kitchen
My colleague had his birthday a while back, and brought some banana cake that his wife traditionally makes for his birthday to work to share. It was so wonderful I had to get the recepie, which his wife gladly gave.
However, I wanted to modify the cake to be vegan (I'm currently experimenting with vegan baking quite a lot), so I did and it turned out fantastic! I brought some of my cake to work for my colleague and had him take some for his wife, too, and they both liked the cake very much. I thought you might too, so here's the vegan recepie:
BANANA BREAD
Ingredients
4 very ripe bananas
150g (vegan) butter/margarine
200g sugar
2 tablespoons of soy flour
4 tablespoons of water
400 g flour
1 pack baking powder (ca. 14 grams)
100g coconut flakes
some rum (or rum aroma)
Pre-heat the oven to 190ยบ degrees and grease a loaf pan.
I just watched this great animation called "Breakfast" by Kris(tina) Hofmann, a UK designer. It's about losing the connection with the food we eat, and made really well! Please watch it at Vimeo, it's only three minutes long bu really powerful!
Ok, it's the middle of November, so not really growth season. But tell that to our chili plant, which just grew and grew in size during the summer, and started growing chilis in the autumn! I've harvested one chili already, and five more are still growing! I guess it'll be a spicy hot winter for us (at least the one I already harvested was h-o-t!)
Happy World Vegan Day! It starts the World Vegan Month, a perfect time to critically look at our eating habits and their effects on our health, our fellow earthlings as well as the environment. I will be cooking a great, vegan pumpkin soup tonight. Here's the recepie if you'd like to join me:
1 kg Hokkaido pumpkin
1 biggish onion
1-2 garlic cloves
4 biggish potatoes
A bit of oil (olive, raps... doesn't matter)
Ca. 1 liter water
Black pepper
A chili shoot (you can use less or more depending on how hot you want the soup to be)
Ground nutmeg
100 ml soy cream
I'm getting better and better in baking, I must say. The first one, an apricot cake, was gone in one day, and the last slice of the rhubarb pie only hardly made it to the next day. Ond we're only two people in the house!
Look! I made a cheese cake last weekend! An American cheese cake! All on my own! See, I'm not the most experienced or best baker in the world, so I'm really happy that this came out edible.
As you can see from the second picture, the cake is really thin, but the base really thick. That was the only really unsuccessful thing with this cake - the base being too thick and therefore crumbling a lot.
Anyway, half the cake was gone in 30 minutes, so if not so pretty, it is at least tasty!
I read an article in Ullaneule a while back about kitchen cloths and how useful they actually are. As backround to you readers, in Finland no-one uses cloths to do the dishes, rather brushes and sponges.
Anyway, the article was very positive and showed that dish cloths can be used as kitchen cleaning cloths rather than actually wasking with them. Now that sounds good, I thought, as I have up until now been using store-bought kitchen cloths that you use and throw away when they get smelly. Not very environmental; I'd rather have something I can wash.
So I made myself some kitchen cloths! The first one is a basic basketweave pattern, and the yarn is TeeTee's Poppari 100% corn yarn! The problem here is (which I noticed after the cloth was done...) that it can only be washed in 30 degrees. So this cloth is for dusting rather than cleaning the kitchen table!
Nara are planning on starting a campaign against foie gras in Dublin. As I think foie gras (ducks/goose's pathological, fatty liver) is the most stupid and cruel thing one could eat, I searched the menupages.ie for restaurants that serve this shit in and around Dublin. You couldn't believe how many I found, and I didn't even go trough every menu! See the list after the jump.
Sunday was a Hot Day. Brilliant, beautiful sunny day. That calls out for relaxing in the Pheonix Park, knitting the second Ankle Sock, hiding in the tall grass and cuddling the lovely Nic *not published by the wish of the photoshoot object*
Of course I burned myself in the process. Anyhow, that didn't matter too much, because once we got home we started preparing a barbeque; a a few friends were coming over and we tried out best to make the table respectable. I think we succeeded
The guests seemed happy and content too, after a lot of vegetarian grilling, noodles, rice, blue cheese filled grilled mushtooms and some mango sherbet I made. Next time we'll cook Italian!
Today it looked so bad outside!
So I thought it's better to stay inside and bake a peach pie.
I think I succeeded in baking a fine pie, since the above picture has been taken ca. 30 minutes after the pie came out of the oven - and remind you there's only two of us eating it. I tried to find the original recipe for the super easy originally-an-apple-pie, but unfortunately I only have it as a copy-paste Word document.
