Tea and Sympatico

This weekend was the weekend of the Great Northern Contemporary Craft Fair. Just like lasy year I seemed to be drawn towards the food related items! Here's 2 of my favourites. Holly Levell creates pictures and soft sculptures based on food, condiments and confectionary. Louise Dawn Wilson creates fabulous wire sculptures including a collection of brooches based on biscuits. I've been wanting a light by Jane Bleese for ages and as I recently got a bonus from work I took the plunge and put it towards ordering one. I choose this design as a tablelamp in turquoise, red, yellow and brown shades with pale ash for the wood. It'll be ready in a few weeks, I can't wait!

Here we have a special guest post from Matt who can be found playing and recording music under the name Quiet Loner . Here's a short film about his upcoming album release. You can spot the Cake Protest March that I made for the live recording event around the 1 minute mark. This dish started out as a text conversation earlier this week. Matt : I've got leeks, broccoli and potatoes, what should I make for my tea? Me : Dunno, how about some sort of creamy veg pie, maybe with a hotpot potato type topping? However, what was to be created was far more exciting. Here's a clue.... Have you guessed what it is yet? Over to you Matt. Chicken Supreme This was a school dinner favourite so I thought I'd have a go at recreating it. Unfortunately I never measure stuff out when I'm improvising in the Kitchen so these are guesstimates at quantity. Ingredients 1 onion - finely diced 1 large clove of garlic chopped 1 leek sliced Handful of button mushroo...

Before we get onto the last muffin of the week I just wanted to share this great idea that I spotted whilst surfing the sea of Mofo blogs. I found it over at Scottish blog The Modern Housewife . It's a simple yet tasty idea. I heated a small cup of soya milk adding a teaspoon of agave as the soy milk was unsweetened. Once the milk was warm I added a small packet of dairy free white chocolate buttons and whisked until they melted then topped it off with a sprinkle of chocolate and cinammon. So, here they are the last muffins of the week and quite a contrast to yesterdays. They are fat free and use Sweet Freedom instead of sugar. They taste good but have a denser texture than the others I've made which I'm guessing might be down to the fat freeness of them. I like the flavour combination though so I will definitely try them again, maybe adding some oil or trying applesauce to make the texture a little lighter. What do you think, has anyone got any advice? I love...

The idea for these came from a conversation with Mike N at the teapoint when he was telling me about a brilliant Death By Chocolate cake one of his sons had made and was joking that if they saw the muffin generator list they probably just choose all the chocolate things. We didn't actually get that many suggestions with chocolate in them so that seemed like a great idea to me. So, for this recipe we have cocoa, dark chocolate chips and then a bag of both non-dairy white and milk chocolate buttons cut into quarters. There was a bit of a panic whilst I thought I had run out of muffin cases. Luckily I found some Halloween ones I bought a couple of years ago in Vancouver that I'd stashed in a cupboard and forgotten about. As they were getting an outing I'd thought I'd show you my two purchases from the Aldi weekly specials. A brilliant skull cake tin (they also had pumpkin ones) and some ghost and bat sprinkles that whilst not labelled as vegan I can't see a...

As is the way of this time of year, I have got a horrible cold. Luckily I cooked ahead, froze some muffins and prepared some posts for the Muffin Generator in advance so I been able to keep up with the Mofo blogging. My colleagues have only had the first lot but I've been feeling a lot better this afternoon so hopefully I'll be back in work tomorrow laden down with muffins! The next flavour combination idea came from Karen who came up with Pear and Almond which I couldn't resist adding some crystallised ginger to. Instead of trying to get ripe pears I used those ones you get in juice in a plastic container and they worked really well. Pear, Ginger and Almond Muffins Makes 12 Ingredients 1 cup of soya milk 1 teaspoon of cider vinegar 1 ¾ cups of plain flour 2 ½ teaspoons of baking powder ½ teaspoon of salt ¾ cup of caster sugar ½ cup of sunflower oil 2 teaspoons of almond extract 1 cup of pear diced into little cubes (about 2-3 pear...

Something totally tropical for the next Magic Muffin Generator selection. These Lime, Pineapple and Dark Chocolate Chip flavour muffins suggested by Mike K are just the thing when we're having day after day of rainy Manchester weather! I picked up a carton of this new Provomel Rice and Coconut Milk in Eighth Day on Saturday and it worked really well in this recipe. Mike K's Totally Tropical Lime, Pineapple and Dark Chocolate Muffins Makes 12 2 cups of plain flour 1 cup of sugar 2 teaspoons of baking powder ½ teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda ½ a teaspoon of salt Zest of 2 limes Juice of 1 lime 1 cup of milk (I used the new Provamel Rice and Coconut) 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract ½ cup of sunflower oil 1 bag of chocolate chips 1 cup of chopped tinned pineapple (small tin / 4 rings) Pre-heat the oven to 190C/ 375F/ Gas 5 and line a muffin tin with paper cases. Sieve the flour, sugar, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and salt an...

Welcome to Vegan Mofo 2012! Before I kick off I just want to remind people in the UK about the fabulous monthly Vegan Snack Swap organised by Too Happy Vegans. Here's the package I put together to send to Gail. Here's the exciting parcel I received from Joel with lots of things I'd not tried before. It also contains a corn facemask which was funny as the day before it arrived I'd decided to do some posts on food as beauty products for some of my Mofo posts. If you want to sign up for this month get over here by the 6th  and put your name down. So, for week one of Vegan Mofo 2012, here at Tea and Sympatico we have the Magic Muffin Generator, hopefully a way to get your work colleagues excited about vegan cooking. I sent a list of fruits, nuts and flavours etc round last week and asked if they could come up with some flavour combinations that I'd then make into muffins and bring in, a different batch each day. Jenny came up with quite a range and there ...