On Sunday (30th November - the last day of World Vegan Month), I went for a potluck organised by Nisha, Jeremy and Michael! Thanks Nisha and Jeremy for having us! ^^

It's the first potluck I've been to this year - wow how time flies. 

First, we watched Cowspiracy, which is a documentary about the environmental impact of animal agriculture. I've read about some of the facts before (eg. it takes 1000 gallons of water to produce 1 gallon of milk; the water needed to make one hamburger is enough to shower for 2 months!) but what I found so shocking was that 1000+ individuals were actually murdered because they tried to protect the Amazon rainforest from being destroyed for animal agriculture?! Like a nun was shot in the head?!?! Plus apparently 4,600 (if I remember correctly) people were killed/harmed because they went against the meat/dairy/egg industry?!?! No wonder people are so skeptical about veganism. The animal agriculture industry buys out recognized animal/wildlife/ environment 'protection' establishments and uses them to brainwash people.

Cowspiracy is just the second vegan documentary I've watched (the first being Earthlings), but I'd definitely recommend it! Especially if you're non-vegan and yet call yourself an environmentalist. Or if you have a conscience.

Okay now for the food! As always, it was GOOD. Are vegans all wonderful cooks or what?!

Mushroom pasta by Alicia and Cheryl. ^^ The cashew cream sauce was great!

Yummy carrot cake by Zhi Wei and Gretchen!!

Truffle mac 'n' cheese with dill by Nisha and Jeremy! Wow I'd like to learn how to make my pastas as good as these two pasta dishes here!

And grapes-on-sticks plus assemble-it-yourself jelly & chia dessert at the back.

Pav bhaji ('Pav' means bread, and 'bhaji' refers to a thick potato-based curry, according to Wiki); bhaji by Sridevi and LOVEinBread baguette/rolls brought by Rebecca. They went great together! ^^

'Speshio fly lice' (haha!) by Stone.

Chili con Carne by Howard. Too bad I didn't see the vegan sour cream (I think?) at the side!

Garlic, roasted beet and jalapeno hummus by Michael. The colour of the roasted beet hummus is so gorgeous!!

My Thai-style tempeh cakes with chili-lime dressing. I'll post the recipe soon ^^

Super colourful superfood tabouleh. Refreshing!

Fried kway teow by Pauline. Springy and not too salty/oily!

There was more food than this!

Savoury sourdough mustard bread by Qing Hui. It's steamed, how interesting!

We climbed up some stairs and THE VIEW WAS WOW

Though after a while I really couldn't see what I was eating haha

Oh and we brought along our own plates and cutlery to reduce waste. ^^

Massaman curry by Sonal. Rich and fragrant from 2 cans of coconut milk lol! :)

Cute little chilled cakes by Nisha. I had the peanut butter chocolate one and it was creamy on top and crumbly & Oreo-ish on the bottom yum! The other one is pumpkin & cream cheese (I think)

Shepherd's pie by Esha. I was super full by then but this was too good to not eat! 

I did my best to match food to person (..to FB profile) heh. If I got anything wrong or missed anyone out please tell me. ^^;

The three dogs were super cute too! Photo from FB by Jeremy because I couldn't get any of them to sit still for the camera haha.

This potluck wasn't with the #sgvegan Instagrammy people that I'm more familiar with, but I still had fun! Thanks to Jeremy, Nisha and Michael for hosting and organising again! And thanks everyone for the yummy food :)

If you'd like to read about other potlucks:

Vegan Potluck Dinner (June 2013)

Sgvegan's World Vegan Day Potluck (Nov 2013)

Vegan Christmas Potluck Picnic (Dec 2013)

LOVEinBread is a new-ish vegan bakery that emphasizes on organic ingredients!

It's located at Marina Square and it was super difficult to find LOL. It's kinda near the Esplanade MRT exit. If you're not familiar with this place, it'll probably be easier to just ask the Information counter! Walked around in circles and had to backtrack haha

It's tucked in a corner. I like the decor! ^^

They have quite a lot of items! Other than bread buns, they have muffins, pizza bread, scones, sandwiches and cookies.

Plus they have raw desserts! They sell Earth Balance butter here too.

I bought a $20 value Groupon voucher, so I thought that I'd be able to buy a lot.

But the raw tiramisu and the pizza bread were pricey so I only got 7 items! Total for these is $21.40.

Guess who was hungry.

The Hawaiian Pizza ($4.90) was average I think. The vegan cheese was not bad and the bread was fluffy, but what I disliked was that this was so oily! The paper bag was soaked. I can understand that the cheese is oily, but the base of the pizza was quite oily too.

Okay, I guess what they're able to do with the vegan cheese is quite impressive. As compared to a vegan pizza from another cafe (which I shall blog about another time).

Mum said that the Chocolate Almond Muffin ($3.50) is kinda like the stuff I bake because it has a soy taste. Haha! I thought that this was yummy (there's chocolate chips inside if I remember correctly) but not WOW enough for me to buy again.

The Raw Tiramisu ($5.80) became firmer after I left it in the fridge for a few hours. It's smooth, creamy, with a good amount of bitterness. It's made with macadamia nuts, cashew nuts, almonds, cocoa powder, coffee powder, etc. As with all raw desserts, it's quite expensive. Well at least there's the cute good-quality plastic container to keep! That's the main reason why I chose this instead of the slice cakes hehe ^^;

The Mixed Herb Focaccia ($1.70) at the top of this picture is fluffy and chewy! Didn't like that it was kinda oily though. But focaccia is meant to be oily right? Haha

To the right is the Walnut Raisin ($1.90) which was nice!

The Pumpkin Bread ($1.70) is generously studded with pumpkin seeds, and there's pumpkin seeds inside too! 

The Chocolate Almond Bread ($1.90) was my favourite out of these four breads. 

I think all their bread buns don't have a filling. It'll be nice if there was! I shared these with my parents, and they like it. I guess they taste like normal bakery bread - which is a good thing.

 It's great that this bakery is fully vegan so there's no chance of contamination and there's no need to ask if it's vegan or not. ^^ I really like bread a lot, but my review for this wasn't OMG YUM probably because I prefer tough and dense bread, and the breads here (at least those I've tried) are the soft and fluffy kind (which I guess the general population prefers). But I'm sure that I'll visit LOVEinBread again! I'd love to try the other baked items! :)

LOVEinBread

6 Raffles Boulevard

#B1-18 Marina Square

Singapore 039594

Phone: 6338 4173

For another picnic post, view here.

A small picnic spread for two! Had a good catch-up with a friend over this simple meal last Saturday. ^^

Do you watch Roommate, a Korean variety show? It's where a bunch of celebrities stay together and do lotsa fun things! It's in it's second season now, and I really enjoy watching it! The second season is much more hilarious that the first btw. The only thing that would make the programme better is having a vegan cast member LOL.

Anyway, last week's episode 8 was about them making kimchi! When they were out shopping for ingredients, one of the cast (Jackson) mentioned 'kimcheese' because apparently he studied in America and he loves cheese.........

So I had vegan cheese that I got from Mustafa a while back and haven't used because I didn't know what to do with it! Plus I had kimchi and roasted seaweed sheets.

And TADA! Kimcheese kimbap. Kinda messy though because for some reason I couldn't roll them tightly that day meh. But my friend liked it so yay!

I don't know whether to call it kimbap or sushi, but since there's kimchi (which makes it more Korean) I shall call it kimbap. From Googling I think that the differences are: kimbap is served warm while sushi is served cold, kimbap doesn't contain raw fish, kimbap can be kept for the next day while sushi should be served fresh, & the rice in kimbap is mixed with sesame oil while the rice in sushi is mixed with rice vinegar.

For sushi (that's better-rolled), you can view this post. ^^

In it, there's brown rice, chopped kimchi, Sheeze strips, adzuki beans, purple sweet potato paste (leftover from my Purple Sweet Potato Bread) and carrot shreds. Yeah, I forgot the sesame oil. :x

The Sheeze was not as wonderful as I'd expected it to be. I felt that it was kinda powdery. (it rhymes) 

Mum says that it's cheesy when you first eat it, but afterwards the taste is odd.  But if she said that it tasted exactly like cheese I wouldn't have been surprised since in my mind cheese is disgusting. Hmm maybe it'll be better when it's melted!

Roasted potato wedges with Annie's Organic Ketchup! 

I roasted the potatoes with a tiny bit of oil spray, and cracked on some black pepper after. Super simple!

Fruit salad! Quite self-explanatory.

This Systema lunchbox is quite a space-saver! ^^

We went to Botanic Gardens for the picnic.

Oh yeah and the edamame comes from those frozen packets at NTUC. It's lightly salted but not too salty. Cold Storage has unsalted ones (Japanese brand) if I'm not wrong.

Afterwards we went to Brownice for dessert hehe! Since it's at Marymount, 2 stops away from Botanic Gardens ^^

 It rains almost every day now so it might not be such a suitable time for picnics, but they're so fun! Ah I'd love to have a rattan picnic basket.

I've seen many posts  on Instagram by my adventurous veg friend Chen Xi (@peabrainner) about the yummy food at this vegan cafe! So when mum went to Seoul, I asked her to get some baked goods for me. She said that it was easy to find and get to PLANT!

Mum took these photos. Not bad (Y)

Hmm I think prices on this menu board are in Korean won; 12.0 = 12000 won?

1000 krw is about 1.2 sgd or 0.9 usd.

Mum had the Pumpkin Gingerbread Cookie Cream Cake and she said that is was very nice! It was moist and didn't have any taste of soy milk. Wow I wanna eat some of their cakes right now!!

(Sorry if the brightness of this photo momentarily blinds you.)

Mum got these back for me yay!! I enjoyed them all!

The Chocolate Cherry Brownie was rich, moist and not too sweet. The top and the corners are cookie-like. A little oily but really yummy!

The Coconut Chews are chewy (duh) and fragrant due to the desiccated coconut, and there's chocolate chips in it too!

These Gluten Free Lemon Drops look like mochi and sounds like candy haha. It has a crumbly stick-to-your-teeth consistency and it smells & tastes very lemon-y and fresh!

The Pumpkin Cranberry Oat Cookie had such a cute packaging for Halloween!! (I've been meaning to write this post since 3 weeks ago lol.) It's more of a chewy cookie than a crunchy one; it falls apart easily and the last thing you chew is bits of oats.

Someday I'd really like to go there in person! 

PLANT Bakery/Cafe
1F, 63-15, Itaewon-dong, Yongsan-gu, Seoul
Open Tues - Sat, 11am-8pm

-SOLD-

I have 3 (EDIT: I'm left with one!!) brand-new Paderno World Cuisine Spiralizers for sale at SGD$40 each. Email me at serenesayyian@gmail.com if you're interested! :) First-come-first-served, and meetups only.

For more information about the spiralizer, view this post from when I was selling it previously.

Note that the packaging is slightly different (more compact) but the contents are the same. ^^

PURPLE BREAD!

I love sweet potatoes. And bread. And naturally-coloured food.

This bread is slightly sweet, and more moist than my Anyhow Wholewheat Bread. (But if you want pillow-soft fluffy bread this isn't the recipe for you!) I did most of the mixing in my food processor, so it was really easy to make! My food processor comes with a plastic blade (for mixing and kneading bread) but I couldn't find it, so I just used the regular blade. Not something I'd recommend to do often since it might damage the blade, but it does the trick!

I've had this recipe printed out and kept in a folder of recipes. I think it's been there for at least 3 years LOL. And I finally used it yay!

I made lotsa changes - omitted the oil, used only wholewheat spelt flour, swapped honey for coconut sugar etc. But tell me if this recipe is originally yours and I'll credit you!

How coincidental that I printed this in purple ink. ^^

I steamed 3 small purple sweet potatoes and pureed them (with the skin). Added quite a bit of water to get it smooth, but it was still really thick!

This is what it looks like before the second rise.

Done! It's a small loaf.

Super happy with how it turned out! It wasn't mushy in the middle as I'd feared it'd be. :) I could've added more beans though!

Purple Sweet Potato Bread with Adzuki Bean Swirl

Makes one small loaf
Note that I used a 1dl cup (100ml) for measurements. It's alright if you don't have a food processor - a spatula and a pair of hands will work fine!

• 100ml lukewarm water or adzuki bean soup

• 2 tsp coconut sugar (+ more if desired)

• 2 tsp quick rise yeast

• 400ml wholewheat spelt flour (+ a little extra for dusting) 

• 100ml puréed purple sweet potato (made from about 1 small sweet potato + some water)

• pinch of sea salt

• handful of boiled adzuki beans

1. Combine water, 2 tsp coconut sugar and yeast in a food processor and pulse once to mix. 

2. When mixture gets slightly foamy, add in the salt. 

3. Add in the flour, 100ml at a time, processing after each 100ml.

4. After all the flour has been added, the dough should ball up in your food processor when processing.

5. Place the dough ball in a lightly floured bowl and cover. Allow the dough to rise until doubled, about 1 hour.

6. Punch the dough down after the first rise. Flour your hands, knead the dough a few times, and spread it out into a rectangle.

7. Press the adzuki beans into the dough. Cover every inch of available space with beans (but leave about a 1" wide strip at the edge furthest from you) for a more distinct swirl. Add some coconut sugar if you'd like a sweeter bread.

8. Roll the dough away from you and pat the left and right sides in. Place it seam side down into a lightly greased small bread pan (the one I used is from Daiso, 18x8.8x6cm or 7.1" x 3.5" x 2.4")

9. Cover and allow the dough to rise again.. until it looks like it won't rise anymore. About 45 mins to 1 hour.

10. Bake in a preheated oven at 180 deg C for about 30 mins. Leave to cool completely (I left mine to rest overnight) before slicing. Enjoy!


If you're interested in swirly bread, here's a Chocolate Sea-salt Cinnamon Swirl loaf recipe. :)