Today’s recipe was last nights dinner – Paella. We had made this once before, so this recipe is pretty much ad lib. There are several places where you can find vegetarian paella recipes on the net,and they all tend to be vegan. I think of it as similar to cooking risotto, except you just add all the stock at once. This is probably going to feature largely in my kitchen this summer as it’s a light and amazingly full of flavor dish. That and it’s super easy to do, especially because you should have most of the ingredients on hand. Nick and I threw together a large pot of Sangria to go with our Paella that kept us going all night. It’s amazing how good a cheep bottle of wine can taste when mixed right. Sooo good. omm.

On to the Ingredients:

• 250g / Half a bag of Paella Rice (You can use other types of rice if you can’t find paella rice)
• 1 cup vegetable stock
• 1/4 cup Olive Oil
• 1 large onion diced
• 4/5 cloves garlic loosely chopped
• 1 red and 1 yellow Bell Pepper sliced
• 1 courgette chopped
• 6 large Mushrooms sliced
• 1 cup frozen peas
• 1 tin Chopped Tomatoes
• A pinch of Saffron (You may substitute Turmeric if you don’t have any saffron)
• Salt and Pepper to Taste
• 1 lemon
• Optional. You can get a tin of artichokes to garnish, but I wouldn’t eat enough of them to make it work buying the tin so didn’t bother.

Directions:

In a large pot heat up the olive oil and then add the onions and garlic. You can of course do all this in a large frying pan and serve the pan to the table. Just make sure you don’t loose many ingredients when you stir! Cook these until the onions are translucent. Add the rest of the vegetables, and cook for about 5 minutes then add the peas. Cook for a further 5 minutes.
Add the tin of tomatoes, rice and safron and mix well. Then add the stock. Cook for about 15/20 minutes stirring often and adding small amounts of water if necessary. Add salt and pepper to taste.
Serve with lemon slices and a large glass of Sangria

One of my long time friends is having a birthday meal next weekend. A few weeks ago I promised him some special cupcakes as a birthday present. Special because they are going to be vegan Jager Bomb cupcakes ^_^ I did some googling to see if it could be done, and so far one person, over at ecupcake.blogspot has tried. They looked like they held up alright in the oven, so tonight I had a test run to make some vegan jager bomb cupcakes.

I’m not going to post the recipe this time around. I am going to tweak the recipe next weekend and I want to see which batch turns out better.

In essence, the bun is died with liquorice and ruby red food coloring gel, and I used a mix of soya milk, rapseed oil and red bull as the wet ingredients with colored butter-cream red bull icing and gooey jager innards. I haven’t been able to eat a whole one yet as they are fantastically rich! However, according to my boyfriend, who is pretty critical of new foods, they taste great. Like a tasty sweet and mild jager bomb. You can taste both the red bull and the jager. The one thing that I find quite odd is the smell, usually fresh cupcakes are sweet and enticing, not alcoholic and enticing. I can’t wait for round two!