Now on FoodieBlogroll

I'm enrolled now.

Nope, not in some weird cult or fitness centre or university
(probably the three last places on earth to find me ^^ ), but in the foodie blogroll which is an awesome project that at the same time makes me spend a lot more time looking at blogs than I should, but whatever.

This week is crazy, I hope to post some "real" food at the weekend.

New Bento stuff! Plus catching up with food porn

Ok, I shouldn't have too much time off work. Let alone have spare time and sit in front of a computer and browse ebay.

Anyway, I look forward to going back to work tomorrow because I got myself some shiny new bento gear and I'm going to shamelessly promote some bento sites.

Yes, I was totally in need of kawaii side dish containers!
See Strawberry Mashi and Edgar the rat sniffing the new items from irrashai ?


It's so far one of the cheapest and best bento supply shops I have found, and they ship really really fast (5 days from Japan to Germany! wohoo!).

Another cute new site is I love Obento . They are a bit expensive, but the gallery is worth taking a short peek.
Also check out ShopKawaii for awesome bento boxes.


Yesterday I did some more bento shopping... finally gave in and bought a Mini Zojirushi... because you know, it was so cute! Can't wait for it to arrive.

I also did some cooking...

Okra Buried Treasure from Alternative Vegan... I do love okra. I do love okra and can't understand when people say they don't like it for its slimyness... try this, it's so not and lovely with the curry leaves! It was approved by an Indian friend of mine...
... just like this totally belated St.Pattie's Day food... I only returned from Heidelberg around 10 PM on said day, so I made some Irish stuff the day after- soda bread (the recipe from Vegan Planet rocks!), Irish Stew with TVP chunks and Cham(p) - I found a billion ways to spell this mashed potato dish. Can anybody help me out and tell me which version is correct?


And the queen of pasta dishes, Penne Puttanesca, after the recipe from Vegan Fire and Spice. I'm in love with this book. Must remember to write a review soon!



Now I'm about to totally ruin my foodie reputation. Yes, I do cook fast-food style stuff sometimes. If you can call that cooking. And I love burgamix.

Rainy, but still a quite Good Friday

Happy Easter to all of you who celebrate, and a lovely long weekend for all the others!
I hope it's less rainy where you are as I was woken by a thunderstorm in the morning and is has been pouring ever since.

This comes as no surprise at all... why should the weather be good for a change when I've got a week off work?

Anyhow, I don't celebrate Easter, but there's one thing I miss about England and especially since I've gone vegan... Hot Cross Buns :)
I mixed two recipes I found online and modified them to my liking (I think candied fruit peel is icky):

• 350g /12oz white flour
  
• 5ml/1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 5ml/1 teaspoon grated nutmeg
• 1 sachet yeast
• 25g/1oz sugar
• 75g/3oz raisins
  
• finely grated lemon peel of one lemon
  
• 75g/3oz vegan margarine, melted
• 175ml/6floz soy milk, warmed

for the crosses:

• 50g/2oz flour
• 25g vegan margarine
• some water (very little!)
  

Glaze

• 25g/1oz sugar
• 30ml water

1. Stir the yeast into the soy milk.
2. In a seperate bowl, combine all the dry ingredients and make a mould.
3. Pour in the milk mixture as well as the margarine. Knead for about 5 minutes until you've got a soft, buttery dough. Cover with a clean dish towel and let rise in a warm place for 1-2 hrs.
4. In the meantime, mix sugar and water for the glaze and make the crosses by adding only a few drops of water (you really don't need more) to the margerine and flour and knead it into a dough. Roll bits of the dough into very fine sausage-shapes. Two of these will be combined for the crosses.
5. When the dough has doubled, form it into buns, place on a prepared baking sheet and let them rise some 20 minutes more.
6. Before baking, first glaze the buns and then add the crosses.
7. Bake for 20 mins at 180° C and be careful that the crosses don't turn brown.

These are traditionally eaten on Good Friday, but are far too good to be eaten on only one day.
Plus, there super easy and use ingredients you probably all have on hand. They turn out more rustic-looking than the Tesco/Sainsbury/whatever bought variety, but were approved of by my English friends.

Thanks to Maki's tutorial, I also made hot no-cross bunnies which were inhaled by the kids ^^
(this is also the reason why I only managed to take a shot of the less prettier looking ones... though be careful when using raisins for the eyes... some kinda exploded XD)

I have lots and lots and lots of pictures to share and stories to tell and recipes to type and all sorts of stuff that I didn't have the time for in the last couple of weeks, so stay tuned.

But one more thing for today... yesterday I received a lovely letter and lots of kawaii stuff from Roberta that reminded me of her "Pay it forward" game that I participated in, and what could be a better day for presents than today?

These are the rules (shamelessly copied):
"Pay it forward"

1) the first 3 people who will leave a comment on this post will receive a present handmade by me within the next 365 days (I'm thinking of something food-related here, I guess..)
2) you have to "pay", doing the same thing on your blog;
3) I will send the present just to those who will post this on their blog.

Heidelberg PPK Meetup

Last weekend, I went to Heidelberg to attend the first European meetup of the PPK forums. Turned out to be a tiny meetup and two sneaky ladies being not European at all, but we still had loads of fun.

On Saturday, we walked up to the castle.
I hadn't been to Heidelberg before (in fact, I've never travelled South Germany) and it seemed like a totally different world. Still, everybody is raving how "typically German" it is. Anyway, I did like it- it's a very picturesque city and totally worth a visit when you're in the area.

After the touristy bit, we explored an Asian grocery and the local Alnatura market (big organic supermarket chain in Germany) and went to Anna's place for a lazy dinner.

Rachel slicing the best seitan o'greatness ever (with bell pepper in it!).


Salad preparations.


The finished salad.


See what I mean? Pasta with bought basil pesto and crack tofu (with all sorts of herbs and dried tomato) ^^

Shiny happy vegans, eating their tofu.

Then there was pie (and cupcakes, but I didn't take any pictures of them):

On Sunday, we went to a vegetarian restaurant called Effulgence Waves. The owners belong to a sort of cult around an Indian guru named Sri Chinmoy. Strange place, but great eats.

I ordered their "Japanese Garden" plate:

They also did a lot of Mexican stuff:

No animals for Easter!

No food today. Instead, I'd like to draw your awereness to something else... as the holidays are approaching, countless parents suddenly think that giving their kids an animal as a Easter present without looking into what a bunny really needs is a good idea.

A huge number of those animals- mainly rabbits, but also other rodents or small animals- is dumped somewhere or given to animal shelters by the beginning of the summer holidays at the latest.

In between, single animals are crammed into small cages, fed unsuitable food and never let out of their cages unless for the kids to squeeze them.

I'm not saying that kids shouldn't have pets. Though I am totally pro-AR and all, I don't think pets are a bad idea, if they are taken proper care of and are not bought at a pet shop or something.

There are plenty of homeless animals in animal shelters or at private organisations that are kind enough to take care of them, no need to buy them like a bar of chocolate or support breeders.

If you'd like your children to have a pet, talk to them about it first. Then, you can give them a book or a stuffed toy or some pet supplies as a present.

But by all means, please don't support the habit of treating animals, no matter how cute and cuddly and simple they may seem, like toys.

Anthony Bourdain VEGAN VEGAN VEGAN

:) Somebody suggested to post a lot about Bourdain and veganism to boycott google results, so that is my little contribution. see here for more info on the project: http://hezbollahtofu.blogspot.com/ Needless to say I hate Anthony Bourdain (who can't even spell his own name right... he's of French descend and spells it American... is this really common in the US?) and have ordered the only French vegetarian cookbook available on the German market in order to start kicking his ass next week (HOLIDAYS, people!!!) as soon as I have returned from the PPK meetup. For now, all I made is seitan bourgignon , lovely rustic grub! Pre-bake: Post-bake (somehow it was prettier before):

Butter "chicken" and an unexpected omni-made quiche

About once a month, I get into the mood to whip up a batch of seitan.

I don't remember having butter chicken as an omni, thus there is no proper comparison, but this stuff is like crack to me and tastes very authentic. Praise Vegetation for the recipe!

A week ago, it was our accountings lady's birthday, and she (hard-chore omni elderly lady) insisted on bringing something that was vegan so I don't need to watch the others scoffing cake as always.
I thought of it as a joke, but when I came from school last Friday, there were three slices of vegan quiche lorraine waiting for me (omni coworkers had devoured the other part of the quiche already). I was so happy, I nearly cried. How sweet is that?
Unfortunately, I had eaten a huge falafel pita sandwich before, so I took two of the slices home.

50 things I have eaten

This is my contribution to the 50 things you have eaten swap. I listed the 50 most unusual, grossest and yummiest things that came to my mind.
Beware, non-vegan food ahead!

1. homecooked Thai curry by a real weird Thai woman
2. tempeh
3. tofu
4. seitan
5. Horse sausage- yes, as a kid, my mother tricked me into eating it. It's speciality in many parts of Germany.
6. baked seitan
7. durian
8. strange pink Lebanese pickles
9. congee- Chinese rice soup
10. sushi from a Japanese grocery, eaten in a McDonald's
11. Bärlauch
12. many many Indian dahls
13. gluten-free muffins
14. "Traditional" goulash from the Saarland (I thought it was traditional in Hungary?)
15. Streusel buns (yes, bread rolls with crumbles... another specialty, of the Aachen area)
16. Spotted dick. I'm not kidding, it's an English dessert.
17. Himalaya salt
18. "Hill" tomatoes (ask my Italian grocer what's so special about that...)
19. Turkish lentil cake
20. guinea pig crackers, when I was a kid (tastes like cereal)
21. Laddu- chickpea confect
22. Halva
23. Quorn sausages. Mighty good. But alas, not vegan.
24. Takoyaki- Japanese octupus balls (as in whole octopus, not male octopus)
25. real mango from India
26. Königsberger Klopse - the nightmare of my childhood, after horse meat. It's meatballs in a sour cream (not regular sour cream, but normal cream made sour) sauce with capers. Yuk.
27. vegan quiche lorraine
28. homemade kimchee
29. oysters
30. quinoa
31. amaranth
32. black rice
33. red rice
34. furikake-everything
35. vegetarian shrimps
36. okras
37. millet
38. bok choy
39. lots of other "bok" varieties (Asian leafy greens)
40. TVP
41. rice milk chocolate
42. oatmilk
43. vegan cheese
44. curry leaves
45. starfruit
46. manioc
47. Fufu- Ghana's national dish
48. mochi
49. kamaboko- Japanese fish cake. Looks cute, taste like crap.
50. swedish glace with agave nectar