Day 27 - Full on Ful

Washed sprouted ful and peeled ful ready for cooking.

Told you I'd come back to sprouts. These are sprouted ful, the broad bean (or fava bean) that is a staple in the Middle East and particularly in Egypt. We've eaten them as ful medames cooked at home or ready prepared from tins, the equivalent of the navy bean in tomato sauce for the Mediterranean, but I had never sprouted them before. When I came across this I was hooked on the idea.

The beans need to be sprouted for several days before they're ready to cook. Put some in a large jar with a cover that will keep out flies, cover with water and soak for several hours then drain off the water. Each day fill up with water, allow to soak for a few minutes, then swill around and drain again. It took nearly ten days for my beans to be ready but it would have been much quicker in warmer weather.

When the beans have a short root and the start of a leaf stem they are ready. I peeled some of ours before cooking but it's not essential and you can either peel them before eating or just eat the skins as well for extra fibre.

I followed the recipe on the Egypt Farm blog pretty closely. Put the rinsed beans in a saucepan that will take them easily and just cover with water. Add one or two small onions, peeled but not chopped, several cloves of garlic, roughly chopped, a pinch of cumin seed and a couple of good grinds of black pepper. Bring to a simmer and cook, uncovered, until tender. I found my beans took about 15 minutes after the water boiled.

Serve the sprouts with their juice adding lemon juice, oil and salt to taste at the table. Use bread to soak up the liquid, which is quite delicately flavoured and have a side salad of green leaves, cucumbers and tomatoes with some olives for a complete meal. The cooked onions can be served as well if liked.

I plan to use the leftovers, lightly broken up in a food processor to make a soup and I think some orange lentils cooked in the broth first before combining the beans and onion back in will make a nice addition.

Day 26 - Off the rails

A transient artwork by Paul.

Last night due to a combination of events that really shouldn't have mattered we ended up buying ourselves a takeaway from our local vegan Chinese. We didn't over order but we were starving and wolfed it down.

It seems nearly four weeks of careful diet consideration has had an effect. We felt uncomfortable after eating and completely dehydrated from the excess of salt all night. A sad lesson. We've noticed this before sometimes but I'd always put it down to the copious quantities of booze taken at the same time. Seems that it is a different problem as we didn't drink alcohol last night.

Anyway, motivation enough to try to complete the month as planned, only another two days after all, and a good warning for taking more care in the future.

Day 25 - Quickie

I did something I rarely do today, I followed a recipe almost exactly...

This is my take on Bryanna Clark Grogan's Quiche recipe.

Oh, o.k. I didn't exactly follow it. I made my own version of pastry (didn't even look at her recipe for that), adjusted the vegetables to suit what I had and substituted gaily for anything I didn't like the look of in her stuff. It worked really well.

This is what I did -

Make filling:
I used two sweet peppers shredded with one medium onion fried in a little oil until they were soft and limp. Season with a little salt and pepper and allow to cool.

Make the pastry:
300g white flour, half self raising, half plain (or use all plain with 1/2 tsp. baking powder)
75g olive oil
some water.

Put the flour and oil into food processor and whizz a bit, then add enough water to bring everything together into a dough. Start with 2 tablespoons but you may need 4 or 5. Add them in stages. Once it spins up into a ball, stop the processor, take it out of the bowl and knead very lightly incorporating any small leftovers. Use to line a 23cm diameter loose bottomed tin or any other suitable flan dish with sides.

I had a slightly smaller tin and had enough pastry left to line the bottom of 15cm sponge cake tin too of which more later.

Prick all over or use baking beans on parchment to stop bottom puffing up and bake blind in a hot oven 200C for about 5 minutes or a little longer. Remove from oven. Keep the oven on.

Make 'eggy' liquid:

Measure 370g non-dairy milk into the food processor
Add 100g silken tofu (soft or firm)
30g of cornflour
15g nutritional yeast
2g agar agar powder
1 tsp. vegan stock powder (I used Marigold)
1 pinch of turmeric (less is more here!)
1 pinch of nutmeg (great spice)
I didn't add more salt and pepper but it's up to you.

Process until it is well combined and smooth.

Make the quickie:

Arrange the vegetables in the par-baked shell and gently add the 'eggy' liquid. Just like the original version you may prefer to do this with the flan dish on a tray or even on the oven shelf to avoid spills as you transfer it from workplace to oven.

I added vegetable bacon bits also known as pine nuts as a final garnish.

Bake in the hot oven for 30 minutes. It needs to be this long so that the heat will activate the agar. You may need to cover the pastry edges if they start to brown too much but it wasn't a problem here.

Allow to cool, so that the agar will set before serving. Can be reheated if you prefer it served warm but don't overdo it.

My little disk of pastry was topped with the bits that wouldn't fit in the main pan. This made a flat tart without pastry sides but the eggy bit firmed up nicely, so if you prefer a tart with less pastry this is the way to go.



And now, because I can't really fit it in anywhere else I'm just going to rant a little. This excellent recipe is just the sort of thing I never normally make because I have a real dislike of the vegan who knits a complete ersatz meat-eaters world out of tofu. It's wrong in so many ways I don't even want to start explaining it but because I'm nothing if not inconsistent and because I think this particular recipe has a real role for providing food for omnivores that won't take them too far out of their comfort zones I will probably make this again. And so should you.

Day 24 - Add an apple

If you had to make just one change to your diet that would improve it significantly and carry almost no harmful side effects you couldn't do much better than to take the old advice about an apple a day.

But don't take my word for it, google it.

Day 23 - Arroz con Tofu

How simple is this? Very!

All Mexican styled dishes along the lines of Rice with Whatever make use of the extremely simple and versatile Mexican rice with the addition of whatever it is you'd like to eat with it.

To make Mexican rice take 150g of rice, I used brown rice, and fry it off in a little oil until it starts to go toasty. Add a crushed clove or two of garlic, a pinch of salt, a pinch of cumin seeds and about 450ml of tomato passata (or tomato juice made up with water to the required volume which is about twice the volume of the dry rice.) Enrich the tomatoeyness by adding a bit of puree or chopped tomato pulp, depending on what you have. Season with pepper to taste. Cook in a tightly closed pan, stirring every so often until the rice is cooked through and fluffy and all the liquid is absorbed. If you want you can add extra chopped onion or sweet pepper to the mix but don't overdo it, the rice should be a supporting role, not the star. Brown rice will take about 30 minutes to cook, add more water if necessary. Cover and keep warm until needed.

For the tofu I made a sofrito of onions, chopped celery stalk and red pepper along with tomatoes from the tin I opened to get the juice for the rice. I also added one dried red chilli, adjust the chilli heat to your preference. When it was all softened and delicious I added the tofu in small cubes, some tarragon, some stock powder and some garlic and allowed everything to simmer until the tofu was well flavoured.

To serve dress the rice with the additions or toss them through and serve with extra green herbs, olives and anything else you enjoy.

Day 22 - Colcannon Cake

This would also qualify as part of the Noble Potato series, as it is a very traditional use of potatoes and winter vegetables to produce a nutritious meal from cheap ingredients that is much more delicious than the sum of its parts sounds.

Colcannon, in its simplest form, is potato and chopped cabbage mashed together with butter, salt and pepper. Tonight the plain recipe was complicated a little by the addition of celeriac to the mash, which adds a great flavour and reduces the need for added fat to almost zero.

Cook as many potatoes and celeriac as you need. The dish below took 5 medium potatoes and about the same volume of celeriac. That was about a third of this one I bought at the Farmers' Market last week! If you want to cook both in the same pan cut the celeriac a little thinner and smaller than your potato pieces as it takes a bit longer to cook.

I used a mix of purple sprouting and red curly Kale for the cabbage part of the recipe. Pick it over and remove any tough stalks, then cook with just enough water to stop it burning, say a centimetre or two in the bottom of the pot. Cover with a lid, it shouldn't take more than 5 or 6 minutes. When it's bright and softened as in the picture above, drain it and chop into bite sized pieces.

Mix into your mash and either serve immediately or pack into a well oiled baking tin and bake for 30 minutes in a hot oven to give a browned and crispy outside. Serve with veggie sausages or a nice beany tomatoey sauce or just as we did with mustard, pickles and soy sauce to our taste. It really is a wonderfully tasty way to eat your greens.

Day 20 and 21 - Onion soup, onion soup

Day 20 was a washout for blogging purposes - we didn't exactly go off the rails but a heavy schedule for the day meant we ended up eating from a selection of convenience and junk foods. It happens sometimes.

Today I made Onion Soup. This isn't something I ever think very hard about, one of the first classic recipes I ever researched and prepared and slowly adapted over time as my facilities have altered and other cooks have leant me their ideas on the subject, but I thought for the benefit of all I'd consult the book I expected would have the last word on authenticity - Je sais cuisiner although I actually opened the English translation I know how to cook which was one of my presents self awarded for Yule.

Imagine the surprise then when I read the recipe in there - cook the onions quickly for ten minutes, add the stock, cook another 10 minutes, strain the onions from the juice and add vermicelli! It is so far removed from the conventionally accepted recipe that I had to look at it several times before it would sink in.

Anyhap, I tidied away my shattered misconceptions and set about making French Onion Soup - my way. Serves 2-4

500g (after prep) onions, peeled and very finely sliced
2 tbsp olive oil
Pinch of dried thyme or a bay leaf (or both, why not!)
5 cloves garlic, finely chopped.
1 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar

Put your onions and the bay leaf/thyme/both into a heavy based pan that has a good lid and toss in the oil. Cover and allow to soften over a very low heat, this may take as much as an hour. If you're busy set a timer for 10 minute intervals and come back to give it a check and a stir about.

When meltingly soft, remove the cover, add the garlic and mix in, sprinkle in the salt and sugar (keep the quantities scant) and turn up the heat a tad. Keep stirring over the heat until the onions start to take colour, without ever letting them burn.

1 tbsp. flour
1 ltr. stock (Use a good quality cube, or your own home made)
1 glass of wine (red or white, I prefer red)
1 flat tbsp. dark miso or soy sauce to taste

Sprinkle the flour over the onion mixture and combine. Cook for a minute or two, then add the stock and wine and your choice of miso or soy sauce (mash the miso down in a little of the liquid to make it mix in more easily).

Bring back to the simmer and allow to cook for a further five minutes, stirring often to make sure the flour is cooked and the flavours are combined.

Serve with croutons or what you will, we had some toasted Cheesly on slices of bread and another glass of wine if you're allowed. It's very good for the circulation.

Day 19 - Rice and Peas and Greens and Sweet Potatoes and Peanut Gravy

This is very much an old style, stick to your ribs, hippie commune sort of meal and it was just what I was craving.

It really is rice and peas, the peas are dried marrowfat peas saved from the garden and soaked for a few hours before cooking with rice and onions in a pressure cooker. You need about half the weight of dry peas to uncooked brown rice and when you're not being 'healthy' it's nice to fry the onions off before adding them to the pot but it still works well if you don't. Put the rice, soaked peas and onions into the cooker, add about twice the volume of water and cook on high pressure for 20 minutes or so. Allow to cool naturally. When you can take the lid off, add seasonings and about 100g of freshly grated coconut. Mix well, recover and make the rest of the vegetables.

Peel and slice some sweet potatoes. I boiled these until just soft, then drained them and completed cooking them in a steamer over the sprouting broccoli.

Served with a peanut gravy based on my simple peanut sauce from ages ago.

Day 18

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Day 17 - Calzone

Everyone knows that calzone is simply a pizza folded before it's cooked and as such I've already assessed my version as acceptable within a healthy diet however it is incumbent on me to issue this extremely important health message for anyone who might be considering eating one.

Warning: After cooking, pie contents may be hot.

Day 16 - Pancake Tuesday

Today, Shrove Tuesday in the UK and any number of other carnivals and festivals elsewhere around the world, has a somewhat religious theme of using up all the eggs and milk before commencing on a period of fast before Easter.

There are two reasons why this means nothing to me, but the most important one by far is that vegans don't use eggs and milk so the concept of using them up is a bit redundant.

I planned to push the envelope by making dosa, pancakes from the Indian continent, made with fermented ground rice and lentils but of course, forgot to get started in time so in the end resorted to my standby batter for pancakes or crepes served with the usual South Indian trimmings.

Make a number of pancakes (crêpes if you're not in the UK), stack them up somewhere warm or ideally fill as you make them.

Make a potato curry stuffing. Cook some boiled potatoes and chop into small cubes. Fry off an onion, lots of garlic, some grated ginger in a little oil until softened. Add a finely chopped chilli and a tablespoon of mustard seeds and allow to get hot. Add the chopped potatoes and a few splashes of water to help everything combine. Simmer, stirring frequently, until the water is gone then season with a little salt and lemon juice. It's entirely up to you if you want to add a teaspoon of your favourite curry powder to the cooking onions, I think it's best to keep this simple.

Use the stuffing to fill the warm pancakes and serve with a coconut and coriander leaf chutney.

Day 15 - Noodle Bowl

The last couple of times we've eaten out it has been at Japanese restaurants. I wanted noodles at Itadaki Zen but was talked out of it because I would have had too much food. At Oishii I had the Yasai Tofu Ramen and felt it just missed the spot I was aiming for.

With loads of delicious beetroot consommé and other leftovers from Valentine's day, I thought I'd make my own version.

The stock for the soup is usually dashi based, but the depth of flavour from the vegetable broth is a good substitute, particularly flavoured with a few slices of ginger and spring onions. I also add a tablespoon of soy sauce and a small teaspoon of chilli miso to enrich it.

Precook, rinse and cool some Japanese noodles, soba or ramen, and arrange them in the bottom of your large soup dish. Add some slices of tofu, I had marinated oven baked tofu in stock but you can use fresh tofu or fry some slices if you prefer. A handful of blanched kale - softer leafy vegetables like spinach wouldn't need precooking, some sliced mushrooms, some hijiki seaweed (presoaked), carrot flowers, some sprigs of leaf coriander and anything else you'd like in there. Fill the bowl with boiling hot stock and serve with chopsticks for the noodles and vegetables and a big spoon to finish all the soup.

Day 14 - Valentine

Just pictures...

Kir Royale with home made Cassis

Starter of Chilled Beetroot Consommé and Root Vegetable crisps


Tofu Hearts on Baked Mushrooms with Fondant Potatoes and Kale

Toffee Fruits

all photography by Paul.

Day 13 - Pizza

Well, why not pizza? With home made dough consisting of wholemeal flour, water, yeast and a pinch of salt, a tiny drizzle of oil to grease the tray and dot over the top and plenty of vegetables it is as healthy a meal as any self denying, misery inducing bran filled buckwheat burger and much nicer. Just try not to eat too much of it.




This was particularly easy to put together because the dough was ready and waiting in the fridge. Made bread dough will keep quite well chilled in a sealed plastic bag for up to a week and needs only a few minutes at room temperature to warm up enough to make pizza bases. If you're planning to make a loaf from chilled dough, shape it and allow it to rise before baking.

We topped our pizza with mushrooms, olives, fresh basil and Cheesley and it was brilliant.

Day 12 - Coffee

Coffee beans, green and roasted.

We're going out tonight to eat, again a Japanese restaurant but a more mainstream version this time where I may even allow myself some fried food, their tempura is pretty good. So since that's not particularly healthy I thought I'd talk about something else that gets a lot of bad press but actually has quite a lot of health benefits and few downsides, coffee.


Coffee making kit, espresso machine, cafetiere, stove top espresso pot.

Coffee is a drug that many people are addicted to, this may have introduced some experimental bias but in recent years it has been shown that regular doses of coffee can help with a wide range of conditions from Alzheimers to stroke, with protective influences shown on the liver, the kidneys, memory function and even those at risk of diabetes.

Of course, there are still plenty of other researchers who want to put a dent in all this cheerfulness, you'll have to make your own mind up about that. However, the worst thing that's ever happened to me from coffee is the suffering that comes from giving it up for a few days.



And with coffee, what's nicer than a couple of chocolate biscotti.

Day 11 - Lentil Nut Pâté

This makes a lot of pâté, enough for 10 or even 12 if served as a starter with bread or crackers, so you might want to halve the ingredients or try, as I'm trying, to freeze some portions for later. If the freezing experiment doesn't work, I'll come back and update this entry.

The recipe is based on one I found here and have made a couple of times for celebration meals but it is actually low fat and packed with nutrients, ideal for this healthy eating month.

170g puy lentils (or those other grey green lentils that are the same but don't come from Puy)
1 bay leaf

200g mixed nuts (Brazil, hazel, almond and walnut. I was using up a bag of shelled nuts from xmas, but you could use all one sort of nut if you prefer)

2 tbsp. olive oil
300g onions, finely chopped
2 eating apples, cored and chopped, leave the skin on
3 (or more) cloves garlic, finely chopped or crushed
Calvados - a big slug
2 tbsp. light miso
1 tbsp. coriander seed crushed in pestle and mortar
1/2 tsp. ground ginger
2 tsp. cider vinegar
1 tsp. ground black pepper

Cook lentils with the bay leaf in lightly simmering water until they are soft. The time will depend on your lentils but between 25 and 40 minutes should do it. Drain and allow to cool a little before putting in the food processor.

Toast the nuts under the grill or in a hot oven for 5 minutes or so. Remove from heat and allow to cool.

Heat the oil in a large frying pan and add the onions, apples and garlic. Allow to melt gently over a low heat until softened through. Mix in the coriander, ginger and black pepper, then add a big slug (say a double, about 50ml) of Calvados or Brandy. Keep stirring over the heat while the alcohol cooks out and the sauce reduces. Turn off the heat and mix in the miso and vinegar. You need only a touch of vinegar, start with one teaspoon and see how you like it. Because the miso is so salty you shouldn't need to add any salt at all.

Put everything into the food processor and process until smooth. This will take a few minutes but shouldn't be a strain on the machine as everything is quite soft.

If you want to turn it out for serving line a mould with cling film, pack the mixture in and chill for a few hours. It should hold its shape but won't slice very neatly. Otherwise, make quenelle shapes or serve from individual ramekins.

This is better the day after making so it's great for catering for parties, and leftovers will keep for a week in the fridge. No mushrooms either!

Served tonight with lettuce, a bulgar salad and some of my precious little alfalfa sprouts.

Day 10 - Sprouts

Getting a bit behind, not every day is worth reporting.

Anyway, these are some sprouted seeds that have finally become ready to eat. They were planted on the 1st and, I suppose because it's been so cold here, have taken this long to grow. The beetroot didn't make it at all.

I love alfafa in sandwiches and the mustard is hot and spicy, excellent for garnishes as the winter is stopping most chances of growing or buying parsley and coriander leaf.

Planning for more sprouts to come, mung beans, ful, wheat berries so there should be a reprise of this in another 10 days!

Day 9 - Bread Making Day

Bread gets a hard time from 'healthy' eaters, too high in carbohydrate and calories, too easy to eat too much, too full of gluten and other allergens.

I love it. Even more, I love home made bread. There is almost no purchased bread I've ever tried that comes close to it (one bakery in France stands out) and as for supermarket pap, forget it.

The dough was started yesterday but because I was using a slow raise method it wasn't ready to bake until this morning. I've made three loaves from my 5kg of dough, one to eat now and two to freeze for later, and put the rest by to make flat breads, pizza bases and grissini during the week, which will leave just enough old dough in 9 or 10 days time to start the next batch.

The slow rise, low added yeast approach addresses most of the problems that are associated with modern bread and I can nothing better than to point you in the direction of Bread Matters by Andrew Whitely where he expounds on the issue in great and interesting length. If you can afford it, taking one of his courses is well worth while too.

Left over bread shouldn't be wasted either. I've just made some great croutons with some old hard crusts I found in the bread bin, so hard that they had to be cracked through with the bread knife to make cubes. Spread out on a baking tray and left for 20 minutes in a medium oven they turned golden and crispy without the need for any added oil at all. Ideal for eating with the leftover soup from Monday.

Day 8 - Rainbow Bean Soup

A pretty picture of some of the vegetables.

Brightly coloured fruit and vegetables are considered healthy because their colours are complex compounds of chemicals which are good for the body. The simplest way to ensure you are getting the full range of these useful components is choose vegetables in a variety of colours.

I give you Rainbow Bean soup.

Use the type of beans you prefer. I used pinto beans but red, black or navy beans would all work as long as they are really properly cooked and not at all crunchy when they are added to the soup ingredients.

Panch phoran is a Bengali spice mix comprising mustard seed, cumin seed, fenugreek seed, fennel seed, and "black onion seed" which is actually no relation to onions but the seed of Nigella sativa. If you don't have it substitute what you will from what you have.

Makes plenty for four.

300g approx cooked pinto beans (cook your own from dry or open a tin)

1 tbsp. olive oil
2 small onions, peeled and chopped finely
1 medium (2 small) orange fleshed sweet potato, peeled and chopped.
1 yellow pepper, cleaned and chopped into small cubes
2 stalks of celery, cleaned and chopped
1 small beetroot, peeled and chopped
6 or so button mushrooms, chopped
10 kalamata olives, stones removed and chopped
400g tinned chopped tomatoes with juice
1 dry red chilli
1 tbsp. dried basil
2 tsp. panch phoran
1 tsp. salt reduced vegan stock powder

Lime wedges and gomashio to serve.

Soak for 8 hours and cook your dried beans in a pressure cooker on high for 20 minutes, or open one or two cans and drain and rinse the beans.

Fry all the prepared vegetables except the tomatoes in the oil until they are warm and start to soften, add the beans, herbs, spices and stock powder, the tomatoes with their juice and enough hot water to cover everything comfortably.

Cover the pot and simmer for 30-40 minutes until all the vegetables are cooked through.

Serve in big bowls with a squeeze of lime juice and gomashio to taste.

Day 7 - Pumpkin and Potato Gnocchi

A really simple way to use vegetables we have in abundance from our stores at the moment, Pumpkin and Potato Gnocchi make a good low fat Sunday supper. The recipe is at the end of the post and makes enough for four so when I made these at the end of January I put half in the freezer for another meal. Today we ate them.



They were frozen spread out on trays until hard, then stored in a bag. Freezing them like this meant they don't stick together and you can take out just the amount you need. I made these with really big ridges to take a lot of sauce.



Cook them by adding them to boiling water, just enough at a time that the water continues to boil and there is room for them all to move around. When they rise to the surface use a strainer to remove them from the water. They can be cooked from frozen.



Arrange them in a lightly greased serving dish. Cover the boiled gnocchi with a sauce of your choice. The first time we had these we had them with a garlic and rosemary 'butter', tonight I used a tomato and pumpkin sauce that I had also tucked away in the freezer.



Top the sauce with pine nuts, or other nuts, seeds or breadcrumbs of your choice and bake in a hot oven (220C) for 20 minutes.

Serve with grated vegan cheese or nutritional yeast.

To make the basic gnocchi:

300g potatoes, cooked in their skins, peeled and put through a ricer.
300g mashed pumpkin, use butternut or a Crown type, halved and baked in the oven until soft.
160g plain flour, plus extra as needed.
Salt and pepper to taste.

Make sure your vegetables are not too wet. The pumpkin can be placed in a sieve for an hour or two to drain if necessary but should be o.k. if cooked by baking.

Mash the potato and pumpkin together, season then add the 160g flour and mix and knead until a soft paste that will hold its shape is formed. You might need a little more flour if your pumpkin is very wet but try not to use too much, just enough to bring the dough together and make a single ball from it.

Flour a board well - and several plates or boards to take each finished piece. Divide the dough into quarters and roll each piece into a 2 cm rope. Cut each rope into pieces 2cm long, mark with a fork and place, not touching anything else, on a floured board. You'll need to use flour to stop things sticking. As you mark the gnocchi they will flatten a bit under the fork, carefully lift them up and reshape to a cylinder, this will leave a slight hollow on the underside. That sounds dreadfully confusing but I hope you can see what I mean from the picture of the frozen gnocchi above.

When you've made them all they can be cooked by dropping into boiling water, or frozen as described above.

Can be served immediately after boiling if you don't have time to bake them. Needs a sauce of your choice, a simple tomato one works well but it can be as lightly or strongly flavoured with herbs, garlic etc. as you like.

Day 6 - Curry Night

Curry and rice. A joint venture, Mr. Stripey chose, roasted and ground the spices so I don't really know what was in it but suffice to say it was simple, low fat and good and I'm sure there's no need for me to tell anyone how it's done.

Day 5 - Carrot Soup with Mint and Orange

[no picture]

It is said that soup is one of the food types that takes longest to digest, leaving you feeling fuller longer, so it's always a good idea to start your meal with a bowl of it. Unless of course it's saturated in oil and loaded with salt.

Luckily this recipe is neither.

To make two big bowlfuls you need

15 ml of oil, I used half sesame and half olive
3 large carrots
1 small onion
2 cloves of garlic
2 tsp. finely crumbled dry mint
2 tsp. whole coriander seed, crushed
1/4 tsp. ground white pepper
Zest and juice of one sweet orange
Salt to taste

Slice the carrots and onion very thinly, put into a lidded saucepan with oil. Cover and leave to sweat over a low heat for 10 minutes or so, stirring from time to time so that nothing browns.

Add the crushed garlic, mint, coriander and pepper and stir around, then enough hot water to just cover the carrots. Put in the orange zest and let everything simmer for 20 minutes until the carrots are completely soft.

Use a stick blender to reduce the vegetables to a puree, return to serving temperature and add the juice. Add salt carefully to taste.

Serve in big bowls. Add a swirl of soya yoghurt if you like and enjoy with some crusty bread.

Day 4 - Breakfast Porridge

I don't often put pictures of the cats on this blog - after all they're nasty unhygienic creatures who have no place in a kitchen but try telling them that. On the other hand a picture of a bowl of steaming porridge is no easy task to make look photographically attractive, particularly when said bowlful was consumed several hours ago.

The key to a healthy diet is often claimed to be a good breakfast. This is an excellent breakfast if not particularly original or inventive.

For one substantial serving

50g of porridge oats (this is conveniently one small coffee cup here)
3 times its volume in water
a small handful of dried fruit - I favour some excellent large raisins and chopped unsulphured apricots at the moment. Don't overdo it, dried fruit is high in sugar but still good for you in moderation.

Put all of this into a heavy bottomed pan and allow to heat gently. Keep stirring and when it starts to simmer continue for two or three minutes more. Put the porridge into your serving bowl.

Then add as you fancy some chopped fresh fruit, bananas are good or grapes.

Finally, some completely optional items;

It's traditional to add a pinch of salt to porridge. That's fine but I'm leaving it out this month.
A sprinkle of cinnamon is nice if you like it and good for you apparently.
Two teaspoons of muscovado sugar (that's the very dark stuff from Barbados) is delicious but you might not want to add extra sweetness.
Non dairy milk, soy or nut, poured over particularly with the sugar, makes this brilliant in my opinion.

And that's that. With a cup of tea and a bowl of porridge you'll feel as fat and happy as a snoozing cat all the way until lunchtime.

Day 3 - Restaurant Review

Not doing terribly well at this healthy eating month - or am I? Last night we went to Itadaki Zen, 39 King's Cross Road, King's Cross, WC1X 9BJ, a vegan Japanese restaurant in London claiming to be the only such in Europe. Vegan and Japanese, got to be healthy!

Some of the food we had is shown above, I'm sorry the pictures aren't great but phone pictures taken in haste rarely are.

It's a difficult review to write. We had a lovely time, enjoyed our meal and the staff were helpful and friendly but there were disappointments in lots of small ways and it seems ungrateful somehow to list them.

I think the size of our party of nine might have flustered them a bit. We're a well established group and we've brought more than one kitchen to its knees with our greed and disparate requests.

The menu is ordered in such a way that it's difficult to put together a meal that is harmonious. It's easy to choose a couple of items for a quick lunch but for a full dinner it is a frustrating confusion. The restaurant has tried to overcome this by offering some sets. Most of the people with me chose one or other of these sets but the differences from set to set didn't really amount to much. There was too much duplication to make it feel like a real choice.

I ordered off piste and chose some maki sushi which I felt was a bit dry and lacking in sushi su, an onion pancake called jijimi which was delicious, tofu dengaku, kimchi, miso soup and a bowl of rice (which never came but we got a free pudding so nothing to bitch about). The problem was the order these arrived in, sushi, kimchi, soup, then the pancake, eventually the tofu, it was all a bit disorganised. The kitchen sent down some extra Kimbab which was also a bit dry but a nice thought, making my meal more Korean in the end than Japanese. The others who ordered individually had the same problems.

People ordering the sets fared slightly better as their 'courses' were complete. They also got a tremendous amount of food, making the cost of about £21 per head extremely good value.

Puddings aren't very varied and the only oddity, a sweet potato mochi, was so odd that it caused some hilarity but then, you don't go to a Japanese restaurant for sweets.

The staff were accommodating and brought us a little plate of natto so that the virgins (most of us) could try it. When I got past my fear of the slime I found it quite good, although at the time I described the taste as somewhere between acacia seeds and a dustbin.

The bill for nine came to about £240 to include service and a few bottles of wine. Not bad for London. Take cash if you can.

So it's hard to give marks out of 10 at this stage - we may have to go back and try again.

Day 2 - Salt replacer

Actually I should call this Salt Extender rather than replacer. Gomashio is a traditional Japanese seasoning also used in Zen and macrobiotic cooking. It consists of sesame seeds mixed with a small proportion of salt, usually 8 parts sesame to 1 part salt by weight, and is sprinkled on rice and other dishes. Sesame seeds are an inspired way of extending and improving on salt. They are rich in magnesium and iron, contain fibre, vitamin B1 and vitamin E. They also taste great.

So it's good stuff and ideal for a salt reducing regime. I've always loved it but never tried making it myself before so I went on a trip around the web and found this excellent recipe at Just Bento which suits me because I also favour a grey salt from Brittany and the comments about grinding could have been my own. There's also a version there for making the gomashio on the hob. Makiko says, and I agree, that a 10:1 proportion of sesame to salt is easy to calculate and tastes just as good.

To make a good sized jar of Gomashio, which will keep for a while take 200g of raw (untoasted) sesame seeds and arrange them on an oven tray with a good rim. The rim is important because you need to stir the seeds during processing and don't want them spilling everywhere.

Pop them in the oven with the thermostat set at 150C for 5 to 10 minutes (depends if the oven was hot when they went in) while you prepare a brine with 20g of good quality salt in about 150-200 ml of hot water. Make sure all the salt crystals have dissolved.

Get the tray of seeds out of the oven, they'll be hot and starting to toast (but not burnt!) so use gloves. Drizzle your brine over the sesame using a spoon so that there are no tsunami like events that wash everything away. It will sizzle wonderfully.

Stir everything around until all the seeds are wet then put the tray back into the oven and reduce the heat to about 120C. Leave to dry for about an hour giving everything a stir halfway through.

At the end of the hour, give it all another stir to make sure all the seeds are separate and there are no soggy pockets then turn off the heat and leave the tray in the cooling oven to dry completely. When cold store in an airtight jar.

It's then ready to be sprinkled over rice or beans, used whole or ground down a little in the pestle and mortar for a finer sprinkle. Salty and good for you.

Day 1

Of course, as soon as I try to examine our diet to see where healthy improvements can be made it seems easy to justify nearly every culinary decision and entrenched habit. But I'm still on for the project. I'll start by listing the aims:

1) Reduce alcohol intake to the month to zero. This is for health reasons, to give my system time to regroup and repair without adding additional challenges.

2) Cut down on oils and fats. Actually, as vegans who make most of our own food we don't really get through excessive amounts of fats but it's tempting to eat fried food more often than we should and I have become a little bit generous when putting that first dollop of oil into the pan at the start of the cooking process, so this month is time to be a bit more thoughtful about it.

3) Make sure that the daily five fruit and vegetable target is met. This is an almost entirely arbitrary figure dreamed up by social engineers who want to make healthy eating easier for morons but it does represent a target that will be achievable by swapping fruit for my afternoon tea and toast.

4) Pay more consideration to my salt intake. I'm not afraid of salt but enjoy it to the extent that I wonder if I'm damaging my palate by over salting. I have high blood pressure so salt is generally considered a bad thing, but I'm on a medication which expels salt and so leaves me at risk of a potassium imbalance giving me something of a let out. On the other hand, making nearly all our own food I have much better control over our salt intake than many and by my estimation we are coming in at pretty much the NHS recommendation of 6g daily. This month I hope to reduce that by half or so. This may have benefits for my sense of taste.

5) We don't do many cakes or puddings. Anything we have this month will be the lower fat reduced sugar options just for completeness. However, certain junk foods, chips from the shop, weekly takeaways and so on will be suspended for the period, just to break the habit.

6) Supplements; we rarely use supplements to our diet but for the month a daily low dosage B12 tablet and some other trace minerals seem attractive. Also some cold pressed oil rich in omega 3 for salads.

What the month is not about:

It's not about abstinence for the sake of it. I have a couple of dinner dates and Valentine's day booked for the month and I intend to enjoy those outings, although I'll try to keep the alcohol free bit true and avoid anything excessively rich.

It's not about weight loss. Not trying or intending to lose weight and if I'm hungry I'll eat, but I'll try to eat healthier alternatives.

Orange Salad

This is a simple side salad that can be eaten as a snack to vary the monotony of a fruit diet!

Carefully peel and slice some sweet juicy oranges catching all the juices. Finely slice a red (or yellow) onion and divide into rings. Arrange the orange slices and onion rings attractively in your serving dish. Pour over the juices, season with a little finely ground pepper and decorate with a small spoonful of capers and pomegranate seeds.