planet vegan scotland

14:06

ice, a pie and Burn’s Night

sage and onion potato pie

vegan haggis from goodness direct and our old Burn’s Night blogpost from 2008 complete with poetry and music!

other Scottish recipes you might like for Burn’s Night:

skirlie (oatmeal stuffing)

cranachan – pudding of oats, (soya) cream, whiskey and raspberries

Balmoral Pie (scroll down through the mains, it has pics) – sausages and baked beans topped with mash

Scotch Broth

Scottish Macaroons

mince and dumplings

gourmet raw brownies and crisps

brownies all in a row

But first to the crisps: completely guilt free, dried raw squares of tastiness. The three flavours are Beetroot, Spicy Thai and Red Pepper and they’re all very good…

beetroot crisps nestled in their bag

…but the absolute winner for us was the red pepper. Reminiscent of pizza, these would be very nice little crackers too. Topped with a small slice of tomato, a basil leaf and maybe half an olive… but before these musings could be made real and captured on camera they were all scoffed by other people.

red pepper crisps

The brownies are satisfyingly sticky, soft and rich, remarkably like a cooked cake but you still feel great after eating them. No sugar rush/up/down thing going on at all.

that's my favourite, the cacao cocobanana one

It’s deliciously coconutty and sweet. And just look at this cacao mint brownie coming towards you:

you want it don't you? well you should, it's good!

Excuse the food porn Other varieties are cacoa cashew which is pleasantly cinnamony, carob hazelnut and carob orange. The carob ones are nice, they got gobbled down fast, but chocolate is always preferred here.

All these delicious, healthy products are raw, organic, vegan and free from wheat and gluten You can read more about them and purchase on Gourmet Raw’s website Use code GR003 for a 10% discount.

stripey sky and flapjacks

the sky

and the flapjacks

red dragon pie

fresh out of oven

This is a dish we’ve had a lot over the years but never written up. Original credit goes to Sarah Brown’s Vegetarian Kitchen (BBC cookery series). It’s a wonderfully filling and wholesome meal. Topped with mashed potatoes, the base is made of aduki beans (goodness direct link there, which links back to our aduki bean cottage pie recipe!), brown rice and vegetables in a gravy. The name comes from the beans which are referred to as ‘red dragons’ in the East; their nutrient content is said to give you the strength of the dragon

Here’s how we do it:

Soak beans overnight if using dried ones. For the mammoth pie above which did dinner and lunch next day for four, we used 250g of dried beans. Place in a large pan, cover well with water, bring to the boil and let simmer for a long time… (should be instructions on the bag). Throw in the rice (200g) about half way through cooking. Add more water if needed. Once it’s all nearly cooked add the vegetables. In this pie there were four carrots and one head of celery, all chopped. Onion is good too.

As that cooks up a bit, add a teaspoon of mixed herbs, a good squidge of tomato puree and a teaspoon of yeast extract. Taste and add salt if needed. Stir well. Top with mashed potatoes – especially easy if using cookware that does hob and oven like our favourite Le Creuset Cast Iron Round Casserole – and bake in a hot oven until nicely browned.

dished up

Carmelised Nectarine & Apricot Jam

I always enjoy my homemade jam, but I absolutely lust after this jam! I originally made it to giveaway at Christmas, but after tasting the scrapings left in the pot, I just had to keep a jar, which meant I had to make another batch. Such a pity, he he!

The carmelisation was a really just a bit off serendipity, but adds to the flavour. It is the sugar that is carmellised and not the fruit.

The recipe looks long, but it isn't, it is really simple and padded out with tips, that I hope will be helpful. My last piece of advice is MAKE THIS JAM!

print recipe

Nectarine & Apricot Jam

Written by Jacqueline Meldrum

January 06, 2012

I can say without a doubt this is the best jam I have ever tasted. It is so full of fruity flavour. Just gorgeous and easy to make too.

Ingredients

5 nectarines
12 apricots
juice of ½ lemon
1 kilo jam sugar (with pectin)
a knob butter

Instructions

1. Pop a saucer into the freezer, you will test the jam on this later to see if it is ready. 2. Cut a cross in the top of each nectarine, then pop them in a bowl or pot of boiling water for a few seconds. This will loosen the skin. Take them out one at a time and submerge in cold water, The skin will just slide off.3. Take the stones out of the nectarines and apricots and chop into 1 cm pieces.4. Place the fruit and lemon juice in a large heavy based pot and cook gently, bringing to a simmer for a couple of minutes, giving the fruit a wee mash with a potato masher.5. Meanwhile heat the sugar. I used to heat it in the oven, but now I heat it in the microwave. Quite by accident the bowl got a splash of water on it one day and I ended up with warm sugar and some caramel. It really improved the flavour, so now I intentionally splosh water over the bowl before adding the sugar. I microwave the sugar for 6-7 minutes. My microwave is 100w.6. Add the warm sugar and caramel to the pan and stir until dissolved at a low heat. Once the sugar has dissolved bring to a boil and simmer for approximately 5 minutes. 7. While the jam is simmering, add a knob of butter, this helps to prevent foam from building up on the surface.8. Test your jam on your cold saucer. Add a wee dollop, leave for a few seconds and then run your pinkie across it. If it wrinkles it is ready.9. Pour into hot sterilised jam jars using a funnel. Add a greaseproof disc and immediately screw on the lid. Leave to cool.10. Your jam will keep in a cool, dark place for a year. Once open it should be stored in the fridge and used within a month.notes: I sterilise my jars by running them through a dishwasher cycle and bottling the jam while the jars are still hot, but you can dry sterilise them in the oven. Always be careful not to touch inside a jar or lid or bacteria will be introduced into the jar.

Details

Total time: 30 mins Yield: 4 x 454g.jars

As I used up nectarines that had been sitting in the fridge for a while and some sale apricots this jam was quite frugal and as such I am entering it into this week's Frugal Food Fridays, a new weekly challenge set by Helen over at Fuss Free Flavours. Just perfect in this month of tight budgets. If you want to join in, just add your post to the linky and link to Helen. The challenge is ongoing.

Tags: vegan easy jam homemade jam how to make jam caramelized fruit jam preserving vegetarian caramel nectarines sterilising jars preserves jam apricots

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15:08

water stone ice

loch and sea

stone

ice

Glazed Parsnips and Carrots with Pistachio

Yule Dinner

Everyone agreed that this side dish was the best, it’s been added to Vegan Christmas/Yule but is reproduced here too as it’s not just for Christmas but good anytime

recipe:

8 medium parsnips (you can of course use bigger/smaller and adjust quantities)

8 medium carrots

a little sunflower oil to rub

a couple of teaspoons of maple or golden syrup

a teaspoon of rough seasalt

a handful of natural pistachios (not salted or roasted)

Peel/scrape the vegetables and cut into quarters, once lengthways and once across the middle. Rub them with oil and place in roasting tin. Drizzle syrup. Sprinkle salt and pistachios. Roast in a hot oven for about half an hour.

Solstice Chocolate Refrigerator Christmas Cake

sun sets on the Solstice over the garden

You will need:

1 square cake tin, greased

2 100g bars of good chocolate

1 tablespoon of margarine

1 tablespoon of golden syrup

1 200g pack of bourbon biscuits (other biscuits will do), bashed up

and here’s the Christmassy part… a crumbled slice of Christmas cake including bits of marzipan and icing

a handful of raisins

Method:

Melt 1 bar of chocolate in a Bain Marie (bowl over pan of hot water) along with the marg and syrup. Once nice and smooth, stir in your other ingredients and press mixture into tin. Melt the other bar and spread on top. We topped with sugar stars… chill in fridge until set and cut into squares.

It’s gorgeous… quite different with the Christmas cake but very, very good and dangerously moreish

your calorie requirement for the week in one handy square

it’s not too late

cakes

to make a Christmas cake or plan your vegan Christmas dinner

to buy a vegan cookbook or kids book – today, Monday 19th is the last day for free shipping with Amazon but there are various other delivery choices all week.

to get a t-shirt from us, the deadline is 20th Dec with express shipping

Ethical Superstore‘s last order dates are Tuesday 20th 12pm for standard delivery and Thursday 22nd for express

The Book People have next day delivery available until the 22nd.

Or you can just say, ‘no, I am not buying anything else,’ and go for a nice walk instead… probably the better option

in the woods

In case we don’t blog before it’s all over, have a happy festive time

Just like the ones we used to know…

‘Wait just a minute!’ I hear your puzzled voices. ‘I thought you were going to show us your revamped bedroom??? Surely this is a line from ‘White Christmas??? And that doesn’t look like a bedroom photo to me…’

You’re right, and I’m glad (though not surprised) that you recognised those words. I DID intend to show you the revamped bedroom, but it is, as yet, still in the mid-vamp stage and it’s time now for Christmassy stuff. And I did promise you a post about Christmas books, last year. So what’s kept me from posting for so long?

Well, for one thing there was the Compassionate Living Fayre in Edinburgh. It was organised by Ethical Voice for Animals and Scottish Vegans had a stall there, as usual. Here I am with my friend, Christie, giving away free samples of vegan home-baking (donations welcomed!). We raised over £112 for VegFam (feeding the hungry without exploiting animals). But it wasn’t just the stall. I had agreed, again, to do a talk on a compassionate Christmas dinner. With a PowerPoint. It took quite a while to make up my talk and to set up the PowerPoint, I can tell you, and I’d love to show it to you, but I have no idea how…

Anyway, it seemed to go well, and if you’d like a copy of the recipes I handed out, e-mail me at pv47@live.co.uk and I’ll send you one.

Also, I don’t think I’ve mentioned this before, but my beautiful daughter was diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (M.E.) at the beginning of the year. We’ve had problems with the benefits agency and a deeply traumatic tribunal. We don’t talk about it anymore. But it made it difficult to think about blog writing for a while this autumn… Jane’s now having Kairos therapy and is beginning to feel a difference in her sleep patterns, so that has to help.

You know that John’s a tutor with the Open University don’t you? Well he’s got two courses running at the moment which means rather a lot of essays to mark. And as he’s a VERY conscientious and helpful tutor, his comments are lengthy and his tutorial notes copious. I type them all out for him… Each essay takes me, on average, 45 minutes, and the tutorial notes a lot longer. It adds up… And has meant that I’ve had very little time to READ blogs, far less WRITE them.

John is so busy with his marking that he even took some to Johnny’s graduation and marked them while we were waiting to go into the hall.See what I did there? Popped in that information, very casually, about Johnny’s graduation? Yes, our sweet son has passed his post-grad course and was awarded the degree of Master of Science (M.Sc.) (with merit) in Museum Theory and Practice, last week, at Glasgow University! We’re all thrilled and delighted!Excuse the wrinkled top! I was so excited when I saw him walking towards us in his gown and hood that I just had to get John to take our photo right away! Does my excitement, joy and pride show? Just a tad???

But back to the real subject of this blog post: Just Like the Ones We Used to Know…

Well, actually, not quite. We remain a very Christmassy family. Well, you know that, don’t you? I’ve blogged about our Christmas decorations here, about our favourite Christmas films here and about our snowed-in and flu-plagued last Christmas here. But things have, of course, changed over the years. No more do we have rosy cheeked tinies hanging up their stockings excitedly on Christmas Eve. No longer do they sit on my lap, or cuddled in beside me, while I read them their favourite Christmas books.

But we’ve always been a read-aloud family and still are. Not long after I met John, I started reading aloud to him. We like it as a way of sharing a book instead of reading it one after the other and having to keep saying, ‘Which bit are you at now?’ The children were both able to read fluently when they were very young, Johnny when he was three years old and Jenny when she was five, but this didn’t stop them from enjoying having me read aloud to them. When they were wee, our favourite Christmas book of all was probably Lucy and Tom’s Christmas, by Shirley Hughes.We loved all of Shirley Hughes books and enjoyed her illustrations. When I read a book aloud, I always began by saying its title, followed by the author’s name. This way, the children got to recognise the names of authors they liked and could look for them in the library and bookshops. Also, as soon as they could talk, I taught them to say their address, as a safety precaution. When Jenny was three, we lived for a year at 39 Kinloch Terrace. Jenny, who pronounced ‘Shirley Hughes’ as ‘Solly Ooze’, was so used to hearing that name tagged on at the end of book titles that she thought it went at the end of her address, too. So, when asked where she lived, she would say, ‘Tutty-nine Tinnoch Tellace, by Solly Ooze’! Wee soul!

Here she is, reclining beside the truly horrible Christmas tree we had at the time, avidly watching something on television. Don’t you love those wee, crossed feet? And the engrossed wee face? I do!Anyway, Lucy and Tom’s Christmas is still a delight to us and the ‘kids’ love to browse in it and reminisce. This was always one of our favourite pictures from the book.Another favourite was The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, which I valiantly tried to read in an American accent. The kids were uncritical of my efforts and enjoyed it every year for a long time.When they were older, we all enjoyed Jostein Gaarder’s Christmas Mystery and Jenny still rereads it for herself. This year she’s reading it on her Kindle, her main Christmas present which we gave her early, to cheer her up after the tribunal (which, as you’ll remember, we’re not talking about…)

When they were older still, another Christmas book we loved was Envious Casca, by Georgette Heyer. We were all big fans of GH’s historical novels, but she also wrote several Golden Age detective stories. Envious Casca is one of them and we read it so often that our copy fell apart and we had to buy a new one! The family loved me doing all the different voices and acting out all the parts. Really, I’m a great loss to Hollywood! Given a different life, my mantelpiece would be groaning with Oscars!

I’ll stick my neck out here (though I realise that’s NEVER an attractive look, unless you’re a goose) and say that Envious Casca is the best Christmas ‘who-dunnit’ ever! It’s a country house, locked door mystery, well told, with a large cast of characters, all with motives. And it takes place over Christmas! Perfect! Do give it a try!Taken by the Hand is one of my favourite O. Douglas books and it features Christmas, so merits a place in this post!

When her mother dies, our heroine is a young adult, now left orphaned. She’s a shy young woman who has never had to take control of her own life. To begin with, after the funeral, she leaves Glasgow and travels to London to live with relatives, very busy socialites who, while being superficially kind to her, find her a bit of a drag.

Luckily, when visiting a woman whom she met on the journey down, she’s invited to stay with one of this woman’s friends for Christmas, in the Suffolk countryside. There she finds friendship, confidence in herself, people who value her and, of course, love!

Another book that John and I love is Winter Solstice by Rosamunde Pilcher. (They made a film of the same name… Don’t let anyone, not even your nearest and dearest, persuade you to EVER EVER EVER watch it!!! Appalling! Awful!!! Nothing like the book!!! OK? Fine!)

We love Rosamunde Pilcher’s way of describing attractive and interesting rooms and houses, and her gentle stories with interesting characters, and this one is typical. There’s tragedy near the beginning, but then a journey to Scotland, and an interesting house and nice people. And, as in Shakespeare in Love, and as usual in RP’s books, there’s ‘a part for a dog’. She knows her dogs…

Also as usual, there’s lots of smoking and meat-eating, both of which are anathema to me, but we non-smoking vegans are used to having to accept that in books…

If you like the kind of books I do, give it a try! I don’t think you’ll be disappointed. But remember what I said about the film, OK? I’ll be deeply saddened if I hear that you’ve watched even 10 seconds of it. No, wait. Let’s be honest. I’ll be horrified if you watch even ONE second of it!This year, John and I are re-listening to it on talking book, read by the WONDERFUL Hannah Gordon. She is SO GOOD! Her acting is perfect, so natural, and she does all the voices… (And, since she’s from Edinburgh, there are no fake (shudder) Scottish accents! Phew!) It’s like listening to a cast of actors. Don’t accept any alternative readers!!! We’re loving spending the odd half an hour or so in the evenings, John putting aside his essays and me having a break from typing, and crocheting a throw for the couch. (I’ve hurt my right thumb cutting up vegan dog treats – how unfair is that??? – and can’t knit…)

So, picture, if you will, the scene… Hannah Gordon reading Winter Solstice to us via the hifi. A fire burning in the stove. A dog leaning into each side of me on the couch. A cat (usually Tom, of course!) on my lap. The other three cats reclining about the room. The offspring to and froing in the background. A very pleasant way to spend an evening!

Now, I’m going to put my (Christmas) cards on the table here. Despite my impeccable literary taste, at Christmas I’m not averse to a bit of girlie reading. As long as it’s well written… (Though it feels a bit weird that the protagonist’s mother – ‘still quite active and attractive for her age’ in one such book! – is usually my age or younger!) The Twelve Days of Christmas by Trisha Ashley is good for a chilly afternoon, curled up on the couch with some treats to hand. Holly lost her husband at Christmas and now doesn’t celebrate it any more. Eight years on, she takes a house-sitting job in the country, expecting just to look after a couple of animals and keep the house warm and clean and to be able to get through Christmas far from any celebrations. However, the absent owner’s family live nearby and they expect to be invited to the big house for the festivities. And then they’re all snowed in! You might enjoy it too…

So here’s a photo of our favourite Christmas books. (The children’s ones are at the end.)And the picture at the top of this post (which I hope wasn’t too much of a disappointment) was of our Christmas mantelpiece. This is Jane’s domain and I have to fight my corner for any changes I want to make. There was no argument about this year’s addition, though: an extra Santa,made by our friend Kris, who makes cute and lovely ornaments, earrings, cake-toppers, stitch markers etc., from polymer clay.)

And here, because an SVH blogpost wouldn’t be an SVH blogpost without at least one furry person, is Molly, ‘helping’ me to make Sylvia’s Christmas placemats (remember them from last year???)Well, I think I’ve gone on long enough and you’ve probably got plenty of other things you need to be getting on with. Normal features (Tom asked me to say; I wonder why…) will resume in the New Year, but in the meantime, I wish you, my lovely readers (and especially those who leave comments!) the kind of Christmas you like best and a 2012 filled with peace, happiness and love. XToday’s title: From White Christmas by Irving Berlin

Today’s breakfast: thinly sliced homemade toast, marg, marmalade and a Redwood Rasher, washed down with a mug of sweet nettle tea. Set me up nicely!

Today’s dinner will be: Advent Dinner!!!