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On Wednesday night I took myself off on a little urban foraging trip and came home with all of these:

Wild Damsons! I had noticed a couple of trees by the road side while out running so all in the name of being thrifty, I headed back and collected a giant bowl full of ripe little damson plums. They are such a beautiful colour! These taste more tart than regular plums so I decided to make some compote and a sauce. I just cooked the damsons whole in a little water with a lot of brown rice syrup until they had completely broken down, then I strained them to remove the stones, kept some of the smooth strained mix as a sauce and then added the chunkier mix caught in the strainer for the compote. I also used some raw damsons mixed with agave for this dessert:

Damsons with agave layered with coconut flour cream and topped with treacle granola, delicious!

I also got experimental with the dehydrator and created this utterly wonderful cheesy crumble:

This is leftover cashew mayo mixed with nutritional yeast, salt and dried thyme and sage then dehydrated overnight and crumbled. This stuff is the absolute bomb, it will be amazing on salads! I tried some crumbled on top of a big bowl of kamut pasta, cannellini beans, raw courgette and olives in a tomato sauce with a rocket salad:

This was wonderful, the cheesy bits taste utterly lush! I’m also very impressed with the kamut pasta.

Other foodie delights include my giant bowl of muesli:

I used to get worried about all the calories in a packed out bowl like this but now I don’t worry, plus a lot of this was apples! Alara In The Garden Goji Muesli with 2 chopped pink lady apples and organic unsweetened soy milk.I had this after my usual Thursday morning yoga, but instead of doing a podcast I just decided to do my own thing – a few sun salutes, pigeon pose, bound side angle and bound seated twists, it felt so good! 

Of course I had the obligatory smoothie post NRoL workout (I increased all exercises to 3 sets instead of 2) this morning:

Kale, cucumber, mixed frozen berries, one small raw beet, scoop of chocolate vega protein powder, maca, barley grass powder, water, ice, msm, xanthan and guar gums for thickness topped with Justin’s chocolate almond butter sauce, damson sauce and buckwheaties. The damson sauce was wonderful on this! So sweet and rich :-)

Lunches have been this awesome salad:

I loved all the colours in this! Little gem lettuce, mixed baby leaves, red cabbage, carrot, orange pepper, cucumber, radishes, spring onions, roasted soy nuts, raisins and tahini miso dressing. I can highly recommend the combo of soy nuts with raisins, the sweet and slight saltiness is so tasty and made only more delicious by the dressing.

Pre yesterdays cardio and abs and core gym workout I snacked on a Mint Chocolate Clif bar from my NYC stash:

This was lovely, it tasted just like a Chocolate Peppermint Stick Luna bar but more oaty and filling!

Today is actually a very special day:

   

3 years ago we were enjoying the sunshine in Sorrento, Italy after our amazing wedding! As we are so skint at the moment we decided to celebrate at home. Using up stuff from the cupboards and this weeks organic veg box I made us a curry:

I just made up a tomato coconut curry sauce and mixed mine with chickpeas, red cabbage, courgette, spinach and chard stems and for James I mixed his with some quorn chicken pieces and spinach. Both served up with a side of brown and wild rice, pomodoms for James and steamed rainbow chard with shoyu for me:

Nom! I had a massive portion, it was so tasty!

I have to say we do have a great relationship, we are both very different people and I think our differences complement each other very well. James is more laid back where as I am more ‘full on’ we both have our individual interests but we can both appreciate and fully support each others passions. Rather than being my ‘other half’ we are both our own people and our marriage is a great partnership!

I think I say this every week but thank goodness its the weekend! I have a long run, seeing friends and family, my Mam’s birthday, my cousins hen do and a bedroom to decorate, busy busy! What do you have planned?

Have you ever foraged for food before? When I was little we were always blackberry picking from local hedgerows but all the usual fields we used to go to have been turned into housing estates :-(

Well I am off to enjoy the rest of my anniversary with James, have a great weekend!