Meatless Month

Ha. Ha. From: Wehearit.com

A lot of my friends are taking part in a meatless October challenge on Facebook (meatless October = lihaton lokakuu, it alliterates nicely in Finnish!) that started off as a challenge on a TV show. I obviously saw the event trending and decided to join in as well, to some extent at least. I've been wanting to cut back on meat anyway. I don't eat huge amounts of meat, but the "vegetarian" meals I consume are normally just pasta and tomato sauce or different kinds of soups. I used to be quite picky as a kid, but I've mostly grown out of it. Nowadays the only thing I really stay away from is mushrooms. I've tried, but I can't. The taste, the consistency... No.

Anyway, I was thinking I would take on this challenge, just quite light heartedly. I'm not gonna demand that people make vegetarian food just for me if I'm over at their house, for example. And then some things happened. For one I found out that Syö! started today. For about 2 weeks, a bunch of restaurants in Helsinki (and other parts of Finland!) have offers for 10e. And that's cheap for eating out in Finland.

So my basis for my "meatless month" isn't gonna be shunning meat entirely, but to cut back and most of all get adventurous and experimental with my own cooking. I'm not gonna cook meat, and I'm gonna try new sorts of vegetarian foods at home. I want to get used to eating vegetarian food that isn't just pasta and soup. I created an entire vegetarian food board on Pinterest to help me stay inspired!

Tofu + cauliflower curry.

So on Tuesday, October 1st I decided to make a tofu and cauliflower curry that both looked and sounded delicious. We make a coconut milk based curry with chicken all the time, so mostly I just took this as inspiration for what to replace the chicken with. Well I have to say, it was not delicious at all. And a pretty bad start to an already sort of poorly timed meatless month :D Not very inspirational.

Cheesy cauliflower soup, grilled cheese.

Last night I opted for something more familiar, a soup... Not very adventurous. I hadn't made a cauliflower soup before, but I've always wanted to. Just never got around to it, but since we had a bunch of leftover cauliflower from the curry, I decided to go for it :) And this was delicious. So mild and smooth and nicely cheesy. Not necessarily the healthiest, but perfect for the cold weather.

And finally, Joel and I decided to go out for dinner in honor of the 10e menus tonight. We chose Morrison's , because in the past years it's definitely turned out to be one of our favorites during these weeks. I don't think we've ever gone there unless it's been Syö!, even though the burgers are really good. We just don't eat a lot of burgers I guess... I surprised even myself by actually really sticking to my promise of being more adventurous and went for a veggie burger and halloumi, which turned out to be surprisingly delicious! I'm quite proud of myself.

So yeah, any tips and vegetarian recipes are greatly appreciated! How the heck do you cook good tofu?!

Nails & Grotesk

So I've really managed to catch some sort of flu now. Honestly, I'm never sick. Like properly. I get minor colds that never really develop in to proper illnesses every now and then, but usually they don't really affect me. The last time I remember being actually really, properly sick was in 2009 or something, right before we left for Shanghai to look at houses and schools for my family. Anyway, yesterday and today I have felt like (for lack of a better word) shit. Which sucks, because yesterday was Joel's birthday, and right now he's out with friends at Adam's, where I was supposed to go as well. I also had to miss the first uni soccer game of the season. Not really a big deal, but I was looking forward to it!

I had to go to a lecture yesterday, and in the evening Joel and I went out for dinner, but the time in between I spent at home feeling sorry for myself. Which is when I decided to paint my nails.

I've been seeing a lot of white nails lately, and I like it! So on our last trip to Munich I went out and got Essie's Blanc. In Finland Essie polishes cost around 16e a pop if I remember correctly. In Munich they're around 8e. Half the price, no jokes. Insane.

Except on our last day, feeling maybe a tiny bit fragile from the day before which was spent at Oktoberfest, I just ran through DM quickly picking out whatever products I wanted to bring home. When I got to my parents, I realized I never actually checked what the bottle of nail polish said, I just grabbed the first one in the "Blanc" row. And what do you know, someone had placed the wrong bottle in the row, which I then bought. This one, called Allure, was also white-ish, but really sheer. Whatever, I did a white-ish sheer matte manicure. Ignore the really bad job on my ring finger. I never really do much to my nails except for the occasional normal manicure, but I was thinking I could maybe combine these two whites and make a solid to sheer gradient? We'll see.

Moving on to more about last night. A few weeks ago I spotted a nice deal on Groupon again, 48e for a three course meal for two people at Grotesk, a very nice restaurant in the center of Helsinki that would otherwise be a little out of our price range. 

The menu included in the deal was a surprise chef's menu that started out with a creamy, slightly sweet corn soup with some slow cooked lamb. This was definitely my favorite, even though everything we had was great!

Main course was slow cooked veal with a crispy top, hollandaise and a potato croquette. Joel had some mushroom puree under his veal, but since I asked for no mushroom (I honestly just can't, I've tried, but I can't), I had a beet puree that was amazing. This course was pretty heavenly as well.

And finally, for dessert there was redcurrants with redcurrant sorbet, chocolate ganache and milk chocolate mousse. I think. It was good, but I'm not really a dessert kind of gal. I prefer savory foods to be perfectly honest! But I still managed to dig in with such appetite that I forgot to take a photo, which is why you have a picture of Joel's dessert and red wine stained table cloth. Not my fault! I think.

It was definitely a good birthday dinner, and I would not mind going back at some point. I need to remember to keep my eye out for amazing deals like this more often on Groupon!

Now for some more CSI and tea in bed. Sniff.