EBC Rocks Again

So I went back to the East Brunswick Club on a monday night- last night, and they now have permanent table numbers and the wait for food was under 30 minutes, yay!

The 'chicken' burger with lime mayo is still yummy and I enjoyed the coconut choc cake. I'm really curious about the 'duck' borscht, anyone tried it?

Also, great to see so many of the vegan potluck crew!

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Questions

I have have 33 Aussie vegetarian and vegan blogs now listed on the side.

But am I missing any?

Also, where have all the vegan dark choc chips gone?

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Sugar Free, Me?

I've had some mystery symptoms recently and while the doctor is pretty sure I just have a virus he has tested me for diabetes and a few other things. As soon as I heard the word Diabetes I freaked out just thinking about how addicted to sugar I am and how much I would miss out if I did have it, like all the sweet things at the potlucks. Considering the vast majority of things I make are packed full of sugar: cookies, cupcakes etc it would be a struggle. I also went on an elimination diet several years ago and went crazy giving up sugar, I was like a drug addict. I couldn't sleep, got shaky and was so irritable that my then boyfriend would get out of bed late at night and make me a banana sandwich so that I could at least get some fructose.

So while I'm pretty sure I don't have it, I thought that I should make more of an effort to make some sweet sugar less or very low in sugar things from time to time. I've done it before, I enjoyed Dr Furhman's Almond Carob Fudge recipe which is sweetened from dates and the Full Meal Muffins which are sweetened with juice and blackstrap molasses. I also made the super fruit tart recipe which is also from Dr Furhman and is sweetened with dates, fruit and juice- the recipe can be found here.

So my question to you, what are your favourite sugar free recipes?

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Shakeaway

Want plenty of vegan milkshakes to choose from? Then shakeaway is for you. You can also combine flavours like I did. I chose a combination of peanut butter and chocolate and it rocked, it kind of reminds me of Ferrero Rochers. Here are the vegan flavours available:

• apple
• apple & cinnamon
• apricot
• banana
• caramel popcorn
• choca mocha
• chocolate
• coconut
• coco pops
• coffee
• lemon & lime
• lime
• mandarin
• mango
• maple syrup
• orange marmalade
• passion fruit
• peach
• peanut butter
• pear
• pineapple
• raspberries
• rhubarb
• rock melon
• sesame snaps
• strawberries
• tic tacs orange
• tic tacs peppermint
• tic tacs spearmint
• vanilla
• weetbix

As a massive tic tan fan I'm intrigues by the orange tic tac flavoured one. They use separate non dairy blenders too for the vegan ones. You read about other experiences here and here.

Level 1 (where the cinema is), Highpoint Shopping Centre
Maribyrnong,
Sun-Wed 10-5:30, Thur-Sat 10-9:30

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Potluck Number 3

Lidia from More to Love Vegan hosted another amazing potluck. Here are the yummy dishes we shared:

Rebecca's chocolate cupcakes baked in ice-cream cones

Claire's Potato Salad with 'Bacon' bits

Tim's secret family recipe veganized: caramelized onion tart

Lidia's lasagna

Lidia's maple cupcakes


Caroline's vanilla cupcakes, vanilla is under-rated!


Chantelle's first encounter with tofu- sweet pumpkin pie

Sarah's lemon coconut slice, recipe here

Rebecca's potato candy

Reece's 'sausage' rolls

Mr T's beefy seitan from Nonna's Italian kitchen or here (gravy not pictured)

Lidia's scones with jam and...

vegan clotted cream

And my contribution:

White and Dark chocolate Oreo truffles (with peanut butter version)

There are lots of recipes for these online so I don't think it matters if I write up the recipe here but before I do I just have to warn you that as simple as the ingredients are and the recipe sounds they are fiddly to make and take a while.

1 container of tofutti cream cheese
3 packs of oreos, broken into halves
About half a pack or 250 grams of sweet williams dairy free white chocolate chips and equivalent amount of dark chocolate

Using a food processor, grind cookies to a fine powder. Add cream cheese and mix together.

Freeze for about 15 minutes and then roll into small balls. Refrigerate for about an hour.

Melt one type of chocolate (either dark or white) in a makeshift double boiler and coat each one and then drizzle the other type of melted chocolate over them and then refrigerate.

Peanut Butter version: replace cream cheese with peanut butter.

So I made white and dark chocolate varieties of both the peanut butter and the regular version. My fav combination was the original version with white choc.

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Mr T's Mini Yum Cha

On Sunday Mr T announced that he is going to make a cheap lunch. First he put these in front of me:

Vegetarian dumplings and vegetarian BBQ 'pork' buns (or char siu bao in cantonese) both purchased from the asian supermarket across the road from the vic market

And then he put these on the table:


I couldn't help but laugh but really enjoyed this mini east meets west yum cha.

Mr T you are the greatest!

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I want to travel

I want to travel again so bad it hurts. Ok maybe not hurts, but friggin sucks!

I think part of the problem is it has been over four years since I returned from living in Hong Kong and that is way too long between proper travel and since then apart from a couple of long weekends interstate I haven't had a proper holiday yet alone stepped out of the country at all.

I know that I have it so good compared to so many others, but is it too much to ask for a holiday?

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More on Button and an explanation

No interesting baking lately and I don't have the energy for other posts. I was thinking about how little I post about real issues anymore and I realised that when I first started this blog I was working in crappola jobs like working in a call centre that didn't require much brain power or much emotional energy so I could use my spare time to write about stuff I cared about whether it was personal stuff or political stuff. I used to write about women's rights, and the whole female Caucasian dating an Asian male thing and lots more. Now that I work in a welfare related field I come home most days and I'm exhausted. Add into that mix placements and essays and now another thesis and the last thing I want to do it write anymore. It's not that I don't care, I do, I have plenty of opinions on a whole range of issues: china-olympics, sexualisation of young girls, racism and so much more. I just tend to talk about them verbally because it is easier rather than write about them. Food is the one thing that I'm passionate about that doesn't require much energy, so i'm not a sell out OK :-)

So instead of all the above today I give you pics of button on her monkey bars as Mr T calls them:

climbing up

and then she reaches the top she will stay like that for ages looking very proud of herself

It's been just over a month since we adopted her. Bit by bit she has settled in more and more. She now allows me to pick her up sometimes, will choose to jump on my lap and will allow me to pat even when she can see my hand coming towards her, she has also taken to licking me in an attempt to wash me I guess. The only problem is she keeps getting her claws stuck on my clothes and well everything, even her scratching pole sometimes and it takes her a little while to get unstuck. I've also discovered why the vet clinic called her button, she loves to attack buttons.

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Baby cupcakes

Ok take two with carrot cake cupcakes. This time mini cupcakes for my colleagues baby shower. I have coloured the icing pink because she is having a girl using the beetroot trick. This time I experimented with adding half cup extra flour to the recipe and then adding 3/4 cup of flour and I couldn't tell the difference. I think adding a full extra cup extra would be too much. I then sprinkled cinnamon on top because the spices really didn't come through in mini size. I cooked them for about 13-15 minutes.



I then made mini lemon macadamia cupcakes cupcakes with white choc chips, also from VCTOTW. The white choc chips really blended well with the other two flavours, maybe too well in that the flavour didn't stand out enough for me.

Here they are, side by side. I put walnut pieces on the carrot cake ones and macadamia pieces on the lemon ones so you can tell them apart.

The stupid automatic flash whitens out the pink a little, but I'll get a new camera soon and toss away my broken one, I promise!

It's exhausting making mini cupcakes, they take forever to put into the tiny liners and then even more time to put tiny bits of icing on them and I really think flavour wise they are not as good, but they do look cute.

Speaking of tiny cupcakes, I went into a House shop the other day and noticed they had pastal cupcake liners in two small sizes, I asked the woman who worked there which ones fit into the mini muffins trays and she said they both do. So I got the slightly bigger ones and they don't fit. Bitch!

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I'm not baking for a while, I need a rest and besides I have to focus all of my attention on Mr T's permanent residency application, got it takes a lot of prove that we are in a real relationship, you would think that considering this is our 3rd immigration application we would be experts at it and it would be easy, but there are lots of little things like forgetting to keep the very few bits of mail that has been send to both of our names and forgetting to keep receipts from joint travel and why are there hardly any pics with Mr T and I and our friends or family? I have plenty of pics of just the two of us or him with others or me with others. If you are a friend who has pics of me and him and you, please email them to me or facebook me. At least this round doesn't cost thousands of dollars.

Oh yeah and I've also got to start my thesis again.

Hmmm, baking does sound like a better idea though :-)

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