This week “Meryl” blessed us with her presence, having been hired as the new admin assistant.
Remember Meryl from the animal shelter? The employee who spent the whole time filing her nails while Drew was frantically looking for Chops?
I can only imagine what her references looked like. “Very hardworking. She can type with two fingers. 10 words a minute!” Rajiv has really outdone himself since becoming CEO.
Ew, I actually have to touch this keyboard?
She had some great lines though. “Bye Felicia.” “I get that you’re not well. This is a hospital. I’m not stupid.” “Yes, this is Shortland Street. Insert Maori greeting here. Can you call back please? I’m new.”
In other news, Rangimarie decided to have sex with Ezra, but then was caught by her mother.
Then she decided that her ‘lying’ mother was so unbearable that she had to run away and get into a car with some random guy she met in a carpark.
She found out that he was on the run and was all “oh, so you murdered someone? I’ll cover for you!” There are a lot of idiots in the show these days.
I’m loving Te Rongopai’s sister, though.
“No wonder she went there, hot off the press!” “Just because you got married a virgin, touched for the first time. Where is Madonna when you need her?”
Apparently I’m not the only one who hated Pita. What an awful guy. Yeah, blackmailing your ex-wife into breaking up with her new lover was really going to get her to forgive you for cheating on her.
I finally succeeded at making lamingtons yesterday. I used a doubled version of this recipe for the sponge cake, and I veganised this recipe for the icing. If I did this again, I would probably use a veganised version of the latter recipe instead, since the one I made was not thick enough to slice in half.
140g vegan butter, melted
1 cup sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
300 mL unsweetened plant milk
2 cups + 2 tbsp flour
2 2/3 tsp baking powder
2/3 tsp salt
Icing:
500g icing sugar, sifted
200g dark chocolate
15g coconut oil
125 mL plant milk at room temperature
325g dessicated coconut (I used sweetened coconut flakes)
Combine vegan butter with sugar, vanilla and plant milk. Then add dry ingredients and combine. Generously butter a 30cm x 18cm baking pan and sprinkle some flour. Add the cake batter and bake at 180°C for 20 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean.
Let cool for 10-20 minutes and then remove from baking pan and place on a cooling rack. It should come out very easily.
Slice into squares and cut in half.
For the icing, melt the chocolate with the coconut oil, either with a bain marie or in the microwave at low heat. Then add the plant milk (make sure it is not cold, or the icing will solidify too much). Then add icing sugar until reasonably thick – thick enough to stick to the cake but thin enough to only leave a thin layer of icing on the cake.
Dip the cake pieces into the icing, then put on a cooling rack. Immediately cover with coconut flakes, then place in the fridge for about 15 minutes so that the icing sets.
Slice in half and spread some fruit jam, then form sandwiches. I didn’t have time to add the jam, but I will next time. I suggest raspberry jam, but any jam would be tasty I think.
This week I decided to combine two of my favourite cookie recipes – cinnamon almond butter chocolate chip, and oatmeal chocolate chip cookies.
I started with this recipe, but veganised it, doubled it, replaced the walnuts and raisins with chocolate chips, and replaced half of the vegan butter with almond butter.
1/2 cup (230 grams) vegan butter, softened (I recommend Miyoko’s)
1/2 cup smooth almond butter (salted/unsalted is fine as long as it is not too salty
1 1/3 cup (250 grams) light brown sugar, packed
2 tbsp flaxseed meal mixed with 5.5 tbsp water, left to sit for 5-10 mins
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cup (190 grams) all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 cups (240 grams) old-fashioned rolled oats
3 cups dark chocolate chips
1-2 tbsp plant milk
Combine vegan butter, almond butter and brown sugar. Then add flax ‘egg’ and vanilla extract. Then combine with flour, baking soda, cinnamon, salt and oats. Then add chocolate chips. If you cannot incorporate all of the flour, add a bit of plant milk until you can.
The dough may be a bit crumbly, but do your best to create pieces of dough. The cookies will hold together once they are cooked.
Bake at 180°C for 15-25 minutes, depending on the size. If you like your cookies to be crunchy, then cook until golden brown. If you like them softer, then cook until slightly springy but a little undercooked.
A couple of weeks ago, I had the chance to visit what is apparently the only vegan Cuban restaurant in the world.
It happened to be right next to LAX airport, which was super convenient.
They seemed to have everything – vegan “wings” with different sauces, nachos cubanos, tostones and heaps of different vegan meats.
The first time I was there I got El Cubanoso and the Fire Agave wings.
Both were delicious. The fire agave sauce was amazing – the perfect combination of sweet and spicy. The vegan “wing” meat was eerily similar to chicken meat – I don’t know how they do it. There was even a skin. Very convincing.
The cuban sandwich had roast pork which was also very meaty, along with all the fixings.
The second time I went (on the way out from LAX), I ordered the yuca a la yama with the lechón asado – which is shredded “pork”.
The yuca were crispy and tasty and came with black beans and fire agave sauce. The lechón was flavourful and had a great texture, and the sauce complemented it very well.
I will definitely be back. Check it out if you’re in the area!
There are a lot of great vegan chocolate chip cookie recipes out there. I’ve seen some made with refined coconut oil, which yields a similar richness to butter. However, this is still my favourite.
Before I was vegan, I would always use this recipe. But for some reason, after I went vegan I was determined to find a different recipe to use.
Little did I know that this was easy to veganise.
All I did was replace the eggs with flax meal mixed with water and replace the butter with vegan butter. Then I added a bit of nondairy milk because I had a hard time incorporating all the flour at the end. I highly recommend that you use Miyoko’s vegan butter here. Other options would probably be fine, but Miyoko’s definitely gives the best result. If you don’t have access to Miyoko’s, try to find a vegan butter that is as similar to butter as possible, or you could also make your own (recipe courtesy of WorldofRandomStuff).
3 1/2 cups vegan dark chocolate chips/dark chocolate chunks
Sea salt
Combine the flaxmeal with the water in a bowl and leave to stand for 5 minutes. It should thicken substantially.
Cream the vegan butter with the sugars by hand or with a stand mixer. Then add the flax mixture and the vanilla extract.
In a separate bowl, combine the dry ingredients (baking soda, baking powder, salt, flour).
Add the dry ingredients to the rest and combine. If you cannot incorporate all of the flour mixture, add plant milk until you can combine all of it. Then add the vegan chocolate chips.
Chill the dough in the fridge for at least an hour, ideally 4 hours or even overnight.
Take out of the fridge and leave at room temperature for about five minutes until it softens slightly.
Shape pieces and place them on the baking pan. Bake at 180°C for somewhere between 15 and 25 minutes, depending on the size of the cookies. I make mine quite large, and hence it often takes 25-28 minutes for mine to bake.
When you take them out, they should seem firm but not too golden – they should still be pretty light coloured. If they are golden brown, they will become crispy as they cool. So if you prefer that, then leave it in the oven until golden brown.
Immediately after taking them out of the oven, sprinkle sea salt on the cookies if you like them that way. If not, omit. Leave to cool for five minutes on a cooling rack. Then eat!
In the past month, we have lost not one but two Warners – first Frank and now Finn. What is going on?
In fact, we haven’t just lost Frank and Finn. Today Becky decided to switch back to working at Central after a very amicable breakup with Curtis, and I am pretty sure this is the last time we will see her. No big loss there, the character was pretty dull.
I have to say, I’m pretty gutted about Finn’s departure. Not as much as Zoe was, though.
Lately, there haven’t been any casting announcements, so it’s never clear whether the actors have decided to leave or whether they were written out.
Either way, this is a huge loss for the show. Finn became a rather despicable character when he started abusing Esther, but was redeemed in what I thought was a pretty convincing way, which I think the actor can take credit for. This storyline made him into a pretty compelling character who desperately wanted to move on from his past, but would probably never fully forgive himself for what he did.
Anyway, the actor is very talented and I wish him the best.
However, what’s the plan now? They spent quite a bit of time setting up Zoe and Finn as a pairing, but now he’s abruptly left.
And what about Chris? It’s hard to imagine what role he will play on the show without any of his kids around. There have always been some people in that house- the triplets, Harry Warner, Rachel up until late 2016, Phoenix until 2013, etc.
Anyway, I hope they have plans to bring in some new core characters, because we have lost many in the past few months (Finn, Vinnie, Frank). Kawe too, actually.
I hope this new babysitter isn’t part of those plans. I don’t think she is going to cut it.
Last weekend, I attempted to make chocolate lamingtons with a vanilla icing on the outside. I kind of munted them.
I used this chocolate cake recipe, and made a vanilla icing with icing sugar, vanilla extract and a bit of plant milk.
I baked the chocolate cake batter in a rectangular baking pan and cut the cake into square pieces.
Then I sliced them in half and put some seedless raspberry jam in the middle.
It was all going fine until I tried to dip the cake into the icing. I thought I had to make the icing really thick, and then heat it up so that it would be liquidy, but then rapidly solidify after cooling.
The result was that the jam layer heated up, causing the cake layers to slide. Dipping the cake into the icing munted its shape as well.
They tasted great though! Next time I will definitely just make normal vegan lamingtons. Stay tuned!
Can we spare a moment to talk about how horrible the past two years have been for Esther?
Let’s summarise:
October 2016: Curtis breaks up with her after being sent to prison for a drug offence.
February 2017: Esther is diagnosed with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy after experiencing arrhythmias
August 2017: Esther is kidnapped by Jason (Finn’s stalker), and she experiences arrhythmias as a result, causing her to pass out.
December 2017: Esther is again kidnapped (this time by a prisoner who escaped) and she almost dies as her heart stops from the stress.
June 2018: Esther is brutally beaten up by her husband, Finn Warner. Her marriage dissolves afterwards.
September 2018: Kawe, her boyfriend, starts selling drugs while bartending at the I.V. Esther finds out about this and breaks up with him.
Also September 2018: Esther finds out that her heart is failing after yet again being threatened with a knife by two drug people who she was trying to help.
She’s so desensitised that she doesn’t even care anymore about Kawe’s drug dealing, because “at least he doesn’t hit me, right?”
Kylie isn’t having it
“I just have to keep looking at the good stuff, ignore the alarm bells, put them on mute.”
Yeah (!), that sounds like a great plan, Esther (!)
Several weeks ago, Jack found out that Lincoln does p (meth).
Jack ended up accidentally trying it while at Sebastian’s re-birthday, thinking it was E, and he enjoyed it a little too much. It’s a bit strange that Lincoln, who does meth semi-regularly, doesn’t seem to be addicted, yet Jack appears to be heavily dependent on it after only doing it only a couple of times.
Jack was really a wreck in today’s episode.
To which I say – what the hell is wrong with him? He saw what a drug addiction did to Charlie, so what is he thinking? Plus why are the writers doing this? We’ve already been put through this type of story with Charlie, who was not only abusing prescription amphetamine but also selling it. Lincoln does appear to be discouraging him, but of course it isn’t working.
He opted to take even more p after barely functioning at work.
I hope they don’t ruin Jack’s character with this storyline. P addiction is pretty gruesome. And they delved into this in 2012 with Hunter.
On the bright side, Jack and Lincoln kissed after Sebastian’s party.
I guess they’re together now, though it’s not entirely clear. I like the idea of them being together, but this drug storyline kind of sucks.
Lincoln’s great, though.
On to other things… Dylan and Kylie.
It looks like Kylie would also like to take a crack at strangling Dylan.
I don’t have any idea what is going on with this storyline. It looked like the main story was going to be Frank vs. Dylan, but then Frank was quickly written out. I guess the main focus now is on Dylan manipulating situations by faking emotions, but Kylie’s feelings for Dylan seemed to come out of nowhere. It looks like he somehow managed to use her grief over Julia’s death to manipulate her. Ugh.
Also, we really need to talk about Julia. Namely, was it really worth sacrificing her for this odious Dylan character? She was Kylie’s only family connection on the show – her only close family member with her mum gone and her dad who-knows-where/nonexistent.
They had an interesting, volatile relationship which they could have explored. Anyway, ugh.
Also, did anyone bother to tell Toby that his mother died? I know he and Julia weren’t close, but come on. It’s not like he’s in Antarctica, he’s only across the pond in Christchurch.
Toby
There wasn’t even a mention of him after she died. Mate, I get that she forced you to live on some strange commune, then ditched you to move to Sweden, but still. In fact, the only mention of him during Julia’s return was when she told Kylie how easy giving birth was for her.
Other things that irritated me: how come Miranda came to give Julia a stern warning about Dylan, but never bothered to directly state why she hates him?
Also, why did she disappear so abruptly? It does look like she’s going to return later this week, which should be glorious.
