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Archive for November, 2013

Travel Tuesday: Brisbane Day 2

ok, because I rambled so much in my first Brisbane Post, I had to break it up. Sorry about that! I’ll have recipes later in the week, I promise.

So on day 2, I checked out of the hostel SUPER early. I had made plans to go to the pancake brunch with the two girls in my room. The were both German and 18. You want to feel old? Bunk down with two girls that are a decade younger than you. Who ask you for help on their first job cover letter. Yeap, I was feeling ancient! Anyway, we were going to do brunch but the place was noisy and I wasn’t sleeping well on the top bunk. So I was up and out by 7. I had a gross breakfast at this restaurant around the corner and then set out to find a church that was supposed to have some cool art.

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Street Art

Along the way, I turned the corner and found the best. thing. ever *drum roll* a starbucks!!! OMG! So, excited! 1 whole month without an iced soy latte. 1 whole month of trying to find a place that makes good iced mocha lattes (um hi, yes. They put ice cream in their iced beverages sometimes.) I barreled across the street, jaywalking and dodging cars, like Ryan Gosling himself was waiting on the other side. I know Starbucks isn’t necessarily the best but it’s familiar. And familiar is good when you haven’t had American food in a month.

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By this point, I was totally satisfied with life and didn’t even care about the church. This proved a good thing because the church definitely did not live up to the hype. Or maybe I’m a total church snob now that I’ve experienced all the epicness that is Italian Churches (I’m looking at you Sistine Chapel and the church in Sienna). Either way, I walked around for about 2 minutes, snapped a few pics, got some nasty looks from old people praying (cool it! It’s not like I went in the middle of mass!) then continued my wondering. All the stores were closed because it was early Sunday so I made my way back across the river to the South Bank and hit up another outdoor market, this one significantly better for christmas shopping!

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I was back at the hostel by noon and on the road to the next attraction- The Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary! Nothing says, ‘Look I’m in Australia!’ like a picture of you cuddling a koala. Unfortunately, those photos aren’t digital and they came out so bad that I reserved them for only those nearest and dearest. I still have loads of Koala pictures!

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AWW!

AWW!

The park also had an open kangaroo exhibit where you can buy kangaroo food for $2 and walk right up to a kangaroo and hang with it. I didn’t do this. Mostly because 1. seriously? $2 for a teensy bit of food so a kangaroo can slobber on your hand? and 2. up close they are kind of scary. I didn’t want kangaroo slobber AND to be kicked in the chest. Just sayin’!

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See?! Those be human kicking legs! Also, check out the one in the background, just chillin'

See?! Those be human kicking legs! Also, check out the one in the background, just chillin’

Now, just incase you were thinking “woohoo, koalas. Who cares?”, look what I have here. Not only did I cuddle a koala but I followed in the foot steps of the coolest, most awesomest, most bestest band ever- Taking Back Sunday!

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That’s right kids. Matt Rubano and I stood in the same spot and dare I say, possibly (not likely, let’s just pretend) cuddled the same Koala. Almost as cool as say, Cuddling the same Koala as Taylor Swift?

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Yeapers. It happened. And if you’re too cool for TBS and Tswift, I have some Wombats for you…which is funny cause you know, I saw wombats at the Koala Sanctuary, too. Get it?

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The Wombats (above); wombats (below). Ha!

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Anyways, I think that’s quite enough of my Brisbane adventures. I really truly promise I didn’t go to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary and take more pictures of the celebrities in the gift shop then the animals. I have about a million koala pics but i’m going to spare you for now. I will leave you with this look at Australia’s huge skyline as I drove back to Toowoomba.

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Travel Tuesdays: Brisbane Day 1

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Two weekends ago, I packed my bag and hit the road to Brisbane, which is about an hour and a half from Toowoomba. I’m trying to travel as much as I can with the money I have so short weekend trips are perfect. I don’t have to take time off and it’s a little cheaper.

I wasn’t sure what to expect in Brisbane. One thing about this trip to Australia is it was, hands down, my least researched trip. I’m winging it, guys. I knew I needed out of Boston for a little while, this opportunity came up and so I peaced out. This means that I only have the vaguest idea of what I want to do now that I’m here.

Brisbane is close so I thought I’d give it a go!

Turns out, it’s a city and surprisingly, I miss the city! They have vegan restaurants and culture and things to do and fro-yo! I didn’t realize I was missing that until I was in Brisbane.

So here’s a little of what I did:

First off, stayed in a hostel for the first time ever! The first time I tried the whole hostel thing was with my friend,  Laura, in Rome and things did not go well. At all. I think we stayed in the hostel long enough to get information on the closest internet cafe and then we went and booked ourselves a hotel. This was after a week of couch surfing, though, including a stint in London which involved us sleeping on lined up chairs. I think the floor would have been more comfy. Needless to say, I was quite proud of myself for staying in the hostel!

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floor of the elevator in the hostel. Terrifying!

floor of the elevator in the hostel. Terrifying!

 

On Saturday, I just sort of meandered around Brisbane. I went to the Davies Park market where I ate a Swizzle, which is a spiraled potato dunked in Tapioca Flour (Gluten Free and apparently full of healthy things like vitamin B stuff) and fried in  rice bran oil (also, apparently more healthy), then drenched in seasonings. I chose the Aussie BBQ seasoning which was smoked paprika, garlic and onion powder and salt and pepper. Basically it was a huge, pretentious french fry…that was amazing. The market was a bit too hippy for me and it was super produce heavy, which I wasn’t really looking for. I stayed for a bit, ate my pretentious french fries, bought a ginormous hat to keep the sun off (seriously, so strong), then headed to the South Bank Parkland.

Old tree at Davies Park

Old tree at Davies Park

SWIZZLE!

SWIZZLE!

After basking in the sun, I NEEDED to get in doors. I could feel my pale irish skin turning crispy even though I had on sunscreen, a cardigan, pants, and a ginormous hat. So I hit up the Queensland Art Gallery. I walked in and they had a whole exhibit on California, which I thought was ironic. Let me go to an Aussie Gallery to check out stuff on the US. As soon as I walked in, I was ushered to a free comedy performance by Tim Ross and a musician named, Kit. Most of it went over my head as I didn’t get the Aussie references, except for the whole segment he did about Bruce Springsteen. Yes, Springsteen. Even in Australia, I can’t escape him. The segment was concluded with a little cover of Born to Run, which was my cue to get out! At that time, I took in some paintings, which weren’t bad. They had a section on Australian painters, which was pretty cool. The close ups below are some of the more comical elements of paintings that I found.

Tim Ross

Tim Ross

 

Attributed to Lucas Cranach the Elder- The Three Apostles

Attributed to Lucas Cranach the Elder- The Three Apostles. Seriously, could that apostle be any uglier?!

 

Cologne School- Virgin and Child with Saints. This is a close up of, most likely, the person who commissioned the painting. Which begs the question, seriously? They couldn't at least make him a tad more attractive??

Cologne School- Virgin and Child with Saints. This is a close up of, most likely, the person who commissioned the painting. Which begs the question, seriously? They couldn’t at least make him a tad more attractive??

Then I wondered around the South Bank Parkland a bit. At this point, I discovered an outdoor cinema sponsored by Ben and Jerry’s (side note: Ben and Jerry’s is apparently not easy to find here!). So I thought that would be fun and bought a ticket for that. The movie that was playing was Blue Jasmine, which was a really depressing Woody Allen film. I was not a fan! But the experience was fun. While there, I almost bought a Ben and Jerry ice cream but it was $12 for a pint! $12!! So I bought a salad and “healthy” sour gummy worms. Come on! This is a food blog. You know I have to include these pics.

flower covered walk way

flower covered walk way on the South Bank 

 

outdoor cinema. There were lawn chairs and bean bag chairs, which was pretty cool

outdoor cinema. There were lawn chairs and bean bag chairs, which was pretty cool

 

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obsessed!

obsessed!

Then I headed back to the hostel. Not super exciting but I was pretty beat from being up since 6 and then being in the sun all day.

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Turns out, I had a lot more to say then I thought I did so I will continue with Brisbane next Travel Tuesday. Spoiler alert: Koalas are involved!

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Vegan Graham Crackers

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So. I’ve been in Australia about a month now and here’s the food scoop:

1. Tim Tams are the shit. Pardon the language but there’s no other way to word it. The grocery store sells a mini pack of them which has 5 cookies in them and seriously, I downed about 1 of those things a day when I first got here. Since then, I no longer can fit into any of my clothes so you know, I’m trying to cool it but they. are. good.

2. Australia does not have marshmallows, fluff, good peanut butter (despite rumors, they DO have pb, just none without sugar), vegan ice cream in the grocery store, canned pumpkin (serious, this is absolutely killing me), their oreos taste weird, black beans are hard to find and graham crackers don’t exist.

It’s been a rough month.

But I have prevailed! (Mostly with copious amounts of Tim Tams).

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Truthfully, I can live without most this stuff but the hardest was graham crackers! Or canned Pumpkin. But this post is about graham crackers so let’s go with that for now. I really love graham crackers with Teddy’s pb and mini vegan chocolate chips. It’s hands down one of my favorite snacks. But seeing as they didn’t have graham crackers and I haven’t found mini chocolate chips (especially vegan ones), I’ve had to get creative.

Enter, the homemade graham cracker!

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Oh She Glow’s Vegan Graham Crackers
from Oh She Glows,

DRY

  • 3/4 cup + 1 tbsp whole wheat flour
  • 3/4 cup white flour
  • 2 tbsp brown sugar
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1/8th tsp ginger
  • 2 tsp cinnamon
  • 1/8th tsp nutmeg
  • 1/2 tsp baking soda
  • Turbinado sugar or coarse sugar, for garnish

WET

  • 3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
  • Modified flax egg: 1/2 tbsp ground flax + 1 tbsp warm water
  • 3.5 tbsp almond milk
  • 2 tbsp pure maple syrup
  • 3 tbsp blackstrap molasses

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350F (175C) and line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a non-stick mat.

In a small bowl or cup mix together the modified flax egg: 1/2 tbsp ground flax and 1 tbsp warm water. Set aside for 5 minutes so it can gel up.

In a large bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients and make sure everything is combined very well.

In a small bowl, whisk together all the wet ingredients, including the flax egg, but give the flax egg a good stir before mixing it in.

Add the wet mixture to the dry mixture and stir well with a spoon and then set the spoon aside and get in there with your hands and squeeze the dough together with your fingers.

Form the dough into a ball and place it on a very lightly floured counter. Be sure not to use too much flour or it will dry out the dough. Lightly flour a rolling pin and begin rolling out the dough until you have a rectangle that is about 1/8 inch thick. You want to roll it as thin as you can while still being able to remove it from the surface. The dough tends to crack in the initial rolling stages (and this was true for all different trials of the recipe), but I found that once I worked with it more it began to hold together better. If the dough cracks for you, you can form it into a ball again and restart the rolling process if need be. Sometimes I just patch cracks with another piece of dough and press it into the crack. Don’t worry because they don’t need to be perfect!

Once your dough is rolled out you can use cookie cutters, a pizza slicer/pastry slicer, or even a knife to cut the shapes you want.

Now pull away the scrap dough around the edges and set aside. Using a flat spatula/pancake flipper, carefully slide it underneath each cracker and place the cracker onto the baking sheet about 1 inch apart.

Grab your scrap dough and roll it out and repeat the cookie cutting process. Place onto baking sheet.

Now grab a fork and pierce each cracker a few times so it has air holes.

Sprinkle with turbinado sugar (or coarse sugar/white sugar) and bake for approx 15 minutes, rotating the pan 180 degrees half way through the baking time. There is no need to flip the crackers during baking. Baking time will vary depending on how thick your crackers are, so keep that in mind.

Allow the crackers to cool on the baking sheet for about 10 minutes. They will firm up quite a bit

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I was super impressed with this recipe. The graham crackers were nice and crunchy and were’t too sweet, which is exactly what I was looking for. The molasses really stuck out though, which was a little different from the store kind. I don’t know how they would taste with s’mores (hint send graham crackers in care package hint) but I really enjoyed them as a snack with pb.

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I actually had to squirrel these away on my side of the cabinet behind some boxes so the kids wouldn’t eat them. Sorry kids! You can have the store brand cookies. These homemade treats are for me!

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This post just didn’t want to happen. I’ve opened WordPress approximately 800 times to write it and approximately 800 times I’ve managed to do just about anything else.

I feel like the kids when I’m trying to get them to do their homework. They want to do just about anything BUT what’s in front of them.

Talk about the day: Check.

Put their head down and whine about how much they hate school: Check.

Sing Lady Gaga: Check.

Dance to Lady Gaga: Check.

Pretend the chairs are the bars from gymnastics: Check.

Fall off fake gymnastic bars because they are, in fact, chairs and have a fake melt down: Check.

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Literally, anything other then doing actual work is an option. They’ll do one problem or read one sentence and they’re off doing something else and I have to refocus them. That’s exactly how I’ve felt writing this blog but no one has been around to refocus me so instead I:

Write post cards: Check.

Sing Taylor Swift: Check.

Dance to Taylor Swift: Check.

Write 2 other blog posts for later in the week: Check.

Look up xmas presents on the most obscure websites ever: Check.

Check every single on line store I have ever shopped at for an update on their products (I’m looking at you Toms and your super cute new star shoes): Check.

Work out: Actually….uh, nah! I think I’ll blog. lol!

Despite my new found A.D.D, this “cheeze” sauce was divine. I originally made it for the Halloween Quesadillas and then began putting it on pasta with kale and tomatoes for a sort of vegan, veggie loaded Mac and Cheeze. I seriously can’t get enough. Here is the recipe for the quesadilla. I will share the pasta with you next week.

Do you like my fancy bowl?

Do you like my fancy bowl?

But first, let’s start with the sauce:

Vegan “Cheeze” Sauce
by Oh She Glows

Ingredients:

  • 1 fresh butternut squash* (peeled and chopped) OR 1 cup canned butternut squash OR canned pumpkin (I only tried it with roasted squash, a combo of butternut and japanese, but pumpkin is next if I can find it canned!)
  • Extra virgin olive oil, S & P
  • 1 tbsp Earth Balance (or other non-dairy butter replacer)
  • 3/4 cup unsweetened & unflavoured almond milk 
  • 1 tbsp arrowroot powder (or cornstarch) (arrowroot is cheaper in Australia, so I used that)
  • 6 tbsp nutritional yeast, or more to taste
  • 2 tsp Dijon mustard
  • 1/4-3/4 tsp garlic powder
  • 1/2 tsp onion powder
  • 1/2-1 tbsp fresh lemon juice
  • 1/2-1 tsp kosher salt (to taste) & ground black pepper, to taste

1. If you are roasting squash, preheat oven to 425F. Line a casserole dish with tin foil. Mix chopped squash with EVOO, S & P. Roast for about 40 minutes, uncovered, or until tender. Remove and set aside to cool.

2. Next, prepare the roux in a pot on the stove top. Add non-dairy butter over low-medium heat. In a bowl, whisk together milk and arrowroot powder (or cornstarch or flour) until clumps are gone. Add into pot with butter and whisk. Stir in remaining ingredients (nutritional yeast, Dijon, garlic, lemon, S & P) and whisk over low heat until thickened (about 5-7 minutes or so).

3. In a blender, blend the roux with 1 cup of roasted squash (or if using canned, simply stir 1 cup into the pot).

Voila! You have a cheeze sauce. Now, what to do with it:

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Veggie Cheeze Quesadillas
makes approximately 4 quesadillas

vegan butter

1 yellow onion, thinly sliced

olive oil

1 garlic clove

1 red pepper

8 oz of mushrooms

salt and pepper

1 batch of vegan Cheeze sauce

option toppings: guacamole, salsa, vegan sour cream

In a small pan, melt a bit of vegan butter over medium low heat. Once melted, add your sliced onions and stir to coat. Let sit, stirring occasionally until caramelized. This should take 15-20 minutes.

While your onions are caramelizing, slice up your red peppers. Heat some olive oil in a different frying pan  over medium heat. Add your garlic and sautee until fragrant. Add your red peppers. Stir occasionally until soft, this should take about 15 minutes. After the peppers have been cooking for about 5 minutes, throw in your mushrooms and continue cooking for the remaining 10 minutes. Season with salt and pepper to taste at the end.

Once your veggies are done, Preheat oven to 350.  Lay out your tortilla shells. Cover 4 of the shells in Cheeze sauce. Top with your cooked veggies. Place the remaining shells on top. At this point, you can cover the quesadillas and place in the fridge if you are making them ahead of time. I would not recommend leaving them in the fridge for longer then 1 day. The edges tend to dry up and get stale.

Once you are ready to cook, place in the preheated over and cook for about 10 minutes until the tortilla shells have started to turn golden. Remove from the oven, slice up, add your toppings of choice and devour!

Another option would be to cut up all your veggies and cook them with a taco or fajita seasoning, either in the oven or on the stove. I really wanted caramelized onions though which is why I opted for the stove top veggies. 

This recipe is customizable so go crazy with it. 

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Pumpkin faces totally optional, but it does make it more fun!

 

 

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