Ylang ylang, rose, cedarwood and lavender essential oils
In my quest to try to reduce plastic, I have been looking for alternatives to talcum powder, as it invariably comes in a plastic container. Besides the plastic, there is also the fact that talc in its natural form sometimes contains trace amounts of asbestos. Not something that I’d want to inhale and not really a risk I’m prepared to take, no matter how small!
I’ve found a few examples of companies making non-talc based powders, including Honeybee Gardens deodorant powder (I really wanted it to work, but it just didn’t perform well for me, so I used it as foot powder instead). Looking at the ingredients of the different brands got me to thinking – I must be able to make my own version with my own scent…
Most of the examples that I looked at contained cornflour (cornstarch) or Zea mays, which is a fancy way of saying the same thing. I had some essential oils hanging around which would give it a scent, so here’s what I did.
You will need
2 heaped tablespoons of cornflour
20 drops of essential oils of your choice*
An empty airtight container
I had an empty kilner jar, but you could use whatever airtight contained you want. Measure out two heaped tablespoons of cornflour into the container of your choice. Add 20 drops of essential oil and give it a good shake. I used 5 drops each of lavender, ylang ylang, cedarwood and rose. Leave overnight for the oils to diffuse through the cornflour.
Photo of lavender flowers by Pixabay on Pexels.com
Apply by taking a finger tip full and rubbing it over each foot, or apply with a powder puff – et voila! You’re done. Heavenly smelling, dry feet with no nasty chemicals.
Experiment with different oils to give a different scent or for a specific purpose. Teatree oil is an antifungal, so might be a good option if you had athlete’s foot. Black pepper, myrrh and cardamom stimulate circulation so are good if you have cold extremities – but do be careful with the black pepper oil if you have sensitive skin, as it is quite strong.
*If you are pregnant, please consult your GP before using essential oils. Many are not safe to be used during pregnancy. Always keep essential oils away from pets too, as many are poisonous to cats and dogs. Never apply them to your own skin neat, as some can burn and if not, a sensitisation reaction can occur.
I love the smell and taste of sweet spices like cinnamon, mixed spices and nutmeg, I love the smell of fresh bread and I really love dark chocolate, so making this recipe results in three things that I really love! I don’t tend to eat fruity bread very often during the rest of the year, so I really look forward to hot cross buns at Easter. It’s easy to make your own, given a little time and you can vary the ingredients as you like to vary the flavour – you could make them even more chocolate-y by adding 1oz (25g) to the dry ingredients. This recipe makes 6-12 hot cross buns, depending upon how big you like them. It’s easy to scale the recipe up by doubling the quantities of everything.
4 fl oz (100ml) hot water
4 fl oz (100ml) plant milk
1 sachet of dried yeast
1 lb (450g) plain flour (white, wholemeal or a mix of the two)
1 tsp salt
1 oz soft brown sugar
1/2 tsp each of ground cinnamon, mixed spice and nutmeg
1 oz (25g) vegan margarine or butter
Zest and juice of one orange or two satsumas (if it’s a very juicy orange, reserve some for the piping later)
3oz (75g) raisins or sultanas
3oz (75g) chopped orange flavoured dark chocolate
1 heaped tbsp flour and enough water or orange juice to mix to a smooth paste
Put the liquid in a measuring jug. I usually boil the water and add it to cold plant milk. It needs to end up hand hot and that seems to be a fairly good way of getting the temperature needed. Add a little of the brown sugar and all of the yeast. Stir well and leave to sit for 5 minutes or so until it’s frothy.
In the meantime, mix the rest of the sugar, the flour, spices and salt together and then rub in the butter or margarine. Make a well in the centre and then pour in the yeasty mixture and the orange juice. Bring the dough together with a spoon at first and then use your hands. Begin to knead the dough in the bowl if it’s big enough or on a floured work top if not. Knead for ten minutes until it’s soft, springy and pliable. It’s really important that you do this step for long enough – trust me, you do not want chewing gum buns… If you aren’t sure how to knead, this site has some instructions
Put the dough back in the bowl and cover with a clean tea towel. Leave in a warm place to rise. it’ll take 1 to 2 hours depending on how warm the room is. When it is risen, punch the dough back down (it always gives me great pleasure to do that!) and knead the dried fruit and chocolate well in to the dough. I used orange flavoured chocolate, but you could leave out the zest and juice and use a different flavour to give a totally different taste.
Divide the dough into 6-12 pieces (depending on how big you like your buns) and roll into balls. Place on a floured baking tray and cover with a clean towel again. Leave to rise for 20 mins and switch the oven to 220C (Fan 200C), Gas 7 to warm up
About 5 minutes before the buns are finished rising, mix the remaining flour and any reserved juice and water to a smooth paste. It needs to be sticky, but pipeable. Using a piping bag (instructions for how to make your own can be found on this site), pipe crosses on top of the buns. Of course, if you don’t want to faff about, you can avoid this step and just have fruity chocolate buns instead.
Pop in the buns in the oven for about 20 mins. The buns should be golden brown and sound hollow when tapped (testing now will avoid chewing gum bread later…)
Leave to cool and then split and serve with vegan butter as is or toast them first. They keep well in a an airtight tin for about week, but chances are they won’t last that long!
An almost entirely plastic packaging free chocolate egg
So I appear to have blinked and before I knew it, it was not only April, but mid April! Where did that go? After another 7 week half term – and the subsequent horrible full -blown cold that has exploded onto the scene – I’ve finally reached the point where I can take stock of the last month (well, six weeks really…)
So has my blog grown and am I sharing lots of ideas? On the whole, I think the answer is yes – I have 24 posts now and they cover a range of topics. I’d still like to post more regularly and I’m getting to a quieter point in the year at work, so hopefully that will happen.
In terms of reducing waste and plastic use, I’m still using my veg box for vegetables which cuts down on a lot of unnecessary plastic and Waitrose have started putting their organic bananas in a home compostable bag. I have several of those in the compost heap now, so we’ll see how the worms like those! I’ve also discovered that Moma porridge now comes in sachets rather than plastic tubs. As I’m looking for a cheap breakfast when I go a way in a few weeks’ time, I’m going to try these and see how many I need to eat to fill me up – either way, plastic pots saved by buying sachets and cash saved by not having to eat out (£2.99 for a box of 5 sachets, compared to Cafe Nero porridge at around £1.60 per pot). The thing that I am most pleased with this month though, is our Montezuma Absolute Black 100% cocoa solids egg. At nearly ten pounds, it’s quite expensive, but not particularly more expensive than other ‘premium’ eggs. The best bit is that it comes with no plastic other than the bag that the buttons are in, so most of the packaging can be recycled and I can re-use the bag for something else.
Marathon training is going well – next week’s long run is 18 miles, so I’ll look forward to that *gulp*. What I have discovered is that just doing anyway is a useful philosophy to keep in the back of my mind when I’m tackling the next distance increase. The thought of running 16 miles last weekend was much worse that the actual running of the 16 miles, so maybe I should bear that in mind when I’m challenged in other areas of my life and just get started! My marathon training has rather taken over any attempts to do long walks in preparation for the 100km walk in late summer, but I am planning to do a 25 mile walk in a couple of weeks’ time, so we’ll see how that goes.
My final resolution was to indulge my love of 80s New Wave and Synth Pop and to see some live bands. We saw Sleeper a few weeks ago, supported by the excellent Lottery Winners, in Leeds. The new album is good – my favourite tune is Blue Like You, and as always seems to be the case when I go to see a band, the support turned out to be really good too. Not New Wave or Synth Pop (that’s later in the year), but definitely live music – and thoroughly enjoyable evening all round.
So at the end of the first quarter of the year, things are moving in the direction that I want them to. As I move through the year, I hope to build on the work that I’ve already done so that I can achieve all of the things that I want to by the end of the year!
A super speedy post for a super speedy recipe! I love kale crisps on their own or with a main meal, but I especially love the fact that it’s a really quick way to cook a lot of kale. So if you’ve got kale that is starting to look like it’s seen better days, use it all up on this.
Enough kale to it on your baking tray without being crammed
Oil
Spices of your choice, eg curry powder
Heat the oven to 180C/170C fan assist (Gas 4). Wash the kale thoroughly and tear out the tough stems. Drain well and if there is still a lot of water left adhering to the leaves, pat dry with a clean tea towel. Run a bowful of soapy water (all will become clear…) and then put the kale on the baking tray. Pour over a tablespoon of oil and then sprinkle over 1-2 teaspoons of the spice of your choice. Curry powder, Baharat, Ras el hanout, paprika, and chilli would all work well – but only you know how hot you want it to be! Massage the oil and spices through the kale until it’s all well covered…and then stick your hands in the bowl of water that you ran earlier and wash the oil off (you’re welcome – nobody likes greasy taps!)
Pop the tray in the oven for 5-10mins, depending how big your kale leaves are. Check after 5 mins and stir the kale if the kale around the edges is starting to look crispy but the kale in the middle is still a bit wet. You want the kale to be nicely coloured, dried and crunchy without being charred. Pop it back in the oven for a bit longer if necessary and when it’s done, pile into a bowl and serve. Yum!
There are lots of reasons you might want to try vegan cosmetics – animal welfare, environment, health, and so on – but just because something is vegan, doesn’t mean that the ingredients are good for your skin. Parabens and bismuth oxychloride are vegan, but I wouldn’t want to put them on my skin. So even if a product says it’s vegan, I’ll still check the ingredients list, and because so many of the ingredients have technical names, I use EWG’s cosmetics database to check out the chemicals that I could be putting on my skin before I buy. The database is American, so some cosmetic products which are only available in the EU aren’t on it – but there is the fab option of building your own report for a product. This is really easy to do by cutting and pasting the list of ingredients in to the box on the webpage, tweaking the spacing and then pressing the button to generate the report.
Here are a selection of my favourite natural and vegan cosmetic and skin care buys – it’s not an exhaustive list of all the vegan cosmetics out there, just things that I have stumbled across and really love. These really are my own opinions and nobody is paying me in goods or with cash to say nice things about their products.
First up, foundation – because I’m sure we’d all like an even skin tone! I have two favourites. The first is from the Australian skincare brand Inika. I’ve found that their foundation goes on well and stays on all day, especially if I use their primer – which although pricey, has so far lasted me 8 months! I discovered Inika after having a free make-over in 8th Day in Manchester last summer after a meeting. I had some time to kill before my train and thought – why not! The range of shades is great and Strength N3 matches my skin well. My other favourite is from Honeybee Gardens in Supernatural – just the right colour for my so-pale-it’s-almost-blue skin. Of the two, this is my favourite because a) it’s cheaper and b) there is less plastic packaging. You buy the powder holder and then can buy refills – and the pan that the powder is actually in is recyclable. I apply both with the sheer powder brush from Ecotools (rather than a kabuki brush) and they go on fine.
Inika foundation in the round pot and HoneyBee Gardens foundation and powder holder
Make sure the lid is on when you turn the tub over!
Sadly, eating only plants hasn’t led to some miraculous clearing of my skin – thanks hormones! So I like to use cover up some days. The best one I have found for price and ingredients is Green People’s Blemish Banish Concealer. Antibacterial with a lovely tea tree type smell, it covers up, soothes and fights the bacteria that causes spots all at the same time. A dab underneath my foundation covers all but the very worst redness.
Inika primer and Green People’s blemish concealer
With pale skin, the whole blusher things doesn’t work if you go for a shade that’s too dark (or you’re a bit heavy handed with the powder…it looks good on Madonna c.1985. On me – not so much). I’ve tried Inika in ‘Red Apple’ and there’s nothing wrong with the blush itself – there’s good coverage and it stays put – it’s just not great on me. I think next time, I might try ‘Blooming Nude’ as that has more blue in it.
I don’t really go in for eye makeup much, partly because the skin around my eyes is really sensitive and partly because I am really short-sighted, so I need a bit of time to get it to look better than an effort that your average five year old would make! The Pacifica range is now stocked in Holland and Barrett and bigger Tesco stores which is fab, because not only is their make up range good, but their perfume is really nice too. The eye shadow collection has some great colours and if you can wear it then it’s fantastic – but I always found that it made my eyes smart slightly. Inika did a similar thing, but that’s my skin, rather than the product. I had much better luck with Honeybee Garden powder colours which come in stackable reusable pots and a range of pressed powder refillable palettes. The variety of colours is fantastic, and they aren’t all sparkly so they are suitable for everyday wear. I particularly like ‘Spellbound’ – a lovely soft purple. If you buy direct from Honeybee, there’s also the option to try samples of their products first, taking the guess work out of buying cosmetics online. The eyeshadow sample comes in a little plastic bag and I’ve found is good for about 6 applications.
I’ve tried a range of mascaras, and to be honest, it’s not really my thing so I don’t wear it that often. Having said that, I really did like Lavera – they do a nice shade of brown, just in case you want a change from black – and Honeybee Gardens Truly Natural mascara which smells lovely.
It’s probably not a great surprise to learn that I’m not great with eyeliner. Being short sighted is never going to lead to the most impressive of flicks, and in fact, often the result is a poke in the eye. One day I might pull it off, but in the meantime, I keep practising… and my eyeliner of choice is back to Inika again, this time in indigo. At £16, it’s quite pricey, but then you get what you pay for and it lasts me ages. There are 8 different shades to choose from too. They also do a nice little eyeliner sharper that sits on the other end of the pencil for £5. A bit of an investment, but to be fair, it’s going to take a while to blunt that blade!
The thing with lipstick (and lip balm, and anything else that you put on your lips) is that you invariably end up eating some of it. There’s been a lot written about how the ‘average woman’ ingests between 4 and 9 pounds over the her lifetime, though some sources suggest considerably less because lipstick gets smudged off when you eat and drink. Either way, you are going to end up eating at least some of it, so for me, it particularly important to go for something plant-based and with no chemical nasties in.
I reckon that if you were to ask most people what colour lipstick is, they’ll say red. And therein lies the problem, because red dye is often animal derived (eg carmine, aka CL 75470, crimson lake, cochineal, E120 or natural red 4, made by crushing the female cochineal bug) or is something that I wouldn’t want to eat, like D & C Red 22 Aluminium Lake – and in some case the presence of heavy metals has been found in lipstick. Even if the amounts are traces, if I wouldn’t put in me, I’m not putting on me!
That’s only the dyes – we haven’t even discussed waxes or preservatives. The simplest thing to do is to look for a lipstick that is marketed as vegan and then check the ingredients for other things that you wouldn’t be happy to put on your lips – which in my case is anything derived from aluminum and any sort of paraben. I love Honeybee Gardens for their Truly Natural Lipstick range. There are a fab range of colours and the ingredients are free of chemicals that I wouldn’t be happy to put on my skin. The lipsticks use a variety of plant seed oils and waxes and are free from beeswax.
The lipsticks have great staying power and they’ll send you samples of lipstick so you can avoid an expensive mistake – always a risk with buying make up over the internet. The samples are cut directly from the lipstick rather than made as s sample batch, and so are a great way to get an idea of what the colour actually looks like on you before you commit to buying. At $14.99, it’s quite cheap for a lipstick of this quality – but if you are in the UK*, expect to pay around £16 (on Amazon, it’s in the industrial and scientific section – go figure!) My favourite colour is ‘Seduction’ – perfect for a cool skin tone like mine.
Occasionally, I have been know to wear lip gloss, and Pacifica do a nice range. It’s not something that I’d wear on a really cold day though, as it contains enough coconut oil that if it gets really cold, it solidifies and turns white on your lips. Not a great look as i discovered this winter! As for lip balms, I really like Hurraw essential lip balms, it’s just a shame that their packaging is plastic. Bloomtown’s tinted lip balm is also good and comes in a tin, but then you have the problem of making sure that your finger is clean before you put it into the lip balm.
Pacifica lip gloss on the left, HoneyBee Gardens on the right
So after putting it make up on, taking it all off again properly is important. I like Faith in Nature’s cleansing lotion which lasts for ages and doesn’t upset my skin. I switched to using muslin cloths (easily available in Boots) to wipe off the lotion rather than cotton wool and they work really well. I stick them in with the hot wash with my towels once a week and they’re fine. They also last for ages and are much better for the planet than disposable cotton wool.
Ecotools do a great range of vegan brushes, affordable and made with natural materials. I use the powder brush and the micro crease brush most and they are available in Boots as well.
So I hope you enjoyed my whistle stop tour of vegan cosmetics that I love – my final tips are to always check the ingredients of product, because vegan doesn’t mean free from chemicals and to wash your make up brushes regularly!
*It’s worth bearing in mind that you will have to pay customs charges on goods over a certain amount – currently £15 – and a Royal Mail handling charge, if you are in the UK and buy direct from Honeybee Gardens.
I run in the morning 4 times a week, so I don’t really want to be faffing about with a complicated lunch before I go to work. I’m not a great fan of sandwiches, so sometimes I have soup that I’ve made the evening before and then reheat as I’m eating breakfast. Other times I’ll make a nice salad of some sort. This is a super quick grain and vegetable salad that you can mix up really easily by changing the spices or the grains. Prepare the night before and assemble in the morning just before you head out the door.
Serves 2
4 sweet potatoes (roughly 1 lb/450g, but really depends how hungry you are!)
4oz (100g) uncooked rice (or other grain of your choice)
1tsp stock powder
Spices of your choice
Oil to roast
Peel the sweet potato and cut into slices about 1/4″ (0.5cm thick). Place on a baking tray and drizzle enough oil over to coat (about 1 tbsp) and then the spices of your choice. I’m currently working my way through a jar of Jamaican Jerk seasoning. I use about a tsp of that because it has a reasonable amount of chilli in. Any of the following, to taste, would work well – curry powder, paprika or even sweet spices like cinnamon and nutmeg, if that’s your thing. If you want a garlicky taste (without the accompanying garlic breath and the effort of peeling a clove of garlic), sprinkle over a small amount of asafoetida (aka hing).
Once your spices are sprinkled over, mix well so that the potato slices are nicely covered and spread out so that the slices are not overlapping. You could put the slices in a bowl and pour over the oil and the spices and then mix before pouring onto the baking sheet, but well – that would create more washing up which would defeat the object of super speedy salad!
Bake in the oven at 190C/180C for fan assisted ovens (Gas 5) for about 20 mins until the slices are cooked through and are nicely coloured. Scrap off the baking sheet into a bowl to cool down. Whilst the potatoes are cooking, cook your grain according to packet instructions, adding a tsp of stock powder to the cooking water. I tend to use rice as I always have lots in, but couscous would work well and if you’re feeling really flush, you could even go for quinoa. When your grain is cooked, drain if necessary and leave to cool.
When everything is cool, put half the grain in each lunch box and then top with the potato slices and then season well. Add some seeds or chopped nuts for a bit more protein and then grab and go in the morning!
So I was seriously tired and disorganised this week – it’s been a tough week at work. I usually cook dinner for the next day when I get in from work alongside tea for that evening. Completely failed for most of this week, and didn’t really have anything else in the house to eat apart from jam and bread – or so I thought… After the second day of jam sandwiches, I was in need of some serious inspiration. I happened to read an article about having the same thing for dinner everyday. Somebody mentioned overnight oats and that was it – inspiration struck and dinner for the next day was sorted.
So overnight night oats aren’t new, but I thought I’d share my recipe with you, especially as mine ended up a delicate shade of purple with an ombre effect. You can use any plant milk you want, but I carried on with the oat theme and went for oat milk. I went for chia seeds, but flax seed would work as well. I happened to have some frozen cherries in the freezer so I used those, but any fruit would be good. I sweetened to taste with jam, and as I had blueberry in the fridge, I discovered the interesting ombre effect. It’s an easy recipe to scale up or down, as long as you use twice the volume of milk to oats and it takes less than 5 mins to throw together.
Ombre-ish Overnight Oats
Makes about a pint/500ml overnight oats
3/4 cup oats (about 6 fl oz when measured in a jug)
1 1/2 cups plant milk (about 12 fl oz)
1 tbsp chia seeds
6 frozen cherries
1 dsp-1 tbsp blueberry jam
Put the rubber seal on the 1 pt/500ml kilner jar first. Stretching the seal over the jar while trying to stop the contents spilling is no fun! You could use a large screwtop jar instead, and if you are not as hungry as me, you could make two equal smaller portions.
Put the oats in the jar, then add the milk and chia seeds and mix well. Make sure you stir in the seeds well, otherwise you’ll end up with frogspawn like claggyness… Add the cherries and the jam. Don’t mix. If you leave it upright for a few hours and don’t agitate it too much, the blueish purple colour from the jam (which is heavy and sinks to the bottom) should start to diffuse through the oat mixture and give the ombre effect.
My oats were fine after being on the shelf in my office for 3 hours or so, but if it’s really warm, you’ll want to put the jar in the fridge. Take it out about half an hour before you want to eat it and enjoy!
I visited Piecaramba on Parchment Street in Winchester the night before I did my 10K in February. Lots of running guides really push the importance of eating carbs before a big race – though they probably have in mind a distance greater than 10k! Still everyone needs glycogen, right? And what better way to get your carbs than in a pie shop. (Anyone else thinking about Mrs Miggins at this point?)
The restaurant is tiny – there were about 7 or 8 tables in total, plus the order counter. The whole place is comic and pop culture themed. One of the booths had a Nintendo console you could play whilst waiting for your food (bit more advanced than space invaders!) and the walls were decorated with scenes from comic books. Even the mugs had a pop culture theme. Other half got a Hello Kitty mug for his tea and I got a Star Trek:TNG mug which he thought was very fitting! I was most impressed by the fact that all of the tables had a bottle of Henderson’s Relish on. If you’ve never had it before, it’s like a vegan Worcestershire sauce, but about half as strong. It’s really versatile and I use it loads at home, especially in shepherdless pie.
I’m afraid that the inside of the restaurant is quite dimly lit, but the photos will give you some idea of what the restaurant and the food is like.
Other half and I made the most of the delicacies on offer. There are four (yes, really!) vegan pies available. There’s the Big Chilli Style, a pie filled with 5 bean chilli, which we passed on as neither of us thought that was going to be a good idea before a race. The Porky Pie was a BBQ style pulled jackfruit concoction with my favourite spice ever – paprika. For much the same reason as before, I avoided that too. Other half isn’t fond of of jackfruit at all – I’m still working on finding a recipe to tempt him!
Which brings me to what we actually ate. Other half had the Notdog, a pie filled with vegan sausage and caramelised onions. The sausages were chopped into small pieces and there was plenty of roughly chopped onion. Other half was very impressed.
Nodog pie
I had the Fun Guy (the old ones are always the best…) which was a mushroom and walnut filling in a creamy peppercorn sauce. There were large chunks of mushroom and walnut in the filling, giving the inside just the right amount of chewyness. In my head, the creamy filling should have been white, but it was actually a really dark brown. I guess that was from the mushroom juices and the probably the walnuts too. We were both impressed with the pastry which was nice and crispy.
Mushroom and walnut pie
It would have been rude just to go for pie, so obviously we had to sample the pie meal – vegan mash, vegan gravy, pie and chilli minty mushy peas – all for £9.95. I’m not usually a big fan of gravy, but the vegan gravy was really flavourful and set off the mashed potatoes nicely. The mash was good – no lumps and not too rich. The peas were lovely – but had a sting in the tail. At first, they just tasted off mint, and then about 30 seconds later came the slightly fiery chilli kick. Unexpected, but very tasty! And who would have thought that chilli and mint would actually work together!
There was a vegan option for dessert, but as we’d already had a piece of chocolate cake in Cafe Thrive in Southampton that day, we were quite full, so we gave the coconut and chocolate pie a miss.
We had planned to come back for Sunday dinner the next day and try the other pies, but neglected to book and so couldn’t get in. So learn from our mistake and book if you want to go – it’s well worth it! And we shall be visiting again next time we are in Winchester or Southampton.
As I was flicking through this month’s Tesco magazine, my eye was caught by the charred broccoli and chorizo pasta on page 69. I thought I’d have a go at veganising it and I enjoyed the results so much, I thought I’d share my version with you.
Yummy pasta!
Obviously chorizo was out, so I subbed in chorizo style Shroomdogs from Sainsbury’s. You could use whatever brand of fake chorizo you like. I did try to peel the casings off and attempted to crumble the sausages. I gave up when it became clear that was going to end up in a smeary mess, so I chopped them instead. I did use the broccoli, but realise now that I should have cut it up quite a bit smaller! Let’s just say that it took quite a while to cook… The original recipe calls for 3 cloves of garlic but I tend to use hing (aka asafoetida) in place of garlic during the week – I’m a teacher and no one wants their tutor looming over them with garlic breath! Having said that, I now realise how garlicky the sausages are, so it wouldn’t have made much difference. I didn’t have any chilli flakes, so I threw in some extra paprika. I used my own sunflower and pumpkin seed mix in place of pine nuts (£3.65 for 100g! A wee bit on the expensive side, I think) and finally used nutritional yeast flakes in place of the Parmesan.
So after all those substitutions, I came up with something that other half and I really enjoyed and something I’d definitely make again. Here’s the recipe for my version which serves 4.
No chorizo and broccoli pasta
1 280g packet of chorizo style Shroomdogs chopped into small pieces
1 1/2 tbsp olive oil
350g broccoli chopped quite small (1/4 the size of the florets in the picture!)
Large pinch hing
1/2 tsp paprika
300g pasta
50g crusty bread made into breadcrumbs
1 tbsp seeds (I used sunflower and pumpkin)
1 lemon, zested and juiced
1 tbsp nutritional yeast
Dry fry the chorizo shroomdog chunks for 4-5 mins until they are heated through and the outside has started to go a little crispy. Remove from the pan and set to one side.
Heat 1 tbsp oil in the frying pan and fry the broccoli over a high heat until lightly charred and then reduce the heat to low. Add about 4 tbsp of water to the pan, the hing and the paprika and cook gently until the broccoli is tender (3-4 mins if you cut the broccoli small enough). Stir in the shroomdog chunks and take off the heat.
Whilst all that is going on, boil some water and cook the pasta according to packet instructions. Save about 6tbsp of the cooking water and drain the rest.
Stir the broccoli-shroomdog mixture into the pasta with the water and the lemon juice and cook over a low heat for 2 mins.
Meanwhile, heat the rest of the oil in the frying pan and add the seeds and the breadcrumbs and cook for about 5 mins until golden – watch it carefully so you don’t end up with charred breadcrumbs too! Remove from the heat and stir in the lemon zest and nutritional yeast. Season to taste.
Serve the pasta with the breadcrumb mixture sprinkled over the top and dig in!
I bet the White Rabbit never had a data storage problem! Image by dassel on Pixabay
I’m currently on a mission to declutter and organise so I can reduce decision fatigue. I make so many decisions everyday, I want to get rid of the superfluous ones, so I’ve tidied up the random drawer, charity shopped knitting patterns that I’m never going to knit and tried the project 333 challenge (which I shall blog about once the three month trial is up), but I haven’t really got to grips with my digital clutter.
The funny thing about digital clutter and disorganisation is that it gets out of hand almost unnoticed. By the time that you spot it, it’s become clutter of epic proportions. If my house was in the mess that my hard drives are in, I’d never be able to open the front door to get out of the house, let alone actually find anything! I have lots of backs up for important pieces of work that I’ve done or am doing – well, I’d hate to lose the USB stick. And what happens if one of the hard drives corrupts or a helpful cat spills a full cup of coffee on the computer? Not that that’s ever happened before… Okay, so I may be a little paranoid, but a friend of mine lost her whole dissertation two days before it was due in…
None of the things that I’ve done or am in the process of doing are anything more than common sense – or as I saw somewhere last week, it’s not rocket surgery – but sometimes a common sense approach is easier to see when someone else points it out to you. Or at least I find that to be the case!
I see double up ahead…*
So with lots of backups to organise, I started by going through all the folders I could find and deleting duplicates. Four hours and sixty thousand files later – seriously! That’s about 4 or 5 duplicates of each file – I copied everything onto a back up drive, so I had a copy of the original files in case I deleted something I actually wanted to keep by accident. Then I started the time consuming task of working out what I actually needed to keep. Some were easy to make decisions about – that series on quilt blocks of the States that I’ve not looked at for the past ten years, for example. I think it’s a fairly safe bet as I haven’t done it in the last ten years, I’m probably not going to make a 52 block quilt this side of eternity. Other choices were much harder. I’ve done loads since 2004, so that copy of my CV is quite out of date, but it does have all the archaeological units that I worked for, with precise dates. I did only need one copy though, so I got rid of the others!
A little organisation at the start = lots of time saved later
At the same time I started to organise files properly into folders which to be honest is something that I could have done from the start and would have saved an awful lot of faffing about later on. Speaking of things I should have done first time around, I also gave everything a proper title rather than new folder, new folder (2) and so on. My personal favourite was a random series of letters and numbers. I had about 7 of the latter. Turns out they were pdfs of newspapers from the 1870s and ’80s that I’d saved when doing some family history research. It took me ages to work out what the relevant bits were, because the newspapers were broadsheets with tiny print…
So my digital declutter continues. Little and often I think, will be the key to success here. After the marathon moving around of files and folders and deleting duplicates, I really can’t face more than an hour or so of sorting. I haven’t even started on the thousands of photos that I’ve taken on my phone yet. So it may take me some considerable time, but I am determined to finish up with an organised filing system containing only relevant and useful files, and to keep my files properly organised moving forward. Wish me luck…
*For those of you who don’t remember the Riverboat Song first time around, check it out here!
Plant Based and Sustainable 