River Cottage

One of you witty people wrote a comment on one of my posts referring to vegetables as “the dark side of the force”, and then apologised for it.  Can I say there is absolutely no need to apologise for such non-pc humour when commenting on my blog, in fact I must insist upon it.

Yes, I can fully understand why one would feel that some vegetables are evil, lightsaber wielding beasts, but I really suppose it depends which camp you are in – for the vegetable lovers, its Legumes Skywalker and for the veggie haters, its Darth Vegetables starring in Starve Wars.  The hardcore carnivores are the one’s happy to chow down on a spit roast Chewbacca (I’m going to go to hell aren’t I?) and the more kinky of you might spend nights dreaming about smothering Princess Leia in sunflower oil and popping her into your deep, fat fryer. 

Anyway, I think the above paragraph shows you that you’re going to get absolutely no sense out of me because I’ve gone Christmas Happiness Mad.  I’m so excited I hardly know what to do with myself.  I’m one of these people that LOVES CHRISTMAS; there are definitely no bah humbugisms or midnight clanking of heavy chains here.

I have stuck to my veggie eating this week though and I’ve also stuck to working my way through the RC book which I am continuing with, but I’ve decided this is my last blog on the subject (unless anything highly exciting happens with it), because after Christmas I’m going to embark on learning how to make raw food in the form of desserts and puddings (my favourite food), but before a bit about that, I’d like to write my conclusion of using the River Cottage book to help ease into a vegetarian lifestyle.

I think it’s definitely worked in encouraging me to eat more vegan food (I say vegan because of my Zero Cheese Policy) and its 100% helped me learn how to cook pulses (I actually had a phobia of pulses before the RC Veg book, now I eat them every day) and vegetables so they are filling, sustaining and taste good.  As you will know, this hasn’t been drama-free and there are some veggie foodstuffs that I just can’t, no I won’t touch ever again as they make me either shudder (and not in a good way) or they make me into Mrs G (for Guffer) Gufferson (bad wind to a level of social unacceptability).  These minor issues aside, I think overall, this self-imposed experiment has been rather successful as I now feel confident in eating a good variety of vegetables and that the majority of my diet can be vegan/veggie based.  So thank you River Cottage, you are the daddy.

Now, before I go screaming around the house like a Springer Spaniel on amphetamines in a whirlwind of Yuletide celebration, I need to tell you about these raw food chocolate brownies I ate the other day.  Actually, that’s not strictly true, I did eat them the other day, but I’ve also eaten them every day since.  If I don’t reel it in soon, I’m going to have a bad case of Get Extremely Fat-itis before I’ve even dived into my Christmas trough and done my best impression of someone at the Piggy Olympics.

They’re called Yummy Scrummy Raw Chocolate Brownies and they are hand-made by a small Wiltshire company called Elements for Life that specialise in raw chocolate.  They do raw chocolate making kits and everything and after seeing the rather lovely Laura Coxeter on the RC programme a few weeks ago, I’m totally sold on the concept of raw food – in the form of puddings.  Eating raw food as a way of life at this stage is a step too far; I need to build up to that, but as healthy sweet stuff, perfect.  I’ve realised after eating these brownies that there really is no good reason to eat cane sugar or any other kind of unhealthy dessert/pudding when you could eat these marvellous little creatures.  They don’t contain any sugar, just raw chocolate, nuts and dried fruit and MY GOD THEY ARE DELICIOUS.  I feel a bit upset that I didn’t discover this sooner as I would like to have replaced all of our Christmas chocolate with these, so next year I’m going to make all of my own! 

Anyway, that will be my next blog topic for January, for those of you who are desperate for more punishment after reading my almost seemingly constant PMT while attempting to forgo la viande et la poissons.

So, thank you for those who have read and commented on my blog and for all of your advice and assistance. And thank you to River Cottage for forgetting that they’d made me Blogger of the Week about a month ago and left me up there, making me look popular and clever.  A HAPPY CHRIMBLY TO YOU ALL!!!!