Vegan Month of Food 2016 - Day 8 "Far Flung Land" PS: I voted

Today's prompt is "dig deep, what's on the opposite side of the Earth from where you are." There's an app for that (does anyone use a globe anymore?)

We discovered that opposite us is the Indian ocean. The closest land mass is Australia. I can't swim, have water terror, and suck at making vegan sushi, so I went with Australia. They've got beaches, cool animals, and something called Anzac biscuits. Being that today is Election Day in my country (I voted. I got a cool conch shell sticker, that's about the only positive thing going in this entire election) when I learned about Anzac biscuits, I thought it was appropriate for the day, meaning patriotic to their country. Anzac biscuits came about sometime around World War I, and are beloved in Australia. The term "Anzac biscuit" is regulated; it cannot be called a cookie. As point of fact, I learned that Australia forced Subway to stop selling the "cookies" in Australia unless they made them more authentic and called them a biscuit. Apparently Subway couldn't source the ingredients economically enough (quite puzzling to me considering this was essentially a biscuit based on war rations, very basic ingredients) so they dropped them from the menu.

The biscuits are made with flour, sugar, (sometimes coconut, I did use it), oats, treacle (I used molasses the closest thing to treacle), vegan butter, and baking soda mixed with boiling water. That's it. If you scroll past the video, you'll see the link to the recipe I used which is from the Dept. of Veteran's Affairs, so I'm hoping I did choose one that is as authentic. Mine came out hard on the outside, a bit chewy on the inside. I was surprised how delicious and flavorful these are. They have a very long shelf life according to the information I found online, which is one of the reasons they were so popular during the war... stories are that the wives made them for the men at the front lines. I've read that they were made for galas and fundraisers as well, in fact to this day they are used for fund raising efforts.

I also talk a bit about koalas, because dang they're cute, and dang they're in trouble.... they're losing their habitat and on the road to becoming a very troubled species. Let's watch and see:

Here's the link to the little article containing the recipe I used for these biscuits. Give them a try, you may be as surprised as I am how tasty these are for something so very simple! This recipe is based upon ingredients not subject to war rations back then, so easy to veganize! I substituted Earth Balance for the butter, everything else is obviously vegan already!

http://www.abc.net.au/local/audio/2012/04/24/3487637.htm

There ya have it.... far flung and a sticker.

Til tomorrow!

xo