House sitting weekend

Last weekend Marcus and I did house sitting in his friends house near by. They lived in a big house with fantastic kitchen and dry store. For me, it was exciting to cook in such beautiful kitchen. It was my dream kitchen (used to be) to have AGA oven, and an island in the middle of kitchen with cool stools. The kitchen had everything. Fantastic dry store, plenty gadgets, nice white plates, light and airy dining room and conservatory. Dry store like that always reminds me of when I used to work in restaurants. Just took whatever I needed from there and went back into kitchen and carried on cooking/baking. Fantastic. And when I looked at ingredients I could use excited me also to make up some yummy dinners. First night I cooked " Tofu sausage, quinoa and butter bean mash with raw broad beans and olive salsa" Basically, vegan version of bangers and mash. I found butter bean (tin) in the dry store, I knew it wouldn't make enough for mash for us, then I saw quinoa.....so, this is what i did. Cooked quinoa with some dried mushrooms, clove of garlic and splash of tamari. when done, mixed with lemon zest, butter bean, extra virgin olive oil then blitz. In the meantime, lightly brown sausages. Then make salsa. My salsa consisted of: raw broad beans (outer skin removed), sliced good green olives, chopped tomato (with seeds), chopped basil, parsley, grated garlic, lemon juice and lots of olive oil. Fun is to assemble onto plate. I just splodged onto them but can present pretty. Bangers and mash looked like this.

Dessert was vegan ice cream( maple and pecan flavour) with wild strawberry and peach and extra maple syrup! Yummy. I loooooooove maple syrup. I remember when i was a child, I actually drunk maple syrup, I can still do that now. I got such sweet teeth!

Following evening, I cooked pasta dish. We had loads of broad beans picked from near by field. So, I made: Raw spicy tomato sauce with tofu and broad beans. I made everything separately. First I made the sauce by blitzing; tomatoes, black olives, sun dried tomato, roasted pepper, basil, chili and garlic. Then another bowl I mixed chopped basil tofu, broad beans(also soyabeans are nice too!), some herbs and olive oil(extra virgin). Cook buckwheat pasta (our favo pasta), when they are done, add to the bean mix. Put onto plate, spoon the sauce. Finish with some more good olive oil! It's easy and quick. What i love the most of cooking/making food like these(one of reasons) is that less washing up and less greasy and easy to tidy up afterwards! I remember when i used to cook meat, it always stuck on pans, needed to scrub hard, and stunk with fish or meat smell. So, cooking vegan foods are smelly-smell free! Hooray!

Porcini mushroom rice salad

What I recently started making is this: Porcini mushroom and sun-dried tomato rice salad. i just can't get enough of it. I decided I didn't want to eat risotto ( especially white rice) anymore, but still want to eat rice and mushroom together.  I used to cook Porcini mushroom risotto with lemon and herb oil and ricotta ( or feta). It was delicious! Since I got into raw foods, I try to cook as much raw as I can, and healthy as i can,  but I still want to eat food i used to eat. So, I've started to making this rice salad. Cook brown basmati, red camargue and wild rice mix (from waitrose) with handful of dried porcini, chanterelles and splash of tamari. In the mean time, in a bowl, chop some sun-dried tomato, red onion, 1x grated fresh garlic, chopped chili, lots of flat leaf parsley, handful of Greek basil, 1x grated lemon zest and juice, soya bean and some tofu bits. When rice is done, (it takes about 20mins or so, and steam it for another 5mins off heat). Then, fun begins. Mix everything in the bowl, take a good extra virgin olive oil into the bowl, mix well. Maybe add more salt, pepper or tamari at this stage after tasting. I don't eat cheese anymore (except when I go to Greece or abroad!), but adding cheese to this dish is also yummy. I sometimes add this salad with chopped peppers, nut and dried fruits mix as well. If the salad is quite spicy adding spices( coriander, cumin, ginger, harrisa etc), always nice to add dried fruits! then when i serve on plate, i normally garnish with some rocket or watercress. I've started feeling a bit hungry now, I think I'm gonna cook the rice salad this evening and keep some for my lunch tomorrow for work!

Our day in Greece

I absolutely loved waking up mornings with sun rise. sun rose right in front of our house(we hired a little cottage by the sea). When we open the door, here it was. Sun was there. We watched sun rise from sea horizon. It was beautiful. I don't think I ever watched sun rise like that before. Our day started with drinking lemon water. Lemons were from the olive garden. 2nd day there, we explored the garden (full of olive trees). Then we found two lemon trees. We picked them for our teas and water. Smelt wonderful. We were spoiled with fresh spring water, lemons, mountain herbs(mint, oregano, and sage. I'm sure there were more herbs there), and oranges. Then we had breakfast with mug of herbal tea. Our breakfast consisted with; fruits, nuts, hemp mills, sheep's Greek yogurt, and pistachio(or walnuts) honey on top. oh, they were absolutely Divine. some mornings Marcus(he's a very good breakfast chef!) made his special smoothies with home made nutty milk. very rich, fruity and nutritious!

We did qi-gong before (sometimes after) breakfast. it was like whole experience was qi-gong. listening to the sea, watching/listening lives go by(usually sea gulls, fishing boats, waves, rocks, birds and cicada singing). And then we decided to drive our hire car to one of beaches or walked to the beach. When we stayed at home, we had watermelon for our lunch. By the way, eating watermelon in summer reminds me of when i was a child. I used to visit my mum's hometown(Fukushima, by the coast) in summer holiday for a month. It was hot summer especially when i was 14 years old. cicadas singing in background, eating watermelon with sprinkle of sea salt after swimming in the sea.  my sun tan hurt. burnt too much as usual... and looking forward to some dinner. my granny and auntie got some fresh sea foods I loved. I missed my family. This holiday brought up lots of my childhood memories buried deep. Also, some feelings came up! I'm better  dealing with feelings these days.........

When we were on beaches, we had some fruits, nuts, and plenty of spring water. There were some cafe bars where served freshly squeezed orange juice which we loved. It was about €4 for a glass. When we got back to the olive garden, Marcus went to pick some lemons. I was too short(small) to reach to the trees!

Then we had some chill-out with mug of tea. our tea consisted with; mountain tea(some flower heads), dried/fresh mint, (and sage). First, put them in tea bag. Boil some water in a small pan with the tea bag. After boiling for a couple of minutes, take off from heat, steep for 5mins. Drink with slices of lemons. I'd never had sage in my tea before, it was quite nice. we only add a few leaves. (otherwise too much!) as an option, add 1 teaspoon of honey, which makes tea milder in taste. After our tea and chill-out, we had dinner. Marcus set up table, i made dinner. (I didn't cook, made some salad or pasta salad) We brought some packets of  buckwheat pasta from U.K with us. also some seeds mix, trace mix, hemp mills and seaweed. These kind of salad we had during our stay.

Also, Marcus made either smoothies or juice with our dinner. My favo ones were; fresh orange juice, nectarine, and lemon. Pink one was; orange juice, cherries, peaches and watermelon. Both juice/smoothies were absolutely fab. By the way, we did about just over 1liter for 8days. Good extra virgin olive oil like that doesn't taste oily at all.  I dressed both pasta and salad with lemon juice and plenty olive oil. I'm sure that was partly why my skin didn't go dry when I got tanned. Oh, and, plenty of water... that was also important! o.k, this is how much we consumed;

it was only 4th day we did this much. And we found our land lord's olive oil in the kitchen. So, we started on that too. This is our landlord(called Costas)'s oil;

It looked really dodgy in the corner of dark kitchen. i didn't know it was really good oil. When Costas told us, i went into the kitchen, and had good look and taste. Here it was, it was perfectly pressed green oil! Bless, he gave us about 1½ liter to take home. Apparently, it would take about 2 years to pick olives from trees. He said there was no money in olive business, he would keep an half of oil for himself and the other half would go to his olive partner. Cor blimey, he was an character!

Anyway, I feel still good from foods we had on our holiday! Healthy dinners!

Greek Salad and cherries

I've just came back from holiday with Marcus in Greece. I had fantastic time. and had lovely food! we bought locally produced fruits and vegetables for our dinner and breakfasts which were priced up very reasonably. One day when we were at the shop, a farmer turned up with 3 boxes of black cherries to sell to the shop. They looked very fresh. Our shopping lists were; tomatoes, red onions, green and red peppers, peaches, cherries, nectarines, watermelon, cucumber, sheep's Greek yogurt, feta, olives and bananas. All locally produced. They tasted soooooooooooo yummy. They all had full of flavours. Everywhere we walked, we found fig trees, walnuts trees, lemon trees, orange trees, and saw some chestnut trees. It was amazing. Then I understood why Greek food was so simple. They don't need anything to make food taste nice. Because they already have fantastic flavours on their own. I remember when i worked in one of restaurants in London, we did Greek Salad for a starter. I didn't quite get what it meant. I'd never been to Greece that time, I thought Greek Salad was nothing special. But now I can see it's something. All combinations of the vegetables, sweetness from red onion, salty home cured olives, juicy tomatoes, crunchy cucumber.....and salty feta with dried Greek oregano on top, and the most importantly ; extra virgin olive oil . Taste even better when we had Greek salad in a taverna in little village square outside church. It was hot day, sitting by the Jasmin plants smelling the flowers. I'd never experienced such a feeling, it was calm and peaceful. During our stay, we had Greek salad 3times. Once we had it at the cafe by the beach in Damouchari. Their Greek salad looked like this;

It had plenty good olive oil and very salty home cured olives. I thought it was amazing! We didn't eat out often, we made our own salad /pasta every evenings. Only last day we went out and had lunch... Greek salad and chips! Even chips tasted different there. I don't eat chips in England anymore, I get heartburn and tummy ache afterwards. But Greek chips didn't give me heartburn etc at all. I'm not sure what exactly different from English chips, I reckon they use better fat to cook chips. 

What I love about these Greek Salad the most is that chunky feta cheese! Very generous amount! Marcus told me these herbs on top was Greek oregano. Same as Greek mint, they weren't particularly strong, very sutle with flavour. Is it the sun make lively and vibrant foods????? Two nights before we left, our landlord took us to dinner in a taverna in Kissos. Again, it was a small mountain village. we told him we were veggies and didn't drink. Of course, he got us some alcohol drinks.... and we didn't drink them He thought we were strange. But anyway, we ordered some veggie foods including.... Greek salad! Their Greek Salad looked like this;

 Their salad had croutons and dressed with balsamic vinegar. Croutons tasted olive oil. Same as breads, they were yellow, and craft were crunchy with olive oil. They glazed with it. I don't usually eat bread, but  I had 2 slices.( Reminded me of foccacia I used to make. ) Loved them! Loved all foods we had!!!!

Let's go back to cherries. Since I came back, I've been missing Greek cherries. I bought a punnet from local supermarket, they were crap, tasted nothing, really really bland. I didn't understand why. Then I bought ½lb from Bury market on wed. Again, tasted more cherries than previous ones, they were nowhere near as tasty as Greek ones. Hopefully, I can have Polstead cherries this week off Marcus. Polstead(small village, border of Suffolk and Essex) is famous for cherries. In Greece, people were selling their products by side of road. Once we bought ½kg of cherries for €1.20!!!!! Cheap. We thought 1kg were too much so got ½kg, actually, it wouldn't be too much. We ate all in 5 mins! Oh, we found beautiful waterfalls near where we bought cherries. There, we found fig tree with already big figs on them. Everywhere else still had baby ones. It was the magic water which made those figs grow big and happy!

Anyway, Pellion had waterfalls everywhere..... Now, question, where does all these water come from??? Water after water flowing from mountains... Just magic....