I have a lot to blog about - there have been some exciting events and I have had some sort of a social life! I know, it boggles my mind too!
The last thing I blogged about was my fantastic trip to Sydney, which involved a lot of fabulous food and fun times with my wonderful Browncoats! The next weekend was Halloween. Halloween isn't really a thing in Australia, though some people and some shops seem to think it should be. I am glad, I have no desire to have people knocking on my door demanding lollies! But still, it was a Saturday night and it was an excuse for a bit of a spooooooky party! A How to Host a Murder, to be precise.
Our murder party was called 'The Good, The Bad and The Guilty', and was a wild west themed event. My character was Butch Chastity, the famous outlaw. Apparently my character was meant to be totally butch, but being that the one thing I am not is butch I went for the cute cowgirl look. After all, did Buffy not teach us that we girls can kick some serious butt, save the world and still look damn adorable while doing so? Sadly, I don't have a photo to give you right now! I need to get some pictures off Jen's camera, but she is overseas right now. But I will put one up when I do get them. I will tell you though - sequined pink cowgirl hat!
I can show you a picture of my trusty steed though. This is 'Spot-O-Silver', the Appaloosa of Sin. For those feeling strangely nostalgic upon seeing him, he is a Grand Champion from years ago, and he also makes neighing and galloping noises when you press the button on his back! If you don't understand that Appaloosa Of Sin reference, then shame on you and go and download Dr Horrible's Sing Along Blog immediately. For those who do, welcome geek friends of awesome! Sing it with me now... 'Bad Horse. Bad Horse! Bad Horse. Bad Horse! He ride across the nation, the thoroughbred of sin...'.
Here are a couple of the other guests. We have Elias Truist-Heath, the heart-throb gunfighter with a mysterious orphaned past and the delightful Elvira Lynn Fekshin, inspiration for the song My Heart Burns For You And Other Places Too, aka the whore. Oh sorry, did I say whore? I meant madam. ;)
Food wise, we were going to keep it western and simple with a barbeque. The other kids had general charred meat products (you know what they say about that!) and I fried up some Sanitarium vegan sausages for myself. I also provided the salads.
Amazing Grace Pasta Salad from The Garden of Vegan. I love this salad, it is your basic creamy pasta salad with asparagus, cherry tomatoes, snow peas and basil in it. So yummy. Apparently you can also put red capsicum in it, but we all know how I feel about that.
Fantastic Dijon Potato Salad from The Garden of Vegan. Fantastic indeed - this thing is five stars of awesome! This is not a creamy potato salad, rather the dressing is made up of oilve oil and red wine vinegar with dijon and garlic. And lots and lots of dill! Nom. The recipe calls for 14 small new potatoes but I found this made a teeny amount when you are wanting to serve for a crowd (to be fair the recipe does say this makes 2-4 servings). I doubled the amount of potatoes, but still used the original amount of ingredients for the dressing - it makes more than enough to go around the extra potatoes!
Here is my plate - with some baby spinach and some cooked onion as well. It was nom.
For dessert I pulled out the mighty Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World and I made Brooklen Brownie Cupcakes. These were lucky to make it to cupcake form - the batter of these is fantastic and I could have just eaten the whole lot with a spoon! It contains melted chocolate, enough said! It also has black cherry preserves. I could only find really chunky jam with whole cherries, so I just gave it a quick blend up with the hand held to make it smooth, as the cherries are there for depth of flavour rather than actual cherriness. I had to leave out the bourbon/whiskey, as I found we did not have any and there was no time to head out for some. I got a bit confused with the making of though. It says in the introduction it makes 15 cupcakes, and not to overfill the liners or they will sink. But in the instructions it says to fill the liners full with batter. Following the instructions only gave me 12 cupcakes, and once cooked the tops were quite spread out. So maybe next time only fill three quarters full! The Chocolate Brownie Frosting make about twice as much as you need to top the cupcakes. I just used pecan halves rather than chopped walnuts to top them. The result is an insanely rich, decadent brownie. Keep a glass of water next to you!
Well, it was the Wild West. And in the story we were all gathering to attend a hangin'. I wonder what the graduation bear did??
And finally a random food photo, which was actually my lunch for that day. I had a big weekend of cooking and baking going on, which you will see more of the results of in my next post. I started cooking on Friday to get everything ready in time. All this prep work makes a girl hungry!
Sleepy Sunday Morning Scramble and Cajun Tomato Potatoes from La Dolce Vegan. Yummy! The tofu in particular gets a great flavour.
Stay tuned for the results of my mammoth bake-a-thon for the next day!
Cute Kitty Photo of the Post
What would a halloween post be without a black cat? It is my Dim Sim! Who is in no way a giver of bad luck if she crosses your path, that's just silly. Dim Sim dislikes halloween because I make her stay in side for a couple of days because I am a paranoid mother and worry about sickos out there looking for black cats. She also dislikes Friday the 13th, where I do the same thing. Maybe I am crazy, but at least I know my baby is safe. ;)
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