Firewalking in Bristol

After firewalking (she says nonchalantly – of more later) we ate by candlelight (see pic) wholefood vegetarian dishes we had bought to share: tofu, sprouts and potato salads, hummus, homebaked spelt loaves and a coconut-apple dish to round off the feast.

In a forgotten farm lane in the heart of Bristol city, the Larch barn (our home for seven hours) made eco-living a reality. Powered solely by solar panels on a grey-cloudy day, the sudden departure of electricity plunged us would-be firewalkers into dramatic darkness.

The candles sent shadows flying to the wooden eaves.

The fire we had built earlier in the rare November light was burning brightly in the winter night.  Waiting.

We had prepared: voiced some fears (and did not exhaust my list). It was striking to hear others express sometimes identical anxieties – I was not alone when gripped by irrational thoughts.

Sumir, our firewalking teacher, guided our 12-strong group like a gentle young father. Firewalking four years ago in California had been the catalyst for jacking in a sensible career to follow his dream of making music.

I am slightly group-averse but something about facing this fire-filled experience broke through my usual social barriers. We stood on the cold grass in our bare feet.

Samir raked the fire so the embers glowed.

The first person crossed the red-hot dust and I followed as if caught in her eddy.

I walked, as instructed, at my normal pace. I was crunching on hot embers but it did not hurt – no minor blisters or any ill after-effects. I accepted and gave hugs to my fellow firewalkers. We crossed and recrossed the embers several times. It was exhilarating.

And of course I had to write about it.

Is it OK to boast?

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Beetroot soup

Sharon made this soup for me. We have known each other since we were eight, and been best friends since we were 21. She recently gave me a card. It said: “A friend is someone who likes you even though they know you”.

I have a demanding digestion that cannot tolerate tomatoes but finds root vegetables soothing. Knowing my idiosyncratic dietary needs, my pal made me a Winkler-friendly beetroot soup.

Nothing beats the beet. Its colour is dramatic but it’s not all for show. Those vivid reds deliver nutritional punch, a detoxifying antioxidant called betacyanin, according to nutritionist Natalie Savona.

I love this recipe because it uses the whole beetroot so no waste. An electric blender gives the soup its smooth texture. Wear an apron when preparing and cooking beetroot as it can stain.

Sharon found the recipe in her beloved Moro cookbook. Here’s a lazier version:

You need two bunches (750g) of organic beetroot, 1 large onion, 1 potato, oil, cumin, fresh parsley and a tasty vinegar such as red wine or balsamic.

1. Cook sliced onion in 4 tablespoons of olive oil for 10 gentle minutes in a large pan

2. Add 2 rounded teaspoons of cumin (or more – 2 did not make it taste cumin-y, or grind some fresh)

3. Stir cumin and onions for a minute till the cumin releases its aroma

4. To the onion potion add beetroot – 750g previously peeled and diced quite small

5. Also one peeled and diced potato to thicken the soup (hey, do we really need to peel pots? I am gonna experiment without). Note: the smaller the diced cubes the less time they take to cook

5. Add 1.25 litre of water and simmer for 15 minutes or until veg is easy-to-munch

6. Blend soup, return to the pan with 2 tablespoons of red wine vinegar (or balsamic?) and season to taste

7. Add fresh parsley (or coriander I say) to each bowl of soup.

Do you like this sort of soup?

Vegan noodle pie

I dedicate this post to fellow blogger, Meg Wolff, who recovered from cancer thanks to a macrobiotic diet and Donna, a woman who befriended me at a Devon train station, who – it turns out – also cured her cancer after following a macrobiotic diet for ten months.

When Donna first approached me at the brightly-lit station on a dark wintry rainy evening last week, saying: “Hi, I am Donna,” I thought she had mistaken me for someone she knew.

Or maybe we had met…in another dimension?! (I love these stories so bear with me, you rationalists).

Donna asked me: “Are you interested in shamanism?”. “Always” I answered because I love real-life mystery.

To which she replied: “You have good medicine around you.” And I was thrilled.

Donna gave me her card and we are now in email contact – that’s how I know about Donna’s macrobiotic diet, and Axminster’s Awareness Centre, and her parents, the original ‘organic kids’, now 89 and 91. So listen up, you young things, eat your organic greens to get some healthy longevity inside you!

This is all the encouragement I need to eat more organic grains and vegetables, keeping animal-food to a minimum…

Donna and my other dedicatee, Meg Wolff, share many beliefs including the magic of writing things down.

Go visit Meg Wolff’s inspiring blog and I won’t even mind if you don’t come back.

Ah, you are back. OK, so Meg sent a newsletter which included a recipe for vegan lasagna. As a mama, I made lasagna but never considered how to veganise it – until this moment!

So I played around with Meg’s original recipe and here is mine – all ingredients from my local organic shop, the Better Food Company.

I peeled and chopped a big slice of pumpkin, putting the chopped-up pieces gently oiled, in a roasting pan to sizzle away in a medium-hot oven for 40 minutes.

For oil, I used Clearspring organic sunflower seed oil (first cold pressing for a naturally-nutty taste), a new discovery thanks to speaking coach, John Dawson.

While the pumpkin pieces were doing their thing in the oven, I made a vegan white sauce with organic soya milk, sunflower margarine and Dove’s rye flour, adding sliced fennel and mushroom, and tamari sauce, for interest and taste.

Then I drained and mashed 450g of tofu with gently-fried slices of onions and some sprinkling of smoked paprika.

I dunked 50g of gluten-free buckwheat noodles in a pan of boiling water until they softened – about five minutes.

Then I assembled my layers into an oiled-casserole dish, starting with the drained noodles covered with half the fennel and mushroom sauce, followed by the mashed-up tofu and the roasted pumpkin pieces, followed by the rest of the sauce – and baked it for 20 minutes.

I served it with fresh mustard leaves which grow on my balcony in salad pots from Cleeve nursery bought at the Organic Food Festival in Bristol last September – an easy way to have fresh leaves (see pic below)!

It was comfort food-supreme with the baked noodles reminiscent of lokshen pudding from the alter heim.

Happy Obama week!

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Bread to breast

Image via Wikipedia

My first blog competition yielded two entrants and both were stunners.

I asked: “food bloggers, what is your favourite real food? Its tastes are enticing but not from a laboratory and it nourishes as nature intended.”

The prize? A DVD of the Austrian documentary, Our Daily Bread. I had organised its London premiere in October 2006 at the Institut Français on behalf of the Soil Association and the Guild of Food Writers. My brilliant colleague, Craig Sams, kindly introduced it. Our Daily Bread records the drama of industrial food production, without comment and with a keen eye for beauty in the wierdest places.

I am sending this DVD to Helen who wrote a superb winning post at her food blog, Haddock in the Kitchen. She brought all the issues in the film to life but with a hopeful spin.

Choosing bread as her favourite real food, Helen, who lives in rural France, explained how the local boulangeries are in danger of dying out and how “the ubiquitous sliced loaf is enjoying an increasingly high profile on supermarket shelves”.

However the country’s lively food culture won’t take this lying down and the French (who have hung on their flour mills unlike the Brits) are taking home-baking to heart: “There are literally mountains of bread machines for sale in every supermarket – with a price to suit every pocket,” writes Helen.

Helen explains how best to use a bread machine; she uses hers to mix and prove the dough, and her beloved Aga to bake it in.

My second entrant is Kate from A Merrier World whose post takes us on an info-packed journey, starting with the importance of play. This is how children learn: with touch and smell and feeling free to be creative. (My favourite way to learn too!).

Kate describes how home-baking provides those early sensory impressions hopefully laying the firm foundation for adult confidence in the kitchen.

I am sending Kate mix. by James McIntosh, the home economist on a mission to get us all cooking again by giving the quantities and instructions needed for everyday recipes.

Taking up my theme of how processed food is laced with cheap additives, Kate tells the story of the dangerous misuse of melamine to make food seem more protein-filled. She ends by reporting on the return to breastfeeding to avoid such contaminants.

Breastfeeding is a powerful example of a natural, real and healthy food that has been replaced by a money-making alternative.

Women are under great pressure not to breastfeed and those complex reasons are analysed in one of my top-favourite book, The Politics of Breastfeeding – when breasts are bad for business, by Gabrielle Palmer.

But then women can also feel under pressure if they want to  breastfeed and it did not work out. So this is no guilt-trip!

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