Stealing Flowers

A busy weekend with friends in from Stockholm and not much cooking means more posts about plants. After a short and sweet moral quandary, I decided that if neighbours' flowers are sticking out of their fence and on public property it is okay to take cuttings to use to pretty up my bathroom, kitchen and other living areas. The exception to this rule is if the flower is a rose or a calla lily or some other expensive flower with fewer blooms. Luckily, that leaves heaps of flowers in my 'hood ripe for the picking.

Lovely.

Eating Out

Omnivores constantly ask me, "Isn't it hard to eat out?" And I always say no, because I usually go to places where I know my dietary choice is catered for. Well, this morning, the bf and I decided to have breakfast at Cumulus Inc. I thought it would be easy to find something, as Marieke Hardy touts Cumulus as the second best vegan eat in Melbourne.

Eh, I would respectfully have to disagree with her - at least as far as breakfast is concerned. The only thing I could eat on the menu was toast with jam ($8.80) or a watermelon salad minus the yoghurt ($12). I chose the toast. And it was great toast and awesome jam, but it's a little disconcerting when the wait staff has to look at the menu to figure out what's vegan and then recommends the honey granola minus yoghurt. For a place where a soy latte costs $4.75 that is not really acceptable.

Next time I might just stick with with overpriced (but very good!) coffee.

Last Year's Tomato Plant

Last year, I planted my tomato seedling in the ground and that was it - I gave it plenty of water and sunlight and didn't touch it until it started bearing fruit. Big mistake. I didn't prune it in the slightest. I let it grow and grow and grow until it was more than six and a half feet tall. It was out of control - and started producing fruit much faster than I could pick it. The roots grew half way across my backyard - the branches seemed to plant themselves back into the ground.

Near the end of its life, I was so sick of crawling through branches and leaves to pick just-out-of-reach tomatoes, that I pretty much gave up. Many poor tomatoes ended up falling on the ground to ferment.

In the last six months or so I have read up about pruning techniques and, though I no longer have a garden bed, I am hoping that my plant will still produce massive amounts of fruit...just not so much that it goes to waste. This year, I have planted two varieties (Apollo and Sweet Bite) - both are currently staked and both will eventually be encased in trellises. I plan to weigh my bounty and calculate the amount of money my tomatoes cost per kilo, compared to what they cost in supermarkets.

This is my plant when it was only about three feet high - it was probably triple to quadruple this size when I finally hacked it down. It ate the Beefsteak Tomato plant next to it in the garden and consumed my poor gnome, Gerald. In the end, it took about three hours to hack it down and pull up all the roots.

RIP crazy tomato plant - hopefully your replacements will be as formidable as you were - I can't wait until the first yellow flowers start appearing...

Shampoo and Conditioner - Decision Time!

For the past year or so I have been using Aesop brand shampoo and conditioner - specifically, the Revitalising Hair Sealing conditioner and the Gentle Scalp Cleansing Shampoo. I like them because, number one, they are vegan products that are not tested on animals - and also because they smell nice, don't weigh my hair down, don't have weird ingredients, and let me go my preferred 1-2 weeks between hair-washes.

But now I'm almost at the end of my bottles and I'm considering trying another brand. Aesop, for as great as it is, doesn't leave my hair shiny and beautiful - it looks okay, but I wonder if any shampoo/conditioner pair can leave my hair looking like I just walked out of a Pantene ad.

Ironically, the ones I'm considering all start with an 'A' - Akin, Alchemy, and Avalon Organics. Though really, I have never been a real connoisseur of hair products and, in a way, feel like I have no idea what I'm doing! Either way, I will have to decide in the next week or so...

Mushroom, Spinach and "Ricotta" Ravioli

On a recent trip to the USA, I decided to treat myself to something I had lusted after for years - a pasta machine. I found this model for only about USD$60 - almost a one hundred dollar discount from what it sells for in Australia. I couldn't pass it up.

It's taken me a few months to get the hang of it, but I'm finally becoming more skilled in rolling the dough. So, for dinner last night, I decided to use my pasta roller & ravioli press to make the quickest handmade ravioli I have ever made. I follow Vegan Dad's pasta dough recipe, with a few minor adjustments: I used Type 00 flour instead of semolina, and substituted about 1.5 tbsp of the 00 for besan (chickpea flour), which I found gave the dough a bit of colour and bind.

I let the dough sit for a bit while I made the ravioli filling.

Ravioli filling ingredients:

• 175g tofu (I use the extra-firm, but you can use silken as long as you press out the water)
• 75g spinach, finely chopped (I use fresh because I find it easier to work with)
• 4 large mushrooms, finely chopped
• 1-2 tbsp nutritional yeast
• 1-2 tbsp lemon juice
• 2 tbsp vegan sour cream
• handful of parsley, roughly chopped
• salt and pepper

First, crumb the tofu into a bowl. The tofu has to be drained of as much water as possible. With all the other wet ingredients, it is easy to make the filling too wet, in which case the ravioli will fall apart. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix until well combined. Taste test and adjust the ingredients to suit. (Here is where you can also add things like dried herbs and crushed pine nuts if you choose to.)

I use one of these to make the ravioli, but it can just as easily be made with one of these. Roll out the dough, setting enough aside to cover the raviolis. Fill the holes with a heaping teaspoon of filling (too much and they will leak, not enough and there will be too much air inside!), cover, and use a rolling pin the push the air out and cut the edges.

Carefully remove the ravioli from the mould and place on a floured sheet to dry. If you pile the ravioli on top of each other, make sure to dust with flour in between layers, to prevent sticking.

Cook the ravioli for about 2-3 minutes. The only way you can really confirm their done-ness is by taking a bite out of a corner! This recipe makes about 40 ravioli. Leftover ravioli can be frozen and used later. Make sure to either freeze the ravioli spaced apart or use plenty of flour in between layers, or they will freeze together and make a mess when thawed. 

Normally, when eating ravioli, I would make a cream sauce, but last night I felt like I needed some meat, so I made a very simple TVP and leek tomato-based sauce. Served with shavings of Sheese-brand bleu cheese:

Grand Final Cupcake Madness - also, the start of Vegan MoFo!

Vegan Mofo - opening weekend. I'm a bit behind because I was too busy running all over Melbourne being fed by others to make my own food! But I did manage to make one thing this weekend...


It's tradition for me to make yummy cupcakes for my friends' yearly Grand Final BBQ. This year, I attempted to make the most complicated cupcakes yet. From VCTOTW, Orange Pudding Cupcakes with Orange Creamsicle Icing. My version of the cupcakes consisted of three elements - the cake, the pudding filling and the icing.

I made the cakes and the pudding the night before and made the icing in the morning. I iced the cupcakes after I got to the BBQ as I didn't want to risk them looking like crap by the time I walked the two blocks to my friends' house. (The forecast was for rain and hail!)

The cupcakes didn't end up being as difficult to make as I had feared. The only major obstacle I had was finding a suitable replacement for Crisco vegetable shortening. After searching for coconut oil, I finally found some at an Indian grocery. I made the icing with the coconut oil replacing the shortening, and it was absolutely foul. I'm not sure if the bottle I bought was off or if coconut oil always tastes that way, but I had to ditch it and start all over. In the new batch, I simply doubled the amount of Nuttelex and it worked fine!

I also found that with cupcakes where there some sort of filling, it is cleaner and easier to use some sort of test-tube-shaped object to poke the hole, rather than a finger. The holes I poked with my finger were more messy-looking and a lot of the cake ended up coming out of the hole.

My piping back skills have slightly improved from last time, but still have a long way to go. Oh, and I sprinkled some Tahitian Vanilla salt from the amazing Gewurzhaus on the top of each cupcake for a bit of something extra. Behold: