Vegetarian & Vegan Australia Day Barbeque Ideas

January 25, 2013 by 8 Comments

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAIt’s Australia Day this Saturday, one day of the year when it is literally considered unpatriotic not to grill something. Eight months into meat abstinence (LOL), it still feels a bit weird to be a vegetarian at a barbeque. It’s not that I’m ever confronted by people questioning my dietary choices (because I don’t hang out with jerks), but barbeques in Australia are meat-centric experiences and if not adequately prepared I’m struck by FOMO (that’s fear of missing out, Mum). Whether or not you celebrate Australia Day, here are some hand-picked vegetarian and vegan barbeque ideas:

Jamie Oliver Killer Mexican Barbecued Corn on the Cob
I love corn on the cob. Grill it and cover it with cheese, chilli, lime and I would marry it if I could.

101 Cookbooks Grilled Salt and Vinegar Potato Slices (vegan)
Yum! This is the souped-up version of the plain potato slices we threw on the barbie growing up.

The Pioneer Woman Grilled Zucchini with Yummy Lemon Salt (vegan)
I also love grilled zucchini. The addition of lemon salt makes it so fresh and zingy. Do want.

Post-Punk Kitchen Quarter Pounder Beet Burgers (vegan)
BAM. These are for real. I’m the type of vegetarian who perks up at the description of their ‘vaguely disturbing meat-like appearance.’ These contain heaps of plant-based protein as well.

Veggie Num Num Sundried Tomato and Pinenut Seitan Sausages (vegan)
Packet vegetarian sausages at a barbeque are a bit depressing, aren’t they? I am pining for one of these with tomato sauce wrapped in soft white bread.

Delicieux Crunchy Cucumber Salad
After I’d filled up with grilled veggies, burgers and sausages, I’d so appreciate this simple, cool, crisp salad.

Easy as Vegan Pie Lamingtons
I know, I know. I couldn’t resist.

PSA: The molten gorgeousness on my nails is Zoya Nail Lacquer in Jules, which I snaffled up for $5AUD from Jac’s blog sale this week.

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Vegetarian Nicoise Salad Recipe

January 6, 2013 by 2 Comments

Vegetarian Nicoise SaladIt’s too hot. Johanis and I keep on picking ridiculous fights with each other. My energy levels are low. I have a constant low-grade headache. The inspiration for this salad was heat-related: I couldn’t be bothered properly cooking anything and I was craving a cool salad that would fill me up. I took a classic French recipe, the niçoise salad, and vegetarianized it for my own amusement (and now yours, I hope). It’s everything I wanted it to be: fresh, interesting, zingy, filling.

Instead of the traditional tuna, I used my favourite tinned tuna substitute: chickpeas roughly mashed with a little olive oil and salt and pepper. The provide all of the protein-rich savouriness you need to balance the fresh veggies, without being, well, made of meat. I also omitted the traditional anchovies; all niçoise salads already have olives enough to provide the saltiness required.

This recipe could be easily made vegan by omitting the hard-boiled egg; they’re traditional but not really pivotal, I think.

Vegetarian Nicoise Salad Recipe
 
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Author:
Serves: 4

Ingredients
  • 12 baby potatoes
  • 400g green beans, trimmed
  • 1 can of chickpeas
  • 1 punnet of cherry tomatoes, halved
  • ½ cup of black olives (pitted)
  • 1 cos lettuce, outer leaves discarded
  • 4 hard-boiled eggs, peeled and quartered
  • ½ cup of olive oil
  • ⅓ cup of red wine vinegar
  • 1 tablespoon of Dijon mustard
  • Salt and pepper

Instructions
  1. Cook the baby potatoes in a large saucepan of boiling water for 10 minutes or until the baby potatoes are tender.
  2. Meanwhile, make the salad dressing. Whisk together ⅓ cup of olive oil, the red wine vinegar, and the Dijon mustard, then season to taste.
  3. Roughly mash the chickpeas with a little olive oil and season to taste.
  4. Remove the baby potatoes from the saucepan and rinse them in cold water. You can halve the baby potatoes or leave them whole if you prefer.
  5. Add the green beans the saucepan, cooking them in boiling water for just a couple of minutes or until the beans are just tender. Drain the green beans and rinse them in cold water.
  6. In a large serving bowl, add the cos lettuce leaves, halved cherry tomatoes, olives, mashed chickpea mixture, baby potatoes, green beans, and boiled eggs.
  7. Add the dressing just before serving.

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Leftover Vegetable Soup Recipe

December 30, 2012 by 2 Comments

Leftover Vegetable Soup

If you’re anything like me, you’ve still got a concerning amount of Christmas leftovers languishing in your fridge. I’ve never liked wasting food, a quality which I think I inherited from my mother; she is the type of person who gnaws the last bit of meat from a chicken bone. This particularly unimaginately-named soup is less of a recipe and more of an idea for using up the series of droopy vegetables you are likely to find in your crisper drawer.

My version included a brown onion, two celery sticks, most of a sweet potato, two carrots, and about six Brussels sprouts, along with some fresh sage and thyme from my little garden — but you can use any vegetables and/or herbs you have knocking about. In the interests of my continued survival, I added vegetarian protein in the form of dried soup mix (usually a mixture of split peas, barley, and lentils).

I find making soup a meditative practice; I think it’s something to do with the combination of familiar ingredients, leisurely chopping and stirring, making such a satisfyingly large quantity of something, and knowing there’s not much that can go wrong. I’m a dorky introvert and over the Christmas period I got all social-ed out, so when the house finally emptied yesterday evening I quietly made this soup and felt much better.

This recipe could easily be made vegan by using oil instead of butter to fry the veggies.

 
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Ingredients
  • 2 cups of dried soup mix
  • 6 cups of water
  • 2 cups (or more) of mixed grated vegetables – onion, celery, carrot, etc.
  • 1 clove of garlic
  • Small handful of mixed herbs – sage, thyme, parsley etc.
  • A knob of butter
  • 1 vegetable stock cube
  • 1 tablespoon of soy sauce
  • Pepper to season

Instructions
  1. Put the soup mix and water in a large saucepan and bring to the boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for 30 mins (or until soup mix is tender).
  2. Meanwhile, in a frying pan, gently fry the vegetables, garlic and herbs in the butter until they are soft.
  3. Next, add the vegetable mix to the soup mix. You may find you need to add more water at this stage, depending on how thick you like your soup. Add a vegetable stock cube to the soup, along with a tablespoon of soy sauce (if you like your soup to be quite savoury).
  4. Simmer the soup for a further 15 minutes to let all the flavours mingle, then season the soup with pepper to taste (you probably won’t need to add salt as the stock cube and soy sauce are already quite salty).
  5. You can either leave the soup as-is or purée half or all of it, if you prefer a smoother consistency.

P.S. BBC Good Food and Taste.com.au both have excellent Christmas leftovers recipe collections for all your other leftover bits and bobs!

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A Vegetarian Traditional Christmas Dinner Menu

December 22, 2012 by 14 Comments

Vegetarian Christmas

I’m hosting our family Christmas lunch this year and I am experiencing a deep internal conflict: TO MEAT OR NOT TO MEAT.  My heart tells me to stay strong and enjoy a vegetarian Christmas, while my tummy tells me, hey, just this once won’t hurt. I decided to put together an amazing vegetarian traditional Christmas dinner menu to prove to myself that it can be done.

Pre-dinner nibbles:

Spiced Sugar Christmas Popcorn 
I have the attention span of a piece of lint, so I don’t cope well with sitting down and watching a full feature film. However, it’s easy to talk me into a movie date if you offer me an extra-large bucket of buttered popcorn. I will inhale that shit before the previews are even over. I imagine this is the festive version of that delightful experience.

To start:

Baked Brie with Cherries, Rosemary and Almonds
This recipe has got just about everything going for it. Baked cheese, fresh cherries, herbs from the garden. It was originally posted on one of my favourite vegetarian food blogs, Fresh365, which has since been deleted. This version seems very similar (if not identical).

The main event:

Jamie Oliver’s Best Ever Pistachio and Cranberry Nut Roast
The humble nut roast. The retro classic. The butt of so very many vegetarian jokes. But. Please trust Jamie Oliver when he says this festive version is the best ever. P.S. Shout out to Jamie for officially saving the roast dinner for vegetarians across the world.

On the side:

Wild Mushroom Gravy 
The gravy situation is generally dire for vegetarians. This is one of my favourite vegetarian gravy recipes from one of my favourite vegetarian food blogs, Oh My Veggies. Totally meaty.

Boulangère Potatoes
I assume boulangère is French for fucking delicious. This recipe for baked sliced potatoes is from the only vegetarian cooking magazine I’ve ever seen in real life, the UK’s Cook Veg.

Roasted Butternut Pumpkin with Sage and Brown Butter
I’m cheating here by using another recipe from vegetarian food blog Oh My Veggies, but I couldn’t resist this simple combination; there’s only five ingredients, and one of them is salt and pepper.

Golden-Crusted Brussels Sprouts
I know that Brussels sprouts are a deeply controversial vegetable, but I trust Heidi of the very famous vegetarian food blog 101 Cookbooks to turn out something even the most adamant anti-sprouter would enjoy.

Dessert:

Fig, Raspberry and Ginger Ice Cream Cake
A visually spectacular but fairly foolproof dessert recipe by a fellow Adelaide blogger, Christina from The Hungry Australian (who you may recognise from the video from the last post).

Even if you do eat meat, I hope there’s something here you love. X

P.S. For a visual representation of this Christmas menu, visit my Vegetarian Christmas Pinterest board.

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Lush Emotional Brilliance Launch + Liquid Eyeliner in Dynamic

July 21, 2012 by 2 Comments

Lush Emotional Brilliance Eyeliner in Dynamic

Today, the talent you have or need is: ‘DYNAMIC!’ Make waves with this aspirational colour and wear it to enhance your spirit. You know what you are today – to the point, effective and able to achieve in all that you do.

Well, what I achieved today was buying makeup, eating several boiled eggs, and having a long nap, but I did all of that pretty DYNAMICALLY, I guess.

Today is the worldwide launch of Lush‘s new range of Emotional Brilliance colour cosmetics, which comprises of skin tints, liquid lip colours, cream eyeshadows, liquid eyeliners, and a mascara. Lush describes the Emotional Brilliance concept as ‘wearing colors that shape your mood.’ They recommend you ‘choose colors, each with a corresponding word, and they will be significant to your needs at that time. Wear those colors and you truly wear the word. It’s the power of suggestion…’

CUE MUCH EYE ROLLING.

However. I got excited anyway. I’m a social worker as well as a beauty blogger, so a collection of makeup based around positive personal qualities combines two of my favourite things (MAKEUP+FEELINGS=YAY). Also, now that I’m focusing more on eco-friendly, cruelty-free consumption, my beauty buying options have become much more limited (NOT THAT I HAVE ANY PROBLEMS STILL FINDING THINGS TO BUY.) I turned up at the Rundle Mall Lush store first thing this morning and left with Emotional Brilliance Liquid Eyeliner in Dynamic ($24.95AUD/7mL). Because I was there so enthusiastically early the sales assistant gave me a free Bath Ballistic in Phoenix Rising ($5.95 AUD), which smells of soft, sweet spices:

Lush Bath Ballistic in Phoenix Rising

Dynamic is a shimmery golden peach… Kind of an unusual colour for an eyeliner but I thought it was pretty neat. Although the packaging looks like a dropper, it actually houses a standard eyeliner brush:

Lush Emotional Brilliance Liquid Eyeliner in Dynamic

The formula is creamy in texture and is semi-opaque in one swipe. It takes a little minute to set, but once it did, I didn’t have any issues with smearing. I figure you could easily wear Dynamic as an eyeshadow or even as a cheek highlight (all the products are eye- and lip-safe so they are essentially multi-purpose), so here is a thin swatch and a more blended out one:

Lush Emotional Brilliance Liquid Eyeliner in Dynamic Swatch

P.S. Along with all the natural-origin ingredients, Lush Emotional Brilliance Liquid Eyeliner in Dynamic also contains parabens (CLASSIC LUSH, BY THE WAY). As far as I’m aware, the jury is still out about the use of parabens in cosmetics, but some people do choose to avoid cosmetics with parabens in them.

Note: Lush do not conduct animal testing.

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