Signs of Autumn, veganized

Dear readers,
today I proudly present to you: My first vegan recipe, developed by myself! I veganized one of my all time favourite, fried parasol mushrooms... You have never heard of parasol mushrooms? They are kind of big, big portobellos, but more fragile. Here's what they look like:

Pretty, aren't they?
When I was a child, every autumn me and my parents went into the woods to collect mushrooms. Chanterelle, Porcinos, whatever edible kind of mushrooms we could find. Oh,I felt so proud whenever I found some especially pretty mushroom!
Those parasol I liked most of all, my mom would turn them into a wonderful kind of mushroom-Schnitzel, with breading and all, I loved it!
My father still goes into the woods, he just cannot wait for the colder nights and misty mornings of autumn. As soon as it "starts to smell like mushrooms" (so he says) he would be gone for hours, returning with a basket full of wonderfull mushrooms. I guess he could find mushrooms everywhere, that is one of his many talents.
So, imagine my delight when he called me this afternoon and asked me if I wanted some parasol. Of course I wanted them, especially delivered to my door. Best Dad ever!
Then I had a kind of discussion with myself. For the breading, usually I used eggs and breadcrumbs. Egg? Not vegan! So I decided to use the breading for onion rings that can be found in Isa Chandra Moskowitz' book "Appetite for Reduction". Here's the recipe:

-8 parasol mushrooms, the long stems removed

-1/2 cup of flour
-2 tablespoons corn starch
-1 cup soy milk
-1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
-1 cup of breadcrumbs,

Mix the flour with the starch and part of the milk, stir, then add the rest of the milk and the vinegar, stir to dissolve. I added a bit of water, too.

Dip mushrooms in the flour mixture, then in the breadcrumbs.
Heat oil in  a big frying pan and fry the mushrooms over medium heat until they are golden brown. Put them on kitchen paper to get rid of some of the fat.

Sprinkle with salt and pepper, serve with lemon and soyghurt, mixed with herbs and salt and garlic. Soooo good!

So, autumn is finally here, mushrooms are back in the kitchen. Thank you Dad! See, your parasol are on the internet, das hättest Du nicht gedacht...Die sehen toll aus, oder??

Let's talk about the "raw-volution"...

So, on Sunday I had the chance to visit the "Rohvolution" or "raw-volution" (as it translates into English)...
My general impression on raw foods: It is so expensive! Even the smallest chocolate nut balls or sample smoothies were about 4,-€ (About 5 USD, I guess?)
The food-fair itself was so interesting, even my husband enjoyed it very much. There was much stuff like "energised water" or herbs loaded with "sunbeams" and things like that. I am not sure about that thing. I am more a down-to-earth-girl.

I was very surprised about the large variety of cocoa on offer... Cocoa nibs, cocoa beans, cocoa butter, cocoa-whatever. Cocoa everywhere!  We even bought some raw cocoa-bars, I just loved them!

We tried raw-vegan ice cream in coconut taste, so delicious. Just coconut water,coconut and some agave nectar. Need to buy a big pot as soon as I find a shop near us.
One thing I just had to buy was some pure orange oil. Oh, I wish you could smell it, just like orange-heaven!
We also bought some raw granola bars, very delicious.

I am still sceptic about raw soups, or those raw falafel they had on offer. Raw chickpeas? Sadly, there was not much time to get deeper information, it was just so crowded. But the people were very friendly.
Today I ordered a book about raw foods, maybe I'll get some more information in there. Hopefully, it will arrive tomorrow...

There were also cakes, raw apple cake and tiny cupcakes. My son bought one, but it was eaten in a second, no picture, sorry. This also was delish, something like a nut-date-base and a cashew-banana-chocolate frosting on top. Sooo good!

One thing that caught my eye were those beautiful mixers, they looked so colourful. But also, very expensive... Maybe I will get one of those spiral cutters, for making "vegetable"-spaghetti. But at the moment, I am trying to keep everything more simple in the kitchen. I am not so sure if buying more gadgets will help on this. But these spirals looked so pretty.

Have you ever tried raw foods? Any tips or recipes to start with??

Weekend...hoorah!

Looks like we have made it to the weekend. Well done! It was the first "real" week of school, with long hours in the afternoon and lots of work for me in the office, too. So, time to relax at the weekend and not clean like mad, like I did last weekend. The next week I will try to "fly" and break down the weekly cleaning into small chunks, I am so excited to see if this works for me. Hopefully it does.

Feels so good to start the weekend with a clean sink!

So, today there will be some minor cleaning tasks, getting everything in order and do some laundry. Do some shopping.
And, in the afternoon, the most dreaded thing: Shopping for clothes with my 12-year-old son. Ugh! He needs everything, sports shoes, jeans, some sweat shirts and a new jacket. We both hate shopping, but untill I have found a good source to get his clothes online, we will have to get trough this together...
But I am so looking forward to Sunday: We will visit a Raw-Food-Trade-Show, I am so excited! I hope I will get to try some raw food, and get some inspiration. I am really interested in raw foods, although I will never go "raw", love my hot soups in winter so much...
Algerian food in the evening, make some tajine. Just for hubby, he misses his home country when autumn comes.

And hopefully we will get to enjoy the first signs of autumn, like lambs lettuce, mushrooms collected in the woods by my Dad and cuddling under a woolen blanket. How I love my blankets! Maybe read some good book. I found "The Help" in the library, so looking forward to it!
Have a lovely weekend everyone!

P.S: Sorry for the poor picture in this post, I was running around like mad this week and completely forgot about taking photos...Promise this will get better!

Dreamy/Practical...Fail!

For some  time now I had the strong feeling that I needed some more balance on the weekends...not only cleaning like mad!
I have always liked those "Dreamy/Practical"-Posts by Mary-Beth, so, on Thursday, I wrote down my own list. The "dreamy" part included buying some flowers, eat lunch at "Hellers" (they offer vegan/vegetarian buffet) and do a mani/pedicure. The practical side had things like laundry, cleaning and shopping for food.
I wanted to get the house relatively clean on Friday afternoon, go to town and do laundry on Saturday and leave Sunday for the more dreamy things. That was my plan.
On Friday I came home and felt so tired that I zonked out on the sofa at 4 pm and woke up at 6pm. I prepared a quick dinner and spent the rest of the evening on the sofa.
On Saturday  I made a list of everything that needed to be done. Looked at it and went straigt back to bed. No way I could ever manage to do all of these things on a weekend. Half an hour later, I made myself a cup of tea and started the first load of laundry. I went into serious cleaning mode, hadn't done some deep cleaning for a while and so I was cleaning the whole day. Including screaming at my son to help me, and running around like a chicken with the head cut of. Not very funny.
But now I feel a little bit more organised again: The pantry is clean again, the spice-drawer is straightened and I defrosted the little freezer compartment in the fridge. Even my son did help a little bit.

The spices, all clearly labelled. Sorry for the bad handwriting...

Pantry

Pulling everything out of the freezer...

The pantry really needed some organizing. We did throw away so much food that got bad because I forgot it in the fridge. Or it got outdated. Now I know what I have and today I will make up a menu for the week. Bake some bread and think about lunches for the week.
Hopefully, this Sunday will be some time left for a bit of "Dreamy"...
By the way: Any tips on how to get boys to help around the house? Without yelling like mad??? Please???

My magic lunchbox

Hello there, welcome back! Did anyone miss me?
Our laptop is still down, some major error, my lovely son was so nice to let me touch his laptop and load some strange pictures...Good boy!
It was a bit of a struggle to get back to blogging about food after this break. Well, I didn't really even start to blog about food, and all those mouthwatering pictures on other blogs really left me feeling intimidated. I was feeling sooo uninspired.
Then the awesome Colleen Patrick-Goudreau came to the rescue. I just finished her 30-Day-Vegan-Challenge Programm, one thing she talked about was "Intention, not perfection". And this really touched me.
As a new vegan, many people feel this need to be perfect. When I decided to go vegan, my family unfortunately did  not join me, so I am often cooking two dinners, if I have the energy to do so. At the beginning of my journey, after work I often felt so tired and cranky, I just grabbed whatever food I could find. And sometimes I was so tired, I didn't even check the cookies for eggs or dairy.
My body told me later, I felt even more cranky and sluggish after eating non-vegan food.
When I finally made the switch to 100% vegan, this gave menu-planning a whole new meaning and importance. I had to plan two kinds of dinner. And, this is maybe the most important thing for me, I had to plan my lunches!
I work full time, so I have to eat decent food during the day. If I skip lunch, I'll be starving in the afternoon, so enter the magic lunchbox:
These are the lunchbox essentials: Something sweet like fruit-salad or cookies at about 10.00 am.
Something starchy with veggies fur lunch and later some snack like fruit, crackers or chocolate.
Here you can see todays luchbox:
-Some carrots that I snacked on during the morning
-Leftover pasta with sauteed peppers and tomatoes, topped with fake parmesan (made from slivered almonds and nooch)
-Black olives and peperoni
-Two pieces of dark chocolate

 

This keeps me going until I come home. And this helps me to keep my vegan diet. This little lunchbox enables me to resist the cheese I  might find in the fridge. It helps me to say "no" to the cookies I might find on the kitchen counter that are not vegan.
I might still be far from perfect, but I think I am on my way to being a vegan living peacefully in a non-vegan family. And some day, I might find that one tofu-recipe that convinces the whole family to go vegan.
Until then, I fill my lunchbox with yummy things and make my colleagues jealous.

 

Unintended Break...

My First Vegan MoFo... And a broken Laptop. Anyone ever heard of this "Blue Screen"-Problem? Bad Header Whatever?

I will be back as soon as  I have found out how to work with the iPad.... :-(

Vegan MoFo 2013

Welcome to Vegan MoFo 2013, I am so excited to join for the first time!

Today is Sunday, so let's start with a late breakfast...

Some whole-wheat bun, soy-joghurt, orange juice, tea with soy milk and my latest discovery: Vegan chorizo! I love that stuff. Hopefully I will get around to make my own version of it, stay tuned...

If you'd like to join me on my journey to veganizing my family, make yourself comfortable, get a cup of tea and some chocolate, I will be back tomorrow with the menu for the week to come...