On a sunny Saturday

The best thing about living somewhere where the weather is almost always depressing is that it comes as surprise when it isn’t. Everything seems easier when it’s sunny!
On Friday night I didn’t sleep very much I was kept awake for most of the night by teenagers that were dancing and stomping and shouting on the flat above. Mummy was probably away and they are only sixteen so I didn’t feel like arguing and just accepted that on Saturday I would have been shattered. And shattered I was when the delivery company delivered my new bed!
So it was a sunny morning and I was finally saying bye bye to my futon.
Did it get even better? Yes my lovely friends put the bed together without me having to do anything :D
So as a reward for their hard wok I put together a little lunch, something maybe too summery but the day was glorious and all I fancied was salad!

So I got inspiration from the millet tostadas from Susan Marque:

The tostadas are really easy:

1 cup millet
3 cup water
1 pinch of salt

cook the millet in the water till it has absorbed it all, pour it in a baking dish and level it so that is all even, let it cool down.
Cut in squares and fry in a little olive oil. The millet would hold together even without frying it as long as you don't dry it out too much if you slightly overcook it it becomes really unpleasant though.. it's a fine line.

I served it with:
Jerusalem artichokes: peel, slice and bake with 2 tbsp of Shoyu and ½ cup of water

Adzuki beans, soaked overnight, simply boiled with added parsley

Sliced avocados (I know tropical, bad macrobiotic rating!)

Pressed carrots:
Finely grate three carrots, add a pinch of salt and a finely sliced onion. Put a dish on top and a weight and leave for a few hours. Add cumin raisins and lemon juice.

In the beautiful daylight those colourful plates were so joyous!

This week best food article

As my friends know and as those that bothered looking into my links I am a big fan of the New Statesman a weekly current affair magazine that makes my evening in more meaningful and my flight or tube journey less dull.
Not just but their art and culture columns are probably the most interesting and stimulatin around and I end up making to do/read/watch lists much more that I would with the Time Out! I have a subscription that somebody that knows me really well gave me as a gift for my birthday last year.

On this week issue Anne Perkins wrote an interesting article about food that is also questioning why eating less meat is not a bad thing... well if you landed on this blog you probably are not eating much meat anyway!

Not writing any recipe now as I a simply enjoying cooking miso soups, grains and steamed veg, no need for a recipe for those!

Bad habits?

So what are our papers greeting us with in the New Year?
Apparently too much salt, saturated fat and added sugar and not enough fruit, vegetables, whole-grains or oily fish lead to a premature death yawn. What a novelty…

But the news I am afraid is a bit more upsetting that this, apparently the borough of London that will suffer the most will be
Tower Hamlets, Southwark and City and Hackney, as they are the “poor” boroughs. Not just they will be victim of their obesity but also of their smoking habits.
I am furious. I have been living in Shoreditch which isn’t exactly “a poor part” of tower hamlet, but still I did not have a supermarket or a market nearby.I tried to buy some breakfast cereal at the corner shop and it was impossible. Food for “poor people” is full of sugar preservatives colourings etc..

I chose macrobiotic like many people to embrace a more natural lifestyle a simpler way of living and as a more suistainable one. Soaking some dried beans (which I always prefer to tofu or tempeh) eating only seasonal and local seems reasonable and healthy. Reading this article it just feel painfully middle class.

Welcome 2008! (and throat infection)

What a great end 2007 had, the parties the joy, friends, family children, everything great, but now what a miserable beginning!
I am in bed, trying to get better after waking up with swollen glands and throat.
This is for me the time for a more careful diet as the reason for my current status may really be the way I ate during the holiday. I had so much white bread and Pasta and fruit that I was always hungry craving for more!

Hopefully I will be better quickly and enjoying the New Year to the full.


Today I cooked nishime style so “waterless” this should be a very strengthening way of cooking, as it is very “yang”, I am feeling so weak that I really hope that it helps!
I soaked a strip of kombu seaweed and cut it to small squares, I placed them in the bottom of my cast iron saucepan (the lid has to be heavy and fit tightly).
I added very little water (literally few tablespoons).
I cut Hokkaido squash and carrot but you can add a variety of root/round vegetables cut lager for long time cooking and smaller for short time.
I placed the squash as a first layer and the carrot on top. Once the pot is covered you need to put it on a high flame till the lid becomes really hot and you almost can’t touch it, then turn the flame down as much as possible. Cook for 35 min. Add a tablespoon of shoyu replace the lid and cook for further 5 mins.
Today I added few drops of grated ginger juice.

Pre-Christmas soup

I am about to go to Stansted Airport. Once again, like many times before, I am checking my luggage, hoping that is not too heavy, look at my passport to check the expire date and check that each Christmas present is safe and it’s not going to crush during the journey.
I made myself a breakfast soup (yes insane I know), to make sure that I don’t have to rely on the airport Prêt a Manger, and in a kind of last attempt to have something healthy before my parent’s lovely starchy approach-olive oil showered food, (delicious but hard work to digest when you only sit on the sofa and chat all day).

Cook in boiling water some soba noodles and at the end rinse them under cool water.


At the same time heat up about one half bowl of water per person and use this to prepare vegetable soup. I used: baby leeks carrots and cabbage, I added some Wakame seaweed, and a couple of shitake mushrooms.
Towards the end I added grated ginger and few drops of toasted sesame oil. I turned off the heat and added a few drops of Tamari.
I put noodles in the bowl and just poured over the soup.

After this my fridge does not contain any more veg from 2007!

See you in the new year
X

I give you my cookie if you give me your pickle

It’s probably my job that is making me so allergic to shopping, as I have to “buy” stuff everyday so a Saturday afternoon on Oxford Street is my idea of hell.
I wish I was consuming less then what I am and have a more clutter free existence, but I am aware that this is not going to happen so easily.

This post would have been perfect on the 24th on November this year, on the Buy Nothing Day, oh well it comes a bit late but just put the date in your diary as it’s happening every year on the last Saturday of November.

Well we have bought very little today as I was at the Good Festive food swap but we ate a lot!
It was so much fun, I brought some mini sourdough bread rolls, some focaccia, macro cookies (recipe below) and gomasio.

I brought back:
Vegan cookies, bread, pickled pumpkin, fresh organic rosemary and bay leaves, vegan lemon cake, a bottle of elderflower vinegar, some lovely dried pear rings and some seeds to make salad on my balcony!


There was so much passion in the preparation that each person put in what they brought, especially the girl that did the pickled pumpkin attached a little bag with the story of the pumpkin variety and the story of how it arrived to the UK!
Everyone was really friendly, some people had an allotment and some just a good recipe, all were willing to share and chat.

Mulled wine kept me warm, it was an awful rainy afternoon, and I can’t imagine a better way to spend it.


Very "swappable" oatmeal currant cookies,
adapted from an Oliver Cowmeadow recipe

2 cups oat ( I used normal porridge one)
1/2 cup wholeweat flour
2 tbs sesame oil
2tbs maple syrup
3 tbs dried currant
1/4 spoon seasalt
1/4 spoon cinammon





Cover the raisin with water (1/2 a cup) bring to the boil and simmer for 5 min.
Mix dry ingredients and add the oil, add the maple syrup and the currants with the cooking liquid, add more water if necesary to have a thick batter. Oil a baking tray and shape the cookies (1/2 cm thick).

Bake for 30 min/180 °C


you can now swap them with the neighboor, post them to your old friend or just eat them while you spend a lazy Sunday reading a book.

Food Swap 8 December Stoke Newington (London that is!)

What a wonderful thing to look forward to! On 8th of December i am going to parteciapate to: the The festive Good Food Swap-in Stoke Newington organized by growing Communities.

It is a idea that enables you to exchange any product that you can prepare yourself (baked, canned, picked from your allotment etc..) with other people from the community, something that I strongly believe in is exchanging skills and stuff and not just passively consuming.

You can drop off your produce either at the Farmers Market during the day on Sat 8th December 10am -2.30pm at William Patten School on Stoke Newington Church Street at St Pauls Church Hall (where the swap will be held) between12pm-4pm.

Once you have registered and labelled your produce and received your producer number all you then have to do is come back at 6pm for the start of the swap!

I was planning to prepare some gomasio with nori seaweed, some mini sourdough bread, focaccia some macrobiotic cookies.... any other idea?

If you are interested because you live locally or if you just would like to copy the idea click here


Photo:Children offer us pine nuts in Ulan Bataar (Mongolia)