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194 Wickham St, Fortitude Valley, Qld

‘Make your own fun rolls’, the menu urges, with respect to a dish of bean curd, salad and rice paper. It’s a great idea if you’re not afraid of making a fool of yourself. Along with the salad ingredients of lettuce, mint, sprouts, shredded carrot and cucumber come bean curd with a sauce for dipping and uncooked rice wrappers with a dish of hot water into which you place the wrappers. When you judge they’re sufficiently soft, which can be a bit tricky, you pull them out and wrap them around the stuffing, making sure the bits and pieces don’t fall out, another tricky operation. The food is excellent, but  timid eaters may prefer to go for main courses that present no problems. The stir fried vegetarian Singapore noodles with bean curd and egg has an agreeably mild curry flavour, and we also enjoyed the combination of vegetables with fried bean curd. The restaurant was full of happy people, who didn’t seem at all worried about maintaining ther dignity.

These little bites are raw, vegan, sugar and gluten free!  You can use different nuts, vegan choc chips or even add some cocoa to vary the recipe depending what is at hand.

1 cup raw nuts (I used 1/2 cup walnuts + 1/2 cup cashews and macadamias)

1 cup raisins

1 teaspoon cinnamon

2 tablespoons coconut

Extra coconut for rolling

(1) Rinse the nuts and fruit to make them moist and easier to process

(2) Food process everthing until a ball starts to form.

(3) Take teaspoons of mixture and roll into balls, then roll these in coconut.

Refridgerate

Recently, it came to this VVOCer’s attention that the Royal Wedding Menu was to be enitrely plant based.  With great interest I set about investigating further.  Unfortunately, upon delving deeper,  it turns out that this was in fact an elaborate April Fool’s Joke!  See here for more info. Such a shame really:-(

In early February, Oprah challenged her staff to try a more compassionate eating regime by going vegan for a week.  To read the whole story follow this link.

Thank you to John, who hosted our meeting today and provided a scrumptious lunch.  We shared some delicately flavoured lentils served with bread and salads, one of green beans and one of  cucumber dressed with coconut milk. Lovely, thank you John.

Topics discussed:

(1) We talked about our local Indian restaurants and all agreed that it would be good for each of us to post reviews of these.

(2) Helen raised that there was recent talk that Oprah had challenged her staff to be vegan for a week!  Helen to put up a brief post about this.

(3) Discussed the idea of a VVOC excursion to Melbourne to participate in Holy Week in English at the Good Shepard Australian Orthodox Mission which is based at Monash University. Helen to look into this and gather some info for the group.

(4) Melissa kindly offered to host the next VVOC meeting.

(5) Our August meeting will hopefully be a Skype talk or online chat to include Melissa and Jacki, who will both be working on the Mercy Ship in Africa.

Japan Earthquake Animal Rescue and Support (JEARS)

It’s always nice to see that after a natural disaster, there are peopel out there looking out for the animals, as well as the humans… check out the website at: http://jears.org/

51 Sherwood Rd, Toowong Qld

The clientele as well as the food and ambience at the Laksa Hut are reassuringly Southeast Asian. We enjoyed the Salt and Pepper Tofu, crispy with diced onion and capsicum on a bed of lettuce, and Chinese Vegetable with Garlic Sauce in which flecks of fried garlic are to be seen amid the dark green; let Chinese or Malay cooks loose on greens and the result is always satisfying. Other dishes on the menu that look vegetarian need  not be; it may be a good idea to ask. The food is complemented by an enormous range of interesting drinks. Some are commercial products that come ready packaged, such as the sago coconut milk, in which little orange pieces of sago lurk towards the bottom; some are freshly prepared juices with witty names, like the Kung Flu Fighter, in which apple is given a buzz by lemon and ginger. While very satisfying, the food here is simple and quickly served, making the Laksa Hut just the spot for a quick meal when on the way to somewhere else.

6/225 Hawken Drive, St Lucia Qld

Students certainly eat better than they used to, and a meal at this modest establishment in a university area has little in common with the meals to which I was accustomed when among their number. It does vegetarian spring rolls that come with a sweet sauce for dipping; perhaps they could do with a little less batter, but they provide a great start to a meal. Then there are Choo Chee Curry, in which vegetables swim in a coconut sauce that has a bit of a kick, and Pad Thai Vegetarian Noodles with sprouts, veggies, tofu and pieces of fried egg (vegans beware!) There’s probably finer Thai food about, but hey a meal here sure beats buying stuff at the supermarket, wheeling it home in one of those trolleys, discovering at the last minute that you’re out of a key ingredient, and then having a big fight about whose turn it is to do the washing up.

29 High St, Toowong Qld

There are all kinds of vegetarian possibilities at this smart, beautifully appointed restraurant. For starters you can try the vegetable samosas, loosely packed with plenty of peas , or the pakoras, although those that came to us were a little soggy; perhaps the oil they had been fried in was not hot enough.  The main meals include dishes of potatoes (again, we would have liked something a bit more crispy) and richly satisfying aubergines. These are the two most spicy among the vegetarian dishes, but the one we enjoyed most was the smooth vegetable korma. It’s a pleasing cuisine, not quite as hot as Indian food. If, on the other hand, you’re on a hot date, the secluded and dimly lit ambience might make it an appropriate setting, but for other people there may be alternatives where the food is at least as good and a little cheaper.

1/8 Days Rd, Grange Qld

Sometimes it seems that the wonderful smiles of the staff are reason enough to go to Thai restaurants. But there are other attractions at the Thai Chada, such as the excellent Vegetarian Tom Yum soup, red and spicy, that includes thin strips of tofu and tomatoes among the mix of veggies. The Vegetarian Spring Rolls come with plenty of sprouts and a sweet chilli dip.  There are many veggie dishes among the main meals; I recommend the currys, which come in red, yellow, panang (sweetish with peanuts) and green varieties. The last is the hottest, but not disconcertingly so, and the chillis are in tension with the strong taste of fresh basil, against a gentle background of coconut milk and more strips of tofu (the peas are a bit of a surprise.) It was good to see many people enjoying themselves the night we visited the restaurant.