Korean rolls & tofu

Yesterday I helped all day my friend Tae Hee with her project so today she brought me some delicious lunch! She's soo sweet! She prepared this simple rice rolls with Korean tofu, which consists, basically, in tofu (yeah!) and mushrooms.. all cooked in soy sauce and red pepper paste! wow.. that was awesome.. I'm sorry the picture is pretty crappy but I took it very quickly cos I was pretty hungry.. Have I already mentioned that it was really good!?? I'm thinking about something to prepare on Friday for Tae Hee and another girl which has been very nice to me, Francesca. But there'll be an update on that. ;)

Since I'm here posting I'm gonna write a recipe I'm very jealous about, something I use for showin' up with my non-vegan friends.. hehe.. It's similar to what Tae Hee made for me but I learned how to make it in Bahamas.. well, long story I guess.. ;)

Please try this and tell me how it was:

Korean Tofu (2 persons)

150 gr natural tofu

1 big potato in large pieces
1 large carrot cut up

1 large onion cut up

4 cloves of garlic

1 tablespoon chili paste

1 tablespoon chili powder

2 tablespoons sesame oil

1 tablespoon sugar

2 tablespoons soy sauce

salt to taste

Prep! Heat the sesame oil in a large skillet. Add garlic, chili powder and the paste and mix it. Add the tofu (I first fry it a bit). Add veggies after a few minutes. Add salt, sugar and soy sauce. Cover the pan and lower the heat. Cook until carrots get soft and add a bit of water if necessary.

Serve with rice.

Save a baby crab in the morning and eat hummus in the evening.. vegan life!

Today I saved a baby crab. It belonged to the same species of this little guy in the picture. Very often at the center little crabs are entrapped in the sediment.. it's not a big deal, the sea is two meters away and you can free them back to the sea. But not a lot of people think about it. Since I arrived I had to free a lot of animals that otherwise would have been thrown away.. so that I got the feeling some people just wait for me for putting back the animals in the wild. I saved snails, crabs and oysters. It's good I'm there doing it and I hope people realize that it doesn't take a lot of effort and it feels great to give freedom to a poor entrapped little guy. But I wonder if anyone would do it once I'll be gone.That's sad.

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I'd like to present the recipe of one of the best creams in the world: HUMMUS. There're actually two versions (that I know), cooked and raw. Choose the one you like the most. Both best served with pita bread!

Cooked:
1 can of chick peas (400gr)
3 cloves garlic, crushed
1 tablespoon tahini
juice of two lemons
1\2 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley
1\4 teaspoon paprika
salt and pepper

Prep! Blend the chick peas with the garlic and a little water to make a smooth, creamy consistency. Spoon in the tahini, add most of the lemon juice and the salt and pepper (not too much).
Whizz again and add the rest of the lemon juice.
Serve on a shallow dish, scattered with the parsley and sprinkled with paprika.
Serves 4-6.

Raw (dedicated to my friend Candi):
1 can chick pea sprouts (sprouted overnight)
juice of 1 lemon
1 clove garlic
2 tablespoons raw tahini
Optional seasonings: ground cumin, sea salt to taste, chives, paprika, cayenne pepper

Prep! Blend all of the ingredients. Add water to thin to desired consistency.
Very delicious spread on leafy greens or red bell pepper strips or even celery. Enjoy!

(ps. the picture isn't mine.. it's too late for cooking now! :) have a good evening!)

Masoor Dahl Soup

This is my very special Masoor Dahl Soup recipe! I don't know if other people have my same feeling but I'm still amazed to see how easy it is to have a tasty dish without a lot of effort. It's just damn good. So if you're looking for something good here you go ;-b

MASOOR DAHL SOUP

Ingredients:
250 gr red lentils
1 veg cube
spices (1/2 teaspoon each): black pepper, cumin, curry, coriander, sereh, turmeric
2 red chili peppers
3 garlic cloves

Prep! Wash the red lentils and cook them until water has come to the boil. Then add the vegetable cube and the garlic cloves. Cook for 5 minutes. Add all the spices and leave it cooking until you get a thick soup. Take off the garlic cloves and serve!

Guys dig it!

(Perry enjoying the soup)

If you like Indian food I suggest you to check this book, very useful if you wanna try A Vegan Taste of India

Save Bimini

Bimini Islands are a group of subtropical islands, part of the Great Bahama Bank, 86 km east of Miami. I've been in Bimini last year, participating in a field research on the beautiful lemon shark Negaprion brevirostris, as my final stage for my BS degree. These islands are most famous to serve as a nursery for the lemon sharks and believe me they're a natural paradise on Earth. Unfortunately a huge catastrophic action has been taken against Bimini Bay by The Hilton Hotels Corporation. In fact a massive destruction of all the mangroves has started for building a resort for tourists and I saw it my self, I was disgusted and full of anger. Please to know more about it and to protest against it, visit BIMINI BAY RESORT DESTROYS BIMINI.

White Roses

Today I've been a bit sick; it must be the Dutch weather, the temperature first rising to 35°C then dropping to 15°C in a couple of days.. I was riding my bike in the rain and I might have caught a cold that way.. But today I received also white roses from Perry. He went out for bringing back some stuff to a friend at the computer store and he just came back carrying this bunch of beautiful roses.. I was very happy.. I love him very much and I really look forward to move to another country with him. In fact soon I'll be done with my project at the Netherlands Institute of Ecology and we're making plans to re-start school somewhere else; I wanna go to graduate school to get my Master degree and then a PhD in Marine Biology. Perry has a BA in Art and he would love to study Communication & Multimedia. So we're gonna move together.. where.. there's still a bit of time to decide but for the end of the year we wanna leave. We need to find a place that suits our clothes.. Holland is too cold!

About Being Vegan

Many many times I've wanted to write about me being vegan. How it started. Why. But I had so many arguments that I've got a shortage of words for it. Since I can remember I always loved animals, well I first wanted to be a vet and then I just wanted to have a farm full of animals to pet.. (what a great job.. ;-b). My parents aren't vegetarian and I've been raised as most of the kids with a marked distinction between the animals I wanted to pet and 'the stuff' on my plate. My mind just never connected the two things. Beside the fact that I've never eaten chicken in my life or horses, sheep.. cuz I used to see 'em around. Until a day I saw someone killing a rabbit at my grandma's.. the violence was absurd and I swear even if I was a kid (6-7 years?) I started to have a clue about what that meant. But forget about it.. being vegetarian was unacceptable.. even if I asked to stop eating animals.. and I remember my dad approved it and of course he got into a huge fight with my mom.. result: I had to keep on eating meat. The rest of my family lives in the South of Italy, so we usually went to visit them one time a year (we live on the northwest coast), it was 26th Dec 1997 when, I can say without exaggerating, my life changed.. positively! Basically i saw my uncle killing a beautiful rooster. An incredibly beautiful one. He just cut his throat. That was it. I saw the life in the eyes of the rooster I saw the fear. Then I didn't see anything anymore. That was death. I know it might sounds a bit 'too much' for almost everybody I know. I tried to tell my story and I saw people laughing at me. But I can finally tell everything. I was 15 and vegetarian. By then I was grown enough to take my own decisions (now my mom is the biggest fan of my vegan diet.. not bad!!). The way I felt (even if in high school and mocked all the time) was just paradise and becoming vegan it just took me 2 years, the time to realize everything behind livestock, milk farms, egg farms.. I became veg* because I love life and all the animals. I abhor the idea that someone, some asshole, just decides that someone's life has to be miserable and eventually has to end. I'm vegan because of this.

Of course as a vegan I had to learn a whole different way of seeing the ingredients of my food, and I eventually made my first Vegan Birthday Cake for my 18th birthday (I don't have pictures here but I gotta say it was amazing). Today I wanna invite all my friends to try the best recipe of BROWNIES I have. I swear you're gonna love them:

You need:
3\4 cups of soy vegan margarine
1 cup 1\2 of sugar (I use brown sugar)
1 cup 1\2 cup of flour
1\2 cup of bitter cocoa powder
1 teaspoon of baking powder
1\4 teaspoon of salt
1 cup of apple cream
2 teaspoons of vanilla
2 cups of chocolate chips

Prep! Preheat oven to 175°C. Mix all the ingredients, putting aside 1\2 cup of chocolate chips. Spread into oiled 9X13 pan. Sprinkle remaining chocolate chips over the top. Bake for 35 minutes. Let it cool... cut and eat!
Enjoy being vegan!

Being vegan is healthy for the body & the soul and drinking soy milk makes you pretty! ;-b

>loos hier!<

I didn't know that when you get into the 013 during the LOOS you also get this. This is a bag in which you should puke in case you get drunk (and they like it very much €€€).
I was amazed. First time I saw such a thing. so funny.
The club is very big and has three halls; we were in the Bat Cave where our friend Vincent, dressed up with a long blond wig and sunglasses of questionable taste, entertained the crowd with his hard-rock dj performance and everybody had a great time (sometimes he was speaking dutch so I didn't understand but people looked amused).
We also saw some guys we haven't seen in a while so we had some good time and lots of drinks.

Also, I go back to the lab tomorrow to continue my sorting.. Now I go back to the couch & my boyfriend. We rented the 4th season of the Sopranos and we're gonna start with the first episode right now. Ah! I hope you liked my photo slide cuz it took me 1\2 hour to upload.. hehe..
Have beautiful dreams..

some pictures from the latest years..

Am I over-working?

Perry made this picture this morning. It was around 7:00 and I was 'ready' to go to the Ecology Center to continue my sorting.. but I was so sleepy and tired (yesterday we watched The Omen -the original one- and I was so afraid to go to sleep alone that I had to convince Perry to come with me even if it was too early for him.. it took me awhile so we went to sleep a bit late..). If he wouldn't have told me I would have just gone out like this. People here might have thought it was some kind of new fashion.. or that I was just a moron.

Last day of field work for the project

Yesterday was the last day of field work for the project at the Nioo. We loaded the van and drove one hour to reach the site. I'd actually never expect to work so hard. We had to sample 45 sediments cores and carry 'em to the van which wasn't so close (plus all the equipment.. of course!). I'm so glad we're done with the sampling (& sieving) and now we got to start with sorting and analysis of the data.
Just close to the research site there's a field with lots of sheep.. even if the crew that was with me didn't agree, I think they're such beautiful sweet animals so I couldn't resist and I made some pictures.
Most times I find the Dutch countryside extremely boring but sometimes it can be enchanting, something that you don't see a lot anymore. Also, the mind goes immediately to some Van Gogh's extraordinary painting.. I will never forget my time here in the Netherlands, and even if the last winter has been particularly difficult for me, this is a part of my life to remember.