A shout out for the revive cookbook. I received vol 3 as a birthday present. My omnivorous sons were staying and I was trying to cook stuff that was good for me and still appealed to them. A couple of the revive recipes went down a treat.
Quinoa and Cashew mingle was a hit as was the Penne Alfredo with pureed tofu in the sauce - actually the sauce was sooo good I wanted to drink it with a straw while I was cooking it!
Revive cookbooks have become a hit in the wider family - other members own the 1st 2 books. Revive is a café in Auckland - lunch there is wonderful - I can testify to that!
My only caution would be to those trying to follow the same diet as I am - watch the oil - where it says sauté in oil - I just use stock or water and it comes out fine. Coconut cream in some of the sauces - my suggestion would be to use lite coconut cream and just don't dine on that too often.
It's wonderful to find a really great New Zealand vege cookbook - if you haven't got one - go out and buy one now!
Vegan MoFo
Tuesday 28 January 2014
What I ate in the holidays
It's a bit like those talks we used to give at school.
Since last posting we've had Christmas, New Year, a birthday for me, visiting family. Honestly I have been really pleased with how it is gone, gained no weight over Christmas and managed to lose a little since. I think the clarity about my food choices has been the most helpful thing.
We all have things we compromise on and I compromised on the oil - not that I went all out for greasy foods. There was some oil in the dressings and coconut oil in the cheesecake base, cheesecake also had some sugar in the filling.
For our family Christmas dinner I brought along 3 salads - the Indonesian Rice Salad (already posted here) and 2 from Get Waisted by Dr Mary Clifton - the spinach & strawberry salad (which looked as fabulous as I thought it would and was yummy, & the Aztec black bean salad - beans to punch up the protein, lots of colour and crunch and flavour. All 3 salads were a hit with the rest of the family.
We are keen on our garlic bread here in NZ, I provided some garlic bruschetta - simple roasted garlic spread on slices of French bread and slices of wholemeal rolls - this disappeared in short order and was also declared a hit. (roasted the garlic the day before so not too time consuming either).
For dessert I made a raw cashew cheese cheesecake (my eldest son is a huge cheesecake fan). I used one recipe for the base, one for the filling and made up my own topping. (pomegranate seeds & blackberries dredged with pomegranate molasses - yum). The cheesecake was also a resounding hit with the rest of the family. As there were 12 of us it was just a small slice each, topped up with fresh fruit salad it made for a wonderful dessert.
There was other food on the table but being committed to no animal products meant that I just wasn't tempted. (actually 1 small compromise here - it was my sisters 60th birthday so had a very small slice of her cake). It was all wholefoods anyway so the wholefood part wasn't even an issue. After dinner I didn't feel bloated and over full as has happened in previous years.
The food I ate was delicious, looked beautiful and left me feeling great not guilty - I LOVE eating this way.
Since last posting we've had Christmas, New Year, a birthday for me, visiting family. Honestly I have been really pleased with how it is gone, gained no weight over Christmas and managed to lose a little since. I think the clarity about my food choices has been the most helpful thing.
We all have things we compromise on and I compromised on the oil - not that I went all out for greasy foods. There was some oil in the dressings and coconut oil in the cheesecake base, cheesecake also had some sugar in the filling.
For our family Christmas dinner I brought along 3 salads - the Indonesian Rice Salad (already posted here) and 2 from Get Waisted by Dr Mary Clifton - the spinach & strawberry salad (which looked as fabulous as I thought it would and was yummy, & the Aztec black bean salad - beans to punch up the protein, lots of colour and crunch and flavour. All 3 salads were a hit with the rest of the family.
We are keen on our garlic bread here in NZ, I provided some garlic bruschetta - simple roasted garlic spread on slices of French bread and slices of wholemeal rolls - this disappeared in short order and was also declared a hit. (roasted the garlic the day before so not too time consuming either).
For dessert I made a raw cashew cheese cheesecake (my eldest son is a huge cheesecake fan). I used one recipe for the base, one for the filling and made up my own topping. (pomegranate seeds & blackberries dredged with pomegranate molasses - yum). The cheesecake was also a resounding hit with the rest of the family. As there were 12 of us it was just a small slice each, topped up with fresh fruit salad it made for a wonderful dessert.
There was other food on the table but being committed to no animal products meant that I just wasn't tempted. (actually 1 small compromise here - it was my sisters 60th birthday so had a very small slice of her cake). It was all wholefoods anyway so the wholefood part wasn't even an issue. After dinner I didn't feel bloated and over full as has happened in previous years.
The food I ate was delicious, looked beautiful and left me feeling great not guilty - I LOVE eating this way.
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