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Vegan Liegeois waffles!

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Unhealthy. Yes, I know. Too much sugar. Yes, I realize. Not really ‘baking’ since I’m using a premade mixture. Yes, I confess. But I just couldn’t resist this premade mixture to make vegan waffes de Liège (a type of Belgian waffles).

Vegan Liegeois waffles

Vegan Liegeois waffles

It had been several years since I had last eaten Liegeois waffles. These waffles (non vegan unfortunately) are sold at food stalls in nearly every Belgian city. I have even spent a whole summer selling these waffles (and ice-creams) at such a food stall at the Belgian coast as a teenager, earning some pocket money.
Since going vegan around 2010, I hadn’t eaten any Liegeois waffles anymore, and although I’m planning to try different recipes myself, I just couldn’t resist trying out this premade mixture for vegan Liegeois waffles.

just add lukewarm soymilk and plant butter

just add lukewarm soymilk and plant butter

It doesn’t require much effort. Even the pearl sugar is included in the mixture. Just add 125ml lukewarm soy milk and 120g plant butter to the 500gmixture, mingle for about 5 minutes, and the dough is ready for baking. I have a waffle iron with changeable irons, and I used the iron with the big squares for these Liegeois waffles, and placed two dots of dough on each side. This made 9 waffles de Liège.

Yummie! They are not quite as smooth and soft inside as the Liegeois waffles as I remember them, but they come pretty close! Will definitely be making these again!

Waffle iron with big squares

Waffle iron with big squares

vegan gauffres de Liège

vegan gaufres de Liège

Gourmet-Waffelbackmischung “Vegane Lütticher Waffel” (Belgisches Waffelhaus La Gauffre)
Bought at V|edge (Ghent), January 2015
500g, 4,99€

Tea in a box

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I had been looking out for a tea box for some time. Wanted to have the different sorts of tea neatly sorted. I found it pretty unhandy, when wanting to choose a kind of tea or offering it to visitors, to take out all the seperate tea boxes.

Teabox, 25,49€

Teabox, 25,41€

I found this one at Horeca Totaal, a large shop aimed at food professionals, just outside the city center of Bruges (review of the shop will follow).
Pretty happy with this tea box!

IF

Tea box
Horeca Totaal, 25,41€

New T-shirt: in seitan we trust!

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In seitan we trust! A T-shirt from the church of seitan 😀

Inseitanwetrust

I bought this T-shirt at V|edge, the all vegan shop in Ghent (review of the shop will follow on our blog soon). V|edge also has delivery points in other Belgian cities, among which Bruges (delivery of online command every two weeks).

T-shirt, In seitan we trust
100% Organic Cotton
bought at V|edge, 36,99€

 

New additions to our lists of restaurants and shops (2015/01)

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Here are some new entries in the list of restaurants, which we’ve added recently (2015/01).

Where vegans are welcome:

Bites and Wines (Antwerp)

De Fobie (Gent)

La Trattoria (Bruges)

Lemon Grass (Tielt)

Lokaal (Ghent) (review to follow)

Parazzar (Bruges)

Sanseveria (Bruges)

Tanuki (Bruges)

vegan shop V|edge, Ghent

vegan shop V|edge, Ghent

Vegan not available, or no reply:

Bistro Bruut (Bruges)

Bistro De Schilder (Bruges)

Brasserie Venice (Bruges)

Ellis Gourmet Burger (Bruges and other cities)

Gingerbread (Bruges)

The Olive Tree (Bruges)

For more info about these restaurants: see our lists of restaurants where vegans are welcome in the menu section of The Bruges vegan! List restaurants in Bruges and around Bruges.

And we also added some shops to our list of interesting shops:

Biovita in Roeselare (see our review)

Flourpower in Poeke (see our review)

Horeca Total in Bruges (review to follow) and in Ostend

and V|edge in Ghent (review to follow).

Walnuts from our tree in the garden

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Each year, we have plenty of walnuts from the walnut tree in our garden. Although it is still a rather young tree (about 25 to 30 years old), it produces buckets and buckets full of walnuts. We don’t know what variety of walnut it is, as the tree was already in the garden when we moved here.

Walnut tree

Walnut tree in Summer

Upon collecting the walnuts from the garden in the Fall (end of September and October), I usually place the nuts inside (heated room) for a week or two, so they can dry properly and turn them every day. Afterwards, I move them to the cellar, where it’s cool and dry.

walnuts

walnuts

Every once in a while, I shell some walnuts and store the shelled nuts in a jar, ready for use in baking or other recipes. They need to be properly dried to store them like this, you can’t do this when you’ve freshly harvested them from the outside.
I like to have some walnuts shelled and readily available, so I can just eat a handfull of them whenever I feel like it!

cracking and shelling walnuts

cracking and shelling walnuts

shelled walnuts

shelled walnuts

See recipes with walnuts from our garden: overview here.

Walnuts in August, still inside green shell

Walnuts in August, still inside green shell

Walnut tree, Winter

Walnut tree, Winter

A visit to shop Flourpower in de Artemeersmolen (mill), Poeke

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Shop review #10 – In our search for vital wheat gluten (or gluten powder, to make our own seitan, more about that in another blogpost), we found Flourpower, a small shop inside the Artemeersmill at Poeke. Poeke is a rural village between Tielt and Aalter, 39 km from Bruges.

Artmeersmolen, Poeke

Artmeersmolen, Poeke

The shop has a great selection of flour mixtures, and some other bakery stuff.

Inside the shop, Flourpower

Inside the shop, Flourpower

 

This is what we bought:

  • groats of soy, 1kg, 2,35€
  • chocolate chips, 1kg, 7,30€
  • vital wheat gluten, 5kg, 13,70€
  • 10 grain meal, 1kg, 2,10€

Very happy to have found the gluten powder. I bought a 5kg bag, but they also have smaller amounts available.
I have no idea yet what I’m going to do with the soy groats, but I was so intrigued by this (and hadn’t seen it before in any shops), I just bought it. I’m sure I will found some good use for it. If you have any suggestions, let me know!
The 10 grain meal also mentions vitamine C and enzymes among the ingredients, and the shop owner confirmed they were resp. from citrus and wheat origin.

Chocolate chips, bread meal, and soy groat

soy groat 2,35€, bread meal 2,10€ and chocolate chips 7,30€

Vital wheat gluten, 5kg

Vital wheat gluten, 5kg, 13,70€

vital wheat gluten

vital wheat gluten

We took a look upstairs to see the inside of the mill. The mill wasn’t operational that day, because there was a very strong wind. You can see some photos from the inside below.

Very glad to have found this shop, as it is not so easy to find gluten powder around here. I had previously bought organic vital wheat gluten in organic shop Biovita in Bruges (only available on special demand), but that was about 4times this price (+/- 50€ for 5kg, being organic).

Flourpower, location (39 km from Bruges)
Artemeersstraat 14A
9880 Poeke
+32(0)498/604740

here’s are some more photos from Flourpower and the Artmeersmolen:

Artemeersmolen, Poeke
shop, flourpower
shop, flourpower
shop, flourpower
shop, flourpower
shop Flourpower
artemeersmolen, inside
Artemeersmolen, inside
Flourpower, shop
Chapel, Molenlandroute (mill route)
artemeersmolen

Facts about the mill: built in 1810, stone mill, built on artificial hill. Till 1914 used for both canola oil as meal. Afterwards, only for meal. Renovated in 1975 and made operational again. Classified in 1986 for historical and industrial archeological value.

 

A visit to organic shop Biovita in Roeselare

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Shop review #9 – Biovita is a new organic shop in Roeselare (41km from Bruges). It opened at the end of 2014. Biovita now has three shops: two in Bruges, and this one in Roeselare.

Biovita Roeselare

Biovita Roeselare

Biovita is not an all-vegan shop, but they do have many vegan products available that you will not find so easily in other ‘regular’ shops. For example vegan cheeses, icecream or non dairy milkdrinks, tempeh, silk tofu, nuts, seaweeds, etc. They also clearly label the products as being vegan, lactose free or gluten free (but as you know, it’ always best to check and double check).

Roeselare is too far for us to go shopping on a regular basis (the two shops in Bruges are of course closer to us). But we were in the neighbourhood a couple of weeks ago and paid them a visit!

Biovita Roeselare

Biovita Roeselare

Here are some more impressions from the new shop in Roeselare. There’s plenty of parking next to the shop. Style is similiar to the shops in Bruges, and they also have a selection of toys (not so much available at the shop in Sint-Kruis).

 

 

Biovita, location
Meensesteenweg 51
8800 Roeselare
051/43.20.20

To announce their opening at the end of October 2014, Biovita had advertissements on public busses of De Lijn. One of them read this, which was probably the first time a bus drove around in Flanders carrying the word vegetarian (vegan would have been nicer of course ;-).
Photo from the Facebook stream of Biovita (here)

busBiovita

 

See our list with shops, which may interest vegans

 

Fall and Winter harvest from our garden

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In the Fall of 2014 we had plenty of raspberries and bramberries.
It’s the first year our (still rather small) fig tree produced a dozen or 2 figs!

raspberry

yellow raspberries

bramberries (left)

bramberries (left)

some of the figs

some of the figs

And we had buckets and buckets of walnuts from our walnut tree. I keep them in a dry place, and about 2-3 months after harvesting, I start peeling them and keep them in glass jars. Easy to have some walnuts at hand for baking, or just whenever you feel like eating some.

walnuts from our own tree, ready to use

walnuts from our own tree, ready to use

One of our poplar trees is producing oyster mushrooms. It’s very nice to have free oyster mushrooms from the garden, but unfortunately this also means the tree is slowly dying.

oyster mushrooms on poplar tree in the garden

oyster mushrooms on poplar tree in the garden

We had several cauliflowers.

Cauliflower

Cauliflower

It’s already January, but we are still harvesting some vegetables from our garden. There are still some Brussels sprouts, leeks, and also kale and als some root vegetables: parsnip, root persley and red beets. And still also corn salad!

Brussels Sprouts

Brussels Sprouts

Kale

Kale

parsley root and red beet

parsley root and red beet

parsnip

parsnip

corn salad

corn salad

Southern chiabatta

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Quick and easy chiabatta sandwich for lunch. It doesn’t always have to be fancy! Ciabatta bread is normally vegan, but better check to be sure.
We added Wilmersburger cheese (vegan) on top.

southern chiabatta, ready to eat!

southern chiabatta, ready to eat!

Wouldn’t it be nice if sandwich bars would make something like this for lunch?

Ingredients

  • half chiabatta bread, sliced
  • 1 tbs olive oil
  • 2 small bell peppers
  • 2 spring onion
  • 2 sjalots
  • 200 g mushrooms
  • 1 clove garlic, minced
  • 4 tbs passata (tomatosauce)
  • pinches of pepper, salt, oregano
  • wilmersburger cheese pizzatoping
  • handful of black olives, sliced

Preparation

Preheat oven to 180° (350F).
Chop the vegetables brunoise (diced) and fry them – together with the garlic – in olive oil
Add pepper, salt and oregano to your own liking.
Put covered chiabatta in oventray and brush the bread with passata.
Put the vegetables on the bread, add the sliced olives on top and cover with Wilmersburger cheese.
Sprinkle some olive oil on top.
Put in oven till the chees form a crust and starts getting golden (about 15 minutes).

Southern chiabatta

Southern chiabatta

Wilmersburger, pizza toping

Wilmersburger, pizza topping

with the Wilmersburger cheese on top

with the Wilmersburger cheese on top

Cranberry bread with nuts and papaya

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I’ve made this bread a couple of times. It’s a rather large portion, and because the bread is rather moist (because of the berries) it does not preserve that long. But you can easily put some of it in the freezer, and save it for a later date. I’ve added both walnuts and hazelnuts last time, as I still had a handfull of hazelnuts from our garden. The walnuts are also from our own tree in the garden 🙂 I wish I could say the cranberries are also from our garden, but alas, the birds have eaten most of those 😉

Cranberry bread with papaya and nuts

Cranberry bread with papaya and nuts

Cranberry bread slice

Cranberry bread slice

I also added some dried papaya, but you can easily replace this with some other dried berries or fruits, or leave this out altogether.

papaya

papaya

Ingredients cranberry bread with nuts and papaya (vegan)

  • 1 tbs ground flaxseed
  • 3 tbs water
  • 1/4 cup vegan butter – melted and cooled
  • 1 ts vanille extract
  • 1 cup orange juice
  • 1 cup soy milk or almond milk
  • 4 cups all purpose flour
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 4 ts baking powder
  • 1/2 ts salt
  • 2 ts orange zest
  • 1 1/2 cup cranberries (fresh or frozen)
  • 1 cup nuts, chopped and roasted
  • 1/2 cup candied fruit (papaya, raisin, pineapple, …) chopped (optional)

Preparation

Preheat oven to 180° (350F). Grease a bread loaf pan.

In a small bowl, mix the ground flaxseeds with water, whip it well. Add the wet ingredients: melted butter, vanilla, orange juice and vegan milk.
In another bowl, mingle the dry ingredients: flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and zest.
Mingle the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients, and mix in the fruits and nuts.
Put the batter into the loaf pan and bake for 60-70 minutes.

Cranberry bread, another version

Cranberry bread, another version

 

Inspired by a recipe in this vegan cookbook: The Joy of Vegan baking, by Colleen Patrick Goudreau.