Gingerbread truffle balls (vegan and high raw)

I'm not quite sure how it happened, but...it's been 5 months since my last truffle ball recipe.

Fortunately, today's post goes some way towards making up for lost time. In fact, these might be my new favourite truffle balls. How can I not love something that is so easy to make and yet tastes so very much like gingerbread?

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Loving this week {July 2013}

I am linking this into cityhippyfarmgirl's 'loving this week' post for July.

The 'loving'this week' posts are all about the little moments in your days and weeks that have tickled your heart.

Loving...

Quinoa cooked with the juice of one lemon and topped with paprika-spiced tofu (and vegetables). I  think lemon may be my favourite quinoa accompaniment.

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Carrot and chickpea salad with orange and avocado

This salad was an impromptu side dish made to complement a roast vegetable strudel like the one I did last Christmas. The strudel was hot and appropriate to winter. The salad is probably more appropriate to summer, but it was highly enjoyable regardless. Plus, it packs a hefty dose of vitamin C, and that at least is winter appropriate.

In addition to Vitamin C, this salad provides protein from the chickpeas and it is sweet from the orange. I think corn would be a nice addition to the mix too, and in future I may try that variation.

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Out and about in Perth (#3) - walk trails, bike trails, and beautiful skies

Last weekend, Mr Bite and I went for a leisurely, long bike ride along a stretch of Perth's Swan River. Doing so made me think that it was time for another 'out and about in Perth' post. And so! Here we are.

Hello my bike

For those of you not familiar with Perth, the city grew up around the Swan River, which extends from the Perth hills east of the city right down to Fremantle in the west, where it joins the Indian Ocean. The riverside areas provide opportunities for walking, running, cycling, dog walking, and picnicking. 

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Pumpkin pie loaf cake with cardamom spiced apple

When I was 12, we had an American family join us for Christmas. The father had just started working with my Dad, and had moved to Perth late in the year with his wife and two young sons. Being new to Australia and away from family, my parents thought it would be nice to invite them to join us.

I don't remember much about the day, but I do remember that the American family contributed a pumpkin pie. It was the first - and to this day is the only - pumpkin pie I have had. I had no idea pumpkin could be made to taste so good, and I fell in love with the pie as utterly and completely as one can fall in love with any edible product (which is to say, quite a lot). The pie base doesn't feature in my memories, but the pie filling...oh yes. Soft yet firm, brown sugar and maple syrup sweet, and delicately spiced. At 12, the spice mix was foreign to me. Now, I suspect that it involved nutmet and cloves or cardamom. It certainly involved a lot of wonderful things.

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A book update: Recent highlights and upcoming reads

It's been 4 months since my last post on books or reading, which I think is a long enough break for topics I find so enjoyable (and which I hope are also enjoyable for you!). What is more, I have recently finished three excellent books and I hold the belief that if you read an excellent book, it is worth letting others know of its existence.

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Jumbo salad with all the things (kale, cabbage, green papaya and a peanut-chilli-soy dressing)

Naming this salad was hard. I thought about "Purple kale and cabbage salad with a spicy peanut butter dressing". I considered "Thai salad with a twist".  In the end I just gave up. It has so many good things, it defies a simple name.

One of the other advantages of this salad is that it lends itself well to customisation. Green papaya isn't always an accessible ingredient, but grated / spiralized zucchini would step in as an alternative. More carrot would also work, or bean sprouts, or snow peas. This is really a salad concept rather than a strict salad recipe.

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Northern Queensland travels - Cairns (part 1)

In my last travel post, we were approaching Cairns after 5 days of driving across outback Australia. Enjoyable as the outback section was, reaching Cairns was exciting. Not only is Cairns a city of reasonable size (some 150,000 people), it was a coastal city and it was green. Buildings, water and trees are wonderful things when you haven't seen them for nearly a week!

Cairns centre

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Pineapple-cherry-watermelon green smoothie - milk and banana free

I found the thought of going from winter-appropriate roast vegetables to a summer-appropriate icey smoothie amusing, so...here we are.

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Easy roast baby eggplant with herbs and balsamic vinegar

Is anyone else intimidated by eggplant? All that instruction about using salt to draw out moisture and offset bitterness, but then reading that modern eggplant isn't bitter anyway so don't worry about it? I'm never even sure how I should cut the thing.

Recently, I saw some baby eggplant on special and thought it would be a good opportunity to get over my eggplant trepidation. It's winter here, after all, and if there is any time to experiment with roast vegetables - now is it.

And you know what? It wasn't that hard.

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Fitness Fridays - podiatry, gait analysis, orthotics, and new running shoes

I've been meaning to write this post for a while now. Unusually for me, I have struggled with how to start it. Do I tell you about my experiences with orthotics from age 12 to age 18, when my tendencies towards over-prontation were identified? Do I tell you about the running seminar I went to where I heard about gait analysis? How much detail do you really want on orthotics anyway?

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In my kitchen - July 2013

I am linking this post in to Celia's monthly In My Kitchen event at Fig Jam and Lime Cordial.

I didn't do an In My Kitchen post last month and I found I rather missed it. They are certainly fun posts to put together (reflected, I think, in the number of people now doing them). I'm pleased to be back with a post for July.

In my kitchen this month, we have these raw, vegan Kitz 'Mexican buckwheat' crackers.

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Vegan chocolate peanut butter muffins with a raspberry jam filling

My parents are currently visiting family in the U.K., and my sister and her boyfriend are celebrating the end of university exams (and for my sister, the end of university) with 3 weeks in Asia. Thus, my brother is house and cat sitting the family home, a set up that has perks (large house all to himself; no questions or requests regarding the cleanliness of said house; food money left so that he can afford to eat) but also some costs (two challenging cats to care for; no food shopping or cooking except what he does himself; no mother to take pity on her PhD studying son and do his laundry for him).

In such scenarios, I take great pleasure in catering. What self-respecting big sister wouldn't? These muffins were the first installment, and gave me an opportunity to indulge in peanut butter baking, which invokes horror in my nut hating husband (sigh).

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Rawsome snacks at Cafe Cafe, Subiaco

Are you ready for a little burst of excitement?

I recently discovered Rawsome raw vegan snacks and they have raw vegan caramel slice! and raw vegan mint slice! and raw vegan lamington balls! and raw vegan many other things I can't even name them all here! and they are available really dangerously close to where I live and work.

Rawsome raw, vegan caramel slice

In case you couldn't tell, I am very excited by this.

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Northern Queensland travels - Outback Queensland

Our camper van drive across the top of Australia included two overnight stops in the Northern Territory, and then two in Queensland. I have to confess that where the N.T. surprised us with its varied and green landscape, Queensland surprised me with its monotonous and barren landscape. Not only that, it has a 110km / hour speed limit (admittedly in line with the rest of the country and perfectly reasonable), whereas the N.T. allowed us to zoom along at 130km / hour.

If there were any slightly boring bits to our driving, they were in the section between the inland Queensland border and Cairns!

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Harissa-spiced pumpkin and chickpea smash

I wasn't sure what to call this dish. It is a bit like a curry and a bit like a stew, but not properly either. Mr Bite called it a pumpkin and chickpea mash. I decided on smash.

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