This is not a healthy recipe, but it’s tasty and great with a salad. The butter sauce tastes light and isn’t at all heavy. Yum!

Sweet Potato Gnocchi with Lemon and Herb Butter Sauce:
Serves 4

• 200 gram (7 oz) sweet potato
• 200 gram (7 oz) potato
• about 3 dl ( 1 & 1/4 cup) (bread) flour

Microwave the sweet potato for about 6 minutes until it softens, or bake it in a 200C (390F) oven for 40-60 minutes. Boil about 250 grams (9 oz) of potatoes until they are soft. Cut the sweet potato in half and press it in a potato ricer into a large bowl. You don’t have to peel it, the peel stays in the ricer. Take the peel out of the ricer and discard. Peel the potatoes and press through the potato ricer. Add most of the flour and mix together. Put dough on a floured surface and knead. You might have to add more flour. You want a smooth dough that doesn’t stick, but be careful not to add too much flour. Roll the dough into rolls about the thickness of your finger (if you’re a fatty like me, they’re a bit thicker, if you’re skinny, use your thumb as a guide). Cut off little ‘pillows’ from the rolls, about 2 cm (or 1 inch) long. Using the back of a fork, press the gnocchi against it to create ridges for the sauce to gather in. Put the ready made pieces on a floured piece of parchment paper and stick them in the fridge until you’re ready to use them. Boil the gnocchi in well salted water for about three minutes, until they float to the surface. Only cook as much gnocchi as you need for every meal.

Lemon Herb Butter Sauce:

• 50 grams (3 tbsp/2 oz) vegan margarine
• 1 clove garlic
• 2 tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice
• 2 tsp grated lemon zest
• 3 tbsp finely chopped parsley
• a bunch of garlic (about 20 leaves or so), julienned

Melt the margarine in a pot. Finely mince the garlic and add it to the pot so it heats up with the butter to release all the lovely flavour. Add grated lemon zest and the lemon juice. Add the chopped parsley and the basil, salt and pepper to taste. Take the sauce off the heat.

Put the gnocchi in a bowl, pour the butter sauce over it and mix well. Serve immidiately with some extra basil as garnish and enjoy!

• May 15th, my wedding! Alex and I have decided on a date and now were trying to save up a little bit of money so we can have good food, in addition to nice guests.
• December 1st, moving! We’re moving flats! We’ll be moving to a tiny rented house in Dalby outside of Lund. A garden! A real kitchen! I see a bright future for the two of us!
• This month, VeganMofo! I know I’m late and all, but it’s VeganMoFo y’all!
• Bike! I finally have one and I’ve been biking to work for about a week now. I see even stronger leg muscles in the foreseeable future.
• November 13th, Wotlk! Eh I know I’m a dork, but the new expansion for World of Warcraft is coming out soon and I’ve taken 3 days off of work to play! There’ll be lots of fingerfood, sandwiches, sweets and snacks going on here. Yay! I’ve been playing this game for I think 3 years now, I’m not ready to grow up yet!

We’ll be visiting some markets, going to lots of car boot sales, looking at second hand shops and I’ll also be working on my accent. I want to move to south west England in a couple of years and it’s vital to be able to talk to the locals! Hopefully when we come back on the 20th I will have picked up a little bit of the accent.

This is what I looked like last year before we went. I was really excited and nervous then, this time I’m more nervous about our cats and less nervous about meeting Alex’s mum. See you all later!

• Ice cream maker!

The freezer block is in the freezer, my ice cream mixture is in the fridge and when I come home from work tonight I’m making choclate orange ice cream. Wooo! (using the Vegetarian Times recipe and subbing orange extract for the vanilla)

What are your favourite recipes for ice cream? I know there are plenty of them around! And does anyone have a good recipe for lemon icecream/sorbet/sherbet? I am craving lemon like crazy.

A Vegan Ice Cream Paradise is going to be my favourite blog from now on. I’ve read it before but without an ice cream maker it’s seemed a bit pointless for me.

• Organic box of vegetables!

A little while ago now Alex and I started ordering an organic box of vegetables every week. This week we got some amazing things.

Two heads of lettuce, two cucumber, many tomatoes, a bunch of red onion, a big bunch of mixed carrots, a bunch of polka beets and a some parsley. The tomatoes are SO good and the carrots are lovely, crunchy and sweet. Yum!
• Breakfast!

My breakfasts have been really great lately.

Yogurt, musesli with fruits and nuts, blueberries and nectarine. A big bowl of watermelon on the side and some tea. I love summer!

This is how I plan out food:

1. What do I have at home?

If there’s any left over vegetables that I need to use up I remember those when planning. We try to not throw away any food, but sometimes something gets left in the back of the fridge until it’s waaaay past its expiry date. We try to combat this the best we can. I’ll also take note of what we have in the pantry; do we have quinoa, rice, noodles, pasta, canned beans, seitan..?

2. Where’s the recipe..?

If there are any recipes from food blogs I want to try out I try to remember which ones. I get out my favourite cookbooks, or the ones I haven’t used in a while. I check the starred items in my Google Reader. If there are recipes there that mean that I don’t have to buy a tonne of ingredients, they go on a preliminary list in my head.

3. Are there any common ingredients in my recipes?

If there are, gooo me! I don’t want to buy a bunch of celery and end up using only one stalk. What a waste of money that’d be.

4. Brainstorm!

What do I want, when do I want it, will the lettuce still look good on wednesday? Did Alex mention anything he really wanted (meaning; do I have to make wingz this week?)

5. Make the list.

What days am I working? Shall we make cooked breakfast on any of the days? When am I going to go to the gym? Are we doing anything special this week? I sit down, write down the days and what we’re doing on them and then start planning out what meal goes where. I also write down anything special that might affect our week plan and if there’s anything else I’ll be making that I have to buy ingredients for.

After all of that I write down what ingredients we need to buy, think out what we need for breakfasts and lunches and compile it all into a neatly sorted list. Vegetables in one section, fruit in another, soy milk and yoghurt in one.. and so on. We usually go to the same store so the list tends to be written in what order we go through the store (frozen items last).

Here’s this weeks list!

All of this list organising is pretty funny considering I’m not a very organised person usually. Woah!

Stir-fried sesame and ginger cabbage: Serves 4

• 1 tsp olive oil
• 2 tsp toasted sesame oil
• 1/2 onion
• 2.5 cm (1 inch) fresh ginger
• 1 clove garlic
• 1 tsp chilli flakes
• 1 cabbage
• 2 carrots
• 2 tbsp japanese soy sauce
• 2 tbsp water
• 3 tbsp toasted sesame seeds
• freshly ground black pepper

Prepare the vegetables. Chop onion finely, mince the garlic and the ginger (or grate it on a microplane grater). Shred the cabbage finely, don’t worry if it looks like a lot of cabbage, once it starts cooking it shrinks a lot. Slice the carrots finely.

Add both oils to a big wok or a large pot. Saut?? the onion for about 3 minutes over medium heat, until it starts to soften. Add the garlic and the ginger and raise the temperature to medium-high. Stir fry for another minute. Add the chilli flakes. Add the cabbage together with the carrots. Stir fry for about 5 minutes. Add soy sauce and water so the cabbage doesn’t get dry, cover with a lid and let the cabbage cook for about 5 minutes until it is tender. Add black pepper to taste.

Sprinkle sesame seeds over the top and serve immediately over rice or noodles together with some sweet chilli sauce.

(I wanted a bit of a protein punch so I also stirfried some tofu in sesame oil, added garlic, ginger and some soy sauce, a tiny bit of liquid smoke and at the end, some sesame seeds. I put the tofu on top of the whole thing, and enjoyed!)

Here’s a picture of me, my fab flab and my chubby man on Midsummers Eve.

I <3 you Alex!

I’ve had a week and a half of holiday and we’ve been going here and there in Sk??ne, taking walks and enjoying ourselves. I’ve spent an unholy amount of time in the kitchen making up new recipes and cooking up a storm. It’s been a blast but it’s also been insane in this heat.

Yesterday I cooked up some mapo tofu using a recipe from Vegetarian Times. I was reading through the recipe when I realised it told me to use 12 oz of soy crumbles. I converted it to metirc and thought ‘holy shmoly that can feed and entire nation of hungry people’. Only, it said soy crumbles, not TVP and I don’t have the former.

So, here’s the recipe with my alterations, using TVP instead of packaged soy crumbles. It was soo delicious. This is one of my new absolute favourite dishes! (ps. aren’t my Swedish glasses awesome, they have dala horses on them!)

Mapo Tofu:

Serves 4

• 250 ml (1 cup) TVP mince
• 600 ml (2?? cups) vegetable stock
• 1 tbsp chinese soy sauce
• 1 tbsp canola oil
• 4 green onions (about 4 tbsp)
• 2 cloves garlic
• 3 tbsp fermented black bean sauce
• 1 tsp sugar
• 150 ml (2/3 cups) water
• 1 package (about 400gr/14 oz) firm tofu
• 2 tbsp water
• 1?? tsp cornstarch
• 1?? tsp hot chili oil

Put TVP mince in a bowl and reconstitute it using hot vegetable stock. Add the soysauce and stir. While the TVP is swelling prepare the other ingredients. Chop green onions and garlic finely. Drain the tofu and cut it into 1 cm/?? inch cubes. In a large skillet on medium heat, heat canola oil and add garlic and 3 tbsp green onions. Saute for about 2 minutes. Drain the TVP mince of any excess liquid and add it to the pan. Add black bean sauce, sugar and the 150 ml (2/3 cup) water. Bring the mixture to a simmer and then add the tofu cubes. Simmer the tofu for about three minutes, until heated through. Whisk together the cornstarch with 2 tbsp water and add the cornstarch slurry to the pan. Cook for about a minute, until the sauce thickens a bit. Take off the heat and add the chili oil, stir through. Serve with rice and garnish with green onions. A little bit of chinese soy sauce is good with it.

Simply make a design (my sugar packet is 9 x 3 cm or 3.5 x 1.5 inch) and make sure to have enough space to sew on. Print it out and put on top of another paper. Sew it up using a sewing machine, but leave one side open for filling with sugar. Fill with sugar and sew up the last side. Keep the stitches tight. Trim the sides with scissors, but don’t cut too close to the stitching. And voila!

I put one teaspoon of sugar in the big packet and in the small packets are about 1/8 teaspoon of salt/pepper. The small packets with images on them have salt/pepper in.