In my Kitchen - January 2026

January was a busy month of holidays with lots of stone fruit and salads, swimming and sun cream.  It was a dry month with 2 scorching days of 44 Celcius  that left sad brown patches in the garden and kept us indoors with the air con on.  I had holidays on the first and last week in January so had time to relax and also time to go out.  In fact on the first week of January I ate out 6 out of 7 days.  That is a lot for me.  I will write more about eating out and other outings in My Monthly Chronicles soon.

At the start of January Sylvia changed her diet from vegetarian to vegan.  We have always eaten a lot of vegan food and now eat even more though I still have some yoghurt and cheese on meals such as the above nachos and salad.  For a while Sylvia was keen on eggs that it is odd not to have eggs is in the fridge.  Other than that it has meant checking out lots of new products in the supermarket and trying new ideas in the kitchen. 
 

January starts with the end of the festive season.  We took down the tree, put away the cards and finished the treats.  There was leftover Christmas pudding, stollen, panforte and shortbread.   

One of my holiday meals that was easy to make and wonderful to eat was a Festive Roast Potato Salad that used up some of our Christmas leftovers and it is on my blog.

Vegan products 1: We tried lots of new vegan snacks.  One of my favourites was this bag of DJ&A mushroom crisps.  They were crispy dried button small mushrooms with very moreish seasoning.

Vegan products 2:  Damona vegan cheese is the only one that Sylvia has really loved.  She also is quite a fan of the Numo caramel chocolate bars - one of the good reasonably priced chocolate treats from the supermarket.  Which brings me to Sweet William rice crackle choc koalas.  I've never been a huge fan of their chocolate.  She liked the Plantein sweet chilli tenders but I was not so keen.  The FunDay caramel chews are nice but not really my thing.

Vegan products 3: Some vegan products were no surprise.  I have used Damona cheese before and I don't think it is a secret that Oreos are vegan.  We were impressed by the Oreo creme eggs, which were on sale when we needed to spend money quickly to get cash out at the supermarket for a purchase.  I was most amazed by Hellman's mayonnaise (because Hellmans do good egg mayonnaise it was good to see they can also do a vegan one that is not ridiculously sweet) and that our local Italian supermarket sells plant based Nutella that tastes good (and is made with chickpeas and rice syrup).

Vegan products 4: Sylvia really likes these little chia, rice and chocolate puddings.  I don't like those sort of desserts and was just amused by their name: Fancy Plants.

We returned to crispy tofu cutlets which we made in December 2023.  This time we tried in in the air fryer with a spray of oil.  I also double dipped it in the milk and breadcrumbs.  We served it with mash, gravy and green vegies.   Very good.  Perhaps not quite as golden as when shallow fried but delicious and crispy. 

Tofu cutlets always seem quite old-school vegetarian.  I quite like a lot of the older vegetarian recipes that have lots of nuts, tofu and beans rather than all the mock meat of today.  So I was delighted recently when Sylvia discovered the joys of reading my Moosewood Cookbook.  Of course she found it on social media but thank god someone is still talking about it.

One of our regular hot weather meals has been rice paper rolls.  We have been filling them with vermicelli noodles, vegies and fried caramelised tofu from micadeli.  That sticky tofu is so delicious we often eat some of it by itself but it also gives great flavour to the rice paper rolls without making it soggy.  I find that with the thick tofu sauce, the rice paper rolls it is plenty of flavour without a dipping sauce.  Mind you, I find that it thickens pretty quickly.  If I add 1-2 tbsp water to the sauce it means my sticky sauce doesn't quickly get dried on the bottom of my cast iron frypan.

It has been a month of lots of chopping up salad vegies but we have also been discovering some great new recipes that are bound to be favourites because they offer a lot for little effort.  

Another favourite was Zucchini pesto from Plant You.  It a matter of roasting zucchini and garlic and then blitzing them with cashews, basil, nooch, lemon and seasoning.  The sauce is quite velvety and lighter than regular pesto.  I really like that it holds its green colour longer.  It's been excellent with pasta especially on the first night when we had it with tofu bacon.

The zucchini pesto was great for lots of meals.  I had it for lunch with crackers rocket, capsicum and cherries.  (Mmmmm, cherries!)  I stirred some pesto into potato scones and then dipped the scones in more pesto.  And I had a lovely lunch of leftover pesto pasta with green capsicum, peas, tomatoes and cheese chunks.  (I had also wished I had celery in the fridge for it but we were out.)  

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We tried the meal prep burritos - also from Plant You.  Sylvia was keen to have burritos  whereas I prefer a burrito bowl.  Overall it was very good with Mexican spiced rice, tofu "beef" and chipotle lime cashew.  We loved the spiced rice.  I really liked the cashew cream, though Sylvia found it a bit sweet and not salty enough.  And of course we had lots of vegies.  

I was not a big fan of the tofu beef.  I didn't really like the overall texture of the chunks of spiced tofu and also felt it was not dark enough.  The rice and tofu were similar colours and I felt there should have been more difference.  My preference if I was to have these chunks would be a dark sauce rather than just a spice mix.  We found it was improved with a tin of whole black beans in a seasoned sauce - that you can see below.  Alternately it would be good to have the tofu cut smaller or grated and then fried up with brown lentils and finely chopped walnuts with a bit more of a sauce.  

The recipe for the meal prep burritos, was intended to make 10-12 burritos so it lasted us a few meals.  On the second night we had it for tea, we remembered that we had bought corn chips and this went very well with it.  

We have made the Mexican spiced rice again.  I have tried a coupld of Mexican spiced rice recipes in the past but they have been fiddly and stuck to the bottom of the saucepan or taken a while in the microwave.  I am not sure it this rice was nicely fluffy without sticking because my paranoia about burning led me to use 4 and 1/2 cups of stock rather than 3 cups.  I think that the rice might also work with brown rice instead of basmati.

 

This meal looks similar to the meal prep burrito bowls but on this occasion I only made the spiced rice and did not bother with the tofu and cashew cream.  On top of the rice was grated carrot, celery, capsicum, tomato, lettuce, roasted almonds, diced cheese, yoghurt and chipotle plus Sylvia's seasoned chickpeas.  

It is just the thing to eat in front of the telly on a hot day and watching the tennis as I marvel at the skill and athleticism of the players, with the soundtrack of the thwack of the ball and squeak of the sneakers in the quiet moments between commentary and cheers!

On one summer day when we were busy Sylvia made nachos by layering corn chips, whole black beans from a tin, and grated Damona cheese. I topped mine with salsa, lettuce, tomato, purple cabbage, red capsicum and yoghurt.  You can see the final dish at the top of the post!  It was excellent. Just the thing for a night I was more busy washing all the potting mix off my arms than preparing dinner.

 

This was the work before our nachos dinner: re-potting the camelia.  I have had the plant for about 20 years and it was ailing so we took it out of its pot and found it was really root-bound.  It took a lot of work to take the dirt from around the roots so we could re-plant it in a larger pot.  I'd like to say it is flourishing now but it is a bit sad.  It is hard to know how much is from the heatwaves soon after or the shock of a new home..   

 

Sylvia is quite happy to eat the plant based Golden Gaytime ice creams.  I don't love the dairy Golden Gaytimes as much as I used to as a kid but I really liked this Lamington version.  It had a lot of chocolat ewith the coconut ice cream.  I know it is traditional to have the biscuit crumb coating but surely a Lamington Golden Gaytime could have some coconut flakes in the coating.

We had a trip across the river to the Melbourne's eastern suburbs to pick up this sweet little Tiffany lamp that Sylvia bought online.  It's looking lovely on her desk.

I made a collage birthday card for my mum.  Cakes, flowers and a cup of tea are her sort of thing.  We had a lovely celebration meal by the seaside restaurant.  I have written a post about lunch: At the Heads, Barwon Heads.

While out looking for second hand books to use for collage, Sylvia found a childhood favourite: Angelina Ballerina.  It made for a cute collage to hang on her wall.

We made some donations to the op shop.  I found a food processor that I had not used for 10 years.  It still worked so I hope someone else will find it useful.  I also reluctantly put this picture in to the op shop.  The framed poster has sentimental value because I bought it when in Berlin decades ago.  It is from the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin and is a photograph by Eugene Atget who was a photographer in the late 19th Century and early 20th Century.  I have always loved looking at the blur of a human figure who was moving too fast for the long exposure needed by cameras in that time.  But I have too many pictures to find a home for it and hope that someone else gets as much enjoyment out of it as I did.

Much as I try not to accumulate too much a birthday is a time for a few fun presents.  An old plate, a cat and a book on a card, little elephant candles and a literary feminist book.  I am also looking forward to some experience presents.

Another fine meal was a One Pot Pearl Couscous with onion, kale, carrots, celery, sun dried tomatoes and chickpeas.  We added more veigies because we ran out of zucchini.  The coconut milk and nooch at the end took it up a notch to be something we want to repeat.

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's url to Sherry by 13th of the month.  Or just head over to her blog to visit more kitchens and her gorgeous hand drawn header.  Thanks to Sherry for hosting this event that brings together wonderful bloggers who share glimpses into their kitchens.