apples and twigs

On the move... in every way!

2011-11-09T10:50:00.001Z

So, yeah, that food blogging thing. I still love it and read and comment on people's blogs, but writing about things myself is a bit silly as at the moment, I don't really have a kitchen. When I do (as in Osaka), I'll post food and recipes, but to be honest, right now, TRAVEL is my life. So, not to annoy anybody here, I have started a new blog here (it will be pimped in the next weeks, right now it's pretty much a blank canvas for posts - it has some posts though).

I will still post here when I actually do some cooking or foodie things, but I'd be very happy to see some of you follow me over there and through Asia ;)

Hiking for the Dutch and a short history of the Nara Period

2011-08-26T16:27:00.012+01:00

I was born 5 miles away from the Dutch border, and grew up about 10 miles from it. I was severely shocked when I moved to London and started exploring the outsides of the city that there were... mountains... ok, actually, they are tiny hills, but I hadn't lived anywhere that wasn't totally flat before.

So Japan seems to be made of about 80% mountains, real ones, and surprisingly, I enjoy them... passing them on the train, haha! I love walking and in theory would make a great hiker, but anything with more than a 5% elevation freaks me out. So I was delighted to find a trail in Nara prefecture calles Yamanobe no Michi that follows the foot of a mountain, but only really has 2 hills - the rest is countryside: orchards, rice paddies, sweet little Japanese villages and old temples and shrines.Apparently this is one of the oldest roads in Japan. I was a little disappointed by the temples and shrines: they were touted as well-preserved and beautiful, but especially the shrines were in a sad state, which somehow is often the case in Nara Prefecture, maybe because it was supposed to be Buddhist capital?

[Steffi's short history of the Nara period: Japanese emperor discovers this great new thing called Buddhism someone brought over from Korea via China (yeah... and India, I know). Emperor thinks 'Heheee, I shall build my capital as a kind of Buddhism Theme Park and all should admire me. I also fancy the Chinese capital, so I can copy that as well.' He (and his hot empress daughters) went and built lots of temples so convert the local peasants from their folk religion. When the boys took over and moved the capital eventually to Kyoto, Nara was forgotten.

Fast forward 1200 years: Nara prefecture's government thinks 'Damn, no one is visiting our boring little city and we have all these old temples standing around, but everybody is visiting those in Kyoto or eating their body weight in takoyaki in Osaka, only a couple of miles away. I know what! Let's make a Buddhist theme park out of those temples and put lots of crazy deer in there so kids, religious people and American tourists who will eat the deer crackers will visit us!' So in the end, the emperors of the Nara period got their Buddhist Wonderland!]

I went there during O-bon, which can be likened to the Japanese Christmas: it's when everybody goes home to visit their family as the ancestors' spirits are said to return home during those days. It sure made for an eerily quiet Osaka, and also made me one of maybe a handful people who decided to walk the trail that day. There was nothing going on at all - luckily, the signage was quite good (if you read a little Japanese, the English signs can be misleading!), otherwise there might not have been anyone to ask for the way. The few hikers I met were very friendly and I actually ended speaking a lot of Japanese that day ("Where are you from, what are you doing in Japan, why are you standing in the middle of a plum orchard?").

The funniest thing that happened was when at about halfway on the trail, a car pulled over and a middle-aged couple asked me where the baseball stadium was. We were surrounded by rice paddies in a radius of a mile! It sure meant they couldn't find anybody else to ask, as most Japanese are really hesitant speaking to a foreigner. They must have gotten really lost, because I still haven't found a baseball stadium anywhere near there (baseball is really popular in Japan).

I can recommend this path to anyone, even if you are not a walking/hiking person. It's about 1 hr on the train from downtown Osaka to Tenri, from where you can start walking south to Sakurai station. There is a train station you get on every 2 miles near the trail, so even if you don't feel like going the whole 8 miles, it's still worth visiting. It gets my mountain hater stamp of approval!

Village house - yes, there were people living in there. Gives you an idea of what Japan was like before it was rich.

Kimchi udon (delicious) & cute fish (unharmed)

2011-08-19T23:48:00.008+01:00

I love kimchi. Kimchi is one of the staple foods of Korean cuisine, and in its most common form, it's spicy, garlicky pickled cabbage. Yes, not exactly sexy and it takes some getting used to, but once you like it, you're hooked.

Sadly, much of the kimchi that you can buy in Europe has been sitting on the shelves too long and it over-fermented already. You can still eat it, but it is much more pungent than the fresh stuff (which led me to believe that I don't like kimchi! I DO!!!).

The other thing is that virtually all the brands I have found in the UK include shrimp or anchovy. You can always make your own though (no outdoor jar needed, the fridge does the same trick), and I have heard that there are many vegetarian brands available in the US which is blessed with more Korean immigrants.

So, in Japan, kimchi can be found in many varieties in any supermarket or even posh Japanese pickle shops (yes, they have pickle shops here). The best thing is that is very cheap, too, and I have been cooking all kinds of stuff with kimchi the past weeks.

One of my favourites is kimchi udon, which is probably more Japanese than Korean... or is it Japanokorean fusion? Well, it's delicious!

What you need for 2-3 bowls (depending on size) of spicy noodle soup:

1 tbs oil
half a bunch of spring onions, finely chopped
1 tbsp grated ginger
200g fried tofu, bite-size
200g shiitake mushrooms, sliced
100 g kimchi, finely chopped (and with the kimchi 'juice' if you are hardcore)
1 tbs Korean chili paste (or Japanese shishimi togarashi, 1 tbs chilli oil - spicy red stuff)
500 ml soup stock (I used instant konbu dashi that you can buy in any Japanese shop in the West, too, sssht... but you can get away with regular veg stock)
4 tbsp mirin (or sake and a bit of sugar if you want to be sacrilegious)
2 servings udon noodles (depends on your idea of a serving)
1 tbsp miso paste
soy sauce if all this is not spicy and salty enough for you!

Heat up some oil in a deep wok or saucepan. Fry the ginger and shiitake gently for 2-3 minutes. Add your tofu and kimchi, fry for another 3 minutes. Add the mirin and stock. Mix the chilli paste and miso with some stock and add it to the pan (or, if you are lazy like me, add water, stir in the instant stock and wait until it boils). Simmer for another 5 minutes.

Cook your udon noodles separately according to packaging directions, drain and place in the serving bowls. Ladle the soup over it just before serving and garnish with lots of spring onions. Guaranteed to kill any cold or other germs hiding inside you!

The other day, we went to Osaka Aquarium. While I was very unhappy about how some of the animals live, others are taken very good care of. It's not like they have a general welfare policy there, or maybe it is lack of funds because they are doing a lot towards the preservation of rare species. They had a special exhibition going on which cute little fish (of course, no Japan without the kawaii), which was my favourite. Look at this funny little guy! He kept hiding in the tiny shell until we got out the camera. Then he turned into a total attention-seeker!

These bouncy dudes were my favourite. They don't really swim, just sit around and roll from one side to the other on the rocks... yes, it's a normal thing for them. They are less than an inch tall. So funny to watch!

Osaka eats (and grumbles)

2011-08-14T15:02:00.010+01:00

{Sorry, first I need to rant. For food only, move on to the black text.}

I have long been a lover of all things Japanese, but always laughed at the anime otaku crowd that said they absolutely want to travel/move there. Anyhow, when a good friend was working in Osaka, I decided I might give it a go and absolutely fell in love with the Kansai area (that is, the area in central Japan that includes the ancient imperial cities of Japan, Kyoto and Nara, and Japan's anti-capital and second biggest city Osaka). I couldn't stop thinking about it ever since, and the trip also fuelled a wanderlust unbeknown for me ( I have spent about 2 days off in London in the past year, usually I was just travelling).

When my freelancing started to make enough money, I decided to give this location-independent thing a go, packed up in London and have a little flat in central Osaka for a few weeks. So, here's my verdict after a month being here: I am finding it really hard to connect to people, and that's not due to language issues. There is an absolute lack of decent GLBT places and culture which makes me feel very alienated. There are a few places of the loud, neon-signed clubbing type, but in general, if you're gay in Japan, you stay well in your closet.

There's an enormous pressure on women to be stereotypically girly. I like to cook and have a thing for quirky skirts and dresses, that is about as far a girly as I get. No excitement about hairstyles, makeup or pop music, thank you very much. I'm a queer artsy nonconformist gal by heart, which means: I won't fit in here.

Usually I could fall back on the couchsurfing community, but even that here is extremely flaky and superficial. I must have been stood up for meetups about a dozen times by now. I met some people who are nice, but most are just travellers on a super commercial shopping tour through Japan.

Now, the good: The Japanese people I have met are brilliant! I actually have a penpal who lives in a suburb of Kyoto, and now we can meet for coffee (or Donuts, as she particularly loves Mr Donut in Kyoto's central station). My landlord is an awesome punky bagpacker in his 50s, and my neighbour runs a guitar repair shop (his name is Hiro, but sadly he looks nothing like the guitarist in Gravitation), speaks as much English as I Japanese but we get on well. Japanese couchsurfers are also awesome. Osakans are just such a friendly and curious bunch, I could tell lots of stories!

So, Osaka aka Japan's Manchester (seriously, it's about as much like Manc as Tokyo is similar to London), is a brilliant and cheap place to live, especially for its awesome foods. What's even better is that I get to try all the stuff in the Japanese supermarkets in my tiny kitchen. They have a massive tofu aisle in every supermarket! So, on to the foods!

My local supermarket, I am not sure if the Italian makes any sense (must ask the Italians in my life):
Suprisingly, eating out in Osaka seems to be much cheaper than buying food. A 2kg bag of rice costs about 900 yen or £8! And that in a country where rice is the staple food.

Fruit is also crazily expensive, though not as expensive as often touted online. Yes, you can get those £40 melons, but they are thought as presents. You can get a small melon for about £6, though there are none of the big watermelons I have seen in Europe. Still, an average apple will cost you about £2, and a tiny bunch of grapes £4 pounds. You know what's the worst? The cost actually seems justified. It sounds totally silly, but I've never eaten juicier, higher quality fruit in my life! Things in Japan might not be cheap, but they are always good value.

On the other hand, I had this delicious kitsune udon for 320 yen, which is £2.50 - it's udon in a clear broth (it's Japan, so most likely some fish has been sieved through it. I know it's horrible, but if you ignore the fact that the base of Japanese cuisine is fish stock, your life is so much easier. In 9o% of the cases, you will still get fish stock even though you ask for something vegetarian. If you can somehow ignore that 1 tbsp of fish flakes of passed through 10l of stocks, there are many otherwise animal-free options. Otherwise, eat bananas, seaweed rice balls or move to Tokyo and spend £30 on a meal in a fancy veggie place).

So, Kitsune udon... it's udon noodles in a clear soup with a giant sheet of aburaage (deep-fried, sweetish delicious tofu) as a topping. 'Kitsune' means fox and the stories goes that the cheeky fox stole the meat that was to go with the dish and replaced it with cheap old tofu. It's awesome.

I usually boycott all Coca Cola products, but had a good look at the vending machines: they are on every street corner here, and 95% are owned by Coca Cola. So there goes acid green fanta (I couldn't actually figure out the flavour).

The vending machines that aren't owned by Coke are those owned by Kirin and look like this:

The fabled beer vending machine, selling very cheap ice cold beer! Everyone can use these without proving their age (the legal age for anything in Japan is 20). They are usually next to liquor stores so kids would be afraid to go there in case they are seen. Not sure how that works. Curiously, they close down at night (some after 9pm, others from 11pm) so kids can't get anything. How about closing them from 3pm - 9pm instead when kids are out after school?!

Last year we went to the ridiculously named Blarney Stone pub near Umeda (central station in Osaka), which has plenty old Brits as well as cider, so I decided to go again with some couchsurfing folk. I tell you, you know you'e a Euro when you go somewhere and everybody wonders what this strange 'Blarney Stone' is that the place is named after.

Cheesy name and £8 pints ignored, this is a nice little place that served me this awesome VEGAN falafel plate with chips, salad and a pita pocket full of falafel goodness for just 500 yen (it had olives! even a tiny 100g bag of olives costs more than 500 yen here, another reason why I cannot live in Japan permanently), and they had a good live band, so I'll be back!

Oh, and the pasta! Italian will hate me for saying this, but there are quite a few places that do nice pasta, and much cheaper than in Italy. While there are such curious things as the Japanese Neapolitan Pasta and other seaweed/fish egg concotions, I had a really nice arrabiata lunch set the other day at Namba Parks, a big mall/park complex in the southern downtown area. I also got a ridiculously tiny cup of hot liquid with this that I mistook for dressing - it turned out later that it was the soup that was advertised on the lunch deal that I couldn't find anywhere. Cultural differences... I mean, it was in an espresso cup!!!
I've taken quite a few pics from my cooking efforts with real Japanese ingredients in my tiny Japanese kitchen and hope to post some recipes here within the next week or so!

Long time no bento

2011-04-03T15:18:00.001+01:00

Brilliant, as our internet at home is gone for a bit, I got myself this fancy phone that has the internets and all. I can use it as a modem for my laptop but for some reason Blogger is blocked. However, it has a Blogger app. Silly. Anyway, I made a decent bento the other day, with my new addiction, kimchi fried rice, carrot kinpira and mizuna salad. What is your favourite way to eat kimchi?

Portugal and baklava

2011-03-02T11:40:00.008Z

... I know, how do these go together?

Well, it felt almost like spring when I went for a weekend trip to Porto in north Portugal with some awesome people. We were drinking beer at the Atlantic coast at 18°C and sunshine. I want to see more of this beautiful country!

Right now, it's the first time in 2 years that I don't have a trip planned ahead of me, as it's job hunting time. We will see where that leads me.

As a nod to my culinarily less exciting trip to Turkey, I had to try the Baklava recipe from The Urban Vegans' new book. Now you might know that I don't really have a sweet tooth and pretty baked items never look pretty when I make them... and I tried anyway, here's the result:

I know, not pretty, and I felt like I had too few (or too small) filo sheets - do they come in a normed-size package in the US that I don't know of? At least they were delicious :)

Turkey for Christmas

2011-01-01T19:49:00.008Z

... no, it's not what you think. For this year's end of year trip I went to Istanbul for a week from Christmas Eve until New Year's Eve - what's better for a Christmas hater than a city that doesn't celebrate it?
(By the way, Happy New Year!)

I returned to London just in time for New Year's celebrations and now, am still a bit hungover from traveling... I'm not sure what to make of this city. I was hosted by the most amazing and welcoming people in the world - which absolutely saved the trip!- and although nobody in the city spoke English (not even at the tourist information!) or any other European language, everybody was incredibly friendly.

Suprisingly, Istanbul, a city that sits on two continents, European City of Culture 2010, seemed more European to me than any city in the UK. While the notable sights were over-crowded with tourists more than I have seen in any other place, the rest of the city is somehow lacking soul. Istanbul is about the same size and age as London and the history of the city even more exciting, but it doesn't feel like it. Sultanahmet, the 'tourist' area, while pretty, feels sort of fake, and the rest of the city mainly consists of thousands of high-rise apartment blocks that were built within the last 30-50 years, with suburbs that never seemed to end. The 'clubbing' quarters were awkwardly tame, even at the weekend, and people seemed very monotonous - few 'foreigners', very monotonous fashion. The same goes for the food, which was essentially all the same Turkish fare, with the generic pizza and pasta thrown in.

The highlight of my Istanbul must have been the Spice Bazaar (Mısır Çarşısı in Turkish, literally 'Egyptian Bazaar') - a short walk from the main train station and ferry terminals in Eminönü, it's much smaller but more interesting than the heavily commercialised, touristy Grand Bazaar (no way of comparing this to the souks of Arab-influenced countries).

Teas, and spices. Ironically, they keep selling Apple Tea in all the tourist places in Turkey, although it's not a traditional drink at all.

I was very tempted to buy some of these beads of dried veggies, but ah, the easyJet hand luggage restrictions! I thought they were only for decoration, but apparently, they are popular in winter, as stuffed vegetables and more.

Sweets! Why is it that sweets and drinks in the Middle East must always be so cloyingly sweet?

Guys fishing at Galata Bridge - they are actually catching quite a lot. The bridge is always filled with people fishing, which makes you think a) don't they have anything else to do? b) How come there are such rich fish stocks there, when it's after all, a massive urban area?

Istanbul wasn't exotic enough to be fascinating, but not familiar enough to feel comfortable. In a nutshell, while it was all rather nice, it didn't excite me much. Have you been, and what did you think of it?

On another note, and to reconnect with the misleading title, I found this adorable Japanese cooking show on Youtube some weeks ago - Cooking with Dog. It has a great mix of traditional as well as westernised and 'everyday' Japanese favourites you wouldn't get in a fancy Japanese restaurant. Plus, it's ultra cute!

Testing!

2010-12-18T20:33:00.006Z

After all this moving, traveling and being ill, I felt like I needed to get back on the cooking track. I was stuck in such a horrible food rut in the last few weeks!

So I was happy to hear that I can test some recipes for The Urban Vegan's new cookbook. I'm working on the presentation as my new flat has a limited selection of dishes, especially bowls.

I barely ever use plates, as 80% of my everyday cooking is either Asian -hard to rice with chopsticks from a plate, soupy or some sort of pasta with lots of sauce, which is also easier to eat from a very deep plate or bowl. I adore French breakfast 'bols', too! Anyway, I need to invest in some pretty donburi-able and ramen-able bowls. Are you a bowl or a plate person?

The first recipe I tried was Farfalle with Shallots and Chard. Dynise is right when she says shallots are often very under-appreciated. You can get them easily enough in the UK, but if you go into a big supermarket in a French-speaking country, the variety of shallots (and all other allium brothers) will blow you away!
This was a very basic dish but the shallots gave it a wonderfully deep aroma!

Tonight we had 'a lot' of snow in London. That is, about 2 inches, but it sufficed to create an utter chaos. I had the final handover for my old flat today, and it took my 3hrs to get home -normally they journey would take 30minutes- after that because the public transport was totally fucked and there also were powercuts on the tube. It's not much fun sitting in a dark tunnel somewhere below Kings' Cross for an hour with no way out! I hope the situation improves, as I'll have to take the train to work on Monday.

So when I finally got home, I started up this nice Humble and Hearty Vegetable Soup. I just adore chewy barley in soups! I'll try to get some new bowls for the next pictures, and maybe sunlight, too!

Morocco

2010-12-03T12:21:00.007Z

Look, it's a banana flower!

I had been warned before that going to Morrocco would be dangerous as a single woman, and that I would be hassled all the time. The truth is: I wasn't hassled at all, met awesome people (locals and travelers alike) and felt much safer than in most European cities. I enjoyed speaking only French for a week, too. As I've read so much about this 'female traveller' issue in advance, I will probably write an article for Bootsnall or something about this soon. Now I'm back home with a nasty virus infection. I'm blaming Ryanair germs and our crappy flat, not the maghreb. Now, the vegan thing? That was the only downside. I know proper home style Moroccan food and love it above many other cuisines, but this country does not have a restaurant culture at all. They do nice French style breakfasts (coffee, juice, croissants and baguettes with jam), but apart from that, everything was pretty bland. Well, at least it was cheap... Except for the croissants, cafe au lait and some horrid pizza, I stayed vegan, so on the whole it was a nice lacto-veggie trip. My major disappointment was to find the bread stale and the olives dry and over-salty. Apparently all the nice olives go to Europe. I visited a traditional bakery in Fez. Even today, many people in the medinas don't have an oven, so it's common to prepare the bread dough and bring it to the local bakery in the morning and pick it up later. Often, the kids do that before and after school. And the spices! I only bought one spice mix as many were clearly of inferior quality and being sold to ridiculous tourist prices, but it's just so beautiful to look at all the colourful piles! I wasn't smitten by the famous Jme el fnaa square in Marrakesh, but then I never like the obvious touristy places. It's the main square of the city, where at night, music groups, storytellers, snakecharmers and all sorts of other crazy folk meets, and there's also a night food market with food stalls (this is featured in Jamie Oliver's 'Jamie does...' series and book). Sadly, 80% of the people there were middle aged tourists with fanny packs staring at the 'exotic', and the rest seemed to be pickpockets. I would have loved to visit this place 10 years ago or so. While it was enjoyable to see all the food stalls advertising 'As seen on Jimmy Olivier' and 'Johnny Oliver', I didn't dare eating there... I'm adventurous, but everything looked like the last time it was cleaned was... not this year.
Of course I have many more pictures, but not really food related ones. Maybe next post :)

Wow

2010-11-20T21:14:00.002Z

Can I possibly say thank you enough for all those wonderful comments to my last post?

I funny thing is, ever since that post, I haven't actually had any non-vegan food, but lots of vegan acquaintances telling me that they 'turn a blind eye towards non-vegan food' quite often.

So I'll be moving to a new part of life, and a new flat/kitchen soon (Couchsurfers watch out for the Kitchen Surfing London group!).

First, Morocco. Pictures around this time in a week :)

Outgrowing veganism

2010-10-17T23:39:00.004+01:00

I have thought about this for a while and as I would like to keep blogging,
though I assume a lot of people will stop following me after this, I need to get this out there.

With the title I'm not implying that I'm above anybody who is a strict vegan, or that veganism is a phase you will eventually grow out of. Although I did. I don't expect you to read further. I am also writing this for my vegan friends and hope they will accept my decision, even if they don't understand.

Over the past few months, I have found myself falling off the vegan track repeatedly, and have not felt guilty about this at all.

I used to be a poster child for veganism - honestly, I never missed any animal products because except for a little yoghurt and fish once or twice a month, I have not consumed any animal products since I've been 13/14. I love cooking for others to show them vegan food is not bland and boring. I never thought of veganism as hard in social contexts, or travelling, or anything else.

I still don't - I would hate being one of those 'I tried veganism but it was too hard/my doctor told me to eat cheese/etc' people. Maybe I'll even got back to being vegan eventually. Right now, at this point in my life, veganism isn't for me.

If you care about my reasons:

1) The guilt question or: Animal rights vs human rights vs Ecological decisions

I used to be a passionate animal rights advocate, and in many cases still am. Now I have increasingly become interested in how other humans the world over live - and no, this is not a 'why veganism when there are so many other things wrong in the world' point I am trying to make. Simply said, it put things into perspective for me, and made me feel a lot less emotional about animals being exploited for human consumption.

Provocative question: If you travel to an economically deprived country where the monthly village chicken is slaughtered a day early in your honour as a special guest from far away, will you refuse it, knowing that these people live on a handful of rice a day usually? (Not a 'What if a monkey made you a sandwich?' question, but a scene from a friend travelling in SE Asia).

Another situation: Another friend of mine is super eco aware – all his clothes are fair trade, his house uses mostly renewable energy sources, they re-use water and shop all organic. If he travels, he does so by train, I don't think he's flown anywhere in the past 8 years (might be due to a flight phobic wife, though). How can I judge him for eating two eggs and a little bit of chicken once a week?

No, I am not playing down that it is horrible how animals are a commodity in this world. What I'm saying is that there are other things that matter at least as much.

2) the Vegan Scene

This might be one of the main reasons for me and also was what put me off veganism in the first place. When I was 13, I met a guy who would later become one of my closest friends, but back then, he was just the vegan nutcase. Although his arguments made a lot of sense to me, I could not relate to someone who was in his early twenties and still lived off his family/girlfriend, and spent all his time at demos or other direct action events.

When I moved to London, pretty much everybody I knew here was on a certain vegan forum. For a few months, I felt part of a big loving alternative community. Until I realised that apart from veganism, we did not really have much in common, and have values that are nothing like mine.

On the one hand those who are part of a high flying elite, and do not have to worry about money, or those who have never experienced any hardship in their lives (apart from stuff like: 'My parents got a divorce when I was 17' or 'Where shall I go on that round the world ticket my parents bought me?').

On the other hand, there were too many people that were just nuts - people who have been studying for the past 200 years, or have been on the dole for a similar time, and of course everybody has a bloody mental disorder!
(Ok, I get that some people are not in good health, or life has fucked them really badly so they are not 100% ok mentally. But it's my decision whether I want all this drama in my life or not).

On both ends of the scale, I found that people did not care about the same things as I did, apart from veganism: I will not buy anything made by a multinational corporation that is well known for its nonexistent environmental policy or animal testing. No, I will not have this damn take out, no matter how vegan it is, because I would like to have control over what I put in my mouth, and I feel bad for the illegal delivery man/waiter/kitchen assistant who works for 2 pound an hour. Wow, and all these amazing vegan convenience products that come with an extra 400% of packaging that causes our clean vegan eco record to skyrocket.

I don't want to be associated with these people. That said, I have met some awesome vegan people that I hope do not only like me for being vegan.

(And no, I don't want a dozen vegan household cleaning products in my home, either.)

Which leads me to:

4) the Environment
A big part of their holier-than-thou attitude comes from many vegans' assumption that a vegan diet equals a zero carbon emission diet. Well, it isn't, except if you grew 80% of your own food and supplemented the rest with locally grown, organic produce. I don't believe this is possible for anybody in Western Europe, even if you were a farmer. Milk consumption makes for 0.001% of carbon emission of an average omnivore's diet, and even if you eat big fat Argentinian steak, that only adds about another 0.2 per cent. Only reducing the amount of packaging of what you buy has a much bigger effect.

And the story with the meat that needs 10 times as much water as soy or wheat to grow (or whatever is the exact number)? Well, this applies only when the crop is grown in ideal conditions, otherwise the relations aren't that extreme.

To be honest, from this environmental point of view, I'd rather eat 50g of local, organic cheese a month than 300g of soy products imported from Asia or the Americas, and rather eat a few bits of sushi with tuna than buy a pair of vegan trainers that were made from fossil fuels (yep, I know that leather is an environmental no go, as well. Though it lasts longer).

PS: Rather build in some double glazed windows in your houses, Brits :)

Last but not least, and this is a very selfish point:

5) Travelling

I'm a foodie, and I love travel, and for the first time in my life I can do this quite extensively now. Being in Japan this summer opened my eyes. It's very easy to eat all vegan in the UK, but even in my family's village in Germany it's nearly impossible (when I asked at the supermarket where their organic range was, I only got blank stares – all I was looking for was a vegan spread, even if it only was margarine!). Or in a supermarket in Paris. Or – coming back to Japan- in Asia. My Japanese is fairly good, and I was with a friend who speaks fluently in the local dialect. We were in the second biggest city in the country, in an area where (religious, buddhist) vegetarianism has a long tradition. And still, nobody really knew what we were talking about when asking for vegan food (or explaining what exactly that meant). This was in the most developed country in Asia.

Next month I'll be going to Morocco, where the only vegan options will be olives, dates and bread, and essentially every 'vegetarian' stew contains meat broth. I fancy myself a traveler rather than a tourist, and I don't what to be the rich white bitch in a developing country.I'm going to be there for a week, on my own, and believe that I'll have plenty to put up with as a single western woman in her 20s, without creating a fuss about food.

So, will this blog be all steak and kidney pie from now on? No, because I still like the idea of veganism, and vegan food, and will continue to lead a 95% vegan lifestyle. Over the past weeks, I let myself have anything I wanted, and all the animal products I consumed were some salmon maki (and this kind of on accident, because I had ordered vegetarian ones), a croissant and few pieces of feta cheese in a salad – in two months. I can't imagine eating meat, or eggs, or drink milk. Just every now and then, I feel like a little bit of dairy or fish, and I don't want to deny that anymore because of an idealistic idea that no longer moves me (animal rights).

I will most likely keep my house, including pantry and fridge, vegan, as I don't know it any other way (I went vegan shortly after moving out of my parents' place). Recipes and pictures in this blog will stay vegan. I won't start wearing wool, or silk, or leather, or visit a circus. If anything, my eco-awareness has increased. I won't be buying any more non-fair trade chocolate, or coffee, or tea, or clothes. I will increasingly try to buy mostly organic food.

Things like these matter just as much as not consuming animals. Ideally, all of us would avoid all the 'bad' products in this world (woops, I forgot to mention/rant about Made in China and Made in Israel!), but each person's options are limited and we all pick and choose what's right for us.

Turning French - cake salé

2010-09-28T20:06:00.009+01:00

No, not Japanese for a change! Ever since I finally got a copy of Linda Majzlik's A vegan taste of France (I tried for years in vain to get it through Amazon Germany), I've been forcing lots of quiche on everybody around me. Furthermore, I heard of this wonderful invention called cake salé. Now that's not something you might have heard among the croissants, vichysoisses, cassoulets, ratatouilles and other famous French foods. Cake salé is a proper home style French food, and cannot be bought in shops usually.

What it essentially is is a moist, wonderful, savoury snack that's very easy to bake, even when you're me and cannot really bake. You can use everything you like - olives, peppers, herbs, cubes of (vegan) cheese, tiny bits of seitan or tempeh, sundried tomatoes, grated courgettes or carrots...
It's wonderful on its own, with a spread, or along a soup or salad.

I love doing a simple olive and courgette version. This is for a small loaf tin.

Cake Salé type Backyard N19

1.5 cups of flour
0.5 cup soy yoghurt
1 courgette, grated
100g olives, chopped
1 teaspoon salt
1 tsp baking powder
about 1 tablespoon dried/ 2 tbsp fresh chopped herbs (I used a mix of rosemary, sage and water where necessary (might depend on the size of your courgette)

Mix everything - the batter should be like muffin dough, not overmixed, and not too moist. Pour into a greased loaf pan and bake for about 30 mins at 180°C. Eat hot, cold, toasted, whatever way really!

Speaking of France, I went to Paris for the first time in ages this weekend. It was wonderful, the city wasn't busy and I got to see many things that I haven't seen before, including L'Orangerie with Monet's waterlilies (not sea roses as I awkwardly translated literally from German :) ). It also was the first time that nobody attempted to speak in any language other than French to me, which means my French must have improved quite a bit in the last few months!

Sunday afternoon when I had some time left before my train, I went to Musée de Carnavalet in Le Marais, which is touted as "the Paris history museum", but actually it was much more than this. It's a beautiful old town villa with a wonderful (herb) garden and a collection of paintings, everyday things and exhibits of actual historical value. And the best: admission is free, a rare thing in Paris! I'll be back!

A weekend in Amsterdam or: Full of tempeh!

2010-09-11T10:07:00.008+01:00

As much as "Eat, pray, love" was a major disappointment (although it deals with three countries I am quite interested in - including Indonesia), our bank holiday trip to Amsterdam was amazing and full of great food.

There are plenty of vegan/veg-friendly restauraunts in Amsterdam, however, we didn't go to any. Because of that amazing "Dutch" (colonial) speciality - Indonesian!

Now there are plenty of Indonesian places in London and elsewhere. The problem is that they usually are half Indonesian, half Malay, half something else. Nothing wrong with Malaysian food or any other South East Asian cuisine, but I like my authenticity.

Now there is this wonderful Dutch invention called Rijsttafel (literally "Rice table"), aka a buffet of Indonesian food. The great thing is that Indonesian cooking doesn't use any dairy to begin with, and very little eggs, so if you go for vegetarian options you pretty much have a guaranteed vegan meal.

Our first meal in Amsterdam was at a cute Indonesian deli - spicy tempeh (be praised for this invention, Indonesia!), spring rolls, corn fritters!

Late that night, we went to Puri Mas for our big vegan rijsttafel. For €20 each, we had: plain rice, spiced rice, veggies in peanut sauce, spicy tempeh, tofu in a bbq-y sauce, sauteed mushrooms, aubergine in spicy sauce, cucumber salad, a mixed veggie salad, grean beans, friend bananas... and quite a bit more. It was amazing, and the service was just wonderful. And the condiments! I could sprinkle those sweet-salty roasted coconut flakes on everything I eat!

Now I am somewhat at a loss regarding authentic Indonesian recipes, because I can't seem to find any that turn out right. I am lacking some of the basic knowledge about this cuisine, that's why. Any book/website recommendations (except for The Asian Vegan Kitchen)?

Nishiki Market, Kyoto

2010-08-08T23:58:00.010+01:00

Sooo the big trip has been made... and my passion for Japanese food has become even stronger. The first days I was back in London, I popped into the Japan Centre Deli on Piccadilly every day
(which also means I'm even more broke now). I so miss having onigiri for every meal :) (I know, not traditional, but still). Out of the 300something pictures I took, at least a third of them involves food (yeah I know, surprise...).

So, I went to Kyoto, the supposedly most traditional and amazing city in Japan... truth be told, I was rather disappointed. All the big sights are really really for from each other, and most of them charge entrance fees when you could actually see something similar for free elsewhere in the area. If you're not totally into buddhism, or architecture, most of it is not worth it.

A highlight of my trip was the visit to Nishiki Market, though. It's a covered food market a 10 min walk from the main station that makes a wonderful stroll on a rainy afternoon. And while there are lots of non-vegan items (fish is the staple after rice in this country, after all), I bought a wonderful selection of tsukemono (Japanese pickles) at the market. I would have loved to buy some of the tofu specialities, but they all needed refridgeration so I didn't dare taking them on my 12hr flight.

A Scotsman's dream, fried everything! I loved stuffing myself with shoga, which costs an arm and a leg, if you can get it at all in Europe.
They had a big variety of pickles, especially nukazuke (rice bran pickles). Stupidly, I never found the nuka to make your own in Japanese shops at home... because all cookbooks show it in rectangular boxes! It comes in plastic bags, just like miso paste and is often found on the same shelf. I know, d'oh! Reading labels and learning kanji helps, sometimes.

This dapper chap was in charge of the tofu stall... they had tofu anything, and every variety of tofu on top!

... dare I say, welcome to Asia? Scary fish heads :(

The price of fruit and veg in Japan is crazy. Seasonal, local Japanese foods, such as Asian greens and sprouts are really cheap, but even tomatoes are not affordable. I saw a tiny sad courgette for 400yen (that's about 3 GBP!).

The pickle shop! Nishiri is probably the most famous pickle shop Japan wide. I bought myself the biggest gift package of tsukemono. Their packaging is so pretty though, I don't dare opening/eating any of it!!!

BBC Good Food/Gardener's World live show Birmingham

2010-07-06T20:55:00.013+01:00

WARNING: GARDEN NERDY POST AHEAD!

I didn't mean to make this a post about plants, seriously. I have loved food festivals/fairs all my life, even more since working in events, and specifically now that I can claim visiting them is skill enhancement for my job ;-P Plus, in spite of the gourmetness of the situation, there are usually lots and lots of vegan free samples. With my current gardening obsession, it was only natural that I got myself a ticket for the BBC Summer Good Food/Gardener's World show in B'ham last month.

Sadly, it was quite a disappointment. It all started with Birmingham being Birmingham, especially Digbeth (the area around the coach station). Bleurgh. I do love me a Brummie accent and the locals are wonderful, but I can't begin liking this city.

Then, not only did the driver not tell me where to get off the bus as I had asked, so I took an impromptu trip to Coventry where I was rescued by an incredibly nice Irish lady... who told me how she worked in Selfridges in the 1950s selling underwear, and also that the next pope must be a paddy (no, I do not make up these stories about crazy old ladies I meet in random places. They just always appear, like the one who showed us the way into the woods at last year's Beltane festival).

When I finally arrived at the venue... after a long time... I cursed the NEC just for the sake of the NEC and many things that are wrong with it, or at least were done wrong by BBC this time. Seriously, burying the show guides in giant bins with no signs on them whatsoever?! I won't go into further details, but it was an event organiser's nightmare.

Next big disappointment: the food. There were about 12 sausage stalls, 25 pastry stalls, and 80something cheese and salami stalls. To be able to try some of the wine/drink samples, you had to first buy a special 'show tester glass' (crappy plastic champagne flute) for 4 quid.

I cannot speak for the cooking demonstrations - I didn't book any tickets as TV chefs are not too famous for their vegan food, anyway, maybe they made up for all of this. But meh.

The ticket also included entry to the Gardener's World show. While plants were mostly ridiculously overpriced, I managed to get a few quite rare seeds (Japanese herbs! Purple beans! Wohoo!). And then I went to the flower parlour and then outdoor area... and yes, I am aware I sound like I am at least 65, but the displays were gorgeous, especially the show vegetable patches. They caused major courgette envy in me (as I am writing this, 3 weeks later, the plants in my garden are showing the first tiny blossoms)! And ohhhh, it was so pretty! See for yourself:

There was a garden theme competition that was truly amazing. There was an Alice in Wonderland garden that I was looking forward to more than anything else. When I got there, it turned out that some schoolkids had designed the thing and it looked like utter chaos, but not in a Lewis Carrol kind of way :( So I didn't take any pictures. But I loved this Indian garden:

"Salad bar garden", very Islington.

The supposedly Swiss garden - it was a Ricola marketing thing, not a good one. I was deeply saddened that the promoters were Midlanders, not Helvetic :(

"The wild classroom" - I loved this, especially the screens... I have many more pictures but couldn't be bothered to upload them onto my computer yet.

Last but not least... a Japanese inspired garden. Not bad for one designed by a Westerner, if you ignore the middle aged people and weird wooden boards... and yay, Japan. I'm leaving for Osaka in 5 days, I've never been so ready for a holiday!!!

Photo backlog!

2010-06-27T21:16:00.007+01:00

Ahem, no, I haven't given up the yoga + writing challenge, actually it's going quite well, just not on the food writing level. PMS does not make a good cook, or eater :( Neither does getting back to cooking for just yourself. I might re-think that. Or just get very fat.

However, I discovered there are many forgotten meals on my camera from more ambitious times:

This was a meal with recipes all from A vegan Taste of North Africa by Linda Majzlik, my favourite book in the serious. Pea and mint couscous, tomato, cucumber and herb salad and sweet onion baked aubergines, plus ajvar (ok, Turkish). I used fancy Japanese aubergines I found at Japan Centre - I was so excited to see the sexy slender Japanese ones, but when I got home, I discovered that I don't really know all that many Japanese aubergine recipes, so they were used just like the plain fat mediterranean ones.

I love orzo, I could eat it every day. Just like gigant mushrooms and garlic bread (although I am starting to think we have eaten our garlic bread allowance for a lifetime by now... for weeks, dinners evolved around 'garlic bread and something'). Also, lots of parsley and parmesan (or was it plain nooch?).

Oh Phoenicia, I love you. In case I haven't told you yet, Phoenicia is an amazing Middle Eastern/Mediterranean supermarket/deli/cafe in Kentish Town. Their mezze are all 70p for 100g, which is not only cheap for London, but unbelievable for this part of the city. I also love the staff and they love me right back with free Turkish Delight. What I don't love is that I could go there every day... ok, I do go there at least every other day... I leave less of my money in Whole Foods.

Anyway, a no-cook dinner, consisting of Phoenicia's pickled peppers (just like the ones you get in Döner Kebab shops in Germany), olives, a big mixed salad and the weirdest but yummiest, mullusc-like Lebanese stuffed roasted Aubergines with pepper, tomato and walnut filling. The good thing is that everybody thinks they look so gross that I get to eat those all by myself! Oh, and hummus.

Last but not least, weird cakes from Chinatown! I read only good things about Wonderful Patisserie but couldn't imagine them having any vegan options as it's a very Chinese place. Until my Sunday morning Soho co-foodie pointed out that he goes there all the time. Definitely check this place out - all the freshly baked cakes and pastries have detailed ingredients lists, and the staff is very helpful. So I sampled quite a few and took home a sesame-red bean pastry, a heavenly pineapple pastry and a weird and gooey, but tasty, banana dumpling thing with something like a pink peace sign on it.

Quiche and my very first harvest

2010-06-20T10:48:00.009+01:00

I don't know about you, but grew up not liking quiche very much. Quiche was what our French teacher made us cook (yup, we cooked in our French lessons) when we actually couldn't cook or what I was served on family holidays in Belgium. It was always fatty, soggy and generally bleh. The fact that I've always hated everything with an eggy texture didn't help much.

When I worked in Düsseldorf, everybody would bake something for the others for their birthday, and I was in pieces when our 60-something omni accountant made a wonderful vegan quiche only for me. (damn, I must make the butter "chicken" seitan from that post again!)

So last week I was blessed with a giant bag of Swiss chard and we had 2 packages of silken tofu in the pantry for weeks (which my flatmate urgently needs for...something. Men.) and I had time to make pastry from scratch. On top of that, my first batch of baby salad leaves was ready to harvest. They made a whole tiny bowl full of salad, with a tomato thrown in - it's too cold in this country this 'summer'. The recipe I used was the basic quiche recipe from The Urban Vegan cookbook, except I threw in the swiss chard and some sun-dried tomatoes and also sprinkled some Mozarella Scheese on top.

Quiche verdict: I loved it and will be buying a quiche pan to make bigger ones, regularly.

This weeks veggie box brought me fresh mint, so I'm drinking lots of Morrocan-style mint tea :) My garden mint is doing so-so as the slugs love it. I didn't know mint had any natural enemies.
Also in this week's box: green peppers, lettuce, lemons, mushrooms, garlic, aubergines, broccoli, cherry tomatoes and a cucumber.

To be honest, I'm thinking about changing box suppliers or not getting boxes anymore at all. I get my box from Just Organic, based in Stoke Newington, so essentially, it's a local business to me. The guy who own it is a lovely chap in the early/mid-Thirties and he goes out of his way in terms of customer service. He delivers in the evenings and is just wonderful when we have complanints. But to be honest, lately I've had a lot of complaints. I know how to store veggies and I know that organic stuff doesn't last as long as supermarket pesticide-laden veg. But when you get a tomato on Thursday night, it shouldn't be mouldy by Saturday morning. The same happened with this week's aubergines and many many of their lemons :( I've never seen a mouldy lemon before I got their boxes.

Plus, while they don't air-freight, the boxes do not really show the change in seasons and I don't get to know what comes from which country.

If you live around London, have you got any recommendations?

On authenticity

2010-06-13T08:59:00.002+01:00

I have a surprising confession to make: I am a conservative. No, it's not that I brought the tories back in power, silly.

I have been frequently accused of being snobbish about food, or even a food Nazi (the burden that comes with a German passport).

People tell me that cooking shouldn't be taken that seriously and that there are millions in the world that are underfed, plus, not everybody has the time to learn 'the right way' to prepare certain dishes.

If somebody serves me mushy pasta or a risotto that is really a pilaf, or a pizza that's more of a pie – or miso soup that was made with a powder and has been boiled to death, to get away from the Italian, I will eat it, and appreciate the effort involved. If it's home cooking and somebody that I like has done it.

But still, it makes me cringe. Usually the wine that comes along with it makes me forget. The horrible thing is, this happens in restaurants as well, so frequently that I have given up on most London vegan places. I love you wonderful vegans and your aspirations to feed everybody vegan food, but 9 out of 10 times, I'd rather visit a decent 'ethnic' restaurant.

I am no fool, and I know what it's like not being able to choose from a variety of ingredients and having time and knowing techniques, but needing to figure out how to get the most bang for your buck (or quid, you know what I mean).

I was raised on very little money by a single mum in her 20s that had never been taught to cook. And yet, while much can be said about my mother's housewife qualities (or lack thereof), and ready mixes and microwave meals were a regular mainstay in our house, some things were uncompromisable:

Our soups and stews were made with homemade broth, and if French cooked with a proper bouquet garni and if Mediterranian, based on a good soffrito.

Vegetables were never overcooked, and sauces were made from scratch.

Pasta was always superb, just al dente and spaghetti never broken into pieces (the moment that I lost all faith in British people cooking!), and eaten with a fork. I remember having spaghetti and tomato sauce parties: from when I was about 3 years old, my mum would invite her girlfriends and their kids round and feed us all spaghetti. As you can imagine, not only the kids but the walls, sofas etc were covered in spaghetti sauce, but all of us now know how to eat and cook wicked pasta.

I believe that this has influenced my view of food and some good basic skills just make everything better. I don't like muddling my way through in the kitchen.

As a teen hanging out with squatters and a lot of other gypsy folk, I made friends from all sorts of places, and a lot of them were veggies and hence interested in cooking vegstarian food on the cheap and without fancy kitchens.

What do you think were the results?

Wonderful creamy risottos, lasagnes, pizzas from the Italians. No no-stir risottos (if you don't have the patience to work on a dish for 20 mins, give up the idea of cooking altogether. Risotto is one of the easiest things to do in a pinch) or jarred sauces (they weren't available in Germany back then, anyway).

Noodle soups chock full of flavour and ace stir fries, curries etc from Thai and Japanese people.There was no way you could take a short cut and just buy something half ready made, because even if you had the money, the shops didn't have it (where I grew up, they don't have any Asian ingredients in supermarkets to this day. Cities are a whole different thing, mind you). We even made sushi from fish that people had fished for themselves at the Dutch coast (not veggie, I know), just because there was no decent fishmonger around.

Curries with freshly ground and roasted spices and coriander that grew on the windowsill, if you were lucky. An abundance of Indian restaurants is pretty unique in English speaking countries (and most of them cook British Indian, anyway).

And Middle Eastern food! Oh how homemade hummus and baba ganoush and home baked flat breads excited me, also because nobody else around had ever heard of them and it was part of my teenage rebellion (and of course, because they are just wonderfully delicious foods sent from heaven).

None of these people were particularly foodie, or affluent. I believe that good ingredients and the right techniques go a long way, and that the traditional ways are the way they are because they have been working just fine for a long long time.

I like fusion cuisine when it combines the best of two worlds (check out Vapiano for that, they make awesome pasta dishes with Asian twists as monthly specials and have restaurants in most European cities and a few in the US, as well), not when it just ends up in a half-hearted medley of randomness (PizzaHut or your common TexMex, anyone?).

I don't mind variations, such as endless fruit variations for clafoutis or fillings for quiches, or using bok choy in a pasta dish. As a matter of fact, a lot of vegan versions call for substitutes that aren't traditional to begin with. As long as the base it done right, go ahead, that's all exciting.

But seriously, the next person who serves me a pizza with a 2 inch high shop bought crust with sugary Dolmio sauce and a 4 inch pile of toppings will die a slow and painful death.

How about you? Do traditional cooking techniques matter? Where do you draw the line between variation and bastardisation in cooking?

21.5.800 - blogging, more writing and yoga

2010-06-12T10:16:00.003+01:00

Today I woke up way too early and had a nice and easy 45 minute sun salutation/asana/meditation session. There are no word to describe my love affair with yoga and the addiction it becomes once you have established a routine... which, um, I haven't had for the last year or so.

So with all my spring ambition (yes, it's almost summer technically, but have you looked out of the window recently, if you're a UK dweller?), I decided I shall take up my daily yoga habit again.
Then, with a cup of tea, I started reading my bloglines updates and stumbled accross Bindu Wiles' 21.5.800 project, which technically started 4 days ago, but wtf, I need a project to keep me going until the big summer holiday :)

So what is this mystical thing? A new suggestion for a date when the world will come to an end?
Naw, it means I (and more than 500 other people) aim to
a) do at least 20-40 min yoga a day, be it in a yoga course or at home.
b) write 800 words a day, no matter what - blogging, short stories, letters, emails... text messages if it has to be -

at least, for 5 days a week, for 21 days. Just what I was looking for!

Hence this blog is now looking a little bit like a construction site (but hey, it's now RED! with poppies!) as I realised it needs some work.

Now the big question is: does writing at work count?

I bring you: cats! (HELP?!)

2010-05-06T20:17:00.008+01:00

It's been a while again... April has probably been the craziest, busiest month in years, full of visitors, birthday parties, gigs and deadlines.

Since late March, I've all nerded up about gardening and am trying to make our little space resemble an actual garden. At the moment, we're still somewhere in between a suburban jungle and public cat litter tray. I hope that in the next few weeks, I can get some nice pics.

For today, I bring you something incredibly rare on this blog of mine: a cat!
Yes, as I said, my garden is the new in spot for all cats of the neighbourhood. I'm not a cat person to be honest, but not mean enough to chase them, although they poo all over my garden.
For now, I have scattered some rose bush cuttings around the flowerbeds, which has helped a little, but not completely. What is your trick to keep them away?

I'll try to take pictures of all of the criminals. If you have seen the cat above, please let me know. We have named it Three-Coloured-Cat. It likes to lounge on the fire ladder outside my room and its favourite toilet spot is between the radishes and carrots.

On a more delicious note, I have fallen in love with our Mediterranean box again. As I am typing, I am waiting for this weeks' box which will hopefully bring me lovely asparagus.

Another find is Celtic Bakers... they do amazing, organic rye bread that is all... well, Germanic.
Yes, there you have it. I said I would never be that clicheed German bread snob but the 'selection' of 'bread' in British supermarkets makes me weep. Yes, even the fancy shit from Marks & Sparks und Waitrose (although they have quite nice focaccia).
So, Celtic Bakers are awesome, and they have stalls on quite a few of London's farmers markets. I buy their bread at Earth in Kentish Town, although Bumblebee in Tufnell Park and that tiny shop on Holloway Road stock their bread too, at least sometimes, if you're quick. And that's only my neck of the woods.

I'm in a bit of a French food mood recently, and was amazed to actually find tomatoes that tasted like tomatoes at this time of year. What to do if you're out of basil for a killer tomato salad but have some sad looking filo pastry in the fridge? Quick tomato tarte! Rub the pastry with a little olive oil and half a clove of garlic, add sliced tomatoes and bake for about 15 mins. Don't share.

The other day, I made onion and red wine gravy for the first time in my life, inspired by a fellow blogger (and I forgot who made it, gah! sorry!). With extra sticky onions. Why has nobody told me how amazing this is? How daft was I, putting red wine into everything but never even thinking about this? And: what's not good when served with sausages and garlicky mashed potatoes?

Nights out in Zürich and... even more lake pictures

2010-03-25T20:46:00.005Z

So, Zürich. I have to admit, the German-speaking part of Switzerland was not as charming to me as the francophone part. It's pretty much like Germany, only tidier, more boring, with most people being pretty conservative and more mountains. Plus, I understand people less than the French speaking population, although they are technically speaking my mother tongue. Swiss German is weird as hell, but very charming. Not quite in the way of an extremely drunk Scot or Irishman trying to talk, though.

Luckily, I had an amazing host who went out of her way to show me the city. While I was still not too impressed with the place (the city with the busiest nightlife in the country, and on Friday night 11pm, there's nobody on the street? come on, has the big smoke spoilt me that much?), Sabine and I had an awesome time talking about veganism and India (she is yoga teacher and studies Indian culture and Hindi), especially in how it's affected Britain and vice versa.

She also insisted to invite me for dinner at Samses , a very classy but charming vegetarian restaurant. I had tofu 'chicken' with creamy white wine sauce and tagliatelle, and it was both the best tofu (firm! full of flavour!) and white sauce I have ever had. They had vegan tiramisu, too, but I was too full after the pasta to eat any dessert. Sabine had a delish Thai curry, but people started staring at me for taking pictures so I didn't dare lean over (when in Rome...).

I have also heard that Hiltl is very good, but I didn't make it there - neither did I make it to any of the vegan brunch/FNB style dinner parties that regularly take place in the city, or to Tibits, but that would have been silly since there's one in London, too.
If you ever go, google around. Zürich has a big alternative scene but somehow it's well hidden.

Finally, some pics from our boat trip around the Zürich Lake. Boats and ferries are included in season tickets, and in Switzerland, you can get a season ticket for every bus/train/etc for around for a whole year for around £2000! Anyway, it was very very pretty but also freezing. I've seen plenty of lakes and mountains for this year.

Chocolate, mountains, lakes, wine and tequila!

2010-03-09T21:14:00.007Z

It's official now, I'm an urbansexual. Yes, I fall in love with cities instead of people.
Last week, I spent a rather extended (5 day)-weekend at Lake Geneva, mostly in Lausanne, and there I lost a piece of my heart (also, all the cities I love start with either C or L. What would Freud make out of this?).

It's a quite small, studenty city right by the lake about 30 miles from the French border. And very French it is, only with less snotty French people, although they are only a 30 min ferry ride over the lake away.

There's a joke that Swiss wine doesn't get exported because the Swiss drink all of it, and boy I can understand why they do. The red are wonderful and I even enjoyed the white wines (which usually make me sick), and they barely cost anything. Plus, wherever you go in the Romandie, you can see the vinyards where the stuff.

Yet I ended up drinking tequila and beer - at the most awesome couchsurfing' accident' I have had so far. My host for Friday night dumped me so I started an emergency request and ended up with two awesome vegan, foodie, lefty kind of-Americans living right in the city centre.
We had pasta with lots of nooch, wine, tequila, beer. We talked about world peace, growing our own food (I even got to take some seeds home!), the status quo of all things cultural and political in Europe etc etc etc. - for breakfast, I got to sample some Follow Your Heart cheeses in the form of unphotogenic grilled cheese sandwiches. Once again thank you so much, Chema and Nassim :)
!

I also took the ferry to France, to Evian-les-Bains. Yup, that's the place where the overpriced fancy bottled water comes from. What looks a bit like a part of Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory here is actually part of their headquarters.

I just had to take a picture of this bus stop - clearly French people over-estimate the awesomeness of their public transport :)

To be honest, the French speaking part of Switzerland is not exactly vegan friendly. While there are plenty of local products, the cuisine and snacks available are heavy on meat and especially dairy products, and there are no vegetarian restaurants in the area at all.

The German-speaking bit seems a lot better vegan-wise, but it did not manage to touch me in the way the Francophone part did. Anyway, stay tuned for the next post about vegan places in Zürich :)

Return to the world of blogging!

2010-02-27T18:23:00.009Z

Ok, no more silly excuses. I now have a lovely flat with a relatively big garden and a huge kitchen. There are lots of pictures of food on my hard disk and my cameras. So I should resume blogging, right? Here we go, I hope there are still some people who read this :)

Beetroot (flannel?) hash from Vegan Brunch from ages ago in the Cricklewood morning sun, with some sort of salad it seems. Beets are hugely underappreciated by most people!

Carb attack! I just love aloo sag. This was a quick and mostly fat-free version.

I now live with someone vegan to feed, so I have more excuses to buy tons of food and cook many many dishes :) Carrot kinpira, grilled portobello mushrooms, mizuna salad with tomatoes and ponzu dressing, along with potato and onion miso soup, rice, umeboshi and all the other Japanese trimmings.

Still, there are always leftovers for bento... this pingu box broke last week, a shame because it was a very useful size. On the other hand, blue is not very good at making food look appetising. But come on, poor Pingu! This gives me an excuse to look for another Pingu box (I used to have two but gave one away when I moved country).

Rice!

2009-10-11T18:07:00.005+01:00

The thing I love most about "traditional" bento is the rice bit... I'm a carb addict and short grain white rice is my favourite, and it's surprisingly filling for a heavily processed grain.

Somehow I can't get used to brown rice... it's ok for "Western-ish" dishes, but it tastes very wrong with most Asian food IMHO. What do you think?

My camera died a little so this is a bad phone picture of an amazing bento- cannonball onigiri, satay skewers, tomato and spinach (hidden underneath). This was my first time trying the completely round onigiri version, and it was a lot of fun to make and eat!

Friday I brought some sushi to work since one of my co-workers claimed she had never eaten home-made sushi.

Friday night, after all these very Japanese lunches, I badly craved some stick-to-your-ribs food, and since the veg box brought me a huge savoy cabbage this week, I made colcannon with sausages and much brown sauce! Sorry, mashed potatoes with cabbage just can't look pretty...

Yucky Japanese things!

2009-10-10T10:00:00.002+01:00

... that's how a certain co-worker who sustains on a salad and pasta diet called my lovely bento! On the right, there's wakame/cucumber salad with shichimi togarashi, the right has rice, some wasabi, ume and "chicken" satay pieces. Both in my Monokuro Boo boxes, matching the motto: "Simple is best" XD

I know it's Saturday already, I've got my two other bentos for the week on my camera, so more to come this weekend!

Classic Bento

2009-10-06T06:19:00.003+01:00

... in a not-bento-box, but this former pakora box is very useful and just the right size for a bento!
So yesterday I kept it very classic Japanese, with rice, toasted nori hidden by carrot kinpira and fake chicken breast. I also took a boring little salad with mizuna and rocket to work, but that didn't photograph well at all in the morning.

Tonight I'm going to one of my favourite place in London, the Globe theatre, to see the much-neglected Love's Labour's Lost!

Praise the Non-Seitan

2009-10-04T14:15:00.007+01:00

Usually I'm not a lover of fake meats, I try a new product for the novelty of it, and if it's good, maybe have it every 2-3 months. But a few weeks ago, in Wing Yip, I found my addiction:

TKC is a Malaysian company that makes fake meat/fish that tastes pretty authentic and is very easy to cook with, but doesn't freak you out because even if the texture is good, it's clear it's not real meat. Plus, they don't include a billion additives, most is soy-based.

I'm addicted to the "chicken breast" and the "Satay", and last week I bought their fake cod, which is flavoured with seaweed and the "skin" is a sheet of nori- pure heaven and finally something to take care of my fish cravings.

Couldn't take any pictures of the cod because it was scoffed instantly, but here's the prawns (not authentic-looking at all, the other varieties you can buy with their intense red/pink colouring are quite creepy, no?) with soba and some stir-fried mizuna:

And today's breakfast (miso soup not photographed), pretty easy to tell what's what. The chicken is seriously addictive!!!

I haven't seen the products anywhere else, but if you're in the UK, Wing Yip has their megastores in London (Croydon and Cricklewood), Birmingham and Manchester.

That time of the year again...

2009-10-01T19:03:00.006+01:00

I didn't realize it was time for VeganMofo again, since I haven't subscribed to Kittee's blog, shock!
When you haven't blogged in such a long time that you can't even remember your login data (and neither could my browser!), it's time to take action.

London has been incredibly good to me, and so I think it's time I stop buying crap before work or at lunch and start taking over the country with nice bento again. That's my Mofo Resolution: post a bento at least 4 times a week.

I need to get over my diet looking mostly like this:

and this:

The grand vegan BBQ

2009-07-26T12:58:00.007+01:00

Last weekend the much anticipated East London (Essex?) BBQ took place - due to girly things and wacky train scheduled I didn't spend the night, but one day way plenty to suffer a proper vegan protein shock.

The night before I realized I had to bring something and invented some burgers (actually one kind, the other was an old standby recipe of mine). Alas, it was dark and I didn't take any proper pictures. Here are a few of them on the BBQ, along with awesome kebabs, shrooms and corn:

I had a lot of leftovers from making thai curry, so I decided to try a Thai-influenced burger... no pictures sadly, but here's the recipe since a few people asked for it.

Steffiburgers Thai-Style
(for 10-12 medium burgers)

150g tofu, drained and crumbled
4-6 medium mushrooms, finely chopped
2-3 spring onions, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 tbs rice wine
2 tbs soy sauce
a pinch of shichimi togarashi (Japanese hot spice, any sort of chili powder will do as well)
2-3 tbs Thai green curry paste (I used Tesco's which I think is medium hot)
a little flour

Mix everything and use flour as a binding agent- if you've squeezed the tofu properly, you'll only need about 3-4 tablespoons. Then form burgers- you can freeze those right away, but I pan-fried them and then froze them so they only took a short time on the bbq later.

The other week I made use of my Amazon.co.uk gift certificate and ordered a few new cookbooks, including Get it Ripe which I absolutely love!
Yesterday's dinner was influenced by the Quinoa with Bok Choy, Beans and pesto, except I forgot to buy bok choy and used spinach. I would never have thought of a combination like this, although it's so easy, very healthy and not to forget, yum!

And ah, keep your fingers crossed! I had the perfect job interview for an amazing job (event coordinator for an international exhibition company) the other day and will hear from them on Tuesday...

Japanese in Europe

2009-07-12T20:43:00.007+01:00

So I've finally finished my exams, left my flat and moved to London. I'm jobhunting now and am seriously considering working at an Asian restaurant- yummy food and girls, hehe!

In spite of a huge Japanese population in Düsseldorf and other German cities, it is almost impossible to get vegan Japanese food at a restaurant.

The more excited was I when I found out there's a vegan shojin ryori place in Munich, called Kaede. Sadly, the lighting was gloomy, as was the entire place...

I stopped taking pictures after the starters because a) it was too dark to take pictures b) it just wasn't worth it.
We left the place, still starving, paying over 40 € in total for a tiny serving of chicken meatballs, gyoza, some tempura and a miniature bowl of ramen noodles. All of it completely tasteless.
I was one grumpy vegan after that!

(it's not Munich's fault, anyway. We also found a true gem, Tushita Teahouse which has a billion of teas, cupcakes and 3-4 lunch options every day. It's on Klenzestraße, like the ever-awesome Kopfeck)

Anyway, I met Sel in Brixton today. First we had a coffee at Honest Foods on 424 Coldharbour Lane (Americanos, Cappucinos, Latte etc. with soy milk all under £ 1.50!) and then had a late lunch/early dinner at Fujiyama. It's not even a veggie place, but all of the vegetarian options are vegan when you ask them to leave out the egg.
Look at the difference:

a humungous bowl of miso ramen!

gingery fried soba!

We paid less than 20 quid, including a big pot of green tea.
Have I already told you how much I love London?

Almost there...

2009-07-01T15:40:00.001+01:00

sorry, no food again. I'm sort of in between everything right now and don't really have access to the internets. Not too bad since the weather is awesome at the moment and the last thing you want to do is sit inside!

Anyway, I'll be in London from next week on. Then it's jobhunting time, which also includes time to cook, and bentos to make = stuff to blog about.

Just wanted to let you know this blog isn't dying.
I hope you're all having an awesome summer!

You're a terrorist, too!

2009-05-23T20:01:00.003+01:00

Ok I've decided to take the food-focus off this blog. I don't feel like running two blogs at a time, but
feel I need to blog about other things I'm into, too, while not being able to hold up a frequently updated food blog, especially since I won't have a kitchen anymore soon.

The name might change, but for the time being I'm keeping the old one.

One reason that added to my general Anti-Germany-ness is that we're having a Nanny state in a few more horrible ways than US citizens... thank you, Mr. Schäuble!

(and yes, when I applied for my passport two weeks ago, I actually had to give my fingerprints!)

Vegging out...

2009-05-14T19:50:00.008+01:00

Now my written exams are over and all I have to do... is hang out for goddamn 6 weeks for 20 mins of oral exam before I can move on in live.

At the moment the "meh" overbalances the "yay" part of the whole situation. I've been eating crap, felt bad as a consequence and yeah... I think I'll soon change the focus of the blog and make it a culture/London/food blog.

Last post's bento swap turned out to be a good idea, today I received a lovely parcel filled with vegan goodness from Margot of the undead vegan. Some of the chocolate stuff and tofu snack wiener got devoured immediately as I had to run a bunch of errands after work.
Thanks a lot Margot!

With it came a bag of kutjera powder... is says it's good sprinkled on almost everything and google doesn't tell me much more, either. Aussies plz? What do you use it for?

I also cooked a little bit:
pasta with Rübstiel (rapini) from the veggie box some time ago. Ok-ish, but nothing exciting, this Rhine area vegetable.

soba with ginger, scallions and cauliflower from vegweb, because you can never have too much soba!

super ugly but extremely tasty stewed potatoes and tofu in miso gravy from VWAV. I can't believe I've never made this before. the dark miso I used was a bit overpowering, but apart from that it was lovely with some good baguette.

Bento swap

2009-04-26T14:37:00.010+01:00

I've been off work this week- officially to study for my finals, but in reality, I don't care much.
So I did a lot of lovely things... going to the farmers' market every other day, visit friends I barely see and travel spontaneously.

Also, I had a bunch of paper stuff translated... cleared out my wardrobe and found that I have too many bento boxes, too!
More than I can possibly take to London with me... so I'll have to give some away. This is mainly for readers in Europe and the UK as shipping overseas is quite expensive.

The bentos below are up for grabs, and I'd love to swap them for some food goodies :)
(if you want to buy one instead, drop me a line, too)
I have tons and tons of accessories (sauce bottles, onigiri molds, food picks and such) that have to go too, so I'd put a bunch of those in as well (if there's anything in particular that you'd like, let me know).

Super cute Cinnamoroll box, comes with one divider, holds about 300ml.

matching side dish container with one built-in divider, holds about 100ml.

sweet Hamtaro side dish container, about 120 ml
Simple black two-tiered box, holds about 550 ml, the upper tier has a waterproof lid.

"Little dolphin" two-tiered box from Japan Centre in Picadilly with awesome Engrish. Holds about 480 ml, the upper tier has a waterproof lid.

Mister Donut's two-tiered Pingu bento box, comes with a Pingu water bottle and big bento bag with zipper, the box holds about 480 ml and has a waterproof lid, too.

Vernal Nosh

2009-04-15T18:22:00.007+01:00

Yup, I learned the word "vernal" today. No idea if it's combinable with nosh though :)

Internet-free days in the office make you learn unusual words... work is funny at the moment because our phone and Internet connection is all messed up so we can't email orders, read our mail or look up at Wikipedia who Rostropovich and Skrjabin are or whether Brecht wrote any funny plays at all.

(talking about All Messed Up, Paul, if you're reading this, let me know you're still alive!)

Well, it's spring and my veggie box delivery makes me do a little happy dance in the office every Wednesday.

I didn't take a picture of last week's box but it had wild garlic and green asparagus, so I made wild garlic risotto with roasted asparagus!
An odd thing is that Germans love their white asparagus. It's nearly impossible to buy green asparagus here except for a few weeks in spring. Sadly, I love green and hate the pale fellow.

Saturday was Anne's birthday, and what do you make the co-workette with the bluest eyes in the world for her birthday?
Clafoutis! It was my first time baking with silken tofu and it worked like a charm, so easy and everybody loved it (except for the not-fruit-eating-no-not-even-in-cake-male)!
And it was pretty too... yes I actually baked something that wasn't butt ugly!

pre-baking:

finished:

And this weeks' box, containing apples, oranges, bananas, an avocado, swiss chard, onions, parsley, courgettes, and Rübstiel (similar to turnip tops).
I'm excited about the Rübstiel, I've never had it before but apparently it's a traditional green of the Rhine area.

Foodie media!

2009-04-10T12:04:00.007+01:00

Can't somebody tell stupid Germany that there is weather and temperatures somewhere between 10°C and 30C° ? I know I should be happy, but everything above 25°C makes me feel lethargic. I miss the British Isles' gulf stream influenced weather!

Yesterday I started watching Lunch Queen so I guess pretty soon I'll be all about Japanese food again. Japanese and their obsession with food produces awesome things.
Can you imagine a Western soap opera focusing on food?

A couple of weeks ago I did a swap with Kendra from vf... look what I received from England:
gummi bears, vegan shells and cheese mix, a nakd bar, raspberry licorice, a tangerine chocolate bar, ramen, noochy rice cakes, mandarin sopa and a tea tree facial mask. Thanks a lot!
I was surprised by how good the shells and cheese actually were, for something that came from a box!

Have I already written about how I love Italian Foodies ? It seems like blogland is full of Irish/Italian couples! Not vegan, but oh so nice!
Kittens gone Lentil is another awesome (vegan) blog discovery!

Lately I've been obsessed with rice soup... o-kayu, congee, jook, you name it. And after our trip to Mönchengladbach for the fake meat grocery store, I have vegan Asian meatballs and prawns!
I could eat this every day... and I do, for breakfast!

And well, more media: If you speak/understand either French or German, Arte has got a "good food" theme week at the moment, I guess 3-4 documentaries every day.
I've been enjoying the documentary with Sarah Wiener and a bunch of kids staying and cooking at a farm in Provence... I wish I was in France where nice weather also means nice surroundings!

Happy Easter! You can watch a lot of the videos online at Arte +7 .
Thanks Arte for bringing my French back to life!

Happy Spring!

2009-04-10T10:10:00.010+01:00

Or happy Easter, belated Ostara or just: a happy long weekend!
I'm looking forward to 4 days with no plans at all except for two nights at the theatre.
I can't seem to remember what the word "free time" means.

Thanks to y'all for the advise on the fish issue. I guess it's really an Omega 3/6 issue. To be honest, with all my nutrition research, I never paid attention to it properly.
(I wrote "y'all"... damn you Rachel!)

And no, of course I haven't been studying for my final exam in 4 weeks... actually, I don't care much about my grade - work reference and my English exam is much more important and those are both ace (the latter because I'm going to write it myself probably) :)

I have been busy helping out a friend who has been diagnosed with acute leukemia. I shouldn't let myself get dragged down by this, but it's really tough. Doctors say he'll be all right, but it is awkward to see someone who used to be the most energetic and sporty person I know suffering through chemotherapy.

Anyway, to the food - my camera isn't actually broken; I assume my rechargeable batteries have come to the end of their recharging life.

A couple of days ago I finally made Pasta Alla California from V-con. Why didn't I make this earlier? It's got pasta, wine, rocket and broccoli... well I guess I had to make friends with avocado first.
This was an awesome salad including tomatoes, mango, avocado (again!), pea sprouts, cilantro and a lime-soy sauce dressing. It was awesome and the picture sadly doesn't do it any justice.

Three weeks ago, I visited Azumi in Fulda and we had a taco night... now is there a trick how to eat taco shells in a not messy way?

taco supplies!

Anyway, I'm planning to do some Easter baking tomorrow. I plan on making hot cross buns (how I miss them!) and maybe a German hefezopf (tribute to Grandmother). Also, it's Anne's bday tomorrow and I offered bake something for her when she gets back to work on Wednesday.

Has anybody got any suggestions what to bake including nuts or chocolate and fruit (that's what she suggested)? Any new recipes in blogland that I might have missed?

Happy Spring!

2009-04-10T10:10:00.001+01:00

Insane Fish Cravings

2009-04-03T18:45:00.004+01:00

No food pictures again, but I have a question to ask my fellow veggies... the thing is:

For the past two weeks now, I have been craving fish. Constantly.
Hell, I have even been dreaming of fish! I walked past the Rhine yesterday and seriously considered fishing and preparing the bounty myself. I spent half an hour at the supermarket, checking out all the fish products.
I'm downright obsessed and don't understand what's going on.

When I went vegan three years ago (after years of never eating meat and egg and rarely dairy and fish), I thought I was going to crave the occasional yoghurt or morsel of fish.
Luckily, I never did. A couple of times I thought that I'd like to taste something fishy, seaweed or fake fish did the job.

I'm deeply convinced of the animal rights idea and would never for even a second consider eating or using and animal product.

I supplement B vitamins, iodine, calcium and some other things that are in fish and make sure I get enough protein.
I haven't looked into the Omega 3 issue deeply yet (going to do some research now).
What else could my body be lacking so it commands me to eat a creature of the sea?

Has anybody experience anything like this or can help me otherwise?

I'm not dead yet...

2009-03-10T19:18:00.003Z

just busybusybusy with um... stuff!
Have you heard of the Facebook group "I don't have a life,I work in Theatre..Darling!!!"? Well, I'm a very proud member of it atm.
(sorry to Rachel for dragging her to hilariously bad shows!)

My lunches have even come from a tin and my salads in a plastic box a couple of times in the last few weeks. Bentowhat?

I've been so busy I forgot that today is my third veganiversary... so I assume I should at least bake some muffins?

Praise Miso Soup and a discovery

2009-02-08T11:04:00.005Z

Recently I've become very interested in shojin ryori cooking, an old buddhist Japanese cuisine - which is purely vegan!
As much as I love tangy, spicy dishes, I enjoy the pure taste of Japanese food. Sadly, even though I work in the city with the highest Japanese population in Europe and there are plenty of restaurants, vegan food is hard to get.
(Did you know that many Japanese restaurants infuse the cooking water with dashi for making sushi rice? Bye bye veggie takeout sushi!)

I barely ever make miso soup, although I like it. This week I tried a recipe from a new cookbook, The Enlightened Kitchen . It's not 100% vegan, but I think the only un-vegan part is where she suggests cheese for sushi.

Anyway, it was a simple miso soup with sauteed aubergines and sesame, and it's heaven!

Another "new" food I discovered this week were jerusalem artichokes. I had been marvelling at the pictures of them in several cookbooks for years and was desperate for not being able to buy any. I never really bothered to look up a translation... and then, with my last veggie box, arrived a pound of so-called "Topinambur", which are - jerusalem artichokes!
How can you tell? And why does the German word sound so much more like something from the Americas than the English name?

(actually, I looked it up. They are the tubers of a sunflower and were first named Girasole, Italian/French for "sunflower. The English couldn't pronounce it and corrupted it from "Hierusalem" to "Jerusalem").

Finally, I cooked them and had them just with olive oil, herbs and cheesy baked chicory. I think they might become one of my favourite veggies. All the artichoke flavour without all the fuss that involves cooking and eating them!

Going local

2009-02-01T15:56:00.007Z

... oh no, now she's on the local trip, too! Hey, it's the only New Year's resolution I made for 2009!
I think it's funny how definitions of local vary... when someone from the US says they're only buying from their state and the surroundings, that easily covers an amount of land that could swallow Europe. At least some of it.

Let's face it: living in northwest Europe, eating only local food would restrict me to roots and tubers for pretty much all the time except the summer months.
Anyway, I found a farm in Neuss that delivers to Düsseldorf (since I would never be home in Krefeld when a delivery guy came) and subcribed to their "Single" organic veg and fruit box scheme. Actually, the main reason I started this was not as much the local aspect but the fact that when I finally have time to go grocery shopping at the end of the day, both supermarkets and Bioläden (organic grocery stores) only have the icky fruit and veg left.
So for 12-15 euro a week, I might for example get:
Grühnkohl, a giant kohlrabi, jerusalem artichokes, chicory, parsnips, ginger, oranges, apples, bananas, the smallest pears in the world and the most gigantic lemon ever!

This week box held all of this:
beetroot, salsify (I've never cooked with it, any suggestions?), an eggplant, swiss chard, onions, 2 kiwi fruit, apples, pears and oranges again and a small, orange and un-irish sharon :)

Most produce is from Germany and the Netherlands, though there are some things that are from Italy or Spain, or even farther away.
I like that I can preview what's going to be in the box every Friday and change my order online and plan around what's in the box (which is brought every Wednesday).

Another local thing are these sweet German vegan blogs that I recently discovered:
Vegan Macht Glücklich
Schlemmen ohne "Muh" und "Mäh"

Bento routine success!

2009-01-21T19:35:00.008Z

Let's not make any more lame excuses, but let me tell you about my life.
I know... blah blah...

My initial inspiration in cooking, and in so many other things in life, my grandmother, passed away on 10 January. Ever since, my work (or off work) and private life have been crazy. A very good friend is in hospital. I've met my siblings for the first time in more than 3 years!
Actually, I'm going out Friday night with my brother whose voice hadn't even started breaking the last time I met him.

Exciting times call for a routine to calm things down, so I cooked up a storm and made a nice bento every single day of last week.

Proof:
Rice, pickled ginger, hoisin-fried tofu, mixed salad. Hoisin sauce is my new love. It's like BBQ sauce, only Asian!

tagine with "Rumfort"-veggies ("Rumfort" being my own invention... it's German for "was rumliegt und fort muss" or "what's lying around and has to go or it'll go bad"), ugly apple cobbler from Joy of Vegan Baking (though it's me that made it ugly), homemade tomato bread (Jamie O. recipe and the best bread base ever!)

bulgur with carrots and parsley, crack olives from the Turkish grocery, artichoke hearts, cocktail tomatoes, tiny veggie box banana

Two stages of pho. I had a bowl in the morning and one at work in the afternoon. Rice noodles, bean sprouts, carrots, Thai basil and bok choy. I packed the broth in a separate (un-sexy) container.

TVP-based Thai massaman (muslim) curry, a kiwi fruit, cocktail tomatoes and nuts.

"Toast" by Nigel Slater

2009-01-11T15:30:00.000Z

Toast by Nigel Slater

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
I guess I love British celebrity chefs so much because I don't have to watch them on TV.

I hate all the German famous cooks because they're everywhere in the media around me, whereas somebody who only exist on the internet and in cookbooks can't get on your nerves.

So I had never really heard of Nigel Slater until about a week ago when I picked up one of his cookbooks in the library.

Even though it was a translated copy, I instantly fell in love with both his style of cooking (no-fuss, easy "recipes" that are more like broad guidelines) and writing. Plus, there are rumours he's gay.

Then I found out he's written a foodie biography of his childhood and that it was super cheap on Amazon. My copy arrived on Tuesday and I read "Toast" on Wednesday night in one sitting.

It's a journey through the Midlands of the 1960 and 70s and all the class-awareness thing that's so significant of the English. It's about traditional English food, both bad and good.

Instead of chapters, there are short stories that Slater connects with certain foods. Somehow, the jigsaw comes together to make a proper story. #

A very different yet classical coming of age story centered around food- all I could've asked for on a freezing weekday night!

View all my reviews.

Let's start blogging about vegan literature: The Case for Animal Rights

2009-01-04T17:17:00.000Z

The Case for Animal Rights by Tom Regan

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
I guess I have read enough AR literature for a lifetime, or at least for the time being.

Though I'm well used to reading theoretical philosophic literature, I couldn't manage to finish this one. I assume this is a very good book and I appreciate the critic of Peter Singer, but it takes far too long to finally arrive at the main topic, which is animal rights.

View all my reviews.

Happy 2009!

2009-01-04T12:10:00.004Z

Thank you for all your comments on my last post.

And no, the horrible restaurant night hasn't put me off veganism, the blogging hiatus was a result of... the holidays, and by that I mean me travelling 1,000 km south, then up again, and then two days later traveling 1,000 km north again.
I had a great time both in London an Munich, but barely cooked anything.

I'm ready to cook and blog again starting today, but I'm actually thinking about getting away from the food focus the blog has. There's so many pieces of art, literature and other stuff I want to share, but I don't feel like starting a new blog.

Anyway, I wanted to blog about Munich and then realised I haven't seen much of the city. I spent three days with Eva sleeping, eating,watching DVD and talking all night until mid-morning, just like when we were in school/uni.

Just once we ventured out, to Kopfeck , a vegetarian/vegan restaurant and pub, and had a huge Grillteller with the best salad of my life and ginormous heaps of fake meat. Sadly, the place was badly lit so I couldn't take any recognizable pictures :(

So instead, as always, lolcat!

My worst "vegan" meal ever...

2008-12-17T19:36:00.006Z

... happened last night.

Two years ago, we had our work Christmas dinner at a fancy restaurant that served me a nice and inventive vegan meal.
Last year I didn't attend work's Xmas party because I was in a kinda aggressive animal rights phase and would've ruined everybody's night.

This year we had a long discussion whether we should go to a traditional German or an Italian restaurant. Italian won, and I was very happy and so looking forward to it.
My co-worker who organizes the dinners is well aware what "vegan" means and made things pretty clear with the restaurant that said vegan options impose no problem for them.

As you'd expect for an Italian place. C'mon, even for people who don't know the first thing about veganism and cooking, pasta and risottos plus salad and antipasti are no-brainers.

Well, turned out I was wrong.
We arrived and were greeted with a prosecco. Very nice red wine was provided, and the antipasti were little, but ok.

Then the pasta dish arrived. First I thought they'd only accidentally used some parmesan for garnish (next to the pasta), then I realized the whole pasta was drowned in it :( They had substituted olive oil for butter but used cheese!
So I returned my first plate untouched, the waitress looked embarrassed.

20 minutes later, my next plate arrived, no cheese this time! But this time the filling of the pasta felt a little "eggy" to me. I asked others what their filling was and nobody could really tell from the taste. So I asked the waitress what's in their and she answered something in Italian of which I didn't quite get the first ingredient, but the second was pecorino cheese.

Turned out the first ingredient was fish!!!

I only ate a tiny fork full, but was so disgusted.
I was close to getting up and leaving instantly, but well, it was a work thing. Nobody would have been mad at me (actually, people around me got angrier than I did), but sometimes there's a bit of politeness inside me.

Even worse: we were quite a large group and there were two vegetarians that were served the same. They still don't know they ate dead animal last night (I only found out today)!

After the restaurant people actually figured what "vegan" meant, I was offered... nothing.
Organizing co-worker suggested me ordering a dish a la carte. I smugly listed all the vegan dishes they had on the regular menu to the waitress (I had checked online in advanced).
An hour later, I got a place of mushy spaghetti aglio olio.
Waitresses made very sure my wine glass was always filled to the brim.

When I left, they even dared asking if I was full from the meal. I did not answer because it would have turned out in a very long and angry speech.

In my private life, I would have been an incredibly nasty and complaining customer.
Hell, what if I had a fish allergy?

But then, I was utterly stupefied. I've been vegan for almost three years and I eat out a lot.
I've never had any problems getting something to eat, and have never been forced to get chips and a plain salad. There are no vegetarian restaurants in my city and I'm a very happy foodie here! The last place on earth that I would have suspected of fooling vegans was a trattoria.
Once I've recovered, I'll leave a bunch of destroying reviews online and on their website.

Rant over, sorry.

Good news: before the dinner, I went to sattgruen for a cappucino and found out they've replaced all their dairy cheese in their take-away sandwiches with vegan cheese a couple of weeks ago and nobody has noticed!

Purple risotto and mock duck from hell!

2008-12-14T12:42:00.007Z

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!

I'm curry!

2008-12-06T19:22:00.000Z

and I love online quizzes when I'm bored!

Your result for What Spice Are You Test...

You are Curry!

10% Habanero, 10% Sage, 10% Thyme, 20% Ginger, 0% Garlic, 40% Curry, 0% Cinnamon and 10% Oregano!

You are spicy and controversial!

People that love you really love you, and people that hate you... well. But it's all good. You don't mind, really.

You don't live your life according to what other people think about you. You know that you have the right to your own opinion and your own way of doing things. You know that you deserve respect for who you are and the accomplishments that you have made in life.

You tend to let people take you in smaller doses as you feel that too much may be a bit more than they can actually handle. But that's fine too, because you have a lot going on in your life and you like having the time to do it. You aren't one to let things go unfinished. Besides, you are very versatile, distinct, and unique in your own right.

You are more than likely very attractive, but you don't take much stock in those types of things. For you a good mind and a strong disposition are very important, much more important than trying to impress other people.

Take What Spice Are You Test at HelloQuizzy

The mail, the Japanese, the Irish

2008-11-30T12:52:00.012Z

It's gotten very cold and wintery here since last week. We had a crazy storm and even snow Friday last week (where I live, if we get snow at all, it's usually only a day or two in early January). So you can tell I felt like some stick-to-your-ribs goodness. A certain Irish girl that's sorta my flatmate at the moment requested stew, so we ended up making Dublin Coddle after Cherry's recipe but with homemade seitan sausages.

Seriously, I don't like European cuisine much usually, and especially not potato-based dishes, but this was the best thing I've eaten in a very long time. I was sceptical at first because the recipe seemed very simple. But all the spice and flavour from the sausages were coddled (=slowly simmered) into the stew... soooo good (and omni Dublin girl approved, what more can you ask for?).

This should probably be served with soda bread, but I didn't have any time for baking so we had it with whole wheat sandwich bread (yes, I was that busy!).

Some lovely things arrived in the mail the last two weeks or so (yay to Christmas bonus!):
This is what I received from the "Savoury Snack Swap"

a) a couple of rice cracker mixes and Mushroom Crisps! My co-workettes went crazy about the rice crackers but I haven't dared to try the shroom chips. Though, it's mushrooms and chips, so how can those possibly be bad?

b) Tapioca sticks and banana chips and from Saudi-Arabia! Haven't tried them yet... I'm scared of getting addicted to banana chips again, like I did when I was 12 or 13.

Even without celebrating Thanksgiving, these are days of friends and family feasts.
Yesterday was my grandmother's 60th birthday and I made the most awesome banana hazelnut muffins... and forgot my camera! They looked and tasted ace, I promise!

But I've got some pictures from last Saturday, when we had a small girly weekend cooking session + wine + British comedy (far too short though!).

Rachel and mystery girl sitting in my kitchen, ready to dig in! We had Japanese curry, teriyaki tempeh and stir-fried bok choy and bean sprouts with garlic (not pictured).

Another fab Japanese thing is my new Monokuro Boo bento! I love San-x, and Monokuro especially because it's not all pink and girly, but still ridiculously cute. I already have a four container-black/white piggy bento set, and a bag, so this completes the collection:

(bento holds millet risotto with peas, a plum, mixed salad with cucumber, olives and sprouts)

Food is Passion

2008-11-21T19:37:00.004Z

... and even salads can be sexy! I haven't posted in three weeks because a plain salad with bread was the most I created in the last couple of weeks. I was so busy, eating out and being invited to people's places for dinner, or just skipping cooking for a couple of mostly raw food-on-the-go days lately. I know I could at least have taken pictures, but my camera batteries died after 6 years of perpetual re-charging :( Payday will come soon and with it a new month, time to cook, money to buy fancy ingredients and new batteries. For today, I'll leave you with a quote from Margaret Visser's fabulous book "Much Depends on Dinner: The Extraordinary History and Mythology, Allure and Obsessions, Perils and Taboos of an Ordinary Meal"

This is my entry for Almond and the Hazelnut's food quote challenge. I would've love to provided a quote from a non food-related book, but everything I read at the moment is either foodie stuff, heavy AR philosophy tomes or event management reading.

"It was the custom in the past that the youngest daughter of the household had to turn the lettuce in the dressing with her fingers, maintaining the "fresh, green, female" mythology of lettuce. Dressing a lettuce made the anaphrodisiac plant "salad" (literally, "salted"); the sexual connotations of salt could add an extra erotic dimension to the girl's performance before mixed company at the dinner table. The French used to say of a still young and beautiful woman, elle retourne la salade avec les doigts ("she turns the salad in her fingers"). (and I thought this was an invention of Jamie Oliver who calls it "fairy fingers" in one of his books!)

November Rain

2008-11-01T16:24:00.007Z

Happy World Vegan Day to all of you!

This also means the MoFo is over... and I'm relieved. Honestly, I still don't understand how people manage to blog, cook, bake, shop and be an AR activist and still have a life... I can't. I'm happy if I find the time to check my private e-mail every other day. I'd love to do more for the vegan cause but I just can't spare the time.

I won't be doing much today since it's the only day and I've been to busy lately to arrange for a meetup or something :(
I had so many great plans for Halloween but work got in my way... which leads me to thinking... (yes, I should start a vegan foodie philosophy blog)-

Still, we had a neat little Halloween party, featuring too many Jamie Oliver recipes and the fact that Halloween is originally an Irish custom (when I asked people about Halloween, they'd often answer "We don't need to adapt all that American shit, do we?"). No pictures sadly, I had to revive my camera this morning (it sounded like a duck when I tried to start it!).

Anyway, recent eats:

very blurry tom yum soup! We're on winter time here again which means it's still almost dark when I get out of the house and I don't return home before it's dark again, so I'm back in my vampire vegan mood with horrible pictures. Sorry!

Fried tofu, broccoli and brown rice with homemade sweet/sour sauce.

More rice and curried veggies made with *gasp* a jarred organic curry sauce. When I buy convenience food, it's usually the only in the house that's not organic- turned out to be a big mistake. This sauce cost 2 € (would make 4-5 servings) and is divine! I didn't add any seasonings, and usually I use a lot of extra chili, ginger, garlic and soy sauce on anything.

And the only pretty bento I made this week. I'm not sure why, but all my other lunches this week looked like butt, not due to bento-making-skill or no time, but because of the nature of the dishes (curried/lentils and so on), so I didn't take any pictures. I swear they still were yum and nutritionally balanced :)
Pretty bento has mini knödel/German dumplings (not gnocci!), raw tomato sauce, 2 falafel-sort of balls and steamed peas, green beans, broccoli and brussels sprouts with balsamic vinegar.

What's your favourite vegetable?

2008-10-28T18:44:00.004Z

Warning: extremely lame vegan foodie post :) I've been thinking about this for a while (what a thing to be occupied with!), but I don't think it's worth a forum survey or something.

If you had to pick your three favourite veggies, what would you choose?

I'm for greens and rather "exotic" stuff; can you guess?

Another Survey!

2008-10-25T20:57:00.004+01:00

Thanks to Jess, we have another Mofo filler post :) I'm nowhere near the 20 posts minimum, but I have good excuses (like getting excited about interviews ;-) oh, and work, life... chinchillas?!).

1. What was the most recent tea you drank?
Coffee-strong South Indian tea from denn's biomarkt. I go through those tea phases where I obsess about one brand. I realize black tea isn't the healthiest option, but I'm healthy enough already!

2. What vegan forums do you post/lurk on? If so, what is your username? Spill!
I'm pavotrouge pretty much everywhere. I'm registered with the PPK and VFF but I barely post. I occasionally post on vegan.de. My home forum is www.veganforum.com, which surprisingly seems very unknown among bloggers.

3. You have to have tofu for dinner, and it has be an Italian dish. What comes to mind first?
Pizza with tofu ricotta.

4. How many vegan blogs do you read on an average day?

It feels like there are billions in my reader, honestly there are about 60-80. I don't read them every day but skim them all once a week when I can afford to hang out online (read: weekend days).

5. Besides your own, what is the most recent one you’ve read?
I can't really tell, see 4.)

6. If you could hang out with a vegan blogger that you haven’t met, who would it be, and what would you do?

I'd like to meet up with bazu now she's in England :) But I haven't met any vegan bloggers so I'd be happy to meet any at all!

7. If you had to base your dinners for a week around one of the holy trilogy – tofu, seitan or tempeh, which would it be?

Seitan, because it's the easiest to modify and can be used in so many different cuisines. I love tempeh but it's hard to get your hands on here and I don't care too much for tofu.

8. If you had to use one in a fight, which would it be?
Tempeh, because I know many people who are scared of it.

9. Name 3 meals you’d realistically make with that tough protein of choice!
Tempeh cacciatore from Vegan Planet, Tempeh chili spring rolls and pizza with simple Italian marinated tempeh (seems like all I ever think about is pizza...)

10. What’s a recipe in vegan blogland that you’ve been eyeing?
Two recipes have been in my bookmarks for the last couple of weeks, but I'm too lazy to get all ingredients together: Seitan bratwurst patties and Civet of Seitan.

11. Do you own any clothing with vegan messages/brands on them?
Loads. I have a herbivore sweater and tshirt (which cost me $$$ import taxes!), another black AR-themed sweater and countless tshirts.

12. Have you made your pilgrimage to the ‘vegan mecca’ yet? (Portland, duh)
Portland? London is the vegan mecca!

13. What age did you first go vegan? Did it stick?
Properly vegan, as in grasping the whole ethics? When I was 18, and it's been lasting until now.

14. What is the worst vegan meal you’ve had? Who cooked it?
Christmas dinner from work, two years ago. The salad and dessert was better than the regular menu, but the entree was three roasted baby tomatoes, and a "ratatouille" of 2 slices of courgette and a bell pepper with some rosemary thrown onto it. I was endlessly bland and I grabbed some neat Thai curry on my way home because I was still hungry.

15. What made you decide to blog?
I had a blog before but somehow lost the incentive to post. Then I got excited about veganism, cooking and everything and decided I'll feel better if I am actually contributing instead of wasting time online. Also, people kept asking me to share recipes and I got tired of writing them down each time.

16. What are three of your favorite meals to make?

1.pizza 2. pizza. 3. pizza

just kidding- though I love pizza a lot.

My favourite things to make might be:

1. Thai curry

2. vegan Katsudon

3. Fattoush - Lebanese bread salad

17. What dish would you bring to a vegan Thanksgiving-themed potluck?
Apart from never having celebrated Thanksgiving?

18. Where is your favorite vegan meal at a restaurant? How many times have you ordered it?

Simplistic pasta al' arrabiata at Vapiano. I know it's easy to make yourself but they have the best, freshest pasta in the world. I've probably eaten it 50 times in the last three years.

19. What do you think the best chain to dine as a vegan is?
I love Vapiano, an Italian cafeteria-style restaurant where everything is prepared fresh and right in front of your eyes. Plus, their prices (and wines!) can't be beaten. Half of their pasta dishes are vegan (if you tell them not to put parmesan cheese on top at the end). They're going to open their first US branches in early 2009.

20. My kitchen needs ………
Hum... I'm really self-sufficient and happy with the way things are. There are a lot of fancy gadgets but before I can fit any of these in, I'd need a bigger kitchen.

21. This vegetable is not allowed in my kitchen…..!
Savoy cabbage. There used to be many veggies I didn't like when I first moved into my own place, and I love most of them now. But this thick icky-textured cabbage that tastes like dirt shall be banned!

22. What’s for dinner tonight?
Thai noodle soup.

23. Compose your perfect vegan sandwich, right now.
Ciabatta bread, red pepper hummus, lots of olives, Italian marinated tempeh, tomatoes and pickled zucchini.

24. Add a question here!
Duh. Not again :) If there are questions, use the comment function and I'll gladly answer.

Euro-Thai Noodle Soup

2008-10-25T20:40:00.007+01:00

The first couple of dinners I spent with my Thai friend's family, her mother made a real effort to make "European" dishes for me (or what she thought traditional European food). Until I told her I don't need schnitzel and goulash every day.
Now when you live in the middle of nowhere, Asian groceries are not easy to get and we ended up having a lot of wannabe-Thai dishes with supermarket staples, including many many noodle soups.

This is my favourite and the dish that first got me into cooking when I was 15. It's not too exotic and easy to prepare, yet doesn't use fancy ingredients and it's still authentic.
The trick is to really cook everything seperate, it's still very quick to finish, I promise!

you'll need (for 2 servings or one very hungry vegan):

1 square ramen/chinese soup noodles (or spaghetti/linguine...)
1/4 block of tofu, finely diced
2 garlic cloves
1/2 red chili, cut into fine rings
2 cups vegetable broth
1 cup mung bean sprouts

garnish:

2 tbs chopped parsley
crushed peanuts
sugar
chopped spring onions
chili powder/ pickled Thai chilis

1.) Saute the tofu in a small saucepan until slightly browned, then take out of the pan and set aside.
2.) Same saucepan- bring some water to a boil and cook the noodles. Take them out.
3.) Quickly saute the garlic and chili, add broth and bring to a boil.
4.) Now assemble your bowls- first bean sprouts, then noodles, then tofu and ladle the broth on top eventually.

Serve with small bowl of all of the garnishes and enjoy :) I like mine with lots of chili and sugar!

Self-depricating vegans...

2008-10-25T20:31:00.008+01:00

...like I have been this week need their comfort food.

On Tuesday, I had dinner at a co-workers place because I helped her with some computer stuff (because I'm a super computer geek apparently ?_? it's mostly an aura thing I must have caught from all my IT friends).
She's omni but very open to trying vegan things... so we kept thinking about what we could cook and decided we didn't feel like it.
So we had ALDI soy schnitzel (which taste exactly like the chicken nuggets my grandma always stocked for my when I was little!), chips and salad. Yep, we're classy like that.

When I pulled the camera out to get a picture, Anne stopped me because she had to put sesame seeds on the salads- to make it look fancy, hehe!

I do cook!

2008-10-20T00:11:00.006+01:00

I almost can't believe it myself, but yes, I'm still cooking, and even taking pictures! Some tasty new things I've tried in the last 2 weeks:

TVP gyros, djuvec rice, tsatsiki, olives and tomatoes. Just like from the small diner in my hometown. When I was craving gyros in the last years, I'd turn to the ready-made Viana stuff. Then I found a jar of kebab spice on my kitchen shelf (Phil?) and decided to marinade some TVP in that overnight, squish out the liquid the next day and put it into a pan with loads of onions and garlic until crunchy (about 45 minutes). Totally worth it and cheaper than Viana crap for 3 € for a small serving! Djuvec style rice is simply tomato rice with peas and green beans and tsatsiki... go figure.

Simplicity! Red quinoa with eggplants that've been sauteed with tomatoes and capers and a splash of white wine. So quick and good!

More eggplant goodness! Nasu-don after Vegan Ronin's fantastic recipe with a pile of pickled ginger and spring onions. It's hard to imagine what it's like unless you try the recipe.

Sunday roast dinner (actually lunch)! Parsley roast potaoes, chicken-style roast, smashed peas and gravy. Every since my trip to Ireland and getting some foodie magazines from there, I'm so much more into Western European cuisine. Yes, I cooked this!

Political Cooking: Wam Kat

2008-10-19T08:52:00.005+01:00

Ok, this is going to be a German-centered book since the guy I'm talking about is Dutch and now lives in Germany, plus his book has only been published in German so far.

I hadn't heard of Wam Kat before I read an article about his new book "24 Rezepte zur kulinarischen Weltverbesserung" ("24 recipes to make the world a better place", dang German long words that can't be translated!) on Utopia.de.
A political vegetarian cookbook with a twist of biography in it? Sounded like my kind of book, but 25 € seemed a bit overpriced for it.

So I started reading about Wam Kat, who has been cooking for the masses for free at eco/environmental/AR gigs since the 70s, founded his own environmental network and was one of the first bloggers ever (Wikipedia says much more).

I also read some interviews and watched this video:

That convinced me to get the book... usually I wait until I've tried a bunch of recipes or have at least read a book from page to page, but I felt an urgent need to write about this book.

I'm not easy to surprise when it comes to cookbooks, and even though there's only 24 recipes in there (really? it feels like so many more!), I'm eager to try every single one of them. They are really inventive, and if not, have a lovely personal touch to them, and even though the book is called vegetarian 95% of the recipes are vegan. Where not, Wam suggests vegan alternatives- and I mean, for a change, real alternatives, not "leave out xy if you're vegan".

Plus, there's so much general info about the idea of Volksküche, left politics and just random chatter that's so much fun to read.

I'm going to test some recipes soon- and if you think your German is acceptable, give the book a try (after all, it's not the author's native language, either).

Did I mention Wam has the cutest Dutch accent ever?

Blog Action Day 2008 - Poverty

2008-10-14T19:36:00.009+01:00

(yes, I'm aware it's not quite 15 October yet. I'll be out all day tomorrow and the day after so rather early than not at all)

In the past couple of weeks, I think I've posted enough about how veganism is one possible solution against world hunger, how important it it to buy fair trade products where possible, about living on a budget and wasting food.

I'm not going to lecture today, I just want people to stop a moment and reconsider their standards.

Now that the international stock market and economy has been crashing for the last weeks, people are worried about losing their savings, not being able to afford a second car, not having their weeknight take-outs and so on.

The official definition of "poverty" in Germany (yes, we have official stuff for everything) is when you people live on less than ~730 € a month (per person). I lived on far less while growing up and also when I first moved out into my own apartment.

In fact, I'm not that far above that figure right now, and I live in my own place in the city centre, can afford good food, a travel every now and then, buying books and clothes, going to gigs and pretty much everything I'd like to.

Growing up, I was one of the poorest kids at school. Which meant I didn't get fancy designer teen clothes and my family could not afford to go on holiday except for visiting relatives. I was the only kid in my grade whose parents didn't own a car.
Still, we had clothing on our backs and plenty of food in the house at all times. We even all had our own TVs and computers. We had proper health care and social insurance.
Is this "poverty"?

Classmates kept pitying me for the fact that I started working part-time when I was 13 so I could pay for trips, clothes (on top of what was necessary; my mom paid the essential, but teenage girls...) and (gasp!) my own Internet connection and mobile phone.

I get incredibly angry when people moan about how expensive things are yet they can pay International travels, cars and fancy gadgets.
Could it be, that our Western world has lost its healthy views on what's "normal"?

Let's have a look at this neat statistic:
(many of you will know it already, but it's so striking I felt the need to post it today)

If we could reduce the world’s population to a village of precisely 100 people, with all existing human ratios remaining the same, the demographics would look something like this:

The village would have 60 Asians, 14 Africans, 12 Europeans, 8 Latin Americans, 5 from the USA and Canada, and 1 from the South Pacific

51 would be male, 49 would be female

82 would be non-white; 18 white

67 would be non-Christian; 33 would be Christian

80 would live in substandard housing

67 would be unable to read

50 would be malnourished and 1 dying of starvation

33 would be without access to a safe water supply

39 would lack access to improved sanitation

24 would not have any electricity (And of the 76 that do
have electricity, most would only use it for light at night.)

7 people would have access to the Internet

1 would have a college education

1 would have HIV

2 would be near birth; 1 near death

5 would control 32% of the entire world’s wealth; all 5 would be US citizens

33 would be receiving --and attempting to live on-- only 3% of the income of “the village”

How poor are you?

(the original version can be found here, this is an update and abbreviated one)

Wholesome lunchbox October!

2008-10-12T21:52:00.005+01:00

I seriously need to get back into bento-ing. Ok, I need to get back into pretty much everything ambitious cooking, I've been so lazy the last couple of weeks!

As most bento events are a) contests and I hate competition in my free time or b) about cutesy bento or even artistic kyara-ben. I love cooking with a bit of cute in it, but I'll always stay an impatient girl.

So I was very happy to find out about the monthly Wholesome Lunchbox event hosted by Coffee and Vanilla.

This is tomorrow's bento and my entry for this month. I even bothered to "make" a background!

The green "Natural Leaf" box (because who doesn't "Love Natural Blessing"?) has crispy homemade gyoza with seitan, spring onion and mushroom filling. Underneath, there's a small tossed salad of spinach, some tomato wedges and home-grown mizuna.

For sweet things, I have green grapes and Italian lemon/orange cake (recipe to follow soon!).
Can't wait for Monday!

Another me me...

2008-10-12T12:22:00.004+01:00

My weekend plan (i.e. no plan for the weekend!) worked out and I got some proper cooking, baking, cleaning and planting done, as well as recipe copying and other stuff.

Next week is going to be full of blogging events that I don't want to miss out on... so come on, camera, re-charge your batteries quickly...

Until then, I'll bore you with this year's mofo survey by
Food Snobbery is my Hobbery

1. Name a song that involves food in some way.

Die Banane - Die Ärzte (yes, a song called "the banana")

2. What criteria do you use when choosing a new cookbook to buy?

I don't go for the books with fancy covers or lots of pictures, though I like a certain DIY-look as with everything I buy. When browsing for books, it's important that the recipes match the way I cook. Buying Western-centered books is a waste of money for me as I never ever try things, or if I do, don't really like them.
There are a few exceptions, but mostly, I'll be happy with Asian, Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cookbooks.

Another thing that's probably odd is that I like books that have a certain touch to them, for example a cloth-bound cover instead of a paperback.

3. What did you eat today?

Thai rice and mushroom coconut soup

4. Name a vegan food that you know exists but you have never tried.

Fiddlehead Ferns

5. The Food Network just called and needs you to start your new show tomorrow. What will the title of the show be?

I beg you pardon, mainstream TV?!

6. Favorite hot sauce or other spicy condiment?

Asian "Sweet Chili Sauce for chicken" (best without chicken!)

7. How old were you when you became vegetarian/vegan?

after having tried different stages of vegetarianism and going back to an omni diet every now and then, I went vegan shortly before I turned 19.

8. Favorite vegan cheeze?

Veganwonderland's "Keehse", in fact the only one that I'll eat.

9. Cutest baby animal?

Guinea pigs, because they're just like miniature versions of the grown up piggies.

10. Favorite type of jam/jelly/marmalade/preserves?

Homemade elderberry... morello cherry... my own Bratapfel-rum jam... can't choose.

11. Do you take any vitamins/supplements?

I buy some VEG1 every now and then, but don't worry if I run out because I eat plenty of fortified food (making Alpro rich...)

12. What food/dish most embodies the Fall season?

Apple strudel, vegetable soups.

13. What food would you have a hard time living without?

Pasta, and I mean the real stuff. Gluten-intolerance would be so hard for me! Also a life without green tea, olives and red wine.

14. Coffee, tea, or hot chocolate?
tea, mostly green and herbal teas but I enjoy some chai or a good cuppa black tea every now and then, too.

15. It's 10PM and you're starving. What do you eat?

that's what pasta was made for. It's strange buy I have to eat something after 10 PM or I'll wake up in the night, starving. So if I don't have any leftovers, I'll cook some spaghetti and have them with arrabiata sauce or olive oil, chili and garlic. Fruit or veg won't fill that nightly vegan eating machine up!

16. If you have an animal companion, what is his/her favorite food?

Raisins are crack to chinchillas. Seriously.

17. Worst injury you've gotten in the kitchen?

None... though people always fear I'll hurt myself and tell me I look clumsy in the kitchen.
Now that's the reason why I don't own a proper chef's knife!

18. When you have a food-related question, who do you call?
Usually the Internet, or my friend Dan or Yu who are both fantastic, yet omni cooks.

19. Summer is ending- What food will you miss most?

This summer's harvest was disappointing, so there's nothing I'm going to miss. Usually I'd mourn over the last lovely tomatoes and cherries.

20. What snacks do you keep in your purse/backpack/desk at work?

None, as shops are really close and I can go out buy something if I really fancy it. We're a health-conscious bunch so we usually have fruit and maybe even some salad ingredients in the office at all times. Plus, there's bento.

21. Favorite soup to make on a rainy day?

Dhal or minstrone. Any day!

22. What's your favorite combination of fresh vegetable and/or fruit juices?

Ew. I just can't have vegetable juices. I like mango-apple, though.

23. Favorite brand of root beer?
No root beer round here!

24. Make up your own question!

Favourite Breakfast?
Soup! Doesn't matter if it's leftover veggie soup or Japanese/Thai-ish breakfast soup.

Back to organic

2008-10-10T17:58:00.003+01:00

No food pics today, but I have a goal to share with you folks today.
I've discovered I spend way too much money on food at the moment and end up throwing away a lot of stuff.
As much as I like to cook for people, entertain and stuff my co-workettes with cookies, people can only eat until they're full.

And I have a very snobby thing to admit... though I am well aware that there are millions of people out there who don't have enough food and are even on the verge of starving... but I don't appreciate conventional food properly. I guess it's just that throwing out "cheap" food doesn't hurt as much as organic produce.

I used to buy 90% organic for quite some time but somehow lost track of it. So my vegan mofo aim is to return to being more eco-conscious, spend less and waste less.

So my plan is:
a) return to making a meal plan and shopping list - and stick to the shopping list
b) only buy organic OR local
c) buy fair trade, where available
d) buy non-organic/non-local/non-fair only if these options don't offer quality, good-looking produce, cost more than 2x than conventional (trainee here!) or are simply not available (e.g. it's hard to find chocolate chips in Germany at all, no way you'd find organic ones!).

How about you? What products will you only buy in organic (my rule is: everything I'm going to eat raw or grows underground must be organic or I won't touch it) and fairly traded (chocolate/cocoa, coffee, certain exotic fruit) and how much of your overall food purchases?

(and now the first weekend in more than a month with almost no plans and time to cook is beginning!)

Where I cook...

2008-10-06T20:34:00.008+01:00

for now... at the moment it's uncertain if I'll move, when and where. Well, at the latest, next year, to the UK, that's what's certain.

The rest... flatshare searching blues... anyway, this is my first and most beloved tiny kitchen for now, and I'm very proud of it.

The cooking area (only a kitchenette!) is very small, but I've worked a lot on it and can fit everything in my kitchen. Plus, there's quite a bit of space for entertaining guests.
Believe it or not, but up to 15 people fit in here!

Er... please kindly ignore the dirty dishes... kitchenette is shiny nonetheless!

Cookbook, dish, bento and other stuff shelf, mini coffee machine, electric kettle, my mini convectional oven <3>
All the counter space I have is this wooden IKEA board, but it's enough for me. Only must remember to fold it down at night or I'll run into it on my way to the bathroom at night or in the morning.

It's a very small, mixed-together and cheaply equipped kitchen, but it's mine and I wouldn't trade for a fancy, shiny huge one :)

They all look the same...

2008-10-05T16:40:00.007+01:00

...curries, that is. After reading the PPK "let's use our cookbooks more often" threads and finding out I'm running totally late for participating, I decided try some more recipes from Vegan Planet.

Which didn't express me. Don't get me wrong, I love how the book is international and seems to have a recipe for everything, but none of it has had that "wow" effect yet.

So we have lentil curry (which made a load, so I ate it 5 days in a row!):

And green bean-chickpea tagine, served with V-con red quinoa and chickpea pilaf. I left out the dried fruit because a) I didn't have any b) I'm not particularly fond of dried fruit in cooked things

I didn't manage to whip up a cake for Alex's birthday (as if I ever managed a properly iced birthday cake, anyway!), so I made chocolate muffins that look huuuge in this picture.
Talking about cakes, check out this site with fucked up cakes made by professionals!

I was meant to be at a demo on Saturday but we were horribly late. Sadly, everybody had already left and we couldn't catch up with the march anymore- luckily, that meant more waffles for us!

Now the question of the day: find out who this handsome stranger eating a vegan waffle is and win... a date with him and his pet owl ?

Vegan no-fo

2008-10-01T13:01:00.003+01:00

I was all excited about starting to blog away again, but now so many things are happening at the moment, and a friend from London decided to visit on very short notice.

As much as I love entaining people, it's all a bit stressfull at the moment.

Now it's the first day of Vegan Mofo and I skipped breakfast, forgot my bento, had a boring salad and have been feeling a bit sick all day. Not a good start, but maybe it'll turn tonight...

News from Berlin and France

2008-09-20T14:42:00.006+01:00

Apparently, the AR and vegan community in Continental Europe is gradually catching up with the UK and the US :)

This week, Attila Hildmann announced he's going to give vegan cooking classes in Berlin soon. Even if you're not in Germany, checking out his recipes (most are available in English) won't hurt. He first got me into vegan cooking in the good old days.

Furthermore, there's a new (one of the first?) French book called Cuisine vegan facile out there for only 3 € + postage, available from Droites des Animaux, though I'll yet have to check out if they ship abroad.

Not much cooking for me this week :( I hope things will return back to normal after Monday.

My Vegan Asian Takeaway

2008-09-16T21:02:00.006+01:00

- well, almost, if I lived in Düsseldorf. But good news is that Jade's also delivers within the city so I could order in from work :)

As couple of weeks ago I read that a Chinese diner in Bilk had changed to all vegetarian (mostly vegan) options after being a regular omni place for ten years or so.

Two weeks ago, I finally went there and was thrilled- though it's got the size and atmosphere of a small greasy takeout place (there are five or six seats available, ok but far away from comfortable or fancy), they've got all the fake meat/fish options, authentic Thai cuisine and some creative own fusion food dished at reasonable prices.

Not to forget a slightly wonky but charming chef and a piggy on top of the fridge:

For starters, I had the second-best Tom Yum soup in my life, and I've had a lot of it. I nearly choked on this one when Chrissy asked me who this "Tom Yum guy" is and told me it sounds like it's the name of an Asian foodie ^^

Then I ordered a Thai curry with seitan and fake bacon... I know, boring choices but both are my favourite Thai dishes and it's easy to judge a restaurant's quality by these items. The fake bacon was a bit too realistic to me, the seitan good and the veggies awesome.

Chrissy had some mock duck and veggie stir fry dish with an ovo-vegetarian fish patty that I can't review (the only downside of the place- fake fish is made with egg, anything else is or can be ordered to be made vegan).

I also had a Bionade, paid 10 € and left the place stuffed and happy, planning to return very soon (hopefully this Friday!).

Sorry for the crappy pictures, we went directly after work so I didn't take my camera.

For anybody who's in the area and would like to check out the place, this is their website with the complete menu.

Veggie Street Day 2008

2008-09-12T08:19:00.015+01:00

I spent the entire past weekend trying to prevent stalls and leaflets from being blown around by the wind, and the consequence of that is that instead of seeing Conor Oberst live oder going to a demo in Dresden, I'm staying inside with a cold and probably will all weekend T_T

I hate petty sicknesses like this, especially it's an occasion for many people to point a finger at me and say "It's because your vegan.", oh how I loathe it!

Anyway, last Sunday I was at the theatre, no pictures from that (though they had awesome "flying cows" outside!), but Saturday was Veggie Street Day in Dortmund, one of the few vegan fairs in Germany.

Time flew by, meeting all kinds of people (when did I happen to meet them all?) and eating not quite as much as I would've liked to.

Anyway, I only spent 5 €... it was a cheap day that started with me finding a whole bunch of bananas on the street. I carefully looked around me and then decided to take them with me, freeganism made easy!

Then there was veganwondercakes (affiliated with the awesome www.veganwonderland.de) with those beauties that, alas, weren't up for sale until 4 pm:

So instead we decided to go for the regular bakes sale, which was also awesome, though not quite as pretty:

In the afternoon, it got really crowded and there was a singer who looked like a blonde version of Chris de Burgh.

There also was a tombola, and I won a baggy of vegan white chocolate chips (and a guy who won a small purse gave it to me)!

I can't post this without mentioning the hero of the day, sunflower guy... he showed up at some point and everyone thought he was part of the veggie thing... but it turned out that he was promoting some crazy event which includes teenagers having to climb up a tower and then sit in a tippee where Mr Sunflower would answer questions they have about sex.
(no, I'm not on crack and that's exactly what the leaftlet said!)

Anyway, after I had tried to sneak a proper picture of Mr Sunflower, he finally revealed his true self next to a vegan chili stand:

Me-mosaic

2008-09-09T06:18:00.003+01:00

There's plenty of food pics on the way, but for now I want to share this beautiful idea I found on here; I've also been thinking about making a vegan photo mosaic, what do you think?

It works this way: Reply the twelve questions below. Enter the answer to each question into the Flickr search and pick your favourite picture on the first site. Copy the URL into the Mosaic Maker (3 colums, 4 rows), presto!

The Questions:
1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food?
3. What high school did you attend?
4. What is your favorite color?
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. Favorite drink?
7. Dream vacation?
8. Favorite dessert?
9. What do you want to be when you grow up?
10.What do you love most in life?
11. One word to describe you.
12. Your Flickr name.

Return of the Potluck Brunch

2008-09-03T05:06:00.007+01:00

After three month's break, which felt like three years at least, another vegan brunch/potluck took place in Düsseldorf eventually.

We didn't stay long because it was hot- no breeze at all and they started a BBQ in the crammed backyard and also because I had to work at the opera later.

Anyway, here's the grub:

couscous-herb salad, a bread roll, TVP gyros, tomato and cucumber, a small muffin-cup mushroom pastry, half a bread roll and tomato spread to die for.

Apple pancake, tsatsiki sauce with oven-baked zucchini and bell pepper and a tart with custard icing (the same as on the cupcake above). We found out why it's called icing- it melted away in the sun!

Big pile o'sweetness... not why I ate, but Eva who though omni, thorougly enjoyed everything. And yes, she finished the entire serving!
(Apple pancake, fruit salad, chocolate cake, vanilla custard with fruit filling, purple custard and a cupcake)

Four-corns and the infamous emo sheep!

2008-08-30T21:32:00.012+01:00

This week was crazy, and it's not even over yet!

Work was especially insane and so I ended up not checking my emails in four days, let alone doing anything else that required switching on the computer at home.

So today I decided to kick back a little and went to Gut Heimendahl, a non-profit farm that specializes in breeding old cattle breeds, especially sheep.

While it's not a vegan place- they sell their own pork, chicken and wool- they sell very little and it's one of the most animal-friendly farms I've seen so far (and I visited a lot, growing up in the country).

It always makes for a nice weekend trip and they have an awesome shop that sells local veg, homemade bread, sauces, chutneys, pickles etc.

This guy first didn't want to come near us, but then kept posing and seemed slightly disappointed when we put the cameras away. Notice- four horns! They also had a breed that had "only" three.

The cutest doggie that joined us when we sat down for a while, and Eva taking a probably better picture of him ^^

I have more pics but no pictures editing programme to flip them round... I'm still learning about Linux, I guess.

Consumerism: I bought a sourdough bread mix for my new bread machine, tomato-apple chutney and plums for from the farm's shop. If I weren't so lazy I'd have made a tart with it already. Maybe tomorrow.

Recent bentos:

Pizza, cherries, dates and cucumber

Cucumber/wasabi maki, pickled ginger, tomato slices, a packet of Maoam candy and Mexican chocolate cake.

The Vegan's Hundred

2008-08-24T19:54:00.002+01:00

Scanning my camera this morning, I realized I hadn't done any pictureworth, let alone blogworthy cooking this week and neither on the weeked... so this came in handy!

I didn't find anything to cross out, since most things that I haven't yet eaten are either unavailable to me or were unheard of until now. Though green smoothies are a concept that makes me shudder.

Thanks to Hannah of Bittersweet for the Vegan's Hundred, a list of 100 vegan foods that you should eat at some point in your life.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it:

1) Copy this list into your own blog, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.
4) Post a comment here once you’ve finished and link your post back to this one.
5) Pass it on!

1. Natto
2. Green Smoothie
3. Tofu Scramble
4. Haggis
5. Mangosteen (the juice at least)
6. Creme brulee
7. Fondue
8. Marmite/Vegemite
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Nachos
12. Authentic soba noodles
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Taco from a street cart
16. Boba Tea
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Gyoza
20. Vanilla ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Ceviche
24. Rice and beans
25. Knish
26. Raw scotch bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Caviar
29. Baklava
30. Pate
31. Wasabi peas
32. Chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Mango lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Mulled cider
37. Scones with buttery spread and jam
38. Vodka jelly
39. Gumbo
40. Fast food french fries
41. Raw Brownies
42. Fresh Garbanzo Beans
43. Dahl
44. Homemade Soymilk
45. Wine from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Stroopwafle
47. Samosas
48. Vegetable Sushi
49. Glazed doughnut
50. Seaweed
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Tofurkey
54. Sheese
55. Cotton candy
56. Gnocchi
57. Piña colada
58. Birch beer
59. Scrapple
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Soy curls
63. Chickpea cutlets
64. Curry
65. Durian
66. Homemade Sausages
67. Churros, elephant ears, or funnel cake
68. Smoked tofu
69. Fried plantain
70. Mochi
71. Gazpacho
72. Warm chocolate chip cookies
73. Absinthe
74. Corn on the cob
75. Whipped cream, straight from the can
76. Pomegranate
77. Fauxstess Cupcake
78. Mashed potatoes with gravy
79. Jerky
80. Croissants
81. French onion soup
82. Savory crepes
83. Tings
84. A meal at Candle 79
85. Moussaka
86. Sprouted grains or seeds
87. Macaroni and “cheese”
88. Flowers
89. Matzoh ball soup
90. White chocolate
91. Seitan
92. Kimchi
93. Butterscotch chips
94. Yellow watermelon
95. Chili with chocolate
96. Bagel and Tofutti
97. Potato milk
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Raw cookie dough

*If you are wondering what some of these are or how they might be made vegan, just visit one of the several links to Bittersweet blog. There are links to descriptions on many of the items there.

Eating my reds... and greens.

2008-08-17T14:55:00.014+01:00

So I was back to work on Monday and had a lot of stuff to catch up with, hence no fancy cooking. Monday night I realized that I had green beans that were about to go bad, so I made the amazingly quick from Vegan Forum's South Indian Recipe thread :) I couldn't believe something without onions and garlic could be so good!

This week's bento: Mini Mr Bento with the most awesome chili I've ever had- I'm not particularly fond of chili and know I know why- it just didn't have sausage and pasta. Try Jade's recipe, it's grand (second post on this thread). The other containers have strawberries and red currant cake. I've been exploring some DIY sites lately and was pleased to find out both Craftster and Instructables have a bunch of vegan recipes and green living ideas. Yet another one with strawberries and currant cake, plus dates and mixed nuts and the Shepherd's Pie from one of the Irish foodie mags (must remember to post the recipe!)- what is it with Shepherd's pie that it doesn't photograph well at all? The blue strawberry has brown sauce. Somewhere along the line I remembered to switch from eating all those red things to getting my greens, so here's my leafy green bento with farfalle with capers and spinach, peas, cherry tomatoes and dates. Anyway, the recipe of the week came, as so often, from a Jamie Oliver book. It's cherry foccaccia, which is so easy I don't have to post a recipe really. It's a yeast dough, shaped into a flat bread with vanilla-sugarry cherries and margerine kneaded in and it's best right out of the oven for breakfast or as a dessert with ice cream. Today's cooked breakfast followed up close... I've talked about Germans and cooked breakfast before, anyhow, this morning I decided it's time for a nice hash, sausage and shroom breakfast.

It's Sunday after all! Still, isn't the best thing about summer the abundance of red food (tomatoes, berries...)?

J-Drama and Pasta Cravings

2008-08-10T15:18:00.009+01:00

So I'm back to work tomorrow... I've started missing making bentos over the last few days!

Anyway, being the old Japanophile and anime otaku that I am, I spent the last couple of days (rainy weather) watching far too much anime and j-dramas online.

One of them especially caught my eye- "Bambino!" is based on a manga and is about a guy who wants to become a chef in an Italian restaurant. How awesome is that? It's a lovely coming of age drama with a very good cast as well, having Ayaka Komatsu (who also did Sailor Venus in Sailor Moon live action) and Sasaki Kuranosuke (whom I loved as hot engineer guy in Zettai Kareshi!).

The story is realistic, doesn't have any silly romance (yay!), and it's mostly about pasta, so you will feel an urge to cook some after watching. How about that, East Enders/Grey's Anatomy/*insert any other mainstream Western series?

I watched all 11 episodes over the last two days and it was so fun... take that from a TV-hater like me.

I felt like embedding a video, but unfortunately, crunchyroll doesn't have that option yet and lower quality, so watch it with Spanish subtitles on youtube if you can (they have a few episodes in English, too), or pay a visit to crunchyroll, which totally rocks about Asian drama and anime, anyway (there's also a drama about cake that I'll check out next).

It's also peak season for red currants here... seems like those are not popular in other countries, but I remember growing up stealing red currants from the garden in my kindergarten and also my grandma making red currant jam.
I love the tart, sour taste of red currants and don't mind eating them on their own.

So I bought a kilo (for a 1.50 €) at the market the other day and decided to make a red currant cake. Turned out tasty, but the berries sunk to the ground (must flour them next time!) and I made it an improvised upside-down cake which was totally fat-free yet moist and fluffy. I also kept cooking stuff from the awesome Irish foodie magazine, including this not really picture-worthy but delicious miso ramen: Apart from that, it's summer time anyway, so I mostly did Italian cooking (even before Bambino!), as a simple gratin of zucchini and tomatoes with lots of garlic, thyme and olive oil and risotto with loads of arugula. I'm not a summer person, but still don't want it to end, harvest-wise!

Lentil and chickpea Curry

2008-08-04T09:55:00.002+01:00

Because sometimes a short vacation is all you need to get back into that creative mood.

So many things have happened in the last weeks- Ireland was great though I was really disappointed by Dublin. It's smaller than I'd thought, not pretty or "fair" at all, loads of tourists and above all, inaffordable! That's why I pretty much lived on pasta and toast, nothing fancy to fotograph really.

Anyhow, I visited a lovely vforumer in Belfast, and when I missed the coach back, it was raining cats and dogs and I had £ 10 to spend, I stocked up on foodie magazines. And oh, they're so much better than those lame housewife-ones you can get in Germany.

I got this recipes from one of them, and it's easy, cheap and versatile (have it with chutney= Indian, with coriander and coconut milk= Thai, with Ketchup= err, English?, but it's also good on its own).

In the first place, I didn't really understand why it's called a curry, but then I found out there's no other description that matches it. Anyhow, the recipe:

(officially serves 4, but I guess that's when you don't have anything else with it... I already fed 4 people and there's still half left)

4 tbs olive oil
2 onions, roughly chopped
2 tbs red curry paste (Thai/Indian doesn't matter, I used massaman)
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
200g lentils, rinsed and drained
600 ml vegetable stock
170g green beens, halved
2 yellow peppers, seeded and chopped
1 tin chickpeas, drained
12 cherry tomatoes, halved

Saute the onions in a huge pan until soft.
Stir in the curry paste and garlic, fry for a minute. Add the lentils and broth, bring to a boil and let simmer for 20 mins or until the lentils are soft.
Add beans and peppers and cook until the lentils are al dente. Stir in chickpeas and tomatoes and let heat through.

Some days you'd better stay in bed...

2008-07-26T18:08:00.002+01:00

I meant to upload a bunch of pics and blog today, but accidentally deleted the data on my camera.

BBQ today didn't work out neither will the planned brunch tomorrow. I'm all emo. I hope a week in Dublin will cheer me up and bring shiny happy new posts.

See ya!

My Asian Vegan Kitchen

2008-07-06T10:28:00.008+01:00

I haven't made enough recipes from The Asian Vegan Kitchen to do a proper review like I did for Vegan Fire and Spice, but I can already say I love the book a lot, especially because it doesn't focus on the "common" Asian countries for cooking (aka Indian, Japanese, Chinese and maybe Thai), but also has breathtaking Malaysian, Vietnamese and -joy!- Burmese recipes.

I don't know anything about Burmese food, but I know the Cauliflower Curry with pasta is worth the entire price of the book.

It's not as spicy as your average Indian curry and not tangy like Thai curry. It's totally different but familiar at the same time. It's creamy and above all, it photographs well, which is quite unique for curry.

Go make it if you've got the book!

Recent bento:

Pasta with pesto, garlicky white asparagus and cherries... the last proper asparagus of the sesason that I could lay my hands on :/

Simple overslept bento: brown rice with scallions, and sesame seeds, plum sauce in the green container, half a fig, three cherries and two mini chocolate chili muffins.

It's finally summer... time for penguins

2008-07-01T18:32:00.003+01:00

which means even the vegan eating machine that is me doesn't feel much like cooking. Actually, I've tried quite a lot of new recipes over the past days, but nothing really fancy and photogenic.

Instead, I'm sharing my one and only, my everything... after bidding for several months on ebay and never winning, I got a Pingu bento <3
(ok... I won 2 at a time, so be prepared for the one-tiered version).

This bento had green grapes, gyoza and pancake roll-ups (with chocoreale and strawberry jam).

I was a Pingu addict as a child and am currently going through a retro phase because someone at work told me I make noises like the Pingu characters while I'm working.

And for those who never met Pingu and his adorable sister Pinga, grab some popcorn and watch Pingu making some :) (what? it's food related, right?)

Mememe--- meh?

2008-06-26T19:40:00.002+01:00

Actually, I'm happy that I haven't been tagged by anyone so far because I really came to despise me-mes five years ago when everyone in the anime otaku community I was in back then loved them and I received a bunch of tag-related mails every fucking day.

Any, this one posted at Yeah that Vegan Shit made my laugh so hard I had to do it, even though I haven't examined the boob thing closely ^^

What are five things on your to-do list for today?

1) Survive friend's wedding party
2) not empty that bottle of red wine
3) take laundry out of the washing machine
4) watch the soccer match... though not voluntarily
5) feed chinchillas

What are five snacks you enjoy?

1) ramen noodles... it's the addictive msg
2) PB & J bagels
3) dried cranberries
4) any variation of spring rolls
5) cereal throughout the day

What are five things you would do if you were a billionaire?

1) move abroad
2) travel around the world
3) finally buy that Macbook
4) buy a lot of useless kawaii stuff
5) donate money, because I seriously don't feel more money could make me any happier

What are five of your bad habits?

1) interrupting people when speaking
2) twirling and playing with my curls
3) being passionate about a new thing at first and then dropping it
4) eating a warm meal 3x a day
5) copying the accents of people around me - be it in German, English, French of Spanish

What are five places where you have lived?

1) middle of nowhere, Germany
2) 2 months in East Anglia
3) another two in Düsseldorf, Germany
4) Krefeld, Germany
5) middle of nowhere again

What are five jobs you’ve had?

1) cashier at supermarket
2) same supermarket, taking care of dairy and meat section :/
3) newspaper girl
4) language tutor
5) telling-old-ladies which opera might suit them, selling tickets and making plans girl
(current training aka cultural events management)

Tag! You're it if you ...

1) are vegan
2) have no idea what's on the billboard charts at the moment
3) can't remember the last time you had a "(fake) meat and two veg" meal
4) dream in at last two languages
5) have kissed a girl

Just copy this survey into your blog if you meet the above criteria, and don't forget to link back to mine.

Histamine free blues...

2008-06-17T17:53:00.006+01:00

Cooking is a bit of a drag nowadays as my best friend has been diagnosed with histamine intolerance two weeks ago... as I make a lot of fancy new stuff when people visit, it's been really hard since then.
He's an omni but it seems he can't have anything!

Another wave of depression hit me when I opened Firefox one day and all my bookmarks, including lots of recipes to try, were gone and I didn't have a backup...

Anyway, I've been cooking and bentoing a bit.

The Chilli Garlic Tempeh Spring rolls from VeganDad are the best spring rolls I've had in ages! I want to make more, but it seems the asparagus season over here is slowly fading... I haven't seen green asparagus here in over a week.

Finally, once again a bento I'm really proud of, containing a noodle-stir fry with beefy seitan (loosely leaning on the Sezuan fried noodles recipe in Asian Vegan Kitchen), a vanilla-pear-cardamom muffin, cherry tomatoes and Japanese pickled cucumber with wakame, packed in my big one-tier Muji bento. It didn't look so pretty after the tram ride, but uh well, live and learn.

Next time I'll pack any sweets seperately as vanilla-cardamom-pear-sour-wakame is not the greatest muffin concoction on earth.

Apparently, histamine is an enzyme that can cause allergy-like reactions. It's a regular substance of the human metabolism, but some products contain a lot of it or make the body realease more than is good for someone who is sensitive to it.

In our case, that means:
- no tomatoes, no spinach, no celery
- nothing that's been re-heated or pre-packaged or pickled
- absolutely nothing fermented, from soy sauce to beer to red wine, not even vinegar!

PLUS the doctor's put him on a diet for the next month which means: no dairy (all right), no soy products (can be done) , no gluten (impossible for the way I cook normally!)

PLUS other allergies: no citrus fruit, no peppers, stone fruit and no nuts.

Which leaves me with cooking Thai curry without any protein foods and rice, onigiri with cucumber and daal without tomatoes.

Unfortunately, days and days of googling haven't yielded any useful results and there don't seem to be any good cookbooks either. I'd love to hear your recipe ideas!

Vegans against world hunger

2008-06-08T13:06:00.006+01:00

"Every child who dies of hunger in today's world has been murdered."

(Jean Ziegler)

Yesterday was the first demonstration against world hunger in Cologne, organised by a couple of local AR groups as well as attac.

What for?

producing one unit of meat require an average of 8 units of plant based food (mainly grains and soy)
that means 35 % of the world's total grain crop is used to feed cattle
meanwhile, 840 million humans world wide do not have access to enough food... we're not talking about "I could eat something" hungry, but about being nowhere near to meeting the required 1000 calories a day that keeps the metabolism going
every minute, 11 children world wide die because of malnutrition

The problem is not that there's not enough food for all of us. The problem is what it is used for and major corporations speculating and making money with the poverty of others.
If the crops used to feed cattle would be used to feed humans, we could easily nourish double of today's world population.

I'd better not even start talking about the waste of water and other natural ressources.
Even if you're 150% cold hearted about animals and animal rights- can you ignore those facts when it comes to humans, dear omni reader?

There were about 150 people at the demo which was really well-mannered and quiet for an AR thing from my experience, but there's a bigger one planned in Nuremberg on 13 September.

That living a cruelty-free life that respects both humans and animals is possible was shown by the ever popular nearly vegan restaurant/takeaway Sattgruen from Düsseldorf as well by a bake sale.

soy tomato stew with rice and loads of parsley:

apple-something cake, another non-definable one and strawberry cream goodness!

More Bento

2008-06-01T12:23:00.004+01:00

I bet this is getting boring... here are three bento from last week.

# 1 has brown rice cucumber sushi with pickled ginger, wasabi and soy sauce, apple slices and raisins.

# 2 couscous salad, Turkish pide bread, hummus and tomato wedges and dolmades in the side container.

# 3 tofu tofu and bok choy stir fry, rice, some amaranth olive crackers, an orange and raisins. There is sweet and sour plum sauce for the rice in the bear container.

I've been a good foodie and went out to eat both Friday and Saturday, but a bad blogger because I didn't take any pictures (camera battery had died).

At the moment, it's aparagus season and I'm eating some almost every day... what else does a girl need but roasted asparagus and pesto risotto?

Pasta Days and New Book Stuff

2008-05-29T20:19:00.009+01:00

... climate change makes Germany feel like Thailand or some similar place at the moment with an air humidity of at least 80% and summer's peak temperatures.

This means I have breakfast, have a bento, go out for a drink or ice cream after work and come back home between 8 and 10 pm to have some pasta with pesto or a thrown-together salad. Nothing exciting here, though I might do an ice cream parlour report (found one that does rice milke ice cream not too far away from where I live. Squee!).

I bought a couple and was also given a few new cookbooks for and around my birthday last month, but haven't got round to trying very much.

The Joy of Vegan Baking Ginger Muffins
Surprise, surprise! They didn't taste of ginger at all but were awesome. Omni friends loved them. Not too sweet, either, but the sugar/ginger mixture nearly ruined my kitchen.

I told you I'm a messy baker!

Some ugly but extremely tasty veggie curry from The Asian Vegan Kitchen, I have to look up the exact name. Billion thanks for Mr A. for giving it to me <3 "

I'm having friends over and need to make something in a pinch"-food: Couscous Salad Taboulé Style, Hummus, bought dolmades, olives and pita bread. Probably my most favourite combo ever!

Tortilla Chip Casserolle

2008-05-25T13:38:00.008+01:00

Before I share the recipe, let me get some things straight:

a) I've never had authentic Mexican food

b) I'm not particularly fond of the Tex Mex and Mexican recipes I have tried. I know, I'm an Asian food girl. I like spice food, but Mexican is sort of... bold spicy, do you know what I mean?

c) On the other hand, I don't know how good American and Irish guys are at Mexican cooking?!
However, Irish omni Dan and US vegan Dan make a wicked chili.

d) I bet every Mexican in the world would cringe at the thought of using Swiss fake cheese, but I don't care.

In an online shopping splurge a couple of weeks ago, I bought a block of No Muh Chäs, a vegan cheese from Switzerland that had been praised on all forums.

As I mentioned before, I never really liked dairy cheese as an omni or veggie, and hence have no cravings for it and not much of a comparison, either.

Talking about No Muh Chäs... it's VERY cheesy, realistic enough for me to feel an urge to throw it out when I first opened the package. It smells like cheese and it has the texture and I'd never ever try it raw.
Unlike Keehse, it doesn't melt properly and it's really expensive. It even comes in three expensive varieties- blue, plain and herb.

Thumbs down for Swiss vegan cheese, though the taste is still a lot better than that of Tofutti or Scheese.

Anway, it worked quite well in the recipe I adapted from the Brunch cooking zine (the original recipe suggests roux-based sauce).

Tortilla Chip Casserolle
(for 4 people)

1 small can sweet corn, drained
1 small can kidney beans, drained
1 huge can chopped tomatoes
1 onion, chopped,
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 red chilli, chopped
1 thin pita bread (can be stale), torn into pieces
three cups plain tortilla chips
1 cup grated vegan cheese

1. Grease a casserolle pan and cover with the pita bread, pour in tortilla chips, but set some aside.

2. In a pan, sauté onions, garlic and chili, add whatever spices you think are Mexican (I used a bit of cumin, some cinnamon, salt and pepper obviously), add beans, corn and tomatoes and let simmer for 5 minutes.

3. Pour over the tortilla chips, add a layer of tortilla chips and cover with cheese.

4. Bake for 20 mins at 200°C.

post-bake and pre-bake:

Mango Pasta and The Strawberry Mountain

2008-05-20T19:40:00.009+01:00

First of all, I'd like to thank all of you for your encouraging comments about non-massive blogging! You motivated me a lot... now there's the next thing... when I try new stuff, I must remember to post it. My SD card told me it's full yesterday- full of food piccies that I haven't gotten round to post.

Now I can't really say that I've been eaten by the work monster last week, but I was totally absorbed by Black Books, Strawberry Panic! and Michail Bulgakow's "Master and Margarita". Add some gay scene partying and German stout and the week's over.

Anyway, I have a recipe to share. I don't really care for raw mango, especially since I'm too stupid to slice them properly (not letting them go over-ripe might fix that). Now every now and then, I buy "Vegetarisch Fit!", a vegetarian cooking magazine. Rather "than" than "now", because few recipes are vegan, it's pricey and full of ads. Anyway, the April issue had a pasta special, so I grabbed it on a late shopping trip to find the most awesome recipe for * MANGO PASTA* For 3-4 people, you'll need:
* 1 pound of pasta (I used fussili)
* 1 huge can/ 2 small ones chopped tomatoes
* 1 massive ripe mango, diced * 1 onion, chopped
* 1 cup of cashews (or less if they cost an arm and a leg like they do over here)
* 1 block of tofu, drained, pressed and diced
* 1 tsp turmeric, 1 tsp cumin
* salt + pepper and chilli powder to taste

- In a huge pan, fry the tofu in neutral oil until crisp, about 10-15 minutes. Take out and set aside.
- Sauté the onions until translucent.
- Coarsly grind 3/4 of the cashews in a blender/food processor and add to the onions. Also add turmeric and cumin, sauté for 5 more minutes.
- Add the tomatoes, tofu and mango and mango and let simmer for 10-15 minutes or until the pasta is done.

Serve over the pasta and garnish with the leftover cashews (as I didn't). This is simple yet a wee bit exotic and has all the protein a pasta-maniac vegan needs. I think it might be good with kids, too, if you make it less spicier.

As short info for all German-speaking readers: after vegan.ch, there's a new German podcast made by two blokes from the Rhein/Main area... they also do a bit of live action cooking in every podcast and know all the AR info and dates in the country.
Hooray for German vegans!

Finally, I give you cake. This is my messy version (because neat baking is boring) of Strawberry Mountain. I now know why they called it like this... because it makes a buttload (and I halfed the recipe!) and you will get lost in the mountains of sweetness *swoon*.

Nothing's gonna stop me making bento...

2008-05-10T14:51:00.003+01:00

... but proper cooking is a completely different thing.

Seriously, I wonder how people manage to come up with awesome blog post on a daily basis or even every other day.
I don't mean to moan on here, but I have trouble even posting once a week and it makes me feel like a bad blogger. I'd love to be more active in the community, but I simply don't have the spare time.

Let's be honest- how do you do it?
It can't be that all bloggers are students or stay-at-home moms, right.
I'm out of the house from 8-8 on weekdays, so there's simply no time to try awesome new recipes every night, as much as I'd like to.

Anyway, here are some recent bento:

leftover yakisoba (see last post for the recipe), carrot sticks, an orange and some berry soy yoghurt.

traditional Japanese bento, though a bit protein-less... sticky rice with an umeboshi, sesame spinach, an orange, marinated mushrooms and scallions and some apple pieces in the bunny.
another lazy one... rice with sesame and soy/mushroom sauce, peach slices and leftover veggie stir-fry.

And look what arrived in the mail the other day!

I did a little swap with another blogging Stephanie (who throws awesome blog parties and mail blogging thingies that I don't really understand) who sent me, among other stuff, this ginormous bento... I think it holds about 5000 ml and comes with a lovely bag, just perfect for picnics and the like (though I consider scaring me coworkers and bringing it along as my lunchbox XD)... I plan on using this for our Japan day picnic.

Right, only four more weeks until Japan day, my favourite holiday (in my book, it's an annual holiday, all right? Just like Christopher Street Day and World Vegan Day and Bochum Total rock festival and Veggie Street day in Dortmund)!