In My Kitchen: June 2021

June starts with us in the middle of lockdown with a sick cat.  We have been through enough previous lockdowns that we feel like we have this, but then I am on zoom with a kid doing remote schooling too close by and the soup goes flying over the desk and I remember it really isn't that easy!  And then the cat starts sneezing.  I am also missing swimming and being able to visit my parents and ride into work on a chilly morning.  Thank goodness for small stabs of happiness like sourdough and bike rides and walks with friends.  And I am relieved to have got my first dose of the vaccine before the queues for the jab went crazy.  

Above is a sourdough pizza I made with some oat cheese.  Like most vegan cheeses, it failed to keep the other toppings stuck to the dough but was tasty.

Here is more sourdough pizza.  This one had garlic oil, olives, sun dried tomatoes, roasted pumpkin, mushrooms and cheese.  It was really nice though a little on the sweet side.

Isn't this wombat biscuit so cute!  I bought it on the way home from an appointment with my lawyer to get a will drawn up.  I bought it for E who was going to look after Sylvia at home on a pupil free day while I was at work.  Sadly the day didn't quite work out that way because it ended up being our first day of lockdown so I was at home!  Life is so weird right now!

Last week we had bangers and mash.  It is one of our favourite meals.  I especially love leftover mashed potato on toast (or bagels as the case might be) with vegemite.

If there is a lot of mashed potato leftover, we also love making potato scones.  It is so easy to mix in enough flour to make a dough to roll out and fry up.

As well as mashed potato, leftover (vegetarian) sausages are food of the gods.  We will eat them plain or sometimes they are good in a salad sandwich.

We have fallen prey to the temptations of some of favourite flavours in ordinary old products.  Sylvia was keen on the TeeVee snacks with Krispy Kreme original glaze.  I'd much prefer the original chocolate covered TeeVee snacks.

And I fell for this Chokito inspired choc caramel custard.  It was just choc caramel custard.  It didn't have the chewiness of the caramel or the crunch of rice bubbles in chocolate.  Nowhere near the special experience of a Chokito. 

This was a really good salad I made for a lunch.  It had potato, celery, red capsicum, purple cabbage, sun dried tomatoes, and feta.

Another easy meal was this soup with vegies, noodles and finely chopped tofu. 

Before lockdown, I had a good long ride to the Botanical Gardens.  I wanted a gift for mother's day.  And a little cactus tea towel for us!

 We also went to Terre Mardre in Northcote.  It is always such a fun place to shop with so much self serve options and vegetarian foods.  Here are some dumplings, Linda McCartney's Vegetarian Lincolnshire Sausages and a couple of vegan mac and cheese pies.  I loved the mac and cheese pies but they were not quite Sylvia's thing.

More Sylvia's thing during lockdown is making a mess - oops I mean making a science experiment in the kitchen.  This was an experiment in solubility.  Thank goodness she doesn't do much lab work.  I really feel for those I know at uni who are stuck at home when they need to get into the lab for their experiments.

Even though I am quite happy to make my own dinner during lockdown, I decided to order a Night Noodle Markets takeaway meal.  I failed.  The place with the vegetarian options was not on the app so I just found a vegan option on Uber Eats.  By the time my meal came I was hungry and not really expecting to have to cook my own ramen noodles.  I ate the cauliflower bao first, which was really good and then put together the vegies, noodles and tofu puffs in soup.  The edamame was for Sylvia.

My ramen laksa actually looked pretty good once I served it but I was  not that hungry after the cauliflower bao.  So I had some and left the rest for the next night, when I added some tofu, corn and broccolini.  It was really nice and quite filling.  But I am looking forward to being out of lockdown and eating at a cafe again.  Uber eats is not really my thing!

I am sending this post to Sherry of Sherry's Pickings for the In My Kitchen event.  If you would like to join in, send your post to Sherry by 13th of the month.  Or just head over to her blog to visit more kitchens.