People piss me off. There is this adorable cat that I see hanging around our apartment building and I can't figure out if anyone owns her. The cat doesn't have a collar and it doesn't have an ear tattoo so one would assume no one owns her, but I can't find that anyone is looking for her. People are so irresponsible. All they have to do is put a collar on it so you can see that someone owns her... jeesh... ok. Rant over. Let's talk food :)

I spent a few days at my sister in Oslo this weekend. I had to go down for a job interview, and I got the job! Yay! It's a summer job and I'm working as a chemical engineer for one of Norway's largest engineering companies. I'm a little scared but totally psyched.

I decided to take the train down to get some work done, so I made tortilla wraps to bring. I spread the tortilla with refried beans, then filled them with the rice salad I love so much from GoV, added a little fried tofu and some salsa. Very easy and super yummy.

I like that the wraps have the portability of a sandwich, but they taste so much better, probably because I haven't been eating them every day since I was born.


I caught a cold while in Oslo... that's what I get for not getting enough sleep. I have finals coming up on Friday and Saturday so I have no time to be sick. To aid my return to health I busted out the miso and ginger, and I actually took a picture for a change.

It is very good and it makes me feel better. Lots of people post recipes on blogger. I don't because I never use measurements. I just add stuff and taste, but I'll explaine how to make this because it's perfect for winter.

First I grab the ramen noodles from the store. Make sure to get the veggie kind, use the amount of water that the package asks for, probably around 2 c. Throw the spices that come in the bag in the trash. Get some fresh ginger, peel and cut into large chunks (so you can remove them later) or grate if you want to eat it, I never do. Add scallions and soy sauce to water and bring to a boil.

When water boils add noodles, seaweed of your choice. I love wakame and kombu. You can also add fresh leafy greens if you want. I didn't today because I didn't have any on hand. I also love adding dried shitake mushrooms. Boil till noodles and seaweed are soft.

Remove from heat. Add miso, a couple of teaspoons. Start with a little and add more till the flavor is right. You can also add some flax or hemp oil if you want for your fatty acids. Pour into large bowl and eat. I eat my noodles with chopsticks and the broth with a spoon. :) Try this it will fix you right up. For miso soup, use tofu instead of noodles.

I needed tofu today, so I went to town to get some and came across some breaded tofu sticks. They are vegan and I had never seen them before so I decided to try them. I can get about 3 meals from a box and they remind me of chicken strips, minus the chicken. I was actually surprised at how good they were.

It made a great bbq dinner, with the tofusticks, bbq sauce, corn on the cob, broccoli and mashed potatoes. The broccoli and mashed potatoes were leftovers from yesterdays dinner, so the whole thing was very fast. I'm all for fast dinners. After taking the picture I put it through photoshop, and I couldn't be bothered to change it back :)

I also decided today while in town that I'm starting a soy milk campaign in the coffee shops here. Trondheim is a rather small city, so we don't have soy milk in coffee shops like they do in Oslo (the capital). As there is only on decent chain of coffee shops here, no Starbucks, I'm going to start going in, asking for soy milk and not buying anything unless they have it... We'll see what happenes. They will probably try to give me milk without lactose, and I'll have none of it. It might work though.

I came home from school today and checked my mail and there was my very own copy of Vegan Lunch Box waiting for me! I was so excited. Kevin laughed at me... but I don't care. The only way it could be better would be if there were pictures of every lunch box, but obviously that isn't feasible... I haven't made anything out of it yet, but I'm very excited to start cooking.

I made a huge dinner today. I made seitan, with my own recipe for the broth you cook it in. It's a mix of the "meat" broths in LDV, and it gives the seitan a good all-round flavor so I can use it for anything. I also made mashed potatoes, broccoli and miso-good gravy from Everyday Vegan. It was very good, so good in fact that I forgot to take a picture... I did however take a picture of dinner a couple nights ago when I made the mock clam chowder from LDV. Very good too. I'm loving food lately :) I've made the chowder before, but then I used firm tofu. This time I used firm silken tofu which I felt gave a better imitation of clams.


I firmly believe that peanut butter was created to be combined with chocolate, so I made some peanut butter cups from HIAV . These might be one of my favorite recipes in this cookbook. The peanut butter cups are so creamy and delicious, but for some reason they didn't turn out as well this time as they usually do... I must have added to much butter, or the graham crackers were ground finer then usual. It doesn't matter they still taste amazing.

Very yummy :) Thank you Sarah & Tanya.

A horrible thing happened yesterday. Rex, my cat, loves to sneak out every now and then, so yesterday he went tearing out the door and down past the other apartments (we live in an apartment building). He loves it when you chase him, so I took off after him. He turned around and went to run past me and back inside, unfortunately we both stepped to the same side and I stepped on his paw with my big clunky boots. I felt sooo bad. I hurt him pretty bad, but fortunately nothing broke. I was sure I had crushed his paw. Today he seems almost all better, though I think his paw is sore. I still feel horrible, but at least everything ended well.

I'm back and I've made cookies!

These are the chocolate chip cookies from Vegan with a Vengance. These are one of my fav. cookies. I think the only other ones that come close (that I've tried) are the revenge cookies from La Dolce Vegan, these are also slightly healthier.

I substituted about one third of the flour with whole wheat. My boyfriend, Kevin, doesn't like it so I try to sneak it in whenever I can.



For dinner today I made quinoa with mexican seasoning, fresh tomatoes and avocado drizzled with lime juice with refried beans on the side. I love Mexican flavors and this meal was super quick and so yummy. I used quinoa instead of white basmati rice because quinoa makes me feel better, I love the flavor and it's a whole grain.

The refried beans are from a can because I just can't seem to find a recipe I like. If anyone has one they'd like to share please let me know. I love refried beans.

And because he's my baby, here's a picture of my cat. He loves the box. He's so cute.

I'm sick... Usually I swear by miso soup and ginger tea when I'm sick, but this time I don't have a fever or anything I'm just really sick to my stomach and I have aching muscles... So I'm eating rice, relaxing and trying to get better. I'm not going to bother putting up a picture of the rice, because it is quite boring, but it works wonders for my stomach. Will start posting amazing pictureas as soon as I get over this bug.

I was checking my regular blogs yesterday and it turns out that vegan lunchbox lady (Jennifer)'s cookbook is done! I ordered a copy (of course) and now I'm super excited. Books ship on november 15th. Check it out!

I've also received an excellent offer from one of Norways largest engineering companies to work for them this summer and possibly write my masters thesis for them. I'm so excited (a lot of excitement lately, lol). It's such a wonderful opportunity and if they like me it may very well lead to a full time job when I'm done with univeristy.

I am making food, just bad with taking pics. I'm loving nori lately. There is something about it that just satisfies me... Yummy. Will post foodpics soon. I promise.

Is there anything better than a healthy desert? A healthy desert that tastes awesome. I have been adding more raw foods to my diet for a while now, and today I finally made a desert that people at my raw forum have been raving about. It's from Alissa Cohen's book: Living on Live Foods and it is amazing.

You take one peeled lemon, half an avocado and half a cup of soaked dates. Blend it till smooth and eat. Wow! It takes all of five minutes to make and I love it. It's healthy, raw and so good. Here's a pic.
It doesn't look very yellow, or very yummy, so you are just going to have to trust me. I was very skeptical for a while but now that I've finally tried it I can't believe ow good it is.

I also bought some phyllo dough and made apple streusel and spanacopita from Dreena's cookbooks. Sorry, I can't remember which one but the food was great. I have pics of the streussel, but not the spanacopita.

There is something about apples and spices that is so wonderful to me, especially in the fall.











My youngest brother was visiting about a week ago, and I made him the french toast from Vive. He is 13 and he loved it. On his way to the shower he saw me putting tofu in it and he wrinkled his noes, but after he tried it he told me it tasted just like regular french toast. You can't get a better compliment then that. Try it guys!

I got tagged by Melissa so this is a lits of the five things I think everyone should try before they die:

1. Artichokes.
And I don't mean the canned ones or the ones you get out of a jar. I mean fresh artichokes. I love them boiled till tender, then I eat them with garlic butter or olive oil. There are of course lots of other wonderful things to do with them, but I think they are perfect on their own.

2. Asparagus.
Few things represent summer to me as strongly as asparagus. I used to eat them with holandais, but now I love putting them in just about everything. Such a wonderful, crunchy veggie.

3. Spinach.
If I had to choose one veggie I can't live without I think I have to choose spinach. I've loved it for as long as I can remember.

4. Avocado.
This fruit (yes, it is a fruit) can be used for just about everything. It is a great source of fatty acids and vitamin e.

5. Seaweed.
It weirded me out at first, but I truly love the flavor of seaweed. It is also a great source of minerals.

Ok, so a very short post, but it's been a long day. I really did want to post this list though. I love food, and I'm sure there are many other things I could have added, but I think these are probably my top 5.

One of the things I love about vegan food is that you combine side dishes and you get a meal. I guess the same applies for omni food too, but most omnis would miss the animal protein, where as I love that I can have mashed potatoes and gravy, salad and brussel sprouts with onions and spinach and be able to call it a complete meal. I do generally try to add something more protein heavy to my meals, like beans or tofu or seitan etc, but sometimes I just can't be bothered. And let's face it, I did have both cashews and avocado in this meal, so there are some protein heavy foods.

This was dinner today. A side salad and whole wheat pasta with cherry tomatoes and pesto, oh and nutritional yeast. I happened to hear about this whole wheat pasta on tv the other day and decided to try it. Very good, and definately more healthy. The salad is just baby romaine and baby spinach topped with Drenas sesame lemon vinagrette in EDV. I liked the vinagrette, it would be awesome with cold buckwheat noodles and some veggies.



A girl's gotta have her dessert. These are from Vegan with a Vengance. I halved the recipe, because to many cookies are not good for the size of my butt... They do taste good though.

Two days a week I have yoga class, so I try to eat fairly early to avoid a full stomach in class. This is a dish I made this week before class. I liked it because it has a lot of fresh veggies, quinoa which is a whole grain and tofu. I like making stuff like this with lots of different healthy ingredients that is quick and tastes nice. I usually just see what I have left in my fridge and throw it all together because I hate throwing out food.


One of the problems with fall is that I often come down with a cold that just won't disapear so I like to use a lot of fresh ginger and garlic. This dish I made to bring to work so that I would have a decent dinner there. It's rice, ginger, garlic, miso (another wonderful cold-busting ingredient), soy sauce, spinach and tofu. I had silken tofu in my fridge that needed to be used. I was hoping that the tofu wouldn't disintegrate too much, but that didn't work. Instead of tofu chunks I ended up with a risotto looking rice. It tasted delicious though, so I didn't mind that it didn't turn out the way I had planned.


A quick healthy dinner that tasted very good. I needed something substantial yesterday as I was going to several parties and would be drinking alcohol. This was perfect. I really love potato wedges that have been roasted like these. It's a good variation and you just pop the potatoes in the oven and don't have to worry about them anymore.

I decided to make som real wholesome food yesterday so I got out Vive and made the Rosemary tofu balls and served them over pasta. I didn't use the vinegrette because I forgot and was starving so I just ate them. Wow! They were really good. The texture wasn't very meaty or firm, but they tasted delicious.

Making the "dough" for the tofu balls.

Finished tofuballs ready for marinara

Finished dish with pasta, sauce and tofuballs

I also made the choc chip cookies from Vegan with a vengance. I didn't take a picture though because I messed them up. I forgot that I didn't have any baking soda left, so I used a little baking powder (knowing it wouldn't really work) and they were super flat... but still very good.

I'm finally back. It's been a crazy summer with lots of working, traveling and cooking too, just not very much blogging. I've been working at my university, doing research for one of the prof's there. It pays a fair amount and it's great experience, which is good as I have to have 12 weeks work experience to get my masters. I'm pretty sure I have enough now to fulfil the requirements so that's nice.

I also spent some time traveling. I went to Sweden for a short trip to Gothenburg. I was supposed to see the Stones, but as Keith Richard had an incident with a palm tree (what's up with that? The guy is almost 70...) the consert was cancelled. I went anyway as everything was already booked. It was a nice trip. I also went to western Norway for some hiking. I went to Pulpit Rock (Preikestolen) a very famous norwegian tourist attraction. I've never actually been there before, but as my mother was taking the trip with a french girl staying there this summer I decided to come too. We took some amazing pictures, and the hike wasn't bad at all. Well worth doing. Here are some pictures

In the picture above you can actualy see me and my mother standing in the middle of the rock. I'm on the left.

We also hiked Kjerag, which was a lot harder than Pulpit Rock, still fun though. Kjerag is not to far from Pulpit Rock. It's in the inner most part of the fjord. We went to Kjerag first then took the ferry through the fjord (a beautiful trip) to Pulpit Rock.

Here are some pictures of Kjerag

I do have a food pic today too. The first one that I've taken with my new Nikon D50 camera. I am very excited about it and it does take beautiful pictures.


This is todays dinner. I wasn't feeling very creative, and as I made a ton of rice salad yesterday from HIAV by Sarah Kramer (I love bringing it to school as lunch) I decided to have that along with some tofu (inspired by Dreena Burtons recipe on pg 158 in everyday vegan, I can't remeber the name of the recipe). On the side I have a salad with homemade crutons, baby spinach, romaine and pinenuts topped with Dreenas creamy ceasar salad dressing, also EDV. It was very yummy and fast as both the rice salad and the ceasar dressing were already made.

I'm spending most my time lately studying for my finals as here in Norway your final accounts for 75% - 100% of your grade. Obviously I need to do well.

I had one last Friday. It was for this class that was an absolute joke. I got a B (Norwegian B) and I'm pretty satisfied, especially considering the effort I put in (virtually none...) I have another one tomorrow so we'll see how that goes.

I have been cooking a lot lately, but not taking many pictures. I've fallen in love with Vive le Vegan. I love pretty much every recipe I try. I especially like the french toast (which I don't have any pics of) because it tastes like the non-vegan one my mom made when I was a tiny tot.

Quinoa is my new favorite grain.
I love spinach and brussel sprouts
I've been craving grapefruit (in smoothies otherwise it is too bitter)
Dates filled with almond butter are my new treat. It tastes sinfull but is fairly healthy
Seitan is the best meat replacement ever. It works with everything and my cat eats it :)

Will post more after finals. Was supposed to go to Rolling Stones concert in Gothenburg but it has been postponed. To all those who are done with school, enjoy your summer. To the rest of us: Good luck

Finals are right around the corner and the weather is beautiful. I'm cooking. My boyfriend and I fired up the bbq this weekend when the weather started getting warm. I made some veggie kabobs. I don't have pics of them, but they were just different veggies. Made a quinoa salad to go with that. It was inspired by VLV's Quinoa Spring Salad, but I added more veggies. I like lots of fresh veggies in my salads. It was all really good. I love the flavor of bbq.

I also made thai curry. It's a recipe of my moms that I veganize. It's sooo good. I don't have a pic of that either, sorry. I can't remember the name of the book, but it's a very good curry. I put cubed eggplant in it and the eggplant turned all buttery and melted in your mouth. My favorite :)

I had squash left over from the kabobs so I decided to use them in a pasta sauce. Pasta is one of my favorite things because it's fast and easy and you can always add a little twist making it a brand new dish.
Here I've crumbled firm tofu. I sauteed the tofu with some onion, a little garlic and the rest of the squash (cubed). I also added "pasta spices" (oregano, thyme, marjoram, basil). Then I added a can of tomatoes and served it all over some penne. It was very good. I like pasta with a little crunch. I also think that the crumbled tofu gives the dish an interesting texture.





Yesterday I decided on Indian. I love indian food, but I find the sauces to be a pain to make so this weekend we got a jar of vegan sauce from the store. Naan is one of my favorite parts of an indian meal so I decided to make that too. Much to my surprise I discovered that naan is full of animal ingredients. There's yoghurt, eggs, milk, butter... the works. I felt stupid, but thankfully I haven't had it for months, only once after going vegan. I decided that I would make vegan naan that would be every bit as good as regular naan. So I used regular vegan yoghurt, soy milk and margarine and flax eggs instead of regular eggs. The naan was great. Even my boyfriend who was super skeptical when I told him I hadn't put eggs in the naan loved them.

You can see the flax (the black things). I also added some garlic to give the naan a little extra flavor. This pic is from before they were cooked, but they looked the same after, if only a little more golden (we ate them before I could take a pic...).

Today I decided I wanted to make Lemon-Herb tofu from VLV. Wow! It was amazing. It was so tender and nice, and the lemon flavor was so delicate.


The tofu before going in the oven. I also liked that the tofu didn't have to be marinated. You just make it and it turns out wonderful. I served the tofu with quinoa with walnut basil pesto, also from VLV. The pesto was good, but it didn't taste like pesto at all. I loved it as a sauce for the quinoa and it was wonderful with the tofu, however I wouldn't make it for when I crave pesto. It was just too different for my taste. I think it might be good as a salad dressing too, but I haven't tried that yet. The recipe made a fair bit, so I now have a jar of it in the fridge. I'll be having it for lunch tomorrow along with the left over quinoa. I intentionally made a lot so that I would have leftovers. I'm going to crumble the leftover tofu, mix it with avocado and tomato and put it in a pita (inspired by Dreena's website).

Walnut basil pesto.

Quinoa with pesto, roasted pine nuts (love pine nuts) and lemon-herb tofu. Mmmm...

Some people don't do things if they feel pressured. I think I might be one of those people. It seems to me that it's been a long time since I've blogged (because it has), yet every time I think about doing it I decide to put it off. I think it's because I feel like I'm pressuring myself. And because I feel like a weirdo when I take pics of my food. But my boyfriend already thinks I'm a weirdo, so it shouldn't really matter... Anyways I decided that I should do some blogging today. I also decided that I can blog about whatever, even if it isn't about food, because I sometimes feel like just writing random thoughts.

First a few food pics I want to share


This is a cross between Peacefrog's artichoke pasta and Gerry's artichoke pasta, both from LDV. I only had some of the ingredients so I put the two together and changed it all a little and the result was Michelle's artichoke pasta. It was very tasty.


I was craving something sweet, but felt like I needed something healthy, so I made these muffins. I know I got the recipe from one of Sarah's books, but I think I might have changed it a bit. I think it might have been a blueberry muffin recipe and then I used whole wheat. I can't remember. These were really good too, although my boyfriend is of the opinion that muffins shouldn't be healthy (when I told him that yes, there was whole wheat in them). They tuned out really pretty too. I was a little worried for a while, because they looked green before they were done.



Another craving. This is peach blueberry cobler from LDV. What I did though was take Wolffies Peach cobler recipe and added some blueberries. It turned purple, but it tasted delicious.




Made the rosted cherry tomato pasta again. I really love this recipe. It's so easy and so good.



I made these yesterday. They are Dreena's chocolate p-nut butter squares. These are so good. You can see the chocolate and peanutbutter layers. The bottom is oatmeal, so the cookies are almost healthy :)

I've been wanting to make seitan (a meat alternative made from wheat gluten) for ages. Yesterday I decided I should make my favorite Tikka Masala recipe (from Jamie Oliver's book Jamie's dinners), veganize it and add homemade seitan chicken. So that's what I did today. It all tasted awesome, but seeing as how the seitan took almost an hour and a half and the Tikka Masala took almost an hour I realized that it might have been a good idea to make the chicken a different night. My boyfriend had the same as me, except with real chicken (yuck) instead of the seitan chicken. Of course it is an improvement because he had the veganized sauce but I still would have preferred that he had the seitan too.


Here is the seitan cooking. The gluten itself has no flavor, so to make it more like chicken it is cooking in the chicken flavoring from LDV. I was a little worried, because the Tikka Masala recipe calls for the chicken to be marinated for half an hour in an Indian yogurt sauce and I wasn't sure how the flavors would go together, but it ended up being really good. I was impressed. The recipe made more seitan than I thought though so I only used half of it in the Tikka Masala. The next time I make it I'm going to double or triple the recipe as it keeps for up to 6 months in the freezer. I love convenience foods.


Here's the "chicken" marinating.


The only thing I don't like about Indian food is that it always looks so boring. This dish was absolutely wonderful, but you wouldn't know it from looking at the boring brown stuff over rice... As for veganizing the recipe for the sauce that was very easy. I simply substituted soy cream for the yogurt and the cream in the recipe. I would have used soy yogurt, but the only kind we could find had strawberry flavor. I swear, I just saw the regular kind.

On a different note 'Becoming Vegan' and 'Vive Le Vegan' arrived today. I was excited (as always) my boyfriend however asked me if I didn't have enough books about veganism already. The answer is, of course, NO! Silly boys. Will probably be cooking some more tomorrow as it is Sunday and I'm off work, so I'll try to take more pics.

I was checking my e-mail today and found an e-mail about a comment that had been posted on this blog. It was from Sarah :) Yay! It said she loves me too (because I love her for making me a vegan kitchen goddess). I was so excited. Then I realized that I had checked a moderate comments setting, so then I tried to publish the comment but it wouldn't work... But I have the e-mail. Sorry Sarah.


I realized that I'm not very good at posting pictures. It really is too bad, because I make a lot of good food. I took a picture of my dinner today, pasta with spinach, mushrooms, lemon, garlic and soy milk. Oh, and pine nuts on top. It was really good.


This past weekend and through this week I've made tofu scramble which I adapted from the post punk kitchen. It was really good, and it looked like scrambled eggs. My boyfriend saw me cooking something, so he decided to have some too. He liked it. I made some fried potatoes for breakfast, seeing as how we had been out on Friday night. That was nice. I had refried beans with mine.

I made Daniyell's peanut butter cookies and Wollfie's peanut butter cookies, both from LDV (La dolce Vegan). I added chocolate chip cookies to both. I loved them and my boyfriend has started calling me the cookie monster. We had a friend over for dinner on Friday. I was going to make the stuffed eggplant from GOV, because they are awesome, but all the eggplants at the store were looking sad, so I ended up making mashed potatoes, dijon brusselsprouts, spinach and mighty miso gravy. The boys, being omnivores, also had chicken. I intended to make some tofu for myself to go with the veggies, but time ran out so I ended up having everything but the chicken. I asked my friend how everything was and he said awesome. Then I told him there was soy milk in the mashed potatoes and he had to taste it again. He still liked them :) Then he told me how I was the opposite of this guy he know because I eat only veggies and his friend won't touch them. Stupid boys. Veggies are awesome.

Yesterday for dinner I had potato wedges that had been baked in the oven with garlic, terragon, lemon and olive oil and asparagus on the side with chopped cherry tomatoes that had been marinated in garlic, terragon, olive oil and red wine vinegar. I did kind of miss the hollandaise with my asparagus until I started thinking about how disgusting the eggy smell is and how it gets on everything, yuck. Then I was over it. I also made soy dogs for dinner one day. That is to say I bought soy dogs, boiled them, bought buns and made french fries.... It was good though. I came across the long wiener type ones as opposed to the fat bratwurst kind so I bought them.

I'll try to be better about taking pictures. I just got an e-mail from amazon and 'Vive Le Vegan' is on it's way. I'm excited. I love cooking.

I'm bad with breakfast. I don't like eating early in the mornings, so I usually go to school on an empty stomach. Because I'm disorganized and always running late I often forget to bring lunch too, and therefore end up starving and having to buy a vegan chocolate or something at school. Therefore I decided that I was going to make a rice & bean salad from 'How it all Vegan' by Sarah Kramer and Tanya Barnard.


As you can see the salad looks awesome. It also tasted great. I ended up eating it for dinner and none of it ever made it to school.... I'll have to make some more.

I also feel very proud for having taken a picture of something I made. I just want to emphasize that this bowl is my second one, because the first was gone before I remembered that I was supposed to take a picture.





My cat, Rex. He has devil eyes in this picture, but it looked even worse after I tried putting it through photoshop... oh well. He doesn't really have anything to do with this post. He's just a cutie. He liked the corn in my rice salad, and he can never pass on avocado... cats.

A very productive weekend. I've been cooking up a storm, and all of it from Sarah Kramer's books. On Friday I made Roasted cherry tomato pasta which was heavenly. On Saturday I made two loaves of Zucchini bread, then yesterday I made mashed potatoes, baked portobello mushrooms and dijon brusselsprouts and peanut butter cookies with choc chips for dessert. Who knew vegan food could be this decadent...? Well I did. And Sarah did because she wrote the book on it. And anyone who has made anything from her books knows.

I didn't take any pics, so I will have to cook some more tomorrow... however there is a pic of the roasted cherry tomato pasta here:sudzgirl's blog and if that doesn't make you hungry nothing will. If you wanna check out Sarah's website it's here. I love Sarah. She makes me a vegan kitchen goddess.

Other than making food I'm "studying" for a test tomorrow. I hate midterms with a passion. Stupid midterms. They aren't made better by the fact that it's anywhere from -5 to -15 degrees outside (celcius) and there's tons of snow and one of my friends is studying on Malta and another friend is moving to southern Spain. Stupid friends.