It is I, Captain Vegetable...
Today has been all about nutrition.
Our council has recently halved the rubbish collection - from weekly to fortnightly - and they won’t take any extra if you overfill your bin. We thought we were already quite environmentally aware and pretty good at recycling but we’ve found it a real struggle, so we’ve been forced into a rethink about the amount of plastic packaging coming into the house. Supermarket veg is high in both packaging and food miles so instead we’re going to be getting most of our fruit and veg from a weekly delivered organic veg box and our excellent local greengrocer. It means being a little more organised but that’s no bad thing.
To my great delight, I opened the door at 8 am this morning to find that our first fruit and veg box had already been delivered. I was very inspired by all the fresh lusciousness and went on a mission to use up any existing fruit and veg, so that I could get started on the new yummy stuff. By 10am I had used up some ripe bananas in a delicious gluten-free banana and pecan loaf. It was ready just in time for ‘elevenses’!
I’d forgotten how much I like to bake and cook; I haven’t been well enough lately and I hadn’t realised how much I missed it.
Lunch was all about the fresh vegetables. Although I’m not vegetarian, I really love vegetables and often stir-fry some for lunch.
Sometimes I just get off on the colours of things. I already had the pak choi in the fridge and it needed using up but, even though we already had carrots in the house, I couldn’t resist adding a new, bright, fresh carrot from the box.
Lunch: pak choi, grated carrot, tofu, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, cashew nuts and soya sauce whizzed in a pan for five minutes with a little sesame oil. Incredibly quick and easy if you work from home (10 minutes max including all the prep) but I reckon it would also be good as a cold packed lunch. I’ve been fighting off a cold in the last week and I must have been craving the vitamins because it tasted like absolute heaven.
Apparently I wasn’t the only one craving things today.
This is our ‘mama squirrel’ - for the last month or so we’ve been watching her building a nest in our tall beech tree and darting around the garden with an increasingly unwieldy belly.
She’s a lot slimmer now, so she must have had her babies, but the pregnancy has clearly taken a lot out of her. As I was photographing the veg I saw her clinging to the wall right next to the kitchen window. She was frantically licking the stone, obviously after the salts leaching out of the soft limestone. It was fascinating; I’d never seen this kind of behaviour before.
Perhaps I need to provide a salt lick, in addition to the nuts, seeds, fat balls and water that I already put out for the local wildlife. After all, I don’t want them eating the house!
Our council has recently halved the rubbish collection - from weekly to fortnightly - and they won’t take any extra if you overfill your bin. We thought we were already quite environmentally aware and pretty good at recycling but we’ve found it a real struggle, so we’ve been forced into a rethink about the amount of plastic packaging coming into the house. Supermarket veg is high in both packaging and food miles so instead we’re going to be getting most of our fruit and veg from a weekly delivered organic veg box and our excellent local greengrocer. It means being a little more organised but that’s no bad thing.
To my great delight, I opened the door at 8 am this morning to find that our first fruit and veg box had already been delivered. I was very inspired by all the fresh lusciousness and went on a mission to use up any existing fruit and veg, so that I could get started on the new yummy stuff. By 10am I had used up some ripe bananas in a delicious gluten-free banana and pecan loaf. It was ready just in time for ‘elevenses’!
I’d forgotten how much I like to bake and cook; I haven’t been well enough lately and I hadn’t realised how much I missed it.
Lunch was all about the fresh vegetables. Although I’m not vegetarian, I really love vegetables and often stir-fry some for lunch.
Sometimes I just get off on the colours of things. I already had the pak choi in the fridge and it needed using up but, even though we already had carrots in the house, I couldn’t resist adding a new, bright, fresh carrot from the box.
Lunch: pak choi, grated carrot, tofu, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, cashew nuts and soya sauce whizzed in a pan for five minutes with a little sesame oil. Incredibly quick and easy if you work from home (10 minutes max including all the prep) but I reckon it would also be good as a cold packed lunch. I’ve been fighting off a cold in the last week and I must have been craving the vitamins because it tasted like absolute heaven.
Apparently I wasn’t the only one craving things today.
This is our ‘mama squirrel’ - for the last month or so we’ve been watching her building a nest in our tall beech tree and darting around the garden with an increasingly unwieldy belly.
She’s a lot slimmer now, so she must have had her babies, but the pregnancy has clearly taken a lot out of her. As I was photographing the veg I saw her clinging to the wall right next to the kitchen window. She was frantically licking the stone, obviously after the salts leaching out of the soft limestone. It was fascinating; I’d never seen this kind of behaviour before.
Perhaps I need to provide a salt lick, in addition to the nuts, seeds, fat balls and water that I already put out for the local wildlife. After all, I don’t want them eating the house!