Out to lunch

Today Mr. Stripey Cat and I were lucky to be invited out to lunch at the house of a new friend, Rosalind, one of the very few other vegans in all of Normandy.

Rosalind and her delightful children put on a wonderful spread for us. The starter was a thick borscht with delicious sourdough bread. The main course was a Marinated Tofu and Chickpea Bake from Linda Majzlik's book "Vegan Barbecues and Buffets" (ISBN 1 897766 55 6) served with salads of artichoke hearts, french beans and cocktail tomatoes. This was really delicious and although I don't own the book myself I've persuaded Rosalind to copy the recipe for me so that we can make it again for ourselves. The pudding was a refreshing plum crumble with added ginger, again absolutely lovely although by then we were almost too full to appreciate it.

It's so nice to be treated to a special meal like this and I look forward to the day when I can return the favour. Thank you very much Rosalind.

Friends for dinner.

I love people but I couldn't eat a whole one so when we had two friends stay for the weekend a good deal of food was made and consumed instead. Here are a couple of example meals:



For a late breakfast brunch we had tomato salad and ackees, fleshy arils of the plant Blighia sapida, cooked with soya rashers, served with bread and salads.

This is a close up of the ackees, a Jamaican vegetable only available in Europe in tins. It looks a little like scrambled eggs and is fairly bland in taste so is normally paired off with something a little salty and piquant. In Jamaica salt fish or bacon is used, for vegans smokey soya rashers or smoked tofu are good substitutes for these.



For dinner, we harvested the first tiny courgettes to create a courgette tart flavoured with herbs, served with a warm salad of lentils and mushrooms in a red wine vinaigrette and some of the freshly dug new potatoes from the garden. With it we had a lovely bottle of Champagne followed by an excellent Haut-Medoc, wines considerably better than those we normally drink which added to the festive nature of the meal.