Thrive

After what felt like a lifetime of lazy days in Holland, I am back in Hong Kong, but its only for a few days before we (hopefully) head to Hokkaido once more.

As you can imagine, all this holiday time has made me feel lazy, antsy and now very enthusiastic to get busy.

So what better way than to set a challenge for myself?

I mean, during the holidays I tried to do a 30 day push-up challenge that was set up by a group called “Project Her” and I didn’t make it past day 13 or so…and now it turns out, neither did many of the women who started the challenge.

I don’t think it was because the challenge was particularly difficult, it wasn’t. It was challenging, but not impossible.

I think it was just the timing of it…right smack bang in the middle of the summer break. People are kidded up, people are traveling, people are chilling…and somehow, 30 days of pushing up just doesn’t seem to be the first thing on the mind.

Honestly, I am kinda glad I was not the only one to drop off the challenge radar. Organizers were wondering why no one was posting their “accountability” videos on their FB…and well, its coz no one was making videos!

So yeah…I figured, I love food more than push ups, so being as I have ADD and constantly need a new project to work on or I feel like I am rotting away…and being as I am still fresh off the high of hanging out with my vegan bestie in Holland, I have decided to challenge myself to a 30 day vegan recipe creation fest.

Basically…I am not coming up with this shit from nowhere…as with any art, you have the inspiration and you go from there. In my case, I will go with Brendan Brazier’s book “Thrive Foods” and modify from there. I may also use whatever vegan recipes I have on this one vegan app I downloaded, I know, don’t laugh, I actually paid for that fucking app!

I basically feel, after hanging out with my Polish, vegan buddy, that vegan meals are pretty bland. I think folks who turn vegan must do so for a good reason and shit, and maybe it takes for some truly inspired cooking (or simply viewing food as fuel, something I can’t do) in order to stick to being vegan.

I would become vegan purely for the environmental aspect of it.

I am not so sure about whether I would go all PETA on peoples ass.

I care about animals. But my reasons for being vegan would have more to do with a big picture sense of being human, being a sentient being, living on this planet that I have to be custodian of. I think, no atheist, who truly believes in the moral obligation towards all living beings, should eat meat…I mean…ethically, cage farming, dairy farming, pigs in pens…killing alligators to make bags or snakes to make shoes…all that shit, creates a lot of pain in the world. I am not saying I feel for the snake or the hen or the pig…I just…I dunno man…I just think that with each bite you will be creating more pollution because all that shit that comes out of farmed animals, goes somewhere, it gets dumped, it seeps into ground water and then humans get poisoned. All those farmed animals produce a lot of methane…eat a lot of farmland worth of feed…meh…

All I am saying is, I think if someone wants to love dogs and cats and protect them, like to a PETA level of wanting to be an animal rights activist…they can’t also eat meat.

Good lord, I already sound insufferable! Its like that joke about the crossfitter, the vegan and the atheist walking into a bar together – how did people know? Coz they told everyone who could hear em!

Would that be me? A fucking crossfitting, vegan, atheist? GAH! ROFL.

Oh man, I am actually laughing so hard because I never even thought about where this road of possibly becoming vegan would lead me!

Hmm…anyway, my buddy and I were talking and he said, maybe being fully vegan is too much to expect of people (maybe this is his clever way of the soft sell!) and that as long as we ate LESS animals, thats more than enough, its still doing good.

See? Like he doesn’t know he’s saying this to Ms. All-or-nothing, me!

Sigh.

So I am already eating more frikken veggie stirfry meals with tofu, and now this…I am planning a 30 day vegan recipe adventure.

As in, I will come up with my own twist on various vegan recipes.

Today was a roasted garlic quinoa with cilantro, bell peppers and shallots with a drizzle of a tahini (basically my take on a goma-dare, Japanese sesame dressing) dressing with miso, wasabi, yuzu juice, chopped spring onion and fresh pineapple juice.

Let me just say that it was a success, more so than I expected it to be.

For the dressing, this is what was in it –

2 tablespoons of Tahini

1 tablespoon of miso paste

5 tablespoons of Yuzu juice

5 tablespoons of pineapple juice

1 tablespoon of chopped spring onion

1 tablespoon of wasabi (up to you how much you want to use, you can use less if you like, add cautiously and taste along the way, I like mine where I get a slight watering in the eyes!)

And for the roasted garlic quinoa dish –

1 head of garlic (cut off a slice across the bottom part, to expose the garlic pods)

drizzle of coconut oil and then wrap in aluminum foil

Pop in a 400F oven for 30 mins

In the meantime, cook up 2 cups of quinoa (remember to soak first and rinse, this removes the bitterness of quinoa)

1 green bell pepper

1 large shallot (very large ones I managed to get, I am thinking purple onion would work great too, but I do find shallots to be a more distinct, sweeter flavor)

1 bunch (again, up to you how much or how little) of cilantro

After the garlic is cooked, let cool, then squeeze the garlic out. Pop some coconut oil in a wok, throw the garlic in there to allow to infuse the oil, then throw your cooked and drained quinoa in there and stirfry for 3 mins to allow the flavor to get into the quinoa. Then tip contents into a large salad bowl to mix. Add the finely chopped up bell pepper, shallot and cilantro, some crushed sea salt and a drizzle of lemon or lime juice. Done.

The dressing recipe makes about one cup. I only used about a tablespoon for my serving of quinoa delight. No doubt I will be eating this for the next few days, unless my family help me eat it! But I don’t think I will complain, it is pretty tasty.

It was a simple meal, really, if you think about how meat eating meals can go, you feel like you need this quinoa to go with a side of popcorn shrimp and a salad of some kind! But yeah, I was happy to eat just a small bowl of the roasted garlic quinoa with a drizzle of the wasabi tahini sauce.

So much flavor!

Anyway, tomorrow will be another effort with recipes included. I am aiming for at least one recipe a day, but if I go over that, it would be awesome.

Watch this space.