Gooseberry crumble

I've been making the most of the weather and have been spending as much time outdoors in the garden as possible. It's so lovely to see everything in bloom and it's the time of year when all of the months of hard work and tending to teeny-tiny seedlings pays off and there seems to be pure abundance.

This year, I managed to get to the gooseberries before the birds did and after weeks of watching as the gooseberries turned from pale green to a luscious deep purple, the day came when I finally decided to take on the gooseberry bush - and I won!...Well, I escaped with just some slight thorny scrapes. And here are the spoils:

It's hard to see how many gooseberries I actually got but there were almost 1kg, not bad for a fairly small, two year old gooseberry bush. So I decided to make a batch of crumbles. The recipe below is adapted from this one that I found here on the BBC Good Food website.

Ingredients:
800g gooseberries
125g sugar for the gooseberries and 120g for the crumble topping
150g plain flour
100g oats
125g butter

Method (pretty much the same as the Good Food one):

1. Preheat the oven to 180C. Top and tail the gooseberries and mix with 125g of sugar. Separate into individual dishes or one large one if you fancy a feast! Then sprinkle 3 tbsp of water over them.

2. Add the flour, butter and oats into a bowl and rub together to form 'breadcrumbs', then stir in the rest of the sugar.

3. Spoon the crumble mixture over the gooseberries and pop into the oven for about 45 minutes. If you've made a batch like I did then you can either put them straight into the freezer ready to defrost and cook at a later date or gift them to friends and family - mine were delighted and I got and apple and blackcurrant crumble in return.

As you can see, I got three small-ish crumbles from my pickings, plus a large one and there are still a few gooseberries ripening on the bush so hopefully I'll be able to make some more.

Incidentally, I thought I'd purchased an 'Invicta' and was surprised when they turned purple, so I suppose the identity of my gooseberry plant will remain a mystery.  Oh and I wont pretend that this song wasn't buzzing around my brain while I was busy baking....Everybody's good at cooking something...

Running - getting back on track

A couple of years ago I started running. After a discussion at work about doing something for charity, we decided to do the Jane Tomlinson 10k. And so on a slightly chilly October evening, I laced my trainers up for the first time and headed out with a friend to tackle the pavement. As total novices, we didn't have a clue where to start and so we used the NHS's Couch to 5K training podcasts, and let me tell you, that first 60 seconds of running, even at a very gentle pace, felt like it went on forever. However, we made it through the first run in one piece and felt amazing (and just a little exhausted!).

We continued with the program and, as promised, after 9 weeks we could run 5k without stopping and felt like 'proper' runners! By that time, our running group had doubled in size and we started to slowly work towards our next goal of 10k. As always, things never go as planned and trouble struck 3 months before the race when I noticed that I'd lost the range of motion in my ankle. There was no pain, other than the usual achilles pain that occurred towards the end of most runs. And to cut a very long story short, after visiting a sports physiotherapist, I was told that I'd damaged my achilles but, on the brightside (if there was one), I was lucky enough to catch it before it snapped, I was devastated. I was advised to stop running and attended weekly physio sessions for a rather intense and painful massage. After 6 weeks of treatment, combined with regular sessions on the exercise bike, I was able to go out on my first run - and oh was it hard! I'd been told to run no more than a mile but even reaching that distance was difficult, I was exhausted! Thankfully, my achilles held up and over the next few weeks, combined with regular massages, I gradually built up my distance again. It was 2 weeks before the race that I managed to complete my first 10k run and it felt fantastic!

The day of the big race was the hottest day of the year. People were outside in their gardens spraying us with hosepipes to help keep us cool. As hard as it was, I paced myself and tried not to get carried away with the excitement of it all and I managed to finish the race in 1 hour and 4 minutes. I felt so proud, 9 months earlier I'd been a novice and here I was now having just finished a 10k.

My relationship with running has been on and off ever since. A pulled muscle from over-stretching resulted in me getting out of the habit and work seemed to fill the time that running had once taken up. Now I'm on my holidays, I've decided to rebuild my running routine. I felt so much healthier and more energised when running was part of my weekly routine and I want to get back to that. This time, I've decided to try out the Runner's World 8 Week Beginners Program  as it builds up a bit quicker than the Couch to 5k program. I'm also trying to incorporate some Chi Running techniques to help keep my running as injury free as possible, so fingers crossed it will work.

Beetroot and chocolate brownies...and back to blogging

So it's been a year since I last posted on the blog. Life seemed to get in the way and I'm afraid to say that I lost my blogging mojo. I've still been busy in the background, growing veggies and trying out new recipes in the kitchen and I've discovered a particular fondness for veggie infused cakes (and have converted a few people along the way). My first attempt at a veggie cake was the rather lush Carrot and Courgette Cake which I tried last year and is still a hit with family, friends and work colleagues. For anyone interested, the post can be found here. 

My most recent find are Shaheen's Beetroot and Chocolate Brownies from her Allotment2Kitchen blog. I skipped the almonds as I didn't have any and used 'normal' caster sugar rather than golden caster sugar and the results were delicious! You can't see it from the photo but they have a beautiful reddish hue to them and the fact that they are packed with beetroot make them feel like a slightly virtuous indulgence too.

Ooh just looking at them has got me tempted. I think it's time for a cuppa and a piece of cake - I'm counting it as one of my 5 a day!

5 Day Juice Reboot: Day 4

On the morning of day 4 I was awake at 1.00am, and I mean wide awake. I hadn't felt tired when I went to bed the previous night, hyperactive is the wrong word but I felt very alert. Thankfully, I managed to fall asleep quite quickly, but I clearly didn't need much sleep as I was awake again a couple of hours later. After half an hour or so of debating whether or not to get up, I did fall back to sleep and slept solidly until 7.30am.

Day 4 was harder than the previous day. Yes I was full of energy and I had no negative side effects but it felt harder somehow; possibly because I knew I had only two days left and I was starting to worry about the effects that reintroducing solid food would have on my body. I've suffered from a mild stomach disorder for over 10 years and have always managed it by diet. Whilst I knew that consuming juices would be beneficial to my health, it only dawned on me half way through the reboot that returning to solid foods may have some negative side effects, so perhaps this is why I felt different on day 4, I'm not sure. Anyway, this, coupled with a craving for bananas  resulted in me making a green smoothie for lunch  (something that's part of my everyday diet) and I really enjoyed it. It was as if someone had handed me heaven on a plate, well glass, and I savoured every last drop. I know it was a bit of a cheat as technically it wasn't a juice, but sometimes you just have to deviate from the plan a little and I felt that adding something a bit more substantial to my diet was justified (especially seen as I seemed to have gone through the worst of the detox process) and would help my stomach prepare for 'heavier' foods. 

Through the day, the smoothie had little effect on me, although as was very aware of the sour aftertaste of the drop of milk I'd added; it seemed that the reboot really heightened my senses. I was even more aware of this when I had my second cheat of the day (again partly due to my concern/curiosity about my stomach managing solids but partly just because I felt a bit naughty) - pizza, not a whole one, just a few slices of a thin, stonebaked one (after my juice, of course). It tasted salty and was total system overload. Whereas the smoothie had little effect, within half an hour of eating the pizza I was aware that my stomach felt slightly gripey and bloated. It certainly wasn't happy after being indulged with fresh juices for the past 72 hours. Lesson learnt, once you've cleaned up your act, keep it clean, or as clean as possible. And that was the intention of the reboot - to boost my body and hopefully kickstart healthier routines. I haven't gone through this process just to carry on as before, especially now I've experienced how much better I feel on a pure juice diet. I don't want to lose my focus or my stamina again. My body is brimming with vitamins and goodness and I want to keep it that way.

So in summary, day 4 was a day of hits and misses, although I'm viewing it in a positive light. I still had three juices over the course of the day and learnt the effect that processed foods can have on our bodies. It's certainly been an eye opener.

5 Day Juice Reboot: Day 3

Day 3 was the easiest day of the reboot so far. I felt lighter and my cravings were virtually non-existent; I even managed to do 5km on the elliptical trainer after breakfast. I usually like to run in a morning but I didn't quite feel that my energy levels were at that point, and for me personally, the reboot is about giving my body time to rest and recuperate so I don't want to put too much stress on it. I did notice through the day that my sense of smell was particularly heightened - i'm not sure if this is some ancient hunter-gatherer knee-jerk reaction to the lack of solid foods in my stomach, but I was very aware of the different scents as I went through the day.

In the morning, I noticed that the white fur/detox symptoms on my tongue had started to clear up and it had completely gone by the end of the day. My body felt light and I had quite a lot of energy, not in the "I want to run a marathon" way, but more in the sense that I didn't stop all day and didn't feel tired - my stamina levels were much improved. I also seemed to have more focus; usually I'll get distracted from whatever I'm doing by something else and spend my time jumping from one thing to another, but instead I was able to stay completely focussed on the task at hand and enjoy being immersed in it.

It's strange, I've read online how people end up buzzing with energy around day 3 or 4 of the reboot, but I've found that it's affected me in a much more subtle way, gentler perhaps. I felt a little emotional towards the end of the day, so I think that cleansing is taking place at many levels. Let's see what the rest of the week brings.

Two more days to go!

5 Day Juice Reboot: Day 2

Day 2 of the reboot was much better than Day 1. Although I felt lethargic when I woke up, I was relived that my bloated stomach and nausea had gone. I was amazed at how thirsty I felt when I awoke and ended up drinking a pint of water as soon as I got out of bed. Below is a blow-by-blow account of day 2:

8.00: Woke up after 10 hours of sleep. Felt lethargic, hungry and thirsty. Drank 1 pint of water, hot water with lemon and ginger, and 500ml of Green Citrus juice for breakfast.

10.00: Started to feel more energetic. Got dressed and went out to do some gardening. Managed to drink 2 pints of water during the morning.

12.00: Picked a load of fresh tomatoes and basil from the greenhouse and decided they were too good to waste so made a soup for lunch - it was the most delicious thing i'd ever tasted and I felt like i'd been given the world...note to self: add more warm juices to the reboot.

1.00: Back out into the garden to do some more jobs - my energy levels seemed to be increasing. Water sipped throughout the afternoon.

3.00: Afternoon snack - another 500ml of Green Citrus juice. Missed having a cup of tea. Noticed that my tongue felt strange and discovered that it was covered in a white coating - detox symptoms. Drank more water which made it feel (and look) better.

5.00: Tea time - 500ml of Carrot-Apple-Ginger juice followed by 500ml of Peach Pie Delight.

9.00: Still felt wide-awake so went to bed to read.

11.00: Bedtime - started to crave a baked sweet potato and salad.

On day 2, I found that my cravings weren't as intense as the previous day, although I really wanted a baked sweet potato topped with butter! I noticed that I missed drinking tea, I wasn't actually craving it but it's become more of a habit/reward so sitting down mid-afternoon without one felt odd, as if there was something missing. I guess that shows how food consumption can easily become habit rather than needs based. Overall, day 2 of the reboot was much easier than day 1. I had more energy and didn't want to hide away in bed all day, oh and I didn't feel sick, which is a bonus!

Day 3 tomorrow...

5 Day Juice Reboot: Day 1

Just over a month ago I watched 'Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead', a film in which Joe Cross goes on a 60 day juice fast (reboot) to help him lose weight and become healthier. The results were amazing, after 60 days Joe had not only lost a huge amount of weight but his body had healed itself to such an extent that he no longer needed his prescription medications. As I was feeling slightly under the weather at the time, I decided to dust off my juicer and give it a go.

At first, I started to incorporate daily juices into my routine, I was already an advocate of green smoothies and always had one before I went to work, so adding a juice to my daily routine wasn't too painful. After the first week I really noticed the benefits of replacing my lunchtime sandwich with a juice - I no longer felt lethargic, I had more energy and my skin looked clearer.  On 'treat' days when I changed my routine and had those extra carbs at lunchtime, I noticed that my sluggishness returned and I lacked enthusiasm.

So, out of curiosity I decided to follow in Joe's footsteps and do a 'juice reboot'. I bought his book and was impressed with the wide range of recipes and detailed reboot plans ranging from 3 to 30 days. As I'm not looking to lose weight but just give my body a boost, I opted for a 5 day reboot. Although, I'd read about the side effects of the detox process, I naively thought that as I juiced and drank green smoothies I'd be fine, how wrong I was (hence the reason I'm writing about day 1 on day 2 of the reboot).

What follows is a rundown of day 1 - be warned, it's a warts and all account as I want to be as honest as possible about my experiences...

7.30: Warm water and ginger followed by 500ml of Sporty Spice juice - it was tasty but my stomach felt ful after drinking it.

9.00: A relaxing lavender bath.

10.30: The cravings started - all I wanted was a bacon buttie and I couldn't get the thought out of my head. I tried to drink water to alleviate the feeling but my stomach was feeling full and slightly gurgly.

11.00: Started to feel nauseous so laid down for a bit.

11.30: Extreme bowel movement- lets just say that no-one could say I was constipated!

12.00: Nausea eased so made and drank 500ml of Joe's Mean Green. Struggled to get it down as stomach was still feeling very full.

1.00-3.00: Frequent visits to the toilet and waves of nausea/cold sweats.

3.30: Attempted to drink the remaining 500ml of Sporty Spice but couldn't stomach it, even the smell made me gag. Replaced with a herbal tea. Still craving bacon butties.

5.30: Drank the remaining 500ml of Joe's Mean Green - halfway through nausea struck and had to run to the toilet. Brought nothing up, just gas so started to wonder if I was maybe dehydrated as I hadn't been drinking much water through the day due to feeling full. Made an effort to drink more water.

7.00: Drank 500ml of Peach Pear Delight plus a pint of water.

8.00: Started to feel tired. Still craving bacon butties.

9.30: Bedtime - felt exhausted, nauseous and craving solid food.

And that sums up day 1 of my reboot. I spent most of the day feeling nauseous and bloated, craving food (yet when I really focussed on how I felt in my body, I wasn't actually hungry). I'm not sure why I craved bacon butties so much as I don't usually eat them, only as an occasional treat. Anyway, day 1 was spent feeling very deprived and wondering why I'd decided to put myself through this.

Tune in tomorrow for day 2!