Veggie Lady

Vegetarian Sushi

As promised, here's a little post about Vegetarian sushi.

I love sushi. I could eat it every day and I don't think I would ever tire of it. It's just the tastiest food ever, it feels healthy and it fills you up.

Sushi in Japanese refers to the vinegared sticky rice that is served. In the West we commonly use sushi as an umbrella term for everything that the rice is used in, so we just say sushi when talking about nigiri, maki, etc.

It's a common misconception that you need fish for sushi, but this is absolutely not the case. You can use fish as an ingredient with the rice, but it's the rice that's the important bit! I tell you this only because, as a vegetarian, I get people asking me why I eat sushi when I don't eat fish. T'ain't fish. Let them know!

Anyway, minor rant over, back to delicious food. I generally make maki-zushi, as I love the taste of the nutrient rich nori sea vegetable with the rice.

We buy Clearspring producs for sushi - they're all marked vegan, are often organic and are very tasty. I like to make sure we have nice organic Shoyu (soy sauce) for dipping, as it really does taste better than the soy sauce you typically get in supermarkets.

I like to make Futomaki (nori rolls) and Uramaki (inside out nori rolls). Futomaki I find easier to make, but the Uramaki is always tasty and worth the extra effort.

I use all sorts of raw ingredients for sushi. I particularly love the combination of red pepper, avocado and cashew nuts, and tend to make Futomaki with these ingredients in them, however i like to combine sweet potato, carrots, peppers, cucumber, spinach, asparagus etc. Because I make my sushi vegan (so we can both eat it!) I no longer add cream cheese or anything, but back when I did I loved the combination of cream cheese and lightly fried mushrooms together.

After watching the Post Punk Kitchen video I really want to try making some tempeh sushi - I think I'm going to give it a try tomorrow night. I'll post a photo if it's successful!

Have a look at Wikipedia's entry on sushi to learn a bit more.

Post Punk Kitchen - Episode 1

I'm still feeling a bit ill, but thought I would share the very first episode of the Post Punk Kitchen with you! These are a couple of great vegan chefs - my boyfriend bought Isa Chandra Moskowitz's book "Vegan With a Vengeance" several months ago, and it has some really interesting recipes in it. Anyway, here they show you how to make vegan sushi (my favourite food, more about that later this week!) and cupcakes... Enjoy!

I'm ill!

 Oh dear, I've caught a cold.

It seems to have been doing the rounds at work, and I'm one of the last to catch it. Can't stop sneezing, can't sleep, am hot for the first time in months and I look like I've aged about 15 years in the last 2 days.

I feel the need to eat lots of healthy food. We have an abundance of vegan and vegetarian cookbooks, I should start picking recipes rich in vitamin C from them and eat nothing that's not healthy for the next week.

The cold has made me lazy, however, so I don't know if that will happen!

Anyway, I apologise for the lack of posts in the last week. Between the cold, work and uni assignments I'm not feeling very creative at the moment.

I will post something interesting soon, I promise. In the meantime, here is a link to a site I absolutely love, which you may have already seen but which is always worth a visit:

http://veganlunchbox.blogspot.com/

Eco Footprint Quiz

I just did a little eco footprint quiz - I think my veggie tastes are helping me have less of a footprint than many people have!

http://www.ecofoot.org/

It's a nice site: you answer a few questions about the area in which you live, then more specific ones related to the way you live your life. Because I live in a city centre I never take the bus or drive anywhere (I can't drive anyway!), so I'm fairly sure my walking will play a big part in my final result. We also recycle everything we possibly can. My largest footprint was caused by my eating habits - not the being veggie, but the fact that so many vegetables I eat to stay healthy are obviously farmed overseas.

Apparently if everyone lived like me we would need 1 planet, and that most people in my area need 4 more hectares of land than I do.

I'm away to put on my hat of smugness, and to not think of chocolate. I desperately wanting a bar of green and black's chocolate right now, and I can't think why. I haven't had chocolate in ages, save licking the spoon of my vegan truffles (maybe that's why!).

The Daily kitten

Okay, okay, so this isn't vegetarian news or anything, but I love this site so much and wanted to share it with the rest of you.

Every day, at 3.07pm, The Daily Kitten posts a ridiculously cute kitten picture. It's a different kitty every day, and they are always lovely little things.

I unfortunately have a fairly deadly allergy to cats, but I love them so much and long for a cure... Despite the allergy, I can't resist them.

The photo above is my parent's little cat, Tia. (The second I moved out the house they took in two cats!) She was abandoned by her original owner in a bin bag, and was so ill that she lost an eye. She's also tiny, hardly bigger than a kitten, even though she's a few years old now. My sister found her on the Cat Protection website, and when she saw that she was missing an eye she knew she'd found the cat she wanted to take care of... awwww...

Potabello Mushroom veggie burger

Mushroom burger, originally uploaded by Laura A.

I made us mushroom burgers for dinner tonight. really easy to make, and they tasted delicious (if I do say so myself).

Ingredients:
2 ciabatta rolls (or 4 small ones, or whatever roll you want!)
4 Portabello Mushrooms
1 red pepper
Wild rocket
Hummus or mayonnaise, whatever you prefer.

For shallot topping:
4 or 5 shallots, really thinly sliced
Splash of balsamic vinegar (a teaspoon or a little more)
1 clove garlic
salt and pepper, to taste.
1 tablespoon olive oil

Firstly, I very gently fried the sliced shallots in the olive oil for about 20 minutes, making sure they didn't brown or burn.

I sliced the red pepper and put it in the oven to roast while the shallots were cooking.

After the shallots had been sweating away for 20 minutes or so, I added the garlic, balsamic vinegar and seasoning then left on the hob to cook gently together. I put the ciabatta rolls in the oven to heat and harden - the ones I bought took about 10 minutes to cook.

While this mix was cooking I lightly coated my mushrooms with some olive oil, then fried them for around 5 mins on each side.

When the mushrooms were ready I removed everything from the heat, slied the ciabattas into nice bun sized halves and piled one mushroom, some shallot mix, red peppers and rocket into then, then topped with hummus.

Was relatively easy to make, the most time consuming part being the shallots.

Vegan Truffles Recipe

I made my boyfriend vegan truffles for Valentine's day... I know, it's horribly soppy, but he deserves them!

They were quite easy to make, actually. A bit time consuming, but mostly due to the periods of inactivity whilst waiting for things to cool.

Ingredients:
125ml vegan cream
100g vegan plain chocolate
40g flaked/chopped almonds (approx, more or less is fine)
Some icing sugar
Red berry jam

Firstly, I mixed the almonds and cream together and gently heated for several minutes, never letting the cream boil.

At the same time, I broke 50g of the plain chocolate up and melted it in a bowl over boiling water. I used some nice Green and Black organic dark chocolate (marked veggie and vegan - I bought the plain kind, no extra flavourings).

When the chocolate was melted, I combined it with the almond/cream mixture and then blended until the almonds were well broken up and the mixture was sufficiently smooth.

I let this cool for a while - I tried the "bowl in cold water" trick but eventually resorted to the fridge for a few hours.

When the mixture was cool and hardened, I drew out scoops of it and shaped them into rough balls. I melted my remaining chocolate in a bowl, and dipped the truffle balls into this. They hardened quite quickly, and I put them back into the fridge to cool.

I mixed icing sugar and jam together to make the red icing - I guessed the quantities of each but didn't need much - just use whatever consistencies needed to get the icing right for your own decorations - I wanted it kind of runny. I used jam and not colouring to avoid any potential non-vegan contamination, also it seemed a bit more healthy (until we talk about sugar - so let's not!). The icing dissolved nicely in the jam, and I piped it onto the cooled truffles. Back in the fridge, an hour later: truffletastic.

I'm assured that they taste good. I'm trying to be nice and not eat them - I had my fill whilst licking the spoons before washing them, etc. Noticed an hour or two after making the truffles that I had a large smear of chocolate stretching from my mouth to my cheek :)

I also tried, with less success, to make truffles filled with berries - I mixed the warm, almond free cream with melted chocolate, and stirred chopped "razzcherries" into this mix. It didn't have enough time to set, but I'd try it again if I had time to make chocolates the night before as they are ready for eating today!

Note: I have to say that since this is a homemade recipe I wasn't too careful with my measurements, so use whatever looks right to you! I tried to find a good truffle recipe online, but many vegan ones called for loads of sugar (which I think we get enough of from the chocolate) or silken tofu. I'm not averse to using silken tofu when I need to, but when soya cream is available I prefer to use it in desserts.

Barry M Cosmetics

I discovered recently that Barry M Cosmetics are all vegetarian. Apparently none of their ingredients are tested on animals, and many of their products are actually vegan too.

I have the dazzle dust in a few different colours, a few eye pencils and some nail polish. It's all nice and colourful, which I like. Putting this much eye make up on for the photo felt a bit too glam though!

It's always good to find easily available cosmetics and toiletries for veggies. It's something that you wouldn't automatically think about, but now that I know this is veggie I will be making the effort to buy it instead of other brands.

Their website has a list of stockists - looks mostly like Superdrugs.

Anyone else have a favourite veggie cosmetic brand?

Yoga Time...

I've been putting off my Yoga moves for the last couple of months, and am started to feel both guilty and wobbly for it...

I started Astanga Yoga last summer, after taking a really good series of nightclasses at the Yoga Centre in Edinburgh. I took the beginners course taught by Gillian, and really enjoyed it. I'd always heard that Yoga was good for asthmatics, as it helps regulate your breathing, but I never expected to like it as much as I did. Over the summer I practiced Yoga in my living room every day after work, and felt great for it.

A flat move later and the cold has set in, causing me to resort to my "i'd rather sit on the couch under a blanket" ways of yesteryear. I really need to roll the matt out and get back into it, I know I'll feel good for it!

Veggie News: a little round up

I've read a few stories that have sparked the interest of my vegetarian self, and thought I'd up links up to them. Click on the title for the link.

PETA drops Heather Mills McCartney?
A few UK newspapers this weekend have reported that PETA have dropped Heather Mills, a formely vocal supporter of the charity, for the chance to work with Mary McCartney (Paul's daughter and a respected photographer). Wonder if it's true? I really hope not - it's not a good day for a charity if they get involved in personal family feuds. No reports on the PETA site, as yet :)

160,000 turkeys culled in avian flu outbreak
Dearie me... I'm sure you have all read this already, but the Bernard Matthews factory in Suffolk was involved in an outbreak of the bird flu virus H5N1. This has resulted in some 160,000 turkeys being gassed to death. In my ignorance, I didn't realise that so many birds would be kept in such close quarters. Poor wee birdies.

Organic Meat - turning veggies meaty?
Well, I don't think so. I'm posting a link to this article because it made me rather grumpy. A woman who has stopped being vegetarian posts an article in the magazine section, in which she justifies her reasons for eating meat again. Fine by me, but the assumptions she makes are ridiculous and annoying. She talks about the "happy life" of an organically bred animal, but doesn't appear to think about the stressful death. She also assures her readers of the many other vegetarians who would happily eat organic meat - I suspect that many vegetarians would beg to differ. Have a read through the comments - like me, you may become grumpy with the comments from both some of the veggie and meaty readers! She also starts sentences with "but" and "because". Dearie, dearie me...