Smoked Tofu and Samphire Salad

Wow, I've just had lovely bank holiday weekend. I spent time with my boyfriend, Marcus. (Please see my other blog!) We went canoe-ing, samphire picking to the Alresford Creek.... I was actually looking forward to the samphire picking. I love eating them raw. Since I discovered them in one of restaurants I used to work back in 90's( sounds I'm really old...), I've became big fan of samphire. All my chefs used to blanch them in hot water then chilled in iced water to prevent from farther cooking. When I was preparing them for garnish (for the chef), I put a small bit of them in my mouth raw. I thought it had wonderful flavour and texture. I loved the crunchiness, and salted taste from sea water. About 4 years ago, I saw fishmonger in Bury market was selling samphire really cheap. I bought some, but he gave me loads. Apparently, they weren't selling. So, I took home, ate whole bag. Especially I loved them on hot steamed sticky rice with soy/tamari sauce. Being Japanese, Yes, I use tamari in lots of food I cook. I don't add loads, but just a little bit. It adds (for me) wonderful taste. The night we picked them, I made salad "Samphire, lentils and onion salad with Smoked tofu and herb salsa"

We seemed to pick lots more samphire than what I thought. So, following night( we came back to mine) I cooked bangers and mash with samphire again. This is how it looked:

I made mash with cannellini beans (I cooked a couple days ago), and roasted butternut squash with rosemary and lots of garlic. I thought I had some thickening agent in my cupboard. But I didn't. So, I made sauce with onion and some stock till very soft, them blitz. Reduce the liquid a bit then add some dried porccini mushroom, bit tamari, keep reducing. While reducing going, make sure samphire is room temperature. Bake tofu sausages. Mash the beans, harrisa, squash and mix some flat leaf parsley. Then serve onto plate. I love texture of tofu sausages. Wonderful thing about them is; grease doesn't come out, healthy, water doesn't come out, doesn't burn and doesn't taste like regular sausages(meat ones). They are wonderful food! This morning, I made breakfast. This is what I normally eat, I thought colour was pretty. So I took a photo:

Green juice behind is mixture of: cucumber, celery, lots of spinach, some apples, hemp, spirulina, and wheatgrass powder. I like green smoothies too, but i get board so quickly, I need to alternate or keep making different ones. So, my food shopping bill sometimes comes up really pricey. that's why I need to watch what I buy and get when I see some offers. Being healthy is costly business, I hope, in future, health foods price go down!!!!!  Aggggggrrrrr, I'm hungry again!!!! Need to get something to eat.....

Mocha Pecan Pie

So, today I baked Mocha Pecan Pie which one of the recipes Marylin gave me yesterday. I popped into the town to get some bits and pieces for the pie. I bought vegan sugar free chocolate, and extra maple syrup. I adopted the recipe into sugar free and gluten free. It was a bit fiddly to make and roll out the gluten free pastry for little bite size tartlets. I love my pastry very thin and crispy. By the time I rolled out and lined dozen of them, I felt like I was an expert! I made about 28 bite sizes from the recipe. I'm very happy how they turned up. I needed to roll out pastry bit too thick though. The pastry is bit crumbly, I think they will be lovely with thick nutty cream sweetened with maple syrup! This mocha mix is made with chocolate, tofu, coffee granules, maple syrup, flour, coconut butter and hazelnuts(used hazel nuts instead). It reminded me Bourbon pecan pies I used to make in one of restaurants I used to work. Oh, It was hell. I quite often got told off ( and she swore lots and lots!) I put too much pecan mix into these bite size tart cases. According to her, if they had too much mix in, it boiled over while baking and down to nothing...which meant wastage and didn't look nice. So we all had to use little tea spoon and try not to spoon out too much either liquid or nuts. Had to be right amount of both nuts and liquid. In mornings, we had lots to bake for breakfast( for staff), lunch service and peti fore and cut some home made turkish delight too. If they were baked even bit too brown, we had to bake them again! Too many things to do but not enough time to do everything we needed to do. On top of that, we had to check all fruits came in( for fruits plate) and store tidy and nicely into our walk-in fridge. If I stood still even 3 seconds, I got questioned very sharply why I was standing there doing nothing. She only worked early shifts, so I quite liked doing late shifts so that I didn't have to see her. Phew, I'm glad those days were over! Anyway these are what I baked today! ☺

They don't have bourbon or sugar, still taste yummy though.

roasted veggie dinner

I wanted to do camping either this weekend or next weekend. I go camp-out every year since I've moved into Suffolk. I usually go to Norfolk coast. But I don't mind where I go for camping. I just love sleeping in a tent. So, Marcus took me to his mum's house( in suffolk) for a night in her garden to tent out. Bless.☺ We went round on 20th sat. It was a bit cloudy, and still carried on with funny weather. Sunny, cloudy then rain... but saturday wasn't too bad. When we got there, it was lovely and sunny. So, we had cuppa in Marylin( funky name!) 's garden. Then we went out for some food shopping..... then started to rain. Oh, surprise surprise. In this country, weather's very changenable, and English people looooove chatting about weather. They moan when it's cold and wet. Also they complain when sunny and hot too!  And now people have been talking about we never had summer. Summer just came a bit too early, that's all. Sea is very cold to swim in anyway even if it's sunny! and I told them " soon christmas!" I was told to shut up in a nice way. Lot of people I know don't really swear. (I swear lots♥).......... Anyway I've got a 2 man tent, It's big enough for me and Marcus( he's tall and big!), and it was fun sleeping in there. soooo cosy. I love hearing noise of zip opening and close, Snuggle into sleeping bag, having cuppa outside watching sky and chilling-out. All fun! Marylin(marcus's mum) cooked dinner on Saturday night. It was delicious. We had Roasted vegetables and tofu sausages. Oh, yummy♥♥♥

Then we had vegan ice creams with maple syrup  for after. They were devine. We had two different flavours. Ginger flavour and vanilla. We demolished it real quick.  And I feel if I eat them with some company, taste even better! I just try not to be a greedy bitch, that's all.☺

On sunday, Marylin baked vegan cake. It was a bit like date slice with attitude and more interenting and fun to eat. It was called " coconut, date & banana cake". I was told marylin usually baked into bars, and it was first time for her to make it like a cake. The cake looked like this:

Cor blimey, It was really moorish.She also made macademia nuts cream to go with the cake. We had massive pieces each and almost all the cake was gone!!! Marcus and I even took some home with us. Oh, we had rooibos earl grey tea with the cake. It went really well togather. And Marylin was very kind to give me some vegan cake recipes as well! Can't wait to get into my kitchen for baking! Thank you Marylin for lovely din dins!!!  She lives in suffolk country side near to the beach( called southwold), lovely walks and organic farm near by. we bought some organic vegetable from the farm, and looked very happy! they were very reasonable too. Everything was around £1.20 to £2.00, we spend about £8 all togather. 

Don't they look pretty and delicious???

my breakfast

I had really busy day on Friday. Started off my day with working in charity shop till 4pm, then went back home , had a couple of hour kip. Then off to do a night shift at care home in my local town. Then, went to the charity shop to do saturday shift. Surprisingly, I wasn't really tired on saturday all day. I did this before several times last year. I swore to myself I wasn't guanna do it anymore. But someone at work wanted to swap, I also wanted to swap my shift. So we did. What I like to do after my night shift is to go to a coffee shop( American coffee shop, and do bloody good coffee), get a medium decaf americano with extra shot ( used to be: "decaf soya caramel mocchiato with extra caramel) and blueberry muffin. I was very naughty to get the blueberry muffin....it had wheat, SUGAR and animal fat and protein.... I ate it with feeling guilty, but as soon as finished eating, that guilt feeling disappeared. It was yummy though....☺well, my favo breakfast is what I had when Marcus and I spend weekend with poodles. It was: "Plum and mixed berry smoothie and buckwheat crispbread with miso hummus and cucumber." 

Plums were freshly picked from front garden in poodles' house. They were beautiful. We found some frozen plum juice in their freezer, so we used it as well. And, those buckwheat crisp bread is totally gluten, sugar free vegan. It's very light and very crispy and mooooorish. We found them in poodles' local supermarket (posh one). I went to the same supermarket in my local town, they don't have them. Not fair!!! ☹   So, this morning I was thinking with my breakfast, "well, I fancy some MUFFINS!!!"  I usually have : Fresh juice and muesli for my breakfast. My juice this morning was: carrot, apple, orange and red current( I was given fresh red current from my friend Sylvia). and I usually soak muesli with either oat milk or rice milk over night with nuts and fruits mix. Sometimes almond milk, but almond milk is our special treat!!! Anyway this is what I made.

They actually taste and texture like muffins. I quite like them. They aren't as sweet as how I expected, But I can taste sweetness from sultanas I put in, that make this muffin more interesting. ☺O.K, this is how I made: 125g gluten free flour, 125g spelt flour( spelt contains little gluten), 2teasp baking powder, 50g coconut butter, 100ml maple syrup( can use runny honey), 1 lemon zest, 1 orange zest, 1½teasp cinnamon, ½teasp mixed spice, 2 med banana, 200-250ml apple juice/oat milk etc, 175g blueberry/red currents

First, sift all dry ingredients in a large bowl. then blitz coconut butter, maple syrup, banana. Add blueberry to dry. Combine wet and dry ingredients. Add some liquid bit by bit till right consistency. Spoon the mixture into muffin cups and bake @ 180°c for 15-20mins till skewer comes out clean.

Next time I make this, I'd like to use honey instead and add some more!!! See how it taste like. I keep changing and altering recipes I have, I don't seem to use the same recipes twice. When  I bake something I satisfy, chances are; I forget to write the bloody recipe down!!! Never mind. Must be my age having "foregettableness"... called "senior moment"..............☺

my vegan cake

Yeaterday, I had this urge to bake a cake. I already baked a cake and made some dessert at work earlier that day. I really wanted to eat cake but I didn't want to eat cakes made with butter/marge, eggs, sugar and gluten flour. So, when I got home I opened cupboard, saw what I had there. I had quinoa flakes, dried fruits, quinoa flour and gluten free flour. I realised I needed some banana. so I went out to near by garage( they have posh foods from M&S) to get some. Then I was ready. This was what I made. Gluten/sugar free vegan cake. actually tasted not bad. Usually turn out either disgusting or just not great. But this one turned up edible. I was pleased. First, I mashed bananas with some coconut butter. put aside. weigh out flours, I did half quinoa flour and half white gluten free flour. Add some quinoa flakes, some dried fruits (chopped figs and sultanas), orange zest, some chopped nuts. Mix wet ingredients( banana-mix , maple syrup and some apple juice) into dry ingredients. I added apple juice till right consistency. Usually gluten free flour takes more liquid than regular flour, so I added a bit. but not too wet. then  put the mix into a lined tin. Baked it for about 40-50 mins till springy to touch. Rested for a bit. Sliced thinly. It always tends to come out quite dense. Anyway, thinly sliced cake with lovely Jasmin tea is a always winner! I'm happy with how it turned up!!!

It's quite moist. that's how I love my cakes. I don't like dry cakes. when I used to eat cakes all the time in shops in my local town, chances were; cakes were dry. I quite often splash some coffee on top over my cake to eat. I don't really like victoria sponge either. I love pistachio and lemon cake. This is divine. But contains lots of sugar and eggs. My next mission: to change the recipe into vegan(gluten/sugar free too)cake. Mmmm, bit of an challenge......Well, see how it goes!