Courgettes Bite Back

This was going to be the final year I was going to bother growing courgettes as the past few years had failed to produce anything that didn't rot before it had reached a half decent size.  The wet, cool summers of the past few years had put pay to that.  I was right to try it one last time and what a year to pick.  To make sure, this year I had planted a couple of courgette plants in one of my beach combed fisherman crates inside a small plastic grow house.  The results have been fantastic and finally my faith in courgette growing has been restored.

 

The downside to growing in this small grow house is accessing the green gems that have decided to hide themselves in the jungle of scratchy leaves right at the back.  It was time to go in and attempt to retrieve them.  I should have put long sleeves on but it was also damn hot in there.  The results were a very scratched up pair of arms which resembled something you would get from an arm wrestling match with a small kitten rather than a home grown courgette harvesting session.

 

With the bigger courgettes finally harvested and delivered to the kitchen, my thoughts turned to going back in again to now tackle the jungle.  I had to make it easier to harvest and also to cut back the growth which was bursting out the door.  More air and light would lead to less rotting (a couple of small courgettes showed signs of this) and better ripening.  A few more scratches later and the jungle was tamed.

 

They might have put up a fight but in the end, despite the scratches, I won the battle.  This was hunting and gathering vegan style.  The potato and courgette Lasan Kari they ended up in that evening, courtesy of the Phil's curry kitchen, was delicious too.

 

 

Badger Boundaries

As we have been harvesting the onions from the front garden we have been digging it over and planting broccoli and other such over wintering crops.  The one problem with this is that any newly dug over and planted area will attract the attention of our badger clan, searching for juicy worms.  It is a wonderful problem to have but regardless still a problem we needed to surpass if we are going to go to the effort of planting anything new in the front garden.

 

We had recently re-strung the main fence between us and the neighbours as our previous efforts of a new fence, using natural hemp rope, had failed in the face of pigeon shit and badger ingress.  The design of the original fence had been a very pretty fan affair but had proved defenceless against the local fluffies and the Cornish elements; lasting less than a year.  Our new design, using a slightly more robust hemp rope, had a more defensive and conventional design and so far it has done the job.

 

Next was the issue of keeping the black and white visitors away from our veg growing area yet letting them into where we usually leave them a nightly peace offering.  Fishing net collected from the beach offered us the solution here, strung between bamboo poles.  So far it has proved sufficient, although the local cat population needs a little more encouragement to stay away.  In fact they haven't even noticed it's there yet it seems (see the video at the end).

 

 

In an additional effort to tidy up our very British need for boundaries, I foolishly decided that it would be a good idea to paint the wall white between us and our other neighbour (a holiday cottage).  Brilliant white was my choice; as I felt it added a real Mediterranean flare right next to our towering fig tree. 

 

It looked amazing for a few hours after painting.   I didn't count on the Cornish input to my creativity that I would receive from our badger friends come the next morning.  So much for that.  Maybe the paint should have been re-marketed as Badger White instead of Brilliant White.  Luckily we have a sense of humour when it comes to lessons from nature.

 

When it comes to it, to a certain degree you are a complete fool if you start to try and define boundaries between yourself and nature.  Let's just say you can try but you will never completely fully succeed....and quite rightly so.

 

Here's to breaking down the  boundaries forever for everything and everything!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Vote for a Vegan Cook Show

Wouldn't you love to see an all vegan cook show?  I would, and that's why I decided to feed back to The Food Network UK.  No harm in asking surely?  So if you agree, go on the feedback page and search for my comment (link below) and vote, vote, vote!!

Have an all vegan cook show!

The Strawberry King of Kent

 



I was in London recently on business and was fortunate enough to be able to escape each night back to the village where my parents live in Kent.   It made the hot, sweaty experience of the 'big smoke' a little more bearable particularly so as my parents live surrounded by woodland, hops and fruit farms.  

 

I didn't however have to make a visit to the nearest farm to pick my own strawberries as my dad is officially (in mine and Phil's book anyway), the Strawberry King of Kent.  At the top of my parents garden are rows and rows of strawberries glistening in the July sunshine.  I really couldn't believe it this year when my dad rolled back the protective netting (which actually doesn't protect much from the local gang of blackbirds but then my dad really doesn't mind too much).  The plants are positively heaving under the weight this year.

 

So what's his secret?  Well, I don't think even he knows.  He did originally buy the plants from the local fruit farmer and he does swear by growing them under black plastic.   I also know he does use my comfrey feed but I think he might have run out of that by the time this years crop came along.  He is just good at growing strawberries and I am more that happy to help him make the best use of the surplus. 

 

I left for home in Cornwall with 8 punnets.  As soon as I arrived home (despite the 5 hour drive) I immediately set about sorting out and freezing half of these for the winter larder.  Then strawberry ice cream was made followed by a strawberry cheesecake.  The rest is to be enjoyed fresh or in smoothies.  I decided against jam this year as I already have a cupboard full from last years crop (minus what I took to Kent for my parents). 

 

When the Cornish winter throws sea sprayed wind against the window and the fresh produce of the summer is a long lost memory,  I will rejoice in pulling from the freezer these red, summer sunshine trapped jewels direct from the grower; my dad, the Strawberry King of Kent.

 

 

 

 Strawberry Cheesecake

 

The amounts for this recipe are approximate as I just normally 'bung' it together so I have really had to think hard to try and break it down into a recipe!

 

200g vegan digestive biscuits (such as Doves Farm Organic) - either half a big pack or a whole small pack

100g vegan margarine

1 tub (225g) Vegan Cream Cheese (such as Tofutti Original)

125g of Vegan Plain Yoghurt

6 teaspoons of Vegeset (or equivalent veggie setting agent such as Agar)- separated

500g Strawberries

A squeeze of agave to sweeten/taste

 

1.  Whizz up the biccies in a blender until a fine crumb.

2.  Meanwhile melt the marg.

3.  Add the melted marg to the biscuit crumb and combine until well mixed.

4.  Press mixture into greased flan dish (or any dish you want as it isn't baked).

5.  Put cream cheese and yoghurt in the blender and whizz together. 

6.  Add 3 teaspoons of the Vegeset and about 6 strawberries to the blender and whizz until well mixed.

7.  Heat the above mixture in a saucepan until it starts to thicken.

8.  Pour onto biscuit base and smooth to edges.

9.  Whizz up rest of the strawberries, agave, a splash of water and the remaining vegeset.

10. Heat up the strawberry mixture until it starts to thicken.

11.Pour on top of the cheesecake and smooth out.

12. Allow to cool and bung in the fridge until set. 

 

Enjoy!

Green Dentistry

As a vegan you are relatively limited by commercial toothpaste options and if you're concerned about artificial and harmful substances, you are limited even more.  Glycerin, for example, can prevent teeth from re-mineralisation and this appears in the ingredients list of even some of the more natural toothpaste products. 

We had bumped into a friend back in April who had been using clay to clean her teeth for a few months.  She said that she felt it had really improved the condition of her teeth.   In fact, she had lovely white shiny teeth.  It was something that I had been meaning to experiment with for a while so it reminded me that I really should have got around to investigating it myself.  With that I bought some green clay powder and started to look into how to make my own tooth powder.  I think our friend had just been using clay on its own but I wanted to make something which had the taste of toothpaste a little more.  Searching on-line I found that a combination of clay, bicarbonate of soda and essential oils were popular so went about making my first tooth powder. 

Muddy Grin Toof Powder

4 tablespoons of clay (I use green clay)
1 tablespoon of bicarbonate of soda (an aluminium free one)
10 drops (or to taste) minty essential oil

Put it all in a ceramic or glass jar (metal can affect the clay) and shake it all up.  Wait a few seconds for the dust to settle!  Dip a wet toothbrush in and brush away.  Don’t worry if your teeth look dirtier than dirty during the brushing as it will all rinse off!  Have a good rinse after to get all the gritty bits of the clay out.

I have been using this powder now for about 3 months and I have to say, I think it has made my teeth whiter and I really like the taste.  I even had a check up at the dentist and he said whatever I was doing (I didn’t tell him for fear of appearing a raging hippy!) that I should keep on doing it.  I think I might reveal my secret next time!

Please do check out all the information yourself regarding the use of home made tooth products as, although I think it has been extremely beneficial (both financially and health wise) to me, I base this purely on my own personal experience.  If you do ask your dentist remember than most of them seem extremely set in their ways and would only advise the use of products that are most commonly commercially available.  Remember that the biggest expert on your own body and mind is an informed you!

Annual Gull Season Dramas

The annual gull season dramas are thankfully almost over with the chicks finally stretching their wings and attempting to  leave their rooftop roosts and learn the ways of the gull.

Every year we are surrounded by pairs of herring gulls on our roof, next doors roof and the nearby church roof. Every year we have the drama of popping them back on the roof when the chicks fall off, as well as keeping the local kids from throwing stuff at them and being woken up in the early hours with shrieking and pecking on the roof above our heads.  We even had one chick that had fallen off the roof and into our garden wander into the house a few years ago and have a right old look around. 

Phil has been singled out, despite his constant rescue missions, by the gulls themselves just because of the gull wrangling involved in catching them and popping them back to safety on the roof.  If I am in the house I know when Phil has returned from surfing merely because the gulls start the 'bad man has returned alert call'. 

I have helped out a bit more this year in catching them so now I am also clucked and swooped at.  I wish we could tell them we meant no harm and were merely helping them out.  Despite this, they have never actually attacked us which makes me wonder whether the horror stories you read of gull attacks are the usual press frenzy.  The worst they have done is regurgitate or poo on Phil, which is not too pleasant but also far from being physically attacked.

When it comes down to it, it's all part of living on the Cornish coast but we do breathe a bit of a sigh of relief when it is all over for another year.  I do also enjoy seeing the babies finally stretching their wings and wonder at what it must be like for those babies to fly for the first time out over the great ocean.

 

Veganism is Cool

Wow, how good is this?  The sun has been shining now for over a week (hence the lack of being inside writing blog posts - sorry about that!).  So what better way to break my sunshine induced blog silence than with a post about vegan ice cream.

The vegan ice creams on the market are certainly a lot better than 25 years ago, but I find them either a bit too sweet or far too expensive.  A couple of years ago my parents bought us an ice cream maker and I really haven't used it as much as I should have done, but the warmer weather had me breaking it back out of the cupboard and thinking about getting creative with it again.  

I have a really good book of vegan ice cream recipes called Vice Dream but many of the recipes call for cashew nuts which can get expensive (although the recipes are all raw which is a bonus).  Recently though I saw another recipe book where the foundation for all the recipes was a mixture of coconut milk and soya milk, and the process seemed a lot simpler and quicker.  I didn't buy that book as once I had the idea in my head I thought I could just apply any amount of flavour ideas and custom adjustments to that basic concept.   Try different milk alternatives, healthier sweeteners than just sugar, and think outside the normal flavour box.  So I give you my first creative flavour concept inspired by our garden;  Lavender Ice Cream.

 

Lavender Summer of '13 Ice Cream

500ml milk (soya, almond, oat, etc)

400ml (one can) coconut milk

2 tablespoons of agave syrup (more if you like it sweeter)

8 sprigs of lavender flowers

Put the soya milk (or equivalent) in a saucepan with the agave syrup and the lavender flowers and heat up gently to a simmer for a few minutes then turn off. 

Let it sit and infuse until it is completely cool. 

Take out the lavender flowers  

Whisk in the coconut milk then store in the fridge until you are ready to put it in the ice cream maker.  Alternatively, if you don't have an ice cream maker, you can put in a container in the freezer until mostly frozen, then take out and mix up again before repeating it a few times more, but I must admit I have never had great texture results with this method in the past.

Enjoy!

We had ours 'proper childhood summer' style in a vegan ice cream cone.

Dealings With Seitan

We don't have loads of soya products but even so, sometimes we still think it is too much.  Seitan (wheat gluten) is a soya free alternative but it's not too easy to find in these parts.  Ironically you can get it really easily in supermarkets in 'meat loving' Portugal; pre-packaged and ready to go. 

I have made seitan from 'scratch' before but it is quite time consuming.  Recently however, we found this great Seitan Fix Mix from Vegan Store.  We initially bought a small 250g package (£1.59) to have an experiment with and having had some tasty results we then went all out and bought two 1kg packages (£4.89 each) for our store cupboard.  It really is a very cost effective and interesting product to use and we thoroughly recommend it.  Check it out on Vegan Store here.

Recently we made some 'chicken' seitan which we then incorporated into a creamy nut korma.  It was pretty yumski.   We had plenty of 'chicken' left so are having more of it tonight in another culinary creation.  One thing that is missing from the Seitan Fix Mix package are instructions of how to use it but here is what we did to make 'chicken'. 

 

Seitanic Chicken (makes loads!)

 

2 cups of Seitan Fix Mix

1 cup of nutritional yeast flakes

4 tsp onion powder

4 tsp dried sage

2 tsp dried thyme

3 tsp celery salt

8 tbsp tamari

2 cups water

 

Add all the dry ingredients into a bowl and mix up good and proper.  Then mix in the tamari

 

Add the water bit by bit until it forms into a 'dough' (see photo).

 

Divide into whatever forms you fancy (we did little 1" chunks) but bear in mind it expands once cooked.

 

Boil in enough water to cover for about 45 minutes.

 

Use straight away or store in the fridge (preferably in the resulting broth from the boiling).

 

 

So give it a try!  Let us know if you come up with any interesting creations yourself!  I'm sure there are plenty more for us to try out.

 

Enjoy!

Only in Totnes

Following on from our trip to Plymouth, we moved 25 miles further east to get a 'Totnes fix'.  With a good mixture of health food stores, book stores, veg friendly cafes, charity and independent shops, thrown in with a colourful mix of unusual and alternative thinking characters, Totnes can be just the right tonic for bringing you out of your every day bubble. 

 

It had been a little while since we had been here and things had changed a little.  For a start, some of the traffic was coming the opposite way down the one way High Street!  Not sure what that was all about.  There was also a noticeable mix up of shops.  Some had sadly closed down, alternatives had opened and some shops had moved.  Arcturus book store had moved across the road and their previous premises replaced by a cafe. We thankfully discovered that Drift Record Shop hadn't just closed down as we had believed on our last visit but had instead moved up to bigger premises at the top of the High Street.

Hallelujah for independent record stores like Drift where you can have that old fashioned but totally enlightening experience of educating yourself about new releases and exciting non-mainstream music.  Take a look at their website to get the idea and if you are in Totnes, make sure you make the trip right to the top of the High Street.  It'll be worth it.  Lovely people too.

 

Drift Record Shop

A couple of purchases on (new albums from Laura Marling and Boards of Canada) and after tearing ourselves away from Drift we continued down the High Street.  About two thirds of the way down we discovered a new venture called the Totnes Cats Cafe.  I had heard about these kinds of places in Japan where the resident cats act as a therapeutic distraction to the customers.  Despite my recent cat centric posts, I am actually more of a dog person but having two cats sharing my work and home life (even though I don't 'own' them) has made me appreciate the benefits of having these fur covered independent spirits around.

Having looked into the cafe a little more, it turns out that this is Britain's first cat cafe and it has come under some criticism by Cats Protection - see here for more details.  Both sides of the debate have valid points but I guess the only way you would know for sure is to go and see for yourself.  We only peered through the window and the two cats that we could see were fast asleep on chairs and nobody was fussing around them.  I know TC at work enjoys just hanging out with us and getting the occasional stroke and we like him hanging out with us.  It works for both of us.  As long as that is the case at the cafe, I can see no harm.  Profits also go to animal charities which is all good.  Read more about the cafe here.

Too soon it was time to head out of Totnes and back to Cornwall with a bag full of Greenlife goodies .  It is a shame we have to travel so far to get that 'only in Totnes' fix but then again I guess that is what makes it special and unique. Where we live is also special and unique; just in a different way.

Samphire Brasserie Plymouth

With the prospect of a rainy Saturday ahead of us we decided that a treat was in order to bring a little bit of sunshine to our weekend.  We left a drizzly Cornwall and headed the 50 miles east to cross the border into Devon.  We purposely skipped breakfast with the full intention of sampling the fares at one of the newest kids on the veggie catering block - Samphire Brasserie in Plymouth. 

Opened in March this year by local vegetarians Becca Speare & Joe Wadge, I had only managed one quick visit previously so we were both looking forward to the opportunity to fully explore the food and atmosphere of this city based restaurant.  As soon as we stepped off the wet and grey streets of Plymouth and into Samphire we were instantly greeted by the vivacious, sunny waitress who clearly had both the knowledge and energy to represent all that Samphire inspired to offer.  This made us feel, along with the light, clean but nicely quirky interior of the restaurant, like the sun had started to come out on this otherwise damp June weekend.  All this before we had even studied the menu.

All of Samphire's menu is vegetarian and at least half is marked as vegan but they 'don't shout in your face' about their virtuous veggie ways and, with items like 'chicken', 'black pudding' and 'fish and chips' appearing on the menu,  the uninitiated could be forgiven for assuming it wasn't a vegetarian establishment.  This is stealth vegetarian and vegan cuisine; the kind of place you could take carnivorous friends before they even had a chance to complain about the lack of meat.  Some veggies and vegans may have issues with this and I do remember reading banter about this on Samphire's own Facebook page in the early days but as long as the food that is offered is vegan and tasty, I personally have no issues (see our previous blog post about this very issue - Really Alternative). I applaud their efforts to make all dietary choices comfortable with the food they offer, especially if it encourages people to give up animal products.

After several long moments of indecision and dithering, Phil and I finally decided on what we were going to have.  Phil opted for the vegan all day breakfast; a tasty plateful of smokey tempeh bacon, tofu scramble, lentil cake, beans, king trumpet mushrooms, tomatoes and toast at a reasonable £5.50.  This breakfast was certainly a break from the normal vegan breakfast offerings of hash browns, toast, beans and maybe some kind of sausage.

My choice was that of 'Fish and Chips'; vegan fish steak coated in cider batter, served with chefs ‘mushy peas’ & home made tartar sauce (£8.95).  Even after 25 years of being vegan I admit the thing I have missed the most is fish and chips.  I'm not sure after all these years I could accurately compare the taste to the real thing but regardless I was very much looking forward to sampling this vegan version.  I wasn't disappointed.  The big hunk of 'fish' in front of me was like a 'Veggie World' Salmon Steak but coated in a delicious crispy batter that I am fairly sure would have fooled Rick Stein himself!  Presented beside this stealth battered fish was a small 'frying basket' of home cooked chips which were exquisitely soft on the inside but tantalisingly crispy on the outside.  The tartar sauce was thick and creamy and a perfect accompaniment to both the fish and the chips.  I wasn't so sure about the chefs 'mushy peas' though.  As a dish on their own these harissa laced broad beans were tasty and very much appreciated by the chilli obsessed Phil, but as an accompaniment to the fish and chips, I would have preferred a more subtle and traditional version.

 

The proof is in the eating and both our plates were happily cleared with any evidence now sitting in our full bellies.  The only disappointment was that we had no room for any dessert but Phil did still manage to order a chocolate and cashew butter cookie for Ron (later' on). 

There aren't many reasons to draw us to the 'big smoke' of Plymouth but it is clear that Samphire Brasserie is sure to become one of the main ones.  Plymouth doesn't really require a restaurant to have a niche market when it comes to vegetarian restaurants as, apart from the nearby Veggie Perrins, there is a lack of such establishments anyway.  However, with it's freshly cooked, creatively presented take on vegetarian British food, Samphire has managed not only to fill a vegetarian gap in Plymouth but has also created a niche market in vegetarian food in the south west in general.

http://www.samphirebrasserie.com/