7 of the best tofu sandwiches for vegans

Well I've been a vegi for so many years and somehow I didn't discover my love of tofu until 2016. Mental I know! Well now I have discoverd tofu and how easy it is to make sarnies with I thought I'd compile a list of my favorite combos.

I used either firm beancurd (Tofuking stocked in my local chinese supermarket) or silken firm (stocked in asda/tesco) depending on what I could get. I prefer Tofuking as it has a nicer texture! I am also super lazy and dont press it (I think life may be a bit too short 😂).

I also use things I have in for other meals so I don't have to buy anything too special for my sarnies (with the exception of some black salt and gherkins these are purely for tofu in my house) so hopefully you will have all the ingredients in too. Let me know what you think if you try any of these and feel free to send me your favorite Tofu sarnie ideas.

I haven't done any with beans or pulses-the high fibre content disagrees with me so I'm sure there are loads of sarnies I'm missing out on. I've also stuck with the same bread that I can tolerate please feel free to mix it up-some of these would probably be great on a granary or in a ciabatta.

1. The eggless-mayo and cress

200g Tofu
2tbsp vegan mayo (I use tesco free from salad cream as I always preferred egg mayo with salad cream)
2tbsp cress
1&1/2tsp black salt
Salt and pepper to taste

2. The pickled gherkin
Inspired by a jar of pickled gherkins I bought I decided to use the same flavor combinations for my sarnie!

150g Tofu
3 gherkins diced (approx 50g)
3tsp pickling vinegar (from the jar)
1/2 tsp mustard (I use dijon)
1tsp dill (i use dried but if you have fresh use that)
Salt to taste

3. The apple and mint
Inspired by the pineapple cottage cheese and apple sauce jacket potato fillings I had as a young-un this is almost the same texture and is just as light!

150g Tofu
1 medium apple, pealed, cored and diced (I dont do well with apple skins but if they agree with you keep it on it adds to the colour and texture!)
2tsp apple sauce
1tsp apple cider vinegar (or lemon juice)
1tsp fresh mint (or 1/2 tsp dried)
Salt and pepper to taste

4. Greek style
This includes my three favorite salad ingredients and they combine so well together!

150g tofu
30g bell pepper diced (I prefer yellow)
30g baby plum tomatoes diced (cherry toms is my fav but normal ones work fine too)
30g black olives halfed
1/2tsp turmeric
1tsp black salt
Salt to taste

5. The Salad
This sarnie is all about the crunch! You want some good textures and nice colours as you would with a nice salad. I'd love to throw in some sweetcorn too (but is not good for me anymore :-( you guys do it for me instead!

150g Tofu
Raddishes
Cucumber
Pepper
Spring onion
Apple cider vinegar
Yogurt
Salt and pepper to taste

6. The Avocado
I'm sure your shocked that this is 6th but I am not always 100% sure about avocado and tofu together! The textures can be a bit too similar but then other times its a match made in heaven!

50g tofu
1/2 avocado (approx 100g)
1 Tbsp spring onion
20g tomatoes (approx 3 cherry/baby plum)
1 tsp lemon juice
1tsp corriander (or parsley if you'd prefer)
Salt and pepper to taste

7. The Cooked Breakfast
Sometimes you just want a good sausage and egg butty with mushrooms and tomatoes and nothing else will do! Don't forget your brown sauce (or tomato whichever is your favorite!)

2 vegan sausages (I use Linda McCartney)
75g tofu
50g mushrooms diced
50g tomatoes diced
1tsp black salt
1/2tsp turmeric
Salt and pepper to taste

It’s getting cold

Hello! It's that time of year when you need your hats scarf and gloves! Cold, I think, is the word I'm

Bright orange fingerless mitts

thinking.

So, on my last few train journeys to see mum on the weekend I made these beautiful Fingerless Shell Gloves by Lydia Busek.

These were super easy to do and I finished them off in about three hours of journeying. I will have to make some more to get some better pictures because they are very worn already. 

I followed this up with a fabulous and semi-matching hat the next week. The Mirabella Hat by Suzanne Carlson was also really easy and was enjoyable to make. It is a nice loose fit hat and I can get all my hair in a bobble under it too. Epic!

My bright orange Mirabella Hat

So once I had my hat and gloves I decided I needed some thick winter socks and began these fantastic  Cozy Slipper Socks by B.hooked Crochet.

As I wanted them to be to wear with my Docs (vegan of course) I amended the pattern a little. This is such a bad habit that I do try to avoid (amending patterns as I am making it for the first time) as I think it is a little rude. I will post my revised pattern and the finished socks next time. Until then...

A busy February!

Happy New year to you all!

As it is a new year I am was so pleased when I was able to pass on the crochet items that I had made for my friend in 2015 to someone who would love them! They are no longer sitting under my bed reminding me of a difficult time and the fact that I never got to give her them because I was in hospital and I have to say the relief that came with that was fantastic!

So in taking these things to work everyone got to love the wonderfulness of crochet and now I seem to have a lot of orders for crochet items rolling in!-so far though I am not too overwhelmed so that is good!

Ash's Bobble hat! 

My first order was for a bobble hat-the requirements were that it be white/black (now if you have looked at any of my other posts you will probably have seen that I love colour and white and black are not colours in my eyes so...that wasn't going to happen! I double checked though and so long as it matched a black jacket that had a cream furry inside I could use whatever colour...so here is the finished product! I love it!

The pattern for the Easy Crocheted Hat is one I found on ravelry and is so quick, simple and easy to adapt! I think you should all give it a go. I made a couple of minor changes-I chose to slip stitch down the seams as I hate sewing and did a couple of decrease rows around the top as it was quite wide!-but the pattern is so adaptable it allowed for these changes!

The hat is so loved by all my colleagues too that I have another order for one which I am working on now for Gabsta! Hopefully she will love it as much as Ash's! She wasn't as bothered about the colour so long as I use a beautiful self striping wool! What a dream for a colour lover like me!!!

My second request for the year then was for some baby things for Di, her sister is having a baby girl (how excellent! Baby girl things are adorable and can be nice and easy to make!) I will keep you up to date on the progress of this and no doubt a whole post will be dedicated to the adorable baby things that I make for her.

Elijah's teddy

My third one for the year was a request to make a jumper for this well loved adorable teddy of Elijah's. He is getting a bit worn and his mum thought a jumper would mean that teddy would survive that bit longer! Red was the order of the day and I have to say that there could really have been no other colour for a black and white panda! The jumper is teeny tiny n super cute I just hope that it fit!

The teeny tiny panda jumper

Now I have to say this request was one that I thought was pretty adorable and went straight to my heart. I have a favorite teddy (I know I am now 31 years old and this is uncool to admit but my teddy is about as old as me and I have loved her so much. She now sits on my shelf as she has almost been completely replaced with my adorable kittens...namely Oryx who always comes for a cuddle at bedtime!

Pretty standard morning in the Emily household!

So like I said February 2017 so far seems to have been pretty busy on the crochet front. I have to say pricing things up is pretty hard though-I literally never know how much to charge and end up going...erm this much? I think it's partly because I like making things and partly because I know its impossible to charge for the time it takes to make them. Otherwise the hat would have been...£41 approx! No one will pay that right?! How do you guys price up your things?

Until next time...

The challenge!

Just a short one because it's been fairly hectic recently! Ma was writing some poetry yesterday as she has bern struggling to write! She challenged me and here is the result and I am pretty pleased with it! Do you all write poetry? I find it pretty theraputic sometimes and quite enjoy the process! :-) Do let me know what you think!

Astonishment

Foolish man, desguised as an authority,

Professes to once again enlighten

Us. The poor uninformed mass.

Think for ourselves, we cannot,

Clearly we picked the blue pill.

We are not to blame for our own stupidity.

I applaud your understanding and bow

To you Sir

I am a child, to be seen and not 

Out spoken but to speak out, to

Conform! The mass does scream

The slight I envisige, they cannot;
Your sentiment is known to be satire,

Maybe it was just an accident they consider.

I plan a coo and begin to overthrow the,
Rightful leader?

The authority, disguised as a foolish man,
Indignantly bit his thumb at me,
At us. Addicts to subservience

Wearing rose tinted specticles,
Living in stockholm. Lambs,
Leading the way to their slaughter
In disbelief I am forced to doff my hat,
To Mycroft

Chocolate cake and fudge sauce

Hi all! What have you all been up to? Ma has been helping me do some cleaning and sorting that has been long overdue this week! I am so happy as I now have all of my paperwork organised for the first time in...well in a long time and my livingroom looks and smells so much better now too! :-) In sorting through things I managed to get rid of lots of junk that I no longer wanted (to charity shop for anything decent and the bin for anything not decent!) and this has made me feel clearer! My shelves now have spaces and I feel like mentally I have space to think more now-like I'm not weighed down by loadsa stuff! Do any of you feel like that when you have cleaned and re-organised?

So with all the cleaning I haven't had much time to do any crochet and when I have had time I couldn't really be bothered! Weirdly! Maybe I have just done so much this year that I need a bit of a breather!-I am sure it won't last too long so don't worry! Lol

I decided to make a cake (dairy free obviously!) and fat free. I think this is just because we don't have any margarine in! It always happens-I hate baking until I have no margarine (or sugar ir flour etc) and then I think...challenge...lets bake! Do any of you do this too?
So I turned to google of truth as I always do when I fancy cooking or baking (even though I have loads of lovely recipe books) and I came across a lovely recipe for an (Almost) fat free chocolate cake. I ended up using self raising flour so I could omit the cornstarch and baking soda (because I didn't have any!) I also used brown sugar (as I didnt have much castor sugar!) It turned out pretty fabulous and tastey I have to say! Next time I may have to add cherries or rasberries to add a bit of sourness to the sweetness of the cake! (I could also pretend its healthier then too!)

My (almost) fat free cake I am pleased with how it rose!

I also decided to look for a chocolate sauce as I thought I could mimic the loveliness of Wetherspoons chocolate cake and so I found this Chocolate fudge sauce. It was really simple and easy to make and was pretty yummy. I made double the amount and used soya milk as this was the only milk in and coco powder! It was a lot richer than I thought it was going to be and a bit bitter (not in a bad way but it wasn't quite what I wanted) so as I had a bit of apple sauce left over (100g) I thought I would use this to sweeten it up and make it more like the chocolate sauce on the Wetherspoons chocolate cake! Success! :-)

Here is the cake and sauce together! Just needed a bit of dairy free ice cream to make it perfect

I hope you all give a vegan chocolate fudgy cake a go you can just follow the links for the recipes I used. Please let me know if you do and share your pictures, it will help to inspire my next baking creation! :-)

Also if anyone has any ideas of what to do with my left over chocolate sauce that would be great as other than using it as a chocolate spread on toast I have no ideas!

My very tastey chocolate sauce/spread

Until next time...

Keeping myself busy

Well hello strangers! Although it is only a month since I last posted it feels like a lifetime! March brought quite a lot for me I what did it bring for you guys?

First of all my Crohn's stricture got so bad that I was no longer able to drink my fortijuices never mind being able to eat. This was not good! I ended up being admitted to hospital on mothers day. Poor ma!

Coconut oil lipgloss

Coconut oil hair mask

Oooh! That reminds me I did use some coconut oil for making ma some pressies. I decided to make a hair mask, a conditioner and some lip gloss. The lip gloss was definitely the most successful thing I made and it tasted quite yummy. :) The hair mask though just kinda made my hair greasy (of course I tried them out too! lol) Was nice to have the chance to try making some toiletries as I have wanted to do this for an age and never really got the chance to do it! Have any of you made some of your own toiletries? I got the recipe for the lip gloss from Youtube here!

Well like I said mothers day after my bro went home I was sick and that was my cue to head back to A&E. It was quite a long wait and ma was distressed because I couldn't sit still (it was just so hot in there and I was so uncomfortable.) I really hate being sick and feeling sick! I am sure there is not many people who do like it to be fair!

I look surprisingly cheerful!-I wasn't

Luckily I was booked for a gastrojejunostomy (a bypass) on the 17th anyway (for the stricture that became completely blocked) so I didn't have to have an emergency operation which I really didn't want! I also had a bag packed and ready so that ma could just pick it up for me! This time it was quite a horrid experience and much more invasive than the other times I have been in recently. They had to put a nasal tube in to drain my stomach urgh! It was possibly the most horrid thing I have had done yet. (Being sick as it was going in didn't help to make it pleasurable!) I feel so sorry for anyone who has to have one put in because you cant help but want to pull it out as they are putting it in! I suppose it was good though as it drained three liters of fluid and certainly made me feel more comfortable. Having it in for 11 days was definitely 10 days longer than I wanted it in for though, that's for sure! Funnily enough when it fell out on the 15th I totally freaked out about them having to put it back in and had a good sob! The only time I have freaked out more is when my consultant wanted me to have a second endoscopy! I always manage to get through it though. Usually with a smile too! Have any of you experienced this?

On fluids, IV meds and nutrition!

I also had another ultrasound and a CT scan too. There is a funny story there too. The hospital I was at is a teaching hospital and so the doctors come round in a morning and it feels like there is millions of them. They surround your bed and then one of them (usually one of the junior doctors or the consultant responsible for them) asks you questions and tells the nurse in charge what they are going to be doing. I learnt over time that you don't find anything out unless you ask so that is what I did. The consultant (who was actually very nice as they seem to be) mentioned me going for a CT scan so I said "well I am a bit concerned about that because you have to drink the prep and obviously nothing is going down due to my stricture so how will that work?". Cheeky aren't I? One of the junior looked at me as if to say 'it will be fine' but the consultant did discuss it with my surgeon first so it was a good thing to mention! I did mention things like this a lot when they came round doing things and giving me drugs etc. I had to take tablets as well with my nasal tube in (bit painful, like swallowing a chip the wrong way or a crisp in fact felt more jabby!) and I did ask the nurse if that would work as obviously everything was coming back up the tube. She said it should be fine-but I saw it come back up within the hour so they put me on IV meds after that!

They also decided that as the blockage was stopping me eating they needed to give me some nutrition so that I was fully prepared for my surgery. They recommended a Hickman line to make it easier. Wow! It was mighty painful when they fitted it and I felt so awful I cried. I don't usually cry in front of people but that was just a bit traumatic! At the time I was also a bit unsure what exactly they were doing which weird-ed me out but I am super pleased that I was feeling so pants that I wasn't my usual 'lets google of truth that'. I don't think I would have said yes so readily if I had looked it up! I also think I would have freaked out too! I only looked it up after I got it taken out on my discharge day. I was pretty amazed at how long the bit that had been in my body was so I was compelled to find out where it went as it turns out it went right into my heart. Impressive but totally creepy. What do you guys think?

My squares laid out to  ensure my colours coordinated!

Anyway they moved me to the hospital I was supposed to be going to for my surgery and it was a lot quieter (not least because I got my own room!)  and they started me on the nutrition. I started to feel a little better so I got ma to bring me my crochet. I had started with 30 granny squares (they only had 3 rounds on them from an old project) and I wanted to design a new cardigan. So I planned the sizes and laid out my squares...

Look at all the squares ready for some colour!

I did even do some doodles and measurements etc to make sure that it would work for me. Planning is not something I really do so I was quite impressed lol I then just had to add my beautiful orange around the granny squares! This was something that was easy to do as I can do it in my sleep I think and also I could just do one and then have a nap if I needed to! As I had a pretty poor signal in hospital and obviously the days are excessively long my crochet certainly kept me sane!

I wanted to join my squares in a new way for me so I spent a few hours when my signal was okay looking for something that would be pretty and go with the vague idea of what I wanted my cardigan to look like. I found this very good blog post which had some really nice ideas for joining granny squares so I tried the Flat braid. This is a really easy to follow tutorial and is such a pretty join. It looked lovely.
This was where I got to when I left hospital, I was joining

When I got home though I re-thought this join as for my cardigan I didn't think it would be durable enough and for some reason it just wasn't quite right. So I decided to just do my joins as slip stitches using the back loops only as it just makes a more dense join.

Slip stitch join using back loops only

Granny stripe sleeve when it was flat

I think they all missed me as much as I had them

Obviously when I got home I was feeling much better not least because I could eat again (even though I can only manage small portions and I am being very careful!), I got to have hugs and cuddles with my moogles who I missed so much, and got to sleep in my own bed and not be woken up at random times to check blood pressure etc. I had really missed my home. It seemed like a long time to be in! I came home on the 23rd and that was 17 days! Eeek! Anyway I got cracking on with my crochet as I wasn't allowed to lift anything and ma was looking after me! I decided that my sleeves should be granny stripes rather than granny squares! Just thought it would make it a bit different to the ones on Ravelry.

My sleeve joined and working on a cuff

Trying out hood shapes

It was at this point that I decided my cardigan needed a hood and that in actual fact it is going to be a hoodie! I started to completely formulate the image of what I wanted it to look like in my head. I feel it is very important at this stage to share a fantastic photo that had me and ma in stitches as we pondered the best shape and way to add my hood! I don't know if this will make you laugh as much as we did but I hope it does as it was very funny. I think mainly because ma wasn't expecting it and so when I stuck some paper on my head and said "what do you think" it took ma by surprise and really cracked us both up!

Finished back-Look at all those squares!

Weird face but just look at my sleeves! 

So here is the finished version! Completed exactly two weeks after I came out of hospital! It is very cosy and comfy and was surprisingly easy to make. I am going to be writing up the pattern and ma will proof read and test for me. 

You will have to let me know what you think peeps :) 

Until next time!

Flowers

Daffodil bulbs sprouting throughout my ivy

Well today the sun is shining, my tree has leaves appearing on it again and the daffodil bulbs are sprouting. In no time at all spring will surprise us and will be here. It will spring up on us! It seemed pretty appropriate then with spring coming and valentines day this month that I have been spending my time thinking of flowers and making them.

Ma's flowery hat

When I first started doing crochet I must admit that the flowers were one of the things that I didn't like. One of the things that made crochet a bit old fashioned and uncool. However I think that I have either had a change of heart or that I now just love all crochet including the hideous flowers. It started with the cardi I made and then ma asked me to make her a hat. Not just any hat but one with a large flower on it. Well that sounds like a challenge for someone who doesn't like crochet flowers however I surprised myself by really enjoyed making it. It was really easy and it ended up looking pretty fantastic I think, it also matches ma's mittens and scarf that she had made for herself. If you want the pattern for the easy peasy womans winter hat by or the rose crochet flower embellishment you can visit Ravelry and download the free patterns through the links.