnight.
5. Heat the oven to 180C.
6. Put the slices on a baking sheet lined with baking paper and bake for 15 minutes, or fry in a very small amount of oil.

Great in sandwiches and wraps, as part of a cooked breakfast, on pizza and in sushi.

* Liquid smoke is key to this recipe's bacon-yness! And conveniently enough, you can buy it at Angel Food's on-line store :-)