Plastic-free July continues

It’s two weeks since I started the plastic free challenge and I’ve discovered lots of exciting* ways to cut down on my plastic usage.

*okay – you might not be as excited as I am!

The kitchen is a good place to think about single use plastics – I haven’t used clingfilm for years and I have lots of glass containers for storage – but what I really noticed was the amount of plastic bottles and containers that cleaning products were stored in. I tried the dish block instead of washing up liquid (which wasn’t a great success), as I mentioned a couple of weeks ago. Then I went on to Splosh washing up liquid. I had thought the refills weren’t recyclable, but turns out you can send them back to the company and they will reprocess them. How amazing is that? And I was so impressed with washing up liquid, that I ordered some of the toilet cleaner too, which also works brilliantly. All the packaging from the parcel is biodegradable/recyclable too – the worms on my compost heap liked the cornstarch chips, and the cardboard and paper tape has gone into the recycling bin. A resounding success all round!

I use bicarbonate of soda to clean lots of things – it’s really good at removing grime without scratching – so I was very pleased to see that one of the shops local to me has started selling it in paper bags. The plastic pot that I had from the bicarb that I bought from the supermarket has been refilled and the bicarb in the paper bag has been stored in the airing cupboard in the dry. The same shop also sells Epsom salts (which are fab in the bath after a run), so I don’t have to buy bath salts in plastic anymore. Which leads me neatly on to the bathroom…

There’s loads of plastic in the bathroom which could be removed. First up toothpaste tubes. I had experimented earlier in the year with natural toothpaste but hadn’t been able to find anything with fluoride in. I found a local-ish zero waste supermarket that sells Denttabs by weight, but a variety of websites in the UK also sell them if you want to give them a go. I’m very impressed with them so far and a month’s supply for one person costs about £4. They are also much more transportable than a tube of toothpaste if you’re going away, which is great.

Next up – razors. My other half has decided that he’s going for a safety razor after reading about the amount of plastic being generated from disposable razors and bits of razors. The Environmental Protection Agency estimated that in 1990, Americans were throwing away around 2 billion plastic razors. Stop and think about that for a minute. Two billion bits of plastic that are never going to be recycled and at some point in the very distant future, will start to degrade into microplastics…. and that’s only the razors the Americans were throwing away – let’s not forget the actions of rest of the planet! Cassette razors are slightly better, in that you keep the handle and only chuck away the head, but a safety razor is even better – keep the handle and recycle the metal blades. So that’s what other half has done, investing in a Friendly shaving bar (comes in completely recyclable wrapping) and a shaving brush (managed to find one that came in a cardboard box from Holland and Barrett) as well. It seems to be going well at the moment, so fingers crossed!

Finally, toilet paper. The paper that I was buying from the supermarket was recycled – yay! – but it was wrapped in plastic. The only thing that was available to me locally was the Who Gives a Crap? range from the same place as the Denttabs and at £1 a roll, I thought it was going to work out really quite expensive. However, the roll is bigger than the rolls I was using, and so it lasts longer which is great. The toilet roll itself is made of recycled paper and the roll is wrapped in very snazzy paper – and the best bit is that half the profits go to building toilets for those in need.

So those are some of the things that I have done this month to reduce my plastic consumption – hope you’ve managed to make some switches too because…

…Great things are done by a series of small things brought together
Van Gogh

What Goes Green Then Red?

Gooseberries starting to ripen off on the bush
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Gooseberry jam (hands up all of you that said Kermit in a blender…) Other half and I went off to do some Pick Your Own this weekend at a local fruit farm – haven’t done that for years! We ended up with a kilo of gooseberries and a kilo of blackcurrants (and the punnets were cardboard – yay!). The gooseberries have already been turned into pie and jam (more of that later) and the blackcurrants wait patiently in the fridge until tomorrow evening when they will be turned into more jam and some blackcurrant cordial. Never tried to make cordial before, so wish me luck because that could be interesting!

A punnet of gooseberries and a punnet of blackcurrants

Whilst at the fruit farm, I spotted a polite notice that asked you to wash fruit before you eat it as the plants are sprayed to keep them healthy, ie, they use pesticides. So knowing that, I did some research into getting pesticides off fruit and veg and I found this website which suggested washing them and using a baking soda (aka bicarbonate of soda) solution to get rid of the residue. The research was carried out on apples, but I figured it was worth a try. I rinsed the gooseberries thoroughly first and then soaked them for 15 minutes in a solution of 1/2 oz bicarb and 2 and a half pints cold water. Then I rinsed thoroughly again and drained before topping and tailing and using to make the pie and jam. I’ve just eaten a slice of the pie with soya cream and am pleased to report that it doesn’t taste of bicarb, so I will try it with the blackcurrants too.

So that brings me to this week’s recipe – Gooseberry jam. It’s fairly straight forward and you can adjust quantities easily up or down.

Gooseberries, rinsed, topped and tailed – then weighed before you put them in the pan
8fl oz (200ml) water per 1lb (500g) of gooseberries
Juice of 1/2 lemon for 2lb (1kg) of gooseberries*
The same weight in sugar as you have gooseberries
A big saucepan
A sugar thermometer is really helpful for testing for setting point
Saucer – put it in the fridge!
Jars washed in soapy water and sterilised by putting them in an oven at 140C for ten minutes or so.

*don’t worry too much about being really precise with the juice amount, as the size and juiciness of lemons vary – but 1/2 a lemon is a rough guide!

Put the gooseberries, juice and water in a pan and cook for about ten minutes until the fruit has gone soft and pulpy. Turn the heat to lowish and add the sugar. This is really important – you don’t want the jam to boil until the sugar is completely dissolved – unless of course, you actually like eating crunchy, crystallised sugar in your jam! Stir occasionally until all the sugar is dissolved. If you can hear a scratching noise when you stir it or you can feel crystals if you press the wooden spoon onto the base of the pan, you need to keep the heat low a little longer.

Turn the heat up once the sugar is dissolved and boil hard – the jam will rise up the pan which is why you need a big one. The jam will take about 10 to 15 mins to reach setting point, so make sure you stir occasionally to stop it burning to the bottom of the pan. You can test for setting by putting a teaspoon of the jam onto the cold saucer and then popping it in the fridge for a minute – make sure you take the saucepan off the heat whilst you do this. If you push the jam, if should wrinkle and that means it’ll set properly when you put it in the jar. If it doesn’t wrinkle, boil for another minute or two before testing again. Be careful not to let it go too far – it’s a fine line between jam and fruity chewing gum (ask me how I know…). It’s much easier if you have a sugar thermometer as you just need to wait until the temperature of the jam gets up to 105 C and then test for set.

When it has reached setting point, carefully take the jars out of the oven and let cool slightly. Pour in the hot jam and seal straight away. You could eat once it is cool, but it should store well for months in the unopened jar.

A jar of slightly pinkish gooseberry jam — A jar of pink gooseberry jam!

So to come back to my original question – why does gooseberry jam go red (or at least pink)? Apparently, it’s all down to the reaction between anthocyanins in the gooseberries and the heat – which explains why my pie filling went pink too. If you want green gooseberry jam, you should use slightly underripe berries – or so the wisdom of the internet decrees! (I’m sticking with ripe ones…)

Plastic Free July

I’ve just discovered that plastic free July is a thing, so of course I’m in as one of my resolutions this year was to cut down on the amount of plastic I use. I often remind myself that just because it is recyclable, doesn’t mean that it will be recycled. The project is run by a group based in Australia, but they operate across the globe and they have a fantastic selection of tips and ideas for reducing plastic consumption.

If you sign up, they’ll send you a handy weekly email brimming with ideas to lead you gently away from single use plastics or plastic items completely. I’m starting with single used plastic and I’m attempting to go for the whole month, but you can sign up for a shorter period of time.

So what are my main concerns about doing this challenge? Well, two really – time and money. Am I going to have time to do this and is this going to be more expensive than my normal shopping? Given that I only heard about this the day before it starts, I haven’t had much time to think and plan ahead – but I reckon by the end of the week, I’ll have thought about what I need to do to allow me to avoid single use plastics and I won’t be concerned about that anymore. I think the second thing is going to be a bigger issue – but I might even end up saving money – tetrapak containers are out as they contain layers of polyethylene , so I’ll have to make my own oat milk, but that should be substantially cheaper than shop bought. I’ll just have to be more organised so that I have time fit in making it!

On the topic of single use plastics, I have been trying No Tox Life’s dish washing block. It has really good reviews online – in fact, I could only find one that was negative. Unfortunately, it’s not working for me – maybe it’s the water hardness in my area, but it’s not really lathering and yet it’s still leaving a soapy residue (and sometimes taste) on the dishes, despite me doing my best to rinse them off. So I’ve had to have a rethink – I’ve ordered some washing up liquid from Splosh and hopefully that will work better. That’s not really ideal, as the refill pouches are plastic, but the refill is concentrated and so will refill the bottle three times – so it’s a start whilst I try to find something else that is more suitable. Ideally, I’d refill my ecover bottle, but the nearest store to me that offers the service is a 15 mile drive away which isn’t great.

One area where I have managed to cut out single use plastic, and in fact any waste at all, is sanitary towels. I’m using Honour Your Flow, which I got through &keep. I was a bit squeamish at first, but actually, I was pleasantly surprised to find that they are fine. They have poppers on the underside of the wings to keep them in place – even when I run they don’t move -and they are very comfortable. They’re made with organic cotton and come in a variety of sizes from pantyliners to night time and mini to maxi sizes. Once they are used, I keep them in one of the zipped washbags until I am ready to do a wash and then stick them in with my 40 degree dark wash and they come through fine. I did try them on 30 degrees, but that tended to leave staining and I wouldn’t want to leave blood stains on anything else… At £8.60 each, they is no denying that they are expensive. However, I have six and they get me through my whole period (obviously if you have a heavy period, you’ll want either more pads or to do your wash more frequently). I was buying Natracare before – plastic free, but still producing waste – which cost about £2.49 a pack. I’d go through a pack each month, so in 20 months, my reusable pads will have paid for themselves, plus I’m not doing any washing that I wasn’t going to do anyway, so I’m happy with that.

So back to my plastic challenge for this month, I’ve already planned to buy veggie burger buns from the bakery rather than buying prepackaged, to buy compostable bags for my kitchen bin, oats in paper packaging (a double saving on a plastic cereal packet and on tetrapak) and I’m sure I’ll be able to make further switches as I go through the month. Now I just need to find somewhere nearby that sells loose fruit, nuts and other dry staples and I’m well on the way to being single use plastic free – and I’ll share what I have learnt next week!

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle – Project 333 Wardrobe Challenge

Photo by Artem Beliaikin @belart84 on Pexels.com

It seems that everywhere you look these days there is someone telling you how to improve your life by doing/not doing something. I can’t remember how I found Project 333 – I think I might actually have been looking for vegan leather alternatives and got slightly sidetracked. Anyhow, what matters is that I found it in the first place. I’m not going to gush that it’s changed my life – but it has made me a bit more organised in the mornings, and less faffing about deciding what to wear in the morning can only be a good thing. It’s also good for my pocket and for the environment…

So the Project 333 challenge is deceptively simple – you whittle your wardrobe down to 33 items for which you wear for 3 months (hence the 333) and then do the whole exercise again. It doesn’t include underwear (that would be a washing nightmare…), exercise gear (as long as you use it to exercise in and it’s not something you wear out and about), sleep wear and lounging around the house clothes, nor sentimental jewellery like a wedding ring. It does include coats, scarves, jewellery, shoes and any other items of clothing.

I didn’t start at the beginning of a three month period (ie January, April, etc) as I discovered it mid month, but that doesn’t matter really. The point is to assess your wardrobe and work out what you don’t need and you can do that any time.

Project 333 has a website with some detailed instructions, but here’s how I did mine. First thing to do is empty the contents of your wardrobe onto the bed (actually, the first thing I did was to banish the cats who would have had a whale of a time trying to get to Narnia…) That gave me an opportunity – read complete lack of excuse not to – to give the inside of the wardrobe a good clean, It also helps if you do the sorting out bit when you have an empty washing basket so you can accurately see what you have got.

You could do the whole thing in contemplative silence, but I banged on some Kraftwerk and got started with the sorting. First up – what is unlikely to ever be worn again because it doesn’t fit, it doesn’t look good, it’s got bad memories associated with it – or whatever reason that it won’t be worn again. I had a few items fall into this category and put them in a pile to donate to the charity shop. If I’d found this really difficult, I would have drafted in a friend to help.

Next I looked at what I would wear again if it was in better condition. If it was faded, could I dye it? If it was torn, could I mend it? If the fastenings needed replacing, could I do it (or find someone else who could)? If I loved it but it didn’t fit, could it be altered to fit? If I’d had lots of clothes in this category, I’d have to think about what was stopping me repairing them – if I had lots of clothes that needed mending, that’s probably telling me that I didn’t really want to wear them as I would have repaired them by now!

Then comes the exciting bit – pulling together 33 items that I really love wearing. I have a job where I try to be reasonably smart, so I wasn’t about to create a wardrobe consisting of jeans and T-shirts. I also live in the North and really feel the cold – so lots of layers are the way forward – and for that reason, I bent the rules slightly in that I didn’t count my coat, winter scarf and gloves. I often wear two scarves and 2 pairs of gloves, so all of that would have been five items from the 33! This isn’t supposed to be about making myself miserable – and I knew if I was cold I was going to be very grumpy!

I started by thinking about what I needed to have, eg smart trousers and then what items that I really loved that I wanted to go with those and put those things back in the wardrobe. I have a skirt that I have worn every summer for the past two decades and that definitely made the summer cut! If there was something in the wash that I wanted to keep in my 33 items, I hung an empty hanger back in the wardrobe so that when I came to count how many items I had, I wasn’t going to forget it and end up with more than 33. So I worked my way through the wardrobe and ended up with 31 items which left me with two pairs of shoes to include. I don’t have huge numbers of shoes, so that was easy too.

At the end of it, I had a small pile to take to the charity shop, 31 items hanging in my wardrobe and a larger pile on the bed of clothes that I wasn’t going to wear this time around. Some of these items were clothes that were out of season and others were clothes that didn’t make the cut this time but that I didn’t want to get rid of, so they are stored in a crate under the bed. It’s important to put the clothes that aren’t in the 33 somewhere it’s a bit of a faff to get to, otherwise the temptation to pull out a few things might become too much!

So the charity shop pile…The thing about donating stuff to charity shops is that only around 39% of clothes collected for reuse and recycling in 2016 were donated to charity shops and the rise of fast fashion means that often the clothes might not be good enough quality to sell on, according to this article. Let’s face it, if you can buy a T-shirt from new for £2, how on earth can charity shops compete with that? And that means that there is a fair chance that they will end up in landfill.

So donating clothes to charity shops might not be the solution to the problem – I’m certainly not suggesting that you shouldn’t donate to charity shops, but maybe think about what you can do with an item once you’ve finished with it before you buy it – and that brings us back to that old mantra – Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. Reduce the amount of clothes that you buy in the first place. Wear the clothes that you have until they are no longer repairable or you can’t turn them into something else (eg cut off and hem trousers to make shorts, use a trouser leg to make a draft excluder and so on), then send to textile recycling, or if they are natural fibres, shred them up a bit and put them on your compost heap. Finally, if the clothes are fine – maybe you’ve lost weight and they no longer fit – swap with friends, charity shop them or freecycle to give them another lease of life.

I’m completely sold on this challenge – I’m onto my second 3 months now and by storing clothes away, I can add ‘new’ items into my wardrobe every three months (providing I swap some out into storage). Anything that I look at again after three months and think I can do without can be passed onto someone else.

Overall, it’s a win for me and a win for the environment. Picking an outfit from 33 items is so much quicker – and it doesn’t have to turn into a Steve Jobs-type uniform! Fewer decisions for me to make can only be a good thing and nobody has noticed – or if they have, they are too polite to say. It’s made me more aware of what I have in my wardrobe and where the gaps are, and I am only buying clothes to replace something that has completely worn out and is beyond repair or to fill a gap – up to 33 items.

Why not give it a go. What have you got to lose except indecision in the morning and all those things in your wardrobe that don’t actually go with anything else!

3 Life lessons that apply to more than just running

Photo by Mateusz Dach on Pexels.com
(Not actually the 2019 Liverpool Marathon!)

Didn’t get a chance to post last weekend, as the long awaited marathon swung around and so I was in Liverpool. Unfortunately, I had injured my knee about a month prior to the event, so I couldn’t do the full thing and had to settle for a half marathon instead. So this post is about what I learnt from the run.

If it’s hurting, work out what the problem is

I’d been going great guns until I got to 18 miles and then I ended up with really bad knee pain. This should have been a cue to slow down. Instead, I did a 20 mile walk across the South Downs the Thursday afterwards. It was a lovely walk, but despite wearing a knee brace it still hurt quite a bit. The next day, I did a 5K run through the water meadows at Winchester and promptly fell over my own two feet. It was bad enough that the person who was walking his dog thought that I had fallen over it, but I landed on the bad knee and cut my hand too. So fast forward two weeks, and it’s still hurting, so I went to see Sports physio. I’ve now got loads of exercises to do to strengthen my legs and that should deal with the knee pain – in 2-3 months time. His advice was not to try to run the marathon, and in a rare bout of common sense, I decided he was right. If I had stopped when the pain started, would I have been able to do the full 26.2 miles? I’ll never know, but I could have saved myself a lot of discomfort if I’d stopped when it hurt and worked out what the problem was. Working out why it’s hurting and doing something about it applies in so many areas of life!

Even if you’re disappointed, give it your best shot and try to avoid being resentful

To say I was disappointed not to be running the marathon that I’d spent 6 months training for was an understatement and I could have let that colour my whole experience. Instead, I mooched over to Liverpool with the attitude that I’d give the half marathon a go and see what happened. I was determined to finish even if it meant walking most of it, and I figured that as I walk quite fast, if I only ran 3 miles, I could still complete in the cut off time. I could have done the half marathon feeling resentful that I wasn’t doing the whole thing, but instead I figured that just finishing it would be an achievement in itself. And it turned out that was quite important in terms of being in the right place mentally towards the second half of the race. With the exception of about a mile where the route turned inland for a short while, the last 6 miles was into a very stiff wind – alright – it was a hellish wind at around 18 mph, straight into my face. Even the seagulls were having trouble. I was just glad to have made it that far without stopping, so I battled on with a positive-I-really-can’t-believe-I’ve-made-it-this-far attitude and finally made it to the end. If I’d chosen to feel bitter, that last stretch of the race would have been horrendous. My other half was able to complete the marathon distance and I was genuinely pleased for him – again that would have been difficult if I was feeling resentful about my own race

Proper preparation is good thing – over preparation not so much

Turns out that training for a marathon and then doing a half is a recipe for a good time – even with an injury. There’s a fine balance between properly preparing and over preparing and I suppose that some might consider training for a marathon and then doing the half over preparing. I’d agree if that had been the original intention – especially as it was the 18 miles that proved too much for my knee. However, from my point of view, I was making the best of a bad job and all those training runs (and hill runs – I’m looking at you Upper Parliament Street) proved to be invaluable. I could have spent ages looking at the map before I did the run, working out where the water stations were, looking for landmarks to give me some idea of how far round I was etc, but that would have been over preparing – and the moment that something went awry (because even the most carefully planned things usually have something unexpected occurring) – I would have been completely thrown. So I winged it, relied on the organisers to put water stations at sensible distances apart and for the mileage signs to be mostly accurate.

And it worked out fine – and I somehow managed to finish in the top 25% for my age class. And then there’s the medal (personally I think I got a better deal than my other half in terms of ribbon colour 😁)

Marathon medal with blue and yellow ribbon, 1/2 marathon with orange and purple ribbon

So I’ve signed up for next year’s run already and fingers crossed that with the exercises I’m doing to strengthen my legs, I might just be able to do the full distance next time!

Chickpea Citrus Chilli Pilaff

A plate of pilaff with a spoon on a gingham plate holder — Chickpea pilaff – cheap, quick and nutritious!

The thing about convenience food is that it’s convenient. So when people say that cooking a meal from scratch is just as quick as shoving something in the oven, they miss the point that the convenience food doesn’t actually require anything other than switching the oven on and putting the food in. This pilaff requires a little more effort than that, but not much – and leaves me free to go off and faff with some of the little jobs around the house that need doing while it’s in the oven. Preparing the veg and doing the pre-oven bit shouldn’t take any longer than 10 minutes, especially if you do the garlic and chilli bit while the onion is frying. If you use a casserole that can go on the hob, you’ll save on washing up too – what’s not to like? Minimal prep, minimal effort and minimal washing up!

It might seem odd to give the quantities for rice in fluid ounces, but trust me – it works. What you want is twice the volume of stock to rice, and the easiest way to work that out is to pour the rice into a measuring jug. That also means that the quantities can be scaled up or down really easily. You could add in other veg to give it a bit more colour and to make it go further – carrots chopped small would be good and peppers and/or mushrooms would work well too. Experiment with the basic recipe and see what you come up with 😊

1 tbsp oil
1 onion, chopped small (or a pinch of hing – gives an onion-y taste without the odour)
1 clove garlic, crushed
1-2 chillis (depending how hot you like it), finely chopped
1/2 tsp turmeric
1 lemon or 2 limes, zest and juice
4 oz dried chickpeas, soaked and cooked or 1 tin, drained.
8 fl oz (1 cup) rice
16 fl oz (2 cups) stock

Serves 2 as a main, 4 as a side

Switch the oven to Gas 5/190 (180 fan). Heat the oil in an ovenproof casserole dish (or use a frying pan and then transfer the mixture to a casserole before you put it in the oven). Add the onion and fry for 5 mins. Add the garlic and chillis and fry for another 2 minutes or so. Add the turmeric, lemon or lime zest and chickpeas and stir well. Add the rice, stir well and fry for 30 seconds more. Add the lemon or lime juice and the stock. Mix well and put in the oven. Cook for 40-50 minutes, stirring once or twice, until the water is absorbed. I usually serve with green veg or mango chutney, and if I’m really hungry, chapati.

A taste of Canada in Liverpool…

This weekend, other half and I pitched up in Liverpool (again…😁). This time we were here for the Rennie Mackintosh exhibition at the Walker Gallery and then the National Oceanography Centre open day. Both were fantastic – we learnt loads of stuff about the Glasgow School (Britain’s only Art Nouveau movement) and the sea – who knew that Southampton has a double tide? After all that thinking and learning, we decided that we were hungry and decided to try Caribou Poutine, on Slater Street (which is just off Bold Street).

Thankfully, they don’t serve reindeer, but they do do a number of very nice vegan options. Poutine is a Canadian dish of chips, cheese curds and gravy. It sounds like a bit of a mess and according to some sources, poutine comes from a Quebecois slang word for mess! At Caribou Poutine, you can have plain poutine or poutine with toppings. The vegan toppings are jalapeno, fried onions, guacamole, salsa or poutine ‘meals’ include Tex Mex and Shroom. Other half and I were very much looking forward to the chips as we don’t get to eat chip shop chips where we live because everything is fried in dripping or lard.

The Shroom option did sound nice – mushrooms, garlic and onions- but other half and I both had a craving for Tex Mex. I am such a guacamole fiend! The Tex Mex option was basic poutine with vegan cheese, salsa, guacamole and jalapeno. There are a few tables to eat at or you could take away, but as there were some tables free, we sat down and waited, amusing ourselves by watching the preparation of various boxes of poutine.

Poutine in a box with a wooden fork — Tex Mex Poutine at Caribou Poutine

When our dinner arrived, we could see why some people think that poutine got it’s name from the slang for mess. But what a delicious mess – who knew that gravy and guacamole would go together so well! The jalapeno peppers were crisp and fiery, the guacamole was creamy and the tomato salsa was fresh and oniony. It’s a combination that doesn’t sound like it should work on paper, but it actually works brilliantly and other half and I thoroughly enjoyed it. We also liked the price – a large and filling portion for £7 each – and we’d definitely do it again as it was so good!

Chickpea and Mushroom Hotpot

Hotpot on a plate on a quilted gingham heat pad — Chickpea and mushroom hotpot with garden peas

It’s been unseasonably chilly today, and as I had some mushrooms that needed using up, it was the perfect opportunity to have a faff about with the chicken and mushroom hotpot recipe in this month’s Tesco magazine and veganise it. Other half says that just because chickpeas and chicken have ‘chick’ in the title, doesn’t mean that they are interchangeable. He has a point, but I think chickpeas work as the perfect substitution in this recipe!

1lb 2oz (500g) potatoes, scrubbed and sliced to 1/4″ (3-4mm) thickness
1 tbsp oil, plus an extra 2tsp
1 onion, thinly sliced
2 cloves garlic crushed
8oz (200g) mushrooms. Halve small ones, 1/4 large ones.
4 large carrots, peeled thinly sliced
2 cans chickpeas, drained – about 1lb 2oz (500g) if you’ve cooked your own
4 tbsp plain flour
14 floz (400ml) vegetable stock
1 tbsp wholegrain mustard

Preheat the oven to 220C (fan 200C), Gas 7. Boil the potatoes until you can stick a fork in them. It will take at least 5 mins. They need to be stiff enough that you can lay them over the top of the veg, so don’t leave them too long! Drain the potatoes and set aside while you do the next bit.

Heat the tablespoon of oil over a medium heat in a flameproof casserole. A wide one works well, as you can get a fairly thin layer of potato. Fry the onion until it starts to go shiny and a little translucent. Add the garlic, mushrooms and carrots. Fry for five mins and then add the chickpeas. Stir in the flour and mix well. Add the stock and the mustard and simmer for 5 mins until the sauce has thickened.

Veg and chickpeas in casserole, cooking on stove top. — Veg and chickpeas with mustard sauce

Remove from the heat and layer the potatoes evenly over the top so that the veg is completely covered. Drizzle the remaining oil over the top if you like (I didn’t bother) and bake for 30-35 minutes until bubbling and golden. It will be hot, so leave to cool slightly before serving and serves with some green veg and enjoy!

Substitutions I made from the original recipe (and a couple of tips)

Swapped the chicken for chickpeas
Peeled the potatoes (they’d been in the cupboard a while and had sprouted)
Used a white onion instead of a red one
Used chestnut mushrooms instead of button mushrooms. They were big, so some were cut into 6 pieces
Used Dijon mustard instead of wholegrain. As I was using Tesco own brand Dijon (which I discovered the hard way is actually quite hot!), I only used 1/2 tablespoon – adjust the quantities as you like.
Big tip 1 – use level (or level-ish) tablespoons of flour. If you use heaped tablespoons, the sauce thickens very quickly and you’ll probably have to add extra water. Ask me how I know… 😉
Big tip 2 – use the 2tsp oil if you want the top to brown more and take the lid off the casserole for the last 5-10 minutes too, but be careful it doesn’t dry out.

Southampton’s Best Vegan Cafe is Thriving…

My other half and I did the Winchester 10k in February and had been in Southampton the day before for a record fair when we stumbled across Cafe Thrive. I didn’t get the chance to review it then, but I’m now correcting that omission as we visited again this week. This time, we were in Southampton to see Love Distraction, a Human League tribute band – and they, like the food in Cafe Thrive were very, very good!

Cafe Thrive is in Hanover Buildings, on one side of the park, so if you sit in the window seats, you get a really nice view. The cafe is completely vegan and offers gluten and soya-free options too. They take bookings for dinner – and going by how busy it was last time we visited, we booked this time!

Options range from lighter bites suitable for lunch to more substantial meals and lots of sweet options. The first time we visited it was lunch time, so we opted for sandwiches. I went for the ‘New Yorker’ Reuben – tempeh ‘bacon’, vegan cheese, sauerkraut, thousand island style dressing and I opted for the toasted bread rather than the baguette. Other half went for the Classic Falafel – homemade hummus, roasted veg and tahini dressing with bread. Eat in prices were a very reasonable £4.99 (takeaway £4.20), and came with a side salad. Both sandwiches were gorgeous and thoroughly enjoyed by both of use. We couldn’t resist the lure of something sweet though, and had a slice of chocolate cake each, which was moist and very chocolatey!

This time, we arrived at teatime and wanted something more substantial. Other half went for the wholefood burger meal, while I opted for the Fried ‘Chicken’ burger meal. Burger meals are £7.99 and come with a side salad and chips – and the option to go for sweet potato fries for an extra 75p, which as we both love sweet potatoes, had to be done. The wholefood burger is both as virtuous and as tasty as it sounds – the burger is made with lentils, mushrooms, herbs and quinoa and came with red pepper relish, gherkins and salad on a whole meal roll. The slightly less virtuous fried ‘chicken’ was actually seitan burger in batter with barbecue sauce, vegan cheese and vegan coleslaw on a white roll with sesame seeds. It was lovely – a really nice southern fried flavour and the batter wasn’t greasy or heavy. Even the potato fries, which sometimes have a tendency to be a bit on the greasy side were cooked to perfection and really crispy. After my meal I was sunk, but other half thought managed a Viennese whirl which he said was lovely – crisp biscuit and a lovely not-buttercream filling. With two cups of tea each, our bill came to a very reasonable £26.88 and needless to say, should we find ourselves in Southampton again, we shall be returning!

Leon’s Naturally Fast Food Vegan Options

I found myself at King’s Cross station a few weeks ago at around teatime, hungry and not wanting to spend much money. When I’m really hungry, I tend to go for a Vegan Falafel Hotbox, but in a rare deviation from the norm, I decided to try something different and went for the new(ish) Love Burger…

Love burger - bun, vegan cheese, patty and lettuce — The surprisingly smoky Love Burger from Leon, King’s Cross

Described as a ‘beetroot soya patty’, I was quite surprised by just how meaty it was – I had to double check the menu to make sure that they weren’t also serving meaty burgers and had served me one of those by accident. It had a smoky flavour which was very pleasant and came with burger sauce, Carolina mustard mayo, tomatoes, pickles and a slice of smoked gouda-style vegan cheese. With the beetroot in the burger, the tomato and the pickles, I could almost convince myself that it was 1 of my 5 a day! There is a gluten free option available, but the ingredients for the whole thing contain sesame and mustard, so it’s no good if you are allergic to those ingredients. It was quite filling, but was also quite high in calories at 482 per burger, so I won’t be indulging too often! Tempting though it was, I did avoid the vegan lattice fries, though they looked lovely.

Other vegan options include hummus and flatbread, plantain curry or lentil masala and hot boxes. There are also an amazing four vegan sweet options! The Jaffa cake looked very appetising and contains a reasonable 216 calories, and there was also a palaeo bar, a baked rose donut and a vegan billionaire slice on offer. So next time I’m in the City and feeling hungry…