Cabbages are definitely an under-rated vegetable. We get them sometimes in our veg box, and we always try to do something different and creative with them. They’re great in stir fries, soup and as an alternative to rice paper in spring rolls. This plant based sage chilli butter cabbage recipe is so delicious and hearty enough to be the hero piece of any lunch or dinner! And it’s healthy, too – cabbages are packed full of vitamins, calcium and fibre, as well as being low in calories.
Ingredients
1 Savoy cabbage
1 sweet potato
Handful fresh sage leaves
Teaspoon chilli
2 tbsp butter (we used Naturli)
500 ml vegan stock
10 walnuts
Method
Preheat the oven to 180 C.
Place a pan of water on the hob and slowly bring to a boil as you are preparing the cabbage and sweet potato.
Remove the outer leaves of the cabbage, then cut it into six circular wedges through the core.
Put the cabbage circles in a baking tray and pour over the stock. Then cover with foil and bake for 20-25 minutes.
Meanwhile, peel the sweet potato and cut into small chunks. Add to the pan of boiling water and cook until tender. Drain and set aside.
Five minutes before the cabbage is ready, add the walnuts to the baking tray.
Now make the sage butter., Melt the butter over a medium heat, and add the sage and chilli, stirring them in well.
Mash the sweet potato with a little of the butter and season with salt and pepper.
Remove the cabbage and walnuts from the oven and serve drizzled with the sage chilli butter and the sweet potato mash. I served the sweet potato with some salted capers from the local Italian deli that I’ve been obsessed with recently.
We decided this year that we were going to give some of the mindfulness apps out there a try. We have some books with mindfulness exercises, and YouTube has some free ones, but we both liked the idea of having something that would both chart our progress and which we could personalise. Here’s Caroline’s Headspace review.
HEADSPACE
Headspace is one of the world’s most popular mindfulness and meditation apps, so it seemed a good place to start. It’s free for the first seven days, then £9.99 per month, so one of the more expensive apps.
Interface
I found the interface very simple, with a clean, colourful design. It was really easy to navigate to various parts of the app and find what I needed – a good thing as the whole purpose of the app is to relieve stress.
Headspace interface
Meditation
Headspace features a daily meditation, with themes such as ‘hope’, ‘creativity’ and ‘intention’. I liked having these suggestions as it meant I tried meditations that I might not necessarily have chosen. The daily meditations can be as short as four minutes and up to twenty minutes. I tried to do these in the mornings, and each of them left me feeling refreshed, content and ready for the day.
I also did the mindful eating course. This is a thirty-day course, with the first ten days dedicated to ‘learn’, the next ten to ‘practice’ and the final ten to ‘master’. Each daily session lasts about ten minutes.
I’m definitely guilty of mindless eating, when I’ll grab something without really thinking about whether I’m hungry, and finishing food on my plate without really tasting it or enjoying it. The course really helped me to re-evaluate that behaviour and think about the space in my head between the thought of eating something, and my behaviour – making the connection that just because I think about eating something doesn’t mean I have to act on it. There were some really good exercises, like trying out eating a meal without any distractions such as phone, computer or other people. I thought the app was worth the money for the mindful eating course alone. It had a number of really helpful practical exercises, and was genuinely transformative in shaping my thinking around eating more mindfully, and the storylines behind when and how we eat.
There are also meditations dedicated to dealing with difficult times – stress, anger, exam prep, interviews and work stress. There’s even one for dealing with your anxiety when you have to do a presentation, which will resonate with most people! I tried the ‘flustered’ meditation when I was having one of those moments with far too many thoughts crowding in my head from different directions, and found it really helped.
Children’s meditations
I tried out the sleep meditations for 9-12 year olds with our 10 and 12 year old. They were a bit giggly at first, but relaxed into the meditation after a minute. and once it had finished said it definitely made them more relaxed and sleepy. They did go to sleep very quickly afterwards, and I found it a nice way to wind down with them at the end of the day.
Exercise
There are a number of physical exercise sessions on the app, from vigorous workouts to gentle yoga. Most of them try to integrate mindfulness and breathing into the practice.
I tried some of the yoga sessions and thought they were well designed, if a little impersonal and business-like at times in some of the sessions. There are sessions of varying lengths, from 8 to 45 minutes, and for different times of the day – morning, daytime and before bed. There are also sessions for different moods, such as stress and anxiety, and different body areas such as hips, neck, and core. I liked the Afternoon Reset, a 20-minute flow for intermediate yogi that’s good for lunch breaks, and the longer Calming Flow for before bed.
I also liked the Lincoln Center Dance Breaks, which teach dance moves from around the world in short sessions, and the Move Minis, quick sessions for when you just need to move and get your heart rate up but don’t have a lot of time.
There are some great rest day meditations too, for days when you’re not exercising and want to let your mind rest as well as your body.
Sleep
I particularly loved this part of the app. The sleepcasts were stories to send you to sleep, read in a variety of calming voices, and I don’t think I stayed awake to hear the end of any of them! The wind-down sessions are guided meditations to help send you off to sleep, with a variety of exercises from deep breathing and noting to mindful walking and mindful cleaning to help you sleep! The sleep section also has exercises to help you get back to sleep if you’re a night-waker, rather than reaching for your phone and scrolling. And I loved the soundscapes with sounds recorded in natural spaces, like cicadas on a lake, forests, rain on rocks and water running under bridges.
Other features
I thought the nature breaks in the productivity section, with videos of scenes from nature intended to help you refocus when you need to give your mind a rest, were a great inclusion and really grounding when my head had a million tabs open.
There were also quick breathing exercises with a visual guide – breathe with the waves was my favourite – that are a good way to stop whatever you’re doing and take a short mental break, either from work, a stressful situation or just life in general.
Value for money
The app is great value for money once you unlock the paid for features – which isn’t an option for many given the £9.99 per month price tag – and provided you use it on a very regular basis, as I’ve been doing. The sense of wellbeing it gives me is definitely worth the monthly cost.
Compared to other mindfulness apps, I felt that the free content was extremely limited – there was very little that you could access without taking up the free trial, though the app is available for free for some people, including teachers. Once you’re in the trial, many of the meditation courses are at least ten days long – I guess this is deliberate in order to encourage people to sign up beyond their seven day free trial.
I would have liked a family subscription option, which seems to be available in the US, so that I could share the app with other people in the family.
With a library of hundreds of meditations, it’s likely that you’ll enjoy and get your money’s worth from Headspace if you use it often. The app is great value for money once you unlock the paid for subscription – unfortunately not an option for many given the £9.99 per month price tag – and provided you use it on a very regular basis, as I’ve been doing. The sense of wellbeing it gives me is definitely worth the monthly cost, so represents value for money for me – I don’t spend money on a gym subscription or any other sports (yoga, swimming and running are all free!) so I justify it that way.
There are a whole host of free mindfulness apps available – check them out here.
This vegan turmeric miso rice is one of our favourite, make-on-autopilot-it’s-so-simple, delicious dinners. It takes hardly any time to throw together and uses low-cost ingredients you probably have in your cupboard or fridge. The turmeric gives it a nice golden hue and is packed with goodness and health benefits, with it’s anti-inflammatory properties and potential to improve heart health, along with the nutrition in the brown rice with its fibre and protein. It’s hard to imagine something with so few ingredients tasting so good, but trust us – give it a try!
Ingredients
125g (1 cup) brown rice
240ml (2 cups) water
2 tbsp sesame oil
2 tsp miso paste
1 tbsp turmeric
1 tbsp soy sauce
Bunch spring onions, chopped
Veg of your choice, steamed – we used green beans and baby corn
Lemon to season
Method
Bring the 240ml water to the boil and add the rice. Cover the pot and turn down the heat. The rice should be cooked in 40 minutes at a simmer.
Before the rick cooks, steam your vegetables in a microwave or bamboo steamer.
Chop up some spring onions to garnish the rice.
Once the rice is cooked, stir through 2tbsp sesame oil, 1 tbsp soy sauce, 2 tsp miso paste and 1 tbsp turmeric. Season with salt, top with the spring onions and steamed veg, and squeeze some lemon over to season.
It’s Veganuary, and like most years, thousands of people have pledged to go vegan for a month. As always, there’s lots of coverage in the media about veganism, with recipes and guides to vegan living. It’s wonderful to see.
This year though, we’ve noticed an extra helping of negativity creeping into the conversation. An article about how veganism is ‘snake oil’ in the national press here, a blog piece challenging the idea that veganism can save the planet there, all with the same tired old arguments about almond milk and soy and the assumptions that vegans eat only quinoa, avocado and mock meats with their higher carbon footprints.
Here are some of the vegan myths that continue to circulate … and why they’re not true.
Vegan Myth 1 – it’s not sustainable
Avocadoes, almond milk and quinoa are not sustainable and vegans eat avocadoes, almond milk and quinoa therefore veganism is not sustainable. I have heard this argument so many times, usually from people who have scoured the internet to find the handful of studies that support their view that veganism is an unsustainable way to live, even though there’s a growing body of evidence that a plant based diet is the kindest diet for the planet – this study from Oxford University for example concluded that the lower the fraction of animal-sourced products in our diets, the greater the health and climate benefits will be.
It’s true that almond milk, avocadoes and quinoa aren’t particularly sustainable. Almond milk still has a considerably lower footprint than dairy milk, however. And an avocado only needs a fraction of the water required to produce the same amount of beef, as does quinoa.
I also honestly don’t know anyone who eats the shed loads of these foods that would be required to create a higher carbon footprint than an omnivorous diet. We hardly ever drink almond milk, eat quinoa equally rarely, and avocadoes when they come in our veg box. And omnivores eat these things too!
As for soy, which is often cited as another reason veganism is bad for the planet as its production requires the destruction of extensive natural habitats – most soy is grown to feed animals being raised for slaughter.
Avocadoes – best enjoyed sustainably
Vegan Myth 2 – it’s unhealthy
Vegans exist on a diet of fake sausages, bacon and Beyond Burgerswhich are unhealthy and bad for the planet. No one should be eating meat, or mock meats, every day. Meat free burgers have similar amounts of saturated fat and sodium to beef burgers, though without the cruelty that goes into them. Mock meats are great as a treat, and good if you’re transitioning to a vegan diet and want to stick with familiar tastes, but whole foods are better for your health, and better for the planet.
The Oxford study mentioned above also looks at the major health benefits of a vegan diet, and the positive consequences of eating fewer animal products.
Vegan Myth 3 – you can’t get well-balanced vegan diets
A vegan diet isn’t balancedor healthy. Any diet can be unhealthy if it isn’t well balanced and a vegan diet is no different. I could live on chips and dairy-free chocolate and truthfully say I was following a vegan diet, but it would be far from healthy or well balanced. However, the British Dietetic Association says that a well balanced vegan diet is healthy and appropriate for all life stages, and NHS advice is that it’s possible to get all of the nutrients you need with a well planned healthy vegan diet. As long as you make sure you’re getting all the vitamins you need – vitamin B12 is especially important – a plant based diet is a healthy and sustainable one to adopt.
Vegan Myth 4 – being vegan costs too much.
It’s expensive being vegan. As above! Any diet can be expensive if you make it so. Yes, it’s true that food producers often whack on a ‘vegan surcharge’ to new vegan versions of their food – Cadbury’s are recent offenders with their vegan chocolate bar costing around twice what a standard bar of Dairy Milk would. And yes, you can be a vegan and live on expensive mock meats, out of season vegetables and Booja Booja truffles (which are amazing, just kind of pricy!) But a home cooked vegan meal made from scratch, is usually not going to cost as much as something that contains chicken, meat or fish. An Oxford University study from last year showed that a vegan or vegetarian diet is the cheapest option in high income countries. Try our cheap as chips lentil dhal or pasta arrabbiata, or have a look at the Deliciously Ella blog for budget vegan recipes. We subscribe to Oddbox, who deliver wonky fruit and veg to us every week for less than £20 – each box comes with a meal plan and recipes, so you can make lots of delicious meals from scratch.
Lentil dhal
Vegan Myth 5 – it’s too hard to be vegan.
Being vegan is too difficult and complicated. When I went vegan over a decade ago, yes, that might have been true. There was very little information around about vegan food, and very little decent vegan food outside of health food shops compared to what can be found now in your average supermarket. Now, it’s much easier. If you’re just getting started, I recommend checking out Bosh for their simple, delicious vegan recipes – starters, mains and snacks.
One of our favourite vegan dinners is just spaghetti with chilli, lemon juice and a courgette, grated and fried. That’s it. It doesn’t need to be complicated at all, unless you’re looking to bake bread from scratch and make your own mock meats for every meal (yes, we know someone who did this for Veganuary and unsurprisingly didn’t make it to the end of the month!)
Vegan Myth 6 – vegans are annoying and smug.
Vegans are sanctimonious and always want to tell you that they are vegan within five minutes of meeting you. There are smug, sanctimonious people in every community, from your local Facebook selling group to the international knitting community (no disrespect to knitters!) and veganism is no different. And if someone tells you they are vegan early on in a conversation, consider that it might be relevant – I’ll only bring it up if I’m offered food that may contain dairy or eggs, or if it’s genuinely relevant to the conversation.
To find out more about going vegan this January, visit the Veganuary website.
Read more about vegan myths in this new book by Ed Winters.
And try some of our vegan recipes, from starters to main courses and baking!
I know a lot of people don’t like the idea of New Year’s resolutions as they think of them as a way of setting yourself up to fail.
Colin always has small handful of resolutions. I’m a lover of a list on the other hand, and come January 1st can find myself with up to 25 resolutions, or intentions, covering every aspect of my life. I always see them as something I’d like to try to do though, and if I get to the end of the year and realise that I didn’t achieve them, which is usually the case with about 50% of my intentions, I’ll either shrug my shoulders and forget about them or add them to my list for the following year.. I see them as suggestions – a could-do list – rather than something that I need to beat myself up about if I get to December 31 and haven’t done.
For example, every year since I can remember I’ve written down an intention to listen to new music and discover new artists in the year to come, and I never ever manage. I’ll download a playlist on Spotify of new sounds for that particular year and then forget to listen to it. The only new artist I discovered in 2021 was Olivia Rodrigo, courtesy of our kids!
I also promised myself I’d do Duolingo every day this year as I’ve been brushing up on my stale Russian and trying to learn Swedish. I did it quite often, but every day just didn’t happen. And I had a huge, ambitious list of podcasts I was going to listen to by the end of 2021, that didn’t happen either.
With that in mind, here are my intentions for 2022 –
Swim 25 lengths at our local lido, Jesus Green Lido. And it’s 90m long, so those are quite big lengths. I’ve done lots of outdoor swimming in the past twelve months, in wonderful locations, but I need to work on distance. I’ve set myself this as a goal, and am also thinking of signing up to a swimming challenge later on in the year. Being in the very fortunate position of having an outdoor swimming coach as a husband, I’m hopeful I’ll ace this one.
Run 5k without stopping. Confession – I don’t really like running. I got quite good at it years ago, but it was never something I enjoyed doing in the way other people seem to. I enjoyed the sense of achievement afterwards though, and loved doing it with Colin who was always great at encouraging me to keep going and not stop. This morning Colin went out for a run and I wished I’d joined him – he’s always saying that if I persevere I’ll end up enjoying it, and I would like to be able to run 5k as I was once able to do without having to stop and walk. Will be starting this week!
Continue to try and find ways to cut down on our plastic use and live more sustainably. I think we do OK on this as a family, but there are always ways to cut down further. Here are some of the changes we’ve made so far – and in 2021, we improved on that again by cutting down on car use and cycling more (moving to Cambridge helped a lot!), switching to a veg box delivery, getting smarter about waste and making consumer choices that favoured sustainable companies. In 2022 we want to build on that. We’ll be looking out for local events to get involved in, and continuing to share plant based recipes and stories of sustainable living with our growing audience.
Take our camper van to Europe! We’re trying not to get too excited about this one as we’ve been here before (in January 2021!) Back in the pre-pandemic era, when we bought our camper van, we planned an amazing two week European holiday with the van for summer 2020. Of course, we ended up cancelling it, and then didn’t take it in 2021 as a multi-country visit juggling the entry requirements of various countries didn’t seem feasible. This year, we really hope that it will finally happen and that we’ll be able to take our tour of some of Europe’s best hiking and swimming spots this summer. Watch this space!
Creating and maintaining good boundaries – when I look back at moments of stress and unhappiness in 2021, many of them were down to not having good boundaries in place, and I’m going to make sure that these are better, and stronger in 2022. One of the things that has helped me in 2021 is a regular digital detox – switching my phone off for a couple of days or longer over holidays, ensuring that the important people in my life know how to get hold of me if they need me. A firm boundary between real life and the online world is a really important one to maintain and one I’ll be working on this year.
The most important thing for me with all of my 2022 intentions, though, is to see them as just that. They’re not written on tablets of stone, they’re simply suggestions – so I won’t beat myself up if they don’t happen. I’ll update on our progress via this blog and Instagram – looking forward to getting started 🙂
