White Bean and Roasted Mushroom Soup.

Made this soup for dinner tonight... WIIIIIIIIIIIN!!

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Tom Yum.

Remember the laksa recipe I posted not too long ago?

This is it's delicious spicy/sour (healthier) brother, tom yum.

It's basically the same recipe with a different paste base.

Take out the coconut milk, fried onion and nuts from the laksa recipe and you have this one.

It's hot, spicy, sour, healthy and delicious - perfect for winter nights.

Ingredients;

• Noodles, prepared as per packet instructions and set aside (I like chow mein)

• Tom Yum paste

• Tofu puffs (available in Asian grocers)

• Handful of snow peas

• 2 shallot stalks, sliced

• 2 cups button mushrooms, quartered

• A few handfuls of Asian greens (I used baby Chinese broccoli)

• 1 long red chilli

• 1 lime

• A handful of bean sprouts

• Bunch of coriander, chopped

• Handful of nuts (I used cashews)

Method;

1.) Cook the jar of paste about 1L of water for a few minutes (back of paste jar will be more specific with liquid quantities).

2.) Prepare noodles then set them aside.

3.) Add mushrooms and tofu puffs to the soup and simmer for about 10 mins.

4.) Add snow peas to the soup and some coriander stalks. Cook for another 5 mins to soften the peas then turn off heat.

Now for the assembling;

1.) Add noodles to bowl

2.) Add raw Asian greens, the hot soup will cook these

3.) Add soup

4.) Top with lime juice, bean sprouts, fresh sliced shallots, fresh sliced chilli, and coriander

5.) FACEPLANT

Half Moon Cafe.

Half Moon Cafe gets amazing reviews and is said to have the "best felafel in Melbourne"...

A challenge!

I accepted.

Went there last week and ordered aforementioned best felafel in Melbourne.

Felafel won.

Moist, tasty, fresh cooked, lot's of pickles and hommus on fresh chewy bread...

Okay Half Moon, you made the list (a list in my phone of about a million and three new fave places to eat in Melbourne.)

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LOLLIES.

These Unicorn lollies are available at the Brunswick IGA (where SO many strange vegan things hide on the shelves...)

They're those hard boiled style ones with chewy stuff in the middle.

Childhood memories.

I keep finding wrappers under Jeff's side of the bed, these lollies are a delicious problem.

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La Panella Bakery.

 Heaven.

 Sausage roll.

 Curry pie.

 Jam doughnut.

Chocolate muffin.

 Chocolate walnut slice.

 Veggie pastie.

Coffee cinnamon scroll.

Remnants of an apple pie (FRENZY before I could photograph... the shame.)

Mushroom, veggie and veggie meat pie.

The softest and most delicious wholemeal bread I've ever eaten - $1.80. 

My downfall.

The end of days.

Gym membership = useless.

The intense love and hate that I felt for my boyfriend the day he took me to La Panella still resonates in me.

Basically he was like "so there's a vegan bakery in Preston, 5mins drive from your house... wanna go?"

Me - "yeah whatever, you're so obsessed with bakeries, how good can it be?"...

OH MY GOD.

I've spent a good hour tossing up whether or not I should share this here as the shame that follows is depressing...

So we walk in to the bakery, I see that there are shelves and shelves of vegan marked treats.

Of course everything is old world prices, $1.50 vegan sausage rolls, $2 pies, $1.30 jam doughnuts etc. etc.

Well what choice did we have?

We bought it all.

There was a FRENZY, I don't know what came over me.

Seriously, we spent $20 and got 11 items plus a drink... ELEVEN BAKERY GOODS FOR UNDER $20.

Although we didn't eat ALL of it on the pavement outside, we did eat most of it...

I drove home a broken and bloated lady.

What am I meant to do with myself now that I know there are AMAAAAAAAZING $1.50 VEGAN SAUSAGE ROLLS RIGHT NEAR MY HOUSE!?

*sigh, my will power has been doing double time.

Anyway enough of the rant, I am sure you get the idea by this point.

La Panella = cheap, delicious, vegan bakery goods and certain doom to my bathroom scales.

GO THERE.

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