Persian Food

Wow it's been quite a while... but I was internetless for quite some time. Aswell as lazy... ;)

First pictures from Berlin. We went to this vegetarian bistro/restaurant/caterer ALSA and the owner is persian and holy moly his food was extremly delicious. I even liked the rice&raisins combo, something I've always detested.
This was a vegan dish, eggplant casserole with beans, lentils, nuts and whatnot. So fucking amazing!!!



And a mix of salads he had left (we got there at around 4 and almost all the plates were pretty much empty already=good sign!).



Anywho, I finally had some money to buy food. Raspberries are so addictive ♥



Spinach with cucumber, raspberries and a surprisingly good tasting basil dressing (storebought dressings mostly suck... or maybe I just always pick the bad ones).



I've been trying to catch up with your blogs and the last days were simply horrible because I had no food/money/whatsoever and your pictures almost made me cry! And realize what amazing chefs each and every one of you would make (this is not neccessarily the starving person from a couple of days ago talking, he he). Anyone up for inventing beaming and starting a delivery service worldwide with amazing vegan food creations? ;)

Yummy Salad

Avocado with cucumber, tomatoes, mixed salad and white beans. What a filling and nice dinner!



And a delicious juice, mhhh!

Lettuce Bean Veggie Salad

My this was a great lunch!



Lettuce, cucumber, tomatoes, red cabbage, green garlicky beans with great northern beans and some ripped Falafel.



I'll have to make these kinds of salads more often! Especially now to take it to work with me.
When I arrived for the interview at Mattmo they had some sort of peperoni cut into pieces and asian crackers... the typical dutch snack, except there was no cheese. So yeah, I will definitely need to brin my own food, ha ha!

Oh btw, if anyone's interested I decided to make a blog for the time I'll be in Amsterdam. For friends and family to read so I won't have to email every single person.



I'm Loushka, in case you were wondering =p It's what basically everyone who knows me calls me.

Cookies, Snacks, Lunches, Dinner & Fruit

I've been trying more store bought cookies: the midget one is a gluten-free carob cookie and tastes, well, not very good. The Chocolate Chip ones in plastic taste awesome though!



Such milky chocolate chips and a yummy crumbly chocolate center. These are delicious!!!



Washed them down with hot & foamy cocoa latte. 2 Tbsp. cocoa powder with hot regular soy milk & 1/4 cup soy macchiato milk and foam.
♥ I love drinking cocoa through a straw!



Another lunch/snack from some day.
Seitenbacher chocolate cereals & oats with cocoa soy milk (2 Tbsp. cocoa powder plus soy milk) & strawberries.



Boy, and this was by far the best lunch I've had in a long time!



Pita pocket, grilled in a non-sticking pan with raspberry preserves, banana slices, shredded brazil nuts and pieces of 85% chocolate. With red grapes on the side, of course ;)






Probably not exactly eye candy, but look at the gooey goodness going on there (and on the plate, ha ha)!



On Saturday I finally baked something I had been wanting to make for a long time!



All seemed so well... the top was sticky, the way it's supposed to be.



And it sure did look right!



But it was way too sticky. The piece in the photo remained unfinished, it was just too heavy. Too bad though, I really craved some Ontbijtkoek!
I guess that means you can't replace molasses with the same amount of sugar beet molasses. Oh well, I'll ask my sister to bring some when she comes here.



Yesterday I made slow-roasted veggies (bell pepper, carrots, fennel, asparagus, zucchini) and with quinoa (haven't had it for quite a while) for dinner.



The veggies were sooo delicious! The red onions were caramelized... oh my, so good!



Ingredients
2 bell peppers, sliced
1 red onion, sliced
1 clove of garlic, minced
1/2 zucchini, quartered
2 carrots, quartered
1/4 of a big fennel bulb, sliced
1 Tbsp. olive oil
juice of 1/2 lemon
handful of green baby asparagus
rosemary, oregano
salt, pepper

1. preheat the oven to 320° F
2. chop all the vegetables
3. in a baking dish combine the bell peppers, carrots, fennel, onion, garlic and drizzle with olive oil, mix well & sprinkle with herbs and salt & pepper
4. after 30 minutes in the oven add the zucchini and asparagus, stir again and add some more salt & pepper (if needed)
5. another 30 minutes in the oven et voilà, dinner's ready!



"Dessert"... I've discovered red grapes as you can probably tell since they're in almost every picture in this post =p



My fantastic new Magic Bullet made a smoothie: watermelon, banana, raspberries, blueberries, nectarines (all frozen) and a splash of soy milk.



A White Bean Stew (white beans, carrots, zucchini, red & yellow bell pepper, tomato puree, onions, garlic etc.) I made last week. Topped with leftovers from my mom's bulgur salad (bulgur, tomatoes, cucumber, yellow bell pepper, tomato paste, parsley, chili etc.) which went very well together!



I'm looking forward to bake Banana Bread tonight & getting home in general. Work is so boring and I would much rather go home and keep on cleaning my apartment since I had a deep-cleaning phase yesterday... my kitchen almsot sparkles (which it usually never does... erm) and I still have some leftover energy lingering around!

Anyway, enjoy your start into the week! Hope you'll have a great day!!!

Linguine & Kamut Pasta in Avocado Cream Sauce with Asparagus & Broccoli and Grilled Veggies & Potatoes with Tomato-Onion Baked Beans

Yesterday after a long hot day outside I came back home and found a perfectly ripe avocado waiting to be used. I didn't feel like making guacamole so I mashed the avocado, mixed it with 2 Tbsp. soy creamer, a tsp. lemon juice and seasoned it with salt & pepper.



Then I cooked the rest of the Linguine and added the recently purchased kamut noodles. They taste wonderful - how I love whole wheat!
In the meantime I cooked some broccoli and asparagus, seasoned with lots of minced garlic, salt, pepper, a little oregano and a dash of nutmeg.

I tossed everything together in a bowl, added two chopped tomatoes, a few fresh basil leaves and sprinkled on some nutritional yeast and pine nuts.
I'll have the leftovers as a cold noodle salad tonight =)

A few days ago I had the following... and the beans were incredibly good! I used what was left in the jar (about 1/3 cup) and I really wished I'd have more.



Anywho, I just sauteed a medium onion in a Tbsp. water, added a clove of garlic and the baked beans, 2 Tbsp. tomato paste, salt, pepper and 2 fresh tomatoes.



And this is the first time I had a yellow zucchini. Nothing too special about it, my grocer just happened to carry them one day.

Onto the baking. I'm having PBJ sandwiches around the clock it seems and I figured I might be able to losen my cravings if I made PB cookies. I halfed the Crispy PB Cookie recipe from VwaV and got out 7 cookies. Thing is, my natural peanut butter is rather runny (although all it contains is peanuts) yet I didn't add more flour. This lead to a very crumbly cookie. Like be-careful-taking-it-off-the-rack-crumbly, as you can maybe tell from the picture.

I had it with a few Tbsp. unsweetened applesauce. And yeah, I ate the cookie with a spoon =p



Now I'll go back to work and enjoy my first watermelon this year for lunch... SO SO GOOD!!!

Chocolate Covered Banana Cranberry Bars, Banana Cranberry Cake & Pasta with Tomato-Bean Sauce & garlicky Greens

What to do on a Sunday when hung-over?



I decided to stay in my PJ's, put on Friends, got a plate, a knife and dried bananas & cranberries. This is without a doubt my new favorite sweet treat! I can only suggest you try it yourself =)



Banana Cranberry Chocolate Bars (makes 3 small bars)
1/4 cup dried bananas
1/4 cup dried cranberries
dark chocolate for covering

I guess it would be the easiest to throw it all into a food processor or blender, but I cut it all into tiny pieces with a knife.
Then I took a plastic wrap and pressed the mixture into shape.
Then I melted the chocolate and covered the bars in it.
I had some chocolate left so I got out some hazelnuts, raisins (I recently discovered that I don't really hate them anymore, yay!) and dried bananas to cover it with.



I also bought new boxes. A small one (picture below), three medium ones for only 5 € and a big lunch box divided into three sections.



And now onto the Banana Coffee Cake. I turned it into a Banana Cranberry Cake because I doubled the recipe before realizing I didn't have enough bananas.



I served it with cranberry "jam". It was delicious and I ate so much warm cake that my tummy hurt afterwards =p



And a picture of a delicious golden kiwi!
I get an allergic reaction when I eat regular kiwi, but since the golden ones contain less fruit acid I can eat them without much trouble. Another staple fruit, now that I finally found a store that carries them.



Yesterday my boyfriend came over and declared he was hungry.
We both had no idea what to make so after checking my cupboards I decided to cook the rest of the Tofu Tortellini, whole-wheat Linguine, garlicky Broccoli & Zucchini to go with it and a ready-to-eat tomato sauce that I pimped with an onion and 1/3 cup baked beans.
Then I sprinkled it with nutritional yeast(like 4 times in a row, haha, *sings* I just can't get enough) and dug in. Yummy =)



Yesterday my internet worked again, but when I turned on le big Mac this morning it didn't connect anymore. Wtf? I hate this!
I'll try to comment during my break and pray that it'll work again when I come home tonight.
Hope you had a nice weekend and a good start into the new week!

Another quick Tortilla dinner & chinese inspired Veggie Rice Stir-Fry

More groceries! I'm really in the mood for grocery shopping at the moment it seems..

The crunchy amaranth cereal is fantastic in yogurts and the dried mango strips... well, I ate them all yesterday and felt sick because it were too many but they were seriously too good to stop =p



Also, I finally bought Hoisin sauce as you can see in the first picture! After I got back from Amsterdam I ate at this chinese place in Kreuzberg twice. They have all kinds of dishes, sushi, vegetarian dishes and even burgers that can be ordered vegan with tofu instead of fish.

I chose their veggie rice which was so good that I got the same thing twice. The sauce was delicious!! And they topped the whole thing off with pine nuts... yumm!!!

So I recreated the dish with much more veggies of course. I failed to get soy sprouts, but this was a fantastic light and very satisfying dinner nonthless.



I used a handful of baby asparagus and broccoli, 1/4 yellow and red bell pepper, 1/4 cup scallions, 1/2 carrot and pine nuts. I used to be not too fond of pine nuts and their flavor for a very long time and when I tried them this time the taste kind of reminded me of the fake ham flavor potato chips used to have... odd =p



Then on another day I had wanted to make a nice and finally more complete than usual mexican dinner à la me(meaning it's usually just inspired and I always end up making up my own variation to my liking anyway)tonight... with rice, guacamole and whatnot. But plans for tonight changed & I was left with very little time so I just cooked up a quick garlic-onion-black-and-white-bean-peperoni-tomato something and used roasted baby asparagus in it and as "the sprinkle" of my salad. Along with the new balsamico-basil dressing I bought (all the way to the left).

I used to roast it with some olive oil, but now I just wash it and put it right into the oven for about 20 minutes and it turns out perfectly.

Tortillas to the rescue!

Yesterday I did some shopping and stocked up on things to have on hand when I don't feel like cooking or don't have much time. Meaning jarred stuff like a regular tomato basil sauce, baked beans in tomato sauce, spicy peperoni tomato sauce, sweet corn, lentils etc.
And after a long long time without it I got soy yogurt again: blueberry and raspberry vanilla, mhhh!

And you can not believe how I beamed with joy when I looked into the stores freezer and saw TOFUTTI ICE CREAM! I literally could've danced! Ha ha, I felt like grabbing the person standing next to me "They have vegan ice cream!!! WOOOHOOO!" just to have someone to share my joy with, even if they don't give a damn =p Finally I can have ice cream again and it's the perfect timing as it's getting pretty hot here. I've been wearing skirts the last three days and I'm usually someone who's always cold so that really says something ;)

Anyway, I settled on mango and passionfruit (will have to get chocolate and strawberry too when there's free space in the freezer again). It's delicious!!! I had actually planned to ask my boyfriend tonight if he'd like some mango ice cream and serve it to him with fresh mango and pomgrenate to see what he'd say (without telling him that it was vegan ice cream of course), but you can obviously tell that it's not dairy ice cream. So sadly no fooling today!

But I'll have this fruity treat for sure and I'll just shove a spoon with a big mango chunk in his mouth and see if he'll be able to get over himself and and ask for his own portion. Oh the evil plan, ha ha!

So anyway, after grocery shopping and cleaning out my cupboards I was happy about the fact that I still had tortillas and could use my new purchases.
Sadly I can't seem to find whole wheat tortillas anywhere which really bothers me. But these worked just aswell for a quick dinner. The lamb's lettucce I had meant to use had gone bad already so the tortilla was rather plain, but still filling and satisfying.

Baked beans mixed with a spicy peperoni sauce, seasoned with oregano & pepper, followed by fresh bell pepper strips, tomatoes and sweet corn.



The addition to my boyfriend's was a thin layer of the spicy sundried tomato-walnut paste under the beans and on top and whole peperoni inside. His was the hot version, mine the "better safe than sorry" mild version =p



My boyfriend told me he had a phase where he bought cans of baked beans and ate them plain all the time, all day long. Ha ha, so I'll definitely buy these more often!

Tonight I'll make pretty much the same, but take more time for the preparation. I have to use my avocado so guacamole will be made and I'll pimp the bean-peperoni sauce a little with fresh herbs and onions and garlic. And maybe unfreeze some rice and add more veggies (I'm thinking grilled... yummm, I love that pan!).

Grilled Veggie Bagels, Sundried Tomato Zucchini Mix & Linguine with Pesto

Half the fun is getting there... even if it means you have to sit between bikes!



Amsterdam was so much fun! I went with my best friend, the one I made all the PB birthday treats for. He gets along perfectly well with my sister so we explored the city together and enjoyed lovely hours at Cafés & Bars and the Vondelpark of course, where I also spent my birthday lying in the sun!



Ha ha, loved it!



The parrots were there, too! I woke up, looked out of the window and was like "See, the parrots came to greet you!" "Huh, PARROTS???" Ha ha =p



I also experienced Queensday for the first time. Lovely, great weather, great music! Like a small Loveparade ;)



I did not eat out a lot though, because I had to watch my money. I got this Avocado & Tomato Bagel the first day we got there which was 4.40 or something and very tasty!





I spent lots of money at Albert Heijn, basically living on the typical soft toast-like bread that I spread with a tomato pasta sauce, ready-to-eat salad mixes and fresh tomatoes. Oh, and not to forget the tasty ontbijtkoek!

I was more than happy to come home and find a wrapped Veganomicon upon my birthday gifts =D
I was looking at the recipes and pictures going "Ohhh, I craved something like that all week!" at basically each and everything that contained veggies =p

So as much as I missed preparing my own meals I now miss my sister a whole lot and would happily go a week without vegetables again if it meant I could see her again.
Oh well, I'll see her in two months hopefully!



So after my craving for veggies and the rediscovered love for healthy bagels I finally used my grill pan I got at IKEA and it works so well, I can say I'm in love!

The grilled veggies: eet smakelig!!!



I marinated a sliced zucchini, asparagus, scallions, a can white beans, a jar roasted bell pepper and fresh mushrooms (for le boyfriend) in a Tbsp. olive oil, 3 or 4 cloves of minced garlic and lots of rosemary (fresh aswell as dried) and thyme.

With an everything bagel.



My whole-wheat sunflower seed bagel.





Het waar lekker!

Then I made this a few days ago. I don't know what I should call this. Stir-Fry? Side dish? Anyway, it was good ;)



Long grain white rice, wild rice and some special red rice which I can't remember the name of.
I used 1 zucchini, 1/2 cup asparagus and 1 cup sundried tomatoes cut into small pieces. I mixed the vegetables with 2 Tbsp. tomato paste and 3 heaping Tbsp. of a spicy sundried tomato-walnut paste I had bought, along with black olives marinated in garlic on top. This was pretty spicy! I liked the taste, but my stomach isn't used to even the slightest heat so I didn't feel too well after eating it. I gave the rest to my parents and they both liked it very much, it being spicy in particular! Seeing people happily eating my food and complimenting me always makes me wish I had my own vegan Café/Bistro =) Someday... he he!

After buying fresh basil again I finished off the whole plant in one sitting because I craved pesto. I bought whole wheat linguine because I was really in the mood for pasta.
As for the preparation... I had VwaV, HiaV and a vegetarian cookbook lying open looking at the recipes and in the end didn't follow one.



I used 3 1/2 cups basil, 2 cloves of garlic, 2 Tbsp. pine nuts and 3 Tbsp. grated almonds (estimated, I just tipped them into my blender from the bag) and about 1/3 cup water and a little salt.

Then I mixed under some zucchini sautéed in garlic and topped it off with fresh tomatoes!



This was exactly what I had needed! Pesto never fails to make my day when it's homemade. So much better than the jarred stuff!
The boyfriend ate it too. And you know what? He didn't say anything about the noodles. He HATES (better yet fears for a to me unknown reason) anything whole-wheat like so many people do. Just another proof that What the eye does not see, the heart does not grieve over. Hope the translater gave me the right saying here =p

It's good to be back! Hope everyone's doing good!