Aubergine curry

"Aubergine" is a much nicer word than "eggplant"..

This is Aimee's (my omni, but vegan curious flatmate) recipe.

Vegan Aubergine Curry 3 servings (or 2 if you're hungry)
Ingredients:
1 medium sized aubergine
1 onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
curry paste (refer to jar to see how much to put in)
1 can chopped tomatoes
a few generous handfuls of fresh spinach

- Prick and rub oil on 1 aubergine. Bake for 45 min-1 hour.
- Chop one onion and a clove of garlic and fry in oil until soft.
- When aubergine is done baking, cut in half lengthwise and scoop out the flesh.
- Add curry paste and aubergine flesh to onions and stir.
- Add a can of tomatos and simmer for 20 min.
- Add spinach and let it wilt a bit. Keep adding and wilting until all the spinach leaves are incorporated.

~FIN~

Serve over rice.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

I've never been a huge cookie person. Chocolate chip and sometimes oatmeal raisin were pretty much the only ones I actually liked and would bother making. But despite my seemingly ambivalent nature towards the food, I have been known to get some killer cravings for them. These cravings aren't the types that bubble under the surface for a while and then slowly become less managable to resist. No, these cravings are the aggressive "NEED COOKIES NOW" ones that come when I'm least expecting them. One of these cravings happened the other night, unfortunately it came during on of my all too frequent cabinet draughts. Not a cup o' flour or sprinkle o' chips in sight. I decided, with my flatmate, Aimee, that we'd make the best god damn chocolate cookies the next day when we had all the ingredients.

We used Isa's recipe from VWAV. I was a bit worried about the dough; it was awfully crumbly and not at all the consistency of most cookie dough. More vigorous mixing helped a little, but we found that it was easiest just to grab the dough and mold it by hand. The cookies turned out phenomenal! If you can resist the urge to eat them straight out of the oven, I promise they taste 100x better if you let them sit and cool to room temperature. Sounds crazy, right? After all, fresh out of the oven cookies are supposed to be the product of angels! Just trust me on this one.

I've got the plague!

Well, not really. But I've been feeling kind of bleh for a few days and this morning a full fledged cold reared it's ugly head into my life. I'm a big ball of sniffles and aches. My medicine? Chai tea latte, fruit, and a solid chunk of the day devoted to watching Northern Exposure DVDs. Looking forward to a long day of veggie broth and surfin' teh internets...

Vegan Routes. A big fat womp.

Last week I went to Vegan Routes, a new vegan restaurant in Soho. Like Rootmaster, Vegan Routes is housed in a retired double decker bus with the kitchen on the first floor and seating outside and on the top. The food was alright but really nothing special. My friend and I split a hummus appetizer...which was literally a blob of chunky, gritty hummus with some celery and carrot sticks. Not a pita in sight. We both got the Shepherd's pie which was pretty nice, but would have been much better under a different name--calling it "Shepherd's pie" was trying to make it something it wasn't. It was good, but nothing like Shepherd's pie so omni's (like my friend) ordered it with unrealistic expectations. Lentil pie would have been a more appropriate name.

When ordering our drinks, the waiter misunderstood our orders of "tap water" and thought we wanted the £4 guarana. I'm not sure how this confusion took place since there was no language barrier, but the guarana was definitely not worth the price. Actually, it was pretty gawdawful.

The thing that bothered me most was how the food was served. Everything was served in cardboard. Cardboard cups, cardboard plates...and the main courses were served in take away containers. Take away containers! Not only did it make you feel like you weren't even wanted--like you were being rushed out--but it was also detrimental to the environment while being under and eco-friendly guise. How many of those paper plates do they go through in a day just to have them thrown out after each use?! I asked the server if anything was recycled for further use and she said she didn't know.







All in all a major disappointment. My loyalties definitely lie with the original vegan bus. Nicer service, better food, plus it's right next to one of the best vintage clothing shops in London. Win.