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 🙂
It’s the most wonderful time of the year, but can also be the most stressful, lonely and difficult one. A recent thread on Mumsnet about people’s worst Christmases revealed tale after tale of Christmases that were memorable for all the wrong reasons, with stories of drunken relatives, toxic families and abusive spouses.
And even without the difficulties of family time at Christmas, there is so much pressure on us to make Christmas perfect, from the Instagram posts of perfectly curated colour co-ordinated trees and piles of presents, to the relentless messages from all quarters to spend, spend, spend on things we don’t need or can’t afford, whether it’s on useless gifts that end up going in a cupboard and then to the charity shop or the latest toy or piece of jewellery that leaves you overdrawn well into spring.
Each year brings a new gimmick that we’re encouraged to spend on, from Elf on the Shelf, to Christmas Eve boxes and beauty advent calendars. And that’s not to the mention the ‘must-do’ Christmas experiences, whether it’s the local Christmas light show at £15 per head, Santa’s grotto, or the Christmas markets that can end up setting you back a fortune. It can be unaffordable for the average family.
And then there are those of us who find Christmas sad and painful. Perhaps it was once a happy time, but you’ve lost someone special in your life and Christmas is a reminder of how things used to be. Or you’re not in the place you’d want to be in life – perhaps you wish for a partner, or children, to share Christmas with, but find yourself without. Sometimes it can feel as though everyone is enjoying Christmas except you.
Any and all of these things can lead to stress, depression and burnout at Christmas. Here’s our guide to looking after yourself at Christmas so January doesn’t begin with you feeling exhausted, miserable and overwhelmed.
Take some time on your own in nature. Even if this means braving the elements and taking a ten-minute walk around the local park or green space, it will benefit your mood and help to make you feel happier and less stressed. A 2020 study from Cornell University showed that just ten minutes spent in a natural setting can improve mood and reduce stress levels. It doesn’t matter whether you’re walking or just sitting – getting outside will help to make you feel better. While you’re out, take time to notice what’s around you. The sound of the birds, or the feeling of the wind, or the noise of the rain gently falling on the pavement. Slow everything down and just breathe.
And if you have a little longer, and can do so safely, we cannot recommend the tonic of a swim in cold water enough for resetting your mood – you’ll come out of the water feeling totally refreshed, with whatever was worrying you hopefully feeling a little less big and overwhelming than it did before you went in the water. Just make sure you follow the rules for safe swimming – go with someone else or tell someone where you’re going, make sure you’re familiar with the body of water you’re swimming in, don’t get too cold and get out if you start feeling warm or tired. Read more tips on safe outdoor swimming here.
Remember that the best things in life really are free. Recently, we decided to go to London to visit the Christmas markets. This was a nice idea on paper, but ended up being stressful with the crowds, noise and queues. On the way back home, I told our 11 year old that I was sorry the day hadn’t been as Christmassy as we’d hoped. She replied that to her the most Christmassy thing she could think of was all of us sitting in our living room watching Christmas movies together. You don’t have to spend money to make Christmas.
Try a mindfulness meditation. Carve out five or ten minutes for yourself to spend time meditating, and remember that self-care doesn’t mean self-indulgence. A meditation in the morning can set the tone for the day, and help you recognise and manage any feelings that have come up over Christmas time. I have posted before about how invaluable I find mindfulness meditation and how helpful in managing any negative emotions I might be feeling. Try these Calm Moment meditations which have been especially tailored for Christmas.
Just say no. Remember that you don’t have to say yes to every Christmas opportunity that comes your way. This year, there are far fewer socialising opportunities, so December is far less of a whirlwind. Remember though, it’s fine to pass up invitations if it’s all feeling too much. You don’t have to go to the midnight mass carol service on Christmas Eve, or your neighbour’s drinks party, or the informal office Christmas lunch. No one is judging and no one is keeping score – Christmas isn’t about how many people you see and how many events you attend.
Connect with people over Christmas. Check in on your loved ones, especially this year. It may not be possible to do this in person, but if you know someone close to you who might be having a hard time over Christmas, resolve to check in on them regularly. It will make you, and them, feel good.
Practise gratitude. Think about the things that you are grateful for this Christmas. This could be your health, a warm home, friends and family, good food to eat, the sight of frost on the lawn and the blue December sky. It’s a good way to remind yourself that there is always something to be grateful for in life, even if it seems small. Christmas is a perfect time to reflect on the good things in life, as once you start you usually find that there is more than you might imagine.
Plan beyond Christmas. If this time of year is really difficult for you, try to plan something nice for January and beyond. Maybe book a holiday, lunch with friends, arrange a walk in the countryside or invite someone over for a meal. It will give you a focus beyond Christmas and something to look forward to.
Remember that it’s just one day. Be kind to yourself. Everyone else in the world apart from you isn’thaving an amazing time. What you see on Instagram, however lovely it is – the piles of presents, children in matching Christmas pyjamas, stockings by a roaring fire – is rarely the full picture. For most people, Christmas time, like life, is a mixture of happy moments and flashes of stress and sadness.
It’s winter, it’s cold, it’s wet, and it’s dark almost all the time … so obviously it’s time for DOUBLE CARBS! (We’ll worry about those extra calories next year.)
We think potatoes dauphinoise are the food of the gods, and wrapped up in fluffy golden puff pastry, this creamy and flavoursome vegan potatoes dauphinoise pie is a hearty slice of Christmas cheer.
Ingredients
Serves 2 in a round baking dish – double the ingredients to serve more and prepare in a larger rectangular dish.
4 large potatoes, thinly sliced, best done on a mandolin slicer
4 tbsp frozen peas
Handful parsley to garnish
Salt
Pepper
Method
Heat a tablespoon of olive oil over a medium heat and fry the onions for a few minutes until golden, then add the garlic. Set aside.
Add the milk, cream and peas to a pan and heat over a medium to high heat until boiling.
While the milk, cream and peas are boiling, roll out the pastry and use half to line the baking tray. Add the thinly sliced potatoes.
When the milk, cream and peas mixture is bubbling, remove from the heat and add the onions and garlic. Season with salt and pepper. Pour the mixture over the potatoes.
Preheat the oven to 180C.
Cut the rest of the pastry into thin strips and arrange as a lattice over the top of the pie.
Bake for 25 minutes or until the pastry is golden.
These vegan mince pie puffs can take five minutes or less to throw together if you choose to use shop-bought mincemeat (just double check it’s vegan, because not all mincemeat is) or a bit longer if you want to make your own mincemeat. For us, eating mince pies or anything filled with mincemeat starts on December 1st and is usually a daily activity from then on. There’s nothing more Christmassy than eating one of these mince pie puffs with a cup of hot chocolate on the sofa, with the Christmas decorations up, watching a festive film!
Traditional mincemeat is made with suet to hold everything together. I’ve seen vegan versions using vegetable shortening, but our version doesn’t use any fat. It means that the mincemeat is looser, but every bit as delicious.
Ingredients
1 block vegan puff pastry – we used Jus-Rol
200g cored and grated cooking apples
75 g raisins
100g dried cherries
100 g currants
50 g sultanas
70 g dried cranberries
80 g soft brown sugar or coconut sugar
100 g demerara sugar
2 small oranges – zest and juice
1 tsp mixed spice
1 tsp grated nutmeg
1 tsp ground cinnamon
3 tbsp port, or orange juice if you want to make it non alcoholic
Method
Make the mincemeat. Put all the ingredients except the juice/port in a bowl, then stir them together. Cover the bowl with a clean tea towel and leave it in a cool place for an hour. This will allow the flavours to combine.
Set the oven to a low heat – around 110 C. Give the ingredients another good stir, then put them all except the port/juice in an ovenproof dish. Cover it with foil and bake for around 2 1/2 hours. Set the bowl aside.
While the mincemeat is baking sterilise some jars – you’ll need around 4 medium jars for this. Sterilise them by washing them in the dishwasher then adding to the oven at 180 degrees for five minutes – you can turn the oven up and do this once you remove the mincemeat.
Remove the mincemeat, and put it back in the bowl. Stir through the port/juice.
Add the mincemeat to the sterilised jars.
To make the puffs, roll the pastry sheet out and cut it into four equal size rectangles. Spoon the mincemeat into the middle, leaving an edge on each side that you can pinch closed. Bake for around 20 minutes at 180 C. Sprinkle with icing sugar and serve.
Bookmark this page, because once you’ve made this vegan salted caramel chocolate cake, you’re going to want to keep coming back for more! Delicious warm from the oven with ice cream. I might even have had some for breakfast 🙂
Ingredients
150ml soy milk for the cake, 400ml soy milk for the caramel and 150ml for the icing
60ml vegetable oil
1 tsp vanilla extract for the cake and 1 tsp for the salted caramel
1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
150g self raising flour
240g caster sugar for the cake and 100g caster sugar for the caramel
40g vegan cocoa powder (I used Green and Black’s)
1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp cornflour
200g vegan chocolate
2 tbsp vegan butter (I used Naturli)
Tsp flaked sea salt
Optional – vegan chocolate vermicelli.
Method
Preheat the oven to 180.
Combine the 150ml soy milk and apple cider vinegar and set aside.
Combine the flour, sugar, cocoa powder and 1/2 tsp salt, then add the oil, vanilla, and milk and vinegar.
Bake for 30 minutes until a skewer inserted in the cake comes out clean.
Then make the icing by melting the chocolate in a heatproof bowl over a pot of boiling water, then combining the 150ml soy milk with the melted chocolate and the butter. Wait for the cake to cool before icing it.
Then make the caramel by adding 100g caster sugar, 400ml soy milk and the cornflour. Bring to a boil, continually whisking to keep smooth, then simmer until it’s smooth and thick. Add the sea salt and the vanilla extract.
Sprinkle with some chocolate vermicelli. Pour the caramel over the cake and serve with ice cream or cream!
Our 2020 Christmas gift guide was one of our most popular posts last year – here’s our guide for 2021. We both love Christmas (especially Caroline who always promises not to watch any Christmas movies or put up any decorations until December 1 … and always fails!) yet despair at the waste and the over-consumption this time of year brings. Here is our 2021 Christmas gift guide to inspire you, whatever your budget!
Take the Plunge!
For the swimmer in your life, or actually for anyone who loves the water whether they’re in it or not, The Art of Wild Swimming books, by our friends Anna Deacon and Vicky Allan will tempt anyone to go running for their nearest loch, lake, river or beach. These handy guides are full of beautiful photos and expert advice on local swimming spots, written by the local people who know them best – including Colin, who contributed to the sea swimming chapter and the section on his childhood haunt, the River Teith! The Art of Wild Swimming Scotland and The Art of Wild Swimming England and Wales is out now, published by Black & White.
Search Engine Optimised!
A foraging course with a local expert is an unusual and thoughtful gift for nature lovers and cooks who want to know a bit more about eating from the land, but who aren’t sure where to start and what to forage for. Wild Food UK run courses nationwide – check out their website for times and locations.
Sea buckthorn – a favourite with foragers, pictured here growing by Gullane beach in East Lothian
Christmas in focus
Hit your local charity shop to find photo frames – mine usually has a selection for 50p – £2 each, then download LaLaLab and choose your favourite photos from your phone to print – the turnaround is usually around 7 days. Fill up some frames with some wonderful memories from 2021 for a loved one. Or find a big frame, take out the picture, and make your own photo display with mini pegs and string.
Vegan wax wraps for baking gifts – Beeswax Wrap Co
Be calm
Calm is one of our favourite apps – full of brilliant exercises and meditations as well as gentle physical exercises to help bring peace to your inner self. Gift a subscription for 2022 to someone you think would love it too.
Travel is still something that feels pretty restricted, so how about an online AirBnb experience for someone who’s missing the chance to explore new cultures? You can choose anything from yoga delivered by an Indian yogi to meditation with a Buddhist monk, to a vegan cookery lesson from a New York chef. Or for the cook in your life, gift an online cooking lesson with a difference from Migrateful – the lessons are all given by UK migrants who are facing barriers to integration and finding a job due to legal and language challenges. There are lessons for a wide range of cuisines and dietary requirements – I’m looking forward to trying the veggie Syrian class.
Book a cookery lesson from a migrant chef at Migrateful and learn a completely new cuisine.
Seek and ye shall find
The best gifts are often the ones that don’t cost money but that the giver has spent time and love preparing. What about designing a nature walk for your loved one and giving them a voucher on the day? Research and plan your route first, choosing somewhere you know relatively well where you think you’ll find plenty of interesting wildlife. Download the Seek app so you can identify what to see along the way – then turn nature guide for the day and take your gift recipient on a walk to discover the flowers, plants, birds, trees and animals on their doorstep.
A well-planned nature walk costs nothing and could be the perfect gift this Christmas.
We were lucky enough to spend the weekend in the Cairngorms, in celebration of Colin’s auntie Sheila’s 70th birthday. As tourism season in the Highlands was coming to an end, auntie had booked the entire Cairngorm Lodge Youth Hostel for the festivities, which saw hordes of family from all corners of the UK and beyond descending on Glenmore one wet Friday in October.
Although time was short and we only had two nights and a full day, we made sure that we packed plenty in, including swimming in Loch Morlich, climbing a mountain, eating enough chilli and pizza to sink a ship and even bumping into some friends at a quiet lochan high up in the mountains!
Ryvoan Bothy on Meall a Buichaille
Where we stayed We stayed at the Cairngorm Lodge Youth Hostel – seven miles from Aviemore and just a two minute walk from the shores of Loch Morlich. It offers a range of rooms, from singles, twins and doubles to dormitories, with clean, modern showers and a large kitchen. There’s also a refectory, a conservatory with spectacular views of the mountains to enjoy over breakfast, and a large living room with a pool table.
What we did As well as ceilidhing the night away, eating our body weight in pizza, catching up over coffee and French toast made by Colin, and enjoying a few games of pool, we wanted to make the most of the stunning surroundings of the hostel.
Loch Morlich is one of our favourite Scottish lochs, where we’ve spent summers kayaking and swimming and winters walking round the beautiful Rothiemurchus forest that fringes the loch …. and swimming! It’s just across the road from the hostel, and with its wide golden sandy beach, views of the majestic Cairngorms and still, clear waters, it would have been rude not to (although I did just watch from the shore!) The temperature was a brisk 6.5 degrees, so no one stayed in for long. There were also paddle boarders and kayaks on the loch, undeterred by the chilly temperatures and rain.
Meall a’ Bhuachaille is a four hour circuit from the foot of the hostel, through pretty woodland and then on to the slopes of the 543m high mountain, leading to incredible views across to Loch Morlich and the Cairngorms. The last ten minutes of the ascent are steep, with steps instead of a path for much of it, so you’ll definitely feel you’ve earned a rest at the top. We sat in the sheltered cairn and replenished our energy with some sugared almonds from House of Bruar, where we’d stopped on the way up the road to Aviemore.
The way down leads you past an Lochan Uaine, where to our delight we encountered the Wardie Bay wild swimmers of Edinburgh, who’d taken a trip up to the Cairngorms for the weekend and had just enjoyed a dip in the green lochan. We also passed the Ryvoan bothy, which was kitted out for walkers with a fireplace, candles, table and cooking equipment – the hiker we met there looked very cosy enjoying some biscuits while his socks dried outside!
An Lochan Uaine
What we ate We all sat down to dinner on the Friday night in the large refectory, where Colin’s cousin Jenny was a total superstar and made three types of chilli, including this vegan chilli. She kindly shared the recipe, which serves 4.
Ingredients
1 stick celery, chopped
1 large white onion, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced or chopped
2 tbsp tomato puree
Splash of balsamic vinegar
1 tsp veg stock
2 tins chopped tomatoes
2 tins kidney beans
2 tins black beans
1-2 tsp chilli flakes depending on how spicy you like your chilli!
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp cumin
2 tbsp nutritional yeast
Lime to season
Method
Heat a tbsp oil in a large wok and fry the onions over a medium heat for five minutes.
Add the garlic and spices and fry for another minute, then add the tomatoes, vinegar, beans, celery, stock and nutritional yeast.
Bring the mixture to the boil then leave to simmer on a low heat for 40 minutes.
Muffins can be quite hit or miss for me – from giant dry, crumbly, tasteless things wrapped in cellophane and bought in service stations, to light, fluffy, moist delicacies like this! The courgette means that they aren’t dry, but we like them split and slathered in something delicious too – in the picture, we had them with beetroot houmus made with roasted beetroot, tahini, chickpeas and garlic.
This recipe makes about ten muffins.
This makes about ten large muffins.
Ingredients
140g plain flour
16 oz soya milk
1 tbsp paprika
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 grated courgette
2 tbsp vegan butter, soft or melted
50g grated cheese
1 tbsp Dijon mustard
Method
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C.
Combine the flour, paprika, baking powder and salt in a bowl.
Then fold in the milk, courgette, butter, cheese and mustard to form a batter.
Spoon the mixture into a muffin tray and bake for 20-25 minutes till golden.
