EBC Breakfast

We went to the East Brunswick Club (EBC) with Troy and Bec when I was still eating gluten. EBC is an omni pub with has been doing a large variety of vegan options for a while, including the famous vegan parma which apparently Pink ordered. They started doing breakfast recently which Vicki has blogged about twice.

I couldn't resist the Elvis pancakes, with fake bacon, peanut butter, maple syrup, banana and ice cream. Crazy right? But keep in mind that they don't open til 12 so it's really lunch! Excuse the blurry phone pics!

The fake bacon went surprisingly well with the sweet pancakes, I suspect because they fried it with maple syrup. I loved this, but it did make me feel quite sick at the end. That might have been all of the sugar or all of the gluten or both. I'm glad I got to try it though. The pancake texture was awesome, I really need to perfect gluten free pancakes!

Toby tried the big vegan breakfast, which included scrambled tofu, fake bacon, tomatoes, mushrooms and spinach and some toast. The tofu was quite garlicky but we enjoyed it. Size wise though it was disappointing, it wasn't really big at all.

Troy got the breakfast parma which comes with scrambled tofu, bacon, tomato and chips and salad on the side. He enjoyed it and allowed us to pinch some of his chips.

East Brunswick Club
280 Lygon St
East Brunswick
9388 9794



I wanted to get this post done today because I want to start the new year with this blog being mostly gluten free. We will no longer post gluteny recipes or dishes we make at home since our home will thankfully be g/f. So the only gluteny dishes featured will be the occasional ones Toby samples when we go out.

Soy Curls

After entering countless blog competitions I finally won something-soy curls from the generous Miso for Breakfast. While i've read about soy curls on various blogs I'm never tried them because they aren't available here in Australia.

First we tried them in some bean nachos, we simply added the soy curls to the pot of bean chilli mid way through cooking.

The texture was quite interesting kind of like soggy seitan, but I discovered that most of the recipes consist of frying them first.

So we tried frying them and then added it to a mixture of fried noodles with some fry's strips and vegetables. This was much better, the texture was still similar to seitan but less chewy, also it's gluten free!

Overall, we enjoyed them and Toby loved the protein factor. Although I'm not sure if we have fully adapted to the texture or managed to cook them properly. We won't rush out to order them from overseas but would buy them again to experiment further if they were available in stores here.

Cafe Lalibela

I went to Cafe Laliebla recently with Eve, it's a Ethiopian omni restaurant in Footscray but with plenty of veg options. It's close to the Footscray station and Savers which is handy, although I'm not sure if I would recommend going there at night. Footscray while much better than it used to be, still attracts some interesting characters. We both chose the vegetarian banquet for only $12 each which contains all but one of the vegetarian dishes. The one dish that it doesn't contain is ful which is the only non-vegan option. So that works out very well!

It was served on top of injera which is a spongy slightly sour type bread. Injera is traditionally made with teff flour which is gluten free but sometimes they add in other things and I didn't check. The dishes served included a salad, stewed vegetables, lentil stew, split bean stew, and a stew with pea flour. One of the curries was quite spicy, but the rest were quite mild. My favourite was the tangy split pea curry. If you hadn't had Ethiopian before it's lots of fun to use the injera to scoop up the dishes on top.

It was all delicious and quite filling. We couldn't quite finish it:

Cafe Lalibela provided prompt service, a tasty, cheap filling meal, so I will certainly visit again when I'm in the area. Although if I had to choose Abyssinian might get my pick even though it is more expensive because they have an amazing chickpea style gravy in their banquet.

Where's the beef, Lisa and Foodscrazy have also given it glowing reviews.

Cafe Lalibela
91 Irving St
Footscray
9687 0300

US Trip & New Limit on Eating Out

There are cheap flights to the US at the moment and the dollar conversion is awesome, so we decided to book a trip to the US. The flights should be confirmed tomorrow but it looks like we have 3 weeks in total and will visit New York, San Fransisco and Portland in June.

I'm super excited but overwhelmed looking at the eating options and trying to figure out what is g/f friendly. So if you have any recommendations please leave a comment!

To be able to afford the trip though we need to make some drastic cuts in our usual spending. We worked out recently that most of our money goes on eating out so in an effort to save, we are going to trial eating out only once a fortnight. This is quite a massive change from our normal eating out which involves eating out most of the weekend and one weeknight. 

On a completely unrelated note, look what Toby made with lego. It's the Melbourne Heart logo, which are his new favourite soccer team.

2010 in Review and Xmas Dishes

It's been both a  great year and a hard year in many ways personally:

• I finished my thesis and studying finally and started working in my field
• I got an article published in a journal
• Toby become injured, had an operation and spent some time in hospital. He is thankfully ok but will never be able to do martial arts or contact sport again.
• Between the two of us we lost 3 grand parents this year.
• I paid off my car loan
• I spent most of the year with some sort of minor illness or just feeling really blah.
• I started jogging and yoga and ended up stopping due to the above.
• It was recently Toby's 5 year anniversary of moving to Australia, it's gone so quickly!

Food wise:

• I spent most of the year trying to figure out whether I had coeliac disease and alternating between being g/f and eating gluten and then finally found out that I had it.
• Tart N Round- g/f vegan restaurant closed and while i've managed to find lots of g/f options I still miss having a place where I can eat everything. 
• There was several new vegan or vegan friendly restaurants open including my fav disco beans cafe. As well as Mamasita, Chan house, Yong's green foods,  Gasometer,  and New Day Rising.
• Toby managed to veganise chinese radish cake and a few other Chinese favourites.
• My two favourite potlucks were the ice cream potluck and the g/f picnic potluck.
• We had a fun Sydney holiday that centered solely around eating and rocked my world.
• I paired up with Cindy and cooked/baked some incredible tasty and pretty dishes like the penguin love cake.
• We blogged everyday for a whole month for vegan mofo in November.
• My fav meal out this year has to be the incredible french toast at monk bodhi dharma and fav dish at home was probably the vegan vanilla slice.
• Toby's fav meal out was the artichoke dish at Movida Aqui and fav dish at home was the  frozen margarita pie.

We are planning on eating out less next year and looking forward to making lots more yummy meals and conquering some g/f adjustments to my favourite dishes.

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Here's what we made for xmas this year:

After sampling the little fruit fudge puddings that Cindy made, I decided straight away that I had to make them for my family on xmas day because they were both cute and delicious.

I made a few adjustments by accident that ended up working quite well. I added a more orange juice and I used a combination of the gingernut biscuits and the orgran itsy bitsy bear biscuits. This resulted in some of them being more fudge like and they had slightly less ginger flavour. Also I skipped the cherries and oil and only used currants.They were gobbled down quite quickly by family on xmas day and I don't think any of my dark chocolate hating family detected the dark chocolate.

Xmas pudding bites (which were originally sourced from here)


1 cup raisins, chopped (I used more currants)
1/2 cup currants
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup of orange juice or rum (I used orange juice)
1/2 cup dry roasted almonds
300g vegan and gluten free cookies
200g dark chocolate
100g white chocolate
1 tablespoon vegetable oil(I skipped this)
pistachios and cherries  to garnish

In a small saucepan, stir together the raisins, currants, brown sugar and orange juice.  Simmer the fruit for 3 minutes, then set it aside to cool.

Blend the almonds to a coarse meal in a food processor.  Mix them together with the biscuit crumbs in a large bowl, then stir through the cooled fruit mixture.  Gently melt the dark chocolate and add it to the bowl, stirring to combine.  The mixture should have formed a firm and slightly crumbly dough.

Roll inch-diameter balls from the pudding mixture, place them on a lined tray and refrigerate until firm. (I skipped this and just added more orange juice til they held together a little better)

Finely chop the red and green garnishes.  Gently melt the white chocolate and oil together so that they're silky and quite liquid.  Drizzle the white chocolate over the pudding balls and sprinkle over the garnish.  Refrigerate until the chocolate has set, and continue to store them there until serving. 

And I made a g/f free version of our family Vegemite Gravy recipe, I found a similar looking recipe here which I copied.


    2 tbsp margarine
    2 tbsp plain flour (I used orgran gluten free flour)
    500 ml stock, heated (I think I may have used a little less)
    1 Tbsp Aussie mite (g/f version of vegemite) (start with 1 teaspoon and taste)
  
   1.  Start your gravy in a saucepan by melting the margarine. Sprinkle margarine with flour, and stir over a gentle heat to colour it, but be careful of burning. When it is really grungy-looking, after about five minutes, add the hot stock slowly, stirring quickly to incorporate the cooked flour.
   3. Add the Aussie Mite and stir well. If it's too thin, continue to simmer and reduce in volume. If it's too thick, add more stock or water. At this point, taste for salt and pepper. If it's just right, strain and serve in a warmed sauce boat.

I had issues with lumps as you can see but the flavour was pretty similar. Don't be deceived by the aussie mite (or vegemite) it adds a depth of flavour without being obvious.

Chocolates!!!!

I saw my friend Katie Carot today and she gave me this amazing present. It made my horrible day so much better.

She said that she is behind in blogging at the moment but will post some of the recipes when she gets the chance.

The detail on the chocolates is just so awesome. I adore the look of the zombie brains but all of them are so damn cute. See the detail on the little men?



 
They are different flavours too including peanut butter, strawberry and caramel/marshmallow and of course white xmas and they are all incredibly delicious!

Thank you x 1000!

Edited to add: recipes are now up here and here. 

Arancini Experiment

I had my grandmothers funeral yesterday and have been stressing about what to make for the wake for days. I'm only sharing this in case you are crazy enough to google 'gluten free vegan wake food', like I did. I found nothing and so then I googled 'wake food' and 'wake dishes' and 'what to make for a wake' and still didn't find much that was helpful!

My mother arranged lots of finger food, sausage rolls, pies etc for the wake. So I wanted some sort of g/f vegan finger food. All I could think of was rice paper rolls, but wanted something warm since it has been freezing in Melbourne lately. Emily on twitter suggested rice balls which I thought was a great idea but maybe a bit too unusual for my family, this eventually lead me to the idea of making risotto balls which are also called arancini. Thanks Emily!

I saw the Melinda's packaged risotto cakes in store and decided to make them and my own arancini and compare the two.

I was skeptical about packaged food but they were surprisingly great. They can be dairy and egg free options, so I used cheddar cheezly and egg replacer. You still need to cook the mixture on the stove before adding it to the oven, but it was much quicker and easier than making my own.  I think the flavour of the cheezly gets lost, vegan cheese is too subtle. However, Toby and I really enjoyed them, particularly the little bits of vegetables.

And then we ended up making our own. I followed Pip's recipe except I replaced the mushrooms with sun dried tomatoes, used corn flake crumbs and I baked them. I took them to the wake because I was sure that they would taste even better, but they were a tad bland. Yes surprisingly the packaged ones were actually better. I think getting rid of the mushrooms was a mistake. Also, I think I didn't put enough stock powder or something. I meant to serve them with some marinara sauce which I forgot to take. So we ended up serving them with sweet chilli sauce.

Sun Dried Tomato Risotto Balls from Fairest Feed

(Makes about 25)

2 tbs olive oil

1 onion, finely chopped

2 clove garlic, crushed

400g mushrooms, finely chopped (I used sun dried tomatoes)

1 bay leaf

1 1/2 cups arborio rice

4 - 6 cups water or stock

1/2 cup nutritional yeast (optional)

1 tbs fresh thyme

1 cup rice flour or breadcrumbs (I used corn crispy crumbs-Organ brand) 

oil for shallow frying

Preheat oven to 180°C

Heat the oil in a large pot over medium heat. Add the onion and garlic and cook gently until soft (about 10 minutes). Add the bay leaf and mushrooms (or sundried tomatoes) and cook for another 10 minutes, stirring until the mushrooms are soft. Add the rice and stir to coat the grains in oil. Add a cup of the liquid and stir until it has been absorbed. Continue adding the liquid, cup by cup until it has all been absorbed and the rice is tender. Discard the bay leaf and stir in the thyme, nooch (if using) and salt and pepper to taste. Set aside to cool.

 

When the risotto is cool enough to handle, use your hands to form golf ball sized balls. Roll them in the flour or breadcrumbs and bake til they are crispy, roughly 20 minutes.

I didn't take a picture though since I was up at 11pm the night before making it and it seemed wrong to take food pictures at a wake.