#ConfinedAtoZChallenge – V is for Vegan and Definitely non…

#ConfinedAtoZChallenge - V is for Vegan and Definitely non...

Back in February when I popped up after a 9 month hiatus, I said I’d do better at posting. So here I am, halfway through May – sigh… The perennial excuse is that life has been very busy. We put our house on the market in early March and it sold within a week and we’ve now bought back in Victoria. As with the UK, the market over here is crazy so we were very relieved to find something we liked that we could afford as it is a real seller's market and piles of crap are going for really stupid prices. It’s going to be a big change as we’re moving from a biggish single-family house with garden into a condo (North American speak for apartment/flat) which is half the size. It wasn’t what we set out to find, but it ticks all our boxes and is in a great location, so we decided to go for it. So much downsizing is going on at the moment and we move back to the city at the end of June, so we’re very excited.

However, back to the kitchen blog, and the latest entry of the #ConfinedAtoZChallenge I’m getting close to the end of the alphabet and am determined to finish, even if it takes me another year as I’ll probably go on hiatus again while we move. For now, on with the motley…

V is for Vegan

The vegan in this case is stuffing balls. I’m not a fan of stuffing, but my other half likes non-meat stuffing, so I was looking for a recipe a while back and came across this one for Healthy Stuffing Balls on the BBC Good Food site. It’s got apricots and chestnuts and herbs and lots of other good stuff and makes a lot of stuffing balls, depending on how big you roll them. I use a bit less parsley than the recipe because it can be really parsley heavy and I sometimes use the egg and other times don’t depending on whether I think the mixture is wet enough on its own. These freeze beautifully, so you can make a batch at a time and then just take a few out, defrost and reheat as you need them. The recipe is in the link and here are a few pictures to prove it happened.

V is for Venison (which is definitely not vegan…)

It’s many years since I made Toad-in-the-Hole, but we were watching a cooking show and one of the featured chefs said that it was one of their favourite things to eat. Given said chef (who’s name I forget) ran a seafood restaurant, it struck me as kind of funny. It also reminded me that I had some fancy organic venison, pork and garlic sausages in the freezer that needed using.

Steve (the husband) is a dab hand with making Yorkshire puddings, so he whipped up his usual batter and I won’t insult anyone by putting that recipe down as most folks have their own YP batter recipe. I put the venison sausages in the oven with a little sunflower oil to cook off for about 20 minutes then added the batter and let it do its magic for about another 25 minutes. The evidence is below and I have to say it was pretty damn good even if it doesn't look particularly pretty. Far too much for two, of course, but it heated up nicely for a lunch as well. And the main success as far as Steve was concerned was the batter was a little stodgy in the middle which gets his vote every time.

That’s it for now. I have no idea what W might look like. I’m trying to run down the freezer at the moment before we move, so kitchen creativity may have to wait a few more weeks.

Take care all and stay safe and well.