Blog action day wasn’t long ago and it got me thinking about the things we do, and don’t do, for the environment. I’m not a regular user of reusable bags. In fact, I always get plastic bags from the store and that’s incredibly stupid of me. After blog action day I started looking for patterns for a shopping bag (with the intention of having Alex’s mother sew me one or two). I found this, and it was pretty amazing. Of course ‘I’ could never make anything like that… or so I thought. I have a sewing machine (but I’m sure only the higher powers know why) but I haven’t used one since I was 14 and forced to in school. Yesterday I got the brilliant idea of making a bag (I still have a cold and I was feverish). It took me 2.5 hours and a lot of swearing but I made it!

Here’s the link to the original bag and the tutorial

Singlet style shopping bag - Tutorial

And here’s my bag!

The sewing is kind of bad, but I’m a novice and the bag works perfectly. I can fit a lot of things in there and it feels sturdy enough. I will make a couple more… sometime in the future.

Tell me something, do YOU want to be more Irish? Oh g’wan! Just admit it. Even I wish I was more Irish and I’m sure Alex wishes he was too, even though he’d never admit it and probably start muttering about the damn potato famine…

Yesterdays favourite, the potato farl is as Irish as.. potato and it’s delicious too. I’m a fan of most potato things, like crisps, thick chips, french fries and potato wedges (basically, cover it in hot fat and I’ll eat it) but I hate boiled potatoes, or mashed ones. This, however, is an acceptable kind of boiled and mashed potato.

The potato farl is also often called potato bread and it’s an important ingredients in the Ulster fry, an incredibly fatty breakfast consisting of fried potato farls, soda bread, bacon, sausages and eggs, preferably fried in lard. That’s not how I roll but I’m sure they’d be good fried… We had potato bread in England and I haven’t been able to get it out of my mind since.

Ok, recipe time!

Vegan potato farls:

• 1 kg (2 lbs) potatoes
• 3 tbsp vegan margarine
• 2 tsp salt
• 450 ml flour (just under 2 cups)

Peel and cube the potatoes. Boil until soft and then mash or use a potato ricer. Add in the margarine and salt and stir until the margarine has melted. Work in most of the flour and then knead on a floured surface. You might need more or less flour depending on the texture of your dough. You want a stiff non sticky dough. Take balls of dough and roll out to a 0.5 cm (1/4 inch) thick cake about 15 cm (6 inches) across. Sprinkle the cake with some flour. Cook in a dry pan on medium heat until both sides are golden. Flip it occasionally. Cut each cake into quarters. Makes about 10 cakes.

To fry the bread add a little oil to a pan and fry for about a minute on each side in some oil. Serve warm.

Recept på svenska: Irländskt potatisbröd

I have a new favourite food! Before I went vegetarian broccoli was one of my most hated vegetables. I wouldn’t go near it and I swore it would never ever go in my mouth. Well, that all changed and now broccoli is a huge favourite. I still have a horrible cold so both yesterday and today’s dinner has consisted of easy to cook comfort food. They’ve both also featured my absolute favourite way of cooking broccoli.

So, yesterday’s meal:

Garlic and ‘parmesan’ roasted broccoli with a mac n bechamel (it’s a Swedish classic) with spinach, nutmeg and black pepper. Generously topped with parmazano. Woooooah! It was so good I thought I had died and gone to heaven.

And today’s dinner:

More of that delicous garlic roasted broccoli. This time teamed up with a nice home made potato farl and some baked beans to form an Irish dinner. How is this Irish you ask? Well, does it have green? Yep. Potatoes in any form? Yaps. Tasteless baked beans? You betcha!

Garlic and ‘parmesan’ roasted broccoli:

Because you deserve it!

• 1 head of broccoli (about 500gr/1 lb)
• 2½ tbsp oil
• 2 cloves garlic
• ½ tsp thyme
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp pepper
• 2 tbsp fake parmesan

Turn oven on to 225C or 450F. Cut the broccoli into little florets. Mice/press/grate the garlic cloves. Mix all the ingredients together and toss with the broccoli in a bowl. Make sure to get the oil mixture everywhere on the broccoli. Spread on parchment paper and roast in the oven for about 20 minutes. Serves 2-3 people.

Recept på svenska: Vitlöks- och ‘parmesan’rostad broccoli

Edit: I feel so filthy and cheated! I was sure Oreo’s were vegan but atleast here in Sweden they have whey! The first time we bought them they were imported oreo’s from the US and they were lovely and vegan 8and expensive!). Since then they’ve started being sold here in Sweden in almost every store. These are not US imported. The ones we get in our normal store isn’t vegan at all. Damnit! I feel so cheated and upset : /

Saturday was Alex’s birthday and he seems very happy about it. I was an awesome girlfriends and bought him 9 Discworld books as well as supplied him with baked goods and Homer Simpson socks. Who’s the man? You da man! (Yeah, that’s me.)

Now I’ve run out of energy and I’ve come down with a nasty cold. I’m so happy about those frozen soups now, I’m much too tired to cook.

Last week I went to the doctor to talk about my SAD. I’m not getting any medicine but I am going to start seeing a psychiatrist because they figure that might help. The doctor ran a lot of tests, she was really nice and friendly. Upon mentioning being vegan she asked me if I’d like her to do some additional tests just to make sure I wasn’t suffering from any vitamin deficiency. There was a lot of testing being done and they had to take quite a bit of blood (actually, it only LOOKS like it’s a lot of blood, but still it was scary!). Turns out almost everything about me is perfect. Perfect blood.. everything, pressure, sugar, value.. the lot. I’m fine for b12 and the other essentials too. The only thing that was off was my liver. when she phoned me up she asked if I was either taking lots and lots of pain killers or if I’m drinking lots of alcohol. I don’t do either so they’re going to do another test in a couple of weeks. I’ve read up about it on the internet and the other things that can cause this is lots of fatty foods or being on the pill. Maybe the doctor didn’t think I ate much fat, because you know, vegans are so healthy and they never eat fat… um, but I’m going to cut down my fat intake drastically and we’ll see if that makes a difference. I might be vegan but it’s not lettuce that built this very voluptuous body. If that doesn’t work I might have to go off the pill. We’ll just see.

Anyway, before going on this fat free ‘diet’ we had a party to attend. So yesterday we went to a friends house to celebrate Alex’s birthday and the hosts up coming birthday. Here’s what I brought!

Delicious cookies n’ cream cupcakes. I <3 Isa! I ordered Vegan Cupcakes but it ran out of stock so this is a recipe from online.

Vegan homestyle chocolate chip cookies. Dreena is a vegan goddess!

We made a few changes to this one. Mainly, have no blackstrap molasses, we didn’t use a 1/3 cup maple syrup, instead we used half maple and half golden (maple is SO expensive here).

Today’s blog action day! It’s funny how something come just so conveniently. I was going to talk about things you can do to help the environment when my electricity bill came through the door. We pay extra to get ‘green’ electricity (wind power/solar power/hydro power) and it’s surprisingly cheap! When we moved in here we decided to pay the extra money. I thought it’d be expensive (I’ve never lived in a flat where you take care of your own electricity before, it’s always been included in rent). It really wasn’t. We pay our electricity bill every three months and this time our extra spendings for having green, as opposed to normal, electricity was only 10 SEK. That’s not even two dollars!

Anyway, here’s handy list for things anyone can do (and that we do) to help save the environment:

• Be vegan / vegetarian /cut down on your meat eating - even if you’re not willing to give up on meat you can do lots buy just cutting down a little.
• Buy green electricity - it’s not that expensive!
• Walk/bike/use public transport - we don’t even own a car and it works awesomely.
• Think about how much energy you use - we have energy saving light bulbs, our computers get turned off automatically after a little while (also, get a tft instead of that big old crt monitor), we turn the TV off when we don’t use it. Standby mode sucks up energy.
• Buy local, buy organic - when ever we get the chance to buy local and organic we do.
• Second hand is your friend! - I’ve found so many fantastic things in second hand shops and at flea markets. Some of my most beautiful things have been virtually free. Re-using is a beautiful thing.
• Recycle. It’s easy, really.

Everyday we think about the environment and being green. We do what we can on our limited budget and we try our best to influence other to do the same. (I think my mum has been whined at more than what any normal person deserves )

As for being vegan, I think that’s one of the most wonderful things we can do for our environment. We’re already using less water, less energy and wasting less lives, just by putting delicious food in our mouths. It’s THAT easy. Everytime I get a sugar high on vegan brownies instead of brownies full of dairy and eggs, I’m making a huge difference in the world. (Guess who’s never going on a diet, if brownies can do all that I’d better start gobbling them down!)

Do you have any other suggestions on how to live greener? Please share!

Rise is such a comfort food for me. It doesn’t really make sense, it’s not a particularly Swedish thing. We’re more.. meat and potatoes, potatoes potatoes. I guess it’s starch thing, I used to hate potatoes as a kid (so much, in fact, that I threw up if I was forced to eat them) so rice became my starch of choice. Today I decided I wanted onigiri filled with wasabi pea purée. Yum! I’ve not been feeling great lately, but I’m seeing a doctor on Tuesday and I’m hopefully getting some help. And besides that, I got myself a daylight lamp today. It’s used in light therapy to help against SAD and it’s hopefully going to help make things a bit better. Anyway, I needed cheering up so here’s what I made!

Wasabi pea purée:

•  200 ml frozen peas
• 1 tbsp ready made wasabi
• 2 tsp oil
• 2 tsp water
• salt and pepper

Put peas in boiling water and let boil for 2 minutes. Put in a food processor with all other ingredients and mix together until semi smooth. Add more salt and pepper if needed.

For the onigiri I cooked rice and let it cool. I used one of my onigiri moulds, filled it half full with rice, put in some of the purée and then more rice. Cut up some nori and wrapped it around the onigiri. And then some more wasabi and some soy sauce and I was ready to be comforted.

So we went to Denmark yesterday. It was one of those one day bus trips that mostly old people go to. I think there was a total of five people under 65 on that trip. Anyhow, it was nice and we’re happy we went. Lunch was included and we got…. a salad. Denmark is the land of meat and beer. Seriously, I think they have meat sandwiches for breakfast, a big steak, some bacon on top and another big steak. Yep, that sure sounds like Denmark to me. We’d told in advance (well in advance) that we’d like to have a vegetarian meal, we didn’t request anything vegan as I knew that would just not work. When we finally got to have lunch I was so hungry I thought I’d start gnawing off my own leg. Here’s what we got for our lunches.

Before lunch we were joking and saying they’d probably serve us fish. Phew, we were wrong. Sure, the plate LOOKS nice, but I was only hungrier after having finished it. A cold salad plate of lettuce, peas, tomato and cucumber topped with two decorative slices of bell pepper. I was sad! We made up for it by eating buttloads of ritter sports and nice bread afterwards. Omnis were served meat, potatoes, gravy and broccoli. They could have atleast given us some potatoes and broccoli. Or some bread on the side. This was a supermodel portion of food, or dieters food. Well, I’m neither! (We were the only vegetarians there and we got some pretty creepy looks from the oldies. I guess they thought we were dangerous or something, or maybe just weird, vegetarians eat PEOPLE you know )

Apart from some baking supplies (we can’t get some of the things we want here in Sweden), awesome danish rye bread, and some tasty danish curry and hotdog ketchup, we also got a small mountain of ritter sports.

Oh ritter I love you!

Ok, so a couple of things, but no recipes. A few days ago we made mac n cheeze at home, using Susan’s recipe. If there’s one person I trust to supply recipes of awesomeness it’s her. All the recipes I’ve tried from her have been delicious and easy. I sprinkled my mac n cheeze with bacon bits, onion powder and black pepper. Wow, that’s good.

And next, a little while back Kris was talking about the crazy googles that led to her blog and annouced that if we told her about the crazy googles we’d done she’d send an apron and her book, The damn tasty vegan baking guide, to one lucky winner. That’s me! So yesterday I got a book, an apron and two V pins in the mail. Wow, the apron is even nicer than I thought it would be! I’ve looked through the book a little, but haven’t had time to bake anything yet. It loosk really good though, and Alex is drooling over it as we speak. Thanks Kris, you’re awesome!

Here’s yours truly posing with the new apron and the book.

We were going to a party on Saturday night and everyone there was supposed to bring something baked and delicious. I made some pretty fab coconut cupcakes frosted with a lemon icing (from VwaV). As a present for the birthday girl I bought a nice stoneware jar, light blue with polka dots and filled it with simple checkerboard cookies. I spent the day slaving away in a hot kitchen, no time to wash my hair, put on make up or be fancy in any way. Although I did make up for that later, the photo shows a less charming me.

First a photo of the cupcakes. They were lovely and Alex ended up eating about a third of them.

It never ceases to amaze me just how vegan friendly some of our old Swedish cookies are. I KNOW you have checkerboard cookies in other countries too, but it’s also a very Swedish thing. Many recipes are so simple, no eggs, no milk, just butter/margarine. Hey, that’s almost too easy! I flipped through a Swedish cookies and cakes classic, we’ve had it in my home since forever. In Swedish it’s called Sju sorters kakor. Not long ago they translated the book to English, it’s called Swedish Cakes and Cookies. This recipe is from that book, the only thing I changed was the margarine, mine’s vegan, theirs isn’t. It’s one of those recipes that doesn’t even belong to a certain author or anything anymore, it’s so old and well used it’s public property now. They’re not terribly sweet, but they’re lovely with coffee or tea.

Swedish checkerboard cookies: makes LOTS and LOTS!

• 450 - 500 ml (1 3/4 cups + 2 tbsp - 2 cups) wheat flour
• 100 ml (1/3 cup + 1 tbsp) sugar
• 200 g (2 sticks) vegan margarine

• 2 tsp vanilla sugar or 1 tsp vanilla essence (but make sure to use a little more flour!)
• 2 tbsp cocoa powder

Mix together the sugar, margarine and flour until it forms a ball. (Kind of like when you’re making a pie crust). Divide the dough in two parts and mix each part with a flavouring. One of the doughs with cocoa and the other one with vanilla. Divide each dough into two pieces and roll them out to two rolls (I made three of each because I am hardcore!). Put two different coloured rolls next to each other and put two more on top of that making a checkerboard pattern. Press it a little so the doughs stick together and wrap it in plastic film. refrigerate for a little while. Turn the oven on to 200C (390F). Take the log out of the fridge and cut into 3-4 mm (1/6 inch or so) slices. Put on a baking paper on top of a baking tray and bake in the oven for about 10 minutes. Let cool. Enjoy!

We’re currently working on translating all the recipes here to Swedish and adding them to a separate blog with just recipes so that my fellow Swedes don’t have to do lots of crappy translating. When I started speaking English on a daily basis (that is, when Alex moved in with me) I quickly discovered I was nowhere near fluent in kitchen English ( a typical session of cooking would go ‘Alex can you hand me that.. thing. I need it for this.. thing. You know the thing? For the thing?). I’ve picked up a lot since then and now know most of the necessities of cooking English. No more lying awake at night thinking about what a colander is or trying to understanding what all those weird sounding spices were. I thought the word for whisk was whip since you used it for whipping cream. Anyway, so we’re translating things at the moment. We’re also trying to get an index together of all the recipes on here. So that’s taking quite a bit of our time at the moment.

I found a bag of organic Jerusalem artichoke tubers for almost no money at all (less than a dollar or 50 pence) and so decided to make us some delicious soup. I love this creamy sophisticated soup so much but we rarely get to eat it because Jerusalem artichokes are usually ridiculously expensive. Being on a tight budget usually doesn’t allow this kind of luxurious food. I sprinkled some store bought ‘bacon’ bits on top and served it with some nice white bread on the side.

Jerusalem artichoke soup: Serves 2

• 250 g (1/4 lb) Jerusalem artichoke tubers
• 3 small potatoes
• 1 smallish garlic clove
• ½ tbsp oil
• 1 dl (1/3 cup + 1 tbsp) white wine / cooking wine
• 250 ml (1 cup) water
• 1 stock cube
• 150 ml light cooking ‘cream’ (half and half? Mine’s 5% fat but light cream or medium would work too)
• salt and pepper
• 1 tsp thyme

Peel the artichoke tubers and the potatoes. Chop into smallish pieces. Mince the garlic. In a medium pot sautée the potatoes, tubers and garlic in the oil. Add wine and boil for about a a minute. Add water and stock cube and bring to a boil. Simmer for about 15 minutes until everything is soft and a bit ‘mushy’. With a handheld mixer or a blender, mix the soup until smooth. Add back to the pot and add the ‘cream’. Heat. Add the thyme and salt and pepper to taste. Serve hot with a nice bread and maybe some ‘bacon’ bits (they’re so good!).