planet vegan scotland - posts tagged 'cooking'

cake

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 08:56:49 GMT

cake chocolate brambles

chocolate recipes including chocolate cake. More cake recipes here :D

bloggage, food and snow

blackcurrants and tyres

friends and mince pies

raised beds

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 09:10:04 GMT

We have 3 new ones for next season, hopefully one more to come Planning to give over the whole allotment bit at the bottom of the garden to potatoes next year, with the chives, rhubarb and some other bits (maybe leeks? nasturtiums?) for biodiversity.

the four big beds, all made of reclaimed wood and old tiles from the roof

It’s been really noticable this year that the more food we grow, the smaller are our shopping bills, also much more work, but it’s very joyful

So now, my baby bed in detail…

just created

It’s in “the hot place”, a sunbathing area of near tropical climes, the place of the toolbox of lettuce (actually mixed salad leaves this year) with house walls to the North and East, shelter from trees and shrubs all round and refelective light walls too – I think I could probably lay cookies out to bake there on a hot day!

All the beds are layered up thus:

a layer of kitchen compost, should be thicker really but wanted to get this one going

seaweed from the beach, mainly kelp

4 growbags chucked in the top

Having learned the propensity of lettuce to survive even the fiercest winters I have planted winter density seeds in there and also garlic round the edges. There may be something unsightly done with bubble wrap and wire as it gets colder.

and randomly:

blackcurrant and apple pie

oatly less artistically arranged this time… we highly recommend growing blackcurrants – the abundance! the easy jam making! the easy freezing! the gorgeous smoothies… and pies…

and a mother sheep feeding lambs behind barbed wire:

beautiful horns she has

wild garlic

new designs in shop

how does your garden grow?

apples

Fri, 20 Aug 2010 11:06:54 GMT

a great abundance of these this year

there will be pie tonight

beautiful shiny juicy

faeryland

if the mountain defeats us...

getting a bit festive

broad beans

Sat, 14 Aug 2010 14:35:20 GMT

the sunflower opened, by newly painted bench

waiting to be shelled

I worked very hard painting that furniture so expect to see it in every picture! Shelling the beans was somewhat labour intensive, aching arms for one bowl to put in soup…

beautiful beans

While shelling I contemplated growing runner beans instead next year…

they are tasty raw, been having them in salads

But then I put them in the leek and potato soup a couple of minutes before the end of cooking time:

leek, potato and broad bean soup

oh my… the flavour, the tenderness, no bought beans compare to this. The just picked freshness… totally gorgeous. They don’t take much room to grow, each plant produces lots and lots of pods… I now intend doing them again despite the shelling drudgery

recipe similar to this but with the obvious inclusion of beans instead of peas and I didn’t bother thickening it with flour.

One more day to enter the competition below!

tomato and rice soup

strawberries

flower power

preserving

Thu, 05 Aug 2010 07:53:51 GMT

redcurrants and rosemary awaiting sugar

What a bumper year it’s been for the currants – were having berried up green smoothies daily, there are lots in freezer which will extend the berry smoothie season and it’s looking to be a very abundant bramble year too. Last year we gathered quite a lot for the freezer as well as smoothie-ing them fresh. At least I thought we’d gathered a lot until I met a man in the woods with 3 huge bucket loads of them. He must have spent all day picking. Maybe for jam? I really want to try preserving in different ways this year so we can eat the home grown stuff in winter too. So we made strawberry jam as mentioned, and then moved onto:

redcurrant and rosemary jelly for savoury things

This was inspired by the home baked blog, that mixing of flavours is beautiful! I used Delia’s redcurrant jelly recipe with quite a few rosemary sprigs thrown in and then used the same basic technique to make:

blackcurrant jelly

which is wonderful – what a sensational taste blackcurrants do have!

Cooking on the stove this morning is Apple and Ginger Chutney from the Cranks recipe book with the apples from the bike ride heavily supplemented with ones from our trees and our own onions in there too Adapted recipe on the sauces page.

paint the planets

blackcurrants and tyres

bloggage, food and snow

potatoes

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 12:46:30 GMT

pink and white tatties

Never before have we had so many of these beautiful apples of the Earth. Pull a stem and reach into the ground for tuber after tuber – the plot is full of them Weather conditions have no doubt contributed to this abundant harvest but I’ve also been a more diligent waterer on dry days. Sunshine finds me standing at the well, filling cans with the water so rich in iron it smells of metal. Plants love it. Potatoes are thirsty roots.

…and we do love these pots: in salads with mayo and chives; as a side dish with marg and parsley and in soups with kale and onion from the garden too

Christmas without Cruelty Edinburgh 2005

wild garlic

cooking and coast

sweet things

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 11:45:07 GMT

Alpro soya milks and puddings

Have been sent some Alpro goodies to try We do like their soya milk. The only one I didn’t know about was the ‘milk alternative’ suitable from 1 year old. Lots of extra vitamins and iron in it (and surprisingly nice in nocaf!). The chocolate puddings are lush lush lush…

Blackcurrant smoothies, there have been a few more – here’s a before pic Layered up are borage flowers, gooseberries, blackcurrants, leaf beet, parsley, linseeds (flax), brazil nuts, bananas and apple juice.

smoothie to be

sweet red onion from garden - very pleased with these

blackcurrant cake - currants cooked in batter and raw squished into icing too

also made some banana muffins with lots of redcurrants in – no pic but very good

Charlotte's strawberry jam bubbling on cooker - taking 'sweet' to new levels!!

raw mom summit

woods, hands, feet, bread and soup…

catkins and cheeze

rhubarb, tweets and elderflowers

Sun, 04 Jul 2010 08:32:32 GMT

rhubarb and ginger jam

We have a veritable forest of rhubarb so into jam some of it went yesterday! recipe over on frugal where there is also a twitter competition detailed on the front page to win my copy of The Moneyless Man (who is vegan by the way, don’t think I mentioned that before)

Gathered some elderflowers in the wood yesterday too and made some cordial sort of from this recipe though I made much less as I know it doesn’t keep for long even in the fridge, even with citric acid which I didn’t use this time… the taste of summer in it is amazing…

smoothie and hummus

herbidacious!

summery greenery

joyful swimming and pie

Tue, 29 Jun 2010 07:57:09 GMT

early morning swimming

When we bought this house the old endowments associated with our previous mortgage were no longer needed and we wanted to invest the money from them in this property (trying to be sensible). The kitchen was hanging by a thread so that got replaced and the children were given the choice of what the rest should be spent on. Their chosen pool has been a fantastic buy, on it’s 4th summer now, Charlotte being the most determined swimmer among us, beating her personal best every day!

from above

Wishes Come True Pie from the novel Hubble Bubble, very delicious even with some substitutions for things like grains of paradise and job’s tears

root veg, nuts, seeds, grains, gravy topped with pastry

much ado about nothing

samosas

penguins and seitan

green soup and juice, raw chocolate pud

Sun, 27 Jun 2010 13:26:58 GMT

minty pea and nettle soup

recipe up here

wheatgrass

been drinking wheatgrass juice with friends

slight deviation away from green

Raw chocolate pudding teamed up with Swedish Glace (booja booja stuff in a tub is raw if you prefer). Pudding was made thus: grind up some raw chocolate nibs (could use cocoa though of course not raw) then blend with a large avocado and 2 ripe bananas with a squirt of agave nectar – makes enough for four people. I also added a little water for a smoother result.

Poppies:

inside a flower

seeds within

blackcurrants

mellow

knitted digestion

you think i’ve been quiet…

Thu, 20 May 2010 11:52:54 GMT

i haven’t! i’ve been very noisy and busy, but it has all happened offline. i know, what is this offline of which i speak? it appears to be the thing one discovers when one stops playing with fabric and fibre and ventures into the world of offices. ick! no, they don’t pay me, but i get moral brownie points that i can splurge on sweetcorn fritters from vegan with a vengeance:

in fact, they were so good i have to post them twice!

i also FO’d a project that i’ve had kicking about for a while: rav

planting log, sitting, eating, stones and sea

Sat, 15 May 2010 16:23:52 GMT

broad beans and leeks in one of the raised beds

I have just planted over 300 little leeks, lots of kale and purple sprouting brocolli seedlings, carrots, radish, garlic, basil, sunflowers and flat leaf parsley as an alternative to the madly (but wonderfully) continually self seeding curly

allotment bit at bottom of garden, greenhouse left

The thinking of the planting this year is to grow things that both do well up here and that we eat lots of, no experimentation with things like aubergines which only just manage to flower before winter! Also in are lettuce, rocket, mixed salad leaves, french beans, broad beans, peas, potatoes, onions and in greenhouse there are tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, courgettes and a giant grapevine obtained on freecycle and doing very well so far. Perennial things like rhubarb, chives, lovage, bronze fennel, mint and leafbeet are thriving. Fruit bushes and trees all look to be heading for a bumper year. Cold winter can’t have hurt them

sitting together continues, even in sunless situations

and the eating: chocolate sesame snaps now have thick chocolate stripes on them

chocolate sesame snaps

Made some gorgeous dandelion fritters to go with wild garlic pesto – saw them on home baked a while ago and used basic vegan pancake mix of soya milk and self raising flour beaten to a thick batter, a flower in each spoonful/fritter:

a nice lunch

no shortage of this ingredient in the garden

next wild food recipe on the list to try – Cat’s nettle pies!

stones and sea

broken arm update: after two weeks it has healed so well it does not need cast anymore and writing can take place again

hang the parliament and eat cake

Sun, 09 May 2010 17:17:28 GMT

we’ve managed to get a hung parliament. for those of us who object to our political system (FPTP), this is great news. it thoroughly demonstrates how inadequate the system is for a modern democracy with more than two parties competing for seats and power. however, the current state of affairs sees our bid for PR on a knife-edge as the reformist liberal democrats are in negotiation with the vocally anti-reformist conservatives. my fridge has made its views very clear:

yesterday, in response to all this, j and i went on a demo to campaign for a fairer electoral system. since purple is the colour of the suffrage movement from, oh, so long ago, we were requested to wear it. i don’t actually own a single item of purple clothing(!), but i managed to find this quite lovely vintage number for a couple of quid at a local charity shop (excuse the shocking photo – i’m not very good taking photos in a mirror):

its vice-like grip on my ample endowments made me feel like a suffragette in a corset (note the fugly back-fat coming into view)! so, i wore it with green for effect. the glasgow showing was poor, but thousands turned out in london and succeeded in gaining counsel with nick clegg himself.

i drowned my political fears in domestic goddessness today with scones:

and chocolate cupcakes from vegan cupcakes take over the world:

we bought some hemp milk yesterday and, although pricey and a little hemp-y in flavour, it imparts a delicious texture to baked goods.

i still haven’t finished my orange election jumper. i think that says something, but i’m not sure what. still, at least i won’t have to think too hard about whether to use blue or red buttons… not that it looks like i’ll get much of a say in that, anyway!

those cakes

Sun, 18 Apr 2010 15:49:05 GMT

they were the meanest-looking cakes in da house:

in other news, j ran a half marathon today. he ran a PB of 1.44ish, to be confirmed officially:

f***-you cupcakes

Fri, 16 Apr 2010 12:55:37 GMT

so, i have to go to a birthday party this weekend. i usually like birthday parties, but i hate obligation, and i really hate one-sided obligation. the pressure’s not coming from the person whose birthday it is, but it is coming from the party organisers, who expect me to be there and, furthermore, “don’t have time” to make cake suitable for vegans “as well as everything else”. by now it’s a moot point to make that vegan-suitable cake is not exclusively suitable for card-carrying vegans. i despair.

so, i’m making that point in person. i will probably suffer bad karma forever, for i am making fuck-you cupcakes:

i’ll post more photos when they’re all done, but believe me, revenge has never tasted so sweet!

growth

Thu, 15 Apr 2010 07:38:09 GMT

colour

Planted my berry bushes from Suttons yesterday, well protected there from the rabbits Potatoes are going in today… Dipping into the Anastasia series again to get truly inspired again with growing, so different from anything else I’ve ever read.

honey berry bush, in beside goji and blue

Made wonderful leek, potato and wild garlic soup from the recipe on Cat’s blog

pond flowers

fairy all springlike now beside the Archangel dead nettles

rabbit bones

daff

new leaves on sweet chestnut

flowering currant - is full of bees, lovely noise

new mint

of Russians and swans

Thu, 08 Apr 2010 07:51:18 GMT

woods and loch

Totally loving the gorgeous springness that is all around now Had some lovely wild garlic pesto yesterday and think may do same today. Seems to have less of a garlic hit when very young though still very good.

freshly picked wild garlic and the sky

Swans are still following us around – whooping ones fly over the garden and woods regularly just now and look – we have new swan taps on the bath following a water gushing disaster with the old very antiquated ones!

swan tap

fitted for us by a Russian plumber, first plumber to come here who didn’t make a soap opera-esque drama about getting the water on and off with our old system and was also gentle and kind to elderly cats and frenzied frogs! More Russian-ness in The Turning Point from the beautiful Misha and Grishko ballet shoes from here:

ballet shoe heel

sandy shore of the loch

Spring pics

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 15:10:59 GMT

The only crocus to survive intensive rabbit grazing

beautiful biscuits for a ballet day with the girls...

cake too, no anorexic dancing here

poor mangled nut feeder - deer trample it to get the peanuts out!

soon there will be daffs

willow catkins and the sky

chives

parsley

free veg seeds from the bbc here

reflections and windows

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 18:05:13 GMT

The bridge did get finished:

Now this may appear to be a blurry photo gone wrong – well, it is - but it is also a picture of trees reflected in chocolate so worthy of inclusion

It is a montezuma’s very dark bar…

walnut cake and sheep

Sun, 28 Feb 2010 16:21:09 GMT

Vegan Easter has been updated

Walnut cake with a tablespoon of Nocaf added to the mix. It is not coffeeish as had intended but is very nice:

1st of March tomorrow, so will it get more springlike?

toast, Valentine cookies and a cheesecake

Sun, 14 Feb 2010 19:36:58 GMT

We do still favour green smoothies for breakfast but on a cold winter’s day sometimes only decadently topped toast will do

Valentine cookies: made this basic dough and did half plain (some topped with coconut), a quarter of it with a little finely chopped fresh ginger and the other quarter with unwaxed lemon rind, beautiful flavours!

Tried this Mamma Cucina cheesecake, very impressive to get a vegan one readymade in a shop but not a patch on homemade… what is though?

and a scene from a recent sunny day (more snow predicted for tomorrow!)

cheap

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 15:31:31 GMT

a frugal recipe again, basic pasties :)

and bargains to be had – the book people are offering 10% off all orders until midnight tomorrow (Wed. 3rd Feb) – just enter WIN10 at checkout for offer.

edinburgh xmas

Tue, 05 Jan 2010 21:35:19 GMT

we went into the kitchen on xmas day morning to make a cup of tea (xmas or not, everyday begins with a cup of tea!) and were amazed to see an unusual-looking bird. not just one, though:

they're fieldfares, and had made their way into j's mum's garden to eat the last of her pink rowan berries during the hard frost that accompanied the snow we've been having for the past few weeks.

we'd gone for the handmade xmas approach and so didn't really have much to offer in return for our epic treatfest, which included a new teapot and some pekoetea to go with it, an alessi jar with some dried beans to fill it, two sets of whisky glasses (j and i love our single malt!), a tweed flatcap for j and some awesome books:

so, left to right, that's veganomicon (unbelievable book! super-highly recommended), vegan cupcakes take over the world (perfect for the sweet tooth in everyone, not just vegans), jekka's complete herb book (how to grow, harvest and prepare herbs for cooking, medicinal and cosmetic uses), and the twisted sisters sock workbook (beautiful handspun, beautiful socks, inventive approaches and inspiring ideas), phew!

we just gave folk homemade truffles and knitted items...

apparently, this is the coldest winter for 30 years. really, it couldn't have come at a worse time. just as it seemed the tide was turning on public opinion of climate change science, this year has really put a spanner in those works. a feeble summer, dodgy scientific practices, failed UN summits, and now more snow than there has ever been in my lifetime. as much as this is actually evidence for rather than against climate change, it rarely gets interpreted that way - least of all by the deniers. so, it really feels stacked against at the moment...

listening: most of the day, to j's sister's will young cd
reading: too many brilliant books!

chocolate brownie cheesecake!

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 14:03:16 GMT

i made a chocolate brownie cheesecake yesterday:

it's the chocolate brownie from how it all vegan topped with the cheesecake from easy vegan cooking. you just make up the two cake batches then put the brownie mix in a round baking tin and pour the cheesecake mix on top of it before baking the whole lot.

as you can see from the above photo, there's a bit too much fluffy brownie layer and a bit too little stiff cheesecake layer. next time, i'll halve the baking powder called for in the brownie mix and then halve the mix again for the cake quantity. i just felt it was too cake-like and not pudding-y enough to be a real brownie. i'll also double the cheesecake quantity and not bake the whole thing as long. i think i ended up leaving it in for over an hour, so maybe just the one hour next time should do it...

listening: mumford and sons
reading: turbulence 4: who will save us from the future?

planet vegan scotland - posts tagged 'cooking'

cake

Related posts:

raised beds

Related posts:

apples

Related posts:

broad beans

Related posts:

preserving

Related posts:

potatoes

Related posts:

sweet things

Related posts:

rhubarb, tweets and elderflowers

Related posts:

joyful swimming and pie

Related posts:

green soup and juice, raw chocolate pud

Related posts:

you think i’ve been quiet…

planting log, sitting, eating, stones and sea

hang the parliament and eat cake

those cakes

f***-you cupcakes

growth

of Russians and swans

Spring pics

reflections and windows

walnut cake and sheep

toast, Valentine cookies and a cheesecake

cheap

edinburgh xmas

chocolate brownie cheesecake!