MY HEART AT HOME

~ My Beautiful Home, Australia!

Happy Australia Day!!! Yes I know my post is a little belated.... but I've been very busy celebrating!!! To challenge myself, I cooked a huge BBQ style vegan brunch for my family. Instead of the standard Aussie day brunch (sausages, fried eggs and steak burgers) My family ate: home made bread, roast mushrooms, tomatoes, avocado and sauteed spinach. Being at home has made me realize how wonderful and special family is (between the quarreling of course.....).  

So on top of celebrating my beautiful home country this post will celebrate heart warming pieces of my  childhood home! ENJOY :)

CAMPING VEGAN STYLE

~ Waking up on the beach at Dawn, Dunsborough 

What do you eat when your a vegan camper? I'm in Perth visiting family and recently went  on  camping style getaway to Margret River and Dunsborough. Of course I was a diligent vegan and forced my friends to eat quinoa... and buy ice for the esky to keep all my veggies.....

LOOKING FOR HOME!

~  Rescue me Kitty! Perth, Western Australia

I want to write a post on my Dad, whom is a huge cat lover too. My Dad came home from his summer holidays with much more than he bargained for. A cute little fur ball now called Dizzy!! While he was windsurfing up at Coronation Beach he and my brothers noticed a little stray cat that would come looking for food. They started leaving little scraps of food out and became friendly with the stray. Coronation Beach is in the middle of nowhere: there is no running water and no houses for miles -  essentially it's far out in the bush and a very strange place for a stray. After five days of feeding him scraps, a ranger became aware of Dizzy and set up traps to capture him (and put him down). My Dad found out about this and smuggled Dizzy back to Perth!!!!

QUEENSLAND FLOOD APPEAL: THE ANIMALS

~ Please Read

A few days ago I landed in one of my favorite places: Perth, Western Australia. My friends and I had planed a road trip up to Coral Bay. But alas the floods in Australia are not only in Queensland and Victoria but also in Canarvon: which means that we changed our plans. For those of you not familiar with the floods in Australia, 3/4 of Queensland is under water. That's a landmass bigger than France and Germany put together. It's a total nightmare.

VEGAN STYLE: # 1 searching for shoes

~Fantasising Shoes

Recently I received a comment from the lovely Kym who asked me about Vegan Shoes.  She gave me the great idea to include some vegan style posts! All these posts will feature clothes from the net (so that everyone has access to them) and will come from a variety of price ranges. Today's focus: SHOES!!

SYDNEY FESTIVAL: starring animal activist Emmylou Harris

9news

~ Dancing in the streets of Sydney!! 

Saturday night was the opening of the Sydney Festival!! I had an awesome time running around the town, checking out the different flavors of music and dancing like a spring chicken!! We began the night in Hyde Park watching the sensational Imogen Kelly dancing her flamingo burlesque act! The spotlight was almost stolen by a random couple standing in the audience unaware that they were blocking everyone’s view of the stage…. They were oblivious for a good 5 minutes as the crowd screamed for them to sit down!

VEGAN CHEESECAKE

~ Post 4 hour cook-a-thon!

I am so excited to share this recipe with you! Not only is this cake vegan, but it is also gluten free AND uses only a little sugar. This cake is the best cake I have ever made and there were several people who asked for this recipe (blown away at how healthy this cheesecake actually is!).

Now the secret to this cake is… avocado!!!

NANAIMO STORM

The pomegranate vanilla

~ In the Kitchen, Mastering Nanaimo slices

I have heard too many people say that putting togther the words vegan and dessert is a sin. To battle this unjust generalization I opted to be in charge of desserts over the festive eating marathon. When I cook vegan foods for people I don’t know, I never want others to guess that it’s specifically a vegan dish. It is a pet peeve when people say “wow this is good considering it’s vegan”. I want my food to be good for the fact that it is simply delicious full stop. I think that the Nanaimo slice achieved this.

CELEBRATION FEASTING

Location: Tessa gorging on vegan cheese cake!

 WOAH! What a crazy week of celebrations!! Happy 2011 everyone! Im back from a beautiful holiday in Byron Bay.

I thought I would do a couple of post on this weeks celebratory cooking! I was in charge of deserts and have recently been reading a lot of Angela's vegan blog at Ohsheglows…. I made my own adaptations of her vegan cheese cake and whipped up her delicious Nanaimo slice.