A Sunday in Italy

The other day we found a piece of Italy in the middle of Newmarket in Auckland. This annual Italian Market packed with many different visitors had Freshly baked bread (I bought a rye sourdough loaf that was amaze balls!) , all kinds of pasta, pizza, bread & several different oil (Rosemary, lemon and garlic are now my top 3 favourite food oils!) and vegan gelato, yes VEGAN Italian ice cream - I was in heaven.

The que to Laleles ice cream stand was one of th longest in the whole market, for a reason. They sold vegan smoothies, organic cocolato (which is a kind of vegan Italian ice cream made with coconut) and the organic population that we decided to try.

There were so many flavours to choose between but we went for the dark chocolate salty caramel and avocado coconut popolato. (After the photo was taken we switched ice cream as my addiction for avocado took over!) thank gosh that Lalele was not only a visitor of he Italian market, but have a store on Queen street - I will make sure to pay them a visit in the near future.

After a lot of different Italian food flavours we chilled out in the sun and enjoyed the fact that it was finally a very summery day, before heading back home to the cave to watch horror movies and eat the big left over chocolate cake. What an Italian day, eh!

Buenas noches! (okay that's Spanish.. Don't know how it goes in Italian!)

Feverish Saturday

What do you do when everyone else has left to go to the beach and you've been laying in bed with fever a whole sunny, warm Saturdy and wake up at 5:30pm, feel restless but still not completely back on track? Go to where you're best friend works (Neghbourhood bar in Kingsland, which is by the way one of my favourite hang outs in Auckland!) so she can cheer you up with a hot chocolate!

So this fever Saturday hasn't been too bad and I did have an hour of sunlight in our garden in the morning. I love that summer is getting closer, cold (both in my body and around me) can go away. Now.

Happy birthday Peak!

The other day a practised my vegan baking skills when I made a chocolate mudcake with frosting for one of my roomies, Tony, who turned 30. Charli made a slightly more impressive vegan b-day cake though, and both of them together led to a cake coma for all involved.

The best part of being an adult? That you can have cake for breakfast lunch and dinner and no one tells you of for it! 

Oh you lovely kumara

I craved hash browns ALL day yesterday, came home in the evening, looked through the whole kitchen for potatoes, only found kumaras and thought why the heck not. I've never made hash browns before, so I thought it was gonna be a mission but it was so easy, and NO, you don't need egg to keep the patties together.

All I used was shredded kumaras, finely chopped spring onion, cajun pepper (to make it nice and really spicy!), salt, black pepper and some flour. Put some Oliviani butter in a frying pan on medium heat and squeezed handfuls of kumara mixture together and flattened into pattie shape. Cooked until golden brown on the bottom (but was careful with not flipping them too earlu as they probably would've break otherwise!), flip and cook the other side until golden. 

The best protein bar out there

Okay so the other day I went in to the cool little store Commonsense Organic in Mount Eden to buy (for the millionth time) the tastiest proteinbar I've ever had. It's like eating a juicy brownie, but packed with loads of good stuff aswell. They come in different flavours and I've only had the really chocolaty one before - until I was by the cash desk, ready to pay and Tom (yes, the Tom who invented this brilliant thing) himself comes up next to me and tells me to try the mint one instead. So thank you Tom for making me try something new, it was awesomeness in a few chews!

The hasselbackpotatis that got burned

So I made a traditional Swedish side dish the other day after showing Guy a list of food from which he though these potatoes sounded like a winner, it's called Hasselbackspotatis and it's so much more yum than I remembered. 

Don't understand why I haven't done it in years as it doesn't only taste divine but it's really easy to make (if you don't forget to take them out from the oven in time.. Yes mine were burned but they got good reviews from the people eating it anyway;) they are potatoes that you cut up almost completely through and roast in the oven. 

Hasselbackspotatis is usually served with some kind of meat, but with lack

Of mock meat and tofu or anything else in the fridge I just made a white bean salad and served it with hummus. A bit more innovative way to eat these potatoes. 

Try to make these yourself and you won't regret it. You can find the recipe here: http://easilygoodeats.blogspot.co.nz/2012/02/hasselback-potatoes-hasselbackspotatis.html?m=1 

I added some crushed garlic in the oil for more flavour and polenta on top instead of breadcrumbs. Good luck!

The plant-milk movement in Sweden

Hey you all lovelies that are patient enough to even visit my blog, that hardly gets any attention from me.

Anyway.

Just realised that I forgot to tell you guys that I wrote this blog post for the Vegan Society the other week, about the Swedish music festival, Way Out Wests', choice of banning cows' milk in the festival area. I wrote the post before the festival had actually started so just wanted to add that the result after this 72 hours without milk campaign was that 3991.77 kilos of CO2e was saved - pretty incredible, hey?!

Read my little article here if you want to know more about the starting of what I want to call the Swedish milk revolution.