Caramelised Onion, Cabbage and Mushroom on Toast

An excellent brunch!

Thinly sliced onions were fried in a bit of sunflower oil, with a teaspoon of molasses sugar and a pinch of salt. When they were caramelised I added thinly sliced cabbage, then when that was cooked I added sliced mushrooms. That's really all there was to it. Well worth trying, and an excellent way of using up the ubiquitous cabbage in the veg box.

Chocolate Sponge Cake

Birthday Cakes :-)

Never have I boasted about my baking skills - I've always been a bit scared of making cakes and the like, as I was under the impression that ingredients always needed to be measured precisely, in order to be in the right proportions.

Well, this cake proves me wrong - I guessed at all the ingredients, and guessed at how much of each thing to use. So, the moral of the story is: go ahead and experiment with baking cakes.

This one contained about a cup and a half of flour (mostly self-raising, some plain when it ran out), about the same amount of hot chocolate powder (the type that is just cocoa and sugar), 5 teaspoons of baking powder, all mixed up. To this I added some golden syrup melted into sunflower margarine and mixed with hemp milk and a bit of sunflower oil. I stirred it all up and it seemed to be a cake mixture consistency, so I poured it into a greased baking tray and baked it for about 20 minutes.

Omnivore friends loved it. Score!

The first cake was an experiment to prepare for these birthday cakes. In case you can't work it out, I made one big one and a load of cupcakes. The decorating is a bought 'chocolate fudge icing' (surprisingly vegan friendly) and some fruit flakes, which are basically condensed fruit juice and taste like jelly fruit.

For these I used 2 cups self raising flour, 1 cup cocoa, 1 cup sugar, 7 teaspoons of baking soda, about a cup of sunflower margarine, 5 desert spoons of golden syrup and a splash of soya milk. Again, I mixed all the dry ingredients then added the melted fat and golden syrup with enough soya milk to bring it to the right consistency.

It's important not to open the oven as they are cooking or the cake with fall in on itself. Let them cool before decorating them or the icing will melt. Enjoy!

Chocolate and Brazil Toast

I discovered the joys of mixing cocoa, sugar and butter as a sweet-toothed child. This is my grown-up vegan version. Experiment with proportions to suit your taste. You may need to add a little (plant based) milk to help the texture of the mixture. Soon I am going to experiment with whiskey as the liquid. Very grown up.

Lazy Person's Crumble

SCORE!

While some frozen mixed berries are warming themselves up over a low heat prepare the crumble by frying some nice sugar and cinnamon/nutmeg in some vegan margarine, then stir in enough oats to soak it all up. Pour the fruit into a bowl and top with the crumble. Ta-daaar!

Parsley Popcorn

Popcorn so good that it's impossible to take a photo without a hand being in it :-)

Popcorn is AMAZING! Fun to make, fun to eat. For this one I dried a few bunches of parsley in the oven, which was then crumbled so that it looked like the dried stuff. This was sprinkled over the fresh popcorn, with some sea salt. I guess you could take the easy route and just buy it dry, but hey! I was experimenting.

To make popcorn from its kernels use a big flat based pan with a well fitting lid. A good glug of sunflower oil and a small handful of kernels (less than you'd think) will pop pop pop to fill up the pan. Practise makes perfect with knowing how much of each ingredient suits your pan, so get popping!

Salad Soup

In winter, most people would rather something warm than a salad, but feel compelled to buy leaves for health reasons. This is what was behind my friend giving me half a bag of wilting salad, and why I decided to try to make something a bit more comforting out of it.

I boiled an onion, a chopped potato and a few cloves of crushed garlic with some bouillon until the potatoes were starting to disintegrate, then I added the spinach, rocket, watercress and red chard. After taking it off the heat I added a handful of frozen peas, which after a few minutes cooled the soup down enough to blend it.

A dollop of soya yogurt (the remains of the sojade from the reviewing session) and some freshly ground black pepper made this a delicious and nutritious soup.

Soya Yoghurt - Review

As a lacto-vegetarian I consumed natural yogurt at an alarming rate, so decided to try some vegan alternatives. Here are two soya ones, and a pea protein desert, thrown in for luck. I have split my review into four sections: eating experience, nutrition, and ethics, as these are the things I take into account when buying food. I’ve left out price as there wasn’t much difference.

Provamel’s Bio-Organic Soja

· Eating Experience

This was the most enjoyable product to eat on its own – it is sweetened with tapioca and corn starch, which put me off a bit, but actually gave it a well rounded taste. The texture is smooth, and there’s a fresh and creamy aftertaste, which may be a paradox, but it is a reality that I remember from eating low fat dairy yogurt. It’s not quite as satisfying an experience as my beloved Yeo Valley low fat natural yogurt, but comes close enough to stop me mourning the loss of yogurt. I imagine that I will use it in much the same way as I used to use dairy yogurt, i.e. guzzle it straight from the pot, look around guiltily, then guzzle some more.

4/5

· Nutrition

Both soya yogurts were very similar so I’ll write about them together. Although the recommended serving size is 125g, I think it’s more realistic to talk of 150g as a serving. (That’s not just me, is it?) So, in a Gwen sized serving you get about 75 calories, 6-7g protein, 3-4g carbohydrates, 3-4g fat, and reasonable amounts of everything else. Sojade’s product has next to no sodium, while Provamel’s has Seems like a pretty good deal to me. Live cultures in Provamel’s were bifidobacterium, Streptococcus thermophilus and Lactobacillus bulgaricus, while Sojade’s were Bifidus and Acidophilus. In laymen’s terms these are tummy friendly bacteria that do all the good things probiotic yogurt is said to do, including helping restore balance which has been disrupted due to antibiotics.

5/5

· Ethics

I LOVE this company. Originally set up to produce protein rich foods at an affordable price for developing countries, They are just all-round goodies, and to top it all off they have an IBD Ecosocial label, (http://www.provamel.co.uk/sustainability/ecosocial.htm) which guarantees that they are socially, economically and environmentally ethical. Especially cool is the fact that they decided to build their processing plant by a canal, so that for the main part their soya beans are transported by barge. I don’t know about the vehicles used to transport the products, but they clearly have a real desire to be as ethical as possible, just look at one of the projects they’re involved in: “The ‘Vitagoat’ is a bicycle like contraption that is helping to combat malnutrition and poverty in Africa and Asia and which we part fund. A small, entirely pedal-powered bicycle like machine, it produces nutritious soya milk without electricity or running water, cooking and grinding soya beans merely through ‘legwork’. Each unit can generate between 5 and 10 jobs, up to 30 litres of soya milk per hour and precious nutrition for literally 100s.”

5/5

Provamel have an online quarterly magazine: http://www.provamel.com/downloads/foodandlifestyle%20Summer10COMPCLOSED.pdf

· Conclusion

Feel good food 5/5

Sojade’s Fresh Soya Speciality

· Eating Experience

If you imagine what soya milk might be like if it were approaching a solid state, then you have a good idea of what this tastes like. It has the same soya aftertaste too, which isn’t something I enjoy very much. As the ingredients are purely water, soya beans and live cultures then it makes sense that its characteristics are very similar to soya milk. It was ok on its own, but would be much better accompanied by some jam or something else to add to the taste. I would buy this again to use in savoury cooking, e.g. to make mushroom soup creamier.

3/5

· Nutrition

See Provamel’s review.

5/5

· Ethics

Sojade is a Breton company with a background in organic farming. They use French soya beans which are organically produced, and GMO free. They seem like a really good company – their website says “In this complex world we live in, the values ​​behind the company are focused on respect for humans, nature, material, maintenance of good practice and common sense.” Energy used is partially from their solar panels, they are installing a wind turbine, and their vehicles are electric and hybrid. They are the same company as Sojasun, which are non-organic and don't seem to shout about their ethics too much. They also sell cow and sheep milk products, but don’t say much about how their animals are treated so I can’t comment on this. There is a rumour that the starter culture is animal based: http://plants-vs-vegans.blogspot.com/2010/11/sojade-sojasun-and-bacteria-problem.html

3/5

· Conclusion

Good for cooking, questionable suitability 3.5/5

Redwood’s Wot No Dairy? Plain dessert

· Eating Experience

In its defence, this product describes itself as a dessert, rather than a yogurt, so maybe my misled expectations caused my disappointment, but this isn’t something that I will buy again. It tastes like one of those cheap supermarket deserts that are sort of a cross between custard, mousse and yogurt and are more for the sake of having something a bit naughty, rather than actually experiencing any enjoyment. It felt artificial and without genuine character – the Katie Price of the vegan desert world. The ridiculous name with a kool misspelling put me off too. Not impressed.

1.5/5

· Nutrition

The small pot provides 122 calories, 4.5g fat, 16g carbohydrates, 3.6g fat, 1.45 mg sodium. It doesn’t have any nasty added extras.

3/5

· Ethics

Unlike the other two companies Redwood doesn’t mention the process which their soya beans undergo which makes me think that they may use chemicals to extract the milk, rather than doing it mechanically like Provamel and Sojade. I took an immediate dislike to the company when I spotted a basic grammar mistake on the website (there instead of their), but putting the pedant in me to one side, they seem to be making a good effort to be ethical. I should also remember the adage about stones and glass houses, and remind myself to learn the difference between a desert and a dessert. First impressions make me think that their ethical stance roots from a commercial shrewdness, rather than a true passion, but that might just be their PR failings. Environmental policies are available to look at, and they have won a large number of ethical awards – including Best Vegan Company in the Vegan Environmental Awards 2007 - so they must be doing something right. On top of the grammar mistake, I am also prejudiced against them because they are an American company which focuses on meat and dairy product alternatives. This probably says more about my issues than anything about them…

4.5/5

· Conclusion

Might be good for nostalgic eating here and there 3/5