Purple risotto and mock duck from hell!

It sounds vile, and it was. Anne and I had another geeky computer night planned- with a trip to the local Christmas market with co-workers and then some cooking before.

I found this awesome-looking recipe for purple risotto with red cabbage and oranges at chefkoch.de ( I have to admit, it was the orange monster in the picture that intrigued me) and thought the mock duck fillets I had ordered from veganwonderland would match it perfectly.


Hell, somebody told me to buy them because they were supposed to be awesome. Looking at the package, I was slightly scared because although they were made of seitan, they looked too "real" to me.

Anyway, it had a horrible smell - and taste- like some chemical that shouldn't be in there according to the ingredients list. It turned nice and crispy on the outside, but stayed rubbery and yucky on the inside. Anne only tried a bit, but I was brave and at the whole thing, mainly because I had the price in the back of my mind. Half of the package is left, and I tossed it deep down into our freezer at work...

The risotto has some potential, though, I think I'll toy with the recipe at bit during my Xmas holidays (did I mention? 2 weeks off, including Xmas in Munich and New Year's Eve in London! Please don't tell my ecological footprint *_* ).

But there were tasty things too, this week:

Quick veggie paella that I came up with last Sunday, without a recipe. I've never really made paella before, but I liked how this turned out.

The biggest surprise was when my omni-co-workettes made cookies the weekend before, they whipped up a batch of vegan ones for me! Actually, three different sorts of cookies. Isn't that awesome? Boss liked them, too!

Exams suck...

I haven't been cooking much lately. In fact, I didn't even make bento a lot for the last two weeks or so.
Only one more week to go until crazy exam time is over!

What I made, however:

Low fat chocolate chip cookies based on the VWAV recipe... and I have to tell you, I actually gave my baby away today. A coworker was looking for "different" cake recipes, so I lent the book two her.
I've never been seperated from my VWAV for longer than three days ever since I got the book two years ago.
Will I survive and will it miss me?


Bento with a mixed salad (baby spinach, tomatoes and mixed seeds) and seitan gyoza that turned out mighty pretty for a change.

Also, the most basic potato bake ever- I sliced some taters, added onion dice, drowned it in a mixture of soy cream, vegetable broth and spices and added chredded Keehse.
Calories, anyone?

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!

Cookies

Baking a variety of cookies in the weeks before Christmas is a very German tradition. I'm by no means traditional, but I have very fond memories of doing the Xmas baking wiht my grandmother once a year as a child. The anticipation of the cookies may even have been greater than of the presents.

So yesterday I tried to recipes from two other vegan German bloggers.

One were the oatmeal-coconut cookies from amy's blog. They turned out awesome even though I forgot the baking powder and only used all-purpose flour instead of wholewheat. I must remember to bake with coconut milk more often!

The other, strange-sounding but yummy creating was brought to us by Lotta who posted the recipe on the PPK. At first, baking with olive oil might sound weird, but it's really good.
How can olive oil not be?

Omni collegues enjoyed both varieties.

Summer has arrived...

And me, I'm feeling depressed and very unsunny inside. I feel like eating a huge salad like this one I whipped up some weeks ago (rocket, lollo rosso, sunflower seeds, peanuts, black olives and loads of olive oil and balsamic vinegar).

BUT, after my quest for vegan chocolate chips in this country has ended, I made the Chocolate chip cookies from VWAV yesterday.
Their lovely chewiness when eaten out of the frigde cheers my up (pics to come).

Tomorrow's bento will be soba noodles with a soy sauce/rice vinegar mix sauce, some apple slices, a small salad of grated carrots, sunflower seed and sesame oil (of which I spilled the majority on the kitchen floor T_T) and some sesame crackers.