Reggae Reggae Review and Potluck Food!

Although I haven't blogged since the last potluck a month ago, I am still alive- just been busy doing loads of overtime at work! Anyway, I'm taking this curry and these cookies, pictured above, to the Yahoo! Scottish Vegans potluck at Penny's tomorrow.

The curry is based on this vegan society leaflet recipe, but instead of using ordinary chickpeas, I've used brown Kala Chana chickpeas(they're Pride tinned, and I got them in Morrisons' ethnic foods aisle) and IMHO they're nicer than regular ones!

The cookies are Veganomnicon's Chewy Raisin Oatmeal cookies, and I've mixed up dried cranberries with the raisins, and added double the spices for extra spiciness!
This here is tofu and onions in Reggae Reggae cooking sauce, served with rice and peas. I've loved all the varieties of Reggae Reggae Sauce I've tried so when I saw their new cooking sauces, on offer in Morrisons' at 2 for £3, I bought them to try! It's a bit pricey, even when offer, but I loved this one too- very, very spicy but is absolutely delicious, and very similar to their ketchup sauce in taste. 9/10

Review for the Caribbean Curry variety coming up soon!

Potluck pics...

The potluck was a sucess with lots of good company and tasty vegan food! On the spread on the table are Jane's peanut butter cookies, Penny's lentil and sunflower bake, Norma's Upside-down pear cake, Sooz's brownies and sausage rolls, as well my things I posted in yesterday's entry.

Not shown in the pic (as they were still heating up while I took it- d'oh!) but also worth a mention (and a thank you for bringing as they were yummy!!), were Norma's chilli and tortillas, and Sylvia's corn chowder and baguettes.
Sylvia with JohnnyNorma and Sylvia
Sooz, Penny, Jane and John

Luckily there aren't any scary pics of me!! :)
Thanks again for coming guys!

This isn't a pic from the potluck, it's Ryvita with new Pure "cream cheese" spread and strawberry jam- very tasty indeed! I love the new Pure spread myself and would score it 4/5, although I've read mixed reviews for it. It is rather sweet and I'm not sure whether it'd work quite so well as a savoury, but if you're using it in a sweet dish like I did then it's delicious.

Potluck preview...

Long time no post, but I'm still alive, just been super-busy lately! I'm hosting a potluck for the Yahoo! Scottish Vegans group tomorrow and here's some of the food I've made for it...

Pictured above are my own recipe lemon and poppyseed muffins...
A tomato-tahini pasta bake with breadcrumbs-( it's this recipe, then put in a casserole dish, cover with breadcrumbs and a sprinkle of nutitional yeat, and bake for 30-40 mins at 220 C)
Bird's eye chilli pasta salad, following a serving suggestion on the packet... definitely not for the faint-hearted as these chillis are HOT!
And last but not least, some chocolate cupcakes with vanilla icing! As seems to be compulsory when I make things for potlucks, this is the one that went a bit wrong as the frosting was a lot runnier than I'd intended it to be, and it was in an icing syringe by then so it was too late to fix! Luckily it still tasted fine though!

Nibbling on cookies with cacao nibs!

I bought a bag of Suma cacao nibs- chocolate in it's purest form!- from a local health food store and decided to make cacao nib cookies with it. I made two kinds, a chewy chocolate cacao nib cookie, above, and oatmeal chocolate cookies, pictured below.

Here are the recipes for both...

Chewy chocolate cacao nib cookies....

115g margarine

125g sugar

1 tsp molasses

2 heaped tbsp cocoa powder

1 tsp vanilla essence

1/4 tsp almond essence

250g plain flour

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

100g cacao nibs

-preheat oven to 190 C

-in a small bowl, mix margarine, sugar, molasses and vanilla and almond essences

-in a large bowl, mix flour, cocoa baking soda and salt

-add small bowl of mixture and cacao nibs to large bowl and mix well

-scoop spoon sized portions into your hand, roll the dough into a ball and flatten then place on cookie sheet

- bake for 8-10 minutes until edges are slightly browned, and let cool before removing

Oatmeal chocolate cacao nib cookies

1/4 cup sunflower oil
1/4 cup maple syrup
1/4 cup soy milk
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 heaped tbsp cocoa powder
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 1/4 cups plain flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
1 1/4 cups oats
1 cup cacao nibs

-preheat oven to 190 C

-in a small bowl, mix oil, sugar, maple syrup, soy milk and vanilla essence

-in a large bowl, mix flour, baking soda, baking powder, cocoa powder, cinnamon and salt

-add small bowl of mixture, oats and cacao nibs to large bowl and mix well

-scoop spoon sized portions into your hand, roll the dough into a ball and flatten then place on cookie sheet

- bake for 10-12 minutes until edges are slightly browned, and let cool before removing

When Things Go Wrong In The Kitchen...

I've not had a "when things go wrong in the kitchen" post for a while, so here it is, as luck would have it, the night before the potluck! Why is it that something you've made a few times goes smoothly when it doesn't matter and has hiccups the one time it does?

These rather flattened looking chocolate balls are supposed to look like the ones in the last picture of this post. The recipe is a work in progress and I seem to have used just a wee bit too much soya milk here so they haven't held a shape very well(as you can see!)! They do, however, taste delicious, so it's just the presentation that's an issue, but still, it's annoying nonetheless when I wanted them to be perfect!

I'm bringing them along anyway, but luckily I also have a perfect 3 bean chilli and backup plan peanut butter oatmeal cookies to bring as well!

Q- When can a vegan bite off a bunny's ears, eat them, and still call themselves a vegan?

A- When the bunny is made out of dark chocolate of course!

How cute is this little display of easter bunnies my mum gave me for easter? I thought I'd better take a photo of her handiwork before I ate 'em! The wee daffodils are actually Marie Curie nurses' charity pins as well. She also gave Jay, who's diabetic, assorted nuts instead of an egg in a Top Gear mug (but they've been eaten already....). Thanks Mum! :)

Suck on my chocolate peanut butter fudgy balls! (Stick 'em in your mouth and suck em...)

Sesame Street's Cookie Monster would love these bad boys- Big Crunchy Peanut Butter Oatmeal cookies from Vegan With a Vengeance. I've made the smaller version before but decided to try out the full-size version. They were pretty huge already but spread even further in the oven- I snapped them still in my baking tray, beside the book, so you can get a good look at the size!
This here is a broccoli and onion frittata-style tofu dish, which is basically my quiche recipe without the pastry, served here with oven chips.
And last but not least, chocolate balls... Chocolate Fudgy Peanut Butter Balls. DJ of The Skint Vegan brought some delicious fudge with pistachios based on this recipe to a potluck and posted the link to the recipe, so I tried it out myself, and was very pleased with the result!

I experimented with the quantities(using 1/2 a cup of peanut butter instead of 1/4 cup of margarine, upping the soya milk to 8 tbsp and using only 1 1/3 cups of icing sugar), to try and make a moister fudge, and came up with something just a little bit too moist to be a true fudge, so rolled it up into balls and dusted it in cocoa powder to make these yummy balls.

I reckon it would also be very tasty rolled in chopped almonds, using almond butter...

And last but not least, I don't think i can make a post that mentions Fudge without posting a photo of a very cute kitteh who answers to that name...