Snack Review: Pocky Double Chocolate

Because Tofu Cute had a lot of new Pocky flavors in their store I was able to try plenty of them. This is one of the flavors I was very curious about, because I really love chocolate, and double or triple chocolate is almost always a hit with me.

When I opened the package a strong chocolate scent was released. That was a promising start. I tasted my first one, and I was actually surprised by how strong the chocolate flavor was. Normally the chocolate of Pocky is not really strong and this was pretty intense. The thick chocolate coating is sweeter than the dark chocolate biscuit, which gives this snack extra depth in flavor. There isn't really that much to say about this snack. If you are a chocolate lover you will most likely appreciate it. With 1,99 pounds this is a more expensive type of Pocky than some of the others they sell. For this price you get a 46 grams package which equals to about 23 sticks. Get it here at Tofu Cute.

Meatless Monday: Cranberry Muffins

After making a delicious pumpkin cranberry risotto, I still had plenty of cranberries left so I decided to try my hand at cranberry muffins. While I thought the cranberries we a bit too sour this way, Zeronic adored these muffins so I really want to share them with you all. I found these on Yummy in my Tummy, but because that is a Dutch site, I will translate the recipe below that I adapted slightly.

Cranberry Muffins (makes 12)
- 150 gr fresh cranberries
- 265 gr flour
- 3 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 160 gr cane sugar
- 240 ml milk
- 1 egg
- 85 gr butter
- pinch of salt

In a large bowl, miks flour, sugar, baking powder, cinnamon and salt. Melt the butter and mix with the milk and egg. Add wet with the dry ingredients and mix with a wooden spoon. Add the cranberries and stir lightly until mixed. Pour the matter into a muffin tin. Place it in a preheated oven on 200 degrees for 15-18 minutes. (180 degrees for a microwave oven). You can sprinkle powdered sugar on top for a decorative effect.

This post is part of Midnight Maniac Meatless Mondays.
MMMM is a weekly carnival dedicated to those interested in improving their personal health and the health of the planet by reducing meat consumption one day a week. Every Monday you have a chance to feature a link to something meatless. It doesn’t have to be a recipe {although that would be nice}, it can be a picture of a meatless meal you ate that week, an interesting article you read about meat consumption, a post on your blog about going meatless, perhaps a post on someone else’s blog you found helpful, anything Meatless Monday appropriate.

Weekend Cooking: BBQ Tempeh Sandwich

My fellow foodies Chinoiseries, Graasland and JannyAn are part of this Tofu and Tempeh Hop. We did a hop on dips in the last weekend of December and we had so much fun that we decided to do another hop and this time the theme is tofu and tempeh. I have had tofu before and while I can eat it alright, it never got me really excited. Tempeh I never had before, so that is why I decided to try to cook with this, especially when I saw a post on Healthy, Happy, Life on sandwiches that featured a BBQ Tempeh Sandwich that looked very appealing. Inspired by her post I made my very own.

BBQ Tempeh Sandwich  (makes 4 large sandwiches)
- 1 package of tempeh
- Your favorite bread (I used freshly baked multi grain bread, that I made that morning)
- Lettuce
- Cream Cheese or Toffuti cream cheese to veganise it.
- Cherry tomatoes
- Cucumber
- Your favorite BBQ sauce (I had smoked BBQ from calve)
- Mayonnaise or vegan mayonnaise
- Appel cider vinegar
- Sunflower oil

Slice the tempeh. Heat some oil in the pan and bake them for 1 minute on each side. Then put on a good deal of BBQ sauce and coat the tempeh with it. Turn the heat lower and let it simmer for a few minutes. Let the tempeh cool down a bit.

Meanwhile slice the tomatoes and cucumber, wash the lettuce and sprinkle some apple vinegar on there. Slather cream cheese on one side of the sandwich. Toss a heap of lettuce on top together with tomatoes and cucumber. Place some slices of tempeh on there. Slather the other side of the sandwich with some mayonnaise and you have build yourself a nice filling sandwich!

Most people would eat this for lunch but I made this for dinner on a Sunday evening. It was so filling that I had enough after only one sandwich.

If you want more Tofu and Tempeh recipes check out the following links:
Chinoiseries made Tempeh Burgers
Graasland made Faux Feta
JannyAn made Gado Gado

This post is part of Weekend Cooking. Make sure you check out what everybody has been up to food wise. It is always a lot of fun!

#118 and #119 Burgers, muffins, wraps and falafel bento

Well not all of that in one bento but in fact in two ;)

This bento I made yesterday for Zeronic. It actually holds lots of fruits and some veggies hidden in all those dishes. There is an apple-pumpkin muffin and a cranberry muffin, tofu-tomato-zucchini burgers, apple wedges and a laughing cow cheese.

My bento for today also has more veggies than meets the eye. The wrap is filled with kidney beans, mushrooms, zucchini and spring onions and is a left over from dinner. In the other tier is some BBQ tempeh and red lentil falafel. I also have a laughing cow cheese to fill it up.

I realize that these bento doesn't look as appealing than the ones with lots of different and colored veggies, but it is more practical this way, still healthy and just as tasty :) I can't wait for summer though because then it is so much easier to add some color to a bento :)

Snack Review: Kabaya Saku Panda Chocolate Monaka

When I encountered this cute cookie on J-list, I couldn't resist and grabbed one with order.

Kabaya is a brand I never heard of before but they are famous for their Candy Toys. These are figurines that come with candy. They are more oriented on boys, so that could explain why I never have seen anything by them before. This cookie is nothing like that though and it didn't come with any toy.

The snack is basically a cup made of cookie and filled with a thick bubbly chocolate layer. Or maybe I should say a wafer because it is the exact same type that you get served with ice cream sorbets. The brown chocolate parts were really tasty, however the while milky chocolate parts were kind of bland. Normally I like the sweet milk flavor but this hardly had any. This is too bad because if it would have been the other way around this would have made for a perfect snack. I do have to compliment on the concept though. It is one I never seen earlier and I quite like the idea. This cookie can be bought for $1,50 on J-List.

Meatless Monday: Cream of Broccoli Soup

Last week I got myself the How to Cook Everything Vegetarian app for the iPhone from Mark Bittman. Of course I had to try a recipe from this app and I happened to be looking for a cream of broccoli soup and the app provided :) I am planning a review of this app in the future but for now I will share this recipe with you for this Meatless Monday. Of course I adjusted it a bit, because I can never follow a recipe blind ;)

Cream of Broccoli Soup (serves 2 as a main)
- 450 gr broccoli, in florets
- 30 gr butter
- 1 spring onion, chopped
- 2 cloves of garlic, chopped
- 800 ml vegetable broth
- 125 ml sour cream
- salt and pepper

Put the butter in a deep saucepan over medium heat. When the butter has melted, add onion, broccoli, garlic, a pinch of salt and some pepper. Cook for about 5 minutes. Then add the broth and cook till the broccoli is very tender, about 15 minutes. Puree the soup with a handheld blender until smooth. (till this point you can make it in advance and store the soup in the fridge up to two days) Stir in the sour cream, season to taste and serve.

As a variation you can also make this soup with cauliflower.

This post is part of Midnight Maniac Meatless Mondays.
MMMM is a weekly carnival dedicated to those interested in improving their personal health and the health of the planet by reducing meat consumption one day a week. Every Monday you have a chance to feature a link to something meatless. It doesn’t have to be a recipe {although that would be nice}, it can be a picture of a meatless meal you ate that week, an interesting article you read about meat consumption, a post on your blog about going meatless, perhaps a post on someone else’s blog you found helpful, anything Meatless Monday appropriate.

Also part of Meatless Mondays at My Sweet and Savory.

Weekend Cooking: Crisis Soup

I just love recipes that clean out leftovers and this soup seems to be the king of those kind of recipes because you can basically throw in any kind of leftover veggies you have. I fond this on a Dutch site Puur Gezond and they called it crisis soup, because not only can you toss in a lot of things, it is also really cheap to make! I am going to post the version that I made here, but this soup will be different every time it is made, because there are never the same things in the fridge.

Crisis Soup (serves 5)
- 200 gr of red lentils
- 1 can of cubed tomatoes
- 3 cloves of garlic
- 3 tbsp of oil
- 1000 ml water
- 800-1000 gr fresh greens from your fridge

Cut up all the fresh greens in small pieces. (I had half a butternut, bok choy, Chinese cabbage, half a cauliflower, fresh parsley and some spring onions). Chop the garlic. Heat some oil in a large pan and fry the veggies. Add the lentils and the tomatoes with the water. Let it cook for 20-25 minutes. Taste and see what it needs. This will vary because it will never be the same. Add salt, pepper and other spices to taste. The soup thickens a lot and it will be really filling. We just served it with bread and garlic butter.

Can you believe how much it thickens?

Some tips:
- Instead of lentils you can also use all kinds of beans that you have in your pantry. Adjust cooking times accordingly.
- If you have very leafy veggies add them when the soup is almost done. Spinach is a good example.
- This is also a great way to clean out leftover cheese or creams that you have.
- I added parsley but other fresh herbs that you have a bunch of, can also be used up. Just make sure you taste. 

What are your favorite recipes that clean out leftovers? I would love to try them, if they are vegetarian.

This post is part of Weekend Cooking. This is a weekly meme where bloggers share all kind of food related things. Please hop over to check it out!

Weekly Menu Weeks 3-4

We don't have a Vitatas vegetable bag this week because we didn't like half of what is in it. And while we love to try new things and new challenges, we took a break this week and went to the market instead to get a nice batch of veggies. Half of these are still organic and they cost us 8 euros for the whole week.

From the market we choose a huge amount of turnip tops, a cauliflower, broccoli, half a pumpkin, 2 zucchinis, black salsify and a lemon that I needed to make lemon cake ;) Not on the picture are mushroom, which we bought as well.

The menu for week 3-4 will be:
Friday: A warm salad with the black salsify and avocado (from Kookblog Rozemarijn) with baked potatoes and a meat replacement.
Saturday: Sushi!
Sunday & Monday: Turnip tops mashpot (recipe here)
Tuesday: Wraps with mushrooms and zucchini (and more)
Wednesday: Pumpkin-cranberry risotto (I still have cranberries left, recipe here)
Thursday: Cauliflower Manchurian with rice and peas from the Everyday Happy Herbivore Cookbook.
Bento: I have build up quite a stash from cranberry muffins, red lentil falafel, BBQ tempeh and tofu-zucchini-tomato burgers. So I don't think I will be making more this week, but you never know :) I will make a loaf of tomato-basil bread in the machine this weekend though :)

#117 - Tofu Burgers and Cranberry Muffin Bento

This is the bento that I made for Zeronic today. He doesn't always need a bento on Thursdays but because of the bad weather her today, I thought I might just give him one anyway :)

His main is rice with mixed beans and in the other tier there are two mini tofu-zucchini-tomato burgers and a cranberry muffin. The tofu burger recipe still needs so tweaking so I won't be posting that on the blog just yet, but the cranberry muffins are very much liked by Zeronic so that recipe will appear on the blog soon.

Snack Review: Lotte Kancho Love Biscuits - Hazelnut

I have reviewed several filled cooking snacks before but I never had one with a hazelnut filling, so I was curious to try these when I found a package on Tofu Cute.

This was a type of filled biscuits that I haven't had before. Not only flavor wise but also the brand is new to me. These cookies are manufactured by Lotte, the same company that is also behind the Koala biscuits that I bought several times before. This biscuits aren't much like the Koala type though. Koala's have a thinner biscuit and more filling while these are more similar to the Hello Panda biscuits from Meiji. They have a thicker layer of biscuit and less filling.

The smell of this snack is subtle and not as overwhelming as some of these snacks can be. I liked the taste of the filling a lot. It was like eating a biscuit filled with Nutella. Maybe a little less creamier, but taste wise quite close. Unfortunately the biscuit itself tasted a bit stale. It wasn't as crispy as I am used to and that was a bit of a downer. I checked the package on any holes, but there weren't any, so that can't be the reason. That is a bit of a pity really, because otherwise hazelnut is surely a flavor I enjoyed. These biscuits can be bought for 0,99 pounds on Tofu Cute.

Meatless Monday: Red Lentil Falafel

This is my first time making my own falafel and I didn't make them with chick peas but with red lentils. I was actually planning to make red lentil burgers, but Zeronic requested these instead. I loved these home made falafel and they are perfect in a bento, which you can see in my bento from last Wednesday. This recipe comes from the Essential Vegetarian Cookbook. I adjusted it a bit, like I mostly do with recipes. Do mind that this recipe is fairly time consuming, but it leaves you with a lot to stash away for later use :)

Before frying/baking

Red Lentil Falafel (makes 45-50 balls)
- 250 gr red lentils
- 2 spring onions
- 2 cloves of garlic
- 1 tsp cumin
- 80 gr fresh bread crumbs
- 125gr grated cheese
- 1 large courgette
- 150 gr cornstarch
- oil

Cook the red lentils in water. This should take about 15 minutes. Meanwhile, grate the courgette in a large bowl. Chop the spring onions and the garlic in the kitchen machine and add them to the bowl with the cumin, grated cheese and bread crumbs. When the lentils are done drain them and chop half of them in the kitchen machine. Add this and the other half of the lentils to the mixture. Mix everything well. Shake the cornstarch on a plate.

Mixture before rolling

At this point I tool the plate of cornstarch and the bowl with mixture to the living room so I could sit during rolling the balls. Scoop about a tbsp of mixture and roll this into a ball. This should go really smoothly because the mixture is just perfect to work with and didn't stick too much. Roll the ball through the cornstarch to coat. Place the balls on another plate and make about 45-50 balls this way. You can store them in the fridge until you are going to fry them.

For the frying you can just add a layer of oil to the pan, wait until the oil is hot enough (it will form tiny bubbles). Gently place a few balls in the oil, bake them for 1 minute and scoop them out. Lay them on a plate with kitchen towels to drain the moist. Continue this with all the balls. If you don't like to fry them, you can also bake them but you will still need a fair amount of oil.

Red lentil falafel with fries and salad

Serve them with pita bread and garlic sauce, or any yoghurt based sauce. We served them with fries and a salad.

This post is part of Midnight Maniac Meatless Mondays.
MMMM is a weekly carnival dedicated to those interested in improving their personal health and the health of the planet by reducing meat consumption one day a week. Every Monday you have a chance to feature a link to something meatless. It doesn’t have to be a recipe {although that would be nice}, it can be a picture of a meatless meal you ate that week, an interesting article you read about meat consumption, a post on your blog about going meatless, perhaps a post on someone else’s blog you found helpful, anything Meatless Monday appropriate.

Also part of Meatless Mondays at My Sweet and Savory.

Book Review: Rabbit Food Cookbook

Title: Rabbit Food Cookbook
Author: Beth A. Barnett
Subject: Vegan Cooking
Publisher: Sasquatch Books
Release date: October, 2011
Length: 224 pages
I got this book: from the publisher for review.

Summary:
From Goodreads:
"This isn’t just a cookbook; it’s a thoughtful and accessible guide eating well for your body and for the world. Beth Barnett is an incredibly popular illustrator and writer – and Rabbit Food is her opus. Including tips on everything from how to plant your first garden to how to sew your own reusable grocery bag, Barnett provides ample detail for living a thoughtful, sustainable life."

Personal opinion:
This book is indeed much more than just a cookbook. Beth writes about various subjects like the history of food, about nutrition for vegans, how to start your first garden, what a vegan pantry should include and cooking times on grains and beans. The book doesn't have any pictures but it is full of tiny illustrations which give the book something personal. Another personal touch is the fact that the part with the recipes is handwritten. The recipe section has various menu items like we know from most cookbooks, like soups and main courses, but also vegan baking gets a place in the book. I have two minor points about the book. One is that the main courses do rely a lot on tofu. So if you are not a tofu lover, this book isn't really for you. The other thing is that with the recipes it doesn't always state how many servings a recipe makes and I find this a bit hard to work with. It surely is a cute book that gives that bit of extra information that can make it easier to start on a vegan diet. I got an e-book for review but the real cookbook is spiral bound, which is always a plus.

Purchase links: Amazon
Other reviews: None yet.
If you have reviewed this book and want your link here, please leave a comment with the link, and I will add it :)

Of course here is a recipe from the book. I choose an easy, low budget pasta recipe to make. I loved the white beans in a pasta dish. I never had that before. 

Pasta with White Beans (serves 3)
- 2 cups pasta
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 1 onion, diced (I used spring onion)
- 3 cloves of garlic, choped
- 1 can white beans, drained and rinsed
- 1 can diced tomatoes, Italian style (didn't have those so I just added Italian herbs myself)
- 1-2 tsp fresh rosemary
- dashes of pepper, oregano and basil

First cook the pasta. In the mean time heat some olive oil skillet on medium heat. Add onion and sauté for about 5 minutes. Then add the garlic and sauté until the onions are softened. Add the beans to the pan and stir occasionally for a few minutes. Add the tomatoes, rosemary and other spices. Cover and let it simmer for about 10 more minutes. Rinse and drain the pasta when done and add with the sauce or serve the sauce on top of the pasta.   

This post is part of Weekend Cooking. Please make sure you check out the other participants as well. You never know what you will end up making! :)

Vitatas #11

This week the vegetable bags weren't delivered at our local organic store so we were allowed to pick out our own veggies from the assortment they have. This resulted in a rather summery vegetable bag. Mainly because they didn't get the wintery vegetables delivered.

In the bag we have a lot of broccoli, lettuce, fennel, grean beans, 2 courgettes and cherry tomatoes. I also have some leftover veggies from last week but I found a recipe that will clean that out in one go :)

The menu for week 2/3 will be:
Friday: Crisis soup - this is a soup where you can basically toss in all your leftover veggies :)

Saturday: Gnocchi with courgette sauce (recipe here)
Sunday: BBQ-tempeh on Italian home made bread with a heap of veggies.
Monday: Tofu burgers with courgette and tomato with a salad.
Tuesday: Cream of broccoli soup

Wednesday: Pesto pasta with fennel beans (recipe fennel beans here)
Thursday: Broccoli Quiche (from CyV on Met de Paplepel, in Dutch)
Lunch: More home made Italian bread :) And who knows if I will make something else this week.

So a nice balanced menu with 5 new recipes and 2 on repeat. I wanted to try cream of broccoli soup for some time now and because we have lots of it this week, I have placed it on the menu but I haven't got a good recipe yet. So if you have one for a vegetarian cream of broccoli soup, please let me know :)

#116 - Falafel and dip bento

I have spend a lot of time in the kitchen yesterday making my own falafel for in the bento to take to school today. I also used my bread machine for the first time to make my own bread!

In this bento there is red lentil falafel (recipe will follow), roasted cauliflower dip (recipe here at Always cooking up something), a laughing cow cheese wedge, a broccoli muffin and mixed beans in sajoer sauce. Not in the picture is the thick slice of multi-grain bread I will be taking with me too ;)

Snack Review: Panda Pocky

I am a bit of a pocky fan and I especially like to try the more exotic flavors so I was really curious to review this limited edition panda pocky from J-list. Pocky is a product from Glico and comes in many varieties. The most common is chocolate but they often come up with cool limited edition flavors where this one is a part of.

The snack is called panda pocky but the actual flavor is cookies 'n cream. This is a flavor that I really love in chocolate bars, so they can't really go wrong here. Let's see how true this will be ;)
Unlike most pocky sticks (except for Choco-banana) these pocky sticks aren't vanilla but chocolate biscuit. The outer layer is white cream with bits of chocolate in it. They smell really sweet and vanilla like, and they taste like that too. I wasn't really able to taste the outer chocolate pieces, but otherwise this is a great flavor combination if you are a fan of sweet things. The last bit of biscuit without coating is a bit dry though. A great plus here is that unlike with a lot of typical flavors, these don't taste chemical. 
A fun detail is that the plastic package inside the box has drawings of cute pandas on them to accommodate the theme. I would certainly buy these again, because I am very pleased with this combination. They are $2.50 a box on J-List.

Meatless Monday: Sweet Risotto

I still had a butternut squash left when I encountered this recipe in a Dutch vegetarian magazine that is called "Vegetarisch Fit". I actually have a few of them but didn't cook from them much. I thought that had to change to I browsed through one of the previous winter editions. I will be cooking three recipes from the magazine this week because they fit the vegetables in my organic veggie bag so well.The first one I made is Sweet Risotto which tasted very good and is a great comforting winter dish.

This is a case of it tastes better than it looks. The risotto remained a bit soupy because it didn't want to absorb the last bit of moist, but the taste was good nevertheless. It also made me discover that I rather like cranberries, which I never ate before.

Sweet Risotto with Butternut and Cranberries
- 400 gr butternut squash
- 2 shallots
- 2 cloves of garlic
- 1 twig of fresh rosemary
- 400 ml vegetable broth
- 600 ml cranberry juice
- 2-3 tbsp olive oil
- 150 gr fresh cranberries
- 250 gr risotto rice
- 4 tbsp fresh chopped parsley
- 4 tbsp grated cheese
- 40 gr butter

Cube the flesh of the pumpkin. Peel shallots and garlic. Place them together with the leaves of the rosemary in the kitchen machine to chop everything up. Boil the cranberry juice together with the vegetable broth in a pan. Heat olive oil in a second pan and stir fry the garlic, shallots, rosemary, butternut and cranberries shortly. Add the rice and bake this shortly with the rest. Then add about 1/3 of the cranberry juice and broth mixture and let it boil softly for about 20 minutes while stirring occasionally. Add the rest of the broth bit by bit, waiting everytime until the rice absorbed the moisture before adding more. Keep stirring now, or else the risotto will burn. Never leave risotto alone! Lastly stir in the parsley, butter and cheese through the risotto, just before serving.

Progress picture, when the first broth went in.

This post is part of Midnight Maniac Meatless Mondays.
MMMM is a weekly carnival dedicated to those interested in improving their personal health and the health of the planet by reducing meat consumption one day a week. Every Monday you have a chance to feature a link to something meatless. It doesn’t have to be a recipe {although that would be nice}, it can be a picture of a meatless meal you ate that week, an interesting article you read about meat consumption, a post on your blog about going meatless, perhaps a post on someone else’s blog you found helpful, anything Meatless Monday appropriate.

Also part of Meatless Mondays at My Sweet and Savory.

Weekend Cooking: Restaurant Sakana

Somewhere mid December I went to this all you can eat sushi restaurant called Sakana to celebrate the birthday of my friend Fhant. I sometimes see restaurant impressions done by other participants of Weekend Cooking and I always enjoy those very much because it isn't very likely that I will visit those far away places. So I thought I would return the favour and post an impression myself.

Salmon Handroll

Sakana is a Japanese all you can eat sushi and grill restaurant in a city called Den Bosch. I have no idea how the sushi restaurants in Japan work but this restaurant works with an all you can eat concept. You order in rounds and each round you can order 5 items of food maximum. This can be hot or cold food. What I love about this all you can eat concept is that they don't like it if you waste items so you have to pay extra if you not finish what you order. Of course when you are with a group there are always a few garbage cans that can stuff some more away ;) But I think it is a good concept that makes you think before you order.

Some flamed fish nigiri

 I don't eat fish very often as I eat mostly vegetarian but I do make an exception when I eat out in a sushi restaurant. I just can't resist and mostly the vegetarian sushi offer is very limited. However if I make sushi at home I often do opt for vegetarian also because Zeronic doesn't like to eat fish. What I liked best in this restaurant were the flamed nigiri's. I am not sure I ever had these before. They serve the nigiri with warm fish instead of raw and they are marinated in some sauce and flamed. I found these very unique and I find them a nice addition to the more traditional nigiri.

Dragonballs - Picture by my friend Belsammael

Another thing I tried were these sweet sesame balls. They are called dragon balls and I think they had red bean paste in them. All though a bit odd I liked them but I find it more of a snack or dessert item, not really for a main meal. Come to think of it, I think I did eat only sushi apart from these dragon balls. No hot items except for some mushrooms. I guess I just love sushi too much and because I can only eat fairly small portions, I take what I like best.

Some nigiri and inside out maki

 I do realize that I only took pictures of the food and not of the restaurant itself. This is mainly because I only made the pictures to share on twitter in between orders and I only thought up later that I wanted to write this post. Hopefully you guys enjoyed this impression regardless.

I am curious now though how Japanese restaurants function in other countries. Do they have the same concept or do they have another concept entirely?

This post is part of Weekend Cooking. Please check out the other posts as well, because you never know where the idea for your next meal will come from! :)