Confessions

Surprisingly this morning did not start out w/ oats, but instead cereal & a long black coffee.

1 cup Special K Vanilla Almond cereal, 1/2 cup nonfat soy milk, 1/2 sliced banana

My day was pretty darn boring just studying, studying & more studying at the library. I snacked on a mix of dried fruits & nuts to keep me going. Luckily my favorite salad bar was open in the cafeteria for lunch. In my head I was planning an amazing salad w/ strawberries & walnuts, but when it was my turn to order my salad they salad informed me that they had no strawberries. Stuck w/ making a last minute decision I ended up w/ a pretty random salad...

Mixed greens w/ chickpeas, avocado, raisins, pumpkin seeds, sun-dried tomatoes, pumpkin, & tofu w/ balsamic vinaigrette.

Is it weird that I get pumpkin & pumpkin seeds in my salad? Guess I'm just obsessed w/ all things pumpkin.

Dinnertime is when things started to get weird. James & I went to Bondi Junction to go see a movie, Animal Kingdom, and we were expecting to grab something there but everything was closed. Much to my disdain, the only thing nearby that we could grab quickly was Oportos, a fast food restaurant that specializes in chicken (James' favorite). I am not a fan of fast food & it has been ages since I have eaten at a fast food restaurant. I thought I was really smart when I asked them to replace the chicken on the green salad w/ the veggie patty. Our dinner was ready in a minute & I stuffed our Oporto bag into my purse and we ran quickly to the theatre to not miss the start of our movie. As I was munching away in the dark of the movie theater I thought that my salad seemed a bit creamy. I told myself that it was just the avocado that they added; my taste buds have been shot the past couple of days due to a cold & I haven't been able to taste much of anything. Upon throwing away my trash at the end of the movie though I read on top of the salad container that the dressing was mayonnaise... yes MAYO, the kind w/ eggs in it that I have disliked way before I was even vegan.

Errr, frustrating. I guess this is what happens when you try to eat vegan at a fast food restaurant

: (

Rich Chocolate Cookie Slice

If your looking at this post thinking that there is going to be a recipe for a vegan rich chocolate cookie slice, just turn around now because this is not vegan at all. Sorry : ( Although I eat vegan, I still enjoy cooking non vegan food for other people (minus meat). I got the original recipe from Catherine Atkinson's Best-Ever Book of Cookies & adapted it a bit. The title of this book is no exaggeration; there are recipes for almost all types of cookies you can imagine, including 'healthy' cookies that are vegan & gluten free.

Ingredients:

275 g/10 oz fruit & nut plain (semisweet chocolate)

130g/4 1/2 oz/ generous 1/2 cup unsalted (sweet) butter, diced

90g/3 1/2 oz tea biscuits (or graham crackers)

90g/ 3 1/2 oz white chocolate

Step 1:

Grease and line the base and sides of a loaf pan (or any type of square tin) w/ baking parchment. Break the semisweet chocolate into even pieces & place in a heatproof bowl along w/ the diced unsalted butter.

Step 2: Set the bowl over a pan of simmering water and stir gently until melted (this takes less than 5 minutes). Cool for 20 minutes.

Step 3: break the tea biscuits into small pieces w/ your fingers.

Finely chop the white chocolate

Stir the broken biscuits & white chocolate into the cooled, melted semisweet chocolate until combined. Turn the mixture into the prepared tin and pack down gently. Chill for 2 hours, or until set.

Someone enjoyed licking the bowl ; )

I served the finished product w/ a scoop of caramel ice cream.

James said it tasted delicious- rich & crunchy w/ lots of chocolate.

I promise to post a vegan cookie recipe soon!

Oat-ful & Veggie-ful Weekend

Let me update you on my weekend. There has been a big change in my life.... no more soy lattes for me! I've officially changed my Australian drink of choice to a long black w/ soy milk & honey. More caffeine & less soy milk.

Go Socceroos!

My mornings have been very oat-full

Pumpkin Oats

1/2 cup rolled oats, 1 cup water, 1 tbs honey, a couple of cubes of steamed pumpkin

Pistachio Oats

1/2 cup rolled oats, 1 cup water, 1 tbs honey, pistachio bits

PB&J Overnight Soaked Oats

1/2 cups oats, 1 cup water, 1 tbs honey, 1 tbs crunchy peanut butter soaked overnight w/ a few strawberries added in the morning. This was my first time trying to soak oats overnight & I think I may have done something wrong; they had way to much excess water that had to be drained out. They were still very yummy though & easier than making them on the stove like I usually do.

Lunch & dinner has been very veggie-full

Arugula salad w/ steamed pumpkin, cherry tomatoes, 1/2 avocado and hummus & BBQ sauce

Toasted wrap from the Bondi Junction food court w/ spinach, carrots, cucumber, onion, & avocado

Vegetable soup w/ roll from a cafe at the Spot in Randwick

Salad w/ spinach, cucumber, avocado, & capsicum

& bowl of whole wheat spaghetti w/ marinara that was seriously lacking vegetables.

I also tried out a new juice company Emma & Tom's. No added sugar, no concentrates, nothing artificial. The extreme C was delicious.

Other weekend highlights included attending a very fun house warming party for our friend where I ripped my favorite faux fur jacket, going to the movies & seeing Get Him to the Greek which was hilarious, watching the World Cup and rooting for the Socceroos, & making a very decadent non-vegan dessert (pictures to come). Hope you had great weekends too!

Samurai on Stanley

With this cold weather outside lately I've been craving a bowl of warm oats.

1/4 banana

3 sliced strawberries

1/2 cup oats

1 cup water

pinch of salt

1 tbs crunchy peanut butter

Then I enjoyed a soy latte w/ honey at the Paddington Grind while I read my book.

For lunch I took the bus to meet James' sister at her school & we walked to the Westfield Mall at Bondi Junction to grab lunch. I had a mix of the Thai salad w/ tofu and spicy vinaigrette & a mixed green salad w/ onions, tomatoes, cucumbers, and avocado.

Can you believe this is what they serve at mall food courts? This is not your average sitting out all day under heat lamps normal mall food... everything is fresh and healthy (maybe not so much the fried tofu).

I spent all day getting ready & planning for James' big 21st bday party on the 26th. So far everything is looking great, I can't wait!

For dinner James and I were craving sushi so we tried out a new place on Stanley St. near the city. I love this area. There are tons of quaint restaurants & cafes w/ tables facing the hustle & bustle of the street. I'm a bit skeptical trying new sushi restaurants in Aus, I've had a couple of bad experiences, but Samurai was my best sushi experience in Australia yet.

We started off with some drinks & edamame. Like my new manicure? OPI Light my Sapphire.

I was expecting a little seaweed salad but they brought me this enormous bowl of greenage. Trust me I was not complaining.

I also ordered a vegetable roll.

Dinner was delicious! I always thought that fish would be the one thing I would miss becoming vegan since I used to eat sushi about once a week, but oddly enough I have not craved it once. It's weird how much being vegan has changed my taste buds.

I saw a couple things on my way home that made me happy including an adorable white Vespa...

& a possum in the tree outside. Possums are way different in Australia than they are in America (i.e. overszied rats w/ fangs). They are the cutest things ever. Last winter James & I would go on walks in Centennial Park at night & try to find them climbing around in the trees.... I know we're weirdos.

Tiger Mottle

Tiger Mottle, refers to the 'mottled' surface of a perfect espresso extraction. More importantly the term refers to my favorite place in Paddington for breakfast located at the 5-ways. Tiger Mottle is a restored terrace that has been converted into a restaurant that serves simple breakfast & lunch, and the best coffee I have found yet in Sydney.

Everything inside is a pristine white, save for the retro vinyl covers on the wall & a wooden moose head above the fireplace which is always roaring (even though it doesn't look like it in the pic, I swear it was!).

James took me here for breakfast this morning before we headed to the library. I started off w/ a soy latte w/ honey which was especially rich & creamy. You can tell by the design on top that they really take their coffee seriously here.

For my breakfast I had the mottle muesli- toasted maple, macadamia, & pecan muesli w/ soy milk, banana, & rhubarb. Rhubarb on top of granola (or muesli as they always call it here) is amazing! I am dying to try making granola sometime soon after recently reading about how to make it on this chica's blog.

For lunch I went to the salad bar again & had a mixed green salad w/ chickpeas, pumpkin, avocado, corn, pumpkin seeds, tomatoes & sun dried tomato basil dressing. No bread for me this time. I was happy to see two fellow foodies taking pics of their salad too. Taking pics of food by yourself can be soo awkward sometimes, I'm glad to know I'm not alone ; )

Second coffee of the day. CAFEEEINE. The coffee stand on the UNSW campus always makes their coffee lukewarm, more like room temperature to be honest. I begged them to do it extra hot this time, but I think they were a bit confused because they made it w/ extra foam. Hmmmm very curious. I also ate a banana but did not take a pic, it was waaay to big & phallic looking haha.

I'll be honest my day at the library was very discouraging. I took my first GRE practice test and I did not do well at all. From there on I started freaking out about grad school, and wondering if I'll get in anywhere... I'm not even positive where I want to go at this point, I still need to research more. I just wished the GRE was based off my knowledge of psychology not random words & math that I have not studied since high school. I do not understand the logic of standardized tests. Thank God I have 2 months left to study, hopefully it will be enough : /

My dinner was equally as uninspired as I was feeling about the GRE- leftover vegan fried rice James' mom the other night that I hadn't tried yet w/ some sweet chili sauce. I also had a few bites of James' pasta that he ate for dinner. Think I'm going to take a break from studying tomorrow in hopes that it will boost my morale.

Jenga!

You may have noticed that I changed the title of my blog. Originally I named my blog what I thought was the french version of "the little carrot", which mainly stemmed from the fact that I thought it was a cute name & I love vegetables. Maybe I should have stuck w/ a language that I do know more about though, like English or Spanish, because although I lived in France at one point in my life, my grasp of the French language is close to nothing. I have not changed my domain name though, just the title at the top which I hope is correct. If it is not please let me know.

I was sooo happy when my boyfriend brought me a coffee from Starbucks today. He said that the woman working there did not understand what an iced coffee was and kept telling him that they only had an iced soy latte or a frappucino. Filtered coffee please not espresso. I'm not completely crazy, on the Australian Starbucks website they say that they offer 'iced shaken coffee'. Nevertheless I was still happy to have some caffeine.

The toaster is broken so I ate an non-toasted English muffin w/ crunchy peanut butter & honey for brekkie. I know that honey is not considered 'vegan', but I do not exclude it from my diet. I understand why many vegans object to eating honey, but I am not 100% vegan all of the time (more like 95%)... I adapt my dietary needs to my lifestyle. Plus, my primary reason for eating vegan is because of health & a general discomfort w/ eating animals... combined w/ not wanting to support the dairy & meat industries considering the way that they are currently run in America.

For lunch I grabbed a salad at the UNSW cafeteria. My salad included mixed greens w/ peas, corn, chickpeas, sunflower seeds, avocado, tofu, & pumpkin w/ balsamic vinaigrette & a piece of french bread on the side. There are sooo many options at this salad bar that I get overwhelmed when the server asks me what 7 toppings that I want; i always end up w/ a hodge podge of things.

Surprise, surprise I grabbed another coffee later on. This time I tried something a little new, an orange soy latte. It was pretty tasty & I found a little orange peel at the bottom of my cup.

For dinner I had some of last night's leftovers w/ BBQ & hummus paired w/ Promised Land Chardonnay. I just got into reading a blog about women drinking & have found it really interesting; they present a wide range of views about women drinking and have a lot of interesting contributers. I would recommend checking their blog out.

James & I have been dying to play Jenga lately so we finally stole his family's 'Jenga Xtreme' set. What ever happened to regular Jenga? Most of our time was spend just putting this complicated thing together. I knocked it over every time, oops!

Queen's Birthday

Yesterday was a public holiday in Australia because it was the Queen's birthday. I would say happy birthday Queen, but I found out that it is not the actual day of the Queen's birthday.... I get the feeling that it is just a good excuse to have a long weekend (like Labor Day in the States). I really don't have anything to take a break from (no school or work, just studying), but I did wake up at 4:30 AM to watch the Australia vs. Germany game. I drank tons of tea to stay up, but sadly Aus lost ; ( I went back to bed and woke up later on to have my last Luna Bar and a minature soy latte w/ honey.

Somewhere in there I munched on a banana, and then had a late lunch at a Thai restaurant at The Spot in Randwick. I had a big bowl of curry Laksa w/ veggies & tofu.

I grabbed another little latte, this time chai, before heading back to the books.

For dinner we met up w/ James' family in Maroubra where I feasted on tons of veggies. James' mom always goes out of her way to make me really yummy vegan food & she outdid herself again w/ a big salad & roasted veggies.

She was a bit disappointed that the patties that she made didn't hold together but they still tasted great, we're trying to think of a way to keep them from falling apart next time. They were made of lentils, brown rice, corn, curry, & flour.

Can't wait for leftovers today!