Global warming

I had planned this post for the Vegan MoFo but my internet didn't help and I couldn't download the images that will illustrate this post. But the good (or bad) thing is that this is a theme that we need to talk about every day. It is urgent, it is important and this week the richest countries in the world are not doing their best to help. But we can, with big or small steps, we can help to save the planet, to save ourselves.

My uncle Nani is a famous cartoonist in Brazil and he has been drawing and writing about various serious issues (national and global) for the last decades. Last year he published a book called "Aquecimento Global: Cartuns Inconvenientes" (Global Warming: Inconvenient Cartoons) that put together his recent work about the issue. In Portuguese we use to say when somebody doesn't understand what you talking about something like that: "Did you understand or should I draw it for you?". As a lot of people seems not to understand some important and serious issues like the global warming, Nani decided to draw them :P And he allowed me to publish here some of the cartoons of his book. I chose the ones with no words, so everybody can enjoy them and not just the ones who speak Portuguese.









I have faith in the world and I'd like to have faith in the people too!

PS. Se você é um leitor brasileiro, o livro pode ser comprado aqui!

And December arrived!

First of all, I am stoked that it's already December. Time is really flying. Last December I wasn't that happy and a lot of things were hard for me with my moving to Dublin. It was my first Christmas in ages far from my family and friends. But now things are getting better and I am excited. Matteo's family is coming in the end of the month and we'll spend some great time together.


Last Saturday I delivered a vegan cupcake order for a wedding reception and it was really good to see everything ready:



I am still busy baking (have some orders for next weeks) and having no time to cook and write here, but I think it's better in this way. But yesterday I made white risotto (or risotto alla piemontese). It was almost like the traditional one (of course in a vegan version), but I added some personal touches: some parsley, cherry tomatoes on top and I baked some potatoes wedge because Matteo always thinks that risotto is not enough for a meal. And he said that my risotto is better than his and this is really nice coming from an Italian guy.


I still want to post some things here (like another interview) this month and I will organize myself to make it!

Happy December!

Das Ox-Kochbuch Vier - Ox Cookbook 4

I am super excited today! First because I'm baking almost 200 vegan cupcakes for a wedding party next Saturday. Second because the cookbook from Germany with my vegan recipes is out and my copy arrived today! It looks great and I am so happy :)

The special cover

I already blogged about the book and you can read it here!

One of my recipes

You can order yours here.

December arrived with a lot of great news for me and I'm really loving this month.

My day to say thanks!

We don't celebrate Thanksgiving in Brazil and neither in Europe, so yesterday was almost a normal day, except that it was a holiday for my husband that works for an American company :)

But today, in my small selfish world, is my day to say THANKS.

In the 27th of November of 2004 an Italian guy started to own my heart. Five years later he is the most important person in my life. My boyfriend, my husband, my best friend.

November 27th . 2007

Matteo, thank you for these 5 years. Thank you for all good memories. Thank you for all the dreams that we have. Thank you for sharing with me your life, your values, you. Thanks for being my partner in everything.

PS. I love you.

The same, but different

I am still baking more than cooking, so I don't have too much to blog about. But last Saturday I did some different things that I want to share.

I made my classic crepes/pancakes but decided to change a little bit the dough and the filling! In my usual dough recipe I added 3 teaspoon of oregano to give a special taste. My usual filling is made just with savoury flavoured soya protein mince and herbs but this time I added 2 fresh leeks. The result was delicious. And as I said before, everybody loves pancakes!


Still on Saturday I decided to make a pie with some strawberries I had. We bought the pastry and I covered it with chocolate chips, Italian "crema pasticcera", raspberry jam and fresh strawberries and put on the oven for 20 minutes. This picture is ugly as hell but the taste was unbelievably good! I want to make it more times, but I need a pie pan first (and, of course, a better camera).

For the rest of the days, I am always baking my vegan cupcakes!


Oh, and on SundayI went to the cinema with a lovely Irish friend to see "An Education". I loved it! Yes, I do have a life outside the kitchen :P

Sweet Birthday Cake

I love to bake birthday cakes and I love to bake vegan chocolate cakes.

I am not cooking too much these days because I am baking more, having more orders to Sweet! Yesterday I made a birthday cake for a young lady. Her mother asked me something with the colours white, red, yellow and blue and a different decoration because her daughter studies art design.

Inspired by this cake, I made my best seller cake: the chocolate one with chocolate ganache and strawberries filling. I really hope the girl likes it as much as I liked to make it :)

All about... puff pastry!

salty pie with broccoli and leek

After one year living in Dublin I still don't know where to find many things, so sometimes I stay months without eating something or using some ingredient I like. That happened with puff pastry. It is not easy to find a vegan one in Brazil too, but in Italy it is, so during the 3 months that we spent there last year we had eaten this a lot.

Last week we found a vegan option at Marks & Spencer so I decided to make a lot of food using it. We had salty pies, some snacks and some special twists. There are so many things you can do using this amazing pastry! And the best thing, it comes ready to cook! Sometimes is great to have this option close to you.

little snacks with pesto + tofu and tomato + vegan cheddar

One thing that I wanted to try were some "garlic puff twist" that I saw in the amazing blog Just The Food during the Vegan MoFo! Mines weren't garlic ones. I used extra olive oil instead of Earth Balance with basil, parsley and black pepper and we had them with some gnocchi. Easy, fast and delicious!

Veganize-se: para os meus leitores brasileiros!

Mesmo tendo um blog em inglês, o Brasil ainda é um dos países onde possuo mais leitores: amigos queridos, conhecidos, desconhecidos, todos interessados nas minhas aventuras pela cozinha e pelo mundo vegano.




Quem me conhece sabe que sou jornalista e que trabalhei nos últimos anos com conteúdos voltados para web e celular (mobile). Pensando nisso decidi me juntar ao Lembreto, um serviço de canais de conteúdo para celular. O nome do meu canal é "Veganize-se" e terá em média 5 mensagens por semana, que o assinante recebe direto no celular. As mensagens serão sempre em português, relacionadas ou não com o conteúdo postado aqui no blog :)

Para assinar o canal, basta clicar aqui ou enviar "ASSINAR VEGANIZE" para 49523.

Espero você no Veganize-se também!

Happy World Vegan Day!

The world says thanks for everything you do for the animals and for the planet.

Vegan Mofo III - Day 31- Hamburgers and potato wedge

That's it, the end of the Vegan MoFo. And I promised that I would finish my Top 10 and I will. But I realized that I don't have pictures of none of the one million burgers and potato wedge (these potatoes are a "must" here in Dublin and they are delicious!) that we eat at home. We don't have food for dinner, just sandwiches, so we are always eating hot dogs or burgers. And we love it. So this is my complete top 10, hope next year I can come back with more recipes or great pictures.

Vegan Food Top 10:
Cupcakes
Mushrooms
Pizza
Soup
Risotto
Pancakes
Pasta
Parmegiana burger
Rice & beans
Hamburgers & potato wedge

(I still have one more post for today, so I will be back in a few minutes :P)

Vegan Mofo III - Day 30 - Rice and beans

I want to finish my Vegan Food Top 10 and I couldn't let this combination out! Rice & beans are the best Brazilian combo and it's part of our menu at least once a week. And the best thing is that you can eat with so many other things and have a nutritional and colored meal (you know, you should have a lot of colors in you plate always). I am still using the canned beans but I am planning to buy some black beans to cook here and make some other great Brazilian food, like feijoada.








Vegan Food Top 10 until now:
1. Cupcakes
2. Mushrooms
3. Pizza
4. Soup
5. Risotto
6. Pancakes
7. Pasta
8. Parmegiana burger
9. Rice & beans

Vegan Mofo III - Day 30 - Trick or (vegan) treats II

Yesterday I decided to make some "new" cupcakes (or some that I hadn't done before) and my choice was inspired in the "Toasted Coconut Cupcakes" from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World. I did them a little bit different, but keeping the two most important ingredients: the coconut milk and the cocoa powder. And I can tell you that they are my favorite ones now! They taste so good that I could spend the Halloween weekend eating them all. But they are not for me, but for the Govinda's restaurant.


And I'd like to make some Halloween decoration too, but hadn't nothing at home (and didn't have time to buy), so I did some colored frosting that remember the best thing about Halloween: the colored treats :)


Happy (vegan) Halloween! And have fun :)

PS. I'll be back later to finish my Top 10!

Vegan Mofo III - Day 28 - Chocolate cookies

We have just a few more days of this amazing Vegan MoFo and I'm really happy to be involved this year for the very first time. The blog has a lot of new readers and my loyal readers are always here to support me (L)!

Last Sunday I have no cupcakes to bake because Monday was a bank holiday, so I decided to bake some cookies (instead of doing nothing at all). I don't know why but I had never baked cookies before and it is something so easy to do! I wanted the regular chocolate cookies and none of my cook books have them, so I saw a lot of recipes in the internet and made a mix of them to bake my own cookies.



So, my recipe is (one more vegan cookie recipe!):

2 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup sugar
2 tablespoon cocoa powder
2/3 cup maple syrup
1/2 cup oil
2/3 cup chocolate chips (or if you want more, go for it!)

Pre-heat the oven (175ºC) Mix all the dry ingredients. In other bowl, mix the wet ingredients and whisk it. Combine all (use your hands to do this). Make the balls with the size you want and place on ungreased sheet pan with at least an inch between each ball. Put them in the oven and bake them for 15 minutes (I saw different times around the internet and this one worked for me, but keep checking on them every few minutes). They will be done when they seem a little bit softer then you want them to be. They will harden up some as they cool.

And before I forget about it, this is the picture of the last "Pasta al forno" that my husband cooked for us. This is one of my favorite ways to eat pasta and it's so easy to make it (I need to remember to blog the recipe soon):

Vegan Mofo III - Day 26 - Brazil Nut

October is flying and with it Vegan MoFo is almost ending too! It's the last week of this amazing month. And for the last posts I saved some surprises. One is that as a journalist, I love making interviews. I think it is my favorite part of this profession. And I decided to start making some interviews here too.

The first one is with Andréa Nichols, from the amazing blog Brazil Nut. Her blog is one of the first blogs about vegan food and veganism that I started to follow when I decided to join this virtual (big) world! She writes in Portuguese and always have something great to say to our Brazilian vegetarian and vegan friends.

Hope you enjoy it as much as I did and I will be back with more interviews soon :)

All about... : Your blog is in Portuguese, so you should have basically just Brazilian readers. Why the decision about making a blog about vegan food and veganism in Portuguese? Do you think about make it in English too?

Andrea: I do think about writing in English all the time. Sometimes I blog in both languages, but it’s mostly in Portuguese. I started the blog in Portuguese because a few years ago, when my husband and I became vegan and I decided to write about it and show how easy it was, there weren’t a lot of blogs in Portuguese and there were a ton in English. Since my point was to help, I figured I should do it in my mother tongue.

Andréa e Clementine

All about... : You live in NY and are always involved in some kind of animal liberation activism. Do you think the city has a lot of groups and people involved? Did you do that in Brazil too? What are the mainly differences, in your opinion, between the activism in Brazil and in the US?

Andrea: Activism here (in the US) is very strong, very powerful. I didn’t feel the same in Brazil when I used to live there. But that was 8 years ago. It’s getting better and better from what I see and read. And I’m hopeful.

All about... : You are always blogging some great recipes. How often do you cook? What do you like to cook more?

Andrea: Thanks! I rarely cook. I’m not crazy about cooking as much as I am about eating, discovering new recipes and taking pictures of food. :) My husband is the one who cooks at our home and he cooks so well. He has no fear. He’ll look at any recipe and go: “I can do this”. And he does! I’m always looking for new ideas and recipes to bring to him. I’d say I’m a lucky gal. :) I like cooking simple things, mostly appetizers. And I like to present them nicely. I’m more about the way the food looks.



All about... : What tips you can give to people that are thinking about becoming vegan?

Andrea: Stop thinking and just go vegan! Anybody can do it at any time. No preparation is needed. It’s much easier that people think and it’s the best thing one can do to help animals, to help the planet and for one’s own health. If somebody wants to be ethical and environment-friendly, going vegan is the 1st thing to do.



All about... : Do you have any favorite vegan cook book?

Andrea: All our cookbooks are awesome. To name a few: The Urban Vegan, Vegan Brunch, Vegan Planet, Veganomicon…

Andrea: Thanks for inviting me to respond to your questions, Glauce! I’m a big fan of your blog and your cupcakes!

Vegan Mofo III - Day 25 - Parmegiana

"This should be the number 1 in your top 10!". That was Matteo told me today about my vegan parmegiana burger. Yes, he loves it. More than I do. But for sure it is in my Top 10. I won't write to much about it because you can find the recipe here and also this recipe will be in the German cookbook Ox #4.

Every time I cook this recipe, I remember about my Brazilian friend Maria Raquel, she made us this parmegiana burger many times and she will be always an inspiration <3.

One more time, I don't have great pics (and I still don't have a good camera), so you have to try this recipe to be sure about how good it is! I will cook this in the next few days too and I am thinking about some variations, so maybe I can write about it again in the near future.



And in this beautiful sunny and cold Sunday, have a cupcake in the afternoon. I made this one this week (I baked so many vegan cupcakes this week!) and I love the colors.

(I also could change the name of this blog to "All about... (vegan) cupcakes!")

Vegan Food Top 10 until now:
1. Cupcakes
2. Mushrooms
3. Pizza
4. Soup
5. Risotto
6. Pancakes
7. Pasta
8. Parmegiana burger

Vegan Mofo III - Day 22 - Pasta

This post is about pasta, another food of my "Vegan Food Top 10". I always liked to eat pasta, even before being vegan. My family loves it, so it was always part of our menu. After becoming vegan it was the easiest option (some brandes in Brazil still have eggs on the pasta but they also have the semolina option), mainly for someone who didn't know how too cook too much stuff. And after having an Italian husband, you can imagine how much pasta we eat! But that's totally fine because it is good and gives you a endless options to cook. My favorite ones: with zucchini and soy cream, with sausages and soy cream, with olive oil and garlic, with mushrooms and soy cream.

But I will let some pictures "talk" for themselves!


Vegan Food Top 10 until now:
1. Cupcakes
2. Mushrooms
3. Pizza
4. Soup
5. Risotto
6. Pancakes
7. Pasta

Vegan Mofo III - Day 19 - Pancakes

Back to my "Vegan Food Top 10", I couldn't let the pancakes (or crepes) out! I cook them a lot and I also blogged about them sometimes. But yesterday I think I made the best ones.


"Humm... Huummmm... Huuummmmm!" was the sound that I heard from Matteo when he tried my pumpkin pancakes. Yes, pumpkin again (I told you!). I used the regular dough (recipe here) and for the filling I made a pumpkin puree. All you will need to make it are 1/2 pumpkin (make a soft cream with the food processor, I used also the skin), 1 tablespoon butter, 1 vegetable stock cube and black pepper. You can make it like a regular "potato puree" (mashed potatoes).

The best thing about pancakes is that you have endless options of filling. So, use your imagination and share your ideas with us too :)

Vegan Food Top 10 until now:
1. Cupcakes
2. Mushrooms
3. Pizza
4. Soup
5. Risotto
6. Pancakes