Roasted pumpkin seeds

While eating my pumpkin, i also saved all the seeds (putted them in a box with water in the fridge xD) until i had all the seeds, then i looked up on internet for what to do with them and decided to test out this recipe: Roasted Pumpkin Seeds.

They turned out way better than last time i tried making roasted pumpkin seeds xD

So first you boil the pumpkin seeds in salty water for about 10 minutes, then you dry them a bit and mix them with oil and salt and spread them on a baking sheet, then you place them high in the oven and roast them on 200°C until they are ready (aka golden brown and crispy). I think mine took about 15-20 minutes.

Was really delicious =D Wanted to buy another pumpkin just for the seeds xD

Veggie soup with pumpkin

Made a pumpkin polenta dish yesterday but forgot to take picture so i'll write about todays dinner instead =p

This dish is kinda like add everything from the closets/fridge that you want, so i'll just say what i used then you can add what you want, like and have available =D

Ingredients
1 small onion, chopped in pieces
A tablespoon ginger or so, chopped in small pieces
0.5 chili in small pieces
1 carrot, in rings
2 small potatoes in pieces
1 small red beet in pieces
1 bunch of pumpin, in pieces (i wanted more pumpkin than i used xD pumpkin rocks! =D)
Leeks (think mine was 15 cm or so) in rings
Broccoli in pieces (i used 2 florets but probably yummier with more)
Water
Veggie bullion
A handful bulgur
A handful red lentils
A tablespoon or 2 of tomato paste
Lots of spices to taste, i used fennel, ginger, paprika, cayenne pepper, black pepper, coriander, spaghetti spice, turmeric, mint, oregano
I also added a little bit of noodles at the end =p

Directions: Chop veggies and bring to boil with water and veggie bullion. Add bulgur, lentils, spices, tomato paste, and simmer until veggies and stuffs are ready. Add noodles and simmer until they are ready. Enjoy =p

Pumpkin curry

Since i got myself a pumpkin now it's time to eat it =p (not much else interesting i can do with it xD)

So here's my first pumpkin dish of the year, inspired by the warming curry dish from vegetarbloggen.

I didnt measure anything at all, i just took something. Vegetarbloggen has however measured some stuff if you want measurements =p Also you can add anything you want ofc and how much of each ingredient that you want also.

Ingredients:
Vegan butter (i used alpro which i love =p oil is fine too or just water i guess)
Ginger, chopped
Onion, chopped
Garlic, chopped
Chili, chopped
Mushroom, in pieces, i sliced mine
Carrot, in pieces, i sliced it in rings
Pumpkin, in pieces, i had rectangles
Zucchini,in pieces, i had half moons
Water + vegetable bullion
Coconut milk
Curry powder
Bulgur (mine was whole, but other stuff like rice or so can be used also)
Chickpeas
Cherry tomatoes (or normal ones), in pieces, i cut mine in 4
Salt
Pepper
Coriander powder
Lemon

Heat butter in pan and add ginger, onion, garlic, and chili and saute on medium heat, then add mushroom, carrot, pumpkin and zucchini and saute some more. Add water, bullion, coconut milk, curry, bulgur and bring to a boil. Add chickpeas and cherry tomatoes and simmer on low heat until nice and ready xD Then taste with salt, pepper, coriander and lemon (or add them earlier whenever you feel like it).

Tadaaaa you got yummy dinner ^.^ (sorry for bad picture xD)

Halloween 2013

Sorry blog for not sharing much lately. Since last i've had my hopefully last exam, and i have travelled on vacation to Belgium to my sweet bf where i had some nice 2 weeks that passed by too fast. On the other hand it's nice being back at work again (yes i actually missed work while i was on vacation xD) and also to be home with my own family =p I wish the distance was shorter though, so i could visit my bf more often.

Anyways back to the topic of halloween. I kinda love holidays and celebrations, and ofc i had to prepare some fancy food for the occation. I also managed to acquire a pumpkin but it's still just laying on the desk, waiting to be used, no carvings or anything in it xD So gotta figure out some pumpkin recipes for next week since i'll probably end up eating pumpkin every day again or so until its gone xD

So for this years halloween i wanted colored food and heres what i came up with:

Dinner:

I guess it might look like i murdered someone ? xD Was yummy atleast =D

I sadly dont have any recipe since i didnt really measure well, but i can give a short summary of what it is in case anyone else wants to try making it =p

So the green is a pesto made of green peas (mine were thawed frozen ones), broccoli (boiled), spinach (i used frozen but fresh is probably good also), soy yoghurt, veggie bullion, salt, pepper, garlic, basilicum (i didnt have fresh so used dried), pumpkin seeds, and nutritional yeast mixed in food processor or blender (could be i forgot some ingredients too).

The red is spaghetti boiled together with a small red beet that i chopped in pieces (great for food coloring!!!).

The orange is mashed sweet potato and carrots. I boiled them to they were soft along with some onion, then mashed them together with some vegan butter, coconut milk, salt, pepper, and nutmeg and possibly some other ingredients i forgot about xD


Then over to dessert:

This is a banana-blueberry marzipan cake xD

I kinda started using half of the recipe for my 17th may cake, but added some blueberries, bananas and raisins, and dropped the almonds and used a bread shape. It had to stay in oven for way longer than the other recipe and it came out quite dense when it finally wasnt dough anymore xD

For topping i used raspberry jam, bananas mixed with whipped vegan cream, and marzipan mixed with some leftover red beet water from the boiling spaghetti to get it bit more pinkish. Then i did some more jam and some candy skulls for decoration =p

In case someone wondered why i didnt decorate the whole cake it is because someone wanted to have it non-decorated. Personally i prefer with decoration =D But i guess you taste more of the cake part without decoration =p I also made a kiwi-jelly that failed (it wasnt jelly xD) but dont have a picture of it.

Then after eating my family watched the movie "White Noice" while eating some burnt popcorn (i always burn them xD). Was nice movie i think =p Not too scary xD

Hope everyone else had a nice halloween too =D

Veggies with rice

My dinner yesterday was inspired by the chinese veggies with rice recipe i found at veg-veg.

I changed a bit on it though, so heres what i used (for 1 person):

About 0.5 dl whole grain rice
1 medium carrot in slices
0.5 onion in slices
200 g cabbage in slices
1 teaspoon fresh chili, chopped
1 teaspoon fresh ginger, chopped
0.5 dl water
3 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon maizena
5 almonds, chopped
1 dl bean sprouts

Boil the rice, chop the veggies, stir fry them in water or oil until bit soft. Mix together the water, soy sauce, maizena and add along with the almonds. Add the bean sprots and boiled rice and serve =p

Probably good with other veggies too, like mushrooms, bell pepper, mini corn etc =D

A little update

So ye, lately i started up the school semester where i'll be writing my master thesis, which hopefully will work out somehow. What i'm gonna work on is transport upscaling in fractured porous media.

So ye, porous media is a solid stucture with void or pores in between (sand, rock, sponge) where fluid can flow (water, oil, etc). So with geothermal energy, it's nice to know how the fluid is flowing and transporting heat in that porous media. The pores are pretty small though so it's impossible to calculate everything on the micro scale (it takes way too long time and often you don't know how things look like), so then we have to upscale and average over the grid blocks, which is what i will be working on. The porous media might also have large (or small) fractures in it where the fluid can flow faster (or if the fractures are filled with something with fewer pores it might flow slower) so i might add that into my model.

Two weeks ago i was at a GeoEnergy conferance here in Bergen hosted by CGER. It was quite interesting and we were served delicious food (atleast i got delicious vegan food =D).

The first day we went on a guided trip around old houses in the Bergen area. Here are some pictures:

I was just on top of that building!!!

Some old building

A rock!

Old rope building where they made ropes

2nd day there was conference in the day with many interesting presentations on geothermal energy, and in the evening we went on a mountain here called Fløyen where we ate dinner at Fløyen Folkerestaurant
For appetizer i got a salad with olives and different veggies, so it was pretty fancy =D
For main dish i got stuffed bell pepper which was yummy =D
And for dessert i got berries with strawberry coulis =D
I sadly dont have any pictures from the restaurant, but i have some from the mountain. It's really nice view from there =D
I also got a nice salad with lots of veggies and nuts for lunch at the conference =D

Day 3 there were some more presentations before it ended at lunch =p

Banoffee pie

Made a banoffee pie today after drooling at the recipe a couple of times =p

The recipe i found on vegetarbloggen (one of my favorite blogs!) and it turned out delicious. Like a pie with banana and toffee cream =p Nice caramel taste =D I think if i make it again that i will use grated nuts in the dough instead of just flour though, maybe a nut-date-flour mix =p

For english version of the recipe you can use google translate xd

Enjoy =D

Thick raspberry mini pancakes

I guess most common berry pancakes are blueberry pancakes, but i wanted to try out raspberry pancakes instead, but since the raspberries are bigger than blueberries i wanted to make thick pancakes. Turned out nice too =D Had some syrup on top too for extra sweetness since the raspberries are a bit sour.

This recipe made 3 thick mini pancakes for me.

Ingredients:
2 dl flour
 0.5 dl sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon vanilla sugar
A little bit of salt
About 1.5 dl non-dairy milk (adjust to get desired thickness, dough should be pretty thick)
2 tablespoons soyayoghurt
2 teaspoons melted vegan butter (or oil)
Raspberries (i used frozen, i guess fresh will work also, you can use as much as you want, i didnt measure mine but think i used maybe 1-2 dl or so)

Directions:
Mix together dry ingredients, add milk and yoghurt and mix. Add more or less milk if needed, it should be thick consistency but not too thick. Melt butter in pan then add to dough and mix, then add raspberries and mix carefully so they dont break (unless you want it more mixed). Bake a thick pancake in a small pan on both sides on medium heat until done. Enjoy with syrup or something else, whatever you like =D

Yammie =D

Carrot curry soup

Last weekend i was at the vacation house of my parents together with my sweet boyfriend since i had free from work both saturday and sunday, so we came there friday evening and went back sunday. On the saturday we went out on a little trip with the boat of my parents =p Most of the other time we were just chilling, and we were lucky it was nice weather all the time (except raining in the night).

We needed to eat something before leaving on sunday, so i decided to make carrot soup. More specifically carrot curry soup =p It turned out pretty good so gonna share recipe =p

Here's ingredients i used:
1 onion
3 large carrots
4 mini potatoes (i guess its about 2 medium-large ones)
0.5 red bell pepper
1 tomato
Water
1 vegetable stock cube
0.5 can coconut milk (1 can = 400 ml)
Curry powder to taste
Salt
Pepper

Directions:
Chop all the veggies into pieces and add them in a pan with a little water in the bottom (or oil) and saute it until all veggies are added and a little soft. Then add water so it covers the veggies and add stock cube and bring to a boil. When the veggies are soft, pure them with a hand mixer or blender.
Add coconut milk, curry powder, salt, pepper to taste, and more water until wanted consistency.
You can also add some coconut milk when serving to get it some more decorative.

Sorry for the horrible pic

And here is us in the boat =p

Lemon water

Lemon water is supposed to be good for your health, and it's also bit more refreshing than just water, but also not as unhealthy as soda or other sugared drinks. Most places i read to drink it warm (in the morning), but cold is probably more refreshing in the summer =p

So heres what you do:
Have a glass of water (warm or cold), and squeeze 1/4-1/2 lemon in it (or how you prefer it) and enjoy =D

You dont even have to use a juicing device, just squeeze the lemon =p I just used it to get out the rest of the juice from an almost empty lemon, but normally i just squeeze.

Marzipan cake

Heres the cake i made for the norwegian national day 17th of may.

I used more or less the same recipe as last year that i found on vegetarbloggen, but i did some adjustments, so this years cake tasted better =p

Ingredients i used:
400 g flour
2.5 dl sugar
25 g grounded almonds
2 ts baking powder
2 ts vanilla sugar
Some salt
4.5 dl plantmilk
1.5 dl vegetable oil
Some drops of vanilla and almond essence to taste

Mix together dry ingredients, then add wet ingredients and mix together. Divide dough into two buttered and floured 20-24 cm diameter round cake forms and bake in oven on 185°C for 20 minutes. Let it cool.

For me, one of the cakes was bit bigger than the other one. In the original recipe, both are supposed to be sliced in half, but i only did the bigger one in half. Then i did the unsliced cake in the middle.

But ye, back to the assembling. Heres what i used:
Juice (i used tropical juice)
Jam (i used strawberry, but others are fine too)
2 bananas
Vegan whipped cream (i used 2 boxes of GoGreen Visp (2 dl each box), but would be smart to have an extra just in case of need)
Vanilla cream/pudding (i used Freia vaniljesaus mixed with 2.5 dl milk, but alpro vanilla pudding or other vanilla puddings would work too)
Marzipan
Fresh berries for decoration

I had 3 cakepieces so this is what i did:
First i took one of the cut cakepieces and poured over it with juice until it was pretty wet. Then i added the jam, then bananas in pieces, and then whipped cream. Then i added the uncut cakepiece and poured juice over that one too so it got wet. Then i had a layer of jam followed by a layer of vanilla pudding. Then i added the 3rd cakepiece and poured juice over that one too. Then i did whipped cream all around the cake, and on the sides too. Then i rolled out marzipan and covered the cake with it. Then i decorated with berries and some leftover whipped cream.

Heres the result

Tofu scramble

Today is the 17th of may which is the norwegian national day, so then all the norwegians are celebrating =p Ofc i join in with some yummy food =D But other than that, i'll just stay at home and be lazy =p Many people wear the norwegian national costume (called bunad) and are in town, but i dont wear it unless i have to xD

I kinda wanted to have a bit the same as the rest of my family had for breakfast, and they had scrambled eggs, so i had scrambled tofu =D This time i added some (vegan) sausage in it too for extra coolness =p

Heres what i used, and sorry for not more specific amounts, i kinda did a splash of each xd
About 85 g tofu
Water (maybe 0.5 dl? more if needed)
Turmeric (to make it yellow =D)
Paprika powder (dunno why i added this, so it's optional)
Coriander (also dunno why i added this, so it's also optional)
Black salt (for eggy taste)
Nutritional yeast (makes it even more yummy!)
1 vegan sausage in pieces (i used Taifun Tofu-Wiener) optional
Pepper
Chives (optional)

First i squeezed some of the water out of the tofu (mine had been frozen btw). Then i ripped it into little pieces and put it in a pan and put on medium high heat. In a cup i mixed some water with turmeric, paprika powder, coriander, black salt, and nutritional yeast, then i added the mixture to the tofupieces and mixed it nicely while tasted if i needed more of some spices (where i needed more black salt, nutritional yeast and water xD). Then later when it was warm, i added the sausage pieces and let it heat up some more. Then i did fresh grinded black pepper on top and mixed in some fresh chives.

Onion pilaf

Today for breakfast i decided to make onion pilaf from my gourmet vegetar cookbook (page 185). It's actually more of a dinner recipe but oh heck xD

It was yummy so figured might as well put the recipe on the blog =p I did a couple of changes from the original recipe though, so heres what i did:

(1 person)
Ingredients:
0.5 onion (mine was maybe 0.75 but i guess it depends on the size), chopped
75 g rice
Ca 2,1 dl veggiestock (water + stock cube)
2 tablespoons frozen chopped spinach
50 g green peas (i used frozen)
1 teaspoon coriander
2 tablespoons nutritional yeast

First i sauteed the onions in some veggiestock until they were soft, then i added the rice and the rest of the veggie stock and let it simmer until most of the water was evaporated. Then i added spinach and green peas and let it be on low heat until they all were ready. Then i added coriander and nutritional yeast, mixed and ate =p

Pretty easy and yummy =D

Choco-lemon-mousse

I've been seeing some other bloggers making chocomousse a while ago (this, this and this for example), so i wanted to try it myself too.

Since i was so lucky to have a plate of chocolate, an alpro whip-able cream, and a lemon, i decided to make choco and lemon mousse. I kinda failed a bit though, adding too much lemon to my lemon mousse so it became lemon sauce or so, so i added some (or too much) lemon mousse to my chocomousse, and it became chocolemonmousse.

Well, heres the ingredients and directions i used:
1 alpro cream or other brand (alpro one is 2,5 dl)
About 100 g chocolate (i used a 72%) can use more or less as you want too.
0,5 - 1 lemon (i used 1, and it was bit way too much i guess according to everyone else except me xD)
1 - 2 tablespoons powdered sugar

Whip the cream until its nice and creamy.
Melt as much chocolate as you want (i did about 80 g , and the remaining 20 g i chopped into pieces and mixed in later).
Press the juice out of the lemon (as much as you want) and the zest you want from the lemon. Separate the whipped creams into two bowls and add lemon to one and chocolate to the other and mix carefully so they are still fluffy.
Also add powdered sugar to the lemon one so it gets a bit sweeter and the chocolate pieces in the chocolate mousse =p
Then if you want you can have two separate mousses, or you can add the lemon mousse into the chocolate mousse like i did, until it taste good. I added almost the whole lemon mousse, so it got a pretty strong taste of lemon, might have been better with less lemon.
Put in glasses or so and put in fridge until serving (or eat immediately).

Enjoy ;p

You can use other tastes too ofc =p think caramel or peanuts might be good =D or strawberry or orange or pineapple =p

An update from Belgium

Hi guys =p

This easter i went to Belgium to be with my bf who lives in Antwerpen =p I came here on sunday and will go back on tuesday together with my bf, so i'll be bit more than a week here =p

From the airport in Bergen

I travelled via Copenhagen, and my 2nd plane was 1.5 hours delayed (happens quite often i think that there are delays xD)
My luggage also got lost on the way, but luckily they found it next day and brought it to me =D As compensation for my lost luggage i got a kit with some toothbrush, toothpaste, deo, hairbrush etc to survive the night without my luggage so that was pretty nice =p

So far i havent done a lot, my bf has still school this week, so i've been following him there, and tried to do some schoolwork of my own too (still laying some behind :x), but i typically ended up on fb or so xD

The weather has been nice, but cold.

Today we went on a trip where my bf showed me where he used to live (was pretty close to where he lives now). Was really nice to see =D

Me and some statue

My bf with the same statue

My bfs old home (jk ofc xd)

Fancy house, ofc need posing pic xd

Me posing too =p

We also went into a shop where i found vegan candy! =D So tested out two of them, the chocobanana and the fruit jelly things (made with agar-agar and not gelatine, and no carmine or milk in it either ;p)

Looked tempting to enter xd

Middle row is vegan =D (ignore top row and lowest row xd)
Btw check ingredients first to be sure, i didnt check everything

Candy we bought =p I ate half already @_@

I was hoping the bananas would be skum bananas like i used to eat before, but they were jelly bananas (it actually says on too :>) but they were still good ofc =p Fruit jellies were kinda sugary and not so chewy as some jelly might be, but they were good too =p Now i got sugar shock @_@

Hope rest of the vacation will be nice too =D

Broccoli risotto

Just gonna admit immediately, my risottoes arent made like risottos but like rice with veggies. I'm too lazy to add bit and bit with water and use special risotto rice, so i just add everything at the same time and use normal rice.

Oh well, heres the recipe inspired by the broccoli risotto at vegandad.

Ingredients:
0.5 onion
1/3 broccoli
0.75 dl rice
2.5+ dl water
1 bullion cube
0.5 ts oregano
Margarine/oil
Nutritional yeast (optional)
Salt and pepper

Chop the onion and saute it. Add the rice, then the water and bullion cube, followed by the oregano and broccoli in small pieces. Let it boil to water is gone, add more water if nessesary. When ready, taste with nutritional yeast, salt and pepper and some margarine if you wanna =p

Easy peasy

Here served with tomatoes with salt and pepper, and sauted mushrooms with salt and pepper and soy sauce.

Chili sin carne

This used to be my favorite dish =D

I dont remember exactly how much i use of everything, normally i do so the ratio looks more or less good and taste if it needs more of something xD

Well, heres the ingredients (from memory):
0,5 medium-small onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, chopped
Some chili, chopped (optional)
2 small potatoes, in cubes
0.5 red bell pepper, in cubes
Paprika/chili powder
1 vegetable bullion cube
Around 3 dl water (i dont remember how much i use, i just add something, and depends how liquid you want it, i just add more water if i feel its needed)
Basil spice, oregano spice (i normally use shitloads xd)
+- 250g (0.5 jar) pastasauce
0.5 can of kidneybeans

Saute the onion, garlic, potatoes, chili and red bell pepper. Add the paprika/chili powder, water, bullion cube and basil/oregano and let it boil for 5-10 min. Add the pasta sauce, then add the kidneybeans and let it boil bit more. And always remember to taste meanwhile if you need more of something =p

Tortilla chips with rice dip

This happened one evening after work when i got home with a tortilla chips bag that i had bought since one of the recipes in my cook books (carrot dip) was calling for tortilla chips (and just for the record, i still havent made the carrot dip, and the tortilla chips bag is empty now :x).

Sooooo, i was snacking on tortilla chips with salsa sauce/dip/whatever until the salsa was empty, and then i started dipping in the leftover boiled rice of my parents dinner, and it actually worked out pretty well!! =D The crunchy salty tortilla chips went very nicely along with the soft, chewy rice. So if you ever have leftover rice and tortilla chips, its not a bad idea to mix them =p Maybe would be even better with salsa on top of it too xD Sorry for bad pic btw =p

Yesterday i went to doctor and checked my blood, seems my iron is lil bit low, but i've been kinda slacking with my healthy eating lately (or always), so mostly just eating bread with jam, fruits, snacks, more snacks, even more snacks, bunch of chocolate and nuts etc kinda every day >.>

My willpower is extremely weak ._. And weird thing is i'm too lazy for baking too, normally i baked cakes and stuff all the time (really, all the time, like, every day), and now i've barely baked something since xmas except for cookies when i went on trip, and some muffins i baked to use some blueberries, pineapple, lemon and orange. I followed this recipe a bit except for the obvious substitutions.

So in the back is orange-chocolatechip muffins (with bit lemon in too), to the left is blueberry lemon muffins, and in front is pineapple muffins. My favorite was the blueberry-lemon one with pineapple as 2nd and orange last.

Valentines day

Since i went to school and worked whole day (8-20) and wasnt home until 21 i didnt really have time to prepare something fancy (i know i could have done on wednesday, but i was too lazy then xD).

So i ended up with love hearts, fanta exotic, chilinuts, chocolate and watching the movie Love Actually with my bf =D So very sweet for valentines evening <3 I love you my sweetheart! <3

Love hearts and fanta exotic

Hope you had a nice valentines day too =D

Mothersday + trip + fastelavn + sausage testing

Today it's both mothersday and fastelavn (better if they do it on 2 seperate days i think xD), so me and my sis decided to give a family trip as mothersday present, and i also made cookies for the occasion and i also wanted to make a cake, but would kinda be too much with the fastelavn boller too @_@

Sadly i didnt take pic of the cookies but they were yummy =p With carrots, hazelnuts, chocolate and raisins =D If i make them again i'll try to take pic and post recipe xD

So ye, whole family went on a hiking trip to a small mountain nearby called Storrinden. From there we can see the airport, so it's pretty cool =p It was nice sunny weather, but ground was frozen snow on it, so was kinda slippery some places, but luckily no one fell even if it was pretty close sometimes xD (a different story on saturday when i went to work and i fell 2 times in a row >.>) We ate the cookies when we reached the top =p

Here are some pictures from the trip (all pictures are taken by my sister):

When we got home after a bit, fastelavn boller was ready =D It's normal bolle with jam and cream in it and powdered sugar on top. Recipe on boller you can find here. We also had hot chocolate with it =p

Later in the evening i shared some Wheaty ToRo sausages i had bought on veganlife with my bf =p They were really good =D He said the taste was really the same as with meat sausages, but the texture was bit harder and drier, but they were still awesome! We ate the whole package in short time, so time to buy more now xD Hopefully they will arrive before he has to leave again =(

We also ate some Spacebar Chorizo and vegan white chocolate that were also very yummy! The white chocolate is more or less just as i remember it, but it melted bit quicker in my mouth i think, and i missed some crunch in it (probably cuz the other white chocolate i ate in my non-vegan days was toblerone xD). The spacebar chorizo was really yummy too and sausagy =D

So i think everyone should test out those things if you like it =D It's really nice that you can get everything vegan version so theres no need for the more cruel animal based products =D