Miserable Melbourne!

It's almost 3am and I'm still up. Not that it matters anyway, because I don't have a job and I doubt I'll be doing anything tomorrow (though I am meant to be meeting up with a friend for dinner.. but we'll see what the weather's like first!).

Today I did a bit of cooking. First off I was craving some chickpea cutlets from VCON. But wouldn't ya know, I had no chickpeas. BUT, I had a tin of white (cannaleni?) beans. I did a quick Google to see if anyone else had subbed the chickpeas for white beans successfully and, lo and behold, Virginia from Vegetation appeared with her amended recipe. I didn't have sage leaves or vege broth, so I omitted the leaves and mixed a few squirts of Bragg's in a 1/4 cup of water instead. This was also my first time baking the cutlets and they came out super nice. This was my lunch:
2 white bean cutlets, pesto pearl couscous and a side salad of cos, tomato, avocado and a few dollops of pesto to dress. Pure yum. I had my barbeque sauce at hand to add to the cutlets, but the meal had enough flavour too it as it was. I actually think the cutlets were a bit too salty - I might cut down on the soy sauce next time. Still amazing though.

Later in the day I tried my hand at making my own cinnamon sugar pita chips. They ended up a lot greasier than I intended but were still good. Didn't take a picture unfortunately.

Because I'd had a big lunch, I planned on having a small dinner, like soup and salad. But I was cruising through my bookmarks on Firefox, and came across this vegan corn bread recipe I hadn't yet tried. I had just under a cup of polenta in the cupboard, so I made a slightly smaller batch (which was also a little flat due to me using self-raising, and omitting the salt and baking powder) and added a drizzle of agave. But wow, I can see why it's award winning. It was amazing on the side of some of Amy's organic vege and barley soup, slathered with avocado or a bit of vegan margarine (or both). I ate at least half the cornbread - so much for a small dinner!


In other news, after me talking about the thousands of calories I consumed today - I need to try to lose some weight! I went great for a couple of weeks.. did 10 days of the master cleanse and exercised every day, but now I've gone back into carb loving mode. I just love bagels and pasta and cornbread too much!! I guess once I'm working it'll regulate my eating a bit (I hope!).

Yeah I know, what a terrible blogger I am. But I will get back into the swing of things, I promise! I am currently unemployed so I have lots of time on my hands. To start off is a pic above of some cinnamon and sugar pita crisps made by 'Ricci's Bikkies'. I was really craving some of Stacy's Tuscan pita chips (which also come in a cinnamon sugar flavour that I never tried). Fresh & Wild in Stoke Newington, London, stocked them for a short while back in 2006-2007, and they were AMAZING (albeit imported and expensive, as is most things at F&W). I spotted the kind of similar version of Ricci's a couple of days ago at the supermarket, and figured it was the closest thing I was going to find (although I wanted savoury, not sweet!). I'm sure I can easily recreate the cinnamon/sugar flavoured ones, but I would have to work pretty hard to recreate the pesto and dried tomato-ey goodness of Stacey's. And as yet I can't find anywhere that sells them online who will post to Australia. Le sigh.

What I liked about Ricci's baggie of pitas is that on the nutritional label it said there was 2 servings per pack. I'm getting so used to seeing packs suggest that half a biscuit or something is one serving, so it was a relief to see something suggesting 3 or 4 slices as the serving - that's MY kind of snack! And right they were - they were gone in 2 sittings.