Happy birthday to Danni and the new Indian love in my life

Had a great time celebrating gorgeous Danni other birthday on Friday! We had an aaaaaamazing dinner at my new fav Indian restaurant: Tandoori Mahal Indian & Nepalese Restaurant, which is right on Dominion Road in Mount Eden. The food is so tasty that I have to warn for food China if you ever come here because it's so hard to stop eating and as all of us know, Indian food is ridiculously filling!

Also, important note to add. The staff was great and was completely vegan-understanding, LOVED that.

The night continued up the road at ginger minx, where we ended up spending a lot of funny hours and the day after.. Well, let's just say, I'm a sucker for good Indian food..

I LOVE BRUNCH!

How good are bagels?! I hadn't had it in ages until we saw sesame bagels on special price at Countdown and decided to make ourselves a big weekend brunch. We made our special (using a recipe that Guy found for Christmas) sun dried tomato & white bean paté and using silken tofu, I also quickly made scrambled tofu. Scrambled tofu is so easy to make! I only blended the silken tofu with some spices, like pepper, salt and smoked paprika and added some finely chopped onion and capsicum and fried it all together - so yummmmm

It is for this reason I much more prefer cooking my own brunch (or food overall), because it gives me  much more choices and yummy flavours than a vegan option would be at a typical cafe here in Auckland where egg seems to be what they top up most things with, where I end up having to pay like 15 dollars for an oatmeal or something.

So to all you cafe owners out there: Who says you need dairy or egg to make an awesome brunch? All you need is some tofu, dairy free butter, sundried tomatoes and beans and you're all set!

The colourful rainbow of veganism

Very often people say to me that they wish they could adapt a vegan lifestyle, that they really want to be vegan, they tried but there are just too many things in their every day life that somehow makes it hard. You go out to eat at a restaurant and that yummy cheesy pizza seems so much more tempting than a dry pizza with some chopped veggies and tomato sauce on top. 

And I get it - I really do. I always say to them that I don't blame them, that it is a transition, a new lifestyle to learn. I've been there myself. In the beginning of my vegan journey, when I first decided that I was going to be vegan I went through some rough times, I didn't always want to be that annoying person who had to have special ingredients when I got invited to dinner parties or went out to eat at a restaurant. I beat myself up for buying shoes without even thinking about that they had leather soles and felt so stupid when I realized it several weeks afterwards.

The trouble seems to be what we put into the word vegan. It seems that many people thinks it has to be this hardcore lifestyle, they think they have to take the whole vegan package - where you have to look a certain way, avoid yummy easy-to-find food, start to read ingredient lists of EVERYTHING and stop shopping at your favorite clothing store etc. I think this is why veganism can seem off putting, it seems harder from the outside than what it really is.

I just read this brilliant blog post "10 Ways to be vegan: the options for veganism", which shows the many different ways you can choose to be a vegan in. Veganism is really a rainbow and I think it's really important to not be so hard on yourself. Not many people can be 100% vegan in today's city life society. So what if you're a weekday vegan, or a Paris vegan or a travel vegan today? Maybe it is a learning curve you have to go through in the school of Veganism.

What kind of vegan are you?

I'm not usually a big fan of categorising though and I know that many vegans would be very annoyed if someone called themself a vegan and then went and ate a chicken on a Friday night to "treat themselves" (yes, I'm one of the vegans that would get very annoyed about this). Point is, it is way better doing your best and at least give veganism a chance before you totally dismiss it.

The vegan dilemma

Haha I found this pic and thought this is the true, ultimate vegan dilemma - as much as I love when people want to try vegan food it always breaks my foodie heart when I'm at an event or something like that, where vegan food is served, and when someone who's not a vegan eat from the little vegan corner that clearly has a sign that says "vegan".. Veganism in a nutshell!

Sunday winter walk through Auckland with my love

A piece of vegan heaven in Newmarket

Wise Cicada is a must visit for every vegan in Auckland. It's a cute shop and cafe combined in one place and there are so much on my wish list from this place.

So the cafe does amazing brunch on weekends, and they have so many different food choices (it's always strange being vegan and being able to have many different choices when you go out to eat) such as scrambled tofu, sandwiches with tofurky and other condiments, smoothies, juices, salads and much more.  

In the store they sell everything, and I mean, everything you might need for vegan cooking and/or baking. They have the Angel Food Cheese that Hell Pizza uses on their vegan pizzas and they even have a little deli where they sell tofu mayonnaise, beetroot hummus, cashew cheese etc and you pay by the gram. So cool!

Unfortunately it is a tad too expensive for me, when I am trying to save up as much as I can. One small piece of vegan cheese is like $14.. back home it is half this price. I will definitely go for another walk to Newmarket to treat myself as soon as I can though and it did give me lots of inspiration to start making my own vegan cheese and mayo and stuff from scratch.

Vegan potluck - eat yourself happy

On Saturday The Vegan Society arranged a vegan potluck in Grey Lynn. You were meant to bring a dish to share, a plate and $5 to help out with paying for the rent for the venue. Pretty sweet, we though and were excited to go so we went for a luxurious brunch at Pita Pit and ate ourselves happy on their yummy falafel wrap to get more energy for the cooking later on.

But as the "bailer" that I am, after cooking, baking and still in a bit of a falafel choma I decided I felt more up for staying in the comfort of my own house and luckily enough everyone was happy with moving the potluck to our kitchen. So we had a yummuy mexican bean chili, rice and a chickpea/brocooli pasta with chocolate balls for dessert and some rice crackers and hummus!

Turned out to be a pretty cool potluck after all.

A girls winter weekend away

This weekend I left the city life in Auckland and had a getaway with some of the girls from work to Tauranga. Nicky invited us to stay in their wonderful house just by the water and it was such an amazing few days!

The weather turned out to be perfect for our plans, on the rainy Saturday we stayed in, watching Mrs doubtfire and making some falafel burgers, had a brownie baking session in the dream kitchen of the house and had a wine night by the open fire place.

Oh, and we also went for a nice brunch to this place where they had a tasty muesli served with vegan coconut yogurt and soy milk. (We also went for a brunch a second time, which was nice aswell, but staff that are totally ignorant when you ask for vegan options doesn't even deserve to get mentioned..)

On the sunny Sunday, we made it up to the top of Mount Manganui before we headed back home. 

I forgot how stunning the view is from up here, and it felt strange to think that last time I was up here it was warm enough to go for a swim afterwards. As lovely as a winter weekend like this can be, I cannot wait until summer!

Mmmmmash!

Last night I realised how underestimated mashed potatoes is! I had loads of potatoes that needed to be used up and after having my meal I wondered why I haven't done this sooner. I don't think I've had mashed potatoes since becoming vegan. I only mashed the boiled potatoes, put some coconut milk, dairy free butter and salt to mix it up with and it was so yummy!

So yeah, more mash from now on!

What's been going down since last time I saw you

So it's been a while again. A lot has happened since last time and I have a few busy week behind me.

First of all, I been starting to go to yoga and a absolutely love it! I'm going to Abundance yoga centre located in the City Fitness gym on Queens Street, where it only costs 20 dollars/week to become a member and be able to access the gym and all the different yoga classes.

It's so great to go to a yoga class after a busy day at work, to just give myself an hour every day where I only focus on mye, and I can shut all stress and everything else outside for a moment. Pretend that it's not there, which do help, in that moment.

Because it has been a few stressful weeks to say the least..

Oh yeah, because did I mentioned that we moved a couple of weeks ago? Maybe I forgot to mention that tiny detail. We exchanged our big cold room and moved to a house much better and much closer to work, with the help of Scott, Danni and their van. 

Even though it was pouring down rain on moving day and even though we had to use the rug doctor to get rid of a stain on the carpet, the move in went pretty quickly (sometimes it's beneficial to be a backpacker and not have loads of stuff, sometimes)

I've alsocooked some amazing meals, of course. Cooking decent meals is always something I will prioritise even when times are stressful (mostly because I love food but also because as all of you hopefully know, good food is the source to a good mood.. For me anyway!)

I've also tried to become a master of making cupcakes. Yes, I have tried, I have failed and I have had my personal cupcake victories.

Me and Danni tried to make these gingerbread cupcakes, using my grandmas recipe and veganize it. We wanted to make it really cool and add a nice icing and make vegan merengues to put on top, and we did manage to make a couple of successful merengues but most of them just melted in the oven (I'm gonna give this another go at some point and let you know how they turn out!)

After three hours of experimenting on this cupcake Saturday eve, we were too tired to finish really, as the base tasted a lot like baking soda, true meurenges were a fail and because we hadn't even started with the icing at that point.

Other than that I've also had loads of bunny cuddles recently. We now even live with a bunny in our house - it's so great to have pets around again!

Last but not least, work has been going pretty well for both me and Guy. Working for Greenpeace is amazing, especially when activists climbes the Parliament House to take action for real climat change now and challenging John Key and the government. That makes me feel even more proud that I work for this organisation!

Until next time!