Bad Greys August 9, 2009
Posted by tuimeltje in fandom veganism, non-food veganness.Tags: fandom
2 comments
Medium: Television
Show: The X-Files
Episode(s) mentioned: Duane Barry (2×05) and Ascension (2×06)
Pizza May 21, 2009
Posted by tuimeltje in dinner, food, snack.4 comments
I don’t have an oven. I love my flat, but there are two things missing. An oven is one of them.* This could of course be remedied somewhat by getting one of those combination microwaves, but that’s an appliance somewhat low on my list of things to buy. Well above a toaster, but still fairly low.
Because I don’t have an oven, enjoying a nice bit of pizza is somewhat of a rarity for me. But recently a fellow student talked about heating pita bread in a frying pan when lacking a toaster. She may also have mentioned the possibility of preparing pizza this way, I don’t actually remember. All I know is I came away from this conversation intending to try it.
And I did!
I optimistically bought a set of basic pizzas, just dough with a bit of red, to be augmented at home, assuming it’d fit in my frying pan.
It didn’t, but that’s not important. Because, you see, they can be cut up. Say, in quarts. Which I did. Then I added a bit of passata, some bell pepper, and some olives. Put it in my frying pan with a makeshift, incomplete cover for a while, and then I ate it.
So much fun!
And tasty.
One makes a nice snack (or addition to breakfast…), a few make a nice dinner, a lot might just make a party.
If you have more frying pans, anyway.
Ode to pizza:
*The other thing missing is a balcony. Fixing that would require a move.
More chocolate cake May 11, 2009
Posted by tuimeltje in food, snack.add a comment
Last week it was my last day somewhere, and it seemed to be customary to bring tasty things for such an occasion. Since finding decent vegan tasty things to fit a student’s budget can be kind of tricky and time-consuming, I figured I’d best bake something myself.
So far, the basic chocolate cake has never let me down so I figured I’d see if it’d work just as well flat.
This time I did actually use some vanilla-tasting liquid so I skipped the cinnamon. Because my parents only had a little bit of white vinegar left, just enough for one batch, and I wasn’t sure balsamic would be the thing to use for cake, I visited my grandma when batch #1 was in the oven. Instead of spending those spare moment on study, I checked out her collection of vinegars and plants. Apart from making sure my grandma has tasty condiments (Also no white vinegar to be found. I went with the raspberry-flavoured one she had), my aunt also occasionally adds some flowers to my grandma’s garden. Though the enthusiastic wisteria, ivy, and almost-a-little-pink-and-oddly-smelling-like-white-chocolate flowers you can see on the picture are plants that just grow there with out any intervention on my aunt’s part (though she may, at times, intervene to make sure it doesn’t grow quite as much. Especially the ivy).
I made two batches of cake, cut not too large but not too small either. While it was quite a lot, I kept worrying I’d not have enough. Silly, really, as I did have plenty. Enough so it didn’t fit in the Curver containers I’d bought specially. I ended up going to the nearest supermarket for an old melon box so I’d be able to transport the cake.
Enough to have some left to make a small package (two pieces and a note) for a friend who’d be receiving chemotherapy there the next day.
Enough to still have something to take some with me tomorrow.
That’ll be the last piece, though. And it’s probably still tasty and moist.
Good cake. A cake which, oddly, tasted vaguely alcoholic. I wonder if that’s the raspberry vinegar.
Oat May 4, 2009
Posted by tuimeltje in administrative, breakfast, food, travel.Tags: grain-base, strange and unusual foods, vegetable
2 comments
Before I went ahead and spent two months living somewhere not my flat most of the time, I wondered about what facilities would be available to me there and how easy it would be for me to cook and store anything decent. It all turned out very well, both the available facilities (the freezer has some door-issues, but is still usable) and the totally cool and considerate omnis, but before I was able to find this out I figured I might as well go prepared.
Make sure I at least had a decent start to my days.
Some time ago Dino had an episode of his podcast in which he shared some ideas on how to have easy meals when traveling. Apart from saying things that made me want a rice cooker like crazy, he talked about little bags or containers or whatever you have containing quick-cook oatmeal with little additions that would become a decent breakfast or snack after adding some hot water.
I first went with this idea some time ago, when we went to Germany with the band again (and again I didn’t come across any falafel places. Saw lots of snow, though, which more than made up for it), mostly trying it to have something decently filling in case the catered foods weren’t too vegan.
Something where I could just add hot water.
I didn’t have much hope for a decent taste, but I could live with that provided it filed up my belly nicely.
Turns out my combination of things to mix in with the oats gave me something that was actually quite tasty, even with just hot water added, so I thought that might be a nice thing to bring along now.
Hot water tends to be easy to come by.
The things I used for this easy breakfast mix:
-Oats. The quick-cook sort that only requires a minute or so of boiling/microwaving.
-Dried things. Raisins, goji berries, dried red date bits I got at an Asian supermarket.
-Crunchy things. Mixed nuts, sunflower seeds, some more things from an Asian supermarket, like foxnuts, lily seeds(? something lily-like, anyway), and thin little almonds.
-Powdery things. Cocoa, cinnamon.
Basically what you do is put the desired amounts of each thing in a container with a good lid, shake it around for a bit to mix it up properly, and take it with you when you think it might come in handy. You can play with the additions for a bit, see what you like and what you can find.
I used a 1.2L flat Curver container which got me through the first two weeks with a few breakfasts left.
As for final preparations, in Germany I put a little bit in a plastic tumbler with a decent seal, shook it a bit (decent seal, yeah? Important), let it soak for a few minutes, and ate it.
Around here I just put some in a bowl, added some boiled water, and it stand for a bit while I took a shower before eating it.
Not only properly filling, but quite tasty too. Yay.
It’s likely to become a standard food to bring along to places where getting a decent vegan meal might not be that easy. I always used to take along some handy packets of salt, pepper, and ketchup, maybe some insta-soup, but this will make a nice addition to my survival kit.
As a bonus, a picture of a bell pepper I found in the supermarket recently. I didn’t intend to buy any, but I couldn’t resist this one. One side solid green, the other side wholly red.
It made me happy.
Not the same kind of happy as a humourously-shaped carrot would, but that’s fine. Happy’s good.
Some administrative things. Soon I will shut down the fandom veganism blog. I don’t have the time to properly maintain it, so I’ll just move the two posts here and see where it goes. I still very much like the idea of a blog like that, though. If someone else is setting one up and wants contributions I might just add my bit, but for now any fannish veganism will be posted here.
Royal April 30, 2009
Posted by tuimeltje in dinner, food.Tags: festive, soup
2 comments
Today it’s Koninginnedag, the celebration of the Queen’s birthday, which means that I’ve seen an overwhelming amount of orange with the occasional flecks of red, white and blue, of course. As my wardrobe is entirely devoid of orange I did not join in, so I’m making up for it online.
Oh, yes.
Most of the morning was spent in a relatively small fisher’s village next to my city of birth, where things are celebrated with some more enthusiasm and patriotism (both 1st and 6th of the national anthem and the provincial anthem were sung) than you might see in larger cities. Not that nothing is organised in larger cities, mind. I remember very well the decorated bikes and the sundry games (spijkerpoepen!) I played to be rewarded with a brightly-coloured candy stick or lollipop.
And the freemarket. That’s always fun. Mostly kids selling their old toys or playing whatever instrument they can get their barely-trained hands on, but sometimes there’s good stuff to be found there. I’ve not been in a few years, but this year I went near where I live. I bought me a puzzle and some Tartex, considered buying a medical encyclopaedia from the 1970s, and if they’d already had the cables and such, I’d most likely have bought a laptop.
Might still do that next week, once the cables and such are in.
Anyway.
Your exposure to orange isn’t limited to me brushing up on my extremely basic coding skills to give you headache-inducing letters. As I can’t be bothered to show any patriotism, community spirit, or conformity by wearing something orange, I figured I could share my culture and heritage and whatnot through food. Orange food.
Carrot soup.
Carrots aren’t particularly Dutch, as far as I know, though I suppose it’s more indigenous than many of the things easily found in supermarkets these days. But they sure are orange.
While I can find various soups when going through old posts, I can’t find any soups that are specifically carrot soups. A few contain carrots, and a few are orange due to liberal use of things like pumpkin or red lentils, but I couldn’t find a carrot soup.
Odd.
I’m sure I’ve made one before, and I really thought I’d posted about it.
Oh well. It doesn’t really matter now, you’ve got pictures of it right here.
Basically, what I did was do the dishes that have been in my kitchen for some weeks (yes, weeks. I’ve hardly been home these last few weeks, remember?), get my large pan, pop a good many cumin seeds in it, chuck in two chopped onions, then either nine or twelve scrubbed and roughly cut carrots (II stopped counting at some point. You can just go with whatever amount you find appealing, really), some water, a bit of garlic powder, some kentjur powder, and a miso bouillon cube. I let that heat up until the carrots were soft enough to purée. After puréeing it and adding a bit of water to make it more soup-ish and less mash-ish, I added a nice bit of lemon juice. I also added a little bit of salt and tamari as the I’d kind of skimped on the bouillon cubes.
I would’ve liked to have added some ginger. I love the carrot-ginger combination, but as you can see in the picture, the little bit of ginger I had left was all wrinkly and wooden. No longer suitable for consumption, that bit. And what with this being a national holiday and all and me forgetting to buy it earlier, I didn’t have anything fresher, so I used the kentjur as a substitute. Not quite as nice, but better than nothing.
Apparently there’s some comedian somewhat confused about Dutch holidays and trying to figure out Koninginnedag. Go watch!
