Vegan MoFo day 10 - Something blue!

Something blue indeed. Frequent posters on the PPK forum might remember the blue monstrosity I posted in the gross food porn thread a while back. It was a risotto I foolishly thought I would throw some leftover red cabbage in to that I was trying to use up. Oh boy. Don't do that. Unless you WANT your food to be blue, like today.
I have no desire to eat a blue savoury meal again so thought I would make 'Frozen' pretzels. Frozen as in the Disney film, not actually frozen. They're essentially salted pretzels in blue icing (that was fun to make, by fun I mean messy) sprinkled with desiccated coconut (snow) and finished with silver edible spray. Because glitter.

Vegan MoFo day 9 - Most retro recipe

When I think of retro food, I think of 70's favourites like prawn cocktails. I've never actually had one but thought it would be easy to veganise using Fry's crispy prawns. In hindsight, I wish I'd have used something like Vbites making waves fishless fingers as they are, in my opinion, pretty fishy! The Fry's ones were hugely disappointing, it just tasted like their chicken nuggets with a minuscule amount of seaweed (really, it's the last thing on their list of ingredients). They weren't bad, just not at all fishy in any way and for £3.99 for a box, they should be better than their cheaper competitors.

That said, with the cocktail sauce I made, it made for a pleasant retro experience. I baked the 'prawns', left to cool then removed the batter. Chopped the fishless strips into smaller pieces and mixed in to a bowl of cocktail sauce (vegan salad cream, ketchup and a dot of tobasco......you can use Mayo instead but will need something like sherry vinegar to give it that tang).
I served it in an avocado and munched my way through my retro treat.

Vegan MoFo day 8 - Make a new vegan friend

Yeah. So I'm a bit of an introvert and painfully lacking in self-confidence so I'm kinda stumped with this challenge. At least I was until the cashier at Lidl's gave me this little guy with my shopping today.......

His name is Horace, and he's definitely a vegan because I saw him nibbling on a giant broccoli floret!

So me and Horace are chilling right now waiting for our dinner to cook (we're making some broccoli pasta because that's his favourite thing and I also forking love broccoli). Peace out.

Vegan MoFo day 7 - make something inspired by a book/film

What's up MoFo'ers. One of my favourite films is Napoleon Dynamite, it cracks me up whenever I see it. There's lots of food in this film, the opening credits are mostly written on dishes of food (all of which are seen at some point in the film)

The main character, Napoleon, loves tots. Now I couldn't just do a plate of tots so I thought of another scene where tots took centre stage (geeks of this film will know about the inconsistency between shots of the number of tots on Pedro's plate).  In this scene, Pedro is picking at his school dinner of corn dogs, tater tots, green beans and ketchup......so this is what I made!

The scene goes something like this....

Napoleon - How long did it take you to grow that moustache?

Pedro - A couple of days. 

Napoleon - I wish I could grow one

Napoleons - Are you gonna eat your tots?

Pedro - No.

Napoleon - Can I have 'em?

My corn dog looks more like the English battered sausage you get from a fish and chip shop.

For the batter I used flour, water, polenta, vwg, paprika, garlic powder and oil, and the sausages were Linda Mac. I deep fat fried those mofos until my clothes, hair and entire kitchen stank of oil......and that is why I never make fried food!
It was worth it for the corn dogs though. Damn, those things are good. 

Vegan MoFo day 6 - Recreate a restaurant meal

I initially thought I should veganise something omni from a restaurant but changed my mind at the last minute. I haven't had sushi in a long time and when I do it's always from a restaurant; I've never made sushi before. I thought today's challenge would be time to give it a go!

Granted, it's not pretty and I don't think I'll make it as a sushi chef any time soon, but at least I gave it a go. And it tasted pretty damn fine.

Vegan MoFo day 5 - Best sandwich ever

This might not be THE best sandwich ever, and technically it's a roll, but I thought this would be fun. I recreated a sandwich we would often make at lunch spreads my Nan would do (we being my Uncle John and us kids - he was the instigator of this sammich). Ladies and gents, I am talking about a Scooby snack. No, not the brownies filled with weed, the ultimate snacky sammich. It's usually in a roll, but between two pieces of bread is fine. It consists mostly of some kind of meat, cheese, pickles, sauce, salad and most importantly crisps. It is imperative that your Scooby snack contains crisps!
I should probably be ashamed of myself for posting a sammich with crisps as I bet everyone will be doing proper sandwiches like croque monsieurs and banh mi's. I have no shame (really, see yesterday's cold baked bean and salad cream post).

 

In my Scooby snack was homemade creamy coleslaw, tomato crisps, violife cheese, vbites Italian deli  -style meat, gherkins, bbq sauce and sriracha. Noms.

Vegan MoFo day 4 - tell us about a weird food combo that you love

I'm not going to mess about, this is pretty grim....... I like cold baked beans with salad cream. I am a monster.

Here's a plate of aforementioned gross food combo. I'm not even attempting to make this look pretty.

Vegan MoFo day 3 - Quick, easy and delicious.

When I get home from work late (which is fairly often) my go-to food is usually something noodle-based that I can whip up in one pan and plonk in a bowl. I'm not a sophisticated cook, I don't make things look pretty, as you can see from my rather beige looking dish today.
I made a creamy chickeny spaghetti bowl, and it was super filling, quick and easy to make and pretty tasty. Again, all cupboard ingredients used in this due to the no fridge sitch.

Creamy chickeny spaghetti bowl 

Ingredients

A couple of handfuls of soy curls or equivalent (I used vantastic foods soja shnetzel as we don't get soy curls over here....sad face)

2 cups of vegetarian chicken broth (I used better than bouillion)

A handful of spaghetti, broken up into thirds

A handful or so of sweetcorn kernels

3 tbsp chives

1 clove of garlic, minced

salt & pepper to taste

3 tbsp of tahini

Basically boil the spaghetti and soy curls/schnetzel in the bouillon, garlic, seasoning and herbs until most of the liquid has been absorbed by the curls/schnetzel. Add the corn and bring to a low boil. Remove from heat and stir in the tahini. Boom. Big phat bowl of chickeny corny creamy spaghetti to eat whilst watching Netflix.

Vegan MoFo day 2 - Recreate a meal from your childhood

We used to have cream of tomato soup a lot when I was a kid, and my mum would make croutons out of toast to sprinkle on top. I wanted to replicate the kind of sweetness and creaminess of cream of tomato soup using cupboard staples, as I'm without a fridge right now (worst time for your fridge to die is vegan MoFo, fact). 
I was really pleased with the results, it's tasty and really filling due to the beans used. Also super creamy and tomato-y!

Kinda cream of tomato soup

Ingredients (makes 4-ish portions)

A generous glug of good quality olive oil
1 medium onion, peeled and diced
3 decent sized cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1 tin of chopped Italian tomatoes
1 tin of butter beans, drained and rinsed
2 tbsp tomato paste
4 tomatoes, halved
2 cups of vegetarian chicken broth (I used better than bouillon but vegetable stock would be fine)
1 tbsp Italian mixed herbs
Pinch of salt and freshly ground pepper
2-3 tbsp tahini

Halve your tomatoes, place on an oiled baking tray, and bake for 10-15 minutes on gas mark 6. You don't have to bake them but I find it releases their sweetness.
Saute the onions until translucent, add the stock, tin of tomatoes and salt and pepper. Bring to a low boil, add the remaining ingredients except the tahini, stir, simmer for half an hour.
Remove from heat and wait a few minutes to cool a little before stirring in the tahini and blitzing with a hand blender.
Garnish with freshly grated nutmeg or basil. Enjoy!

Vegan MoFo day 1 - Rise and shine, it's MoFo time!

Morning MoFo'ers! Can't believe it's that time of year already. 

Today I woke up late so had to make something filling, quick and tasty for breakfast before heading to work. I present to you, breakfast guac on toast!

(sorry about the dull, out of focus pic, I didn't have my glasses on and it was dark)

Breakfast guac on sourdough toast

Ingredients for 1 portion

1 small avocado

1 small tomato

2 slices fresh sourdough bread

1/2 a small lime to squeeze and garnish

Salt and pepper to garnish (use herbamere salt if you have it)

Simply toast your bread, mash on the avocado with a fork, squeeze lime juice over it, dice the tomato and garnish with this, salt and pepper to taste and a wedge of lime.

Oh, the juice is fresh cawston press sweet greens juice with a wedge of lime. Lush.

Tasty, quick, filling and healthy! Can't wait to see what all you other MoFo'ers are having for breakfast.