A post long over due: food porn backlog!

I had a lot going on in the past couple of weeks, like planning stuff for the summer and undergoing dental surgery, but it seems like things are finally looking up and all of the stress is slowly subsiding - phew! Sorry for keeping you waiting, guys. :)

[Some of the photos were taken on my phone, so the quality may not be the best. Whoops~]

Pasta in cream sauce with lemony asparagus.

Mitarashi dango!

It was my second time making dango and it actually turned out okay this time. The sauce was really nice, savoury yet sweet - mhmm! You can read more about dango and all the different variations of it here on the good ol' Wikipedia.

Donuts! And Strawberries, too.. But the donuts are clearly the star here :D

Oh how I wish one of the local bakeries would offer vegan donuts, sadly that's not the case - perhaps someday? This recipe from Cooking Vegan Food Up North was easy to make and it provided me with a generous amount of delicious fresh donuts - highly recommended.

Sesame & Spring Onion Ramen

A plate full of tofu scramble & veggie goodness.

If only I could eat this everyday. Simple pan fried tofu scramble with steamed asparagus, avocado and a drizzle of balsamic vinegar.

Jam & vegan cream cheese sandwiches, a banana, strawberries and raw almond butter.

Onde Onde

Onde Onde are chewy fried rice cakes rolled in sesame seeds and filled with a sweet mung bean paste. I was so surprised to spot these at a local Asian grocery shop, because it's really hard to find freshly made Asian desserts, snacks and bakery style~ goodies for sale here in Germany. Small unexpected finds like this are just the best!

A breakfast food you can't go wrong with: Pancakes!

These came out just perfect. Slightly crispy on the top with just the right amount of fluffy pancake-y goodness on the inside. Topped with a little margarine and golden syrup. Unfortunately I can't remember what recipe I used, possibly one from Vegan Brunch?

Breakfast: Peach green tea and grapefruit.

I wish I had taken a better photo of this because the flesh of the grapefruit had such a nice shade of red, but I forgot to take one with my DSRL. Ah well~, another time.

Rice paper rolls filled with letuce, vegan bulgogi and OJ.

The recipe for the bulgogi can be found on Vegan8Korean. They have three different recipes: Gochujang Bulgogi (hot & spicy), Tempeh Bulgogi and Bulgogi Style Seitan. I have tried the first two and they're both immensely tasty. :)

Vanilla-Pudding & Chocolate Cake

Fluffy vanilla cake, a layer of vanilla pudding and a layer of chocolate ganache. The ganache looked a little funky after it had hardened, but it didn't harm the taste at all. I am not ashamed to say that I ate the entire pan in two days... ^^;

Raw zucchini pasta in cheese sauce with crumbled burger patty leftovers.

Homemade kimchi.

As usual I used Maangchi's recipe: Easy Kimchi (Mak Kimchi)
You can replace the fish sauce with some soy sauce and leave out the squid, no problem! Or you could use this completely vegan recipe by Vegan8Korean, yum!

Well, that's it for now! I hope you're all enjoying summer. Talk to you soon ♥

Daily Eats: Green Tea Chocolate Cookies & Almond Milk

Green tea chocolate filled cookies & almond milk.

Inspired by AliensDayOut's most recent cookie adventure. Like Mipa, I started off with the 'Minono' recipe from Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar, an extra tablespoon or two of flour was enough to make the dough work-able and the cookies kept their shape very well. I left out the orange zest because I wasn't sure if the flavour of oranges would work with green tea, but vanilla made a lovely replacement. The filling is made of white chocolate and green tea (matcha) powder and the tiniest bit of vegetable oil - it's incredibly delicious!

Daily Eats: Green Tea Swirl Bread

Homemade green tea (matcha) swirl bread.

RECIPE: Milk bread & variations (via Une-deux senses)

Great, great recipe! You can leave out the egg to make it vegan, it's no problem at all, though you might want to add a little more water or else your dough could be too dry. The left over tangzhong / water-roux can be diluted with water and be used as a vegan 'egg' wash. My bread making skills aren't very good, but I have used the water-roux method used in this recipe before for making bread and it honestly never disappoints. If you've been shying away from making bread at home I suggest you give this recipe a try, it's worth the work. :)

Daily Eats: Crêpes

Crêpes with blueberry filling.

I decided to spoil myself a little today and made some delicious crêpes in the afternoon and filled them with with a blueberry pie style filling, which was my favourite crêpe filling as a child and probably still is (though I do love maple syrup too mhmmm~).

Daily Eats: Breakfast

Bread roll with sweet sugar beet syrup and black coffee.

Daily Eats: Raw Cheesecake with Strawberries

Raw cheesecake with strawberries.

Daily Eats: Veggie Paella

Dinner: Veggie paella with arugula. Jello fruit cup for dessert.

Daily Eats: Chocolate Chip Cookies

Chocolate chip cookie dough.

Daily Eats: Waffle Iron Baked French Toast

Save some time when making French toast by using a waffle iron! Crispy French toast (or maybe waffle toast would be the more appropriate term :)) in no time. My waffle iron can make two waffles at a time so this worked perfectly and it gave me some time to clean last nights dishes while the toast was baking - perfect!

French toast with banana, strawberry jam & vanilla cream + cup of camomile tea.

Daily Eats: Bami Goreng

Bami goreng / Indonesian fried noodles.

Daily Eats: Sweet Azuki Milkshake & Lunch

Lunch: Yubu chobap, steamed sweet potato & a banana.

Sweet azuki shake.

When I made steamed buns on Friday I filled half of the dough with mock meat and the other half with sweetened red bean (azuki) paste. BUT, as it always happens, I made waaay to much of both fillings so I decided to use some of the sweet bean paste to make myself a tasty tasty milkshake: almond milk, some silken tofu, sweetened red bean paste, half a banana and a few ice cubes. Yum!

Daily Eats: Steamed Buns

Working that dough~

Mock meat filling.

Ready for steaming.

Daily Eats: Afternoon Snack

Toast with margarine & strawberry marmalade, fresh strawberries and a glass of almond milk.

Daily Eats: Lunch | Nubian Heritage Soap

Nubian Heritage Coconut & Papaya Soap || Lunch was ramen, kimchi and a can of coke.

The soap was on my iHerb wishlist for a couple of months and I'm really happy I decided to add it to the cart on my latest order because the smell of this soap is out of this world! I can't wait to use this!

Daily Eats: Iced Latte

Iced vanilla latte.

Double shot of espresso, almond milk, a handful of ice cubes and vanilla protein powder (adds flavour, some sweetness and it works as a thickener to make a creamy drink :)).

A Small Challange

I'm challenging myself to post at least a photo per day for an entire month (March 20 - April 20). I've really been slacking with this blog and it's weird, because I actually do have a lot of things and recipes I want to blog about and I did quite well during vegan MoFo in November... But for whatever reason I can't seem to get anything done and I don't want this to be just another failed project in the never ending universe of the interwebz~.. Boo. So I'm putting a tiny bit of pressure on myself with this challenge and hopefully I'll get my groove back. This isn't exactly like Vegan MoFo since my only goal is to post a picture a day of something I cooked, baked or ate that day. Should be doable right? Y'all can come kick my cyber-butt if I miss a day! (keep the different time zones in mind though, I'm not taking a beating just because the day's over in your neck of the woods ;))

Anyways, if any of you bloggers out there would like to join me in this challenge leave me a comment so I can stalk you see what you're up to!

Oh and btw! By the request of a horde of people single lady (yo Allysia!) I will be posting the recipe for savoury oatmeal soon. I meant to post it last week (there we go again..) but it's just that lately I haven't been in the mood to eat savoury oatmeal myself so there wasn't an opportunity. :)

Fudgy brownie with real cocoa nibs.

These were a disaster, extra fudgy brownies ruined by evil cocoa nibs. I thought the nibs would add a nice crunch to the brownies, but they tasted rubbery (perhaps dues to the heat from the baking process?).

Backlog of Food Porn

Blog maintenance went over well, I got everything on my list done: The Recipe and Reviews pages are now updated, tags are sorted out and I added a search function that you can find on the right side. I also made some change to the Subscribe/Follow page. You can subscribe by e-Mail and get each new entry delivered straight to your inbox or stick to the good ol' RSS-feed. I really hope the e-Mail feature works, this is not a feature I use to subscribe to other blogs so I'm not sure how reliable it is and how the formatting of my entries may change, but I thought it was a good idea for those who don't use feed readers. You can find a link to my flickr page too and I would love some flickr buddies, so please get in touch y'all~~.

I didn't get much feedback regarding blog improvement, but you're all welcome to leave a comment or send me a mail anytime if there's anything you would like to see improved or if something is wrong with the layout or blog (dead links/photos for example) and I'll do my best to fix it. :)

Anyhooow.. It's been a while since I've posted some food porn, so I figured today would be as good a day as any to change that. I honestly didn't take many photos during my blogging absence, but spring is around the corner and the sky isn't that god awful shade of grey anymore and so I've gotten back in the habit of taking photos of what I cook and eat again. Everything is just more fun in spring, right? :)

Oatmeal with plums, hemp seeds and dark sugar beet syrup.

Côte d'Or Pistache Noir 70%

This...sounds way better than it actually is, I'm sad to say. :( The pistachio pieces are sooo tiny, you can hardly taste them and when you do they taste like marzipan... I mean, I like marzipan, but that's not quite what I wanted when I bought this. It's not all bad, the dark chocolate tastes nice and that elephant is quite cute as well, but I won't be buying this particular flavour again.

Savoury oatmeal with soy sauce, sesame oil, scrambled tofu, beans, seitan and dried seaweed.

A lazy woman's answer to rice porridge, or bubur like they call it in Indonesia. I absolutely LOVED bubur when I was a child and I still do, but it takes a rather long time to make the classic rice version while it'll only take a couple of minutes if you're using quick cooking oats instead. The recipe is pretty simple, so if anyone's interested I could probably have it up sometime this week. :)

PB filled chocolate pillow.

Last week I finally made the peanut butter chocolate pillows from Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar. I had a tub of oversalted homemade PB that needed to be used up... A neat excuse to bake cookies, amIright?! Of course I am, hehe. You really need to try these if you have VCIYCJ, because they're uh-maaaazing. 

N.A! Nature Addicts fruit snack.

Fruit leather seems to have found it's way to Germany. 'bout time, I say. If only those little packets would be a bit a whole lot larger, ahem...

Speculoos oatmeal with hemp seeds.

Oatmeal with walnuts, snickerdoodle style. My current favourite.

Vegan egg (!!), sunny side up.

Soon there won't be anything left for us vegans to veganize, I mean... vegan eggs?! Amazing! They're by no means perfect yet, but they're pretty darn good. The idea came from a thread on the PPK (here).

Soy yoghurt with fresh strawberries.

Green smothie.

Made from hemp+chia seeds, bananas, spinach, soymilk, almond butter. The almond butter made it taste like cookie dough, I'm not even kidding. :)

[The last three photos were taken with my phone, sorry about the quality.]

Daily Eats: Saturday

Cupcake for breakfast.

[I'll be doing some long over-due blog maintenance today: sorting out the tags + updating the Recipes and Review pages. If you have any ideas for improvement, now would be the time to mention it. :)]

Friday Eats

I'm back from my blogging-vacation. It felt a little weird not to blog for the first couple of days after Vegan Mofo, but it was good to have the time to do other things (like watching Korean dramas... very important!). :)

And sheesh! Christmas is approaching so fast, isn't it? I can't believe it's only 2 weeks away. I have no idea what foods I want to make for Christmas dinner and our tree is still in a box somewhere, waiting to be unpacked. Decorations? Nada. Gifts? Non! I expect panic will set in soon. How are you all managing so far?

Breakfast

Raw Holiday Chia Pudding (recipe from Kristen's Raw) with banana's.

SOO GOOD! I doubled the amount of cinnamon and milk, let it soak over night (in the fridge) and had one half for breakfast yesterday and the other half today. Chia seeds are really hard to find here in Germany so I had to order from iHerb. I don't know if it's because they were moving to a new location or maybe the mail service is too busy during the holiday season, but my last three packages have taken an extra week in delivery and my last two got stuck at customs. They got released fairly quickly and with no problems, but just a heads up to any international iHerb customers out there.

Snack #1

Two tall glasses of kale packed green juice.

Lunch & Dinner

For lunch I made 떡볶이 (deokkbokki), a Korean dish consisting of a spicy hot pepper sauce and rice cakes. I usually prefer it fresh, but I had some of the leftovers for dinner and it wasn't bad at all! :)

You can find a recipe for it over at Maangchi's or Aeri's website. Kelp broth works well as a replacement for the anchovy broth and fishcakes can be omitted or be replaced by sliced tofu puffs or textured soy protein (soycurls) soaked/rehydrated in kelp broth. I like to add some ramen, mushrooms, tofu and/or textured soy protein. Yum!

Snack #2

A Persimmon. Still not sick of these little fellows! :)

Snack #3

Whole wheat bread with margarine and apricot jam.
Cup of Ostfriesentee/East Frisian tea (one of my favourite tea blends) with almond milk.

Have a lovely weekend! x