The first time I wrote here about cakes was after my first chocolate cake I tried to cook in Europe and it wasn't a good experience. After that, I gave up on the cake mixes and decided to cook the real cakes. And it's going very well. In Italy I cooked some carrot and chocolate cakes and everybody loved them. Vegan cakes are the kind of food that everybody asks how it can be vegan but when tasting one says that it's as good as all other cakes.
After moving we stayed some months without cakes because we had a lot of house stuff to buy and not enough money and some kitchen stuff had to wait. But now we have everything and I can cook all the cakes I want.
Our (me and Matteo) favourite one is the chocolate cake. And I always use a great and easy recipe that my friend Raquel sent to me: chocolate with nuts. I wish I could eat this cake every day, but I would become a ball have no time to do it!
Here the recipe:
1 ½ cup white flour
¾ cup sugar
½ cup crushed nuts
2 tablespoon cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 ¼ cup water or soy milk
½ cup oil
Place all dry ingredients in a bowl and mix. Add the oil and then the water or soy milk. Mix until you have a consistent and smooth mass. Put in the oven for 30 minutes (180ºC).
I usually make a chocolate topping cream too with soy cream and cocoa powder. Just put them together in a pan and cook for 5 minutes after boiling. It will still look liquid. Wait until it gets cold and you'll have a delicious cream. Another option is make this topping cream with soy milk and a bar of dark chocolate.
And to my Brazilian friends, the recipe in Portuguese:
1 ½ xícara de farinha de trigo
¾ xícara de açúcar
½ xícara de nozes moídas
1 colher de sopa de cacau em pó
1 colher de chá fermento
1 ¼ xícara de água ou leite de soja
½ xícara de óleo
Peneire todos os ingredientes secos em uma vasilha. Misture e junte o óleo e depois o leite (ou a água). Misture até obter uma massa consistente e lisa. Leve ao forno por 30 minutos (180ºC).
Cobertura: leve ao forno um pouco de creme de leite de soja e cacau em pó (eu coloco as quantidades bem de olho aqui, quanto mais, melhor!) e deixe ferver por alguns minutos. Ela vai parecer ainda líquida, espere esfriar até que se torne cremosa. Uma outra opção é fazer a cobertura com leite de soja e barra de chocolate amargo ou meio amargo (se quiser bastante cobertura, use uma barra inteira!)
I love Italian food. Since... always. Even before being vegan it was one of my favourite food. And in my first years of veganism I used to eat a lot of pasta because it was easy to find without eggs and easy to cook.
Well, now I'm married with an Italian guy (and love him too!), so it's easy to figure out how much pasta we eat.
Today he went to the kitchen to prepare some fast food to us and the result was amazing: pasta with funghi and tofu. He chose the tagliatelle and while the pasta was cooking, he made the sauce: unsweetened soy cream, mushrooms and olive tofu. Put the oil in the fridge with garlic and onions chopped. Add the mushrooms, a little bit of water and some herbs (he used parsley and basil). Wait the water to boil to cook the mushrooms and keep it this way until just a few water is left. Add the vegetable stock cubes (we use it but you can use what you want to spice it up), the soy cream and the diced olive tofu. Let everything cook for 2 or 3 minutes and it's ready. Mix with the pasta and enjoy your fast and delicious meal!
I don't like to do some things, as everybody. And one thing that I don't like and wasn't used do to is to walk when I have to go out. I was used to take how many bus it was necessary to go everywhere and after I got a car, just use it. But I know it is not the best choice when you think about the planet, about live in a better world. And as I always try to remind here, being vegan is also to care about a better world.So I decided to try to reduce the use of my car when I was still living in Belo Horizonte. It's not easy because it's a city in the middle of the mountains, so it's not that good to go to some places walking. But I started with small distances. And after coming to Europe I am doing it more often. In Italy, Matteo's family lives in a small town, so everybody is used to walk or use the bike. And there I started to ride a bike too. It works to me just because it is a small city, I'm afraid to ride a bike in big cities (even knowing that it's safe here because everybody respects pedestrians and cyclists). Well, I'll try it here in Dublin some day in the future because I really enjoyed to ride a bike again after so many years. 
After moving to Dublin, I started to walk again. Dublin is a flat city and our house is close to the city centre. Fifteen, twenty minutes walking. I have to confess that to me it is still a long distance. But it's worth it. Now we know that there is a bus with a stop close to here that take us to the city centre too, but we try to keep walking. And as I can see, most of the people here do the same every day. We can see a lot of people walking or riding a bike to go to and come back from work. It's something cultural too. In many cities of Europe people do that. And the most important, drivers respect them. Regardless of laws, is also a matter of education.
It's awesome to see this habit here. It is healthy and environmentally sustainable. And it is easy to do. Everybody can try it. If not riding a bike, walking. Good for you, better for the planet.
It's usual to read that a healthy and balanced diet can be noticed by the colours in a plate. We always try to cook different vegetables here to make our meal full of colours. Try to consume, every day, at least one dish with these different colours: red, yellow and orange, purple and dark blue, green and brown. It's not that easy but you can get better day after day.
Here some example of food by colours:
Red: tomato, red pepper, watermelon, cherry, raspberry, blackberry, papaya, guava.
Yellow and orange: carrot, mango, orange, pumpkin, peach, corn, apricot, banana.
Purple and dark blue: grapes, plum, figs, beets, eggplant, cabbage.
Green: leafy vegetables, broccoli, green pepper, spinach, parsley, herbs, asparagus.
Brown: Nuts, oats, whole grains.
To me the hardest food colours are purple and dark blue because I really don't like some of them. I like grapes, but my husband hates them. The only one I learnt to like in the last years is eggplant. But I can't eat figs or beets. I remember that in Brazil I used to eat beets cooked with beans, but it's not good anyway...
And about you, how many colours has your plate?
There are just a few things that I miss from Brazil. And it includes some kind of food. Today (a really cold Sunday) we decided to cook the best Brazilian combination ever: rice and beans! It's not the original way too cook the beans and I added some sausages, but it was awesome! And to complete the meal, some fried olive tofu. An easy way to make our day happier ;o)
This post should be about the lunch menu of today, but I changed my mind. The food I cooked today is inspired by my best (Brazilian) friend Raquel. We use to call it “parmegiana burger”. It is a different way to cook it because we use potato puree and tomato sauce over. Well, my friend Raquel really knows how to cook the best vegan “parmegiana burger”. Not just that, she is a brilliant cook. In Brazil, we used to go to her house every week (sometimes two or three times a week) to talk or watch a movie and eat. And it was always one of the best things of my days. And last year we did it more often than usual because we knew it would be for just a few months, before we move to Europe.
Today, cooking my vegan “parmegiana burger” I couldn't stop thinking about her, about how she became my friend and about how much fun we had together. 2008 wasn't a good year for her and I feel bad to be so far. I wish that Ireland was closer to Brazil. It would be great to be close to her always. I don't know if she knows how much important she is to me, how much I love and care about her. She is one of the best people I have ever met in my life. She is good, nice, smart and funny. And this kind of friendship is rare nowadays. She is more than 10 years younger than me, but it doesn't matter because we really have a lot in common. And we love to eat, we love to cook and we love to talk about food.
Today she told me she is not inspired to cook good vegan food these days. And she should be! She should cook with pleasure again. She should be happier. She deserves all the best in her life, always.
Raquel, I miss your food. I miss our laughs. I miss you every single day. Be ready, when I go to Belo Horizonte I want many great days of vegan food, laughs and talk!
This is the "parmegiana burger" with the potato puree and tomato sauce (still missing the cream cheese I put after)
Most of the people thinks that all vegan and vegetarian people love salads. And it is not like that. Some do, others don't. I grew up without eating a lot of vegetables. My family hadn't this habit. We used to eat vegetables like potatoes, carrots, broccoli, just cooked with other food, never in cold and traditional salads. So I just started to try to eat salads after becoming vegan. So when someone asks me "But does vegan people just eat lettuce?", you can imagine my face (and answer)... I think even after becoming vegan, I could count the days in my life I have eaten salad.
I am definitely not the kind of person that asks for salad in a restaurant. I just do that when I really have no other option. So, you may be asking, what do you eat? The rest of the food! I love all kind of pasta, risotto, lasagne, rice and beans, everything cooked with potatoes, salted pies... and the list goes on.
But my life is changing. In November I decided to start a diet. I won some extra weigh after turning on the 30s and it's time to say goodbye to them. So I talked with one of my best friends, Clarissa, who is vegan and is almost a nutritionist. And the first part of this diet is about change some habits to have a healthier and more balanced diet. Yes, I still can be healthier! So she asked me to start eat more vegetables, with salads, not with the food. So I did it. It's not that easy and it's not that good too. But I am eating green salad and tomatoes every single day.
These last days, I decided to add some fried red tofu to the salad. I know that everything fried is good but not healthy. But you don't need to use oil to fry the food. Just let it in the pan for some minutes (around 8) and it will taste a lot better. So this is the (best) way I figured out to eat salad! Yesterday I did the same with vegan sausages. I know I won't do it every day, but it's helping a lot to keep the new (and good) habit.
And the other great option is eating tomatoes and lettuce with the sandwiches at night! This is really amazing. Vegan cheeseburger is better like that. You know, we don't eat food at night, just have a meal with sandwiches (the opposite of Irish people that eat sandwiches at lunch time and food at night).
I can say that I am starting to enjoy the salads and I'll try more options. This is an habit that I will keep (we'll keep because my husband is eating too)! Thanks, Clarissa, for the great job. I am doing my best here!
