Wonders of Wheat

Here's how much of a vegan geek I am. I brought this back from our honeymoon in Hawaii.


It's vital wheat gluten. It's listed in quite a few recipes in my favourite vegan cookbook back home, yet I've never seen it for sale in the UK. In retrospect, deciding to carry a package of unidentifiable white powder through American customs in my hand luggage might not have been the best decision but happily I got it back home in one piece & last weekend, finally got around to cooking with it.


It may not sound like the most exciting of ingredients to non-vegans but really, it's great stuff for making burgers & sausages as it binds like only egg can do. Consequently, I made two recipes with it. The first was vegan chorizo. You mix the gluten, pinto beans & a host of other lovely things including smoked paprika & cayenne pepper together in a food processor till you get a spongy mass like this.


The gluten does it's magic making the dough easy to roll into four sausage shapes which you then wrap in foil, tightly twisting the ends, and pop into a steamer.


40 minutes later the sauages turn out like this. Firm and tender, just like meat sausages. They're ready eat straight away or you can slice them up to top pizza, put in sandwiches, add to pasta sauces etc.


The second recipe was for black bean burgers & again the gluten worked a treat, making the burgers really easy to shape & helping to make them firm when cooked. Just need to find out where to buy this stuff in the UK now.

Two Very Strange Looking Catepillars

Aren't they odd! Maybe they look this way so the otters won't eat them.

More Snaps From Skye

Paul in the otter hide.


Violets were everywhere.




Nothing makes Paul smile like marmalade pudding. Mmm.

On the Trail of the Elusive Otter

Part of our reason for wanting to visit Skye was to do some otter watching. We spent a whole day with Grace & Paul from the International Otter Survival Fund & they showed us how to look out for signs of otter activity.

1. Frog Skins


Frogs are apparently a favourite snack for otters but they don't like the skins so discard them instead.

2. Footprints


We spotted these track marks near to what was probably an otter holt.

3. Spraint Mounts


Or, to you & me, otter poo. Otters use their droppings to mark their territories & they can recognise other individual otters in the area just by the smell of their spraint. You can spot a spraint mound by the patch of unusually vivid green grass around it (natural fertilizer, you see). Paul & I drew the line at sniffing the stuff but Grace got right down there amongst it & was able to tell how recently the otter had been there & what it had been eating.


Despite all these signs there wasn't even a sniff of an otter sighting that day. All was not lost though. We were able to spend the day listening to Paul & Grace's fascinating stories about otters while we looked at this amazing view. We were also able to use their tips to help us locate an otter later in the trip.

Skye

Some snaps from our recent trip to the Isle of Skye

The Barton Boys

It was my father-in-law's birthday at the weekend so we had a family day out at the canal boat festival in Little Venice followed by a pub lunch. It was fun being able to nosy into people's homes & we even came across a boat owned by some Bartons. Naturally a photo was required.

One a Penny, Two a Penny

On Thursday before this horrible cough descended I popped to the shops to get ingredients for making hot cross buns.


I spotted these lovely lamb-shaped cakes in the window of the Polish bakery.


My hot cross bun recipe has been adapted (& veganised) from one by Silvana Franco. The best thing about it is that it uses dried blueberries instead of currants.


The next best thing is it uses white marzipan for the crosses.


I guess being stuck indoors with this horrible lurgy has its compensations. I get to eat most of these myself!