Bah, Humbug!

I have to confess, the Christmas Spirit has been a little bit absent of late. We're having our first Christmas away visiting family since Ho-Tep was born and having settled into our own little lazy holiday routine for the past four years, this year December has been a flurry of activity. Presents have had to be organised waaaaay ahead of time, I've had two kids-worth of social calendars to keep up with as it's been Ho-tep's first year nursery school, plus an active role in the Parent Focus Group there has meant my feet have hardly touched the ground. Oh, and did I mention we were ill with the flu - again! - for a fortnight? So, we've been busy and it's been hard for me to think past the to-do lists and the calendar and the Night-Nurse towards the simple joy of Christmas.

But a few things have happened recently to change all that. Firstly, the kids innocent enthusiasm for the impending celebration has a way of sneaking up on you. Secondly, we spent a lovely afternoon with some friends yesterday eating mince pies and drinking mulled wine while listening to a Bing Crosby Christmas album and generally getting very festive. The colours of the season have also worked their magic -


and finally - it's started snowing!

It started last Thursday and has just got deeper and colder and deeper and colder all weekend.
I've lived in Bathgate for eight years and I've never seen it this cold and snowy in December before. I've been so grateful for my moon boots this last week keeping me solid going up and down the hill, and the kids' thermals and waterproofs have been brilliant at keeping them nice and weatherproofed as we've trekked back and forth through the town going about our business. The way things are going, we may well have our first White Christmas for years. Which is fine, as long as it doesn't mean we spend Christmas Eve stranded in the car on the A1, halfway to Leeds!
The kids have been having a ball, though. Snowball fights, Snowmen, actual snowflakes on the windows in the morning... what more could they want?



Well, maybe some Festive Hot Chocolate to warm them up after a fun afternoon in the snow?

Festive Hot Chocolate - Serves 4.

4 cups soya milk + 2 tbsp
2 heaped tsp cocoa powder
2 heaped tsp granulated sugar
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
2 tsp malt extract
50g dark chocolate - about half a bar - broken into small pieces.
Soya cream to taste.
4 candy canes (optional)
Vegan marshmallows (optional)

Method

Combine the milk and chocolate pieces in a medium sized pan over a low heat and stir frequently until the chocolate is melted and the milk is hot. In the meantime, combine cocoa powder, sugar, cinnamon, malt extract and 2 tbsp milk in a cup and stir until a smooth paste. Once your chocolate-milk mixture is hot, turn off the heat and quickly scrape the cocoa-mix paste out of the cup into the pan before whisking it in well. Divide the hot chocolate into 4 cups, top up with a generous glug of soya cream, and add some vegan marshmallows and a candy cane stirrer. We can't get hold of vegan marshmallows so we keep it plain with the candy cane. Brandy, coffee liqueur and Cointreau all make welcome - and adult - additions to this warming cup of good cheer.

Over and out...

Oh, and by the way - I'll post the results of my Puregate giveaway next time, so stay tuned to find out who I'm passing my baton onto...

Puregate. And the great Pure Giveaway!

So many of you were interested in my little kerfuffle with Pure that I thought I'd better let you know what happened.

After my initial email, I got a really polite email back asking me for the dates on my tub of Pure spread and my contact details. A week later, I received a really polite letter back from Pure's customer services manager telling me that my feedback was appreciated and had been passed on to the quality manager at the Pure factory, and as they were so dismayed I had disliked their cream cheese-style spread, please find enclosed a voucher... for one purchase of cream cheese-style spread or cheese-style slices.
As I live in bfn it goes without saying trying to find these mythical cheeze slices has been fruitless. And as the entire reason for my complaint was the fact I didn't like the cheese-style spread... well, ha-ha, Pure, very good!
So, being the altruistic sort I am, and as we're nearing the season of goodwill I've decided the only thing I can do is Pay-it-forward. Young Treehugger mentioned after my last post that she'd also tried the execrable Pure spread and only managed to make it palatable by combining it with a wad-load of pesto. She questioned whether she should complain also. I say - hell, yeah! Complain! We Brits are the slackest of the bunch when it comes to complaining about poor products or service and as the Sosmix and Swedish Glace debacles proved, when the vegans unite, we really can make a difference. So, I'm going to take my generously proffered voucher and buy a carton of Pure Creamy spread that one of you lucky readers is going to win! My only proviso? You must review it here at Skint Vegan Towers. If you like it, let us all know. If you think it's as shiteous as I've been maintaining for a good few posts now, let us all know. And while you're at it, let Pure know, so if you get an equally useless voucher as compensation you can Pay-it-Forward as well... and so on and so forth. And maybe, if enough of us complain, they may change their spread recipe to make it a palatable alternative to tofutti. And the beauty of it is, you won't even have to part with your money for it.
Are we liking this idea? I think so! Obviously, this is only open to readers in the UK and Ireland as Pure is an Irish-based company and I don't believe they've crossed the water just yet. So, c'mon guys, I don't care if you blog, lurk or have just accidentally stumbled across my blog, if you want a chance to become the next maligned Pure creamy-style spread reviewer, leave me a comment to let me know you're up for the challenge and, darling, I'll sort you out! *wink-wink*
NB: lest we forget, I am not hating on Pure as a company, as I still believe their dairyfree margarines are the best in the UK market.

Got a Pure Big Mouth, man!

Drunk texting - is there anything worse you can do? Any worse combination of alcohol and communication to make you feel regret the following morning?
Well actually, yes.
You can find yourself halfway down a bottle of white wine and decide this is the perfect time to fire-off an email to Pure's marketing department detailing the ways in which you think their new foray into Dairyfree - their vegan cream cheese-style spread - tastes like ass. Including textural ones. There may have even been a diagram - I'm hazy on the exact details.
Yep. That's an action that will make you sit straight-up in your bed the following morning with the cold hand of dread clutched around your heart. Not as dreadful as seeing a reply in your inbox over your coffee the following morning, though...

C is for Cookie...

My kids love that song. In their honour, I made some coconut chocolate chip cookies from 'La Dolce Vegan!'. My husband is a cookie man too, due to their resemblance to his favourite Great British classic - the biscuit. Anything that can be dunked in tea will pass muster with him, whereas muffins and cakes - well, there's just too much faff involved isn't there? Too much faff and sugar for a simple man with an essentially savoury palate. But these little mouthfuls of coconut-flecked chocolate chip goodness were perfect as an after-dinner treat.

Moist, melt-in-the-mouth with an irresistible crunchy crust I'm going to have to struggle to keep enough over for lunchtime tomorrow.

Oh well, at least I haven't got this fella to contend with.



For other variations on chocolate chip goodness, have a look at Katie's irresistible version of chocolate chip cookie dough oatmeal - a perfect marriage of breakfast and badness! Don't forget, every click on her site this month benefits an extremely worthy cause so don't hesitate and snag yourself some delicious recipe ideas too!

Dill Pickles...

Are not the pickles we use for this delicious soup. This is going to sound like frugality gone mad, but believe you me, in our house when we have 3 medium Polish gherkins (the brine-pickled ones, Mrs Elmswood's Hamisha gherkins come a close second) and half a jar of gherkin brine left we celebrate because we know it means gherkin soup is on the cards.
Bazu recently posted about the importance of sour in Iranian cooking from ingredients such as sour grapes, pomegranate extracts and lemons and limes . Sourness is an equally important component in Polish cookery but it comes from the lactic acid produced during fermentation. Sauerkraut is the best known example, but brine pickles are also popular and the base of a popular Polish soup - bialy or white barsch - resembles nought so much as sourdough starter with it's twin ingredients of rye flour and water left to - you've guessed it - ferment.
Skint Vegan Dad may share the sauerkraut love but the rest of this appetite for the tangy has passed him by, so what better time to whip up a quick pan of pickle soup that when he's stuck on a train between Leeds and Edinburgh, returning from his brother's stag night?

Gherkin Soup (Zupa ogórkowa) (serves 8)

Ingredients
1 tbsp vegetable oil
1 tbsp margarine
1 yellow onion, finely diced
3 spring onions, finely sliced
2 medium potatoes, diced
3 medium brine pickles, grated
1/2 tsp celery salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
water to cover vegetables
1 heaped tsp boullion powder

For the zasmaska (roux)
1 tbsp vegan margarine
1 heaped tsp chickpea flour

Melt the oil and margarine together in a medium heavy-based pan. Add the chopped onion and sliced spring onion and fry for five minutes, until translucent. Add the diced potato and grated gherkin and fry for a further 2 minutes. Add celery salt, pepper, boullion powder and enough water to cover the vegetables and bring to the boil. Once bubbling turn down heat and simmer until potatoes are tender.
Once tender, take a seperate pan and melt 1 tbsp marg before adding 1 heaped tsp chickpea flour and stirring constantly with a wooden spoon. Once the flour mix is pale golden, start adding gherkin soup, ladle by ladle, stirring constantly between additions. This process will thicken the soup without diluting the flavour. Once all the soup is combined, make sure it's heated through and serve. Delicious - and tangy. (n_n)

Lunchmonkeys

I'm here to say I've had two of the best lunches of my life for the past two consecutive days. On Friday, I served the kids leftover pumpkin and lentil soup with animal shapes pasta, but unfortunately there wasn't enough left for me. So I decided to make myself a sandwich with the pumpkin and caramelised red onion foccacia that I'd baked the previous day. I don't generally eat a lot of sandwiches - I'm a bit sniffy about whether they constitute a proper meal or not, and I'd never eat anything so heavy for a snack, and generally I prefer hot food over cold. So even though I probably enjoy eating sandwiches more than soup, my overall preference for hot food would lead me to choose soup instead. Perfectly illogical, I know!

What to fill it with? No hummus, no roast veggies, no tapenade, no (edible) vegan cheese in the fridge. But there was tofu. So I quickly whipped together a tofu eggless salad - 1 cup chopped tofu, 2 finely sliced spring onions, 2 diced Polish pickles, 1/2 tsp sweet paprika, freshly ground mixed pepper, salt and plaimil mayo - and spooned it up between two slices of foccacia.
The result was an immense, delicious sandwich. My seasoning for the salad was perfect, bland-textured yet salty and creamy, very authentic! The foccacia was better the day after too. It was soft and yielded complicitly to the bite, the onions adding some chewy, roasted contrast. I could have eaten another of these straight away, but I didn't as I'm trying to be a little more sensible in my eating decisions at the moment!

Today - Saturday - my kids have ballet and tap classes in the morning. So we're kind of up and at 'em first thing and they usually have a bowl of cold cereal and some juice to eat before we go rather than the leisurely breakfast I would prefer them to enjoy. So, I had a brainwave as I got them ready this morning. Breakfast-for-Lunch! Tasha at the Voracious Vegan posted tantalising pictures of her pumpkin pancakes yesterday, and as I still had about 2 cups of pumpkin puree leftover, I decided to make pumpkin-choc chip pancakes with Linda Mac sausages and baked beans. I used the recipe for Daniyell's banana pancakes from 'La Dolce Vegan!' but substituted 1/2 cup pumpkin for the banana, used hemp seed oil for added nutrients, upped the sweetener to 1/4 cup and stirred about 1/2 cup dark chocolate chunks and 1 tsp cinnamon (we ♥ cinnamon!) through the flour mix before adding the wet ingredients. I'd gone and bought a new non-stick frying pan from Tesco this morning while McGonnagle was at her dance class simply because my last really good one - that I'd had for about six years - finally died on me and two crap pans later, I couldn't stomach the thought of no pancakes in my future. Especially considering they are the birthday breakfast of choice for my little ones. This pan can stay because I think it just helped me make the best pancakes I've ever eaten.

Soft, fluffy and delicious with that spicy warmness of cinnamon and warm melty blobs of dark chocolate, these babies rocked!
I still have a little pumpkin left so I think I'm going to make some more foccacia. There's also the small matter of tidying the garden up for winter. Hope you all have a great weekend!
P.S. I'm just about to take the kids to Mill Farm for some spooky-dooky goings on, so I thought I'd dress in appropriate colours.

Yes, that's right - I really am a black-hearted old trout!

Over and Out....

They Eat Pumpkins, Don't They?

Well we do around here, that's for sure!
Bathgate has gone Halloween-mad, and with the inevitable outfits, candy and monkey nuts come pumpkins. They're selling 'carving' pumpkins at Tesco - real whoppers - for £1.50 each.
You know what we do with Carving pumpkins round here?

We Curry them.

And we roast them with just a spritz of olive oil to stop them from burning.

We really do! Don't bother peeling them, you can just scoop them out of their rinds once they're lovely and soft. And if there's room in the roasting tray, we may even put some chunks of swede in there too - it's all going to go in the same delicious soup. No salt or pepper, because while some of it's for soup, the rest goes into lovely soft spicy pumpkin muffins.

Pumpkin chocolate chunk muffins that we might eat naked with some Earl Grey tea before Judo, or we might leave them till they've been suitably attired for Halloween with some green cream cheeze frosting and happy little pumpkin heads.

And we might really push the boat out, and as we're having pumpkin muffins and pumkin and lentil soup, we might make some pumpkin and caramelised red onion foccacia bread to go with it.

Yeah! You know, I think we might just do that... (-_o)

Gratuitous 'Ho-Tep as burglar for Halloween Party' shot.