Collcannon

There isn't a dish more Irish and more suited to this time of year than Collcannon! For those of haven't heard of it before, Collcannon consists of mashed potato, ground up Kale and Onion with loads of butter. Seriously yum, satisfying for cold days and most importantly nutritious. Any vegan doesn't really need to be told of the nutritional benefits of Kale. Here is some information anyway:

If you have a food processor, blend the kale up with white onion and mash into mashed potatoes with loads of butter(I use Pure Sun Flower) , salt and pepper and you're done. Taste's great on buttered bread too.

Quinoa and soy sauce.. who knew!

Here is another tasty and nutritious Quinoa recipe!
It is really easy to make and is full of flavor. Between the Quinoa and Sesame seeds in this dish, you're sure to get a sufficient about of protein and calcium.

Depending on  how many people you're cooking for, the amount of Quiona varies. I usually go for 100g per person.
This recipe includes Quinoa, Sweet Potatoe, Pepper, Chilli, Garlic, Soy Sauce, Seeds, Salt and Veg stock/Bouillon, parsley.

This recipe serves around 2 people, depending on how hungry you are! You can add as much and as little veg as you like.

1. Start by chopping your peppers and sweet potatoes. Chop them into relatively small strips, so you don't have to spend ages cooking them. Also add chopped garlic and chilli and olive oil. Sprinkle with a little bit of dried basil.

2. Just before you put your veg into the oven, throw some seeds onto a tray and sprinkle with soy sauce. And then throw them all into the oven. Cook seeds for aprox 10mins and veg...until done!

3. Now for the Quinoa. Put 200g of Quinoa into a pot and boil 200ml of water. ( 200g =200ml water, 300g + 300ml water..etc)

How to successfully cook Quinoa: Add the boiling water to the Quinoa, put the lid on (important you do), bring to boil and simmer for 15 mins.
Still keeping the lid on, after 15 mins of simmering, turn the hob off and allow it to steam for another 15 mins. And Voila, light and fluffy Quinoa!

4. When Veg is done and Quinoa is done, mix it all together with the toasted seeds.
Chop a spoonful of 2 of parsley and throw that in there too.
Add salt to taste.
Add a couple splashings on Soy Sauce. 

The final product!

 The toasted seeds in soy sauce. Cook some extra and eat as a snack!

Vegan Garlic Mayonnaise

I had gone to Cornucopia a few weeks back and got their Vegan Garlic mayonnaise Potato salad and fell in love. I couldn't believe they were vegan.

I remember seeing the recipe in the cookbook so I took it out and made a crack at it.

The recipe made way too much so I would half the ingredients.

-88g cashew nuts (soaked over night)

-63ml olive oil

-63ml water

-Juice of half a lemon.

-2/3 cloves of garlic chopped roughly.

Then just pop all the ingredients in a food processor and blitz until smooth.

It didn't turn out as smooth as I thought it would. It didn't resemble the mayo from the restaurant but still tasted good. I added some chives, salt and pepper into the mayo too and made a potato salad.

The recipe also called for mustard and hazelnuts. I forgot the mustard... and i had no hazelnuts but they are for sure a good addition.

So I'm going to write about a few things on this post. Once again, I regret that most of my photos are taken on my phone, so pretty bad quality!

Pesto Pasta Bake

I've posted about this many times before, but I can't get enough of it. I just made a big one for work lunches. I've started an internship and working smack in the middle of town on Suffolk Street. I have all the best food places right on my door step. I went a bit overboard on the first week and burnt a hole in my pocket. Blazing salads right around the corner, so expensive but so hard to resist. So from now on it's packed lunches.

Pesto pasta bake has been a favorite so far to bring in, so far. Roasting up lots of red peppers, sweet potato and whatever vegetable and stiring it in with whole grain pasta and home made pesto. The roasted vegetables are so tasty and sweet. I sprinkle a little brown sugar on top of them to bring out the sweet flavours more.

I bought some nutritional yeast during the week to add into my pesto and It tastes great. I had read about it's almost cheesy taste.

I sprinkle the top with Cheezly mozzarella after, along with bread crumbs. I have grown to love the cheese.

I want to use the pesto mix it up with baby potatoes and bulgar wheat too. Yum Yum.

Shepardless Pie

Here is a picture of a shepards pie I made. It had puy lentils and veg in a tomato sauce. It tasted alright but It needs work. At least it's full of goodness. The family liked it anyway. I'm thinking of adding cheese on top along with mashing some sweet potato into the mash.

New Alpro range

I came across Alpros new Hazelnut and Almond Milk. It was on special so I went with the Hazelnut. It tastes great and I way prefere it to soya. Tastes alot like normal milk, I find. It has a great nutty and kind of chocolaty taste. It tastes absolutely great with cereal. I plan on buying this from now on.

Blazing Salads

As I mentioned before, I have to stop myself going to Blazing Salads. Costing a good 6 euro to fill a box up. It tastes sooooo goood though.

Our orange lunch

I cooked a load of food for my friends 21st during the weekend. I made us a little birthday lunch involving sweet potato wedges and cous cous. :)

Cookies

Same cookies I have posted about many times before because they are SO GOOD. These are triple chocolate ones. Dark chocolate, vegan white chocolate and the cookie it's self is chocolate. Delisssh.

And this! Orange chocolate spread. I love orange chocolate. It tastes just like terrys chocolate orange. I picked it up in Nourish on Wicklow street. Highly recommended!

Puff Pastry- Samosas and Jam puffs.

I have used puff pastry a few times this week. And it's vegan!

So first of all. I made samosas for dinner tonight and they turned out great. Usually they would be made with filo pastry but the puff pastry is a lot easier to use. They turned out extremely good. I had never made them before. To make the filling, what you need is ( I don't give any mesaurements really as you can have as little or as much as you want:

But aproxameltly:

-A good handful of diced butter nut squash

-A good handful of diced carrots

-'' '' '' red onion

I baked these together in olive oil until soft.

Meanwhile:

-Blanche a handful of chopped cauliflour, Peas and pea string things.. (?) hah

- Chop some chilli and a few mushrooms and spinach.

-In a sauce pan add oil, 2 teaspoons of curry powder, 1 teaspoon of coriander and cumin seeds.

When the carrots, onion and squash are finished cooking, add everything into the saucepan and stir for a while until everything is coated.

I had falafels and some left over veg curry so I broke up some falafel into it and added a couple teaspoons of the curry to moisten it up.

I cut out about 4 large diamond shape in the rolled out pastry placed some of the mixture to one half and then folded over. Then wet the pastry a little and popped into the oven for about 20 mins.

And for the left over pastry!! Squish it all together and roll it back out flat. Cut little triangle and circle shapes out and fill with jam or chocolate or jam and peanut butter. These tasted so good!

Vegan Pesto

I've been making this a fair bit. It's really so simple and also so yummy.

I add:

-Semi-sundried tomatoes

-Rocket/Spinach

-Cashew nuts (pine nuts are insanely expensive)

-Chilli

-Salt and Pepper.

-A couple cloves of garlic

And all into the food processor. I have some Basil in the fridge so I will make some tomorrow for my dinner.

My first vegan Christmas.

...wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. For once, I didn't feel horrible and unhealthy from the copious amounts of chocolate. So no weight gain what so ever!

As I said previously, I went to Cork for Christmas, down to my Aunt's. It was a long drive down and a very long and squishy one on the way back (4 people+2 dogs and a flat tyre on the m50). I didn't have my digital camera with me so all my pictures were taken on my phone. I had a surprisinly delicious dinner anyway. My aunt made me roasted sweet potatoes and gave me a lesson in roasting. I also had falafel, peas and roasted potatoes. As plain and boring as that sounds it was really tasty when put together with some gravy and ballymaloe country relish.

For dessert, My aunt had gotten me a slice of Natasha's Living food Raw Coaco Orange Ganache Tart. It's 4 euro for a small slice but was so worth it! It was so creamy.

I received 3 vegan baking cookbooks for Christmas.

I had picked out 'Sweet Vegan' myself for my mum to get me. I choose it mainly due to the fact all the recipes are in grams. I really don't trust my cups to grams conversions. Different sites have different calculations! I have marked out all the reicpes I want to try.

However.. a lot of the recipes have ' unprocessed cane juice'.. or un processed cane sugar. I've asked around a few health shops and they have no idea what I am talking about. Does anyone know where to get some??

And Jesse got me Vegan Cookies-Invade your cookie jar and Babycakes! They both have amazing looking recipes and are lovely books. Once my exams finish, I will get stuck in.

Avocado Love and my biscuit downfall.

I've only realised in the past few days how good avocados are. I've never really tried them or used them until I made guacamole last week. They're often in my fridge as my sister always eats them with balsamic vinegar.

I threw some into the sandwich I eat all the time and it was an excellent addition! It tastes unreal and adds a whole load of added nutrition. However with a high calorie intake with each avocado they seem to be avoided. The nutritional benefits of them definitively outweigh the high calories.

So with a pitta bread add hummous, chilli sauce, cucumbers, red onion, spinach, balsamic vinegar and of course half a mashed up avocado. I mash it up with the chilli sauce. I tend to use the same ingredients in my sandwiches but I can't get enough of all of them combined. I guarantee that this is delicious! I made one and had to make another right after it was so good. My mum had a try and got me to make her one too!

And at about 69c in Dunnes stores per avocado, it's a bargain! I've seem them priced up to 1.50 euro in other shops.

In other news. I have been informed by other vegans I know that biscuits such as Tesco's bourbon creams and Boland's cookies are vegan( and are sooo addictive). I wish I didn't know this to an extent! I am a biscuit junkie and would be my biggest downfall in terms of junk food. I was glad when I decided to become vegan that I would be cutting out all the biscuits I previously ate and maybe I would loose some weight. However, this hasn't been the case! I come home with cravings and if they are there, I pig out. Oh my addiction to sugar! So if you didn't know they were vegan, pretend you didn't read this. Unless you're able to control yourself.

Lentil, Quinoa and falafel stuffed peppers.

I had made some of the Lentil and Quiona salad, mentioned below on this blog and had some left over. I also had some falafels in the fridge and lots of peppers. So a stuffed pepper was made. I added lots of chopped chilli and garlic into the mixture of cooked lentils and Quinoa along with some broken up falafel and sweet chilli sauce.

My mum bought me some Cheezly mozzerela. I had seen this in the health food shops but I'm quite wary of it. I grated a little bit on top and tasted grand. I didn't really put enough on to make it stand out to much though.

I baked the peppers until tender and served it with left over guacamole, spinach, sun dried tomatoes and balsamic dressing. It was very tasty but sooo spicy!

Bagels!

I go to Itsa Bagel a fair bit as I am in love with their Kind Veggie Bagel. It never fails to please me but It always promises a messy lunch. There is no way to eat it gracefully without getting food allover your face. I have managed to eat it neatly once, but I was alone so Bring lots of tissue if you are going to eat it. I have talked about it on this blog before but It needs another mention as It is Vegan. This bagel is Vegan and the Vegetable and Lentil soup, which is also unreal. There is an Itsa Bagel in Dun Laoghaire, Abbey Street in Arnottss, Sandyford, Fitzwilliam lane, Malahide. They're Irish, reasonably priced BUT I do not like the coffee one bit.

I tried to make one myself at home, didn't taste as good but still very good.

I started off by making some guacamole. It was my first time and it went as follows:

1 avocado

2 cloves of garlic

Juice of 1 lemon

Half a red chilli ( I made mine spicy)

1/4 of a chopped onion

salt and pepper

 all in the food processor

I then grilled some strips of red pepper and sweet potato.

Layered it up with some of the guac, hummous, strips of veg, spinach and balsamic dressing.

The photo isn't very pleasing but I was in a rush and just wanted to eat!

And another bagel idea, I have posted before.

Bagel with Hummous, sweet chilli sauce, Grilled or roasted thin strips of sweet potato in sweet chilli sauce and a salad on top!