Welcome to the Blog

Hi everyone! If you're here for the easy, yummy and colourful vegan chocolate strawberry tart recipe, please scroll down to the end of the blog post. You'll find the scrummy recipe there. If you're happy to read me rambling on about my nomadic life, please read on and get to the recipe later.

In many ways I have always been a city girl at heart. I was born in a big city - New York in case you were wondering - and have lived in countless cities all over the world. My frequent moves were partly the result of my parents' work (they were in the airline industry when I was growing up) and party the result of my gypsy ways getting the better of me in adult life. 

After spending time in the lovely, small and quaint Williamsburg, Virginia (of all places right?!) for my undergraduate studies I knew with every bone in my body that I desperately needed to get back to the bright lights of urban life. Hence it's no coincidence that after a few detours here and there, I eventually landed in London.

Hi everyone! If you're here for the fresh, yummy and fun vegan mung bean salad recipe, please scroll down to the end of the blog post. You'll find the flavourful recipe there. If you're happy to read my musings on recent UK politics and embracing diversity, please read on and get to the recipe later.

''And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:
Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!'' - Martin Luther King Jr. (1929 - 1968)

I have mainly viewed my little corner in cyber space as an opportunity to share my passion for good, healthy plant-based food. Sure, there has been a gentle undercurrent of wanting to empower myself and my readers to cook more and make informed food choices. And I've perhaps jutted down a note or two about eating local, organic plant food. But it's never been more political than that.

However a few weeks, as the run up to the UK elections was hotting up and pretty nasty and disturbing comments about immigrants and other disadvantaged groups in society were being batted about, I felt I needed to speak up and use this nook for more. I mean how could I 'just' talk about yummy food when there was all this 'stuff' going on around me?

So here it is. My blogiversary and an opportunity to share this delicious vegan asparagus tart recipe. It's gone so quickly and - it might sound cliché but - it feels like only yesterday when I pressed the publish button and sent this vegan carrot cake out into the blogosphere. 

I know that blogiversaries are supposed to be a time of joy, but as the the date drew nearer, I felt quite ambivalent about it all or, dare I say it, even slightly downcast. I'm a pretty upbeat, positive sorta person, but I couldn't help but feel a sense of overwhelming disappointment. All this work that I put into the blog and I had nothing to show for it. No thousands of instagram followers (What did I read the other week? Someone got 72,000 in their first year?!), no million blog hits a week (Yes, someone else mentioned that staggering figure on social media just a few days ago. Amazing stuff, right?) and nothing exciting on twitter either (I don't even get that platform, do you?). So I turned to my husband and asked him if I should just call it a day and stop blogging. 

Meet my new favourite breakfast buddy: this easy Miso Soup with Shiitake mushrooms! I know it might sound weird, but I can promise you, it's weirdly wonderful :).

Actually, let me backtrack a little bit and tell you how I got to swap my fruity porridge for soup...

As those of you who have been reading the blog for some time know, I'm studying to be a nutritional therapist (Yup, Still. In year 2. One more year to go. And in case it's not blatantly obvious: I CAN'T WAIT TO GRADUATE! ;)). As part of my studies we were asked to partake in a diet experiment; we had to live a particular diet and lifestyle for one week and then write a report about our experience. Cool huh? 

By the time I had a chance to look at the options available to us, most of the diets were already taken:(  and I was left with only 4 possibilities: FODMAP, the GI diet, macrobiotic diet and the blood type diet. Sorry, but this was a no brainer for me. As a massive Madonna fan (this is her best album ever and this my favourite tune) I knew full well that Madonna partly attributed her healthy body to her macrobiotic diet and so I HAD to give it a try.

Though still in the midst of Winter, the sun was shining brightly the day I got to hang out with the most influential Raw Chef in the UK – Russell James and developed this yummy raw avocado soup and sour cream recipe, based on one of Russell's own. Many of you will know Russell from his youtube channel and other may know him from his popular blog The Raw Chef. I was lucky enough to meet him at an uber-cool converted South London warehouse which is his live/work space. It houses not one but two stunning, envy-worthy kitchens; the first kitchen Russell uses to teach his super popular raw food classes, the second one (an electric blue one nonetheless), is his personal kitchen which is as high tech as it is inviting and beautiful. 

Now what do you do when you meet a vegan foodie superstar with more than 190,000 facebook followers? Talk plant-based food of course ;)

Let's talk about the elephant in the room, shall well? Mushrooms in these delicious lemon, poppy seed and Chaga mushroom cookies, what's up with that? Before I explain, let me just say:

1. No, I'm not going mad. Not yet anyway ;)
2. These cookies taste AMAZE!
3. Your kids won't know there are mushrooms inside these cookies, I promise. 
4. And YES, it's TOTALLY worth adding in this weird but wonderful Chaga mushroom.

As you may remember I am not a massive fan of the 'superfood' tag. Basically I feel it's so overused. BUT after my encounter with a raw food expert (more about that in this blog post) and a fascinating lecture about medicinal mushrooms (not magic mushrooms, medicinal mushrooms ok?:)), I can honestly say that I am completely sold on them. So much so, that the next 4 recipes I'll post here on the blog (this one included) will contain a different medicinal mushroom.

"I know one thing: that I know nothing" - Plato

Hi everyone! If you're here for the raw, easy and fun gluten-free no-bake granola bars recipe, then please scroll down to the end of the blog post. You'll find the scrummy vegan recipe there. If you're happy to read about my own personal food philosophy, then please read on and get to the recipe later.

It's MEAT-FREE WEEK here in the UK and guess what? I'm in. Wholeheartedly. Completely. Totally ;)!

So I got to thinking how best to use this really cool and important week in the foodie calender. Of course I'm gonna share a cracking plant-based recipe with ya'll, right?! But I also thought it would be a great excuse to finally talk in detail about the what, why and how I eat. I've been meaning to do this for donkey's years (ok, maybe just 10 months aka since launching this blog), but up until now it didn't seem like quite the right time. As my readership has grown though I feel it's so important for me to continue to be open, honest and transparent about my food philosophy. I owe that to you, my readers and I owe it to the integrity of my blog :). 

To be clear, I'm under no illusion that my writing in this post is 'the ultimate truth'. It's just my personal view as I hold it in the here and now. However, I'm always open to learn and explore other ideas and thoughts; I want to keep developing my knowledge about food and hence should I learn something that challenges what I presently think, I'll be sure to let you know ;). 

WARNING: This is a long post. Please skip to the recipe section at the bottom if you want to. I won't mind :)

Hello all!  If you're here for the delicious, healthy and fun gluten free pistachio and cardamom cookies recipe, then please scroll down to the end of the blog post. You'll find the super easy vegan recipe there. If you're happy to read my musings on my dreams and wish list, then please read on and get to the recipe later.

When I started 2015 I put together a little 'wish list' for the blog, full of dreams, hopes and ambitions. One of these wishes was to have my recipe featured in a magazine. Initially, I was ambivalent about writing down this very personal dream on my blog for everyone to see – what if I failed and didn't get published? Wouldn't I look utterly silly? But, trusting in the power of positivity and affirmation I went for it and wrote it down. So what if I didn't succeed and never got featured? You live and learn, right?