I was amused to watch a recent Masterchef episode recently where contestants were given a mystery box of vegetarian ingredients including lentils. Contestants failed to exert themselves beyond the traditional Dhal and Lentil soup. Don’t get me wrong, Dhal is a cheap easy, tasty dish to prepare but hardly a challenge!
In our garden we have an over abundance of zucchinis growing! They’re easy to grow and great for swapping, baking and making into soups and fritters. Here’s one of my favourite ways of using them:
Ingredients
| 125g butter/nuttlex |
| ½ cup (110g) brown sugar |
| 1 egg/ vegan egg replacer |
| ½ teaspoon vanilla essence |
| 1½ cups grated zucchini |
| 1½ cups self raising flour |
| 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon |
| 1 cup instant oats |
| 1 cup muesli |
| 2 cups dark/dairy free chocolate chips |
Preparation method
1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees C.
2. In a medium bowl, cream butter and sugar until fluffy. Stir in the egg and vanilla, mix well, then stir in the grated zucchini. Sift together the flour, baking soda and cinnamon, stir into the zucchini mixture. Finally, stir in the oats, muesli and chocolate chips.
3. Drop dough from a teaspoon onto an ungreased baking sheet. Leave about 5cm between biscuits. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes in the preheated oven
Recipe sourced from All Recipes with changes by Cate
The Naked Lentil, a three part documentary series made by Greg Williams and Kylie Bryant, starts this Thursday 28th of January, at 8.30pm.
Tune into SBS One at 8.30pm on Thursday to see the first episode!
The doco follows Lentil through a pretty turbulent time…. mounting debt, staff conflicts… and heaps of other crazy jazz! It also shows an incredible community that comes together to make sure the doors of Lentil stay open.
It’s going to be a rocky ride and you’ll see lots of familiar Lentil faces!
Watch it. Tell your friends. Tell the person next to you on the tram!
THE NAKED LENTIL* BEGINS SOON!
Check out:
http://www.sbs.com.au/shows/nakedlentil
http://www.sbs.com.au/secretsandlives
Episode 1 – 8.30pm 28th January.
Episode 2 – 8.30pm 4th February.
Episode 3 – 8.30pm 11th February.
*Please note the show features no actual human nudity… only a few nudie vegetables.
I’ve been enjoying the vegan challenge a lot more than I felt I would. I was hoping my energy would improve substantially but I think my thyroid dysfunctioning is perhaps strnger than what I eat! I’ve beenmaking medication for a couple of months and my levels have improved which is encouraging.
Last night I bought some Torfutti Cream Cheese:
pic from here.
I really enjoyed it. It tasted just like french onion dip. It still frustrates me that the range of such products made in Australia is so limited. There is one soy cheese which is Australian made but it contains rennet, an animal product which doesn’t make alot of sense! But I guess the only way to change this is to eat lots of non-dairy alternatives and demonstrate the demand. I had some of the ‘cream cheese’ on the cheese free vegetarian pizza I had for dinner, very nice and it stopped the veggies from falling off!
Today I did a Polka Dot Rabbit stall at the Northcote Uniting Church. I was pleased to find a stall holder with yummy vegan biscuits (I had one in the shape of a camel!) and I went to a kebab shop for a felafel wrap for lunch which was yummy as I didn’t have alot of time to choose a meal from the various shops, needing to get back to my stall.
For dinner I enjoyed a yummy meal with some ginger beer:
Tofu sausage roll, salad, avocado and chickpeas 
I guess a lot of my posts have been about eating out, probably because this is more of challenge than cooking at home where you can control what you like to eat. On saturday we went to Docklands for a look. It was rather like an empty CBD with lots of chainstores which we managed to avoid.
We decided the have some lunch and were pleased to find a Morroccan restaurant with lots of veggie and vegan options. There were plenty of tapas type dishes but I decided to have the veggie couscous hotpot with a rather lovely cocktail. Great stuff!
60 Minutes was on tonight with a big story on Australian pig farming. Very distressing, and it certainly made me happy to be following a vegan diet. You can watch the video here
Tonight we went to Vegetarian Nirvana Cafe in Richmond. It’s the only Indian restaurant I have found which cooks without animal products such as Ghee. It was great choosing from a menu which was all vegetarian or vegan and it felt great to have so many choices!
We enjoyed rice, papadums, eggplant curry and a lovely kofta style dish. I’m afraid I didn’t take any photos but I’d strongly recommend this restaurant to anyone!
On other matters, I’m finding some unexpected benefits from my vegan eating. I’ve had sleep problems ever since I can remember. Early waking, insomnia, restless leg syndrome and snoring. I even had to stay overnight in sleep lab earlier this year. In regard to the snoring, it sometimes gets so bad that I have to sleep on the couch! Embarassing to admit! But true. I was referring to a special dentist at a private clinic and was told a mouth guard could cost several thousand, even with health insurance. Well, since I’ve switched to vegan eating, my snoring has gone! Amazing stuff….
Last night we had our first vegan dinner party! It was great fun. Four keen friends joined us to enjoy an entirely vegan meal.
On the menu was:
Entree:
-Moroccan spiced Olives
-Semi Dried Tomatoes
-Turkish Bread
-Hummus Dip
-Beetroot Dip
Main:
-Dahl
-Garden salad (from our garden) with avocado and tomato
-Falafels
-Quinoa Tabouli
-Broad beans
-Oven desiree and sweet roast potatoes with nutritional yeast and cajun spices
Dessert: Chocolate Beetroot cake with soy icecream.
We drunk cider, Chris’ homebrew beer and some local wines including a lovely cherry wine. Great fun, can’t wait to do another one!
