Saturday Evening with Dreena

Well, this year Father Christmas was kind indeed to me - I guess I must have been a good girl after all. Or perhaps Old Saint Nick is a herbivore too...!! As a gift (from My Beloved, I suspect from the inscription) I received Dreena Burton's 'Eat, Drink and Be Vegan', from which today's dish was created.

My Beloved and I adore Caribbean food, it must be said....well, we adore the Caribbean - the sun, sea, sand, diving, cocktails, swinging in a hammock in the shade of a coconut tree, fish, turtles, rum....yeah, you get the idea. So anyhow, when I clapped eyes on Dreena's Blackened Tofu...I just knew it had to be tried!

Here it is, in glorious, sumptuous technicolour:






And here's a saucy close-up....




We served it with Cayman-style rice n' beans which is both spicy, fiery and rum-soaked all at the same time. The heat comes from the habanero chilli (aka 'scotch bonnet' pepper), the spicyness from the mix of scallions ('green onions'), garlic and coconut, and the rum...well, it's an integral part of Caribbean cuisine, don't you know?????

:)

Yummmmm......

Am returning to the table soon for a slice of the remaining carrot-ginger-coconut cake....Life Is Good!

Stay Vegan, Friends!

Xmas Dinner

So what is a vegan foodie blog sans vegan food pix porn? Yeeeesssss, I hear you cry, we want pictures! So here we go....this was our Christmas dinner:

Skipping merrily past the massacred carcasses of our animal friends, we opted for a good stuffed tofu, lemon roasted potatoes, and a medley (as they would say in restaurant-speak) of vegetables in a baked acorn squash. Relying heavily upon Isa, Colleen and Sarah we managed to produce the following...

Marinated and stuffed tofu:





The tofu had been marinated in a 'beef' stock from Sarah Kramer's book 'La Dolce Vegan' and we stuffed it with TVP, brown rice and sun-dried tomatoes. Next we made the lemon and red onion roasted potatoes and baked the acorn squash:






These were ridiculously simple to do, but the presentation is really cute and there's something fun about being able to eat the bowl your vegetables come in! Anyhow, we sauteed off a batch of mixed veg - sweetcorn, edamame, onions, garlic, etc etc etc - and stuffed it into the baked squash.


See here:






and ta-da!





But this is the end result:





Smiles all around! Bon Appetit!

:)