What has happened?

Well a number of things really. Firstly we spent several months travelling around the UK WWOOFing with the intention of picking up hints and tips for gardening our way to self sufficiency at some undefined point in the future. Along these travels we saw animals kept in the respectful way they should be, children being brought up knowing exactly where their food came from, including the explicit gory details of the animals’ execution (which, by the way, didn’t seem to upset them in the slightest), we also thought a lot during that time about whether or not a strict vegetarian diet for the UK to feed itself was really possible. Can all those hills used for grazing sheep really be turned over to efficient veg production? No.

So, to cut a long story short, on one of our final WWOOFing stops our hosts offered us meat, and we ate it. First it was rabbit. By this time this was a relatively simple choice. The rabbits had spent their entire lives running around the fields surrounding the farm we were sat in. They led the ultimate free range lifestyle. They were not pumped full of drugs. They were not farmed intensively.  They did not suffer from unnatural diseases as a result of the way they were kept. They weren’t subjected to high levels of stress as they were not transported miles in cramped conditions to meet their fate at an abattoir. They were just rabbits, doing what rabbits do. Then one unexpected second they were no longer rabbit. They were, literally dead meat. Charged with the crime of feasting on the wrong vegetables and  too much frolicking they were shot just when they weren’t looking.

So that was the rabbit. It had wrangled it’s way out of our reasons for not eating meat and ended up in a very tasty rabbit and orange stew. Next came the pig.

But this is “Egg But No Bacon!”

I know, but this is what has happened, and it’s time I let the truth out. It was at the same farm we’d eaten the rabbit. On a return visit we walked into the kitchen to find our host salting bacon. “These are our pigs!” she said rubbing salt into the skin. It was all so matter of fact. To be sure they has been upset. We’d heard several of our WWOOF hosts tell us stories of the first time they killed their pigs. How sad they’d felt, for days even. Grown men crying. This is what responsibility feels like. But along with the tears comes a respect for the animal you could never have buying it shrink wrapped in a supermarket.

So they gave us the choice again. They were planning a roast for dinner. Did we want some? This seemed a step up from the rabbit somehow. I’m not sure why. I think it’s just the scale of it. Pigs are the size of a person. They look at you. They run over to you when you come to feed them scraps. They have personalities. They make odd noises. They are hysterically funny. So this was the choice. Did we want to eat another living being? Something that had lost it’s life only to end up here on the table covered in salt to be sliced, fried and served with an egg? Was this what we wanted?

After some deliberation we both decided to go for it. I’m not sure whether it was a full acceptance of the proposal that it is ok to eat living things, after 4 years of thinking I still don’t feel like I know enough to make a fully honest decision on that. This was more a taking of an opportunity. An experiment if you like. How would it feel to eat an animal that we know had been raised and killed in a way that we thought was acceptable?

So how did it feel? Honestly it was odd at first. I cautiously took a slice of meat from the carving dish and put in on my plate beside the usual pile of potatoes, carrots and peas. I kept looking at it, pushing it around my plate, preferring at first to eat the potatoes. Then, when I thought no one was looking (why?!) I quickly cut a piece, popped it in my mouth and chewed it up. Blimey it was tasty!

This meat was a million miles from the pork I’d given up. It seems like over time we’ve been conned into accepting dry flavourless meat. This home reared meat was completely different. So succulent, and the crackling was something else! So I had the results of my experiment. The dead pig proved everything I had suspected. Badly reared animals result not just in suffering for them, but also the actual flavour of the meat suffers.

So where does this leave me now? Am I destined to return to a diet of frozen chops, chicken fillets and Big Macs? No way. The original arguments still stand. In fact they have if anything been strengthened by these experiences. The intensive animal farmed in entirely unacceptable. I am more convinced than ever of this.

I can’t take on the supermarkets, but for myself my next step is to take as much responsibility as I can for any meat I eat. A neighbour recently brought around a rabbit and taught me how to skin and gut it. Soon I may go out shooting with him. We have bought a quarter of a pig from the farm we worked at. We bought into the pig when it was just weeks old. Beccy and Tony have raised the pig for us in a way we are happy with, and in a few weeks from now we will go to collect it, chopped and bagged up for the freezer. I imagine this quarter of a pig will last us a long time. But in preparation for when it does run out, maybe we should get our own pigs.

So “Egg But No Bacon”, will you be changing your name to “Bacon and Eggs”?

No. Well, at least not for the moment. There is a difficulty with this kind of ethical eating that I’m not sure how to deal with. People know now that we eat meat. What will happen if I go to someone’s house for dinner, or somewhere else I am not absolutely sure of the origin of the meat? I can’t say I’m not vegetarian but I won’t eat your meat. Well maybe I should if I feel strongly enough, it’s just something about it doesn’t sit right. It is guaranteed to turn people against you and anything you have to say before you’ve even began.

We need a new way of talking about meat eating. There is something about saying to people “I am a Vegetarian” that I was never comfortable with. To be honest I think it’s a meaningless term. As I see things you can not BE a Vegetarian, you are just a person and you choose not to eat meat. It is not part of your essential state of being. By saying you are a vegetarian it takes away responsibility and the need to think. If you say, “I can’t eat this because I am a vegetarian”, it doesn’t really mean anything, it is not an explanation. What is happening is that you won’t eat it because for some reason you choose not to.

To clarify and explain why I think the distinction is important I suggest that the opposite is also true. You don’t eat meat because you are a meat eater (or not vegetarian). You eat meat because you choose to. And with that choice comes the responsibility of thinking about what you are doing. Every time you eat a dead animal you take responsibility for how that animal has been kept. By eating the meat you are saying you accept responsibility for the death of the animal and that you approve of the conditions it has been kept in.

It is up to you what those conditions are.

A week after we moved in, the boxes were barely unpacked and it was time to start work on the allotment:

We were given a  grassy patch of land at the bottom of the field, previously unused it meant we’d be starting from scratch. We pegged it all out with sticks and string and set to work taking off the top inch or so of soil. The area is a bit of an odd shape that somehow lent itself to being formed to read ’211′:

In total it gives us somewhere near to 20 square meters of growing space plus we’ve been given another big bed which we will start work on soon as well as space in the poly tunnel! A very good start!

The layout may look bizarre but much thought went into the design… well at least 5 minutes of thought. The fence to the adjoining field runs diagonally along the left side meaning we had this oddly shaped piece of land to work with and so couldn’t do standard straight lines of beds.

We made the two long strips narrow enough so we can reach the middle from either side and so won’t need to stand on the soil when weeding.  They are divided by one path, just wide enough to kneel on for weeding, and another path dividing them from the “2″ is wide enough to fit a wheel barrow down.

We created the 2 thinking it would give us the most bed space while still having easy reach for weeding (and not trampling the soil) all the way to the middle of the bed via the two short paths that jut in. Very clever hey?

The turf squares we removed have all been stacked (grass to grass, soil to soil) in a tower and covered. In a year or so all the grass and weeds will have disappeared and we will be left with lovely new top soil to put back on… hopefully!

We plan on putting planks around all the edges and building up the soil over time to make raised beds, I’ve always found them easier to work, plus they look good, which I think is also important. It is much more pleasant to work in a good looking orderly place. I think it makes the work more enjoyable and therefore you are more likely to keep up with it and not get overwhelmed by the task of weeding a huge sprawling weedy mess.

We put rotted down grass clippings on the beds, covered them with card board, then covered the whole thing with carpet, weighed down with logs to keep the soil warm. Lucky we did, as the next day the temperature dropped suddenly, all the ground froze and it would have been impossible to do anything.

It was pretty amazing really. With the protection of the mulch and carpets the soil underneath stayed fine while all around the ground was frozen solid.

Now all we can do is wait for it to warm up a bit before we can get on with the exciting task of starting to grow our own food. I can’t wait!

Any tips for good things to grow would be great, especially things that grow well in the cold wet climate of mid-Wales!

There has been a reason for this period of silence though, or rather several reasons. The first of these is that most of my time spent at the computer these last couple of months has been devoted to the creation of the website for The Loop Project, which is an exciting new venture of Andy and myself into the unknown and the start of our transition to a low carbon future. Read the launch here.

Basically what we’ll be doing is a bit of what we used to do – web and graphic design (strictly for TLP approved customers) to keep ourselves afloat while we learn and pass on skills which will be important in a world which can no longer rely on cheap energy.

Expect to see a mix of exciting design for like minded groups like this and reports of our adventures in learning and teaching like this, as well as a few of our own “Public Information Campaigns” like this, How to Bake bread, the first of a series of retro style posters designed to promote key skills for resilience.

Download A4 PDF here to print out and stick up anywhere you see fit.

Anyway, that’s enough of a plug for The Loop Project (if you do want any work doing please do get in touch;-)), back to Egg But.

So what can you expect from your favourite vegetarian food blog in the next couple of weeks, what else has been going on?

Well after a near move to a small town half way between Leeds and Manchester Andy and I realised we weren’t quite ready to settle down and set off with our rucksacks again trailing around various farms WWOOFing, including a lovely place not far from Warrington, Ratcliffe Farm, there’ll be a somewhat surprising for some report about what we got up to there.

We went to Wales, got into Cider with Bill Bleasdale who introduced us to the lovely town of Llanidloes which is to become our new home! While we were there we went to a party at this place, a housing co-operative where we found out a flat was coming up for rent. With shared access to 14 acres of land including a 9 acre wood (providing all our firewood for heating) and space in allotment to get growing, we snapped it up! We’ll be there within a week and can’t wait! So Egg But will soon be more settled, but informative, hopefully you’ll come with us on our journey as we develop our veg patch, start keeping chickens and get into life in Mid-Wales. Hurrah! See you soon.

After years of wanting to join in the fun but being too afraid of the huge pans of molten fruit involved, which I imagined would throw great blobs of sugary lava all over my face causing permanent jam splatter scars, I have, under the expert guidance of a friend, finally gone for it and cooked up an enormous pan of lovely plum and apple jam.

Big bubbling pan of jam

As an added bonus all of the fruit collected was free, collected from various sites around Chorlton Ees. Anyone who’s familiar with the Ees will no doubt have noticed the area around Hardy Farm has dozens of apple trees all laden with hundreds of apples which are  ripe for the picking right now. So long as you’re not expecting to find supermarket style perfectly symmetrical shiny unblemished apples there’s probably more than enough for anyone who fancies to go fill as many carrier bags as they can carry.

The plums were from another less well known site on the Ees, the Community Orchard. The Orchard is perhaps an acre of land packed full of plum trees, apple trees, damsons, raspberries and lots of other fruits free for anyone to come along and pick. You just have to find it… and I’m not going to spoil the fun by telling you where it is! I remember the excitement when I first stumbled across it, an adventurous off road sneaky peak through a gap in the hedge revealed something of a secret fruity garden tucked away. Magic.

So with our bags full of lovely fruit all we had to do was work out what to do with it. Here’s where Steph came in. With a growing reputation as Chorlton’s resident jam expert we arranged an early 9am start jam session scheduled to last just over an hour. We were having so much fun though that one thing led to another and 6 hours later we’d not only made 9 jars of jam(!),  but we’d also done a bread making lesson, made two loaves of bread, a lovely celery soup, soda bread, jam tarts, repotted several plants and done an experimental basil cutting.  Rock and Roll!

What a lovely way to spend a Thursday morning.

Steph and Andy

The jam making process it seems it quite straight forward really involving simply boiling up your fruit and adding more sugar than you could possibly imagine necessary then pouring it into sterilised jars to be sealed and labelled up. There’s plenty of books and websites about for you to find out how to do this (or you could just pop round to Steph’s ), so no need for me to go over it here, all I want to say is it’s great fun, very rewarding and reasonably easy. Do it!

Here’s a couple of Jam making websites

The basic method from Self-sufficient.co.uk
Lots of recipes from The Foody
Lots more recipes from Jam Recipes

And here’s a link to a book I’ve been enjoying reading at the moment, the River Cottage Preserves Handbook. This series of books (including Bread, Mushrooms, and Veg Patch) really does seem to be spot on, each one put together by one of the River Cottage’s relevant experts they go through everything you need to know right from the basics. Can’t wait to give the Hedgerow Jelly a go. It’s made with a mix of any foraged Hedgerow berries and crab apples. Or maybe the Bramley Lemon Curd, which sounds like a lovely wintery treat for toast. Mmm.

All I need now is a kitchen to do all this in, oh and a house to have a kitchen in, oh and a garden to grow all the fruit. Ahhh, one day. For now it’s foraged fruit and friends kitchens all the way. Not that that’s a bad thing, in fact it’s great fun. See nothing should stop you. You don’t even need your own fruit or a kitchen to make your own jam, just a nice friend and a sense of adventure.

Perfect!

It was a pretty amazing day really. In the space of an afternoon we managed to make a plain white loaf, a dozen rolls, bread sticks, a focaccia, tortilla wraps and some nachos! All turned out great. Rachel certainly was a natural – she has great baking hands. Watching Rachel and Andy’s synchronised dough kneading it was difficult to tell who was teaching who.

Synchronised bread making

Even the kids got stuck in. Beth helped cut dough into strips to make bread sticks, which Ellie then did a marvellous job of shaping and adding grated cheese to make them extra tasty.

Beth makes bread sticks sticks

Beth and Ellie make the breadstick shapes and sprinkle cheese

Even little Lily helped, she made the important decision that lemons were indeed too yakky to be added to the mix.

Lily discovers lemons are not as tasty as bread

Most of the recipes used came from The River Cottage’s Bread Making Handbook – a fantastic book, packed with great recipes, beautiful photographs all put together with style and enthusiasm that really makes you want to bake. Also all the recipes seem to work well. Who would believe that this was our first venture into Italian bread making?

Focaccia... Mmmm

Or that a 4 year old could really play a major part in producing some of the bestest ever bread sticks?

Breadsticks, millions of em!

Those expensive, tasteless, o-so-straight and boring tubes of tat will never again be spotted in the Cordingley shopping trolley (or there’ll be trouble Rach – I’ve got my eye on you!).

So the first Bread Making Workshop was a great success, we all learnt a lot, but I think the best thing we discovered is that you don’t need to be an expert to do this. It doesn’t take years of practice to make something infinitely better than what’s on offer at the supermarket.

Of course the more you bake the better your bread will get, but this was all of ours first attempts at making over half of the things we made and all turned out well. I believe the key skill in bread making is the determination to outwit the marketers who create your addiction to shop bought bread.

It is not necessary to have the most amazing kneading techniques, special equipment, years of practice and oodles of spare time, but rather you need to be able to resist the lure of colourful packaging, health claims and subtle hints towards your own incompetence – ‘you couldn’t possible make a loaf so light, crusty and tasty as this’. Well here is the proof that you can.

Once again, here it is, a thing of beauty – the first loaf from Rachel, Master Baker Extraordinaire (family baker for over 3 hours):

Perfect!

Reclaim the power! Bake your own bread!

Anyone who is interested in taking part in a bread making workshop, or having us come to your house to run one for your family and friends please contact me.

And so it began…

Just over a month ago now, on the Summer Solstice of 2009, a group enthusiastic picnicers gathered on Hoxton Square, London, under the red and white flag that was the symbol of the first event, “A Taste of Things to Come”. An anarchy symbol morphed into a picnic bench to spell out the intention – no longer were we fools to the robbery of overpriced bars and restaurants serving up expensive drinks and salads of limp lettuce and unripe tomatoes. No longer will we be slaves to the supermarkets. We won’t eat your pre-packed out of season processed food and snacks. We will reclaim the power of good, simple, local, seasonal food and show it off in fantastical picnic extravaganza!

At least that was the idea. As the man at the local offi pointed out after questioning the significance of our lovely little red badges, our choice of lubrication for the event was arguably off theme, “Ah a picnic to promote local food! Excellent idea… I see you have chosen 8 cans of Jamaican Red Stripe to compliment your food”. Hmm.. seems we still have some way to go. “But it goes with the colour scheme” is not a valid excuse.

The choice of the longest day for our first picnic was obviously a good move. A beautiful sunny day was spent lazing in the park and the long hours of sunlight encouraged us to stay out well past the intended 4 pm finish time until long after the sun had gone down.

So what was on the menu? Aside from the small oversight on the booze, the local food theme went pretty well. An impressive spread was enjoyed by all including some fantastic spicy green-bean salad, fine cheeses, homemade chutney, standard picnic-issue (but top quality!) egg and watercress sandwiches, and fresh, still-in-the-pod peas. Lovely jubbly. The bakers had been hard at it too – homemade too pretty to eat strawberry cakes and cherry topped buns with tea (not coffee!) icing both went down a treat.

Entertainment for the day was unexpectedly provided from travelling performance artist Nicola who joined us for a few hours and treated us with an outing of her “Dream Coat”. The coat has many individually decorated fancy pockets, each containing a dream. You choose a pocket, take out the dream and swap it for one of your own which then gets passed along. Fantastic. My plane crash dream was eagerly swapped for a story of a horse running and bizarrely I haven’t suffered any more terrifying plane crash dreams since. Magic. Should I feel guilty for the poor soul who will soon be treated to recurring dreams of planes exploding mid-air? Perhaps, but you’ve got to take your chances in the dream world. You never know what might happen.

There was also face painting and an impressive BMX (with basket) stunt display!

So as you can see “A Taste of Things to Come” was not just about the food. It was also about was getting together in a free space, to share good times and stories. It was great to see friends we’d missed so much while we’d been away. And while our main aim of promoting local, seasonal food may have slipped  into the background of catch up chats and Jamaican lager one thing shone through – that is that spending many hours loafing in parks with good food and good friends is simply a great thing to do. This kind of thing should be part of our day to day lives, not a once a year only if it’s boiling and you’re skint event. No more rushed dinner hours! Take your time over lunch every day. Sit in the park, chat to a stranger, offer them a sandwich. Don’t spend your weekends in shopping centres, go to the woods, sit by a river, pick wild blackberries and enjoy being outside. It doesn’t rain as often as you think it does.

Just one question remains. TLP? What’s that all about?… more soon.

I can’t believe it! I feel as if I have been being robbed, lied to and generally deceived. It’s a conspiracy. They know what they are doing and they do it anyway. I wonder how they thought they’d ever get away with it? Maybe I’m to blame. Maybe we’re all to blame. Who knows? But what is for sure is that it won’t be happening anymore.

What what what? What has happened?

What happened was this. Today we mixed some plain flour and some water in a bowl, kneaded it a bit, left it a bit, rolled it out and dry fried it. And you know what happened? We made lovely, fresh, soft, tasty tortillas. It was easy. AND they tasted REALLY nice. I’m MAD.

£1.69 it is for a pack of 6 Old El Paso tortillas. £1.69!!!!!
It cost us about 25p to make the same amount. GRRRR.

How can this have happened? At what point did we become so insecure of our cooking/baking skills and so dependent on other people making things to sell to us that someone worked out they would be able to sell something to us that is so cheap and easy to make yourself.

Seriously it would take more effort to walk to the shop to buy some. It’s almost like someone convincing people to buy water when everyone knows it comes out of the tap. Oh…

Well anyway, I’ve worked it out! Ha! You won’t get me anymore. And what’s more I’m going to make it my mission to tell everyone else too. You won’t get away with this for much longer.

If the ‘cheap’ and ‘easy’ tags don’t draw you in, check out this list of ingredients:

INGREDIENTS:

Wheat Flour, Water, Partially Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil, Stabiliser: Glycerol, Salt, Raising Agents: E450a, E500, Dextrose, Emulsifier: E471, Preservative: E202, Flour Treatment Agent: E920

Mutant food!

I don’t even know what most of that stuff is! I reckon they could release a batch with deadly poisons listed in the ingredients and no one would pick it up. Glycerol?? Do I want to eat that? Really? I have no idea? It sounds like an explosive. And numbers, lots of numbers. I don’t want to eat numbers. I want to eat food.

Here is the list of ingredients you need to MAKE YOUR OWN TORTILLAS. Hurrah!

Makes 8

250g plain white flour (plus extra for rolling out)

2g salt

150ml water.

So easy it’s hardly worth writing a proper recipe, but I’ll tell you once and then you’ll be off.

Put the flour in a bowl. Gradually add the water mixing it around with your fingers until you bring it together in a ball.

Knead for a few minutes.

Cover and leave to rest for about half an hour.

Divide in to 8 pieces, gently shape in to a rough ball and then roll out to about 2 or 3mm. While you are doing this put a good frying pan on a medium heat to heat up (no oil).

When the pan is hot put a tortilla in the pan, watch as it starts to bubble slightly as the underneath starts to brown (approx 30 seconds) then flip over and cook for another 30 seconds.

Stack them up as you cook them in a dry tea towel to keep them warm (the steam of the stacked warm tortillas keeps them soft).

Eat straight away, or wrap in tin foil to eat later (can be reheated later wrapped in foil in a low oven).

That’s it! And this recipe somehow still makes it seem more complicated than it really is. Honest.

A couple of other revelations:

Chapattis are made in much the same way, only use wholemeal or chapatti flour!

Nachos are basically tortillas cut up and deep fried. Officially they should be made with cornflour, but we gave it a go with plain and they made an equally good snack. Bit of salt, bit of spice shaking and you’re there.

What will I ‘discover’ next? Can you really make your own pasta? noodles? pizzas? soup? Of course you can. I’m onto you. I’m going to get my revenge… watch this space.

Please let me know if you read this and then make your own tortillas.
New tortilla makers count as of 7th July 2009: 9

See more “make your own…” posts

May certainly is a character. First off for the day, in full traditional Thai dress, she took us for a walk round the back streets of Bangkok to visit her local shops where we gathered some ingredients for the day’s class.

A small street side stall provided most of the main key ingredients – galangal (Thai ginger), lemon grass, Thai basil (more aniseedy tasting than the usual Italian type flavour we tend to have at home), chili and kaffir limes leaves.

The lime leaves were fresh. It’s unbelievable how much of a difference it makes to use fresh leaves. I looked into the possibility of buying/growing kaffir fresh at home. To buy the fresh leaves are £5 for 10 leaves! , although possibly worth it, definitely out of my budget. Or a 18″ tall plant could cost you £30 then of knowing my luck it would die as soon as the winter came. Hmmm. Ah well.

Next stop was the rice paper lady where we bought some fresh rice paper to make spring rolls. As a real treat we arrived just in time to watch her make some.

The woman was like a machine! A scoop of batter from one hand slapped onto a hot pan where it formed a perfect circle, cooked in just a few seconds and was then skillfully whipped off the pan with a cut off end of a aluminium food can which had been folded in half to create the perfect scooping tool with which it was tossed onto the pile of rice paper at her side. I have a video of it. At some point I’ll get a fast enough connection to upload it. It really was amazing to watch.

So the cookery class, what did we learn? Well to be honest it was quite a whirlwind cooking marathon! In less than 4 hours we prepared and ate over 10 different dishes!

First of she showed us how to make the essential red and green curry pastes, then it was onto Tom Yam Soup, Isaan, Fried Veg and Cashew Nuts, Pad Thai, Peanut Sauce, Spring Rolls, Massaman Curry, Penang Curry, Green curry, Pumpkin Hummous and Green Papaya Salad! Phew! We were all stuffed! PLUS – at the end of it all May brought us a dessert of sticky rice, mango and coconut milk, very tasty, but we were all just so full. Luckily just at this moment Andy walked through the door to pick me up. Strange coincidence? I think he’d been secretly watching, ready to pounce. Well ok, so maybe we’d arranged that he should come meet me when the class finished, but I’m sure he wasn’t disappointed to arrive to a free banquet of delicious Thai food.

It really was a great day. May was so happy and enthusiastic I spent half the morning just smiling to myself at her funny ways “…mmm… more spicy…more tasty…”. She ended the day with a Traditional Thai dance, which she got incredibly excited about showing us. She donned a set of long brass curly fingers and danced around the shop to the music from her cd player with a huge grin on her face. If you ever happen to be in Bangkok I’d highly recommend doing her cookery course, it was great!

A Recipe for you! Not had one of them for a long time…

Thai Green Curry

Serving for one person

Fry one teaspoon of green chilli paste (google how to make, or you can buy ready made jars) in a tablespoon of hot oil until fragrant.

Put 2 slices of galangal, 2 lime leaves and 2 inches of lemon grass in a pestle and mortar and bash slightly to bruise. Add this to the pan with one tablespoon of coconut milk.

Add veg (a small bowl full) – you can include whatever is in season, but good things to use are pumpkin, squash, green beans, carrot and onion. Anything that would take more than 5 minutes to cook through (eg pumpkin) can be cooked before.

Add half a cup of coconut milk and cook until the mixture is thick.

Slacken with a little water then add one tablespoon of light, half a tbsp of dark soy sauce and a tsp of sugar, cook until veg are soft.

Add about a tbsp of coconut milk (or coconut cream) before serving, serve with brown rice and garnish with chopped Thai basil.

This is a very special place. There is very little to do other than sit in relaxed cafes and bars, read books, be inspired, have a massage, do some Tai Chi  or maybe go for a trek in the hills. It is great. We’ve already stayed here twice the amount of time we planned to (lets hope the guy we left our big bags with in Bangkok hasn’t sold all our stuff!).

We’re staying over the river from the main part of town, it’s very peaceful. We have only the noise of the geckos,birds and the occasional downpour of early monsoon rain on the roof of our little bamboo hut to listen to.

Bridge to our hut

We’ve discovered a few things while we’ve been here, the first of these discoveries is that we both have an amazing ability to sit in a cafe for over 5 hours without really realising an hour has passed. Something strange has happened to time. Or perhaps it’s just that our cafe of choice has an atmosphere and menu that appears to lead to a meditative state that removes you from the usual worries of time and the urge to “do” things.

The cafe, aptly named “Good Life”, specialises in tea, the must have over 50 different types on their menu, many of which have been used as remedies for various ailments in traditional medicine. Today we sampled the ‘Jiaogulan’- tea of immortality!

From their leaflet,

“Jiagulan has grown wild for millenia in the Guizho province of Southern China. Here the people were mot much unlike any others. They woke up with the sun fed the animals and tended the fields… In 1972 after completing the first ever nationwide census … the Chinese government found that the Guizho province had a remarkable number of people who lived to be well over one hundred years old “

“Researchers were sent from Beijing university to investigate. They considered diet, lifestyle, genetics and nearly every possible factor, their conclusion? Jiaogulan”

Personally I’m not quite sure how to feel about these kind of  “healing” teas, I’m definitely interested though and along with sampling more teas I shall be doing a bit of research . Either way for now at least I know it tastes good and I reckon with this tea and my trip up Tai Shan I’m set up. Ooo,I’ll get a letter from the Queen, or rather Prince Charles, or whoever. How very exciting!

Two other very interesting things have been tried in this place, Kombucha and Wheatgrass. Now these two I am convinced of.

Kombuca

Kombucha is a tea that has been fermented by a kind of mushroom which is a culture of yeast and acetobacter. What this really means is it turns the tea into a very slightly alcoholic drink which tastes, in my opinion, a bit like cider.

Good Life sells loads of this stuff,  and I’m not surprised, I’m completely hooked – it’s amazing. It’s subtle, but it produces a kind of mild euphoria and keeps you alert in a happy kind of a way. We’ve been having it just after breakfast. What a way to start the day!

Here’s a few photos of the culture they have. They have loads! Jars and jars all growing in the back of the restaurant. Amazing stuff.

bottling the kombucha

Again, there’s all kind of health claims, from Seeds of Health,

“There is a lot of experiential evidence from people who have been using kombucha over many years. Many of the benefits reported include improvements in energy levels, metabolic disorders, allergies, cancer, digestive problems, candidiasis, hypertension, HIV, chronic fatigue and arthritis. It ‘s also used externally for skin problems and as a hair wash among other things.”

As with a lot of these kind of natural health products, the kind of  “proper” scientific research seems to be somewhat lacking, but from the experience  of it  I’ve had I’m definitely willing to give it a go and look forward to starting my own culture as soon as possible. I like it too that it’s one of these things you kind of pass on, like a gift. Once you have some of the culture, it keeps growing, you can have enough for yourself and pass it on to other people. I would love to hear from anyone in the UK who makes it!

Wheatgrass

Wheatgrass shot

This is another new one on me courtesy of Good Life. Wheatgrass. This too seems to have an incredible energising effect. Down in one, a shot sized glass in the morning is enough for me, but some people are hooked on this stuff, I’ve heard people saying they’d have up to 8 a day!

The health claims, mostly based on the high chlorophyll and vitamin content  include a wide range of benefits including increasing hemoglobin production, detoxifying, helping skin problems such as eczema and psoriasis, keeping hair from greying (!), prevention and cure of colon and other cancers and boosting energy. Bodykind has a good “is it all just hype” article which details some scientific evidence supporting the benefits of drinking wheatgrass.

Again, it’s hard to know, all I can tell you is that after a tour of Pai’s bars finishing at four followed by only 3 hours sleep I had a shot of this with my breakfast and was certainly more perky than I was before and have made it through the day with much more energy than I usually would after such a night. I do not however know if my hemoglobin production has increased!

Wheatgrass can be grown easily at home in trays, there’s lots of information and instructions here. If/when I start my own I’ll let you know how it goes! Would be great to hear from any other fans or growers too!

Finally, here’s a few photos from the lovely trek we did while we weren’t getting high on grass. We had an amazing time and were very lucky to have the company of two lovely Dutch girls Juul and Eliza. Lots of good chats plus perhaps more than a few beers to celebrate their last night in Pai, sob:-( Celebrate is not quite the right word, sad to see them go, we had a good time together. Keep in touch you two!

“A Taste of Things to Come” is the first (hopefully) of a series of events I plan to organise with the aim not only of getting a group of friends together to have a picnic, but to bring people together in a space where they can share their ideas and hopefully inspire each other and the way they choose to live. This is an open invite event. All are welcome. Just turn up on the day, or there is a facebook event you can sign up to for more information.

Come loafe with us on the grass.

Join us for an afternoon of fun in the sun!

It’s a gathering of people bringing together good food and good conversation.

Bring food to share, drinks, your own plates cutlery etc, a nice rug and an open mind.

We have a lot to talk about.

If possible food should be home made, show off your marvelous cooking skills!

You lucky London people have lots of lovely markets to choose from so get some good local seasonal produce and cook up something special!

If you really can’t cook just bring some fresh raw fruit or veg to share. Everyone loves a few crunchy carrots!

Food markets:
http://www.urbanpath.com/london/food-markets/

What’s in season?
http://www.eattheseasons.co.uk/weekbyweek/26.htm

How to find us, Google “N1 6NU” for directions, when you get there, you’ll see us!

If it rains a lot,we have a Plan B,watch this space for more information.

Looking forward to seeing you there!