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Showing posts with the label Whole Food Plant Based

Clive's Pies

  It's not often that we big up a food company, but since sampling a few pies from Clive's range we felt that we should extoll the virtues of these delicious products. We've been vegan for a long time now and it's commonplace to find plant based foods in most outlets, of course this doesn't mean that they are all nutritious and of good quality - you have to sort the wheat from the chaff.  We took a chance on a couple of Clive's pies some time ago when we discovered our then local wholefood store, Archie Brown's in Truro stocked them. We each tried their creamy mushroom pies and loved them...really tasty, well filled and with a good crust. We are not huge fans of pastry, so were pleasantly surprised as to how good they were. We dipped our vegan toes into the Clive's portfolio and were rewarded with pies of consistently good quality. Other brands we've tried have been a bit hit and miss in terms of taste and consistency, but Clive's hit the mark ev

Dhal

  Red lentils are an absolute favourite and we have both felt the same way about them for many years...our go to comfort food, whatever the weather!  Put them together with some vegetables, miso and brown rice and we have the ultimate in simple, nourishing food.  It's one of the first vegan ingredients we attempted to cook over 34 years ago - with very little in the way of recipe books and we had no idea how to get them just right; resorting to beans on toast over and over again, but sheer determination and much experimentation got us there in the end! Now we enjoy them at least twice a week, these days in a pan of seasonal vegetables cooked with spices and fresh herbs - sometimes using the leftovers for roasts and burgers...they are just so versatile and we adore their subtle, almost bland flavour and creamy texture.   Red Lentil Dhal Recipe   (4 Servings) Ingredients 8oz red lentils 1 medium onion 4 garlic cloves Selection of seasonal vegetables Selection of spices (black cumin,

And The Food Goes On...

We like to keep our meals simple, preferably in one pot and do eat lots of stews, chilis and curries. We also never throw food away and any leftovers will get added to the next day's meal and so on... All our meals start life as a pan of freshly chopped veg. So far we have: 3 onions, 4 cloves of garlic, 1 sweet potato, 2 medium tomatoes, 1 large red pepper and 1 courgette with a good sprinkle of dried basil, oregano and smoked paprika. This is a tub of leftover stew from the weekend. If you follow us on Instagram @thesmithsontour you will see a post from Saturday regarding the ingredients, some of which is from the garden. The leftovers whizzed up and added to the mix as a thick stock. We also added a little water and stir-fried/simmered for around 20 minutes. Next up mushrooms. Sliced and chucked in for a further 5 minutes of simmering. Then added chopped kale from the garden... and lastly - we added beans (today we used Suma's tinned black beans) and juice of half a lemon. Co

Plant Perfect

  We were asked recently if we still stick to Ann and Caldwell Esselstyn's principles...being vegan and oil free and yes we do. It's over 8 years now since we stopped using oil and apart from when other people cook or we buy something while out we continue to eat the same healthy way - always vegan and oil-free.  Simple vegan meals really don't take long to make and are easy enough to cook from scratch each day. There isn't any need to spend huge amounts of money on junk food, when simply cooked vegetables taste so good! We wrote a blog post about this some years ago:  When Everyone Runs, Stand Still  but thought it would be good to remind people... It was Caldwell's 87th birthday on December 12th and he continues to enjoy good health...35 years of eating a whole food, plant based, oil-free diet has obviously worked wonders!  As a reminder, here is the list again... 1. Eat oats  (Old Fashioned) for breakfast, any way you can as oatmeal, as a cold cereal as we do

Chickpea and Foraged Greens Bake

Bakes are a great way to use up the end of a loaf and any leftover cooked veg. The mixture can be made into patties, sausages and balls, but the laziest easiest way is to bung it all into a tin and bake! We make them a lot because they are easy, tasty and filling... This one has 1 tin of chickpeas, 4oz of our homemade sourdough crumbs, leftover purple sprouting, leeks fried in soy sauce and spices, a blob of tomato puree, wild garlic and nettles. We put all the ingredients together in the food processor...  Then into a loaf tin and bake on a medium heat for 30 minutes. Take out of the oven and leave for 10 minutes before turning out. We had half the bake between us for our second breakfast on Sunday and the leftovers on Monday with bread, salad and pickles. It really is easy to eat simple, healthy vegan dishes and we love it! Hope you are all keeping well. Love Kay and Sime xx

Keeping It Simple

Oven baked potatoes with haricot bean hummus, baked tomato and mushrooms and silken tofu pan-fried with kale, onion and lots of crushed garlic. A simple tasty feast...vegan, organic and oil-free. Today's hummus is made with haricot beans, fresh lemon juice, fresh parsley, ground cumin, smoked paprika, a tiny pinch of Cornish sea salt and some crushed peppercorns.  We love baked tomatoes. These have fresh oregano pushed into the centres and a sprinkle of black pepper. We bake them for 30 minutes. Kale, onion and garlic frying in water and soy sauce, turmeric and cumin. We added silken tofu after 10 minutes and fried for another 10.  Sime's plate...piled high, as usual! Since we stopped using oil some years ago, we found that soy sauce, miso and lemon juice are great alternatives, though organic vegetables seem to be naturally more flavoursome, especially oven roasted vegetables. We rarely follow recipes and tend to make up meals wit

Lonely Planet Goes Vegan - The Vegan Travel Handbook

                           It's a sign there are big changes afoot, when a company like Lonely Planet acknowledges that veganism is here. Although we are not into buying stuff anymore, we do have a passion for books...especially travel books! We have collected many travel guides over the years and we continue to use our French ones even though they are probably over 20 years old now. We bought our first Lonely Planet Publication in 1991... Europe On A Shoestring ! We found it to be a great resource, using it frequently to do research when planning trips, as well as taking it with us.  We love nothing more than sitting with maps and travel books, dreaming and planning our next or future adventures and always try to find whatever information we can about places to eat, so when we heard about a new vegan travel guide - we had to check it out. Click here for a preview of The Vegan Travel Handbook  The book features various lists like The World's

Red Lentil and Garlicky Vegetable Stew and Herb Dumplings - Vegan, Organic and Oil-Free

All this cold weather makes us crave warming stews or hippy slop as we usually call it! For this one we fried 1/3 of a butternut squash, half a red pepper, 2 carrots, a handful of green beans and a bulb of garlic with a good sprinkle of mixed herbs, water and a splash of red wine for around 10 minutes. Then we added a can of chopped tomatoes, 8oz water, 4oz washed red lentils, a teaspoon of ground cumin and simmered for around 20 minutes. We made the dumplings earlier, as it's good to let the batter stand for at least 15 minutes. We used to make the dumplings with vegetable suet, but have used rice as a replacement for years now. This time we used 6oz brown rice cooked in turmeric, 3oz wholemeal flour, half a chopped apple, 2 teaspoons of ground flax seeds, 1 teaspoon each of  baking powder, dried sage and thyme, a good handful of fresh parsley, a pinch of Cornish sea salt and a sprinkle of black pepper. Use a tablespoon to scoop enough of the mi