Plum madness

It's plum season... I have very fond memories of my childhood connected to plums. My grandma used to have a giant tree and we kids climbed it to pick some fruit. And find out which had worms. Ew. However, last week I bought some Sojadé Plum Yoghurt (Sojadé is a Frenech company... I can't really recommend the other flavours, but plum is ace!). Then a coworker brought a huge basket with plums from her garden. And since Sunday is baking day for me, I decided to give the traditional plum tart another try. I've tried various vegan recipes but they were all dry and crumbly. So I whipped up my own. The self-raising flour I bought at Cologne's English Shop yesterday helped a lot. It came out soft, not too sweet and lovely. Who said I suck at baking?
here's it:
200g self-raising flour
50 g sugar
1 tbs soy flour
1 package vanilla sugar
3 tbs soy yoghurt (I used Sojade plum)
5 tbs oil (I use sunflower oil, my fave for everything)
about 100 ml water

400g plums, pitted and sliced

Mix all ingredients except the plums. It will make a gooey and sticky dough. Spread into your preferred baking form ( I <3 my heart-shaped sillicone baking form, but you could also spread it on a greased baking tray).
Cover with the plums, press them into the dough, but be gentle. Sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon. Bake for 20 mins. Yum!

(Still, a wee bit of the heart broke when I flipped it over...)

Eating Out 3

Last Saturday there was a city/musical festival thingy in Essen (a city with half a million inhabitants about 20 kms from mine. If you write "essen" without the capital E, it means "eating" in German. Yay!).

The festival was pretty boring, but I had some great soy meatballs in curry sauce (probably TVP-based) with rice. A giant serving, just right for me!

Then we also discovered the hugeste Alternative clothing store I've seen in Germany so far.
I couldn't spend any money because we went to the huge Basic health food store before where I eventually bought gomasio and too many variations of vegan soy desserts!

We also found out that there will be a huge Diwali-like Indian festival in Stuttgart in November, so I decided I'll be visiting my ex in South Germany for a couple of days then.

I also made a huge online book and bento supply order that night. I was surprised to find all the books except for one in the mail today (included a vegan Thai cookbook, a book featuring only tomato recipes and one with exotic fruit- worth buying it for the photos alone!).

Unphotogenic curry, darn you!

Eating out 2

The Saturday after the fair, I went to an Ancient Roman "theme park/museum" kinda thing in Xanten. It's close to the place I grew up- in the middle of nowhere, no vegan options.

The weather was great, I enjoyed the place (they rebuilt a Roman city in the place it actually were 2000 years ago!).
Afterwards we went into the old city centre (very medieval!). They even had a health food stor inside an old mill!

That's why I jumped into sattgrün
to buy a sandwich, taboulleh, a veggie pepperoni and some bottled herbal tea.

The taboulleh hat couscous, tomatoes, lots of fresh herbs, pickled zucchini and lentils.

Sammich was ciabatta with roasted bell pepper, tomato, lettuce and olives with tapenade. Yum!

Eating out

Ok, I've seen to many strange gay movies lately. However, this is not an excuse for not blogging.

The excuse is: a lot of work, a nasty stomach bug that wouldn't go away for 2 weeks and blogger not uploading pics.

The last couple of weekends, the weather was surprisingly good.
Two weeks ago, there was the "Veggie Street Day" in Dortmund. I was sorta dissappointed because it was just the same as last year but without a proper stage programme and it was a vegan-only event though it took place at the end of the city's hight street.
No attempt was made to interest any omnis in the event, it was all the antispeciests' big horror show.

I only ate a bit of a boring vegetable paella. That was all solid food I ate in that week, except for soy yoghurt and breadsticks.

Azumi had some cherry streusel cake (wet dream of my childhood! Need to make some myself!)