Posts

Peanut butter cookies

Image
Written by McDonald, T.   |  Date 8th of November 2021 Vegans always get excited when we see a pack of biscuits that are vegan.   Sometimes though, just for fun, we like to make our own biscuits.  It is a lot easier than you might think and it will make you think about just how much sugar goes in biscuits. Notes You might find it easier to roll the dough into balls and shape them by pressing on them with a folk.  Creaming means to use the back of a large spoon to mash and mix into a paste. Makes 12 cookies Ingredients   1 cup of  peanut butter 0.25 cup of gram flour or plain flour 6 tablespoons of vegan milk 0.5 - 0.75 cup of sugar (mix brown and white) Milled flax seed 1 tps baking powder 1/4 tsp of salt Method  Step 1 Add the peanut butter and sugar, then add salt and flax seed.  Mix the flour, baking soda and milk in a separate bowl.  Once you have a smoothish paste, add it to the other bowl with the peanut butter and sugar.  Cream together.  Step 2 Create a dough with your hands. 

Vegan Yorkshire Puddings

Image
Written by  McDonald, T.    |  Updated 24th of March 2024 Yorkshire puddings are a tasty part of Sunday dinner in the UK not to mention Christmas and Easter.  With this in mind, a vegan alternative is required to satisfy the patriots dinner plate.  I looked for a long time and tried many different recipes, but in the end I had to alter the best basic vegan recipe to make it perfect.

Becoming A Vegan

Image
Written by McDonald, T.   |  Date 1st of November 2021 Today is world vegan day!  When I first heard of veganism, I was in my teens.  I liked the idea, but didn't know how I would ever make the transition.  Like many others, I ate for comfort; it would give me something to look forward to.  When I got into my twenties, I started to meet many more vegans who encouraged me to try new and exciting foods.  At first, I was not keen, but did enjoy the vegan lasagna.  I tried vegan burgers and used vegetarianism as a way to move gently into veganism.  This had varying results.   I found vegans had different tactics: either trying to tempt we with food or trying to gross me out with images of slaughtered animals.  The latter just made me resent vegans and i ended up rebelling, but the food ideas would work.   After years of living as a flexitarian , someone that will eat vegan food on some days but not all,  I went on a fast on the lead up to Pentecost and continued for months after.  By

Vegan noodles

Image
Written by McDonald, T.   |  Date 29th of October 2021  This is an easy throw together if you are in a hurry.  It is really filling and will keep you going for ages.  Ingredients Vermicelli x handful or two Carrot x 0.5 cut into thin strips Garlic x 3 cloves crushed Butternut Squash x 50g Sweet potato x 50g Peas x 0.25 cup Red pepper x 0.5 Mint sauce x 1 tsp Vegetable stock x 300ml  Apparatus  Large frying pan Method Dice butternut squash and red pepper. Fry in a little oil in a frying pan.  Add the garlic and fry for another minute or so. Make the vegetable stock and add it to the frying pan.  Add the vermicelli and simmer for 3-4 minutes. Add the mint sauce. Results   I hope you decide to give this a try. If you do, please let me know what you thought in the comments or on twitter.  Please like, share with your friends and subscribe.     

How I Veganised Klingon Cuisine

Image
Written by McDonald, T.   |  Date 25th of October 2021 If you are a Trekkie, you should have a look at this.  I veganised a whole Klingon feast!  This has got really good food ideas that I still use today, so if you are a vegan and looking for a bit of Star Trek fun or food ideas for your Trekkie party, look no further because this is it! Abstract After watching many episodes of Star Trek i decided to investigate and try to make an authentic Klingon dinner.  However, since i am a vegan and cater for a Christian vegan audience, i had to consider appropriate constraints such as no meat, eggs or dairy and try to keep it healthy too.  With this in mind, i wondered if it was at all possible to create such a meal.  I searched the internet looking for suitable resources and found them although the sources where limited.  Despite the lack of suitable sites, the ones i did find where very helpful.  For instance, i discovered several Klingon dishes and even a vegetable one called Gladst, As

Low Carb Pineapple Fried Rice.

Image
Written by McDonald, T.   |  Date 22nd of October 2021 This is a little different in that I will be using cauliflower rice and not the regular kind. Yes, that is right.  I did say cauliflower rice.  You either buy the rice or you make it yourself by grating a cauliflower.  This is a very simple dish and almost impossible to mess up.  Notably, since you don't have any rice to cook the night before, using cauliflower rice makes it so much easier.  Super tasty. Notes You can use the store bought cauliflower rice or make your own. To make your own, just great some cauliflower with a cheese greater.  You can use canned pineapple chunks if you want; however, why not use a fresh pineapple?  Pineapple corers make preparing it so easy. Serves 1 Time - 15 minutes Ingredients Cauliflower rice x 100 g Pineapple chunks x 100 g - 130 g Peas x 0.25 cup Red bell pepper x 0.5 Carrot x 0.5  Aubergine x 40 g Mushroom x 8 small to medium Soy sauce x 4 tbsp White pepper x 1 tsp Salt to taste Chilli pe

Focaccia Bread: The Perfect Recipe

Image
Written by McDonald, T.   |  Date 18th of October 2021  As much as I love flatbread, it is not that good at soaking up liquids.  I needed a bread that would adsorb liquids to go with soups and stews, so I searched the internet and the library looking for a suitable bread an I found, ironically, a sort of flatbread that was perfect for the job called Focaccia, an Italian flatbread.  Pleasingly, Focaccia is accidentally vegan because it is mainly just flour, yeast and water.  I then looked for the best recipes I could find.  As always, I found some fantastic ideas and recipes but none of them was exactly what i wanted; as a result, I used the best parts and common themes to create my own recipe.  Since I like to keep the roughage levels high, i added wholemeal flour to the recipe.  After some careful planning, I produced the perfect Focaccia bread.  Just for a little trivia, the Guardian (2018) in their article 'Rachel Roddy's recipe for focaccia; An authentic Italian recipe f

Vegan Is Not Just About Food

Image
Written by McDonald, T.   |  Updated 2nd of October 2022 After being a vegan for a bit, you might start to realise that your clothes are made from animals. The same rules apply to clothes as it does food and toiletries, which is to ovoid anything that is an animal product. With that in mind, when we need a new item of clothing we need to look out for that vegan option. If you are female, please bear in mind that I am not and so look at things from a very male perspective. Getting back as to what to do, when we shop, for instance, for a tie, we need to make sure it is not silk. Shirts Avoid anything made from animals.  Speaking for myself, I like linen or cotton. Linen is made from the flax plant and is better than cotton because it dries quicker; nonetheless, they are both made from plants making either one suitable for vegans.   Belts Belts are one of the biggest offenders with many people owning a leather belt.  Look for belts and other accessories that are not made of leather.

Vegan Lasagna Chunky Vegetable

Image
Written by McDonald, T.   |  Date 8th of October 2021 Home-made lasagna is so much better than any other kind.  In fact, this vegan lasagna was one of the first non meat dishes I ever tried and even then I thought it was better than its meat counterpart.  It turns out, there are two different types of vegan lasagna: one with lentils and one with chunky vegetables.  This recipe is for the chunky vegetables lasagna.  I will lead you through the stages resulting in an amazing dinner that will impress the whole family. Notes You can make your own or buy pasta sheets. Dry pasta is vegan whereas fresh pasta from a shop is not.  Making your own tomato sauce is easy. Ingredients  Dry or home-made pasta sheets Courgette x 1/2 Carrot x 1/2 Mushrooms x 6 Aubergine x 1/2 Red pepper x 1/2 Vegan white sauce for lasagne x enough to cover the top Vegan cheese x 50g  For tomato sauce Tomatoes x 4 Brown sugar x 1 tsp Basil x a few sprigs Garlic x 4 cloves crushed   White wine vinegar  Black pepper to t

Creamy Korma Curry

Image
Written by McDonald, T.   |  Date 4th of October 2021       This recipe uses cashew cream instead of cream or coconut milk for that extra special flavour.  You can read how to make cashew cream here .  Don't worry it is very easy to make and it is the key to giving a creamy texture and taste to the curry.  If you are new to curries, this is a good one to try because it is very mild in spiciness.  Ingredients  100g of tofu 1/2 of onion  4 x garlic cloves chopped 40g of aubergine 2 mushrooms 30g bell pepper Cashew cream 2 tbsp of creamed coconut  1.5 tomatoes   2 tsps of saltations 1 tbsp of coriander 1 tbsp of turmeric  1 tbsp of korma spice 1 tsp of cumin powder  0.5 tsp of chilli powder 1.5 tbsp of brown sugar Apparatus  Frying pan Blender  Spatula   Wooden spoon Method  Step 1  Assuming the tofu has been prepared and diced. Fry the tofu, garlic, onion, aubergine and mushroom in a frying pan. Add the spices to the pan and fry to release the flavours of the spices, which shouldn&#