Just Humans Being...

Follow my blog with Bloglovin Day 15 World Vegan Month. Yesterday we were out all day.  A glimpse of sun through the clouds and torrential rain. We didn't expect to be finishing work in the dark, but one of our jobs was on a closed road and in the freezing wind and rain we had to leave the car and walk with all our cleaning equipment. The job took longer than we thought and on leaving we realised that we would have to return to the car in complete darkness...our only head torch was running low, needing a  recharge and there are no streetlights on that road, so not only was it very cold (the road is quite exposed and high above the sea), but we could barely see!  Lucky for us, we had earlier called into  Baker Tom's - a surprise discovery in St Awful and bought vegan pasties, which were very welcome...it was too dark for a photo, but they were ok. Anyway, our leftovers from Wednesday were put aside for this evening and what looks like a dish of

Day 13 World Vegan Month. Tonight's dinner has a spicy and nutritious kick. All organic, our chilli contains: onions, garlic, fresh ginger, butternut squash, red pepper, mushrooms, finely chopped tofu, brown lentils, red kidney beans and haricot beans.  Fried up in red wine, turmeric, cumin, chilli flakes and smoked paprika. We also added yesterday's leftover potato wedges, which we chopped into bite size pieces, some French passata and the juice of one lemon. Served with brown rice cooked in turmeric, as well as crispy kale and sesame seeds fried in soy sauce and black pepper. This meal contains lots of plant protein, calcium, iron and various B vitamins, as well as numerous other minerals and vitamins. It's also oil free, easy to make and absolutely delicious! Here's another version of  Our Chilli Recipe if you are interested - this previous post also features our cornbread recipe. Enjoy!!! Love Kay and Sime xx

Day 12 World Vegan Month. We like to make nut roasts, bhajis and burger-like patties and we pretty much follow the same process. Today we made these Walnut and Mushroom Burgers and potato wedges and we were so hungry by the time it was all ready - that we basically shoved it on the plate and ate it! The bread rolls and salad leaves were just cheap out-of-date supermarket ones that Sime picked up yesterday for a few pence (he can't resist a bargain). The recipe we use is similar to the one on this previous post: Our Simple Burger Recipe We used our food processor to whizz up around 200g of breadcrumbs, added 100g of walnuts and 100g of  mushrooms fried in soy sauce with 1 onion and 6 cloves of garlic.  Easy, stodgy...perfect for a cold day like today! Love Kay and Sime xx

Day 11 of World Vegan Month. For lunch today, we stir-fried onions, garlic, carrots, tomatoes, mushrooms and kale with soy sauce, fresh ginger, ground cumin and a good handful of peanuts. We cooked it up for around 15 minutes and added a heaped teaspoon of miso paste, juice of half an orange and a sprinkle of ground black pepper. Easy to make and a delicious combination of flavours! We served it with whole wheat spaghetti (which works well as noodles) and a green salad underneath. Sometimes we add peanut butter to the pasta/noodles, which is lovely too - if you like peanuts! Let us know if you try it and if so, what do you think? Night, night Love Kay and Sime xx

We have arrived home to a chilly and wet Cornwall, where our lovely Fleaby was waiting in the barn for us and has wanted lots of cuddles and fuss. We took a ferry from Roscoff in Brittany to Plymouth and for the first time, we experienced armed military police on board the ship...apparently for our security! As always, we take our picnic basket with us and enjoyed our usual feast of salad with rustic baguette and a vegan forest vegetable p âté. Last night, we were welcomed home with a supper of foraged food prepared by Sara at Cotna, which was delicious...unfortunately, we didn't get any photos. Today, we have cooked a simple stir-fry for Day 10 of World Vegan Month. We fried carrots with spring onions in soy sauce, ground turmeric and cumin... Then added chunky cloves of garlic, mushrooms and kale. Plus a Puy lentil and soya bean mix from France and some brown rice.  Finishing off with the juice of a whole lemon and some ground black pepper.

Day 6 of  World Vegan Month. We've been out all day exploring the Golfe du Morbihan...which is lovely and on return, we wanted to make something quick. As we had a few carrots and lentils, we decided to make a quick version of our lentil soup. It turned out a bit thin, but was tasty, warm and perfect with the crusty bread we had picked up. The place we are staying in has a blender, so we were able to whizz it up. We used 4 cloves of garlic, 1 onion, 4 carrots, 1 potato and approximately 2 tablespoons of red lentils (we would normally use more, but it was all we had). We boiled/simmered the lentils, added the potato and fried the rest of the veg with soy sauce and also added cumin, smoked paprika and black pepper. We whizzed it all up with some soya milk too and unfortunately this was the only photo we took, just after we put the soup back in the pan to warm through... Here is a more reliable recipe from a post some years ago...you can add fresh cori

We have travelled from the Auvergne, through the Loire and are now on the south east edge of Brittany in a lovely space. Finding places with kitchens is always important, as we like to cook! Tonight's dinner was fresh organic broccoli from the Biocoop, which we steamed for 5 minutes, then fried with 5 cloves of garlic and 1 red onion in soy sauce with dried basil and black pepper. We also added a tin of mixed beans and sweetcorn and finished with the juice of half a lemon. We served it with last night's leftover tabbouleh and a mixed salad. It's always good to have an opportunity to cook when travelling and it doesn't have to be difficult or long-winded. This place is perfect and it's obvious that the owners are enthusiastic cooks themselves, as the kitchen is well-equipped!  Another nice space to be!  This is Day 5 of World Vegan Month. Love Kay and Sime xx

The light is terrible in this kitchen at night, but here is our Day 2 food post for World Vegan Month. We've made a Bolognese with haricot beans and veggies and served with a green salad. Here is a previous post for the recipe: Our Bean Bolognese Recipe Enjoy! Love Kay and Sime xx

Halloween and All Saint's Day (La Toussaint) is a big event here in France and it has been for a long time, probably as big as in North America. We remember being in Paris with our kidlets many years ago over Halloween and seeing lots of decorated places and kids dressed up, which we didn't really see much of in the UK at the time. Our hotel overlooked one of the city's large cemeteries and on November 1st, we woke up to an incredible sight - the cemetery was absolutely buzzing with people bearing flowers and gifts...it was fascinating for us all to see and experience.    At the moment, we are house and kitty sitting in the Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes region of France and there is much activity in the cemetery of this rural village this week, as families honour their dead loved ones. Today has been a quiet day for us, we are happy to stay away from the Halloween celebrations and instead just enjoy the peace of this lovely house, cuddle lots of kitties, feast and relax.

As lots of you will be aware...we eat porridge every day. When we go away, we take all our ingredients, pan and utensils so we can continue to eat it on the road. We have recently introduced various hosts to the benefits of eating a daily bowl of what we call superfood porridge and have gone through the recipe with them, but we did promise to make a video too, so here it is! It's funny, but we still get contacted by old blog followers and B&B guests from years ago asking us for a reminder of the recipe.  Simon made it back then and would beautifully hand write the recipe out for anyone who requested it. One guest wrote to say after using Simon's recipe for years, she went and knocked a cup of coffee over it and could no longer read it, so this spurred us on to create a copy on our laptop and now we just press a couple of buttons and off it goes attached to an email (yes, we realise this technology has been around for a while, but still - it's a cool id

After many years of bread making, I have finally learned (thanks to Sara at Cotna Eco Retreat ) how to make sourdough this year - using a wonderful old starter made from organic rye flour and pure spring water. As usual, I've tweaked the original bread recipe just because I like to make things simple and we both prefer denser breads.  ♥ Scroll down for the recipe ♥ Feeding the starter. I keep the starter in the fridge until ready to use, then add organic rye flour and warm water. This is how it looks when mixed in... And this is after around 8 hours. The starter gets added to the other bread ingredients and forms the dough.  I use Shipton Mill organic flours and mix it up for variety. Our favourites are stoneground wholemeal, extra coarse wholemeal, wholemeal spelt, light malthouse and dark rye. This is how it looks after being left usually overnight. I line the banneton (proofing basket) I like to use polenta and sesame seeds, inst