Tea and Sympatico

Thorough being a subscriber to Vegan Life magazine I got sent a free one day ticket to the Om Yoga Show in Manchester last weekend. Om Yoga magazine is the sister magazine to Vegan Life and they hold big yoga shows in Manchester, London and Glasgow every year. Great! However, there was just one issue with this - myself and exercise are not natural bedfellows!   After being diagnosed with three chronic health conditions in the last twelve months I was feeling a little overwhelmed recently and decided to seek some counselling. I am very lucky in that my employees do value staff well-being and we are all entitled to six free counselling sessions a year which take place outside of the workplace. So, I've been seeing a counsellor and one of the subjects that has come up is exercise. The conditions I have are chronic but not life threatening. They will not go away, I will always have to deal with them, but diet and exercise can play a big part in managing them. I've never exercise...

A little round up of things I have been making, buying and enjoying. The other week I blogged about the Yoga Kitchen book I'd got from the library and the green tea energy balls I'd made. I'm going to try another energy ball recipe this week and I have my eye on an unusual recipe involving mushrooms and chocolate but I don't think there is much else I'll make from it. Apart from that is ......panna cotta! I've only ever made panna cotta once before when I first met Matt and was trying to impress him with a fancy meal. This recipe used Vege Gel rather than agar and is flavoured with chocolate and coffee and topped with cacao nibs. The recipe recommends almond milk but I used Marks and Spencer soy which is really creamy and vanillary (not sure if that's actually a word other than a name of a Lush product). It would be interesting to experiment with other plant milks and I've got 3/4 of the packet of Vege Gel left so I intend to do so! The kitchen i...

About two years ago we watched the film Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead . Afterwards we talked about trying a one day juice fast sometime but then forget all about it. To be honest even though I found the film interesting I didn't think that there would be any way that I would manage to only drink juice for a day. We moved house around that time and my juicer has been in the shed in our backyard since then! Last Monday at work something made me start thinking about trying a day long juice fast again, in fact feeling really strongly that I wanted to do it. On the way home from work I popped into Home Bargains and right by the till were the perfect reusable insulated juice containers at a bargain price. I took that as a sign that the time was right! We picked last Sunday for the day to do it and bought all the ingredients in advance. I looked around the internet for a plan to follow. I actually ended up ditching the idea of using my juicer and decided on using the Vitamix instead keep...

I've just had the second Deliciously Ella book out of the library. Like the first book the emphasis is on easy to prepare veggie food with fresh, wholefood ingredients and there's no sugar, gluten or dairy in any of the recipes. Ella is a plant based eater rather than a vegan and she does include honey in some of the recipes but that is easy to substitute with agave or Sweet Freedom. One thing Ella does exceptionally well is breakfasts. I've blogged in the past about my love for Baked Oatmeal which was born from recipes in her first book and on her website . The picture below is a recipe from the Speedy Porridge Four Ways section of the book and is Cinnamon and Date flavoured. Her porridge method involves soaking the oats for 10 minutes before you cook them, just like with her baked oatmeal recipe. This dish is made with soya milk, dates, cinnamon and a little coconut oil and drizzled liberally with my favourite Sweet Freedom which has become such a must have item...

It's that time of the week again for a round up of bargains I've been discovering, treats I've been enjoying and things I've been making. In this first picture are a couple of things from Netto . I remember Netto appearing in a few places in Manchester back in the nineties and they were always at the lower end of the discount supermarkets and not somewhere I ever felt drawn to want to shop at. I didn't even think they were still going until one opened on the road out of Glossop about six months ago. I also wasn't aware that they are actually a Scandinavian company. They don't have the range of stuff that Aldi and Lidl have but there are some good bargains to be have and the specials often include really nice homewares stuff. It's too far out of town to walk too but we sometimes stop in if we're driving past like last Sunday. I picked up a good, cheap planter for the plants I've won that I mentioned in my last post and also these fruit and...

These days I have to live pretty thriftily. I work 3 days a week. I chose to go part time a couple of years ago and it suits me well. My health condition saps my energy and having time to rest between the days I work (I work Monday, Thursday and Friday) does help and has definitely increased my productivity and concentration levels on the days I do go to work. It leaves me with very little disposable income though. Most of my life I've worked in pretty low paid jobs, currently I do an admin role, so I'm used to watching my pennies and I'm pretty good at it. Ebay and charity shops are my friends. I make stuff for presents, I enter competitions and I am a big fan of discount food shops. I would even go as far as to say that I get a shoppers high from these places and can often be found entering our house shouting to Matt - 'Just wait til you see what I've got for 29p!' We cook from scratch a lot and eat lots of healthy wholefoods dishes. Shopping at disco...