Strawberries

Oh my gosh - I am soooo excited. There are loads of fruits and vegetables coming into season in the UK at the moment. I popped into the supermarket earlier to pick up some salad for my lunch tomorrow and also found British strawberries. And they taste delicious. For anyone outside the UK who is reading this, if you ever visit our beautiful shores then I recommend you try strawberries whilst you're here.
Although I love all fruit (apart from grapefruit, I could never get my head round that), strawberries hold a special place in my heart. When I was a kid growing up in Blackpool, my parents used to grow strawberries around an old corrugated iron swimming pool that stood in the middle of our garden. And boy did they grow. We used to have buckets and buckets of strawberries every week in the summer, they grow so well here. One of my fondest memories of my chilhood is standing on a stool in the kitchen, helping my mum to wash and hull them all.

Woo hoo! New food!

I'm so happy this week. Salad crops are starting to come into season in the UK. I've been eating salad all week - fresh tomatoes, cucumber, peppers, and I bought some amazing lettuce and spinach at Roath Real Food Market yesterday. It's so nice to have a change in diet. Don't get me wrong, I love winter vegetables, but it does get a bit tiresome by April.

Making a Meal Out of Sides

   Today I found myself eating in a chain restaurant with friends where the food is generally reheated rather than served fresh. My first glance at the menu led me to believe there was quite a selection for vegetarians. On closer inspection, however, it turned out that three of the vegetarian meals were the same cauliflower cheese dish that had been included under different course options. The only main I could find that included no animal protein was a jacket potato with baked beans. Tinned beans aren't ideal, I know, but sometimes you have to cheat a bit. With all the will in the world, a jacket potato with beans is never going to be an exciting meal. So, I decided to add a side of flat mushrooms to make it a bit more interesting.
   Making a meal out of starters and sides is a skill that I picked up whilst living in Greece. Whereas Greek main meals generally revolve around meat, the starters (or mese dishes) are usually vegetarian, and a lot are plant-based.
   If you are finding it hard to make a plant-based choice when eating out, why not order a combination of starters and sides instead? It gives you much more variety and your dining companions will no doubt be jealous of your personal buffet!

fork2fork

   I just checked out www.fork2fork.org.uk, a great website for anyone who lives in Wales and wants to eat fresh, direct and local food. Frustratingly, the website sends you round in circles a bit and some of the links don't work, but it's a good reference point for anyone who doesn't know where to start in buying local. You can pledge to buy local, find out where your nearest farmers markets and farm shops are, and read about Welsh producers. They will even send you a seasonality calendar so you know what best to buy when. Buying local isn't just about food, either. This year I bought Christmas presents from my local farmers market and Christmas market, including Welsh ale for my dad (he gave it a definite thumbs up), Welsh wine, chutney and preserves.

Scavenging for food at Heathrow Airport

The travelbug is in Austria this week, so I apologise for any spelling errors. I'm having to use a German keyboard, and the spell check is trying to correct me in German so everything is coming up in red!
Admittedly, Heathrow Airport is not on my top 50 list of favourite places on planet Earth. It is, however, a useful place to pass through if you need to get to an awkward destnation quickly. Which is how I found myself there on Saturday morning. The awkward destination being Innsbruck, where I was headed to visit family.
I thought this would be a good opportunity to see how difficult, or easy, it is to stick to a plant-based diet whilst in transit. I appreciate there are thousands of vegans out there who do this on a regular basis, and are probably telling me to shut up right now. But for me it was an interesting experience. It actually reminded me of when I first turned vegetarian, before the days of labelling foods for dietry requirements and before most people really understood what vegetarianism was. I remember many a trip where my staple diet would be fries, salad and bread, and I would constantly have to tell people that no, I don't eat fish, and I can't just pick the chicken out or eat around the beef.
So there I was in Heathrow airport, having to read every single ingredient again. I must point out here that, unfortunately, I was flying from Terminal 1. The larger terminals at Heathrow do have some excellent fresh food outlets, and I can't wait for them to make it onto the UK high street. I settled on a carrot, houmous and salad leaves on wholemeal sandwich from Boots, a fresh pear and filling my water bottle up from the water fountain. The sandwich is made by a company called fresh! (I believe the exclamation mark is an essential part of the name). The blurb on the box (which is recyclable by the way) promises 'no gunk and no junk', and I have to say it was a really tasty sandwich. The only downfall is that the houmous did contain tahini. On that note, does anyone know the correct spelling for houmous? I've come across a few different variations so far.
Extra brownie points go to Caffe Nero, where the lovely barista was more than happy to make me a latte with Alpro Soya, which I might add was one of the tastiest lattes I've ever had.
For the benefit of anyone else who is travelling through Frankfurt airport in the near future, they have a lovely fresh food outlet. The vegetarian options are still quite dairy-based, but there's a lot of fresh fruit and juices.