NEW CAR CAKES!

WOAH! Long time huh? Well I’ve just been doing a bit of this, and a bit of that. Don’t worry, I’ve been baking alright. Just gobbling it up a bit to fast for my camera to get any evidence of my work. But tonight I thought I should put some of my wrongs right and finally UPDATE!
So, here we go...what do you break a fast like ours with. Well I thought I’d do something nice for my brother today. You see despite being a dashing young doctor, he still lives the life of a broke and broken student. And his car reflects this, especially now, especially the broken bit.
Yes his car broke down, with me in it, on the side of the freeway, and it sucked. So I thought in condolences for his crappy car which he does love, and to encourage him to maybe buy something a little safer I’d bake him something. But, “I think it’s time you bought a grown up car that won’t kill us all” is a little hard to communicate in a cake. So I thought what says good cars? GERMANY! Their cars are super safe! And do you know what else the Germans do well? CAKES! So I thought I’d bake him a a German cake, and hopefully he’ll get the point...or just love the cake!

I THINK IT’S TIME TO GET A NEW CAR CAKE!

4 apples, peeled and sliced
1/2 C. nuttalex
1/2 C. sugar
1/2 C. maple syrup
2 T soy milk
1 t vanilla essence
1/2 t almond essence
1 1/2 C flour
2 1/2 t baking powder
1/4 c brown sugar
1/2 t ginger
1/2 t cinnamon



Your mates!

1. Oven to 180
2. Slice up your apples and put them in a microwave safe dish, cover them with water and nuke them for a minute to a minute and a half


Slice and dice


Micro!

3. Cream the sugar and nuttalex



4. Mix in your wet ingredients

5. Sift in the dry ingredients



6. Pour into your greased pan



7. Top with apples, make it as pretty as you are!



8. Dust with some sugar and spices for an extra touch of lovely!

9. Bake for 30- 45 minutes. Inserting a knife to see if it’s done. You know how it’s done, comes out clean, ready to go!



10. Eat warm with a little soy ice cream or save it for tea the next day.

11. Go car shopping with your brother (or if you don’t have a brother with a broken car how about just go shopping for whatever you feel like)

HOLY KRAY KRAY I FINALLY DID ONE!

TALKIN' 'BOUT EATING!


That's right! The feel good hit of 2009 is back and better than ever! Still asking the hard questions and getting the straight answers. Never has one indervidual delved so deeply one on one into the psyches of histories great thinkers, in her bedroom, documenting it all on her laptop, between pieces of raisin toast. Trust me, if you can sit through over 7 minutes of mindless small talk, then WELL are you in for a treat!

Easter Easter Easter!...almost

Oh man I'm hella wild about holidays. Secular, religious, festivus you name it. I'm a mad holiday slut!
And I guess not surprisingly the thing I like best is the EATING, you know and the being together blah blah blahhhwherreee are the treats?!!!!
In the first of what I can only assume will be a series of delightful and enlightening seasonal offerings I give you my own little favorite, ginger biscuits. Because as a member of the ginger club I usually like to wear my heart on my head and my hair color in my biscuits. Mmmm Ok so maybe my syntaxes don't make a whole lot of sense, but who needs sense when you have ginger, nutmeg, cardamon and molasses pictures of goodness!

Gingerbread Cut-Out Cookies

1/3 cup oil, canola or rice bran are my favorites. Remember, olive oil is for salad and home made hair treatments, not cookies
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup molasses (I added a tablespoon of golden syrup too. Molasses is great and all but it can taste like your grandma smoked a box of cigarettes and spat into your batter)
1/4 cup plain soymilk

2 cups whole wheat pastry flour or all-purpose flour (or a mix of both)
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

spice blend:
1/2 teaspoon each ground nutmeg, cloves and cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon cardamon (if you like it, remember it's not for everyone)
1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger


A motley crew.

Directions
In a large bowl whisk together oil and sugar for about 3 minutes.


What a sweet heart.

Add molasses and soymilk. The molasses and soymilk won’t really blend with the oil but that’s ok.


Mmm, maybe not so much.

Sift in all of the other dry ingredients, mixing about half way through. When all of the dry ingredients are added, mix until a stiff dough is formed.


Mix it all up y'all.

Flatten the dough into a disk, wrap in plastic wrap and chill for an hour or up to 3 days in advance. If you chill longer than an hour you may want to let it sit for 10 minutes to warm up a bit before proceeding.
Preheat oven to 350 F. Lightly grease your cookie sheets or line with parchment paper.


They're so sweet when they're young.

On a lightly floured surface roll the dough out to a little less than 1/4 inch thick. Cut out your shapes with your cookie cutters and use a thin spatula to gently place on cookie sheets. Bake for 8 minutes.


So pretty!


Remove from oven and let them cool for 2 minutes on the baking sheet then move to a cooling rack. Wait until they are completely cool before eating.


Trust me they're so yum, I couldn't even get a picture before they were almost all done!

WHAT HAS 2 THUMBS AND CAN'T BE BOTHERED WALKING TO THE SHOPS FOR INGREDIENTS?

THIS GUY!

Aka me.
Aka Sorry that there hasn't really been any actual baking going on. Truth be told I've been surviving on your general romantic writer come retail workers diet. Cereal and cups of coffee. Nah don't worry I'm totally kidding. I'm more an empty taco shells and wine kind of a girl.
But one thing I do know, even if my culinary knowledge is ebbing away is how to eat out...LOLZZZZZ.
No seriously, here is another dinner suggestion for all you lazy with a side of binge eaters. Oh and this one is omnivore friends friendly too.

TIBAS
Tibas is a good old fashioned family restaurant. If your family was Lebanese and you ma was a hell of a lot better at cooking than mine. It's cheap, the food is awesome and the atmosphere is vibrant and warm. If you're anything like me and you like your food soaked in olive oil and everything with a side of pickles then you may just be in heaven wrapped in pita bread. The menu is extensive and includes all the stables such as every form of souvlaki, dip, salad and side you could ever need. All available in take away late into the night, the perfect plus one to a couple of beers. Just be aware that the place it's self is strictly no booze, selling or BYO-ing. And if you did decide to turn up, totally wasted and demanding your chips in your souvlaki you would not only be massively disrespectful, but alas, also a douche-bag.
But they have all this wicked fruit nectars and pomegranate juice so who needs anything else anyway right.
Now all this is great, but considering it's position on Sydney road one could argue that everyone nice, vibrant lebanese family restaurant can make the same claims, which is when I get to the heart of my point. The set menus.
Once again they do have pretty extensive meat options too, but lets leave that at the door. AND KEEP THE BLOOD OFF OUR HANDS. Ok for all the non vegans out there reading this purely out of friendly obligation, that was a joke. Focusing purely on the vegetarian option, for a small $13 you get: 2 pies (one is cheese and one is spinach but they are more than happy to give you 2 spinach if you are fromage free), dolmades, falafels, 3 dips (again one is dairy but you can ask for extra of the hummus and baba ganoush and skip the third), garden salad, tabouli and a chick pea salad, and some very darling fluro pink pickles. And if that wasn't enough every table is also provided with about a kg of pita bread for free.
Mix this heavenly offering with a guava juice, a side couple of sides (what's a bowl of wedges between friends) and I guarantee you'll walk out of there happy. Well maybe crawl. You probably won't be able to stand for the crushing weight of your stomach for a few days.
I can also highly suggest it for a first meal back after a big weekend, it brought all the good back to my body that Golden Plains took out.



Perfect food for sharing!



HELLO DOLLY!



I'll have an order or bitchin, with a side of bad ass thanks.

TIBAS LEBANESE RESTAURANT
504 Sydney Road
Brunswick
9380 8425

Open for lunch and dinner everyday sans Tuesday.

NEW PLACES TO GET KRAY KRAY!

Ok so maybe these places aren't really "new." And maybe they're aren't really "kray kray." And maybe I just said that because I've been trying to get the term "kray kray" to catch on as an alternative to "crazy" for a while and it hasn't taken as well as I expected. But I suppose they are relatively new to me and hopefully can add something fresh to your usual dining experience!

YONGS GREEN FOOD

Now I know I often refer to things as being, "the shit." I also often say stuff like, you look up "the shit" in the dictionary you see a picture of this. And, this is so "the shit" that I'm embarrassed for everything else that ever existed. But this is "legit the shit." I'm talking hard core, bad ass vegan goods. There is a sentence you don't hear everyday. Not only do they do raw food that is in no way douche bag-esc only delicious. But they have a massive variety of stuff. This isn't all bean burritos my friends. The focus is on more asian style dished with such specialties as vegan Pho, yeah that's right you heard me. You can finally have Pho again. Plus a pretty sweet raw sushi platter and home made kimchi delights. They also venture to some new taken on old favorites like the raw burger with cashew bread, and raw lasagna (or rawsagne as they call it LOLZ) complete with cashew cheese. Actually come to think of it, they do a lot of banging stuff with cashews.
But the prom queen of the whole place has got to be the RAW GREEN TEA CHEESE CAKE! I hear the blueberry option is also pretty nice but I settled down and had 3 kids with the green tea one after one bite so never got that far. And best of all the people are not at all douche bags like at some vegetarian places *cough* Vegie Bar *cough*. In fact they're all super cute and helpful and will not make you feel awkward at all over all the questions about the wide variety of mock meats. Which although I categorically hate, I will lament and say their selection does seem less hateable than most. And maybe I almost thought about considering their Korean BBQ, almost.


Lasagna, so RAW!

Yong Green Food

(03) 9417 3338
421 Brunswick St Fitzroy

Open for lunch and dinner everyday except Monday.

VEGGIE KITCHEN
Now I usually do my best to keep my rampant personal life out of the press, but I'll let y'all know that I recently moved north side, more specifically to Northcote. Before moving here I thought the best part of living in this are would be being surrounded by like minded hipster douche bags who think they are lesser douche bags for not living in Fitzroy but are in reality just the next evolution of post modern douche bag-ness. Turns out I was wrong. Well not about the douche bags, that I was totally right about. But about it being the best thing. Turns out a little local place called Veggie Kitchen is the best thing. Now the awesome thing about this is considering how amazing the food is, it's still pretty low key. You're usually get a table no stress and the take away is yet to take longer than 15 minutes.
But that's not what makes it so special, you see again straying from the usual Asian vegetarian food stables like stir-fried greens, these guys are actually doing some pretty amazing stuff with tofu. And they do it in pretty much everything on the menu.
Now the funny thing about vegetarian and vegans that seems to always surprise people, is that very few of us really indulge too heavily in this soy based snack. You see, we too see how gross it can be. But these guys take things to the next level by, get this, home making it all! Which ensures that it's not only way less processed than most, but that they also can change the textures and taste to compliment each dish.
The result, light, interesting and totally satisfying fare that always hits the spot and never gets boring!


Braised tofu, baked pumpkin, Tawainesse stuffed capscium and vegetable cutlet.

Veggie Kitchen

(03) 9489 2120
Northcote
159 St Georges Rd Northcote

Open for dinner everyday!

The Worlds Most Bitchin’ Brownies.

It’s actually true. They are. I’m don’t even think I’m going to write anything funny here because the brownies speak for themselves. I will make an observation though. Some things are legitimately more delicious when made vegan. I personally prefer vegan pies, because they always have to seek out freaky good ingredients like weird mushrooms to stay legit. And the same goes for brownies. Well not in the mushroom sense. Well not here at least. A lot of vegan sweet things seem to replace animal products with more sugar and chocolate and bits and pieces. I’m not sure of the science. But I sure am happy with the results.

Ingredients

2 x 150g blocks of dark chocolate, as a general rule anything over 70% cocoa is usually dairy free, but remember to check
200g jam, I used strawberry but whatever you got around
1/4 C. soy milk
3/4 C. sugar
1/2 C. rice bran oil, this is my choice for cooking but any low flavor oil will do. Just stay away from the olive oil
2 t vanilla extract
1/2 t almond extract
1 1/2 C. flour
1/4 C. cocoa
3/4 t baking powder
1/4 t salt
Tub of strawberries roughly chopped, could use 1 C. of berries also


Your crew for this evening.

1. Pre heat the oven to 160

2. Melt one block of chocolate over a double boiler, or lacking that a metal bowl over a pot of water on the stove

3. Chop up other block of chocolate and set aside for now

4. In a large bowl mix your jam, milk, sugar, oil and extracts. Beat well to get all of the lumps out of the jam, you want it nice and smooth

5. Sift in all of your dry ingredients, mix well using a fork because the batter will be pretty thick.


White christmas. Almost.

6. Finally fold in your fruit and remaining chocolate


Whose a pretty birdie?

7. Pour into a brownie dish, don’t stress if it doesn’t fill the pan right to the corners, the batter will spread while baking

8. Bake for 45 minutes or until the top is soft but crinkly

9 Wait until cool, slice and enjoy! They’re pretty amazing warm with some non dairy ice cream but also keep awesomely for days.


TADAAAA! And remember, you don't have to be pretty to have it going on!

NOTE: The usual tooth pick test doesn’t really work here for letting you know if they’re cooked an account of all the chunks of melted chocolate. So you’ll have to go by sight. But don’t stress too much, soft brownies are always yum.

Be still my beating heart.

Like a lot of vegans I know, the turning point for me from vegetarianism to veganism came in the form of Jonathan Fafran Foers book Eating Animals. I'd been a huge fan for a while but had held off delving into his first work of non-fiction because quite honestly, I was afraid it would turn me vegan. And I wasn't sure if I was ready to give up my cheese-wheel-a-night habit. Turns out my fears were founded as his engaging, witty, thoughtful and at time beautiful book is a pretty strong argument. I would always suggest it not only to new vegans but also vegetarians, as Foer is himself actually a vegetarian.
It's a really clear and accessible way to rap your head around a huge issue. And I found helpful in also addressing a lot of the emotional implications of our relationships with the foods we eat. Of course the god fathers of consumerism literature like Michael Pollan are always going to be called up first to give addresses on these issues, but I'd take Foer any day for his ability to make sustainable eating seem very possible.
Tying in with my little love in is this really cool interview I found with him from motherjones.com, another really engaging and interesting resource. It encapsulates a lot of his arguments from the book, which I really recommend you check out. Without wanting to sound like too much of a douche bag, it may just change the way you look at your dinner plate forever.

http://motherjones.com/environment/2009/11/jonathan-safran-foer



I'm not convinced of your vegetarian credentials Jonathan, because you appear to be EATING MY HEART OUT!