The Extreme Staycation

  Location: London, UK  COVID-19 / Coronavirus Outbreak World Vegan Day 🌍🍃🐄🐔🐖 The 1st November is World Vegan Day. I have two thoughts on that - firstly, that every day seems to be National or World something day and secondly that for me, every day is VEGAN DAY 😁 As I have alluded to my veganism in this blog,  I thought   I'd let you know what lead me to this point. At the age of 8, I connected the dots that the meat on my plate and the animal in the field were very much connected and I couldn't bear the idea of an animal dying just so I could eat it.  Although I now have many more reasons which support my choices, animals dying was and still is my primary motivator for being vegetarian/vegan. I used to eat fish for a long time, but I could never eat a fish if it still looked like one and gradually I found I couldn't face the idea any longer. In 2014 I decided that for Lent that year it would be a good challenge to go vegan - I loved and ate dairy on a dai...

Location: London, UK  COVID-19 / Coronavirus Outbreak Lockdown Today I think it rained pretty much all day. Yep, that's July in the UK for you. Today for dinner I made a (vegan) lasagne.  I've pretty much nailed this recipe during lockdown and I'm quite pleased with it.  All of the taste, none of the animal products. My (vague, not written down) recipe is onions, garlic, some veg (generally courgette, mushrooms, peppers, carrots) sauteed.  I then add in a tin of tomatoes and some soya mince from Holland & Barrett (inexpensive and versatile). Next, make a bechemel sauce (soya milk works best and I used Sainsbury's baking block) layer it up, chuck it in the oven for 30 mins, bingo.  Delicious.

Location: London, UK  COVID-19 / Coronavirus Outbreak Lockdown We made pizzas today. I didn't take a photo because it was not a pretty sight.  Pizza dough makers on YouTube will make stretching the dough look all very easy and straightforward but IT ISN'T! First error - not enough flouring of surfaces and hands. Second error - exacerbated by the first error, should have put the stretched dough onto the tray it was going into the oven on before adding toppings.  Some suggest you heat the tray up first, from pizza #3 I know this didn't make a difference. It was pretty much impossible to neatly slide the pizza onto the tray, so I made mine a calzone which made it slightly easier.  Other members of the house ended up scooping it as a big ol' mess onto the tray and throwing it into the oven... However, even with our hole-y / calzone / piles of dough and toppings not looking quite the way we anticipated they tasted YUM! So will be making this again, with a few preparation ...

Location: London, UK COVID-19 / Coronavirus Outbreak Lockdown I'm half Australian (which half I hear you cry?) and to celebrate my mum's birthday (she is the Aussie half) I made Lamingtons. For the uninitiated, a lamington is a sponge cake with jam in the middle, dipped in a chocolate sort of sauce and then rolled in coconut. I wanted a vegan recipe but I also wanted it to be written by an Australian (as they know what they should taste and look like!) so found this winner!  Enjoy! https://www.mckenziesfoods.com.au/recipe/vegan-lamingtons/ My photo below - also featured are some pecan and chocolate chip cookies - recipe from Lucy Watson.

Location: London, UK COVID-19 / Coronavirus Outbreak Lockdown I love to bake and I've had a bit more time to indulge this during lockdown.  I asked my house mates what they might like and scones were requested and so scones were baked. I remember going for afternoon tea once and ringing up to check that my being vegan could be accommodated.  The woman on the phone detailed what they would serve me - what sandwiches and cakes - and with the alternative I would get instead of scones "because obviously they aren't vegan".  I remember being a bit dumbfounded by this statement.  They had managed to make the rest of the options vegan friendly, so why not the scones, surely the high point of the afternoon tea?  And the easiest to alter - change the milk and remove the egg.  I was particularly irked as I had literally baked a batch of vegan scones the day before. I like a challenge and I have made vegan alterntives of pretty much everything, including...

Location: London, UK COVID-19 / Coronavirus Outbreak Lockdown Cooking and Baking How is everyone doing on the cooking front? I've taken this as an opportunity to try some new recipes.  It's been quite fun and I've definitely found a few new ones which will be coming out again. However, as soon as I found a lush new south-east Asian aubergine dish, the aubergines disappeared from Sainsbury's! I've taken to shopping just once a week as much as I can. This does mean purchasing faintly ridiculous quantities of some items, namely bananas - we eat a lot in my house and yesterday I bought 17 in varying shades of yellow to green to keep us going. Apparently our shopping habits have reverted back to what they were 10-15 years ago with people doing one weekly shop rather than 3-4 times a week as has become more common. I finally got some more flour - hooray!  And celebrated by making some carrot, pecan and maple syrup muffins which were delish!