Foody bits and pieces this week

What a week!  Lots of social events, visiting people, catching up.  I have the day at home today and boy do I need it.  House to clean, crumble to cook, my frizzy boofhead to manage before I head off to a vegan ‘do tonight.

This week DeeW turned 5, without my permission I might add.  She chose to have her ‘party’ at the Icehouse, which is an indoor ice skating venue in Melbourne.  We met up with some other homeschooling families.  I don’t skate at all and if I tried you can bet I wouldn’t take my hands off that metal helper thingy:

(I picked this dress up for a few bucks from Savers last week, hand made, looked unworn).

I made practice pineapple-mango upside down cakes as she requested this for her  birthday.  The practice cakes were great.  The actual birthday cake didn’t turn out at all and was quite awful.  Whoops.  Oh well, the kids stuffed themselves on strawberries and some liked the Christmas stollen I bought from Aldi.  And my vegan sausage rolls were a hit with two of the guests who were walking around with their little squirrel cheeks all bulging out with sausage roll.

At my mum’s house, I had her Greek pilafi rice (she makes it vegan now, yay!) and a Greek style peas and potatoes dish.  Hopefully I’ll get the recipe up soon:

Here’s a raw smoothie from Brendan Brazier’s “Thrive” book.  It’s made with pomegranate, hemp protein and banana with a pinch of cayenne pepper:

More Not-Butter-Chicken from The Kind Cook.  Yes, this is a dreadful photo:

Cauliflower ‘popcorn’ from Eat Raw, Eat Well.  I think I way over dehydrated this but it’s so delicious.  You toss cauli florets in some olive oil, nooch and a bit of salt then dehydrate:

Pecan Banana Cookies also from Eat Raw, Eat Well:

And we put up the Christmas tree.   It’s rather lopsided.  I prefer to say it’s really chilling out.  This is what a tree looks like when kids decorate it:

Some gorgeous vintage kitchen stuff I picked up for next to nothing.  LOOK AT THE HANDLES YOU GUYS!

I tried a packet mix of a mock meat rendang curry and added some potato.  Yum:

Banana bread-cake for playgroup yesterday, where we discussed the merits of dipping cake in to tea/coffee.  I’m a dipper/dunker:

And speaking of tea, I’m outta here.  I have the house to myself so today’s music selection is Tori Amos and G’n’R.  Yeah!