NO CHICKEN SALAD

This is one of the most delicious things I’ve made in weeks! Just writing about it makes me so hungry, I seriously just wanna make this salad again tomorrow!

But first let’s talk about the name. When the conversation comes to fake meats there is often someone who can’t keep it to themselves and cries out, “Why do these damn vegans always copy meat dishes, they should be making their own dishes. This is fucking disgusting and they shouldn’t be allowed to do this!” My opinion is, these people need to shut up and chill the fuck out! Seriously, who cares?! If there is NO MEAT in it, you can make it taste like whatever you fucking want. Also, what they might not (want to) consider is, that there are certain foods you might have enjoyed in your former meat and dairy eating past and even if not, who cares if it tastes good?!

And then there is this other group of specialists! When they hear something about a “vegan chicken salad”, they are like “Yeah, I had chicken too today and it was vegan. Like, you know, it was on a vegan diet. HA HA HA..” Seriously… I try not to even start commenting on.. that…

Well anyways, I call this a “No Chicken Salad” coz it’s easier to understand what taste we’re going for. So people can easily recognize it. In reality it’s an asparagus, mushroom, soy meat salad. Which is quite a moutful. Literally!

So tasty!

But anyways here goes the recipe,

4 cups soy meat
1 cup canned asparagus (or if in season use fresh)
2 cups fresh champignons
8 tbsp of margarine
1 onion
1 cup vegan Mayonnaise
1 clove of garlic
1 can of mandarines
1 tbsp paprika
vegetable oil
tamari-sauce
salt pepper

put the soy meat with some salt in a bowl cover with boiling water, leave for at least 15min

peel fresh asparagus and chop up into 1/2″ pieces, cook in some salt water til soft

canned asparagus can be chopped up straight away

dice champignons, not too small and fry in some oil, put salt and pepper in to taste and half of the onion, finely chopped, turn down temperature and let simmer

drain soy meat well, and if bigger pieces, cut them up fairly small

fry up soy meat in margarine, season with tamari sauce, put rest of the finely chopped onion in, leave until meat slightly crunchy, add crushed garlic and season to taste with salt, pepper and paprika

mix all ingredients, let cool down, chill in fridge and add vegan mayonnaise.

season again to taste

Of curz this is another recipe, slightly altered, which I’ve got from Björn Moschinski. Who is really making some great stuff and is also easy to watch in those instruction videos(not so easy if you don’t speak German, but I’ll post the video here anyways).

This is so delicious, you need to try it! Maybe it’s just one of these things Germans are used to, mayonnaise based, protein rich salads, but I think most people should like this.

Try it out and let me know what you think!

MAYO WARS

Yesterday I’ve made another attempt to make the best vegan mayo ever. Or just an edible version would have done.

Last time I’ve made it it tasted kind of .. questionable. I think that was due to making it partially with olive oil(coz I’ve ran out of sunflower oil in the middle of production) and to the fact that I was so stunned by getting it to a perfect consistency that I didn’t dare seasoning it.

So, the taste was quite overwhelming and strong. Not so great.

Yesterday, I wanted to make a “vegan chicken salad”, so I needed some more mayonaise. And why buy it?! Vegan mayo is fucking expensive and I also like learning how to make things from scratch. Sometimes..
Not so much the first two trials.

I’ve only put soy milk in it and vegetable oil and both times, it turned into a gluggy mass. Like a big jug of really oily milk. Yuck!!
It was gross. And what a waste!! But what are you supposed to make with that?! Down the drain I’d say!

The first time I used soy milk from a regular supermarket. It had some additives in it, sugar, stabilizers, crap like that. I’ve added a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar to the milk before the oil, as it was suggested in the german video below. And regular sunflower oil.

An instruction video for our German friends – Ein how-to video für unsere deutschen FreundInnen

The second time(in between I had to go to the supermarket to get some more oil) I’ve used organic soy milk, made only from water and soy beans and canola oil.

By that time I was really sick of reading any more recipes. But I saw a great hint in one of the recipes which was, to put the oil in really slowly, because otherwise it’s too heavy and just goes straight to the bottom of the blender. That helped.

So here are my best tips for making the perfect vegan mayonnaise

•Use a small amount of soy milk(half a cup) for a trial, so you don’t waste so much of the ingredients if it doesn’t work out

•Pour the oil into the blender, which has to be at highest speed, VERY SLOWLY!! A very thin stream while still pouring it in steadily

•Apparently both, soy milk and oil should have room temperature(same temperature) or it won’t work

•If the oil is still a bit separate in the end, just put the mayo into a bowl and stir it while also stirring in the seasoning and the oil will blend with the rest

•Put the seasoning in after you’re happy with the consistency, some people put them in in the beginning, you might wanna do that once you’ve perfected your technique, otherwise, see above, regarding waste. You don’t wanna throw all this stuff in and then having to pour it down the drain

Perfect vegan mayo

And here is the recipe

1/2 cup soy milk
1 1/2 cups oil(flavour neutral oil, like sunflower or canola, or experiment with olive oil)

And then season to your liking. This is what I’ve put in.

1/2 tsp mustard
1 tbsp apple cider vinegar(or any other vinegar or lemon)
1 tsp paprika
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
1/4 tsp pepper
1 tsp salt

I’m very picky with my mayo, I hated Australian mayonnaise, I refused to eat it and would only eat a certain Swiss brand. It’s gross, too sour and sweet and, brrr, just slimy.
But I’m really happy with how this recipe turned out. It tastes like The Real Deal. And you can season it up how you want it, which makes it taste even better.

Making the perfect mayonaise is like an art form!

Lunch

I would also recommend this recipe to meat eaters or vegetarians. I mean, why eat mayo with raw eggs if you don’t have to. Why take the risk of salmonella, that shit is dangerous. And raw eggs?! Gross!
And why eat animal products where it’s really not necessary?!

Just to make sure the recipe really works, I’ve tried it again today. Well, the first time it went shit again. What I’ve noticed already yesterday with one batch is, that it first solidifies and then all of a sudden goes liquid again. Which is so frustrating! Not sure if I’ve put too much oil in or put it in too fast, but I really tried to put it in as slow as possible. Maybe too much then?!
So, I don’t really wanna call myself a vegan mayo expert now. But I am! It doesn’t always turn out, but when it works, ‘Wow!’ lol

And if you think, “This shit is gross, coz too oily!” or if you can’t get it to work or wanna try something different, here are 2 more recipes, one is a raw almond mayonnaise and the other one a tofu mayonnaise. Have fun experimenting and tell me how it went!

VEGAN PASTA SALAD

If you follow The Forage on Facebook you might remember me talking about some vegan pasta salad I said I’d post the recipe of. That was about 2 months ago. Today I will finally post it. Yeah, that’s the speed I work at..

I’m a bit sluggish sometimes, but it’s a REALLY delicious salad so it needs to be done!

I love pasta salad by the way, I remember eating it as a kid, the more mayonnaise the better. It’s a finely tuned mix of sweet, sour, salty and fatty flavours. Oh My God, if you make it right it’s just so delicious. Also, if you make lots of it, it’s the perfect snack to pull out of the fridge when you come home after a day of work.
Or whatever else you do during the day. Or night.

I normally freestyle most of my food, so I just made a list of things I thought needed to be put in and served it to my guests at our house warming party. They loved it! I was so happy!!

Ok, but here’s the recipe, remember it’s vegan, so you need to get some vegan mayonnaise (mayonnaise is the key) from the health food shop, apparently they sometimes even have it at normal supermarkets too. I haven’t seen it there so far though.

Recipe for 8 people and then some,

fusilli(spirelli)  3bags of 500g
vegan mayo 2 jars
tofu smoked 1pack
vegan deli slices 1 pack
vegan sausages(spicy) 1 pack
(3 meaty things in total)
gherkins 1 jar
onion 2-3
apple 2
cherry tomatoes
mushrooms
or other veg
olive oil
capers 1 jar (optional)
salt
pepper
paprika
cayenne pepper

fry up mushrooms and tomatoes(you can use other vegetables of your choice, like zucchinis or peppers) in olive oil and some spices, when they are semi done let them cool

boil pasta, strain just before al dente and let cool

cut onions, apples, gherkins and sausages and all other ingredients into small pieces, I like them fairly small, but that’s a matter of taste

stir the mayo into the cool-ish pasta

and put the cooked vegetables and the rest of the chopped stuff in

add capers and spices to your liking

stir well

put in plastic container with lids and let sit in fridge over night

Of curz you can leave out any ingredient you or your guests wont like or are allergic too. Or add whatever else takes your fancy. I added the cayenne pepper quite freely, so the salad had quite a spicy kick to it, which thankfully everyone loved. Made it a bit different.

I made one batch with onion and one without, afterwards one of my friends said she didn’t quite like the apple, but she loved the salad, so I guess I could have left that out of one as well. Inquire about your friends dietary requirements beforehand if you’re not sure.

It was a delicious salad, I made another batch just for the two of us a few days later, but it wasn’t quite as good. I used a different kind of mayonaise, coz I couln’t find the other one and I blame that.

This is a great salad for a buffet when you have friends over or as I said, a semi-healthy quick meal.

Next time I might try a potato salad, I quite like that as well. I used to love a good egg salad, but I can’t imagine making a vegan egg salad..?
Have you ever made pasta salad? What’s your favourite non lettuce-ey salad?

OLD FRIENDS NEW WAYS

I have been back in Berlin for almost 5 weeks now. I LOVE it! It’s funny coming back, I really feel like Berlin is my (adopted) hometown. It just fits. I feel really comfortable here. But then, I’m not working already, once you work in a place it’s a whole nother story. At the moment it’s kind of like a holiday. An adventure.

I thought I would be blogging basically straight away, but it took me quite a while to settle. Not in a way to feel at home, as I said that was no problem, more in a way to get back into a routine.

Routines are funny, the exciting part of moving somewhere different and starting something new is that you don’t have a routine or that you change it, but I like routines in some way. It’s a funny one.

For example, before we left I was eating really healthy, mostly raw vegan food. When we got here I was like “OH MY FUCKING GOD!! Organic shops here are awesome!!! I wanna try EVERYTHING!!!” So we ate a lot of organic, vegan, but nevertheless much more processed food. And the vegan restaurants!!

I had a couple of slip ups, were I ate some vegetarian, non vegan sweets. I made this whole list in my head ages ago of all the things I wanted to eat coming back and it’s difficult to get things out of my head once they found a way in there, so yeah, I’m trying to be more undogmatic, but still straight edge, if that makes any sense?!

But now I’m basically back to my old ways.

Breakfast! I try to have something like this every day.

Also, no internet.

Some minimalists seem to go for the ‘no internet at home option’. In our shared flat we can only pick up the signal of a free internet every couple of days and then it’s really shit. So mostly we go to the library now, they give you codes for 2 hours of free internet. I’m sure you could use the internet there the whole day, but I kind of like the 2 hour limit, it keeps my internet addiction contained. It’s amazing how quickly 2 hours pass on the net. Frightening!!!

I met some of my old friends again. It’s funny how you can  basically pick up were you left with some people, even if you might not have seen them for 5 or more years. One of my friends, I’m pretty sure she’s a witch, she’s got a black cat, is a feminist and collects herbs, 3 reasons she basically would have been burned at the stake for a couple of 100 years ago, is gonna go on a herb forage with me next week and I’m super excited!

We gonna look for elderberries, linden flowers and some ramson maybe, which is like a wild garlic.

I’m also going to another forage walk tomorrow.

Here is a cool music clip, by Sticky Antlers. A band I found while watching a documentary about Punk in Africa.

Here is the crazy long trailer.

I nearly passed out watching this movie, the cinema was so overcrowded and the show was really delayed. As with the trailer, the movie would have benefited from some better editing, but nevertheless it was very interesting.

Also cinemas are so much better in Berlin!!! Oh my god! I’ve got so much catching up to do! I love art house, independent, foreign movies. I hate that regular cinemas nowadays just show this regurgitated boring hollywood crap that just insults my fucking intelligence with it’s cliches and stories that have been done 1000 times before.

I’m trying to get into blogging again more regularly, see how it goes!

Have you tried something new lately?

Green Smoothies

So I wrote about blender foods the other day and I just wanted to share some recipe ideas I tried since then.

One day I was in a real hurry and had about 2 minutes before I needed to run out of the door to get to work, so I whizzed up this quick smoothie.

1 banana
1 passion fruit
some rice milk

Very easy and very tasty! I forgot to mention liquids in my other post, so yeah, put in some water or some rice milk or make almond milk yourself or just put in some freshly squeezed juices, I like grapefruit, for example.

Today I made another green smoothie for breakfast. It turned out kind of green, purple-ish and I thought it was really pretty.

This is what I put in

fruits

and this is how pretty it looked like.

love the colour

I had to actually thin mine down with more rice milk, coz it was really thick. Tasted delicious!

Here is a clip of some more green smoothie tips and ideas one of my friends posted in the comments(Thanks Damian:).

And here is a different take on the green smoothie, a savoury version. I’m not sure, is that healthier, some people seem to think, the more greens the better?

Next time I’m gonna try making my own almond milk and throw some nuts and raw cocoa beans into the mix!

Have you tried any green smoothies yet? Got any more ideas?

Blender Food

In some previous posts I’ve been going on about how we don’t have a blender..

And now we’ve got one! 2 weeks before we move out, awesome!!

Anyways, I’m trying to quickly remember all the things I wanted to make.. wtf?! So, first I’m gonna make some green smoothies, with bananas and pears maybe and spinach, dandelions and plantain, if I can find some. Dunno about fruits, I like passionfruit, maybe a kiwi or two and I like grapefruit too.

Or I’ll just make some fruit smoothies, would be nice with quinoa or amaranth or something for a breakfast shake. Or sprouts would be nice too, you could sprout beans or quinoa yourself. Or heaps of other things. So healthy, juicy and delicious!

I’m also thinking about blending up some veggies, maybe mushrooms or chickpeas or grains and stuff for some homemade veggie burger. Or nuts, for nut burgers.

That’s all I can come up with at the moment, if you have any more recipe ideas that need a blender let me know!

Eat Your Weeds

I’m looking forward to doing some foraging in Germany.

Here is a classic foraging plant, dandelions! I used to pick them to feed them to my guinea pigs, personally I find them too bitter. I will try them in a green smoothie though, once I get a blender. Hopefully the smoothies turn out nice, because I’ve got high hopes. I will mix them with a lot of fruits in the beginning, bananas and pears and put spinach in and dandelion or whatever, kale maybe and then ease into putting more greens in. But a 50/50 mix of fruits and greens can’t be too bad?! Haven’t checked out any green smoothie recipes yet, but that can’t be too hard. Just freestyle it!

looks like a great youtube channel, definitely gonna check out more of his videos

I really like drinking dandelion/chicory coffe substitute. It’s very common in Germany, it’s called Malt Coffee and kids drink it. Definitely better than that sugar filled Milo crap or whatever else kids drink..
Anyways, I love it, we have it with rice milk. I wanna make it myself sometime, collect dandelion roots and roast them. Sounds kinda exciting!

Here are some more weeds. Eat them! Just watch out that crazy people haven’t sprayed this shit!

And here is a cool link to an article called ‘the fantastic four – 4 essential wild edible plants that may just save your life‘

Ok, maybe quite a dramatic header, but it’s always good to know what’s available out there, not just for emergency situations. And free stuff?! Always great!!

So yeah, watch these videos and eat your damn weeds!!

Snacks Made From Food Waste And Other Food

Here is a thing you can do, collect the pumpkin seeds from when you make a roast or whatever, clean them, dry them and roast them with tamari/soy sauce, sea salt and olive oil. No need to shell them. So Delicious!!
Great way to make food from things that are normally considered food waste. Also a great snack.

I’m sewing my ass off at the moment to send out all my orders before we leave, that’s why I’m neglecting this blog a bit. But that’s gonna change soon.

We are also listing lots of stuff on Ebay.

And are making lists, lists, lists..

Here is a picture of our lunch today, it was really nice. Tofu burger, spinach, potatoes, zucchini and tomatoes. All organic. We often eat our vegetables  raw.

Awesome lunch

We make a nice vegetable roast sometimes, it’s really simple, pumpkin, potato and carrots, maybe even broccoli and zucchini or whatever you wanna put in it, olive oil, salt pepper, maybe turmeric or cayenne pepper, if you like it spicy and 20 min in the oven. I love it! The pumpkin and potatoes go so well together in my opinion! What’s your favourite vegetarian recipe/thing to cook?

Starting To Eat Vegetarian

Starting to eat vegetarian can be quite confusing and maybe a bit daunting. First, if you don’t do it already, read your labels. You should do that anyways, it’s surprising to see what is in some foods. If a tomato sauce for example has more then ten ingredients, I won’t eat it. Lots of foods contain all sorts of weird numbers and sugars and all sorts of crap. I wanna impose a new rule for myself “If I don’t know what it is, I won’t eat it!” It’s really difficult! I couldn’t do it right now, it’s stressful enough sourcing vegan, organic whole foods!

So anyways, if you want to ease into the vegetarian diet and/0r generally eat more healthy maybe try the following.

•Check out the health foods stores and have a good look around, that can be not only the healthier option, but also more interesting then just getting the regular products from the normal supermarket.

•Go to the farmer’s market. This is so great I can’t believe I just started doing this a couple of weeks ago. You get food that is locally produced, is fresh and organic and unprocessed and get to support small businesses! What’s not to love!!?

•Experiment, try something new, maybe it won’t be great, maybe it will be. If you are worried about wasting money, write down some foods and research them at home.

•Try out some milk alternative, I quite like coconut milk and I have rice milk for my dandelion coffee. Nice!

•Try some of the meat and sausage alternatives, most supermarkets carry at least some and you will find them in whole food stores also. I recommend smoked tofu, I know some people say soy isn’t great for you, but I still gotta look into that. Soy, vegetable burgers and tempeh can be great. Some brands are better then others, you gotta try them to see what you like.

•Follow facebook pages on vegetarian eating and recipes, find websites and talk to your friends that are vegetarian.

•I’d recommend making vegetarian spreads, like pates, yourself. I haven’t tried making them yet, you can also get them in the whole foods stores, they are delicious and great for sandwiches.

•Also great on sandwiches are nut butters, I love macademia nut butter or vegan pestos, which you also can make yourself. Because this shit can be expensive.

•Most likely you want to eat more healthy too, so I’d recommend to not over cook vegetables or just have them raw. Stir them into your hot food for example after taking it off the heat. Or start the day with a fruit salad. I do that and it’s awesome!

•We don’t use butter in our house and we also stopped eating margarine a while ago. I actually don’t miss is at all! I never thought it would be so easy! I normally just eat spreads straight on my toast, if it’s too dry I just use just use more. I have also tried using nut butters, tahini or jam on top of coconut oil. And I gotta say it’s delicious!

•Eating out can be a problem, depending on where you live. Give a vegan or vegetarian restaurant a try next time. There are some cheap indian and Hare Krishna places in Melbourne I like go go to. And it gives you some inspiration and you don’t need to cook!

•Get yourself some vegetarian books from the library or book shop

•Check out some websites to get some inspirations.

You can also check out these websites for some more meal ideas.

taste.com.au

vegetarian.about.com

instructables.com/vegan

veganeasy.org

To name just a few. And here is one I found that has some cool kids recipes, like zucchini potato fritters, stuffed mushrooms and pasties.

kidspot.com.au

I normally don’t cook with recipes, but I gotta check out some of these websites for inspirations for the future. Some of the stuff they got on there looks quite delicious.

Those are some tips I come up with right now. There must be heaps of others. Remember, when you are just starting to change your diet, don’t be too hard on yourself, don’t be afraid to try something wild and new and most importantly Have Fun!!

Being Vegan

One of the biggest misconception about vegetarian or vegan diets is, that there is ONE vegan/vegetarian diet. Like one way of eating vegan.

Another misconception is that all vegetarian or vegan diets are healthy and include lots of salad and vegetables. Like vegetarians sit there, constantly chewing on their salad leaves.

I’ve managed to be a vegetarian for years and hardly ate any vegetables at all, I basically lived on processed foods, instant noodles and chocolate were my favourites. For me it was ’5 a Month’, not ’5 a Day’. And anyways chocolate is basically a fruit, right?!
It wasn’t that I gained weight either, because I didn’t eat a whole lot.

Veggies!!

I’ve heard a lot of people say, that changing their diet to vegetarian, vegan or raw food made them feel like they had so much energy and that they felt so much better. I changed from a vegetarian to a vegan, more whole foods, more organic diet and cutting sugar and table salt. I didn’t feel very different for the first three months. Actually, in the beginning I lost a pound or two and it took me a couple of weeks to adjust, with like, what to eat, which was frustrating. But I felt cleaner and better. Now, after three months, I’m starting to feel like I got more energy. But I don’t want to just attribute that to my diet, I’m pretty sure it’s about lifestyle changes too, like de-cluttering, and bringing some new, exciting things into your life, but more on that in another post.

Eating meat or vegetarian, both can be unhealthy. Obviously eating lots of meat and conventional processed food is more unhealthy.

I’ve heard some ex vegans blame their health conditions on THE vegan diet. What would be more correct they should blame it on THEIR vegan diet, if at all. Coz obviously not every person who eats vegan eats the same. Funny also, that sometimes when you find out more about these “ex vegans”, they will actually tell you, they used to eat diary and fish and chicken every now and then. Now that is just stupid, you can’t have it both ways! You can’t blame being vegan for your health problems if you’re not even vegan at all. Simple logic fail! I think some people just need a straw argument, seems easy to pick on something that is unpopular with the majority of people and goes against the mainstream ideas of nutrition and how to live your life.

In the same way, I could blame any condition a meat eater developes on them eating meat. Now for some reason, most people and mainstream medicine hardly ever do that, while at the same time telling vegans and vegetarian how they must be lacking nutrients, which will cause them to get sick.

How many times have I heard “Where do you get your iron from? Where do you get your protein from?” But never do I hear people ask meat eaters questions like, “Where do you get your vitamins from? Where do you get your minerals and antioxidants from?”

I’ve hardly ever gotten sick since I’ve been on a vegetarian diet, thirteen years now. I used to have low blood pressure and low iron when I was eating meat, which are now all balanced out. Not sure if that is just related to my diet, I think it would be to some degree.

Apart from eating meat not being great, I believe vegetarians and vegans have the better diets because they most likely eat more fruit and vegetables, are less likely to eat processed food, because they have to cook from scratch. They read product labels, which makes them also informed about what nasty food additives and preservatives and other scary stuff is in food. And while lots of meat eaters just assume they get a balanced diet, throw in a couple of veggies here and there, but not too many, most vegetarians actually research nutrition and a balanced diet.

Another great reason for being vegetarian is obviously caring about the environment and caring about animals.

Just to show you there are lots and lots of professional vegetarian/vegan athletes. If these people can win tournaments and gold medals on a plant based diet, I’m sure we will be just fine doing our day to day activities on a plant based diet.

So yeah, I want to eat more fresh, raw vegetables and fruit. I hardly ever eat leafy greens at all at the moment. I mean what are leafy greens anyways? Spinach, silver beet, dandelion.. What else?

Do people start annoying you when you make changes for the better, be it diet or lifestyle? Have you made any changes lately?