Edamame hommus and tofu wraps.

After seeing the vegan blogosphere light up with amazing looking noms from Isa's new book, I gave in and got myself a copy. That was an excellent decision as it's full of the most wonderful recipes (and is super well-designed).

The first recipe I had to try was her edamame hommus and tofu wraps. Hommus, using edamame instead of chickpeas and with the addition of wasabi powder - YES PLEASE. Plus, fried tofu and sprouts on mountain bread? Also yes please. The dish is very simple to whip up and has amazing results. I added cucumber and chilli sauce to my version and they were a crowd-pleaser all 'round. Also the recipe makes HEAPS of hommus which means salad rolls just got better.

Beef and black bean.

This meal has been on fairly high rotation the last few months. Blue Dragon have a vegan black bean sauce that seems to constantly be on special for $2 at Coles and I've discovered these veg beef strips at my local KFL supermarket, $2.55. Grab some fresh veggies on the way home from work, re-hydrate the strips for 30 minutes (squeeze out water once softened) and get the brown rice cooking - weeknight win.

Home cookin' last month.

Yep, it's been a long time... there's quite a build up of food pictures that need to get off my phone! Seems I was cooking some yummy stuff at home last month... The last few weeks have been a bit of a take-away binge (which will follow, no doubt).

Chilli lime tofu from Vegan Yum Yum, served on brown rice with garlic sesame Chinese broccoli and snow peas.

PASTA! I rarely make pasta. This was linguini with a napoli sauce of onion, garlic, fresh tomatoes, tinned tomatoes, veggie stock, tomato paste, fresh basil, dried oregano, kalamata olives, salt, pepper and chilli flakes. Served with fried broccolini topped with toasted sunflower and pepita seeds.

Felafel wraps - store-bought Yumis felafel balls on Lebanese bread with mixed lettuce greens, tomato, Spanish onion, hummus and chilli sauce.

LAZY dinner - store-bought Tasty Bite chickpea masala on brown rice with steamed greens and chopped cucumber. You heat the curry sachet IN the same boiling water as the rice... while the greens microwave... too easy not to.

Rice paper rolls.

Dragon bowls.

Barbequed marinated tofu steaks (mumma's secret smokey recipe!) with garlic mushies, fresh corn and a mango, avo and pomegranate salad.

The first time I ever made pancakes from scratch! I'm a Vegemite addict so sweet breakfasts have never tempted me. However, a HUGE $1 bag of ripe bananas meant banana topped banana pancakes (with strawberry jam).

SURPRISE! My current favourite - toor dal on basmati rice with store-bought garlic naan.

Home cooking this week.

Dragon bowls! A summer standard on the weekly rotation. Base of quinoa, mixed lettuce leaves and baby spinach, fresh grated beetroot and carrot, chilli and soy fried tofu cubes, crunchy combo and alfalfa sprouts topped with an orange, ginger and miso dressing! This recipe is an old housemates and I thank her every day :)

My house mate Tess is an ice cream master. This was dark chocolate and fresh banana made on almond milk with agave. Basically a frozen smoothie of delicious. Next she made bounty! Dark chocolate with toasted coconut and it did not last long.

My life changed a few weeks ago when I saw the most GENIUS thing ever on Instagram. I love the flavour of hard tacos but am normally outvoted because they're hard to eat. We end up doing burritos instead. THEN, genius. A guy glued a hard taco shell inside a soft taco shell with refried beans! So you have the flavour of hard taco inside a tidy soft taco and oh my god. I made a TPV spiced taco filling (first time cooking with TVP, will stick to black beans next time...) Served with shredded lettuce, diced tomatoes, fresh made guac, jalapenos and tomatillo sauce (Mission brand from grocery store). You guys, do this.

Summer nights after work = quick felafel bowls. Mixed lettuce, diced tomatoes, Spanish onion, kalamata olives, cucumber, crunchy combo and alfalfa sprouts topped with fried Yumi's sesame felafel balls, hummus, fresh squeezed lemon and chilli flakes.

Made an old favourite - black pepper tofu! Served with brown rice and sesame fried greens. I was on the phone to my mum while cooking this which resulted in me forgetting the black pepper! I realised just after this picture was taken and ground up copious amounts onto the dish. So tasty, so moreish.

This week.

Another week, another pile of documented noms.

I discovered Vegan Richa and all of the recipes look amazing! I am particularly in love with dal of almost any kind so got involved with her Toor dal recipe. SO GOOD. Served on basmati with steamed greens, poppadum and lemon.

 

 

There was a pretty serious build up for leftovers going at one point so we had home-made Lentil as Anything :) Rice paper roll, toor dal, garlic greens with duck and a few fried dumplings (Asian grocer frozen section style) served with basmati and lemon.

 

Made my weekly batch of THE WINNER OF ALL SOUPS - white bean and roasted mushroom. I've had this almost every week for a year... it's too good! Lately I've been substituting one of the tins of beans for a few potatoes and also throwing a carrot in. This recipe is an epic winner with omnis too FYI :)

Pesto and garlic roast shrooms with sunflower, pepita and pumpkin seeds. Garlic and onion fried greens and cous cous. So simple - SO TASTY.

Made possibly the best batch of scrambled tofu ever. Managed to not completely drown it in soy like usual and actually tasted the ingredients. I always thoroughly caramelise an onion (20mins cooking time minimum) before adding the rest - it's key! Threw in chopped mushies, minced garlic, crumbled firm tofu, bag of baby spinach, chopped tomato, cumin, paprika, tumeric, dried oregano, sweet soy, light soy and a huge amount of fresh lemon juice. Top with sesame seeds and you're good to go.

Seeing as how it was a day, that exists, I went to Las Vegan. That is all the reason I need. Didn't photograph my tempbacon, chicken nugget and avo wrap with chips as it looked exactly the same as the other week but I did snap the sour cherry pancakes and cherry ripe brownie. Win, win and win. I hope that wrap never leaves the specials board.

FINALLY checked out Little Deer Tracks after being a huge slacker the last two years! Man it was good. Sunday brunch, easy to get a park, walked straight into a table, great menu options, cheap prices, good coffee. Love.

Jeff got house beans on house-made sourdough $9.50 and added avo and shrooms (a few dollars each). The serve of beans was mammoth, he never had a chance. Beans were smokey and rich and amazing but maybe get them as a side unless you have two stomachs.

I got avo on house-made sourdough $8.50 and added a hash and shrooms (a few dollars). Shrooms were AMAZING and so was bread. You will find me here every weekend (unless I am at Las Vegan... the dilemma!)

Tried Oh She Glows' raw pad Thai salad tonight (35 degrees and all). It was okay. I may have gone overboard with the dressing and WOW this was rich. I'm thinking of cooking the leftovers and serving on rice to break up the madness.

Raw pasta, eating in and eating out.

I saw this post on Oh She Glows and was immediately inspired to own one of these julienne peelers. Two minutes and a bit of Ebay later, it was on. I'd been making zucchini pasta with a regular peeler and it was seriously time consuming. Turns out this new peeler is also time consuming! The results are worth it though, check out my carrot and zucchini pasta! I think there will be a lot of this over summer.

Topped with satay tofu and mushrooms, YUM.

 Topped with French lentil bolognese, also yum.

While on the topic of home cooking, I made a seriously delicious treat last night. Garlic and pesto baked mushrooms with toasted pumpkin and sunflower seeds served with herb and sesame seed fried greens on cous cous.

Also I went all out the other day (any excuse to spend an hour in the Asian grocer) and made pad Thai. Terrible photo of copious coriander (because it's awesome) but there is a world of nom under there. The pre-fried crispy tofu chunks were heaven.

Las Vegan yesterday was even more fantastic than usual. The special right now is a chicken, tempacon (THE tempacon) and avocado wrap. Wow. It also had vegan cheese, mayo and a good salad mix. This was insanely delicious and I think about $10. I added chips, naturally.

It's not right to go to Las Vegan without getting a huge take-away brownie to devour the moment you feel like you can eat again. Chocolate and strawberry dream.

Seeing as it's a weekend like every other, Gobbo was had.

Spot burger with chips - beef, bacon and cheese.

Sailor Jerry burger - fish, mayo and cheese.

Bogan burger - chicken, cheese and pineapple.

Nachos with all the good stuff - sour cream, cheese and guac.

Food has happened.

I'm getting lazier and lazier with posts... I guess giant posts with a huge amount of food in it are how it's gonna be from now on cause posting more regularly is never going to happen.

So, behold some of the past months noms!

Firstly, Berrissimo is the greatest place on earth. I'm not even a big sweet tooth and I still find myself dreaming of it. Here is raspberry tart with chocolate mousse and coconut. Below is Chocolate mousse with NUTELLA, chocolate truffle balls and chocolate golden roughs. OH MY GOD VEGAN HEAVEN.

The Trinity Bakehouse in Flemington is deliciously close to work and serves two types of vegan bahn mi! Chilli lemongrass tofu (BEST) and vegan ham. $5.50 and awesome.

Karly made Chinese 5 spice seiten one time, it was amazing.

Las Vegan chocolate banana brownies as big as your head for my birthday picnic :)

Veggie Bar salads with mum for my birthday. I got marinated tofu which is confusingly tasty and mum got crispy brown rice balls with satay. Side of chips was completely unnecessary as these are the biggest salads on earth but it was MY BIRTHDAY and I demanded chips.

Picnic times in my new giant backyard. I made my usual, famous sausage rolls, which are usually inhaled within about 3-3.5 minutes. Karly made my favourite Mexican salad!

Miranda made a lemon butter cake and Tess made double chocolate cheesecake. Double the delicious.

One day I got lunch from Fruits of Passion near work. Pretty epic roast veggie and pesto turkish roll with chips, naturally. This was delicious and surprisingly cheap (roll was about $7/$9 and was massive)... again, chips unnecessary (but necessary).

Winter was an excuse to eat this as often as possible. Fry's country chicken and mushroom pies with mash, greens and onion gravy.

The weekend before my diet started... made 120 dumplings! These never get any less delicious.

Indian feast from the most delicious Indian place in Brunswick West - Tandoor n Spices. This place does not look like much and has limited dining in space/atmosphere but YES it serves up the yummiest food.

Toor dal, can't ever not get it.

Giant plate of onion bhaji, crispy delights.

Rice.

Vegetable pilaf rice and garlic wholemeal roti.

Potato and pea curry.

Aloo tikki. Potato cakes stuffed with spiced lentils and deep fried... with tamarind sauce - YUM.

We had an eight day adventure in Tasmania earlier this month! It was pretty awesome. We mostly did camp cooking (burgers, shrooms and beans breakfast, packet curries with rice and greens etc.) but a few times we ate out like fancy people!

Only one lousy picture of delicious Buddha Thai in Launceston. I am enjoying a fantastic pad see ew and Jeff got a red curry with rice.

MoMo Bubble Tea and Coffee House in Hobart was a good mock meat haven. This BBQ duck was INSANELY tasty. We went twice and possibly ordered the same thing...

Soy burger with chips.

These BBQ shiitake ribs were other worldy... I could have eaten about 99 of them. How do they make mushrooms taste like smokey sticky heaven? I don't know but you need to eat them, now.

The biggest win of Tassie eating was Garden of Vegan in Launceston. WOW this place was special, and beautiful. They have a set daily menu that worked out very well for us! It was a freezing wet day and laksa was on the menu!

Chai lattes (on crockery from my childhood!)

Cold sesame noodle dish which Nia thoroughly enjoyed.

Tea.

Most wholesome and delicious laksa I've ever eaten. Everything tasted really healthy and nutritious and good for you. Anyone who can make laksa feel like that is a winner. I didn't even feel greasy afterwards!

Raw cheesecake and truffle for dessert, naturally.