Eat Your Greens Food Blogging Challenge: Avocado, Kale and Matcha Smoothie

June 25, 2014 | veganopoulous

This month I have entered the Eat Your Greens challenge set by Shaheen over at A2K- A Seasonal Veg Table. The challenge requires you to prepare a dish (or beverage, or some kind of food) with green veggies. All recipes must be vegetarian (vegan recipes are accepted too).

I joined the challenge quite late and it was good timing because my avocado and kale were looking a little sad and I’d also been wondering when I would start using the small tin of matcha I was given. I’ve been hesitant to use it because, like yacon syrup, a small container is very expensive. So I prefer to sit and look at it.

I haven’t been having smoothies, green or any other colour, much lately because when I get up in the morning I’m so cold and immediately put the kettle on. I don’t often have smoothies during the day, for me they’re pretty much always a breakfast thing.

Avocado Matcha Banana Protein Smoothie

For the Eat Your Greens challenge, I knew it was time to break out the smoothie love again. I didn’t follow a recipe, I just threw in the following based on smoothie combinations I usually make:

– 1 cup home made almond milk

– 1 banana

– 1 scoop vanilla protein powder (maybe half a scoop if you don’t like too much protein powdery taste)

– 1/4 tsp matcha powder

– a few kale leaves, torn (if using baby spinach, I add a big handful. With kale, I use much less)

– 1/2 avocado

For me, the sweetness was just right because my banana was spotty. If the banana wasn’t as sweet, I would have added one Medjool date.

I’m glad I chose this for the challenge as it made me realise how much I miss my breakfast smoothies!

Week 3 Meal Planning: the Heat Wave + Angelina Ballerina + Lego Show version

January 20, 2014 | veganopoulous

This past week Melbourne has suffered through a heat wave with temps over 40C. I think some horrible-hot-weather records were broken, like hottest consecutive days in over one hundred years or something. Stinky stinky stinking hot. To give you an idea, the temperature here in Melbourne reached 44C twice. That’s 111.2F. I really dislike hot weather. Give me autumn-winter any day! I was sooo happy when this heat wave ended, as you can probably imagine! It’s nice and cool as we speak, with a decent temp of 24C (75.2F) today.

Because it was so hot, I chose meals that wouldn’t involve the oven. However because it was so hot, I fell in to full on Can’t Be Bothered Because It’s Too Hot mode.

– I made the Thai Style Yellow Curry from Veganissimo! for myself. This made about four or five meal size serves for me, with rice:

– 43 degress, urgh. Arthur and DeeW asked for rye toast for breakfast. I had a smoothie with frozen banana, almonds, pumpkin seeds, hemp protein and lucuma:

– one of my favourite smoothies is quite simple: frozen banana, almonds, cinnamon, soy milk, hemp protein:

– another favourite smoothie has frozen banana, raw cacao, soy milk and tahini. I loooove chocolate and tahini:

– I love chocolate with tahini so much that I mix with with raw cacao powder and maple syrup to make a spread:

– I made the Ancho Lentil meat from Isa Does It, though I used chipotle powder instead of ancho as I didn’t have ancho. I had this in a burrito with lettuce, corn and home made guacamole. I had quite a few of these during the week:

– I made some strawberry and banana soft serve in my blender. Not the Yonanas, because when I’d frozen my strawberries I had forgotten to take the leaves off and I think you have to have all the stem and leaves off if you use the Yonanas:

– I used the leftovers to make these icy poles (popsicles, in other parts of the world):

– I made the Ranch Salad with Potatoes and Chickpeas from Isa Does It. More yummmz and I used kale for my leafy greens (which is not in the recipe):

– I consider myself lucky to have found firm, cheap mangoes. They’re usually so expensive:

Some time ago, I purchased tickets for DeeW and I to see the Angelina Ballerina stage musical. Or as they say, Mousical. Har har. Of all days, the temp was 44C. I had booked tickets for the 10:30am show and Husband kindly offered to drive us in, hang around the city with Arthur for an hour (eating) and then picking us up right outside the Gallery and driving home. It was such a relief not to have to catch public transport there and back in the heat. I loved this little plaque on the seat in front of me:

The curtain:
angelinaballerinastage1

DeeW loved the performance. Me? Welllll the dancing bits were all out of unison, legs not being extended properly, the lifts not executed cleanly. Does that make me sound like I know what I’m talking about? It’s what they used to say on season one of So You Think You Can Dance Australia. I’d like to say one of the dancers committed the greatest sin of touching the floor DURING AN ARABESQUE. But there were no arabesques that I recall. Still, the kids loved it all though I never understand why there has to be parts where the main character is really upset and crying. Because around me, DeeW and other kids were really upset. And some may argue kids have to learn blah blah blah lessons in life blah blah. But ya know, they’re going to learn those lessons from family and life. Not really from their favourite character, in a live show with all those distractions, having a meltdown (by the way, I really can’t stand the tv show. But DeeW loves ballet):

Currently in Melbourne we have the Play Me I’m Yours ‘exhibition’ going on. Twenty four pianos are on the street around the city and you can go and play them:

On Saturday, we went to the Brickvention Lego show. I blogged about last year’s visit. The amount of work people put in to their creations is staggering. There were a few people in costume walking around:

I loved this. It’s referencing the 007 exhibition on at the Museum:

Vintage Lego from when I was young:

Star Wars is always popular:

There were longer tables set up with trains that ran around the edges:

Sydney Op… you know what this is!

And that’s it! It’s been quiet here on the blog front because in the hot weather, the last thing I want to do is be on my computer in the hot study. This week, I think I’ll just chill out and enjoy the better weather 🙂

Vegan MoFo 2013: Day 6. Where Veganopoulous Starts Losing The Plot.

September 6, 2013 | veganopoulous

My MoFo posts so far have been heavy on the side of BOOOOORING and I hope I find some MoFo mojo soon. I did plan on lots of cooking and raw food prep but I’m finding it hard to drum up the energy for it. Also, in the mornings I like to keep things simple where breakfast is concerned and stick to smoothies. Today’s breakfast was another recipe from ‘Eat Raw, Eat Well’. It’s the Cacao Strawberry Smoothie. It was nice, though I’ve never been a fan of the whole chocolate-strawberry mix. Or chocolate with any fruit. I never liked Jaffas or any other choc-orange combination. Anyway, this smoothie was made with nuts, strawberries, cacao, banana, date and I add in pumpkin seeds:

I bought some canned black beans recently and I was keen to repeat my burrito inhaling after pigging out in Sydney so I made the Home-Style Refried Beans recipe from Viva Vegan! by Terry Hope Romero. I made it oil free by adding splashes of water to the pan for the frying stage. Now to be honest, I’m not gaga over refried beans on their own but a recipe like this that is mixed up with a heap of other stuff in a burrito is perfectly okay by me and my burritos would definitely feel sad without refried beans.

I also made Terry’s recipe for Cilantro-Lime Rice in the rice cooker with brown rice but I got the measurements wrong (faulty memory there… or lazy because I should have checked the rice cooker manual) so the lime rice didn’t taste limey at all as I’d put in way too much water. I froze it in batches anyway to use in later recipes.

I was too lazy to prepare my own salsa so I used an organic salsa-in-a-jar with some Tofutti sour cream. It was just yeah whateverrr. Certainly nothing delicious like a properly prepared burrito from a burrito experts establishment but that’s probably because the brown rice was kinda overpowering with its blandness:

And then later on in the day I realised I had one more of my mum’s stuffed capsicums to eat. And then it was a case of “what do you get when you cross a tortilla with a stuffed capsicum and a lazy blogger?”. You get THIS:

It wasn’t very good, despite the attempts to de-Greek it by adding fresh coriander and sprinkles of cumin and the sour cream. But this is REAL LIFE. This is the kind of crappy concoction you come up with when you are hungry and lazy and fast running out of interesting stuff to put on your MoFo blog.

See you again tomorrow… please?

Vegan MoFo 2013: Day 4

September 4, 2013 | veganopoulous

MoFo is great but I’m already finding myself overwhelmed at the amount of amazing look stuff out there that I want to make. I followed MoFo last year and yet again I am bookmarking a tonne of recipes, though last year I forgot about most of them and deleted a stack when I cleaned up my bookmarks months later. I really don’t want to repeat that this year but we’re four days in and I’ve been drooling for most of that time (and bookmarking like mad).

Today included a breakfast smoothie again. I was supposed to make a raw porridge but forgot and when I read the recipe I had to soak me some nuts beforehand. I was too hungry for that half hour soak so it was smoothie time. Soaking nuts gets in the way of my breakfast and I haaate waiting to eat. Anyway, I used bananas, date, hemp protein, home made almond milk and a pinch each of ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves (I couldn’t find the cardamom). It tasted mostly of bananas because I didn’t put enough of the spices. Oh well, live, drink, and learn. It was still a good breakfast:

I made these gluten free crackers from Oh She Glows after reading about them on Made of Stars. They’re very simple and changing the flavours is a cinch, I left out the rosemary and halved the thyme in case they were too strong for the kids. The ingredients in my batch are almond meal, brown rice flour, sesame seeds, nooch, salt, thyme, garlic powder (also halved), a teaspoon of olive oil and water. DeeW loves crackers, unfortunately the ones she loves are the supermarket variety and I really want to get her on to healthy home made versions. More bummer was that the kids didn’t like these and only afterwards did I remember they don’t like the taste of sesame:

Lunch was the leftover Pumpkin Chickpea and Cauliflower Curry with Fresh Cream Sauce (my version) from ‘Let Them Eat Vegan’, again served on top of red quinoa and dinner was a simple vegetable soup my sister had made:

Today’s chuck-it-all-in-a-bowl recipe was for some tahini balls. I didn’t follow a recipe, I just grabbed stuff that I thought would work. This involved finely chopping brazil nuts and pecans in the food processor then adding Medjool dates (and chopping), then things like chia seed, pumpkin seed, ground flax, coconut, cacao nibs and the tahini. They weren’t really sticking together enough so I added a little maple syrup. The tahini flavour is strong, which I love and the trick is not to eat them all in one go:

So again, not very exciting MoFo-wise and I’m still a little sick and honestly feel a little blah about having to think. At least I’m eating better now than I have been in the past few months 😉

Vegan MoFo 2013: Day 3’s Smoothie and Finally, MoFo Themed Meals

September 3, 2013 | veganopoulous

Another smoothie for breakfast today, this time an old favourite made with brazil nuts, pumpkin seeds, hemp protein, frozen banana, a date and some cacao nibs (and water):

Lunch was a salad wrap. I visited my mum a couple of days ago and she’d chopped up some ingredients to make a coleslaw (cabbage, celery, red capsicum, parsley, dill) and I took a small container home with me. For the wrap bit, I used lettuce leaves. The non-raw element is the eggplant dip I also scored from my mum’s house, she and my sister had roasted some eggplant and made a delicious garlicky dip so I plopped that on to give the whole thing some flavour (and I had to use up the dip, nobody else in my house eats it):

Fortunately my appetite is returning because I decided to also have a vegan stuffed capsicum that my mum prepared. In Greek we call this dish “yemista” and they’re traditionally made with a combination of mince meat and rice but during Lent, many people make vegan versions. My mum’s version is delicious and hopefully I can blog the recipe one day:

Before leaving for Sydney last week, I made some meals to freeze so that I wouldn’t have to run around wondering what to cook for MoFo the day after returning home. I made the Pumpkin Chickpea Cauliflower Curry from Dreena Burton’s ‘Let Them Eat Vegan!’, using the oil free option (which is just omitting the oil when you fry stuff and use a splash of water instead). Dreena recommends serving this with her Fresh Cream Sauce, made with raw cashews but I discovered I was all out of raw cashews and tried macadamias instead. I added more lemon juice to the macadamia cream than the recipe called for, so mine was more a Fresh Macadamia Lemony Cream Sauce. Still, it was fine spooned on top of the stew (though I think the cashew version would be much nicer) which I served with some red quinoa I’d cooked and frozen a long, long time ago (as in, I was surprised to find it in the freezer and decided I better use it):

Dreena’s recipe calls for a can of pumpkin puree but I just cooked and pureed some butternut pumpkin I had in the fridge. It made about half a can’s worth, so with the full amount it would have turned out better. Still, it was loaded with veggies and chickpeas, was oil free and gluten free so I kept with my MoFo theme there when it comes to cooking my own meals 😉

Veganopoulous

A Vegan Life In Melbourne: Product Reviews, Dining Out, Recipes, Events, News

Tag Archives: Smoothies

Eat Your Greens Food Blogging Challenge: Avocado, Kale and Matcha Smoothie

Week 3 Meal Planning: the Heat Wave + Angelina Ballerina + Lego Show version

Vegan MoFo 2013: Day 6. Where Veganopoulous Starts Losing The Plot.

Vegan MoFo 2013: Day 4

Vegan MoFo 2013: Day 3’s Smoothie and Finally, MoFo Themed Meals

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts: