Alice in Veganland

Happy February!

2009-02-01T21:33:00.002+01:00

TGIF has a new meaning!

I teased you all with those awesome marinated cold chickpeas last week and never posted the recipe. Well, here it is:

400-500 g cooked chickpeas
1 lemon (or only half if it's a juicy one)
1-2 garlic cloves
2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp dry ginger
1/2 tsp spicy paprika
4 Tbsp olive oil
salt

Mix well olive oil, lemon, minced garlic, turmeric, ginger, paprika, salt and half the cumin. Pour the mixture over the cooked chickpeas. Mix carefully with the other half of the cumin. Let sit in the fridge for at least 30 minutes. Ready!

Here I used brown chickpeas because I saw them in the supermarket and couldn't resist, but I'm sure it's even better with normal chickpeas. This time (following the recipe, ahem...) was extremely tasty and this will soon become a staple in my diet. So good.

Last week I got an awesome unexpected gift from my boyfriend. A LOMO!

I hope I can take some cool pics with it! I'll be sure to post them!

And I don't want to jinx anything, but I'm starting to get lots of calls about jobs. I don't have any offers yet (the processes are always long and require several interviews) but I think I can say that it's going fine. So this week I'm going to be a busy bee going here and there for interviews! Wish me luck!

2009-01-25T22:03:00.010+01:00

I didn't mean to abandon you for such a long time bloggies! But I had a flu, and then my boyfriend had a flu, and then I just had another terrible January. January and I aren't good friends, let's put it this way. It probably has something to do with how the weather has been awful.

While I was at my grandparents over Christmas, my grandmother made some great veggie meals, and I loved how she roasted some mushrooms filled with parsley and minced garlic. It tasted just awesome! I've tried to recreate it, but meh, it needs some work (and some fresh parsley!)

On the side I had roasted carrots and parsnips. I tried parsnips for the first time and they taste great! Sweet and nice!

Another thing I've tried to recreate are the marinated cold chickpeas my dad's girlfriend made for us last November when we went to Barcelona. They are marinated with curry spices and served cold!

Again it needs some work (well, what it needs is that I have a look at the recipe she sent me next time).

I made a nice lasagna, also filled with carrots and parsnip (and mushrooms, did you notice I'm saving in groceries?).

It turned out OK, and I discovered that making bechamel sauce relaxes me in ways I couldn't have imagined... Weird stuff!

I tried red quinoa for the first time (it was new in the supermarket!) and I'm SO HAPPY. It tastes great and I love it. I like it a lot better than regular quinoa.

My fridge is completely empty right now! And my pantry doesn't really look better... I have a lot of seaweed though! I guess it's time to go grocery shopping...

Happy New Year!

2009-01-08T12:07:00.002+01:00

Long time no seen! I'm still alive and kicking!

I spent the holidays in Spain and didn't have time or inspiration to blog, so this will be a long post with Christmas eats pictures.
On Christmas eve (well, and leftovers on Christmas day) we had a veggie pie-quiche-pizza-whatever, with potato gratin and avocado salad. Tasty tasty.

And for dessert, baked apples. My mom makes awesome baked apples!

It's maybe nothing spectacular, but we don't really celebrate Christmas season.

On New Years eve, I had a seitan stir-fry with pineapple, spinach and pine nuts. I cooked it with pineapple juice and soy sauce.

It was good but, after trying my homemade seitan, I don't think I'll like the store-bought version ever again...

And then, for the 5th & 6th of January, I made a traditional Roscón de Reyes, veganized!

I forgot to take the picture until we had already started, oops! I found the recipe in a Spanish vegan blog, called El Delantal Verde, which has amazing recipes. I specially like how she veganizes lots of traditional Spanish recipes!

So how's been 2009 for you this far? I would like to skip it and go directly to 2010... I've been feeling a bit blue since it started. I've had weddings announced (I've been invited to two weddings this year and they're both the same day, can you believe it?), a relative died, I got back to an ice cold Germany instead of staying in fun Spain and have a sore throat from all the weather changes.

You'll be hearing from me in your blogs very soon, but first I need a small break till my head and throat stop hurting.

Getting to know an old enemy a bit better

2008-12-18T20:37:00.008+01:00

There are lots of vegetables I didn't like when I was a kid. Like broccoli for example. I remember giving my mother a very hard time over some pieces of broccoli. The thing is, my mother gave up quite easily... OK, there were lots of vegetables I liked too, so it's not that I didn't eat my greens (spinach with bechamel sauce was my favourite meal for a long time).

When I moved out, I started eating all those vegetables I didn't like before, and all the vegetables and spices my mom didn't like. And I realized they were all very tasty! yum broccoli!

But Brussels sprouts were different because of a story with which my mother terrorized me. She told me that once she was eating some, and she opened one and it was full of worms. You probably think it's not big deal, but I hate HATE bugs of all types. I cannot be around them. Never. And that day I decided to never ever eat Brussels sprouts in my life.

And then I grew up.

No, seriously, I realized that at least I had to try again. And most importantly, I had to try not to boil them (I figured it wasn't the best way to find out if I like them or not...). And I saw some of you have roasted them so...

I mixed them with a bit of olive oil and a bit of maple syrup and a bit of cream of balsamic and to the oven they went!

I had them with salad. Awesome salad by the way!

And with a soy Schnitzel from Aldi (which I liked the first time but this time...meh...I don't know if I'll buy it again, it tasted too fake!)

And with shiitake pickles and savory vegan biscuits. OK, these were my first biscuits ever, and I know realize why it's usually covered with gravy. I've learned my lesson! They were very good, but they tasted a bit boring just plain.

So, are you waiting for a verdict? I mean... I ate them three times! that must be a good sign! Well, I'll tell you, I liked them. Yes, I like Brussels sprouts.

And I halved them all to avoid disgusting surprises!

Homemade Seitan

2008-12-11T14:14:00.012+01:00

The first amazing vegetarian meal that completely captivated me was a batch of homemade seitan made by my friend's mom while we where in high school. Well, actually, that woman had been my neighbor for many years, and I've been informed that she already stole my heart one day I ate at her place when I was a preschooler.

When I started eating vegetarian, my mother would buy me seitan and veggie burgers all the time, since we didn't have a lot of time to cook, and I didn't really know how to cook. Now I barely eat them, because I pretty much hate those things after so many years.

But, since I wanted to use what I had in my pantry (I'm watching my euros, mind you) and the package of gluten was half full (haha, I must be an optimistic!), I decided to try my hands on seitan. I used the recipe of Veganomicon, minus the nutritional yeast because I'm out and it's expensive.

The final result was just amazing. My boyfriend loved it and we ate it all in a couple of days! As you can see, I sliced it thin and made a stir fry with black eyed beans and kale (with pasta!). And also...

With carrots and potato salad (my boyfriend's parents made this, quite tasty, although by the time we ate it at home it had marinated too long, an euphemism to say it was old).

I also made cookies last week, and they came out great! I'm not going to take credit for it, it was Veganomicon's recipe for Terry's favorite almond cookies, but changed: with one tablespoon blackstrap molasses instead of the rice syrup, and with ginger but without the sesame touch. Oh! and whole wheat and with brown sugar, of course!

Last, but not least, my latest atempt to like quinoa. I want to like it, because I know it has a lot of calcium, but I surely don't enjoy it as much as millet, for example. This time, I fried garlic and onions before adding the quinoa, and I used homemade veggie stock instead of water. It was a lot better!

Phew! that was a long post, wasn't it? To prepare you for the next post... I'm gonna give a second try to an old foe of mine. Stay tuned!

Cinnamon-Raisin Muffins

2008-12-03T16:13:00.006+01:00

I used to love raisin bread. But it's difficult to find vegan ones in a normal bakery. I've only found one so far, but they just offer it from time to time. That was the inspiration for these Cinnamon Raisin Muffins based on this recipe. They were good, but not the texture I was looking for.

But they were tasty nevertheless and now they're gone because apparently I cannot stop eating when I'm home all day.

Thankfully, I also eat healthy things, including huge amounts of kale. This meal came out so good that I had to share!

1 onion
1 cup cooked brown lentils
6 leaves kale (or so)
2 dried apricots, chopped

Sauté ingredients together and add the following sauce:

2 tsp tomato paste
1 tsp maple syrup
1 tsp balsamic vinegar
2 tbsp water

We ate it with polenta (made with thyme and lots of nooch) and raved for hours!

I keep the stems of the kale I eat everyday and make veggie broth every week. And the broth is as good as the kale itself!

I'm still sending applications, but everything's moving a bit slow, probably because of the financial crisis? and the upcoming Christmas? So no news from that front yet.

Japanese Dinner

2008-11-27T13:20:00.010+01:00

I'm back from Barcelona! It was a nice trip, specially food-wise, but I don't have any pictures to prove it... My dad's girlfriend is such a good cook AND a veggie lover. It's just a perfect combination.

I found a bag of sushi rice while cleaning the pantry and I made a Japanese dinner!

First we had miso soup:

It had rehydrated shiitake mushrooms, wakame and miso paste.

Then fried tofu pockets filled with rice:

And onigiri! Filled with umeboshi plums and a black-eyed peas paste.

And some boiled and salted edamame:

This all looks very fancy, at least to me, but it was only one evening... Actually what I've been eating all week is this:

It's a stir-fry with garlic, kale, millet, black-eyed peas and tahini sauce. It's to die for!

7 Facts and Chili Sauce

2008-11-19T14:49:00.008+01:00

I've been tagged by River from Wing it Vegan! to do the 7 random facts meme! Go check her fantastic blog if you haven't done it yet!

1. I don't like bestsellers. I mainly read classics, but have a soft spot for two writers who are alive: José Saramago and Paul Auster.
2. I hate westerns and movies for kids. I like "special" movies. Those that change you a little bit inside.
3. I'm making a list of things to do before I'm 30. One of the things I want to do is to go to a karaoke and sing. But not just easy like that, no no! I want to go out in a normal night to have a beer with my friends and end up in a karaoke at 2 am singing tacky songs. Probably drunk.
4. I wish I could ride a bike. I mean, I can, but not safely. So I don't use my bike because I'm scared. I'm specially scared of cars, since I'm not that experienced with the bike...
5. Until I started living alone, I didn't eat mushrooms, broccoli, cauliflower, garlic, parsley and a lot of other things I actually LOVE. My mum doesn't like them. Or as she likes to say "they don't agree with her stomach".
6. I love potatoes. Cooked in all possible ways!
7. My boyfriend and I have a sort of list of "running gags". We've been making the same jokes and stupid things for years and apparently, none of us gets tired!

And now the chili sauce!

We bought a lot of chili to make pickles a while ago, and we never did it! We're slackers! So last week, when the remaining were starting to look ...bad? I decided to make a chili sauce.

I had to chop so many of those little nasty peppers! so many! I found a recipe in internet, something like:

A lot of chili peppers
2 tablespoons rice vinegar
1 tablespoon rice wine
2 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon salt? Not sure, I didn't use that much for sure

It's tasty! It's like these chili sauces in Asian restaurants!

But I put my finger in my eye twice that night, as usual...

Lazy Week

2008-11-16T11:06:00.008+01:00

Yes, I have no excuse. Since I don't have a job, the only real excuse I have for not blogging more often is... well... laziness!

I went to Milan and had a great time with my friends. What can I say, I miss them so much...

The food was absolutely not blogworthly: we ate at the apartment, mainly rice, pasta and salad (and some veggies and fruit, don't worry!). It came out as a very inexpensive weekend. The flight back took me an eternity because my flight got canceled, and by the time I was sitting in the plane I was extremely grateful that I didn't get to spend the night alone in an airport in Milan.

I made some nice meals the week before I went to my trip and I still have to show them to you! First a not-so-interesting green soup, made with kale, lettuce, potatoes, carrots, leeks, and topped with panko bread crumbs.

But also, a lot more interesting, black eyed pea - millet croquettes, adapted from VWAV. I didn't have any quinoa, and they came out perfectly with millet. The only downside is that they were a bit dry and kind of falling apart.

We've been having a lot of salad lately, and my favorite salads have always warm ingredients. I've discovered that stir-fried kale with millet is my favorite combo! With some lettuce and raw veggies, mmmm.
I really had to tell you about the kale and millet...

But the last picture I have is actually something else. A bolognese sauce made with TVP over pasta. I'm not a big fan of meat substitutes, but this TVP thing tasted like the real thing. It was even a bit creepy!

In other news, I have two interviews this week! A phone interview tomorrow and a face-to-face one on Wednesday. I'm a bit scared, don't know why...

And on Thursday, I'm going to Barcelona with my boyfriend to visit my father. He just bought a new apartment and moved in, and he was very excited that we're coming to visit.

I still have to do a meme because I've been tagged! And I have a couple of new things to show, so I promise I won't continue to be lazy and will post more often. And expect a visit to your blog soon!

Tofu Scramble! I did it!

2008-11-06T16:46:00.005+01:00

Well hello unemployment!

I know, I know, maybe I shouldn't be so happy, and I certainly won't be happy if I don't find a job soon, but hey! I think positive and I'm pretty sure I'll find something to start in January latest, which would be awesome because I could enjoy Christmas at home knowing I have a job when I come back after the holidays. OK, these are all speculations, I know...

Last week we made pan-seared dumplings and it was a lot of fun. First, I made a filling with TVP granulate, Chinese cabbage, tomato paste and spices. And then I started forming the dumplings with less success than I thought. Let's say I'm not exactly virtuous when it comes to manual work. Thankfully, my boyfriend was there to save the day, and they ended up awesome!

Seriously, one of the best things I've eaten in a long time. We ate a lot of dumplings, and I could have eaten a lot more. Yeah, lack of moderation is one of my weaknesses.

I'm still playing around with VWAV, and I decided to make a tofu scramble. I know, everybody has tried tofu scramble already, but I hadn't. Actually, I was pretty sure I was going to mess it up, specially since I didn't follow the recipe at all. I didn't have all ingredients, so I just used tofu and spices, and still it was tasty!

This month, I'm going to try to cook with the things I have in my pantry. Not exclusively (hello fresh produce) but mainly. Let's see how that goes...

I also have a picture of a leek pumpkin pasta casserole, which was good but a bit too sweet for me.

I drove my boyfriend crazy with the casserole, because I left it in the oven when it cooled down and he was running around yelling "where is that thing that smells so good!?". Muahaha!

Also, I'm flying to Milan tomorrow to meet my friends. We organized the trip a long time ago, and being unemployed is not really an excuse, since I paid for the ticket a while ago and I don't think that we're going to spend a lot of money.

Spanakopita

2008-10-29T18:31:00.006+01:00

aka I made something fancy!

My story with spanakopita has been long and frustrating. First, I thought the recipe was in Veganomicon, and I spent a lot of time looking for it. Then Mr.Google told me that no! it's in Vegan with a Vengeance! not Veganomicon! So I had to abandon my plans.

Months later, I bought phylo dough to make spanakopita, because well, the recipe is in Veganomicon and I've been dying to try it. Except that it's not in Veganomicon, but in Vegan with a Vengeance. At that moment, I had to make an important decision.

I bought VWAV and made spanakopita. And I don't regret it.
I absolutely love the book, it's so easy! I feel like I have all necessary ingredients for everything, and the recipes look like they're totally my style. I think I'm going to enjoy it a lot.

The spanakopita was great and we enjoyed the leftovers the next day as well (one piece goes a long way). I will make this again for sure. My fears of phylo dough dissapeared quite fast and it was easy to assemble. The only thing I changed was that I added a tablespoon of tahini to the crumbled tofu, and we think that something sweet like raisins could also be incorporated.

Next time I'll make triangles :-).

Tomorrow is my last day at work! I can't wait to be free... (Although the financial crisis and its consequences for my job search did cost me a lot of sleep last night).

Apple-Chocolate Bread Pudding

2008-10-22T21:07:00.006+02:00

Thank you for all the good wishes! I'm a lot better already! And after those resting days, I've also noticed that my head and soul are finally feeling some peace after all those bad moments. I think I'm moving on! And I think I've figured what I want to do next in my professional life, so I think I can say altogether that I'm feeling good!

This recipe is an adaptation of the Banana-Chocolate Chip Bread Pudding from Veganomicon, because I didn't want to go all the way to the only supermarket that sells chocolate chips, and I didn't have any bananas (I'm not buying them anymore! go local!) but I had some old apples and chocolate so... why not?

It was tasty! Moister than the time I followed the recipe exactly, but it could be that I used more oats milk this time. The apples worked perfectly, I would like to try with chocolate chips and apples next time.

I'm lacking energy (I guess I rested too much and now working all day is tiring) so I'm not cooking as much as I want. Or need. But... unemployment here I come! (kidding, but I guess I will have more time to cook, even if it's between awesome job interviews).

I'll try to comment on all your blogs soon! be patient! I have to blame my lack of energy again for it...

ABC Soup For The Soul

2008-10-19T18:11:00.006+02:00

I've spent the past five days sick with a cold (not too hard, but uncomfortable, you know the kind), at home watching The Office & House, and eating a lot of crap. And wearing no pants :-).

I should have eaten a lot of healthy soup, but I didn't. Only yesterday, when I ate a great tomato-spinach ABC soup.

It came out amazing, but it was quite simple: a can of tomatoes, some frozen spinach, veggie broth and letters & numbers!

I know, it's not too exciting... Forgive me, I'm sick!

To make it up for you, I found a picture from a couple of weeks ago.

The tiny wonderful potatoes are from our local market, I love them! And the stuff you see behind the potatoes are tempeh crumbles. They are yet another way to prepare yummy tempeh! I love everything in Jessy's blog, and this was no exception. They're so great that I eat them out of the fridge with my hand when I come home hungry. Seriously.

I'm off to make some soup! I'll have cake again for the next post! Cake! (I swear I eat veggies too...)

Pumpkin Crumb Cake with Walnut Streusel

2008-10-12T11:28:00.006+02:00

OK, so I've been a disaster following the rules of VeganMoFo... 20 posts in a month? did I really believe that was possible? I'll do my best to reach 10 and we'll forget about it.

I promised you cake! And Pumpkin Crumb Cake with Walnut Streusel it is! The recipe is from Veganomicon, although I used walnuts instead of pecans for the streusel.

It smelled and tasted great but was a bit too rich for me. I used homemade pumpkin puree, and substituted one can (what the recipe called for) with 2 cups of pumpkin puree. I think this might have been too much pumpkin because it was a bit too moist.

I would like to try another pumpkin cake/pie before the fall ends (or before they disappear from the market), because this was my first pumpkin cake ever and I'm still curious!

Work drama update: my Vietnamese colleague, who started in the job 2 months after me, saw that I was having a hard time, and decided to tell me that he hates the job as much as I do and has been looking and interviewing for other jobs for a couple of weeks already. Our boss is bullying him as much as me, and we both know better. On the other side, this means that my boss is screwed, because he's going to lose 3 employers of 7 in 6 months and the big bosses are not going to like that (they told me I'm the second person to quit during probation time in 11 years and now they're going to have 2 in a couple of months!). But the most important thing is that my colleague told me this to make me feel better, which I think is very brave and nice, and that this made me believe in myself again. I'm happy and ready to move on :-).

Eating Gnocchi with Chopsticks?

2008-10-08T16:01:00.005+02:00

So, so, my ugly sandwich ended up being quite controversial! hehe. I do buy the shiitake spread in the supermarket, I'm sorry I don't have a recipe for it! It's very tasty and I cannot tell you how many dinners it has solved.
The pickled shiitakes are very common in Russia (my boyfriend's country of origin), although we're not completely sure that they're really shiitakes. It's how they're translated, but it could be that it's just a similar kind of mushrooms?

Enough with the shiitakes!

I'm not cooking as much as I wanted. Things at work are not so great (I came back today in the middle of the day because I wasn't feeling very well). They're putting a lot of pressure on me to tell the managers about what happened. But it leaves me in a very bad psycological condition, so I think I'm not going to talk about it again (although they already made an appointment for me for Friday again). I'm not in a circus.

Were you surprised by the title of my post? No, I'm not trying to steal the crown of Chocolate Covered Vegan, aka the chopstick queen... But we had these super tasty gnocchi with onions and zucchini and soy cream, and not a single fork OR spoon. They were all in the dishwasher! And the dishwasher was on!

But we just couldn't wait for the gnocchi to get cold and nasty... Chopsticks it was!

It wasn't pretty... But somehow I managed to eat all of them!

I know, I know, not too interesting, but I promise there will be cake! in the next post. Cake!

My New Favorite Sandwich

2008-10-05T12:38:00.006+02:00

Yesterday I came up with my new favorite sandwich. Seriously. It's not pretty though, and I took the pictures with very bad light.

I wasn't even going to have dinner. My boyfriend bought this small pickled cucumbers jar for his dinner, and I was all disgusted. All "I don't like cucumbers!". And then "OK, I'll smell one". "OK, I'll try one". "Can you cut ten of them in halves for my sandwich?".

And suddenly, what I had in my hands was the best sandwich ever.

All you need is:
- bread
- vegan shiitake spread
- shiitake pickles (Russian way, so no vinegar)
- small cucumber pickles (well, cornichons, I hope you know what I mean)

It was so good that I had to make myself a second one after 10 seconds. So good that I had to make it again today for breakfast!

I'm officially in love with pickles.

Eating Vegan in Cyprus

2008-10-02T17:52:00.008+02:00

Second day of VeganMoFo! I don't see myself posting everyday, but hey! I'll try! I still have to work in that horrible place till the end of October, but I won't work a minute over my time.

We spent one week in Cyprus. Why Cyprus? Honestly, it's not because of the island itself, but because of someone we care a lot about: our former roommate. As students we lived in college dormitory consisting of 2-, 4-, 5- and even 13-rooms apartments. When I arrived, my boyfriend and my friend had been living in the same apartment for 3 years, and I stayed for 2 years with them, so there's a tight bond between the three of us. About 6 months ago, he went back to live in Cyprus with his family, and it was a rather sad goodbye.

So there we went to visit him! It's always the best to visit a country with locals, and we had lots of fun.

We visited some ruins.

And an incredible castle on the North (Turkish) side of the island.

We also visited Nicosia, the last divided capital city of the world. We even went to a market! (guess who had this idea, hehe)

By the way, that's me!
They had so many things I wanted to buy... But I wasn't going to carry beans from Cyprus to Germany...

I tried one traditional dish, made of okra and tomatoes. I don't have easy access to okra over here, so I appreciate the chance to eat it whenever I get it!

In Cyprus, it's quite easy to ask for vegan food without having to explain yourself too much: just say you are fasting! A lot of people fast there for religious reasons and during that time they don't eat animal products, so you'll be on the safe side. They also have traditional vegan sweets, but that I'll explain in another post (yeah, I'm too lazy to go take a picture).

Happy Thursday!

If life gives you lemons...

2008-10-01T11:22:00.006+02:00

Ehhh... make chocolate cake?

It's VeganMoFo, and which way to start can be better than chocolate cake?

Well, I finally gave notice on Monday, thank you all for your support, which is exactly what I was needing. The worst thing about these situations is that they actually make you think that you might not be right, whereas another person looking at it from the outside realizes that you are right quite fast.

I went to the doctor yesterday morally destroyed, and she gave me a sick leave for the rest of the week, so now I have some time to put all my thoughts together in one piece.

I was going to talk about chocolate cake, wasn't I?

About a month ago, I found Mori-Nu silken tofu in a Japanese store in Frankfurt. I bought a couple of packages and started thinking of the possibilities. My birthday was approaching, and I had to have a tofu cake. I just had...

(By the way, this Mori-Nu really makes a difference. It was a lot better than other silken tofu I've tried, and it tasted a lot better too. Now I understand everything...)

There was this chapter of Law & Order with the vegetarian extremists, and the police was so worried they were going to deliver a poisonous tofu cake! We're still laughing about that, man... I just couldn't resist making a tofu cake...

And where do I look a cake recipe? Tofu for Two, of course... I don't know why, but their sweets are always my favorite... And so I decided to try the Dream Chocolate Cake (with that name, who wouldn't?).

Everybody loved it. I ended up telling about the secret ingredient (you know? poisonous tofu of course), and they still loved it.

So last weekend, foreseeing that this was going to be a tough week, I made it again.

It's not a great picture, bear with me. It's rather dark outside these days.

I love the cake, but I don't understand why Anni and Heiki described it as "not very cakey at all". I find it totally cakey!

Alive and kicking

2008-09-28T18:23:00.002+02:00

Has it been a month already? I haven't forgotten you, dear vegan blog community. It's just... life's been pretty hard this last month...
But I realize I owe you an explanation for not blogging or commenting (hi Binx! thanks for asking...).

Many things have happened in this past month. I turned 26, I traveled to Cyprus with my boyfriend for a week to visit an old roommate of us, and I had to endure severe workplace bullying. Not pretty.

I know this might sound like whining because I already had a bad boss in my last job, but this is different. I was offered a contract without him knowing, and this pissed him off, so he decided to make me go through hell. It is unfair and I don't deserve it.

He doesn't talk to me directly, I've been assigned a "mentor" who is even younger than me and gets everything wrong (we are 6 persons in the team, so this seems pretty unnecessary to me). Another guy who started a couple of months after me does not have a mentor... He excludes me of all important meetings regarding my tasks, gives me different tasks every week (which I never know how to do straight ahead because it's something new), puts me every Friday as a deadline and sends me messages on Thursday saying "Alice deadline is tomorrow. It's taking you too long". He approved my holidays 10 days before I left, and when I came back he gave me a speech about how much disrespect I had shown for my colleagues for going on vacations without finishing my task (which I told him before I left, and for which I had had 4 days) and that I don't work for the government and have to work longer whenever there is a deadline. Which is every week. And I'm already working longer and not getting paid for it (contract says 38.5 hours a week). I confronted him the next day to let him know that what he did was not alright, and he said I had made everything up. That what I was saying wasn't the reality (and I was just basically repeating him what he had said and telling him it was wrong).

And this is supposed to be a research lab where I come up with good ideas to implement?

This is not working out. I cannot sleep, I cannot eat. These are just a couple of things, and don't include the serious sexist comments I have had to listen from my coworkers. It is just not worth it.

I didn't want to write a rant in my food blog, but it is what I have. I promise my next post will be food related. I haven't been doing much of the cooking&eating thing, but this should change soon. In fact I'm quitting tomorrow. I don't deserve to be treated like a stupid. I have an engineering double degree which I gained with lots of effort and was selected to work in an important program of an international agency right after I graduated. I learn fast and work hard. And this is what I will do in my next job.

Love,
Alice in Veganland

Home Alone

2008-08-17T16:25:00.007+02:00

No, I didn't set the house on fire. And no, I wasn't robbed by two idiots. But I've been home alone the whole weekend, which means I had a lot of time for myself, but also that I had to take pictures of my food with my laptop. I'm sorry in advanced for the poor quality photos!

I have tried many new recipes over the last days. Weird, since I hadn't had time for new things for the past three months. I have also uncluttered my apartment, and I even bought some clothes (which I very much needed, by the way), so I guess in general it was a good weekend. However, I don't like to be alone for too long, so I'm already looking forward to this evening!

The weekend started with pasta & pesto. I have a basil plant which I don't use enough. It's perfectly healthy, and grows like crazy, and the weight of all those leaves was starting to be a bit too much. This is why I decided to try a basil pesto, basically using this recipe, but eyeballing the ingredients because I can't be bothered to follow easy and straight instructions.

I'm almost sure I found the recipe browsing tastespotting, you can find pretty interesting things! They are mostly not vegan, but sometimes they are indeed vegan, and it only takes a couple of minutes to decide if there's something worth following or not, so I think it's a good deal.

Saturday was a quick zucchini stir-fry, with a local tomato I had just bought in the market. Nothing new!

I added some soy cream because otherwise I would have had to throw it away and I hate wasting food.

I bought a small tupperware for soup yesterday, because I want to take soup every day if possible for lunch this autumn and winter. Somehow I'm already thinking of winter all the time even though it's august. My mind somehow doesn't realize that it's summer!

What I wanted to talk about was the soup I cooked for today: Edamame Soup. It was even tastier than I thought it would be!

I'm definitely going to cook this again, even if I think that frozen edamame beans are slightly overpriced in Germany. Funny thing is I copied the recipe yesterday on a piece of paper for today, and I didn't write "salt and pepper" because I thought it was obvious, and today I cooked it without salt and pepper. I kept thinking "how weird that the recipe doesn't call for salt". Duh! Silly me!

I wanted this week to be black bean week, but I couldn't find black beans in the supermarket, so we are having white bean week! With them, I cooked Non-Chickpea Cutlets, and they turned out pretty good, but I baked them and they're quite dry. It's not a problem, because I bring them to work packed with the zucchini, so they'll get wet, but I wonder if they would've turned better in the pan.

A new week is starting soon and I'm not sure I'm ready for it, but I guess I don't have a choice, have I? Can we move Monday one day further? Can we? OK, I'll stop whining :-).

Vegan Wedding Food

2008-08-13T18:39:00.006+02:00

I'm back from my crazy trip to and through Spain, and I'm happy to report that everything went great, and we were just a bit late for the ceremony. We usually end up missing everything, so I guess this time we did pretty well!

I had a great time, seriously. I was a lot relaxed than I thought I would be, and that helped me survive the trip, and it's also helping me this week.

My sinus infection is gone, in theory. That's what the doctor said, something like "nature should do the rest". But I'm still waiting for nature to come and do the rest! Anyway, thank you for suggesting the neti pot. I have never seen it in Germany or Spain (but then again, I had never looked for it before). I find it sort of cool and disgusting at the same time (more cool than disgusting, hehe), and I definitely will buy it if I find it.

Before I start with the wedding food, which was indeed vegan for me(I didn't have big hopes on this), I want to show you something from last week.

I made the chickpea cutlets from Vcon again last week, this time with the help of Mr. Food Processor. But this was not the interesting part! The stir fry is! It looks normal, doesn't it? It has local summer squash, local chili and local eggplant, with peanut sauce. I have actually already blogged about this peanut sauce, but it was so amazing I cannot help but do it again.

Hot Peanut Sauce:

2 Tbsp peanut butter
2 Tbsp hot sauce
1 tsp vinegar
1 tsp molasses
1 tsp cayenne pepper

The addition of cayenne pepper made it super tasty!

I didn't expect to have vegan food in the wedding. I honestly don't think they actually know about vegans or even vegetarians. An uncle spent 10 minutes trying to convince me to eat ham, because how can I still be a vegetarian the day of my aunt's wedding?

First they brought me a plate with white boiled asparagus and a lot of mayo (which I didn't eat, of course). This was OK but nothing special.

But the second this was a huge plate of roasted veggies and mushrooms!

Then we had an iced lemon-champagne drink in between.

The main dish was terrible. Basmati rice with too much oil and a some veggies. They are just not used to having to cook for non-meat eaters...
And at the end they were so nice to bring me a fruit salad for dessert!

Given that I thought I was going to have to eat dairy, this was a pretty good meal!

Falafel, Chickpea Cutlets and Chickpea Cookies

2008-08-04T22:31:00.007+02:00

Yes, you guessed right... Garbanzo week!

I've been eating a bit unhealthy the last days. But well, at least it was tasty!

I started with store-bought falafel, roasted eggplant and fries.

Don't worry, it doesn't get unhealthier than this (but I ate it two days in a row!).

And then, the magic happened. I had bookmarked a recipe for homemade falafel in Jennifer's blog, and had wanted to try it ever since. Taking advantage of garbanzo week, I made my own falafel!

These are basically two versions of the same meal. The homemade version was way better, of course. The falafel patties are baked, and therefore a bit dry. Nothing a good sauce can't solve! And they taste very original.

The Quit Now Challenge is working quite well over here. I'm quitting store-bought vegan cookies, in case you forgot. First, I tried substituting them with cereal. Bad bad idea. I had an upset tummy for several days, ending it telling my boyfriend "please, no matter how much I beg, don't let me eat more cereal...". To solve the problem, I made chickpea cookies!

Why chickpea? Well, I'm experimenting with chickpea flour to help a friend who's fighting with a lot of food intolerances. This was just a first step, but I would like to offer her a good recipe with the ingredients she can use (which are not the ones I used here, by the way, I'm just experimenting).

These are very very basic cookies. I could probably improve the recipe, but I'm lazy like this.

Chickpea Cookies:

1 cup chickpea flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 Tbsp raisins
1 Tbsp ground almonds
1 Tbsp flax seeds
oats milk and water until the consistency is "right"

Simple, isn't it? But they're tasty anyway!

And last but not least... I made Chickpea Cutlets from Vcon! It's taken me ages! I simplified the recipe, substituting whole wheat flour for the bread crumbs, and omitting a couple of things I don't even remember, but they were great anyway.

They're not pretty (because I didn't mash the chickpeas so nicely), but they're the best seitan I've ever tried. Maybe the second better. One of the meals that opened my eyes to vegetarianism years ago was an incredible homemade seitan. But these come right after!

You can see the cutlets with local zucchini. I won't write again about zucchini, I really don't want to, but I still eat it every single day.

And that's it! Because I don't want to bore you with my sinus infection (that requires me to go to the doctor every single morning for 30 min till Thursday for a treatment), my long working days, or how I have to fly to Madrid on Friday, drive 400 km the next day for a wedding, drive back to Madrid on Sunday, and fly back on Monday. See, I'd rather stay with my chickpeas in peace.

More Zucchini and an Award!

2008-07-29T18:34:00.010+02:00

Uff, it's been a long time... I have missed you! I promise I will catch up with all your blogs.

The truth is, I don't even have interesting things to show you... The last week and a half has been sort of boring in terms of food. I'm still enjoying zucchini and summer squash from the farmer's market almost everyday. Very tasty, but sort of boring after a while. Well, boring to show, not to eat!

One day my boyfriend surprised me with a box of light yellow Hungarian peppers, and, because I had no idea what to do with them, I stir fried them and served them over whole wheat linguine.

I often cook a big batch of beans on Sunday, and bring them for lunch over the week. Last week I prepared a big pot of brown lentils curry, and ate my way through it with raw grounded cauliflower. It smelled like heaven while cooking and was pretty tasty, but after cooling down in the fridge, it lost a lot of flavor. I froze two portions of it and I will have them for lunch with veggies tomorrow and on Thursday.

The curry had two diced potatoes, a summer squash, cashew nuts, brown lentils and lots of spiciness. The weird thing on the left side of the dish is baked eggplant!

Over the weekend I was craving tempeh like crazy, so I made another pasta dish. I swear to you I have eaten other things beside pasta. In fact, the only times I've eaten it are these you are seeing.

Nothing new, really. Summer squash, a green local pepper, a tomato and tempeh, with a sauce of tomato paste and oregano.

And yesterday I wanted to bake an eggplant very badly, but also wanted to not die because of the heat coming from the oven, so I made it in the pan.

The red sauce is something I bought over the weekend, labelled as "very hot chili sauce". It's not hot, at all. And I'm disappointed!

And last but not least... An award!

La Belle Vegan, I'm Vegan and Therefore Cooler Than You, Musings from the Fishbowl, The Vegan Grindhouse, poopiebitch, The True and Tall Tales of My Fantastic and Brilliant Life, What the Hell does a PinkHaired Girl Eat? and Veg*n Cooking and Other Random Musings all, all of them (!) have nominated me for a Brillante Award. Thank you so much!

And now I have to nominate!

Tofuparty - because I love how she shares the magic of vegan cooking with her teenager.
Veg*n Cooking and Other Random Musings (yes, I'm nominating back and don't care about whether it makes sense or not) - because she's giving me a lot more than she thinks with her posts.
Trying Veganism - because she loves Spongebob as much as I do.
Happyveganface - because I love it when she writes superw00t.
What The Hell Does a PinkHairedGirl eat? - because I'm even thinking of moving next to her so I can taste her fantastic looking meals.
The Tropical Vegan - because honestly, I think she's very cool.
Poopiebitch - because I see the passion for what she does in every single cake she makes.

On other news (oh my, this post is getting longer by the minute!), I have signed up for the Quit Now Challenge organized in August by Jennifer. I'm going to quit buying and eating store bought vegan cookies! Because let's face it, I eat way too many of them, and they're expensive and they involve a lot of packaging (plastic bag + paper top). Go take a look at the challenge, maybe you'll find something to quit!

Artichoke Soup and Roasted Fennel

2008-07-20T09:19:00.008+02:00

I think I have to assume the fact that I'll only have enough time to post once a week in the next months (years? oh man...). The truth is, I'm working quite a lot and it's probably going to stay like this for the next couple of years (oh, and I hope I'll get used to it and stop falling asleep everywhere!). The positive thing about it is that I'm getting a lot of experience, which I will need in the future.

When I arrived home on Monday, still feeling my horrible migraine, I had the luck to find my favorite farmer at the farmer's market still open, and I bought two wonderful artichokes. "This will solve all my problems", I thought. My grandmother, who is a yoga teacher (and on her eighties), always feeds us with artichoke soup to detox. I simply cooked the two artichokes in water, and then added the juice of half a lemon when they were done. Voila! Artichoke soup!

I ate two bowls and that was enough for dinner! I will eat the same thing today, since they don't have artichokes for too long.

The same day, I bought two fennel bulbs, determined to try them roasted. I have tried them raw (tasty, but a bit tough), stir fried with tomato sauce (tasty!), and now it was time to roast them! I roasted them marinated in balsamic vinegar and olive oil, and liked the final result a lot.

For this week, I cooked a big batch of adzuki beans, and everyday I heated a portion with white miso in a pan for the next day. Wow. It's incredible how I can eat the same thing for lunch for a week and enjoy it every single time!

Here you can see them with shitake mushrooms, zucchini and green broad beans. The adzuki beans looked more like a paste, but boy were they tasty!

I'm trying to eat all the items of my pantry that have been there for ehhh years (!), so it was time to use the polenta. I'm not a big fan of polenta, but this time it was really tasty, cooked with veggie broth and topped with nooch.

I have a lot of produce again for this week, since the farmer's market is overflowing with awesome produce, but... I guess you'll have to wait another week to see what I did with it!

Banana-Chocolate Chip Bread Pudding

2008-07-14T18:09:00.008+02:00

I can't believe it's been a week. Seriously. I'm having a small energy-related problem. One in which I don't have any energy, at all. But I didn't come to whine...

I didn't have much time (or energy, as I said) to cook last week, but I did try a couple of things. First, I used the sauce of Veganomicon's Spicy Tempeh and Broccoli Rabe with Rotelle to marinate some tofu. The idea was very good, and I was the only one who didn't like it. Why? Well, I'm sure you've encountered this problem too... The tofu just didn't taste that great. There are so many brands, and each tastes so different... So far, the best one I've had is the Asian one, but that also means the only non-organic one...

I cooked it with summer squash, which was fresh and tasty (unlike the tofu *sigh*). The leftovers kept well on the counter for two days (I know...), so I had them with microwaved frozen broccoli (I know...) and tahini sauce.

The recipe for the tahini sauce is:

- 1/2 cup soy yogurt
- 1 Tbsp tahini
- 1 tsp cayenne pepper
- black pepper and salt to taste

If I weren't so lazy I would add lemon juice, which brings it to another level. But I always think if I use a lemon for such a small thing, I will end up not using the rest and it will go to waste.

OK, I tricked you with a bread pudding and here I am talking to you about leftovers. Enough!

This is Veganomicon's Banana-Chocolate Chip Bread Pudding:

I didn't find any chocolate chips, hence the chocolate chunks. Oh, and I broke my favorite knife cutting the chocolate... It was tasty tasty tasty. Make it the next time you have stale bread. And if you don't, buy bread, wait for a week, and cook it as I did! You know at one point you're supposed to mix with your hands? I licked my hands. Every single finger.

But I won't go without showing you another dessert, no. Oats milk rice with bananas!

The recipe goes as follows:

- 3/4 cup brown rice
- 1/4 cup brown sugar
- 3/4 cup water
- 3/4 cup oats milk
- 1 cinnamon stick
- 2 bananas added 5 minutes before finishing cooking

The second I finished this, I felt it. Migraine. I should have known it! So I'm having a very hard time since yesterday evening. I hope it goes away soon! I want my head back!