Lille Taste of Indian

I finally got my drivers licence now yay :D (8 years after i could have had it :x)

The driving exam went pretty good, so thats great =p To celebrate me and my family went out to eat at an indian restaurant in Bergen called Lille Taste of Indian, located in Marken =p

I ordered the dish called Degree Channa, with chickpeas, mushrooms and curry sauce. It was served with rice =p They other ordered non-vegan food. It was yummy and had a spiced taste, but without being spicy. I would have liked it a bit more spicy though, but then again I'm kinda unfamiliar with indian food, so I'm not sure how it's supposed to be like xD Think I'll try something different next time though, because it was yummy, but not superyummy for my taste =p

It was a quite cosy place though, and the woman serving us was wearing an indian dress or sari or whatever it's called that was very pretty =p

We had a nice time together, and I like to go out and eat and test out new places and dishes, so I hope we will do it more in the future =D

My Xmas 2015

Yoyo everybody, merry xmas! =D

I'm still alive, even though it doesnt seem like it from my posting frequencies xD

So yesterday i celebrated xmas with my family. As usual norwegian tradition i made xmas rice pudding or whatever it's called in english for lunch, made with porridge rice, soy + coconut milk, vanilla powder, sugar, and grounded almons. With cinnamon, raisins and vegan margarine on top =p Very delicious =D

They got a new vegan margarine in Norway now that was actually whiter than my rice pudding as you can see on the picture, which i found a bit funny, cuz normally the margarine/butter is yellow =p
Also my vegan rice pudding was darker in color than my families non-vegan rice pudding =p


After eating we visited my grandparents for a short while before we drove back home (or i drove back home because i'm training for my driving licence). Then i prepared the nut roast that i would have for dinner. I used the recipe that i always use on veg-veg their sites, except i used some more nuts, regretting i didn't make even more =p Guess i'll write the ingredients on my blog so i have it here for later =p

Ingredients:
200 g mixed nuts (i used cashews, brazil nuts, almonds, peanuts, walnuts)
100 g crumbled bread
1 chopped onion
2 chopped garlic cloves
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
2 tablespoons flour
1 tablespoon spice mix (i used paprika, cloves, ginger, pepper, chili, garlic, nutmeg)
1 cube vegetable bullion
1,5 dl boiling water
salt and pepper

So i did the nuts and bread in my food processor until it was chopped into pieces, sauted the onion and garlic in the oil, then i added all the ingredients in a bowl and spiced it as much as i wanted, then did it in an oiled bread shape, covered with aluminium foil, and baked in the oven on 180°C for about 1 hour.

Next to the nutroast i had boiled potatoes, brown sauce, mashed rutabaga, mushrooms, onions, brussel sprouts, and lots of soy sauce =p

After eating we opened the presents.

Here's what i got:

A purse, 2 different cooking books, vegan chocolate, tvp chuncks, mini cake shapes, touchscreen gloves, lavendel smelling candle light, hand soap, sweater, pizza pan, circular glass shape, power plug thingy, huge pillow and cash =p

Pretty nice gifts, i'm very happy for all of them =D

After opening gifts we wanted to watch the movie "The Holiday". Sadly we didn't have the dvd in our house, so we tried streaming it. Sadly internet wasn't in a very cooperating mood (slow and falling out), so we could watch about 10 minutes before we had to load it for like 5 minutes to continue watching it, so we only got 49 minutes into the movie before we gave up xD

It was a nice xmas for me and i got a lot of cool stuff that i wanted, yummy food, and i had a nice time together with my family =D I hope everyone else had a nice xmas aswell =D

Sundays lunch and dinner

Seems it's been a while since i've posted any food that i've made, so i guess it's time for a little update =p

Yesterday i decided to make pizza since i had bought some out of date pepperoni slices from vbites for half price (and violife cheese since i wanted to put the pepperoni slices on pizza).

I had some leftover yeast too so i also made cinnamon rolls with that, and some without cinnamon because my boyfriend doesn't like cinnamon, but seems he didn't want to taste them either :x I made half portion and dropped the cardamom, but added some vanilla sugar instead. I also used 1/3 whole wheat flour to pretend to be healthy (and used 1/3 extra sugar cuz it fell too much into my measuring cup... so much for being healthy :x). Personally i liked the cinnamon rolls and seems someone else in my boyfriends house also dared to taste (most of the time they don't dare to taste what i make), and they liked it too =) I ate like half of them and i still had half over that i put in the freezer so they wouldn't go dry. It's nicer with my family in Norway, they would have eaten all =p

So to the pizza. This one was kinda fail. First off i used to much whole wheat flour that it is darker than most of the dark breads (i think 50% is when they can call it dark?). The crust kinda tasted like dark bread (healthy ftw xD). Personally i didn't mind, but i think i'll use more white flour next time and less of the whole wheat one xD Secondly, i first baked it too short so the crust tasted like sponge, so i had to bake it more. Thirdly, the crust was glued to the pan, so i kinda had to do some effort to get this dark bread crust loose so i could eat it.

Failures aside it was still yummy =)

I'll be so nice that i'll provide +- recipe too =p

Dough:
2-2.5 dl medium temperature water
0.5 bag of yeast
1 teaspoon sugar
1-2 teaspoon salt
1-2 tablespoons vegetable oil
Some pizza spices and nutritional yeast (optional)
Flour until nice consistency

Mix ingredients, knead it and let it rise for some time (i did some hours), then shape to pizza shape =) Use more flour if needed.

Topping:
Pasta sauce
Shredded vegan cheese (i used violife for pizza, it didn't shred though :x)
Onions
Bell peppers
Pizza spices (i think i used oregano, but it didnt say on the box what it was)
Corn
Canned mushrooms
Vbites pepperoni slices
Tomatos
Nutritional yeast

So i guess basically slice and dice and put on what is wanted =p Started with tomato sauce, then cheese then veggies then more cheese =p Into the oven on max temperature (remember to use something below the dough in the pan or pizza stone :x) until it's ready (which depends on oven temperatue and some other stuff and is hard to know, but 20 minutes in my case wasnt enough xD).

Since only me liked the bread crust i pretended it was bread and added chocospread on it xD

Dark bread is always yummier with chocospread ;)

Curried veggies

This was my dinner today =)

Ingredients i used:
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
0.5 onion, chopped
0.5 garlic, minced (can use 1 too, i had 0.5 leftover from yesterdays hummus)
1 chilipepper, chopped
1 mushroom, in pieces
1 carrot, in pieces
3 small potatoes, in pieces
Some tablespoons of red curry paste
Soy sauce to taste
2 teaspoons tomato paste
Some dl of water
A little bit of leftover chickpeas
Pepper
Freshly squeezed lemon

I sauteed the veggies, adding water when needed, then i added curry paste, tomato paste and soy sauce and some more water and let it simmer a bit before adding chickpeas. When water was more or less evaporated it was ready to eat so i sprinckled on some pepper and freshly squeezed lemon juice =) It's probably yummy with rice, but i figured that out 2 minutes before it was ready to eat, so maybe i should start with boiling some rice next time xD

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)

Pizza!

I kinda started eating pizza way more rarely after becoming vegan, mostly because im used to pizzas with meat and cheese, so the carrot pizzas werent really the same xD (+ i mostly had tiny crust and a huuuge layer of filling and no "meat" or "cheese", so wasnt really pro xD). So other food was mostly more tempting.

Ofc there is a bunch of vegan meat and cheese options, im mostly just too lazy to buy it cuz i dont wanna spend too much money so i just didnt make it xD But it really is possible to make any kind of pizza as vegan version as you can see from the menu of this vegan pizzeria Sfizy Veg in Berlin (one day i wanna go there! xd). Why use meat/cheese when you can do a more animal friendly option =D

Well, i got inspired by some blogs to use bearnaise sauce on the pizza, so i wanted to try that. Here are some of the blogposts that inspired me: Brennheit and Harrypizza from veganeren, and the pizza from hverdagsveganeren.

Sadly not all bearnaise sauces are vegan, so check before you buy! In Norway these from Toro are vegan: lett bearnaise sauce (light), and krydder bearnaise sauce (spiced).


So ye, here for the "recipe" aka what i used for this pizza xD But as you all know, you can put whatever you want on pizza =p

Pizza crust/dough (mom always makes pizza saturday evenings so if i want i can have some of the dough so i just used the one she made =p)
Tomato sauce (i just use pasta sauce from jar, but homemade sounds more pro =p)
Pizza spices
Vegan bearnaise sauce with a bit of nutritional yeast (this time i used the spiced one and 2 tablespoons nutritional yeast, next time i will try the light one, nutritional yeast is optional, can skip it too ofc, i also added salt and pepper in it)
Mushrooms (i used canned)
Corn (i used canned)
Pineapple (i used canned)
Green bell pepper
Olives
Sun dried tomatos
Cherry tomatos

Then i putted in oven on 225°C for a while until i felt it was ready xD


It came out very well, so i think i'll make more of this =p It's probably the best pizza i have made for years =D

Beanmix with couscous

I had more leftover beans after making the bean brownies, and i had bean-burgers yesterday so i felt like having something different for dinner today. I searched some blogs and got the idea of making something like refried beans.

This ended up in me making this (which tasted awesome!):

Ingredients:
0,5 onion, chopped
1 mushroom, chopped
0,25 bouillon cube + some water
~100 grams (black) beans
2 tablespoons tomatopuré
Soy sauce
Spices: cumin, coriander, chili, paprika, onion, cayenne, nutritional yeast, salt, pepper

Couscous
0,25 bouillon cube + boiling water
1 teaspoon lemon juice

First i sauted the onion and mushroom in the water and bouillon cube, then i added the beans and the tomatopuré, and i tried to squeeze the beans a bit too =p Then i added the spices and soy sauce. Meanwhile make the couscous with bouillon cube and boiling water, and add the lemon juice to it. Then mix everything together =p I also added cucumber ^.^ Delicious! =D

Mushroom sauce

Time to get this stuff on the blog xD My yammie mushroom sauce! =D

I suddenly forgot how many mushrooms i normally do, but i guess it also depends on the size =p

Ingredients:
Vegetable oil/margarine
0.5 onion
1 clove of garlic
3-5 mushrooms
Plantmilk (recently i used oat milk)
Vegetable stock cube
(corn starch/maizena if needed)

Chop everything that should be chopped in prefered pieces (some like it big, some like it small).
Heat the oil/margarine and saute the mushrooms until they are almost ready.
Add the onion and saute more.
Add the garlic.
Add the milk (as much as you want) and stock cube and let it simmer for like 20 minutes or so.
If you want the sauce to be thinner add more milk, if you want it to be thicker add corn starch.
Home made oat milk is cool since it automatically thickens the sauce by itself xD Dunno if other milks does that too though =p

Tomato coconut curry leftover dinner

First i just wanna mention my legs still dont wanna run, but they dont mind walking for some reason >.> I wonder why xD

So over to todays dinner =p I had like half a can of tomatoes, 1/4 green chili, 3/4 can of coconut milk and half a broccoli i didnt know how to get rid of, so i figured to just mix it all together and see what happened xD And it actually turned out very well! So if i ever end up with lots of leftover stuff again i will maybe make something like this again =p

I guess the basis of this dinner would be the canned tomatoes, coconut milk, random vegetables and spices where the spices and vegetables can be changed to whatever you feel like or have xD I wanted mine kinda curryish =p

Here is what i used but ye, use what you have or want =p
Margarine/oil
2 mushrooms
1/4 onion
0.5 - 1 cm ginger (i guess its about 1-2 teaspoons xD)
1/4 green chili
1 carrot
1/4 red bell pepper
5 cm zucchini
1/4 broccoli
1 tomato
1/2 can of tomato
1/4 can coconut milk
Spices (no spesific order xd): curry, coriander, mustard, turmeric, cumin, chili, paprika, salt, pepper

I sliced mushrooms in 0.5 cm thick slices then divided them in two on the middle. The mushrooms i had on medium heat with the margarine/oil until they were "ready". Meanwhile i finely chopped the onion, ginger and chili. When the mushrooms were "ready" i added this. It's smart to stir every now and then btw =p The carrots i chopped in 0.5 cm thick circles that i divided on the middle so they became half-moons (i was artistic today xd) then added them, then cut the bell pepper in pieces and added them, then i cutted the zucchini in 0.6 cm thick circles that i divided in 8 pieces and added (artistic ftw xD) then i chopped broccoli and added that and i assume i let it stir for a bit until i felt the vegetables was ready for tomato (some minutes or immediately, i dont remember xD) So then i added can of tomato and chopped the other tomato and added that one too. Then i added coconut milk and let it all simmer for a while. Then i added the spices after taste, and let it simmer until all vegetables were tender =p

I could probably shorten the wall of text above to: "chop and add vegetables!" but that would be boring since im in wall of text writing mood atm =p

Ah now i remember, after spicing it nicely up i figured i would serve it with quinoa, so let it simmer while i made quinoa =p Rice or other stuff would probably work just as fine, but today i felt like using quinoa =p

Here is a picture of the deliciousness =p

Now i still need to use the rest of the broccoli, onion, ginger, mushrooms, red bell pepper, 2 kg carrots, 1/2 can coconut milk and the rest of the zucchini xD but i already got plans for some of them (cuz of the cook book project) xD But maybe i make this again to get rid of the rest of the broccoli, cuz that broccoli is "hard" to get rid of and i always wanna get rid of it xD and i always wanna have a broccoli in the house aswell xD im weird xD

Zucchini burgers

Today i wanted to make something (new) with zucchini for dinner since i have some zucchinis in my fridge, so i searched on the internet and found this recipe: Zucchini Patties that i found on vegweb.

I'm not so good on following recipes though, so i mixed it with the amazingly yummy mexican burgers from veganmisjonen her blog (the recipe is removed so i cant link to it anymore, but it kinda use beans and not zucchini).

The end result: Yummy!! =D

I didn't really measure carefully, its kinda like take what you got/want xD I guess this credit goes to the vegweb recipe, veganmisjonens recipe, and my mixing together skills xD


Zucchini burgers

Ingredients:
0,5 - 1 grated zucchini (i had like 0,5 left)
0,5 - 1 onion, finely chopped (i used 0,5)
1 clove garlic, minced
1 box of mushrooms (fresh ones might work as well, or you can skip it completely or use more or less =p i only had boxed mushrooms, my boxes are pretty small btw)
0,5 box of corn (if you have/want/like it xD we had some (around 0,25 box) spare in the fridge so i just added it xD you can skip it aswell)
Some parsley, or in my case i used spring onion, or leek could work as well, or you can skip it xD (="green stuff" in the method below)
Dried oregano (and maybe some other spices if you like, for example basil, coriander, chili, paprika/bell pepper (i think actually fresh one would rock! xD), cumin, or other stuff, add what you have/want/like =p)
0,5 - 1 vegetable stock cube (i used 0,5)
Salt and pepper to taste
Oatmeal or bread crumbs (i used oat meal, i think maybe 0,5 - 1 dl depending on how wet your mix is, i didnt measure, i just added)
Flour (to make it stick together better, just add till its nice consistency)


Method (if its still needed since most of it is in my ingredient list Oo)
Add the grated zucchini, the chopped onion and the minced garlic together in a bowl and add the box of mushroom and the corn and the green stuff and the spices and the stock and the salt and pepper and mix together at the end or in between (i did in between =p). Add the oatmeal or bread crumbs and the flour until you got nice consistency. Fry them in a pan with oil on medium heat on both sides till they are ready ^.^

  

Since they were so yummy i ate almost all myself! xD But i guess its better sharing on 2 or more people, specially if you have a side-dish with it =p

I kinda liked it more with zucchini than with beans, since its more "fresh" taste then (if i remember correctly xD), so i think its time to put zucchini on my regular shopping list =p If you don't have zucchini you can use beans instead, for example kidney beans =p