The Extreme Staycation

  Location: London, UK  COVID-19 / Coronavirus Outbreak World Vegan Day 🌍🍃🐄🐔🐖 The 1st November is World Vegan Day. I have two thoughts on that - firstly, that every day seems to be National or World something day and secondly that for me, every day is VEGAN DAY 😁 As I have alluded to my veganism in this blog,  I thought   I'd let you know what lead me to this point. At the age of 8, I connected the dots that the meat on my plate and the animal in the field were very much connected and I couldn't bear the idea of an animal dying just so I could eat it.  Although I now have many more reasons which support my choices, animals dying was and still is my primary motivator for being vegetarian/vegan. I used to eat fish for a long time, but I could never eat a fish if it still looked like one and gradually I found I couldn't face the idea any longer. In 2014 I decided that for Lent that year it would be a good challenge to go vegan - I loved and ate dairy on a dai...

Location: London, UK  COVID-19 / Coronavirus Outbreak Lockdown Today I think it rained pretty much all day. Yep, that's July in the UK for you. Today for dinner I made a (vegan) lasagne.  I've pretty much nailed this recipe during lockdown and I'm quite pleased with it.  All of the taste, none of the animal products. My (vague, not written down) recipe is onions, garlic, some veg (generally courgette, mushrooms, peppers, carrots) sauteed.  I then add in a tin of tomatoes and some soya mince from Holland & Barrett (inexpensive and versatile). Next, make a bechemel sauce (soya milk works best and I used Sainsbury's baking block) layer it up, chuck it in the oven for 30 mins, bingo.  Delicious.

Location: London, UK COVID-19 / Coronavirus Outbreak Lockdown One of my favourite apps is Olio. https://olioex.com/ It's an ingenious app which was created to solve the chronic issue of food waste in this country. Unwanted food is listed on the app, you request what you want and if you're quick enough (it's fastest finger first!) you then pop over to someone's house to collect it.  For free. This does not appeal to all people and I can understand why, I was nervous about going to a stranger's house to collect food that is about to go out of date.  But it's great! What happens is that either people can list their own food they no longer want or there are people - "Food Hereos" - who go to businesses at the end of the day and collect unsold food that would otherwise be wasted.  They list it on the app, you request, then collect it. If you live in a big city and enjoy an (often late night) jaunt around your local area, then I would recommend downloading t...

Location: London, UK COVID-19 / Coronavirus Outbreak Food I love food and I think about food most of the time We all need to eat and food (and toilet paper) seem to be sending people bonkers. I get it, we don't know what's going to happen.  We don't know when this will end.  We don't want to starve.  We are used to being able to get any food, any time. The supermarkets assure us there is enough food, so let's believe them and dial down the crazy. We all have ridiculous empty supermarket shelve stories so I won't share mine, but I will share how I tried to buy bananas from a small independent shop, he tried to charge me £5 for about 10 bananas.  I declined to buy them.  I used slightly more colourful language in my head but you don't need to hear that. My biggest concern right now is waste.  I hate waste.  I truly hope that all of the fresh fruit, vegetables and bread that have been purchased by the tonne are being eaten and used.  ...