Everyone needs something sweet every once in a while. These are golden, slightly sticky delicious toffee popcorn. It might just be the best thing ever invented! Alex and I were looking online yesterday to try and find things we want Alex’s mother to send us. We’ve run out of nutritional yeast (and the Swedish bjäst tastes nothing like as good as the English yeast), we have no vanilla extract left.. life has been boring lately. Anyway, I told Alex that we needed to make sure his mum sent us some toffee popcorn… and then it hit me: I CAN MAKE MY OWN!. So I did and here are the tasty tasty results.

Sticky toffee popcorn:

• 1 liter (4 cups) popcorn (I make mine the old fashioned way, with oil in a big pot)
• 3 tbsps vegan margarine
• 3 tbsps brown sugar
• 2 tbsps golden syrup

Melt the margarine in a pan. Add sugar and syrup and stir together. Bring to a boil and simmer for 2 minutes. Pour the hot toffee over the popcorn, cover with a lid and shake like crazy. Stir through to make sure there’s toffee everywhere. Leave to cool and harden. Eat! Stuff yourself! Be happy and do the happy dance!

I’ve been trying my best to not give up on summer but I’ve had to let it go now. The mornings are cold now and the room is completely dark when I get up to go to work in the morning. The trees are shifting colours to yellow, red and brown. It’s beautiful but also depressing. I have SAD and this is the time of the year when I can feel it kicking in. There are a few things that really help me when it comes to SAD; Arctic root, exercise and good food. I might be just imagining the food helping, but there’s something so fulfilling and comforting about hot food, soups and stews.

When we had friends over for dinner and gaming (I have a wii now!) on Saturday night I made a nice hearty soup and served it with some bread and a salad. I got a big pot out and filled it almost full. Everyone loved the soup, and really, what’s not to love about a nice hot soup, chock full with vegetables, lentils and curry? Eat it on one of those horrible days when the sun refuses to show and you’re feeling depressed and panicky.

Instead of sunshine soup: Serves 6-8

• 3 tbsp curry powder
• 3 tbsp canola oil
• 2 onions
• 3 big cloves garlic
• 1 red chilli
• 3 medium carrots
• Half a celeriac
• 1 large parsnip
• 1 celery stick
• 1/2 medium leek
• 2 red bell pepppers
• 2,5 dl (1 cup) red lentils
• 2 liters (8 1/3 cups) water + 4 stock cubes (or the same amount of stock)
• 2 bay leaves
• Salt and pepper

In a LARGE pot, combine canola oil with curry. Chop your onions and garlic and add it to the curry. Curry releases most of it’s aromatic flavour when heated in a little oil. While the onions are sautéeing at medium heat, finely chop your chilli. Add to the onions and let cook for a few minutes. Meanwhile, peel and cube your carrots, celeriac and parsnip into 1 cm/half inch cubes. Add to the pot and stir. Chop the rest of you veggies finely and add to the pot. Sauté for a few minutes and then add your lentils, water and stock cubes (or ready made stock) and 2 bay leaves. Let soup cook for atleast 20 minutes, but a longer cooking time makes for a nicer heartier soup (I let mine cook for over an hour while I prepared other food). Salt and pepper to taste. Remove bay leaves before serving.

We slept in this morning and it was just great. I usually wake up at 7 am whether I’m working or not so sleeping until almost 9 am was a nice change. This has really been one of those awesome lazy days where there’s nothing you have to do, there’s food in the fridge for both lunch and dinner and the flat is relatively clean. We did the best of the day and went to baking. In one of my cookbooks is a recipe for a corn muffin with red peppers in. I didn’t have any red peppers and I also wanted to veganize the recipe. They’re from a huge yellow cookbook called ‘Stora vegetariska kokboken’ (big vegetarian cookbook) and I’ve changed them quite a bit.

Corny muffins:

• 250 ml (1 cup) wheat flour
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 tbsp baking powder
• 200 ml (3/4 cup + 1 tbsp) polenta
• 50 ml (3 tbsp) corn flour
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 1/4 cup silken tofu
• 160 ml (2/3 cup) soy milk
• 3 tbsps canola oil
• ½ red onion, finely chopped
• 250 ml (1 cup) sweetcorn kernels
• 3 tbsp parsley, finely chopped

Turn oven on to 200 C (390F). Grease a 12 hole muffin tin with some oil. Mix together the dry ingredients in a big bowl. Combine the tofu with the milk and the oil and whizz in a blender until the tofu is smooth. Add sweetcorn, red onions and parsley and pour the mixture into the dry ingredients. Stir together quickly. Put the batter evenly into your muffin tray and bake in the oven for 20 minutes until they are golden on top. Take the muffins out and let cool. Enjoy with vegan margarine and a nice hot soup.

The first tofuballs recipe I ever made was from a cookbook called Vegetarian nosh4students. The name is terrible and so is the book. The tofuballs were really good though but looking through it just now (Tania asked me where they were from and I was going to e-mail her it as I didn’t think I should post it) I realised the version I make doesn’t really have that much in common with the one in the book. I’ve heavily modified it. Anyway. These tofuballs are the bomb. I love them with a chunky tomato sauce.

Oh and btw, I don’t know what lamingtons are. They apparently like them in Australia. They’re also just like a Swedish baked treat that I love, Kärleksmums (love yumms!). It’s basically just sponge cake dipped in a chocolate frosting and then immediately dipped into desiccated coconut. They’re lovely. I got the idea from Shmooed Food a long time ago and when we had left over sponge cake from making the ‘trifle’ I thought we’d give it a go.

Tofuballs with awesomesauce:

Tofu balls – Serves 3 – 4 people. We usually only get three servings, but we’re chubby and like to eat much.

• 1 large onion / 2 small ones, finely chopped
• 2 small cloves of garlic, minced
• 1 pack of tofu 500 gr / 17,5 oz (18 or 17 works)
• 1,5 dl (2/3 cup) of fresh breadcrumbs /1 dl (½ cup) ready bought
• 1,5 tbsp flour
• 2 tsp soy sauce
• 3 tsp dried herbs (basil, marjoram, thyme, parsley, oregano, whatever rocks your boat, and is in the pantry)
• salt and pepper to taste

Turn oven on to 190C or 375 F.

Just crumble the tofu and squeeze some of the water out. Chop onions and garlic finely.
If you don’t have breadcrumbs ready, mix some plain bread in a food processor to make crumbs.

Put all the ingredients in a big bowl and mix them well. Form into smallish balls (the small ones are tastier!) and put on an oiled baking tray. Spray them lightly with oil and oven them for about 25 – 30 mins. Take them out when they are browned and firm.

Chunky sauce - Serves 3 people.

• 1 Tbsp olive oil
• 1 onion
• 1 clove garlic
• 1 (400-500g / 15 oz ) can tomato sauce (that’s the smooth kind, not seasoned, not juice and not chunks)
• ½ courgette
• 1 yellow bell pepper
• Salt and pepper
• 1 tsp herbs (thyme is good, or basil)

Chop everything finely. I mean finely! Heat up a pan with oil in and fry the onion and garlic for a few minutes. Add the courgette and the bell pepper and fry for another few minutes. Add herbs, salt and pepper and the tomato. Turn heat down and let simmer together for 5 mins or so.

I’m too tired lately to actually cook anything REAL. So we’re having simple tried and tested stuff that doesn’t require any thinking. I’m probably ill. I made the awesomest vegan brownies in the universe and I usually love them, today I couldn’t’ finish my piece, it was disgusting. Alex reassured me that it was damn tasty so clearly I’m the problem. GAH! Ok, so this post doesn’t have any recipes, just some random pictures because I need to post them somewhere. Actually, when I say tried and tested i’m not completely truthful, we did make some things we’ve never made before. Like the Apple oat pancakes from Vive le Vegan!

Tomorrow we’re going to the Swedish migrations board to get some things sorted out with Alex’s staying in Sweden. It’s always such a pain going there, there’s hundreds of people and everyone is angry and stressed. I’m going to bring my best smile and try to get through the day with a minimal amount of pain.

Ok, on to the food.

• The tastiest tofuballs in history with a zucchini tomato sauce and some whole wheat pasta. It’s goooood!

• And tasty tasty pancakes! This might sound a little weird, but I loved these because they remind me of oatmeal porridge with apples, but fried in a pan. I told you it was weird, normal people just don’t’ want fried up oatmeal. We both loved this so much.

• ‘Trifle’! When we were in England this summer we bought lots and lots of vegan jelly/jello. Alex has told me about his mum’s ‘trifle’ many times and this summer I could finally try it. I liked it! It’s basically spongecake pieces in jelly, but it’s delicious. I realise it’s not quite like normal trifle, but it’s good nonetheless.

• Vegan lamingtons, because we had spongecake left over from making Alex’s mum’s ‘trifle’ and we really wanted more sweet things.We love our sweets!

I love cookbooks. I used to have quite a collection but we moved flats and cleaned a lot of them out. When will I ever have use for cookbooks on how to prepare chicken anyway? So here’s my collection for now. Some are good, some are ok and one or two are actually really bad. Does anyone have suggestions for what to expand my collection with? What does your cookbook shelf look like? What cookbook do i just HAVE to buy?

Click the photo to go to my flickr page and see the notes on the books.

A couple of days ago we went with my mother to an Afghan restaurant and had their buffet. Now, this buffet only had 2 vegetarian dishes and one of them was mini spring rolls. Doesn’t that sound like proper Afghan food? Anyway, the eggplant, courgette stew was delicious and the rice was just perfect. There was also a tabbouleh-ish salad that was totally delish!

Also pictured is the Fluffy Tofu Omelet from Joni’s cookbook Cozy Inside. Buy it! It’s really great.

And then finally (WOW this was great) two days ago we had faux salmon, with dilled and buttered potatoes and a sauce made out of soygurt and fake caviar. The fake caviar is delicious. Made from seaweed, it tastes just like caviar, even my mother agrees! The meal was really tasty although a bit weird. It tasted so fishy! I bought the fake salmon at Astrid och Aporna. Everyone in the south of Sweden really needs to go there. It’s a supermarket style store with vegan/vegetarian and organic food. Gooooo!

I was tagged by Bazu @ Where’s the Revolution? for this meme.

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I said I’d post recipes for the very tasty dinner we had this Sunday, but I’m a lazy bum that never gets around to doing anything. Really! Anyway, I got my act together and decided to post the recipe for the quiche I made. The quiche mix is based on SusanVs recipe for Mini Crustless Tofu Quiches. Everyone loved the quiche (and Susans quiche recipe is such a winner)

Roasted veggie quiche: Makes one big quiche, or three smaller ones

Pie crust (use any crust you like, I used the All Purpose Pie Crust from La Dolce Vegan)

Roasted vegetables:
1 big carrot
1/4 celeriac
2 parsnips
1 bell pepper
1 onion
4 cloves garlic
Thyme
1 Sweet potato
1 tbsp olive oil

Turn oven on to 250C (480 F). Peel and cube the carrot, celeriac, parsnips and sweet potato. Peel onion and cut into wedges or onion boats. Slice up the bell pepper in nice big bits. Peel the garlic and cut each clove in 4 pieces. Put in a roasting pan and drizzle with olive oil and lots of nice fresh thyme. Bake in oven for about 40 minutes, until the vegetables are nice and tender.

Quiche mix:
350 gr package silken tofu
1/4 cup soymilk
2 tbsps nutritional yeast
1 tbsp arrowroot
1 tbsp tahini
A little turmeric
1/4 tsp onion powder
1/4 tsp garlic powder
½ tsp salt
Pepper
½ tsp rosemary
½ tsp sage

Cheezy paste:
2 tbsp nutritional yeast
1 tbsp oil
2 tsp water

Turn oven to 175 C (350F).
Mix all the quiche mix ingredients together in a food processor.When the mix is nice and smooth pour into a bowl, add the roasted slightly cooled veggies and stir together. Put into a pie crust. In a small bowl mix together nutrotional yeast with oil and water to a paste. With the back of a spoon, spread the paste over the quiche mix (it makes the quiche taste kinda nice and cheesy).Bake in the oven for about 20 minutes.

We had a fantastic dinner yesterday, everyone loved the food and we had a lot of fun. There was chanterelle and  button mushroom toast, roasted vegetable quiche, two different salads, one with greens and spinach and one with thin slices of carrots and leek and some tasty vinaigrette, roasted and salted pumpkin and sunflower seeds and for dessert some sautéed apples with a home made rosemary caramel sauce and some soy ice cream. It was all delicious and everything fitted the theme. Recipes to come, I’m off to work!

1. Cat in jeans, 2. mushroom toast, 3. Roasted veggie quiche, 4. Sautéed apples in rosemary caramel