I’m MoFo inspired!

An actual blog update, oh no!

I’ve borrowed this survey from my friend Nicole, who is the wondrous wonderful beacon of inspiring wonderment glowing in the vegan firmament who originally inspired me to throw caution to the wind (and vegan pies into the faces of naysayers) and go veg in the 1st place! All the MoFo-ing (“Vegan Month of Food” blogging) going on in the blogosphere has also inspired me to forgo valuable sleep and answer the following questions!

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1. Favourite non-dairy milk?
… Good grief, just one? Well. I love the heck outta my homemade raw nut milks. Almond & date milk is a classic. Macadamia milk is frothy & perfectly creamy, cashew milk is great in tea & in berry smoothies, & hazelnut milk is simply divine (but pricey!). Shop-bought? I usually go for Vitasoy rice milk or Bonsoy. Or a coconut if they look nice!

2. What are the top 3 dishes/recipes you are planning to cook?
… Only 3? Another good grief! I’ll just tell you my most immediate plans: 1. For my 6mo daughter, I’m going to try whizzing up a raw mash of sweet potato & zucchini, maybe a dash of flax oil or Udo’s oil, & warm it slightly; 2. Mango sorbet coconut tartlets from Ani Phyo’s dessert book; 3. Sprout & tempeh sang choy bow.

3. Topping of choice for popcorn?
Tamari & nutritional yeast is BRILLIANT on popcorn. Just ask Webly.

4. Most disastrous recipe/meal failure?
A while back I made a gluten-free orange cake that collapsed near the end of baking & turned to mush in the centre. But it still tasted good! I made many gluten-free test loaves with too much baking soda, yick. & onion in juice… What the hell is up with people drinking that? Yargh.

5. Favourite pickled item?
Radish in sushi.

6. How do you organise your recipes?
Organise? In one big random pile! Or with categories or tags on a blog!

7. Compost, trash, or garbage disposal?
Compost, bitches! We have 2 enormous bins in the garden, & a bokashi bin in the kitchen. There’s a rumour going around that we named them after our favourite characters on True Blood. I think you’ll find that’s an outright lie. Or true. One of those.

8. If you were stranded on an island and could only bring 3 foods…what would they be (don’t worry about how you’ll cook them)?
ONLY 3? Wot! Very uncool.

1. Bananas
2. Parsley
3. Sesame seeds

… damn it. I want goji berries & dates, too. & a million other things! Like raw brazil nut carob/cacao cakes! & coconuts. D’oh.

9. Fondest food memory from your childhood?
Mushrooms. On the BBQ. I remember I thought they were gross & didn’t want to try them, but then I did & said something like: “Mushrooms are better than chocolate.” Wise words, indeed.

10. Favourite vegan ice cream?
I can’t go past the lime icecream from Ani Phyo’s raw dessert book. It’s like the best fruity gelato & the best creamy icecream ever all at once! So lovely. & FYI: I’ve heard it said that vegan icecream is not real icecream, & that’s very true: it’s unreal icecream. Fucking A.

11. Most loved kitchen appliance?
Blender! Of course.

12. Spice/herb you would die without?
I’ve grown to love parsley. It’s brilliantly versatile & packed full of nutrients. Good, old parsley! It’s underrated. & quite lovely in the right smoothie or juice.

13. Cookbook you have owned for the longest time?
I have an enormous collection… not sure. I think my 1st vegan recipe book was Vegan With A Vengeance.

14. Favourite flavour of jam/jelly?
Raw jam made out of dates & raspberries srsly kicks butt. & I don’t mind some fig jam.

15. Favourite vegan recipe to serve to an omni friend?
Ooo… Snackwise, the raw brazil carob & coconut slice kicks even “carob haters” in the arse, so that’s fun! Mains, I find baked vegan shepherd’s pie wins many hearts. Or a salad of raw Asian greens, herbs, avocado, & tomato dressed with a tamari-gingery-sesame seedy-nice oil concoction amazes anyone & everyone. You CAN win friends with salad!

16. Seitan, tofu, or tempeh?
I love tempeh the mostest, but don’t eat it often enough. Tofu is easy & nice. I don’t do wheaty seitan usually, but occasionally yum-out on Asian soy faux meat. In a protein kinda category (& FYI ugh, I loathe the world’s protein fixation & exaggerated RDIs), I usually steer more towards nuts, mushrooms, greens, lentils, & beans.

17. Favourite meal to cook (or time of day to cook)?
I’m all about breakfast, baby. Smoothies, juices, fruit pudding, freshly blended nut milky things, berry-laden raw muesli, scrambled tofu or nuts, leftover pizza or curry, herbs & greens, nut spreads on toast/raw bread, marmite, tomatoes, faux pho, miso, & raw desserts… Breakfast for every meal, k thx!

18. What is sitting on top of your refrigerator?
Placemats & kitchen scales &… random stuff.

19. Name 3 items in your freezer without looking.
Berries, carob sauce/raw icing (frosting), tempeh.

20. What’s on your grocery list?
Right now? Tomatoes & garlic. Running low!

21. Favourite grocery store?
Don’t really have one… I prefer outdoor produce markets, & they vary week to week… Asian grocery shops that stock crazy “pure vegetarian” foods are always fun. I like the one at Q-store shopping complex on the Gold Coast. They always have fresh coriander, which is more than I can say for the bloody awful chain stupormarkets around here! Fie.

22. Name a recipe you’d love to veganize, but haven’t yet.
A proper crème brûlée. I’ve been meaning to for aaages. People always make them custardy instead of really creamy. I reckon it would be easiest replicated using gourmet raw foodie techniques rather than with cooked stuff. Macadamia nuts &/or cashews are probably a good place to start. & I shall start. As soon as I have time & develop a hankering for an insanely rich dessert.

23. Food blog you read the most (besides Isa’s because I know you check it everyday). Or maybe the top 3?
Way to embarrass me, survey. I haven’t been keeping up with any blog regularly since bubs arrived! Sorry, blogosphere.

24. Favourite vegan candy/chocolate?
Swami’s Rawganic chocolate bars. No contest. She’s a brilliant cook/uncook.

25. Most extravagant food item purchased lately?
I don’t really do extravagant..? Perhaps hemp oil… oh, wait. That’s not officially recognised as a foodstuff in Australia yet! Way to be behind the times, Australia. Also hemp flour, since you can’t buy hemp seeds. & hemp flour is only supposed to be used animal feed, apparently. Gee, lucky humans are animals, then! But. Ok. So I’d better just feed it to my cats because our backwards-arse government regulatory body says no. Yep. Yessir.

26. Ingredients you are scared to work with?
Anything vegan ist gut, ja! Except maybe that Mexican gourmet moldy corn stuff? Pass. I don’t digest regular corn too well anyway. Also, O_o & vegan haggis. I mean srsly. WHY.

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Fun! I hope y’all out there are enjoying Vegan MoFo! Xoxo

Spring!

Spring has sprung downunder & there’s a bloggy spring-clean under way in our house!

This here Gluten-Free Vegan blog will be moving shortly, so please make sure you are subscribed via Feedburner or email rather than via WordPress! The links are on the side of this page.

The new domain will feature all the content of this blog, plus new updates, as well as a section for readers to contribute recipes & to a discussion forum (all vegan, with gluten-free & raw sections), plus there’s a podcast & little shop on the way.

In the meantime, you can follow me at veganza.tumblr.com (posted a photo of 5 month old Alice there today!) or twitter.com/veganza.

Hope to see you around the interwebs!

New blog layout, new pages, new stuff!

If you come to my blog to read the posts, you’ll have noticed I’ve changed the layout to make it a bit “fresher” to reflect the fresher way of eating I’ve been enjoying. There’s also a new info page coming called Raw Food that I’ll be updating with living food health information in the coming week. I’ll also be adding more information (of both the “cooked” and “raw” variety) to ye olde Flours & Grains and Other Ingredients info pages that have never quite been finished, and certainly haven’t been updated in some time!

Also, before you leave an epic comment on this blog, you might want to read the FAQ. I’m not a fan of irrelevancy. This blog is about gluten-free living and vegan living and all the things that are tied into that cruelty-free, health-oriented lifestyle. It’s certainly not about you finding opportunities to sell your unrelated junk or narrow political views. If you want to discuss a subject, you’d better make sure it’s relevant to veganism in some way. Read the blog title: it’s Gluten-Free Vegan! And note that I’m not from North America – most of the time I’m quite a bit further south and on the other side of the planet. I don’t appreciate irrelevant conservative capitalist drivel as much as some other people might, although I can appreciate the recent US political frenzy to some extent… But can we has a lil moar global awareness pls?

Much thanks and/or love to those of you who actually have your critical thinking caps on who have sent me emails and comments lately! I would rather not turn off comments entirely, but many folks do recommend it, at least for non-recipe posts. Perhaps people who are really keen ought to comment in their own blogs and I’ll put up the trackbacks instead… Deleting irrelevant junk does take up time that I’d rather not be wasting, and with a kid on the way… well! My husband and I are going to be a little busier for the next two decades at least!

Additionally, I’ll be moving this blog to its own domain soon – the feeds and subscription stuff should stay the same, and the links should automatically update – more on that later when it happens… Please make sure you are subscribed to the Feedburner RSS/XML feeds, or the email updates.

For the moment, stay tuned for better info pages, recipes, and photos this week! In fact, I’m about to whiz up a green smoothie and dust off ye olde overpriced camera equipment right now… and I have an awful lot of cat photos to sort through before I can snap any more pictures…!

Enjoy the rest of your weekend.

Hi

I’m still alive. I know I don’t post regularly enough. Sorry, folks. There are some photos, recipes, and blatherings coming your way shortly. BRB.

2008 aduki award winners announced

aduki independent press announced the winners of the best vegan stuff in Australia over here. Winners included Green Gourmet in Sydney as best restaurant, and Melbourne as the most vegan-friendly city in Australia. (A shame the Forest in Brisbane wasn’t nominated for an award! Especially considering the awesome gluten-free vegan wedding cake they made for me & my new husband… a-hem.) The best Aussie vegblog was voted as Viva La Vegan. On their “about” page you’ll find this interesting tidbit:

With an estimated 30% of the population identifying with vegetarian ideals this number is set to increase following such wide-spread panic garnered from the consuming of animal products which lead to mad cow disease and chicken ‘flu.

Though only a small amount of the population actually observe a vegetarian diet, 10-15% of people aged between 18-35 are vegetarian and of this amount, between one third and a half are practising vegans.*

With a predominantly young vegan population a high percentage of these people are internet literate thus the need for a central place for all vegans from all areas of the globe to unite on one website.

*Vegetarian Resource Group

Nice to hear that among my peers there are plenty of sophisticated, animal-rights-aware folks. Rock on.

Vegan, vegan, vegan, vegan, vegan. Did I mention vegan?

This blog is a gluten-free recipe blog, but it’s also vegan – check the title. Vegan means I do not want to know where to buy organic animal corpses, nor do I want to look at your gluten-free blog that contains nearly 100% non-vegan corpse-laden recipes, however well-intentioned you may have thought the “check this out, you might like it” comment to be. I’m not interested in recipes or advice in regards to animal corpses (meat/flesh), animal lactation fluids (processed cow or goat secretions/dairy products), animal reproductive secretions (eggs, caviar), bug goo (honey, beeswax, cochineal, etc), or whatever other bizarre or unnecessary animal “products” you choose to ingest. Thanks, anyway… I think…!

Please read the Why Vegan? section of this website for more information as to why myself, my partner, and many of our friends are vegan.

Additionally, I live in Australia… most of the time. Unless your gluten-free vegan product is available in the land of Oz, please don’t bother trying to sell it to me! International postage on food items to our isolated island continent usually sucks. I will pass on relevant info to international readers, but only if it’s relevant, and is both gluten-free AND vegan… Vegan vegan vegan! Got it?

I hope this post has cleared things up… I don’t mean to sound pushy, but some people are clearly missing the point. Gluten-free, yes, but also vegan recipes and content – no exceptions. I will continue to filter out inappropriate comments. All this makes me wonder whether I should also be blogging about animal rights issues and activism occasionally in-between recipes… Quite probably I should, at least occasionally, although it wasn’t my intention for this to be an AR blog… Any thoughts?

Hope you are all enjoying your weekend!

Organic fruits and vegetables

I get asked about this everyone now and then…

Yep, I eat organic food. No, I’m not a dirty hippie. The food tastes better (which generally indicates better nutritional value!) and it isn’t covered in pesticide residue. I like my food better that way. And no, it doesn’t have to be expensive if you put some thought into where you’re buying your groceries.

I get a delivery of fresh organic fruit and vegetables every week for around $50 (puny Australian dollars), which lasts us (2 adults who rockclimb (high energy/food requirement) and/or overeat) 1-2 weeks – there’s some overlap, and we usually use up the excess when we have friends around for meals. I don’t buy all my food organic. I usually prefer to get mushrooms and avocados non-organic, as avos seem to be particularly expensive, and we use a heck of a lot of ’shrooms! I buy most of my dry lentils and beans in bulk, and most of these aren’t organic, however soy beans grown in Australia are all organic (last time I checked! We’re lucky). My homemade soy milk is made from organic beans – I make it myself in a nifty little Chinese milk machine, which costs us about 25 cents per week in beans for as much milk as we need for cereal, tea, coffee, and other cooking. Tofu and tempeh is always organic, as far as our local stores/suppliers go, including Asian imports and locally made stuff. I buy organic canned baked beans when I can, simply because they taste better!… I’d say about 75%+ of my food at home is organic. The gluten-free flours I buy for making bread are half-organic, half-conventional. Sometimes we buy gluten-free breads from a local bakery, and their stuff is all organic.

Between cheap local markets, local stores, and delivery services, it’s no more expensive than when I bought conventional foods. The fresh produce also lasts much longer, and usually tastes a truckload better. I avoid buying organic produce and products from supermarkets and certain health food stores – it can be a rip off if you shop in those places (particularly in the big chain stores, I find). There are far better deals out there – usually involving local growers and small businesses that are worth supporting – they have the freshest produce, and there isn’t such a big transportation cost for you or the environment.

I have these lists stuck on my fridge door – I don’t know who to credit them to, but they seem to turn up everywhere. They are handy if you can’t buy all organic food every week.

The top foods you should buy organic because they have the greatest levels of pesticide residue – are (starting with the most contaminated):

1. Peaches
2. Apples
3. Capsicum / Bell Peppers
4. Celery
5. Nectarines
6. Strawberries
7. Cherries
8. Pears
9. Grapes
10. Spinach
11. Lettuce
12. Potatoes

The top foods to buy conventional if you can’t get all organic food, eg. if you live out in the sticks and there are no decent or cheap suppliers in your area. The conventional foods with the least amount of pesticide residue are (starting with the cleanest):

1. Onions
2. Avocados
3. Sweet corn
4. Pineapple
5. Mangoes*
6. Asparagus
7. Sweet peas
8. Kiwi fruit*
9. Banana
10. Cabbage
11. Broccoli*
12. Papaya
[*Note: these foods taste loads better organic than conventional!]

So there you go. Make of it what you will. Organics aren’t for everyone. Personally I think the food tastes better and I felt health improvements, so it’s worth the little bit of extra thinking I had to put in when I made the switch. In conclusion: OMNOMNOM. Wholefoods rule. Eat well, be well, be awesome… and recover from wisdom teeth extraction procedures twice as fast as expected… w00!

Friendly tip: watch out for organic garlic… it can be pretty darn strong! Organic garlic breath can be pretty toxic, so use less garlic if you’re using organic!

I’m a slacker

I’ve been busy and/or slack to varying degrees… Sorry for the lack of updates! I will post a bread recipe later today. I haven’t been cooking a whole lot, between wisdom teeth problems and a deluge of birthdays and dinners out…

Anyway, excuses be damned! More recipes are on the way. Stay tuned… I need to make a commitment to post on certain days or some such. Hmm. I have poor organisational skills, so I’m not sure that will work out too well…

Hi, I’m still alive and blogging… sort of…

I’ve had success in the last week with a new bread recipe and a pizza base, however I am currently having wisdom teeth trouble, and have been too lazy/sore/complainy to post and fiddle with camera shots… Will do an update with recipes soon!

The problem with gluten-free bread

In wheat flour, the gluten in a bread mix becomes stretchy, which is great for rising – it allows the yeast makes a fluffy texture. Without gluten, it is inevitable that the bread will be heavier, however that doesn’t mean it has to be rock hard.

I’m currently working on two bread recipes – one is yeast-free, using baking soda and baking powder to rise, and has a more cakish texture, and the other one is a yeast bread, which is a bit trickier to convince to rise, but has a better “bready” texture.

A lot of commercial gluten-free breads are pretty rubbery due to lots of cornstarch and gums, rarely toast well, and are ridiculously expensive. So my goal is to avoid the rubber texture, make a cheaper bread, with an easy recipe… It does take 3-4 different types of flour to make bread the way I’m doing it now (part of that is about a need for starchiness, and also keeping the fibre/healthfulness up at the same time with richer, less-starchy flours), but I’ve cut out gums and reduced the oil.

I’ll make a couple more test loaves before I post the recipes-in-progress here. I do intent to post updated versions as I improve them later on as well, and/or as I get advice from other bakers out there, too.

Would it be easier to cut bread out of one’s diet? Sure… but then what would I have my baked beans on? My scrambled tofu? I also need toast to spread avocado on, then top with garlic mushrooms… and sandwiches and burgers, and dough for pizzas – bread is useful stuff! I don’t expect gluten-free bread to ever be the same as wheat bread, and that’s okay. I’ve always preferred heavier bread, so gluten-free bread isn’t such a big change for me… If I love bread so much, then why don’t I just fork out for the commercially-produced, expensive, rubbery stuff? Because I’m convinced I can do better – with texture, taste, and healthfulness – and I already have.

Stay tuned… they’re coming! I will post some cakes, biscuits, and other bakable treats, too, and some other gluten-free non-baked meals I like.

Hi!

Welcome to the Gluten-Free Vegan Recipes blog.

The recipes in this blog will be gluten-free, dairy-free, egg-free, and totally animal ingredient-free.

I hope someone out there will find it useful!