lazy day salad-based noms

D works from home, and as the weather (very very slowly) creeps back to warm, likes to indulge in some salad-based lunches. These are pretty easy to prepare, and easy to find the ingredients for, as there's a grocery/bakery on the corner, about fifty metres from the front of our apartment block.



The first of these was a tofu and salad wrap. Fresh lavash bread, with some leftover fried tofu, hummous, a Coles mixed salad bag and some King Soyland mayonaise. I offer no verdict on the deliciousness of this wrap, as I was not home to experience it, but D assures me it was delicious (and it was also repeated for lunch the next day).



Later in the week I was home for lunch, and I can assure you that this salad roll was indeed delicious. I picked up some fresh turkish bread rolls from the corner grocery (Omara, on Sydney Road, for the curious), a roma tomato, an avocado, and some baby spinach, and grated some carrot. Also added some hummous (because we're totally on the hummous train at the moment), and some soy mayonaise.

Sometimes I forget how delicious the really simple, easy, fresh vegan food can be. It can be really delicious!

the moon, northbridge

I have been suffering some serious moon-burger longing this last week, so we went to Moon for lunch yesterday. It's been ages since I was at the Moon during the day, it's a lot easier to see and to get a seat, and it's certainly a lot less loud...



I went for the moon veggie burger (with no pesto). It was deliciousness, and the chips were great. The mushroom inside was especially tasty.



D ordered a weekend special, a grilled eggplant wrap (without the feta and pesto). D declared it delicious, though without the pesto it was a tiny bit dry.

We both ordered a mango fruit smoothie with soy milk and (sadly) ice instead of sorbet, and it was pretty good!

Oh the Moon, I love you and your late night pretension.

The Moon Cafe
2/323 William St
cnr Newcastle St
Northbridge

christmas noms and associated

Spent the day yesterday sprawled around D's parents' house, hanging with various family members (D's and mine) and eating a lot of food.



Woke up just in time for breakfast out on the back patio, champagne Australian sparkling wine and juice and hashbrowns, baked beans, mushrooms, and delicious baked tomatoes. It's a fun way to start the day, but at the same time it's a little bit odd, because it's always such a lot of food at a relatively late time (0900) - how am I supposed to be hungry in time for lunch at 1300 if I've only just eaten a whole lot of hash browns?



The traditional Christmas meal doesn't cater very well for vegans. I've omitted from the above the meat-related elements, but breakfasts are easy. Australian Christmas lunches however tend to, for the most (though not entire) part, fall in to one of two categories: heavy on the roast, or heavy on the seafood. This trend is so all-encompassing that even my own family, eating mostly Chinese food at home, still cooks a roast once a year, on Christmas day. D's family also tends towards the roast traditions, with sides of roasted or steamed vegies.



Roasted vegies are incredibly tasty, but they do not make an entire meal. This year the roasted pumpkin and the roasted potatoes were fantastic, soft and tasty and I gleefully ate quite a lot, but the highlight was the lentil pie that D's nan made for us.



It uses a flavoursome tomato base, and is filled with lentils and a variety of vegetables, topped with mash potato and brushed with nuttelex. I cannot wait to try making this pie recipe, I nommed this right up.



D's nan also made a fantastic apple pie for dessert, which we had with fruit and delicious local icecream.



We hung around into the evening, sitting around in the backyard and trying to decide whether to play the Game of Life. I attempted a batch of jam drops, which were a bit overcooked due to the oven there being fanforced. I also made up a batch of potato salad to supplement dinner, because dinner is often just left over cold meats from lunch with some salads, or in our case left over lentil pie.

The potato salad turned out okay, it was a bit of a made-up creation as the only vegie stock D's parents had contained milk products (boo). I substituted in a little generic soy sauce, some chilli flakes, and a tiny smidge of mustard. I say 'generic soy sauce' because they only had the one, one of those bottles that says 'soy sauce' and rudely doesn't specify if it's dark soy or light soy or some sort of blend.



Slowly more extended family members trickled in to partake of playing pool and table tennis, making fun of one another and eating left over food. The mozzies appeared just as the dessert did. D's mum made a vegan trifle just for us, using some stale banana cake I made last week, berries, agar-agar and some vegan custard. D says it was super tasty, but I have never been a fan of trifle.



My sister gave D a whole lot of chocolate. This pile is not entirely made up of it - also in this pile is chocolate from our friend Moonbug, who is in the UK at the moment, and a couple of blocks from Sheeba a couple of weeks ago. We are pretty set for chocolate for the next little while, but a note for people posting chocolate to Australia - it's summer here, so it melts!

On the cookbook front, D gave me My Sweet Vegan by Hannah, and E + C gave me Vegan Italiano, which I already own so there is a visit to Dymocks in my near future.

Spent today lounging around the house, doing a bit of cleaning and watching the cricket.