Picture heavy, not a lot of words

It's been a long time since my last post. I tried to post some pictures a couple of weeks ago, but for some reason I couldn't. The pictures weren't visible. So I got angry and forgot all about it. But now I'm back with some new delicious things!

It was my brithday last week. Now I'm 21 years young. I feel no difference. But who cares? The only good thing about birthdays anyway is the cake. And the presents, of course. I wanted to make something different this time and chose to do a carrot based cake. The best decision of my life, honestly. This cake is the best cake I've ever eaten. And my parents loved it too! My dad even said that it was the kind of cake that he actually cared to eat (he's not so into baked goods, which means he's a crazy person).

See how tall it is! Or was, it's gone now... Sigh.

This was one of the 5 slices I got to eat. So beautiful...

Okay. So it's glutenfree carrot cake, vanilla pudding in the middle, frosting made with margarine, powdered sugar and fresh orange juice, and orange skittles on top.

This is my dinner from yesterday. Soyballs and mashed potatoes with ketchup. Can't get any better than this.

Before I left home, I baked these chocolate cookies for my mom. They contain wheat so I didn't eat them. I did some experimentations with the dough to see what works the best. I made some peanut cookies as well, I just added salted peanuts into the dough. Once again my mom loved them.

Plain chocolate cookies.

A lonely chocolate cookie.

I enjoyed some strawberries from my mom's freezer with vanilla pudding. Very summery...

Extremely garlic-y soyballs with rice and curry sauce.

An old carrot spice muffin. I made these three weeks ago. They were awesome.

Carrot Cake & Risotto

I've now made the best carrot cake by far. I don't know if it was the orange juice I poured into the batter or the barley flour which I used to flour the mould, but this is truly remarkable. The cake was obviously perfect, moist, soft, full of flavor, spungy. You could never tell it's gluten free (well, minus the barley flour on the sides).

I will post the recipe later (Michael Palin will be on TV very shortly).

And here is the equally amazing risotto I made yesterday. I haven't made risotto in ages, which is incredibly stupid behaviour. Risotto is the ultimate food for me when it's properly made. In this risotto there is green beans, onion, crushed nuts and some salad (that's right, not cabbage but salad). H-E-A-V-E-N-L-Y. For flavor I only used curry and black pepper. Everything was cooked in vegetable broth, that's it. Of course I fried the onion in oil before doing anything else. The salad was added lastly. I still can't believe how good this was. And the nuts were whole nuts, so I had to peel them before crushing. Bueno...

I'm back

It's been ages since my last blog post. There just haven't been that much going on in my (food)life. But yesterday I made this incredible soup. I made lots of it, thankfully.


I don't really remember the recipe (what a surprise) but there's pretty much everything imaginable in it. Lentils, brown rice, potato, carrot, onion, green beans, garlic and tomato (from a can). I cooked everything in vegetable stock and added some spices, such as curry, paprika, black pepper and cumin. The most delicious soup ever! It's perfect for days like these when it's snowing outside and you need something to warm you up after you come home from work. I ate it with some knackedbread with sesam seeds.

Christmas

Phew. Christmas is gone. Again. I hate that.. If only we could celebrate christmas every month. Or at least twice a year. It's my favorite time of the year.

We, me and Mamba, returned home on thursday evening after two wonderful weeks at my parents' house. We had so much fun! I love spending time with my mom, she's my best friend. Luckily, Mamba had a good time as well. She didn't mind Roosa one bit! I'm actually quite surprised about that.

Christmas food is my alltime favorite food and that is why I wanted it to last as many days as possible. In Finland, the traditional christmas table looks almost exactly the same in every home and ours wasn't an exception. Me being a vegan didn't cause any changes. It's very easy making the foods vegan. The only unvegan thing was the pig's leg (they still haven't given it up). Otherwise, we ate the same delicious food.

Here is the impressive lentil loaf I made for myself. I was amazingly good! I didn't follow any recipe, I just made everything up as I went along. It's basically just lentils, vegetable stock, lots of spices, onion, garlic and silken tofu. First I baked it in the oven and the next day took it out of the mould and covered it with mustard and little flour and put it in the oven again. It was very crispy on the outside! Deliciousness. Definitely making this next year as well.

This is my plate (or, one of them). It's potatoes, peas, lentil loaf, carrot mash, turnip mash and "rosolli". It's a cold salad-like thing made with apple, carrot, pickels, onion and beets. The carrot mash is just carrots and flour flavored with syrup and salt. The same goes with the turnip mash, except the spices are a bit different. I love them both to death.

This is one of my presents. It's green jelly ball candies. A lot of people in Finland hate these but luckily there are some people like me who just love these! They're extremely sweet.

And this is the traditional christmas breakfast: plum soup. Usually eaten with rice porridge but we made just basic oatmeal because we like it so much. The soup is of course very sweet and flavored with cinnamon.

This was our christmas cake. There's everything in it: apple, carrot, dates, lots of nice spices... It was moist and wonderful. With powdered sugar to make it look a bit more festive.

And lastly, the gingerbread. I love gingersnaps! And we had so much fun decorating these with my mom. Next year I'm gonna buy some food coloring to make them even more fun!


That's basically it. There were a lot of other edible things involved in our christmas as well but unfortunately I have no photos to prove it. Sorry.

Big Is Beautiful

Well, still waiting for christmas to arrive and trying to keep myself busy. There's not much to do when you live alone. Or, with a cat. I have finally decided on the christmas menu and it's gonna be awesome! Actually it's gonna be pretty much the same as last year, but with some yummy additions. Can't wait! Me and Mamba will, obviously, spend the christmas at my parents house and my brother will of course be there too. Christmas is all about family, especially when you're gotten a little bit older. You realise what christmas really means. But, to me it's all about food, too!

On to the goods. Yesterday I made some delicious comfort food for myself (Mamba didn't get any) because I wanted to. What's better than a big pile of pasta-food? Well, it's not actually pasta, it's rice noodles. Rise noodles with soybolognese. I could eat this every day. Literally.

And then, of course, cookies. This time I made them big! Like, real big. I only made four of them. they're perfect. Enjoyed with "glögi", traditional finnish christmas beverage (Can I call it a beverage?). It's basically just spiced berry juice. It's usually enjoyed with gingersnaps, almonds and raisins. How I love christmas...

Big Oatmeal Cookies (I made four)

1 dl sugar
1 dl oats
1 dl flour (I used rice, barley and potato)
1/4 dl vegetable oil
1 dl water + 2 tsp soyflour
1 tsp baking powder
cinnamon, allspice and cardamom
(xanthan, I don't think it's necessary)

1. Just mix everything in a bowl and transform into cookies.
2. Bake in 480 F for 15 minutes.