Celebrating Fifteen Years of Vegetarianism

I decided to become a vegetarian when I was six years old, it was something I decided for myself and not a choice my parents made for me- although my mum had spent a lot of her youth as a vegetarian.

I can't recall the exact reasons I started but in these fifteen years I have come to really love being a vegetarian, its a huge part of who I am. For me, it is more than just a moral choice. I like animals and don't want to eat them, a vegetarian diet is better for the environment as well as being cheaper, I think it encourages one to broaden their diet - eating meat is admittedly, very convenient these days to the extent that some people also don't regard a meal to be a 'proper meal' unless it has meat in it. That is a terrible thing to think! Meat (and dairy products) should be a luxury, if you eat them at all. The ONLY thing that bothers me about being vegetarian is that I am wary of drinking ale as it is, very often, not vegetarian.

It also extends beyond simply just 'not eating meat', which is something I think some non-veggies/vegans struggle to understand.
In a previous job I was asked to lay bacon out onto a tray (so I had to touch it....ewww) and then cook it (so I could smell it....ergh) and then I had to remove it from the oven, put it into tubs and then pour off all the fat and other stuff from the bacon into a bucket (uurrrrrrrrrrgggghhhhh!) and then I had to scrape off all the crap that had been baked onto the trays and wash them. URGH. By the end of it I was surprised by my own reaction to it... I'd been telling myself the whole time I wasn't eating it so it was okay but by the time I'd finished I'd gone pale and felt really very sick. Even writing about it again gives me a deep seated feeling of disgust. I have eaten meat a handful of times by accident as well as the nausea it made me feel really dirty... I had a huge urge to detox and get that vile stuff out of my system, ASAP.

We don't want to eat a sandwich the ham taken out and we ask you kindly to prepare meat in a designated kitchen area to avoid cross contamination and vegetables with noodles in a chicken broth is NOT a viable meal option and please remember to check the labels if you have us for dinner because you will be surprised by what contains animal products!

Some people seem to think that feeding a vegetarian or a vegan is difficult- but I really think those people should be more open minded. If I were not a vegetarian there is a whole host of culinary delights I would have not thought about trying. You need a box to think outside of it, right? I am so bored of going into a café and finding the only vegetarian options to be cheese or -if we're lucky- hummus. This kind of attitude was one of the reasons I started this blog in the first place!

I love food and I love being a vegetarian. :)

Do it Justice, Add a Lime

A rummage in the fridge produced a Butternut Squash and Red Pepper Korma.
This made for excellent warming, comforting food on a miserable and rainy day like today. To all those who feel like giving this one a bash, I shall inform you that by no means are you to skip out on the addition of lime in this dish. Do it justice, add a lime. :)

I made up my own stock for this, something I haven't done for a long time. I forget how much I enjoy cooking and making this dish up really reminded me of how much I love it, I find it so therapeutic. I find it much harder when I'm at home to cook like I used to as I no longer have to mission to Beanies (how I miss thou...) and explore whats in season, whats new, whats exciting. I am somewhat more removed from the whole process, since my mum is here I don't have to think about what meals I'm going to eat this week as she does a lot of cooking- although its damned tasty most of the time. Trying to break that habit.

This dinner left me smiling. I ate it with brown rice and mango chutney, and had a sneaky biscuit after.

Return.

Hello one, hello all.

I have returned, for more adventures in vegetarian cuisine, now both my life and I have stopped going crazy. Summer has been good, I have spent most of it half-living in Bristol with Jake and Joel and generally living the dream.
The best parts of the dream included WOMAD festival, and seeing Flying Lotus in a car park off a dingy alley in London. Apart from the music being utterly SICK, Jake and I then went for a wander between the hours of five and eight am in Central London, which was slightly foggy and almost completely deserted- very 28 Days Later- a very interesting experience. We even had a cheeky spliff by the houses of Parliament. ;)

This weekend we celebrated Joel's 23rd year of life. As always, I see a birthday as an excuse to bake an extravagant and experimental cake. This time: Lime, Chocolate and Chili Cake.
In terms of flavours this cake didn't quite turn out as I had planned, I was hoping for a more emphasis on the chili while this cake was predominately lime and chocolate with a kick of chili at the end, but then again I am fond of putting enough chili in dishes to make your nose run. I love the building intensity and slight pain you get before breaking through that pain barrier and getting a massive rush of endorphins. Perhaps then, since this cake was for the general consumption of the face-painted party-goers it was better as it turned out.

Much of the inspiration for this cake was drawn from the Dark Chocolate and Ginger Cake.
The basic premise of this it to bake a basic chocolate sponge cake but with added diced fresh chili. A lime syrup is then made by using equal amounts of lime juice and brown sugar- heat it slowly over hob, don't let it boil. Add the syrup while the cake is still hot and in the tin it was baked in. Cover with a tea towel and leave overnight.
I cheated slightly with the icing, since I couldn't source any essential oil of lime I was unable to flavour some chocolate myself, so I bought two bars of Montezuma's Chili, Chocolate and Lime chocolate. I melted this down with a tablespoon of butter to make the icing. I didn't half the cake and ice the inside as the syrup makes the cake itself very moist. I think its a slight pity the chocolate used was a milk chocolate and not a dark chocolate, dark chocolate is almost always better.
Despite my reservations about the cake -which are more aspects on how I think it could be made better and less complaints about the cake as it was- it was very popular with the guests, we managed to scoff the entire cake. A certain someone was spotted standing by the cake and slicing, eating, slicing, eating. It was a real compliment. :)

We ate cake and had our faces painted and got very sideways. As I said, we lived the dream.

BRB

"The real meaning of enlightenment is to gaze with undimmed eyes on all darkness."
Nikos Kazantzakis

Brb. xxx

Having Smarter Babies

Bad news update on the mint syrup:

I put it in hot chocolate but the syrup was so delicate that I couldn't taste the mint at all!

Sad times. I put it in my cupboard even though I'd decided never to use it but am a compulsive hoarder. (oh if only you could see my crafts stash...) Came back to it after I'd been away for the weekend and lo behold it had fermented (obviously not enough sugar) and exploded inside my cupboard. Cleaning it out was pretty grim, and it fucked a lot of the other things in my cupboard.

Anyway. I went to London for the weekend, and saw Rage Against the Machine who were pretty insane. Due to a stroke of luck I found myself yesterday afternoon in London with nobody to please other than myself. :) I spent a few hours looking around the Tate Modern- in a more appropriate mindset to concentrate on the works this time. I then chilled in Soho square, paid a visit to the exquisite Flat White coffee bar. Cited by those in the know as the best place for a cup of coffee in London, I treated myself to a flat white made from a coffee blend called Red Square which I loved but can't seem to find online. (Which is disappointing, I wanted to buy some.) Really chocolate and deep flavour. The atmosphere was good too, since its surprisingly small. This isn't a photograph I took, but its the coffee bar.

After all that coffee and walking I was pretty hungry, and fortunate enough to be only down the road from a Hare Krishna restaurant called Govinda's, who served me some damn tasty curry.

On a reeaaaaaaally sad note, this week marks the end of my time in Broad Lane Court. It's been a weird year, thats for sure. Theres a lot of people here I'm going to miss, some who I'll see again in September, but others not. :(

But, we've got a house next year. It has a cellar and a gas cooker. The boys will be living in another house up a hill which looks wicked for sledging down when it snows. :)

Wickwickwickededywicked

Wins of the week:

Stuffed Pumpkin

Take a small pumpkin, as in one that looks like a reasonable amount for one person to eat. Slice off the top and scoop out the seeds. Replace the seeds with a stuffing mix. I used Tesco's sage and onion stuffing mix or something like that. Also put in lumps of gruyere cheese. I wrapped it in tinfoil, put it on a low heat and forgot about it for several hours. Came back (maybe 3?) later to find it cooked through, and the cheese melting. I removed the lid and grilled the top. Sliced it in half and served it between two with salad. (And thyme chips would have been there if I hadn't forgotten...)

Pear Slice

Slices of pears in syrup on shop-bought pastry. Drizzled with golden syrup and almonds. Baked and eaten with Jersey cream.

Fail of the Week: Faceplanting myself and fucking my arm when I got too cocky and tried to jump off a slackline.

Wins of next week:

RAGE on Sunday. Win.

Most Supreme Excellency Bagels

Most Supreme Excellency Bagels

-by Josh and Rhy

Toasted bagels with courgette and onion -fried with oregano, thyme, and chili- with a garlicy cheese sauce and baby spinach too.

For some reason this took us over an hour.

"Peas-in-a-bannaey-pod"

-by Dave and Rhy and Rosie

One for a the bbq. A twist on the whole 'slice a banana and put chocolate on the inside' thing. Except with malteasers. Wrap it in tinfoil and bake.

Also had the pleasure this week of more scrumptious coffee from Trevor, and courgette and mint soup.