Dr Vegan's Sing-Along Blog

Up for some light entertainment? Fancy dressing up like a cow and singing a song about vegans? Well, my friend, you are in luck. Me and some of my amazing vegan peeps recently performed a song and dance routine at our Summer Vegan Meet and Greet.

Peter wrote the song and asked me if I was interested in singing a duet with him. He and  I are both gobby show-offs and so of course I was up for it. His wife Kathryn and our friend Priya agreed to be back up singers/dancers. I designed some choreography that was simple but effective. We had several Sunday afternoon meals followed by rehearsals that made us laugh until we cried.  Once I was literally lying on the floor clutching my sides after Peter (who wrote the song, you must remember oh best beloved) inexplicably changed the tune and began to sing it as if it was that song by Rod "the bod" Stewart all without realising it. Each time we would be laughing and he would be puzzled as to the laughter and he would groan and say, "I'm doing it again, aren't I?"

Who says vegans have no sense of humour, eh? But that's what people think.  When you go vegan that you become serious or angry or lose your sense of humour. That's why we did it--to show that vegans enjoy a laugh.

And dressing up like cows. And a panda.

So here we are. P and the Three C's.  Or Panda and the three cows.  Because that was the onesie costumes we were able to secure.

So turn up your volume and strap on your seatbelt.  Feel free to sing along with the chorus.      

So without further ado, I present P and the Three C's singing You Gotta be a Vegan.  

Enjoy! 

Song of the summer

Every couple of summers I hear a song and fall in love. It has to be a song with complicated lyrics--like long and winding lists or stream of consciousness ramblings that might not make sense.

I know it when I hear it.

Then I proceed to immerse myself in the song until I can sing all the words.

Sometimes it can take me all summer.

In the past I have memorised such songs as You Can Call me Al by Paul Simon.

It's The End of the World As We Know It (and I feel fine) by REM.

We Didn't Start the Fire by Billy Joel.

 

Loose Lips by Kimya Dawson (of the Moldy Peaches) The longer version than the Juno soundtrack (the one with the Anti Bush/Iraq war lines in it)

Last year (or maybe the summer before) it was I'm Proud of the BBC by Mitch Benn.

This year I have hit upon an incredible video by the amazing Amanda Palmer (married to one of our favourite authors Neil Gaiman).  The video is a stop motion masterpiece with all the lyrics written out by hand before your eyes (mostly on the body of the lovely Amanda Palmer) so there is some tasteful/artistic nudity. You have been warned. But it is gorgeous. I also love that she doesn't shave her armpits--just like me!!! She is big on natural body hair. She has another song called Map of Tasmania all about not shaving off your pubic hair. Seriously.

So here is this summer's song. Drumroll please.
Rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat!

Want It Back by Amanda Palmer and the Grand Theft Orchestra.

If you are squeamish about nudity then go to youtube and search for the "clean" version (I hate that term. it implies the human body is dirty) which had pixelated wobbly squares over her bits.

Do you sing in the summer? What do you like to do to challenge yourself?

Now that's the best tasting pickle I ever heard

Do you remember those telly adverts about Vlasic Pickles?

I have been craving pickles lately. Seriously craving.

If hadn't had the horrible hysterectomy I might have thought I was pregnant.

I haven't had pickles since we lived the U.S. I am fond of only one sort of particular pickle. Not too sweet. Not too sour. The Goldilocks of pickles. The Sweet Dill. 

This was the preferred pickle of my childhood. They can be pretty hard to come by over across the pond.

Besides, they are referred to as gherkins here as pickle is something *completely* different here. Think pickle relish but with veg like carrot, swede and cauliflower mixed in. Blech.

I like the word gherkin because it rhyme with firkin (a container for holding liquids, traditionally beer)

Or jerkin (a type of old fashioned clothing)

or merkin ( a pubic wig)

We found some sweet dill pickles at Lidl for 65p a jar and they really hit the spot. Also the sweet  part is made from sugar not high fructose corn syrup. When we last visited the U.S. we tried to buy pickles and they were all made with HFCS so we didn't buy any.

Somehow I have really been craving that vinegary dill flavour and so it was natural that I fell in love with this recipe for Ranch flavoured hummus.

Plus it really does taste like cool ranch doritos. 

I cannot get enough of this stuff. It makes a huge batch and so I freeze half and defrost overnight in the fridge when the first batch is eaten and it seems to suffer no ill effects of having been frozen.

My attempts at homemade hummus always end up a bit dry and pasty. maybe it is due to the tahini (no offence tahini, I love you but you are glopping up my homemade hummus) but this recipe has no tahini and therefore has no glops.

Thanks to the amazing Chocolate Covered Katie for inventing this recipe:
www.chocolatecoveredkatie.com/2015/05/28/cool-ranch-hummus/

it is great on a sandwich or in a little gem lettuce leaf or on the scoopy end of a spoon.

Are you mad for pickles? Do you prefer the word gherkin? What do you crave?

Deep seated prejudice or unbelievably lazy? You decide.

I am a reader. I read every day. I go to the public library several times a week and always have at least two books on the go at all times. There are stacks and stacks of books in our house.

But what do I seem unable to bring myself to use?

A bookmark. 

Seriously. Now before you get all up on your high horse I would NEVER ever dog ear the page of a book.


That's like grounds for divorce when you are married to a librarian.

But I seem incapable of using a proper bookmark.



It is not that I don't have them. I do. I have loads. In fact, I know where all of them are. In a little pot on the bottom shelf of a wine box on the stairs. What I don't have is the energy to get up and get one when I am reading in the living room and need to get up for some reason.

Or maybe I just really hate bookmarks.

So what do I use? Any old thing I lay my hand on.  Here is a list of things I have used to mark my place in a book because I cannot be arsed to go and get a proper bookmark:

1. receipts
2. a 2p coin
3. a bit of loose thread I pulled from the bottom of a shirt I was wearing
4. the peel off tabs from a plaster (band-aid)
5. the outer wrapper from the same plaster carelessly left on the table when I had bandaged up my finger the night before
6. some fluff I found in my pocket
7.  a small square of green felt that was left on the floor after a craft project
8. the wrapper from a peppermint cream
9. a strip torn off of a newspaper I had finished reading
10. an anniversary card from a friend

So do I have some dark secret lurking in my past whereby I cannot bear to be in the presence of bookmarks because they bring back the pain of my childhood?  Was I once greatly wronged by a bookmark? Did it give me a paper cut? Or am I just undeniably lazy when it comes to reading?

You decide.

I'll just go ahead and finish my book.

Do you know the Muffin Pan?

As the old children's rhyme (did not) used to say:

Do you know the muffin pan?
The muffin pan?
The muffin pan.
Oh do you know the muffin pan
that makes such yummy treats?

So, despite the rising temperatures I was determined to try out some new muffin shaped recipes in my new muffin pan. Chocolate Covered Katie is one of my heroes. She makes healthy, decadent, low fat, lower sugar treats--many of which can be gluten free. When I saw this recipe for Hummingbird cupcakes I knew we needed to try them. http://chocolatecoveredkatie.com/2014/03/24/hummingbird-cupcakes/

Despite growing up in the Deep South, I had never heard of Hummingbird Cake before but apparently it is the most popular recipe ever to have come out of  Southern Living Magazine.

click to enlarge.

Why is it called Hummingbird cake? There are several theories.

1) it makes you hum with pleasure when you eat it

2) it is as sweet as the juice you put  in a hummingbird feeder.

3) as it contains pineapple and banana and the original recipe *may* have come from Jamaica  it is named after a type of hummingbird found there

The original recipe called for 1.5 cups of oil. Southern Living has made it slightly healthier (but not much) and Chocolate Covered Katie has made it *very* healthy.  

CCK frosts hers with cream cheese frosting but we feel that soy cream cheese is highly processed and rather expensive so I used this for my topping to make it truly decadent--a coconut brown sugar crumble: http://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/coconut-muffins



I also used Tate and Lyle brown sugar with stevia in the actual cupcakes so I could use as half as much sweetener (although she only calls for 1/3 of a cup plus 1 TB sugar) as I knew I was also using sugar in my crumble topping. Mine had a total of 1/2 cup refined sugar overall. 

I also thriftily puréed the leftover tinned pineapple and juice and froze them in ice cube trays for future sorbet when the weather gets beastly hot. Pineapple sorbet--bonus! 

Later on for dinner I whipped us up some mini crustless quiches! My mum laughed on the phone when I said I was making quiche without egg or cheese. I used to make tofu quiche sometimes but it was a bit expensive and laborious and took ages to cook. This was a game changer. 

The secret ingredient? Chickpea flour. Naturally gluten free this stuff is inexpensive and high in protein and fibre. 8 grams protein per quiche and 7.2 grams fibre for the basic batter not counting vegetables!!  I used this recipe to make my quiches. http://powerhungry.com/2015/01/chickpea-flour-quiches-vegan-grain-free-gluten-free/

First I sautéed some thinly sliced onion and mushrooms as well as some roasted red pepper from a jar that I needed to use up. I put a little in each greased muffin cup along with some leftover coconut bacon I had. Bacon not pictured as I only remembered it after I took the photo and was too lazy to do another.

 Then I poured over the batter.

Then I baked it in a hot oven as per directed. I was pouring with sweat when they came out but it was oh-so-worth-it. 

I let them cool 15 minutes and then they popped right out of the pan. Thank you oil! 

We had them with a massaged kale salad which was lovely. Also, there were leftovers which we polished off for breakfast the next day and I can attest that they were just as good on the second day. Bonus! 

In the future I might add some cheesy flavoured vegan nutritional yeast and some herbs or finely chopped spinach. 

We would definitely use this muffin tin in the winter for more savoury dishes. I am picturing individual servings of things like nutroast or "meatloaf" frosted with mashed potatoes. 

Plus all the cupcakes I can get down my greedy gob.

Obviously. 

There is nuffin' like a muffin

I have always been more of a cake baker, but truth be told--I love me a muffin. Or a cupcake. What is the difference? Size? Sweetness? Healthiness? Frosting?


I dunno. But I like 'em.


They are handheld. They have a cute little shape. They are portion controlled. What's not to like?


Well....muffin pans for a start.

I went through a faze where I wanted all silicone bakeware. It was supposed to be non-stick and flexible to get your food out. yeah...but it also was a pain in the arse to deal with. The cake pans were so floppy that you needed to put them on a cookie sheet just to get them in and out of the oven and they never cooked properly. The baked goods were as rubbery as the pan. I had muffin tins as well and they were just as horrible. The few times I tried to make muffins they stuck horribly to the pan and ended up with a weird rubbery smell.


Epic/fail.


So they were eventually consigned to a charity shop in the hopes that some one else might want them.


But recently, I have invested in a metal loaf pan from Poundland of all places. I love that pan. We have had many super-duper-always-comes-out-right breads and cakes with that £1 loaf pan.


So when I saw some interesting recipes that needed a muffin tin I thought it was time to reinvest. This time in a metal one. Because metal pan actually cook the food.


I tried Poundland and the 99p Shop (weirdly both owned by the same company!) with no luck. Eventually after some price comparisons  I bought a 12 muffin pan (not two 6 muffin pans) from Wilkinsons for £4. I could have paid more for a non-stick one made with Teflon but there are lots of health indications with using Teflon such as the fact that fumes from heated up Teflon can be deadly to birds. So I just got a plain ole metal one that I would either need to grease or line with paper muffin cases.

My first try was some fat free chocolate and cranberry muffins from Happy Herbivore.  http://happyherbivore.com/recipe/ruby-chocolate-muffins/ They were ok. I chose them as I had some frozen cranberries left from Christmas in the freezer that needed to be used up. The recipe called for apple sauce and so I tried pureeing a couple apples with some water in my blender. It was ok, next time will probably use soy yogurt I just didn't have any on hand at the moment.


There was one little itty bitty problem, however. I tried to use some muffin cases that someone had given me at Christmas and they stuck to the muffin. Are you supposed to grease them? If so, then what is the point of the paper????????


Really stuck. It got to the point where I just thought "Well. a little paper is just some extra fibre"  and ate them anyway. But after flossing a bit of paper out from between my teeth I just decided to do it the old fashioned way.


Oil.


I am not oil phobic. I don't think too much is healthy, but a little is good for keeping your joints lubricated. Most of my baked goods have some oil and some yogurt for moisture.


And boy did a little dab o' oil do the trick. Since then I have made two muffin sized dishes--one sweet and one savoury.


Hummingbird Cupcakes and mini chickpea batter quiches! Whoa mama, these were both amazing. Despite the heat (it is getting a tad warm to be using the oven over here without air conditioning) these were definitely worth it.


Stay tuned tomorrow for the recipes!

Make Lemonade

Sometimes, when things don't go your way you just have to adapt, adopt and improve. As the saying goes, if life hands you lemons, make lemonade.

I am totally cool with this concept these days. But it has taken years to be able to go with the flow and not have a set picture in my head that has to be adhered to the letter or else a fun time *cannot* be had by me or anyone else.  

Besides, I actually really like lemonade.

We were all geared up to go out to Skomer Island on Sunday with the Carmarthen Vegans. Skomer Island, for those of you don't know is a nature reserve in Pembrokeshire with real honest-to-goodness puffins. Seriously, puffins. But it can be a bit tricky and here is why.


1. We don't live in Pembrokeshire we live in Carmarthenshire.
2. They only allow 250 per day out on the island and you can't reserve a place so you have to get there super early to queue for a spot on board the boat.
3. The boats don't always run if they suspect inclement weather ahead and you don't know until you arrive.


We set out as a hopeful party of six all arriving at Skomer from different locations. We left Carmarthen at 7:30 to get us to Pembrokeshire by 9:00. Alas, they suspected choppy seas later in the day and so they boats weren't running. While we are all disappointed, we just laughed and said, "well, we've got all this gorgeous picnic food. Let's go for a walk and have a picnic." Also on the bright side we saved £21 each not having to pay to go out to Skomer making this an incredibly cheap and fun day out. Bonus!

Priya, Susie, Peter and Kathryn, myself and Spiderman went to a beach near Susie's house (she actually lives in Pembrokeshire and has to travel a fair distance to come to any of the meet-ups in Carmarthen so it was so nice to be in her "neck of the woods" as they say.) We also texted another vegan friend Allison and invited her and her dachshund Ruby along. After swinging by to pick up the dogs  Daisy and Nougat from Susie's house we were off to Newgale beach near St Bride's bay. 

This did not disappoint.

The beach was beautiful and there were many amazing geological structures to look upon. There were hosts of caves--some you could explore and some you couldn't.


Thanks to Spiderman for taking all the snapshots. Enjoy the view:

the view out to sea

the view up the coastal path

a rock that was just begging for a Little Mermaid to sit on it and sing

Outside a cave

inside the cave

one of many other caves

It was great to see the caves as a cave features very prominently in our favourite graphic novel Locke and Key. 

Don't go into the Drowning Cave!

some caves were cut off by the tide

the winds picked up and the sea was rough so they were right to call off Skomer

the back of us being whipped by the wind

if you look carefully you can see Carmarthen Vegans written in the sand

Priya wrote Carmarthen Vegans in the sand and a few miles down the beach ran into a Pembrokeshire vegan who was excited to know other vegans were about.

After walking about three miles we walked to another part of the beach and in the shade of a hanging rock we sat down, tired and hungry for our food. There is something about walking along the beach with friends that builds up an appetite.

It was a veritable feast with sandwiches galore and food to share--crisps, watermelon, hummus and vegan cheese all being passed around. It was a glorious meal and then we beach-combed for another two miles or so (where I nearly slipped and fell in some rather slippery seaweed by a lagoon) and then all went back to Susie's for more snacks (flapjacks, chocolate and hot tea) and several hours of lazing about in her beautiful garden and just chatting about anything from silly things to serious deep subjects. We practised our song that we are singing next month at the Summer Vegan Meet Up and realise we still need a bit of work but we thoroughly enjoyed it. We even had Susie's 88 year old Mum joining in on the chorus!

The best thing about the day was the friendship. This group of lovely human beings adopted us straight away when arrived in Wales. We ran into Kathryn and Peter who run a vegan information stall in the market every Saturday. They invited us to join the Carmarthen Vegans and a week later we were at the Waverly cafe eating and visiting like we had known each other forever. There we met the rest of the gang and suddenly we found ourselves being invited to picnics and hikes and we had a social life that involved fresh air, good food and exercise as well as laughter and good conversation. I mean just like that--two weeks after we arrived people were offering us lifts to places and we had friends. These friends have helped us both be more active about veganism and have given us ways to help change the word for animals. 

So even if we didn't get to Skomer, we still had an excellent time. What more could a person ask for?