Saturday 6 April 2013

6 days to go

Last night as I was preparing for a quiet night and a Saturday free of any activity, a message came through “ are you still up for tomorrow?” how what? What is up tomorrow? "ASLAN…" oh no! "8.30 am Waterloo station…"
Apparently I had promised to help out today at All Souls’ homeless centre this morning. It wasn’t in my diary and I had completely forgotten it. First, I nearly cancelled; then, I got lost on my way … that is a story on its own.
Anyhow, I got there 30 minutes late, but the guests were not in yet. After breakfast, the volunteers can mingle and chat with the guests. I had today one of the best conversations ever with one of the guests from Romania. It took me nearly an hour to convince him to try the job centre and keep going until someone at those centres is ready to lend him a hand.
He had quit trying because his friends didn’t get anywhere. But, what I realised is that my Romanian friend spoke better English than his friends, looked strong and was willing to do anything… All I can say is that, God sent me there is morning and this guy needed to hear that he had potential. Encouragement is such an easy forgotten tool and today I have seen it power once again. The guest did agree that I pray for him and I am glad I made it to the centre today. God is good.

Since I had to leave at 7am, for breakfast I had  small portion of yesterday’s leftover. I only got home around 3.30pm and had to cook my dinner… made up on my way to the homeless centre: roasted butternut squash with spinach and a tahini white sauce plus potato rosti just for the sake of it.
Turned out alright didn't it?
So, to make this dish you will need These Ingredients: 1 onion, 1 potato, half of a small butternut squash, 1 red sweet pepper, 2 table spoons of tahini paste (sesame seeds paste), 2 table spoons of mild sugar free mustard, 6 blocks of frozen spinach leaves defrosted. 
ingredients to make the dish

For the Roast the butternut squash: cut into quarters, place in an oven dish, season with salt, black pepper, and a spray of oil. Place the dish in the oven for 40 minutes. Once cooked, switch oven off leave the dish inside to keep warm.
For the pommes Pallaisson  (rosti): peal and grate the potato, squeeze water from the it. Season with salt and coarse black pepper. There is no need to shape your rosti, you can just flatten it in the pan. It is better to fry them in hot oil and in a non-stick pan.
For the spinach: defrost it, squeeze out the water, fry half the onion with the finely chopped brazil nuts until brown, then, add the spinach. Stir with a sponged spatula while separating the leaves. Add a bit of salt and pepper, stir again, add 4 table spoons of water, cover to cook for 5 minutes. It is ready.

Potato rosti
 For the sauce: chop the other half of onion into really fine pieces. Do the same for the all the garlic. Heat some rapeseed oil in a pan, brown onions, add the garlic and fry some more. Don’t let the garlic burn. Now add the tahini paste and the mustard. Stir for 2 minutes then add a glass of water and leave to cook for 5 minutes. Stir from time to time so it won’t stick. The sauce is ready.Now all you need to do is serve before it gets cold. It is better to serve the sauce on the side and not soak the dish in it.
Voila!
Forgive me for blowing my own trumpet, but it tasted good and it is ALL VEGAN!
Somethin’ for dessert?


Friday 5 April 2013

7 days to go

Today is my first day back after having spent 6 days at Minehead Butlins Resorts. Boy, am I glad to be back. It was a genius idea to take with me jar of homemade fried onions and a jar of fried chunky tomato. I have used them for breakfast lunch and dinner. When they ran out, I set off to Morrison’s and got some jars of olives & Garlic, char grilled aubergine, sun dried tomato all conserved in sunflower oil or olive oil. I had also made some oatbran biscuits that I took with me they helped too.   
When I weighed myself this morning, I had lost the extra pounds I had gained during the first two weeks of my extreme vegan lent. That is probably due to the fact that I may had skipped few meals from the restaurant at the resort.
We are now only 7 days to the end of my experience and I am really looking forward to start drinking full fat milk again, drinking coffee and eggs and the rest.
 I didn’t go to work today and that gave me the time to produce this beautiful thing that I made for brunch (I had a lie in). This is a plain rice cake topped with fried onions & thyme, chopped chestnuts and sun dried tomato washed down with some sugar free ginger tea.
Then I popped to the dentist to spend a whopping £220 (how do they get away with charging so much for our grinders?).
Or dinner I made a nice little chilli con carne with soya meat and accompanied with some pearl barley.
Chilli con Carne ingredients (two portions): 1 tin of kidney beans, 1 tin tomato, 1 onions, garlic, ½ red and ½ green pepper, 1 tea spoon cumin powder, 1 tea spoon of coriander powder, a bit of black pepper, soya meat balls (20 medium ones).
Start by soaking the soya meatballs in boiling water for 10 minutes. Then squeeze out the water and cut in smaller pieces.
In a hot pan, fry your chopped onions until brown; add in some thyme and then your soya meat. Add black pepper and salt, then fry so the meat can absorb all the flavour (5 minutes should suffice).
Now add your chopped green, yellow peppers and the tomato cook for about 10 minutes. By this time, there should be very little or no juice from the tomatoes. Now add in your cumin powder, coriander powder and kidney beans plus 250 ml of water or vegetable stock. Then cover and leave to cook for another 20 minutes stirring from time to time.
For the pearl barley: measure 1 glass of barley, rinse it to remove the power that is covering it. Then In the cooking pan, place the barley in the pot with two glasses of water and one table spoon of rapeseed oil. Leave to cook for 15 minutes without covering the pot. Once the water has reduced, stir to separate the grains, cover and reduce the heat. The rest of the cooing will be by team.
Done.
I added, some freshly chopped parsley to my barley just before serving.
Voila!
I have also just posted the blogs from my week in Spring Harvest at Butlins Minehead. Do check in and have a read...
Thank you for reading and for keeping up with me. Remember to post a comment.

Day 32 ... SH day 6

Thursday 4th April. Last day of Spring Harvest for me. It turned out to be longest day. I managed to miss my bus connection from Minehead to Taunton. The next bus was only in 20 minutes which meant that I would miss the train from Taunton to Bristol and also from Bristol to London. As I waited worrying about how I was going to pay for new tickets… a church coach pulled up to collect members who were returning from Spring Harvest to London. A friend who happened to be a member of said church came to say goodbye… to cut a long story short, he wasn’t returning right away and manage to get me on the coach for free.  Talking about being blessed? Now, that’s a blessing. 6 hours it took to arrive in Dagenham plus another two to get home… well, I got home at 9.30pm.
My late broth
 The first thing I did was clear the mess that Mr Jay made while I was away, then made myself a home-made warm and creamy broth with chickpeas and coconut milk… uhhhmmmm! I missed warm food.
Last meal at Butlins

For breakfast, I when to Butlins restaurant this morning and ordered a double portion of fried seasoned mushrooms that I eat with sugar free Dijon mustard… I think this must have been the only breakfast made with effort for the last six days.
Lunch was a snack fest in Pembury when the coach had a stopover; it consist of some plain salty pop corns, an apple and a banana, plus a "Green Machine naked fruit juice… I had never tasted it before it tastes amazing and has no added sugar. Highly recommended!
Now Butlins and all the made up concoctions are behind us now and we’ve got just 8 more days to go.

Day 31 ... SH day 5

The food at Butlins sank to a new low this morning when I went for my breakfast. I arrived and let the kitchen staffs know that had arrived. No less than 3 minutes later I was presented with some barely cooked row mushrooms and almost splattered tomatoes.
The mushroom looked visibly uncooked and I asked the waiter “seriously, would you eat this? Can you not see that this isn’t cooked?”  And I asked him if he could at least ask the chef to cook all into some oil with garlic and black pepper? The waiter took away the plate and when he reappeared, I had better looking tomatoes and healthier looking cooked mushrooms…
Frankly how these people remain in business is beyond me. I don’t know. Is it because we are Christians and are not meant to complain? By not complaining, these people think it is ok to serve us this rubbish and in our “Meekness” we accept mediocrity.
A the end my breakfast look like this with some sundried tomato and marinated aubergines
 At lunch time there was no surprises… you’ve guessed it OVERBOILED broccoli and cauliflower. I didn’t manage to have my lunch at lunch time as we were so busy on the stand. So, my lunch was eaten cold at 6.30 pm.
At break time, I went to Morrison’s in search of new flavours and came back with some Tahini, olive and garlic in olive oil and some sugar-free Dijon mustard. I also discovered that 99% of mustards jars I could find on the shelves had sugar in their composition... Wow!.
So, for dinner my concoction was made of he following: Ready-to-eat chestnuts, tahini and mustard, potatoes, over killed broccoli and cauliflowers, olives, sundried tomatoes… my dinner companion was a  very  hungry  seagull who watched all my movements.
It tasted really good. Tahini on its own isn’t that good, but with a bit of mustard it is just great. Tahini is the equivalent of peanut butted, but it is made of sesames seeds. Next, I will try it on a peace of cracker … it should be interesting.

Day 30… SH day 4

Today I decided to skip the resorts’ breakfast again. I wonder if anyone has spoken to them about the quality of their food here. It is amazing that, having traded for over 20 years, no one has taken them to task about their food; the vegetables are always over boiled, the fruits are bruised and at times you can find some starting to spoil… oh boy. I think I would have cried if I was paying for this with my own cash.
 So, skipped the resto’s breakfast, had a lie in and had some of my oatbran cakes with some tomato, fruit and redbush tea.
For lunch I had a plate of over boiled broccoli too ugly to be shown here.
And for dinner, I had some grated carrots collected from the restaurant at lunch time. To that, I added some grilled aubergine, sundried tomato and pickled beetroot eaten with a rice cake and a drizzle of flavoured sunflower oil from the aubergine jar.It tasted nice, but , I am starting to get tired of these unplanned mixes… just two days before I can go home and plan my meals properly. Can’t wait!
Only 10 days to go now before the end of this no meat, no caffeine, no sugar, no refined food, no deep fried food, no flour, no rice, no pasta extreme vegan lent.
The last days of anything can be a challenge and I hope that I won’t fall for anything until the end.
See you tomorrow.

Day 29… SH day 3

Today I decided not to go to the breakfast but instead had a lie in… I wanted to have a break from the tomato and mushrooms morning combo.

So waking up after 10 am I just had some fruits and redbush tea.
Having worked a bit on the stand this morning, I thought it was time I got out of the “compound”, go checkout the Morrison’s shop next door and get some supply, for the next few days. In so doing, I wasted too much time reading the labels and kind of missed my lunch break. With 10 minutes left, I just flew in the restaurant, collected a roasted potato and cauliflower, dumped it in my chalet, flew to the exhibition stand to liberate my colleagues who were on shift since this morning.
So, I had my lunch at 6.30 pm, which meant I didn’t have to worry about dinner.
For lunch/dinner which you can see here, I had baked potato, boiled cauliflower, topped up with roasted (jarred)  roasted aubergine and (jarred) Sundried tomato plus some olives and a little drizzle of sunflower oil from roasted aubergine jar.
Loved my concoction and it looked much tastier that what was served in the restaurant. I ate it cold but I didn’t have any choice and rather eat cold and tasty than… well what was on offer.
Something that I have notice is that I am really struggling to fit in my prayer breaks. Yesterday and today I was too busy when the prayer alarm sounded mid-morning and mid-afternoon… tut-tut

Day 28... SH day 2

Sunrise on Easter Sunday
Today is Resurrection Day… and Spring Harvest first celebration service was at 7am. I didn’t want to go, but my colleague convinced me to. She thought it was going to take place on the beach with people being baptized like previous years.  It turned out; the beach celebration of the resurrection was cancelled because it was high tide. Then, we couldn’t have communion because the seagulls behaved like vultures at times. I was aware of none of that until I followed the sound of singing which, led to a green… I was disappointed that the service wasn’t on the beach, but happy that I went to the service… in my jammies… lol

It tasted as it looks
Today our good friend Jozef the waiter and the chef kept their word. Within five mutes after I sat down for my breakfast, I receive from the kitchen my tomatoes and mushrooms; still bland… unfortunately I don’t trust them to provide me with something else as they might add in un-prescribed ingredients. My trusted friend the chunky tomato was there too. But, I suspect that if I am still on this diet after day 3 I might lose the will to live… getting bore of it now.
For lunch I had some boiled-to-death green beans, carrots and baked potato with fried onions…
My dinner
The tea time offers no alternative for me and for any possible vegan working on the events team. So I collected the tea and passed it on to whoever wanted it; sandwich, flapjack, chocolate cake and fruits. All I kept from my tea was the clementines and banana.
At lunch time I managed to sneak away some fresh salad that I could use for dinner. So, for dinner, I had a multi coloured salad with sweet corn and the flavoured oil from my chunky tomato sauce accompanied with my oat bran savoury biscuit.
One thing I am noticing now is that my digestive system has gotten used to these vegan meals and is functioning semi-correctly without help. Which is great! I think from time to time, I will take leave from my normal egg-caffeine-cream-butter-sugar rich diet. 30 days of veganism will help me to cleanse and restore my digestive system…

Happy Easter!

Day 27… Spring Harvest day 1

The breakfast was a bit of a challenge today. Given that most full English breakfast includes Tomato and mushroom, I assumed that I would only have mushroom and tomato. But, to my surprise, there was eggs meat and more meat in various forms, then, all the breakfast fruit or salads where bathing in sugar… After my first walk in the buffet area, all I could eat was citruses and my own fruit tea.
Then I decide to ask the team of waiters if there was some thing they could do for me as I was vegan, they said no and seem quiet unhelpful… I asked If the were at least some tomato they could fry for me. The first chef came out and said in broken English “no no we don’t have zat”! the whole team was Polish… So I let go. At this point in that room, I was the only black woman and I was making a fuss… 2 or 3 people were staring at my fruits plate with that “how dare she be different? I didn’t care. All my meal were paid for and I needed o eat.
Then the kindness looking waiter walked pass by, I spoke to him. This other waiter spoke a better English, he understood my predicament and got me an even more helpful  chef who, promised me that for the next week he will be cooking my breakfast and keeping it in the back for me. Result!
Ten minutes after the conversation appeared a plate of tomatoes and mushrooms… seasoning less and saltless. Thank goodness once again I had my Jar of tomato chutney. At the end I enjoyed this!
My dinner
I was a bit more apprehensive for lunch. The room was fuller with people and I really didn’t want to make the same thing I did this morning… I was so glad when I saw, baked potatoes, steamed red cabbage, boiled-to-death leek.
I couldn’t use any of the sauces provided as I had no access to the ingredients. I just took my plate as it was and added some fried onions… bob’s your uncle.
Tea time was the same as yesterday; sandwich, crisps, fruits. Gave away mine and instead ate this great salad that I had from Marks and Spencer’s. It constitute on Endamame soy beans, sugar snaps peas, green beans & coriander.
uuuhmmm.

Day 26… Good Friday - Spring Harvest.

Today is 29 March and is Good Friday. I had a great big breakfast with a great bowl of mixt fruits & red berries tea, an apple and oat bran cookie…
When I got to church, there was communion. I hesitated to take the bread and wine, but if there was a day to eat t and drink, it would be today. So, I took the communion. For the last 28 days, I had managed to skip few of these. Right after the service I was travelling to spring harvest in Minehead on the south coast.
The charity I work for has a stand at Spring Harvest this year and I had to go set up and spend a week there. Spring harvest is a Christian festival organised in Butlins sites for 3 weeks between March and April every year. This year I am spending week one in Minehead.
When I learnt that I was going to Minehead half way in my lent, I was a bit worried. I came here last year and I don’t think vegans would have much to eat here. What hope is there for an extreme vegan? For my lent, I excluded all products of animal origin included honey, excluded refined food items, rice pasta, bread, crisps, all sort of sugars. So, it is going to be really difficult to eat what Is on offer while I am here.  All my meals were paid for in advance, but I don’t think and going to make much of my vouchers.
Thank God that I had planned tuff to eat at least for the first day.  I packed a jar of my chunky tomato sauce and a jar of fried onions and thyme. Those two can make everything better. Ion my way I stopped at Marks and spencer’s to get their fuller for longer salads… most of them had either sugar, soy sauce (which contains sugar), honey, cheese or mayonnaise (which contains eggs). But I found a beautiful nuts and pulses salad with Quinoa, black eye peas, carots, broccoli, peas, green beans, peanuts almonds, pumpkin seeds, pistachio nuts, poppy seeds. It was fitting only if I didn’t have it with the included vinaigrette.
Thank God I had my jar of fried onion with me. Not only did the onions enhanced the taste of the salad, the flavoured oil brought the much needed vinaigrette.
To seal all that, I had prepared for the journey a tub of strawberries. I did really felt full.
When we arrived it was time for tea; Sandwich, yogurts fruit, chocolate bar, crisps tea and coffee… The only thing I can have from that beautiful buffet was… fruits. When I asked to have more fruit as I couldn’t take anything else, I was told no. I resorted to trade my sandwich, yogurt and chocolate bar with another volunteer in exchange of bananas.
For dinner after checking what was available, I resorted to just eat a full bag of roasted salted mixed nuts and one banana.
Let’s see what surprises await us for breakfast in the morning…  better take my jar of tomato chutney to the restaurant just in case.
Happy Easter.

Friday 29 March 2013

Day 26… Good Friday

I have decided to steer clear of the blog for few days. I am leaving you to reflect on this song by Third Day. The song is called “offering”. I love Third Day because ALL their songs make me want to stop and just worship taking in every single word while they sing.
The name Third Day is a reference to the fact the Jesus rose on the third day after his death on the cross. The “offering” song is one of my most loved prayers… Enjoy

If you want to copy the lyrics, click here
Happy Easter.