Indian Bento

Somehow my bentos are more often Indian-style than anything else. I had this one last week after Xmas. It's got plain basmati rice, kidney bean curry, cocktail tomatoes and an adaption of my all-time-favourite dish-

When I started cooking about five years ago, I got this Asian cookbook which had a curry chapter. I found this chicken curry that I became totally obsessed with. I made it all the time. Enter vegetarianism. Enter veganism.
I veganized a lot of stuff, but somehow this recipe never entered my mind. Mabye it contained too many animal products in the original.

However, I made it, and I've fallen in love again. The original recipe asks for yoghurt, so I took a small container (125ml) of the French Sojadé yoghurt and TVP chunks as meat substitutes.

Here's the recipe:

1 onion
2 cloves of garlic
1 tsp turmeric
1/2 inch piece of ginger
1/2 tsp chilli powder

-> peel and dice garlic, onion and ginger. Shortly sauté with the spices in a pan.
Using a blender, food processor or whatever, add 6 tablespoons of water and blend into a smooth paste.

-> in the meantime, reconstitute the TVP (I use vegetable broth with a pinch paprika and some tamari) and chop one red and one yellow bell pepper.

-> Sauté the TVP and peppers for about 10 minutes, then add the curry paste and half a teaspoon of salt.
Turn down the heat and add the yoghurt. Stir well and let simmer for about half an hour longer.

At first, you might think they curry turns out to dry. Don't add any extra water!
While cooking, the excess liquid from the TVP will mix with the curry paste and yoghurt.

Grandma's potato soup

The most evil time is over, yay! After living off cookies and curries yesterday, I thought Christmas would be another occasion to follow my heritage and make a soup (as I may have mentioned before, neither my mother nor my grandma were great cooks, but they're ace at making soups and stews).

This is my try at grandma's traditional German potato soup... unfortunately, all the sausages have sunk to the ground...

For two people, you'll need:

3-4 huge potatoes
(I used seven or eight tiny ones as big organic spuds are unavailable here at the moment)
1 onion
1 clove garlic
vegetable broth
1 cup soy milk
1 teaspoon mustard (real Düsseldorfer is best, but any other will do, as well)
2 tofu/seitan/whatever wieners
nutmeg, salt, pepper

Sauté the coarsly chopped garlic and onion in some olive oil.
Peel the potatoes and cut into chunks, add to the pot and sauté for three more minutes.

Add vegetable broth - just enough to have everything covered, bring to a boil and let simmer for about 15 minutes or until the potatoes are tender.

Blend everything to a smooth soup and put it back on the stove.
Add the soy milk, mustard and spices.
Cut the wieners and add them to the soup, let simmer for five more minutes.

This is best eaten with some fresh bread rolls.

Cookies

Ok, this is probably as Xmessy as I get. A good thing about the holiday season is that I've only got to work two days this week and am able to do some cooking and catch up with blogs, reading etc.

I would've loved to make a variety of Christmas cooking and veganize a lot of my Grandma's recipes, but last week was one of the weeks when everything breaks- at first, my washing machine is having trouble drawing water (not yet sorted out).
Then, my shower brush and tube came apart, so I spent Saturday morning in the DIY store. Anyway, I took it as a sign for getting a lot of new shower stuff from Lush ^^
( I want to eat that almond butter cream!)

But the most horrible thing is that my oven died... four days before Xmas and I had no baked goods in the house at all!
Now, I only have a kitchenette (though the kitchen could accomodate a proper one, there's no power current in the house) and bought a toaster oven when I moved it. It did a good job for pizzas, muffins, cookies and casseroles.
Until Wednesday.

Luckily, Evilzon told me there are actually small countertop ovens that are more than pizza ovens and not even more expensive. So this years happy-Xmas-to-me present is my new convention oven ^ ^
The package even said it's "perfect for baking bread"... we'll see.

So far, it's mainly given me sore arm muscles from carrying the huge parcel from the post office (neverending Christmas queue!).


Yesterday, I decided to try making cookies in it, and they turned out well.
I hadn't made anything from VWAV since V-con had come out, so I made the sparkled ginger cookies and lemony butter cutout cookies (or was it buttery lemon cookies? I used vegetable oil, anyway).

And, as you can see in the picture, I refused using Christmas cookie cutters. I had to go for the bunny!

I'm a martini!

You Are a Martini

There's no other way to say it: you're a total lush. You hold your liquor well, and you hold a lot of it!

What Mixed Drink Are You?

Xmas ignorance

Once again, I haven't blogged for almost three weeks, that is because after VeganMofo, I decided I need a break off the internets.
Then came a cold, after that, enter exams.

And now Christmas. I've never been a holiday person and will never be, and all this Xmas talk, shopping, crowds and stuff makes me want to hide under my blanket.

Anyway, I got some nice bentos made.















This is a very simple one I brought to school last week. It has hummus with parsley, cucumber, radishes and carrot sticks. The upper tier had some sesame crackers and a Lubs almond and plum fruit bar plus a chocolate muffin in the monokuro boo container and a smoothie (not pictured).


The second one has leftover curry rice, cucmber slices and cocktail tomatoes, hummus, sesame crackers and a small RitterSport Chocolate.














The third is sesame rice, chickpeas with ajvar and cucumber salad in one tier, potatoe salad, some clementine and a rice cracker in the other.

Last, but not least, plain rice with Chinese stir-fry, some banana slices, two coconut cookies, dried figs and some white rice milk chocolate (divine!).