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Hi everyone! Sorry it's been a little while since I posted a recipe, but I hope you like this fresh and easy Super Vitamin C Juice, inspired by my holiday. As you know I like to post bi-weekly, but the last few weeks I've been away from home meaning it's been rather complicated to access the internet or a kitchen for that matter. I'm glad to report though, that I may have found a way around this problem. For now. More about that soon...

Firstly, I wanted to tell you a teeny tiny bit about my week on the island of Curaçao or Curadise as I like to call it. If you've been following me on instagram, you know I enjoyed lots of gorgeous and fresh juices whilst I was there. Honestly, I can tell you that they were all as tasty and refreshing as they looked! 

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Hi everyone! If you're here for the light, refreshing and fun vegan mango coconut float recipe, please scroll down to the end of the blog post. You'll find the yummy recipe there. If you're happy to read me going on about my holiday and my family, please read on and get to the recipe later.

As you read this post I'm either at the airport, perhaps I'm even on a plane high up in the sky or maybe I've already landed in my first destination. Either way, I won't be in London. In fact I won't be in London for the next 6 weeks (eek!). Needless to say I'm excited and not just because it's a holiday and a nice long one too. Nope, it's more than that. Actually it's really all about my son. He's just finished his first year in school and with me being so busy over the last 12 months, we've not seen each other as much as we did before he was in full-time education. So, I though it was worth making the most of the school holidays and spending the entire time together. 

During the first week of our journey, we will be on the gorgeous island of Curaçao which forms part of the Dutch Antilles. Curaçao has the most beautiful beaches I know and it's also the place my mother is originally from meaning that part of my roots as well as my son's roots are from this stunning little country too. 

When I was a child growing up in the Netherlands and subsequently Germany, my mother really wanted me to know where my ancestors came from and so we often visited Curaçao, probably about once a year or once every other year. I have so many fond memories of time spent there and the frequent trips across the Atlantic meant that I got to know and love my heritage and culture tremendously. 

I very much want my son to know where his ancestry comes from too. I want him to feel the soil of Curaçao under his bare feet and breath in that incredible, fresh island air. So off we go to spend 1 amazing week with some of my favourite cousins and their children, to live island life to the full and visit as many beaches as we can in the space of 7 days. After that we set off again, but more about that another day ;)

What will this mean for the blog? The honest answer is I don't know. I do know that I should have prepared my bi-weekly blog posts well in advance and have them all nicely lined up for you. But the truth is, I don't because I didn't have a minute's time to do anything other than run around like a headless chicken (sorry, not the best metaphor for a plant-based food blog) putting everything in place to make this trip possible.

However, I am taking my camera and phone with me and hope I will have the opportunity to cook some food, take some photos and share some awesome recipes with you all over the coming weeks. But, I'm not going to stress about it too much cuz what will be will be.

Now, I may not be able to cook as much as I normally do and might not have any recipes to share on the blog as a consequence, but I am really hopeful that I can still share some of the plant-based foods I eat on my instagram gallery and facebook page and I would love it if you joined me for the ride. 

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I've posted some really long blog posts recently and you'll be glad to hear this one's gonna be short and sweet. Why? Cuz I've got a massive nutrition exam coming up at the end of the week and I am waaayyy behind schedule. Which in turn means I'm in a total panic :(

BUT I made a commitment to this blog and to you so here is my bi-weekly post as promised. And, it's a pretty good one too. In fact it's a super good one - my all time favourite green juice! Yup, this delicious Green Fennel Juice is one of the juices that helped me find my green path and I bet it will help you on your wayy too.

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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.

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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?

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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. 

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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.

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