Author: Maria Runs

You can catch me!

Because apparently I am very slow and am certainly not the gingerbread man (shh marathon talk listeners, not that type of gingerbread man).

I think my Nike+ is struggling- although I have had it for 18 months now. It keeps losing the signal from my shoes, and today I did nearly 5 miles (and I only just calibrated it)- at a fair pace for me, in 47 mins, but it thinks I did just over 4 and had an average pace of 11.30, and it won’t upload my run. Grr. Anyway it was a bit of a mind battle today- during the day I was looking forward to a run, but after leaving work and driving through the drizzle, by the time I got home all I fancied was a cup of tea and some TV. But I did know that I would feel better after a run, and regret not getting out, especially if later in the week the weather is worse- if it tips with rain on Wednesday at least I know I only have to do a short run because I did a longer midweek one today. It was so dark though- I went up to Sweatshop on Sunday to get some high viz things with my vouchers, but they were shut (grr), so I am planning on stopping by on Thursday after work. I don’t mind it where there are lots of street-lights- I never need to worry about bad pavements, but when I am driving it reminds me of how seeing pedestrians is really hard, so when crossing the roads I was getting a bit paranoid. Was glad to be home!

But I did have a yummy gingerbread man after my dinner to make up for that fact. These are tasty but not that gingery- I think my taste buds are so used to lots of spices that I need more! And more! Also they would be yummy with a little melted dark chocolate on top- does that destroy the “no junk” promise? I will use nice chocolate 🙂

Last night I tried some Teapigs Lemon and Ginger tea ( I love the little piglets so much!)- this was yummy- not too gingery and I think perfect if you were feeling like you had a bit of a cold or something.

How do you eat your gingerbread men? I like to eat the legs first (so they can’t run away- cue evil laugh) but also because then they keep smiling at me. Weird.

Now a technical question- I quite like the idea of a facebook page (sort of getting with the program, I am afraid I am never going to understand tweeting but I can do facebook!), but I wonder if I am better to have a profile instead of a page? I don’t really want people from work reading my blog (I know stuff on the internet can be found by anyone, and if they did come across it then fine, but I don’t want to put it out there to make it easy!) and I tried to make a page this evening. But then I can’t seem to add people (I would like to add my lovely blog friends) like you would on a normal page- anyone with some idea of how it works I would appreciate a few pointers! Cheers.

Vegan pumpkin spice cake

The Pink Whisk November challenge is to make a tray bake recipe- for all those charity fund-raisers that happen at this time of year. I have had a few people request the recipe for the vegan pumpkin spice cake, and even though I can make it in the individual cake tin tray, I generally make it in a brownie pan and slice it up. I thought a vegan recipe would be good as with dairy allergies and things like that it is nice to have something at a bake sale that appeals to those specific diets. I have also made it gluten free (once) by using quinoa flour.

My recipe is based on the Sweet Vegan recipe, but I have reduced the oil, changed up the spices and made a few other modifications.

You will need

  • 260g plain flour (I use 130g white, 130g wholegrain spelt, or use all quinoa flour for gluten free- rice flour may work too)
  • 240g soft dark brown sugar
  •  2tsp baking powder (Dove’s Farm is gluten free)
  • 1 tsp bicarb (again Dove’s Farm is gluten free)
  • 2tsp cinnamon
  • 1 tsp ginger
  • 1 tsp mixed spice
  • 1/2 tsp grated nutmeg
  • 50ml rapeseed oil
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • 420g pumpkin puree (one tin of Libby’s from Waitrose or Ocado)
  • 150ml milk (I use soya, but almond would work, or dairy milk)
  • 3tsp ground flax seeds mixed with 4 tsp warm water (this replaces the egg- I have made this non vegan using an egg and it was still lovely)

Preheat the oven to 170C, and line a brownie pan with baking paper.

In a large bowl mix the flours, sugar, baking powder, bicarb and spices.

Then add the oil, milk, vanilla, pumpkin and mix until well combined.

Add the flax seeds in water and mix gently to combine.

Pour into the baking tray, and bake for 40-55 minutes. It is a very moist cake but a skewer should come out clean when it is cooked.

Leave to cool before slicing (and then selling at a bake sale!).

Optional- top with spiced cream cheese frosting (use a vegan cream cheese if you want to keep it dairy free). 100g cream cheese mixed with 200g icing sugar, 1 tsp vanilla and a tsp cinnamon. Low fat cream cheese will go very runny, so if you want to use it (I do sometimes) then add 1/2 tsp xanthan gum (again from Dove’s Farm) which will thicken it up.

These are sooooo good- they are gently sweet, and the spices are lovely and warming. Don’t take my word for it though, have a go at baking them yourself! 🙂

Nuts and orange fingers

Hey peeps

I am glad everyone liked the look of the Stollen yesterday- I think Germany has the best Christmas traditions. My Dad’s mum was Austrian so we always had a lot of those sorts of things growing up. When my parents come over for Christmas I will be making another one for then.

As well as making stollen, I made some spiced nuts- whisk up an egg white, add a few tbs icing sugar and brown sugar, loads of spices (cinnamon, mixed spice…) and some extract (vanilla/ almond/ orange) then bake.

They need turning/ shaking a few times- these took around 20 mins.

Yum! Leave to cool, then store in an airtight jar. I will make a variation of these as Christmas gifts.

I have also been making some more warm lunches.

Another from my squash box- this was a red onion squash- with such vibrant orange flesh.

This was chopped up along with a couple of carrots and a massive sweet potato, and roasted in the oven for 30 mins with a little rosemary. By the way, I walked up to Aldi today (I actually went to go to Sweatshop to spend my race vouchers, but it was closed despite having Sunday opening hours of 11-5pm, anyway..) and I got a big bag of sweet potatoes for 69p! And a big bag of apples for 69p! And 3 peppers for 69p! Super cheap.

Then I cooked 50g quinoa and 50g wholewheat giant cous cous with some vecon stock, added a tin of tomatoes, chilli flakes and a tin of black eye beans.

This made 5 servings all layered up, and some more roasted veg for dinner on another day.  After all that chopping I have very orange fingers, so to match I nibbled on;

Yum- Montezumas Milk chocolate with orange- soooooooo good!

Favourite orange thing? I wonder how many people will answer with pumpkin!

PS I also made the vegan pumpkin spice cake, so stay tuned for the recipe 🙂

Stop! Stollen time

Woo!

I made the most of my weekend at home- seems like it has been ages (well, we have spent the last 2 weekends going away for races).

Saturday started with some gingerbread porridge (2 boxes for £3 in Waitrose, but they only had 1 box left!)- nice but I think it could do with more ginger! I think I am a spice addict.

Then it continued with an 8 mile run- I could not decide between a 6 and 8 mile run (I was aching a lot from body pump on Thursday-I had to miss last week due to parents evening, and normally I would go down weights if I miss weeks but I didn’t and was worried that I would not actually finish the squats track), so went on how I felt at mile 3 (when I have to choose the route home)- I was feeling great so I carried on. I even contemplated rounding it up to 10, but then thought Andy might worry about where I had got to. 1 hr 32 which I think is my quickest time for that route too. (We went out last night for a friends’ birthday and I had some chocolate orange raspberry torte for dessert- must be my rocket fuel).

This was meant to be my post run snack, but I actually forgot to drink the milk. The Larabar was amazing though- tasted very similar to the almond fudgy bars.

Then it was stollen time! Hooray! This recipe is vegan and is based on the one in Rachel Allen’s Bake (which also has the best Christmas cake recipe, gingerbread house and white chocolate peanut butter blondies need I go on- check it out). It made me 3 loaves- one normal and 2 smaller.

First up and the fruit needed soaking- 400g fruit (I used 50g mixed peel and 350g mixed fruit, but I have added cranberries, cherries etc before), 100g ground almonds, 50ml brandy, tsp vanilla and tsp almond extract.

Then heat 220ml almond milk and add 2 tsp dried yeast- leave to bubble for 10 mins. As the almond milk was sugar free I also added a tsp sugar here to help the yeast.

Meanwhile put 500g strong bread flour in a bowl with a load of spices- I did cinnamon, ginger, cardamon, cloves and nutmeg. See, spice addict.

Add the frothy milk and stir it- then knead in 150g pure spread and 100g caster sugar.

This gets sticky! You may need to add a little more flour to make it into a soft dough.

Then leave covered for 2 hours to double in size.

Hooray!

Then put it on a board and roll out, pour on the fruit mixture and knead it all in.

Then split it into however many loaves you want (I did 3). Roll each one out, put some marzipan in (which seems to be vegan? For some reason I thought it contained egg whites but the ones I have are just sugar and almonds) and sprinkle a few flaked almonds inside.

Then roll up into a loaf shape and attempt to seal the crack down the middle. Leave for an hour to rise. Then heat the oven to 200C.

Bake for 40-45 mins, and then dust with icing sugar. This is in the recipe but also handily covers the bits where the dough opens back out again.

I could not wait to try some (with some lovely vanilla rooibos tea). My one came out blurry, but look at this slice;

The marzipan in the middle is the best bit! 🙂

They keep for a while (if you can resist them) and also freeze well- so I have put one in the freezer and we are taking the big one to Andy’s parents tomorrow.

I hope you all had a lovely Saturday too- what did you do to relax today?

Also on a totally random note, I have seen that clif bar do seasonal flavours– how good do these sound? : spiced pumpkin pie, iced gingerbread and peppermint stick (US peeps- are they as nice as they sound?). Actually they sound like latte flavours too, but they are clif bars! Amazing. Maybe they need a stollen flavour to add to the collection….

Lumie Lamp

Hey peeps

A few weeks ago in the UK the clocks went back for the winter time. Now personally I never understood why we keep this tradition going (traditionally it was for the farmers etc who had to get up early, but now everyone gets up early as we all work long hours- we can’t just get up with the light!). It means that the mornings are lighter (for about a week it seems) but the evenings are darker an hour quicker. So before half term I would be driving home in the light, but after half term it is getting gloomy at 4pm.

I have seen numerous news reports saying that we should not move the clocks back any more because of road safety (for example here and here)- it makes sense to me as in the mornings children are being dropped off at school or walking straight there, so if it was dark children would only be on the roads for a short about of time, whereas in the afternoons children go to after school clubs, more of them walk home alone, they walk to the shops with their friends etc, so more potential for road accidents to happen. It always seems that when this is brought up, Scotland are the ones who stop it going through parliament, so I think we should have two different time zones.

I also do not like the dark evenings as it means by the time I get home from work it feels like night, and I am less inclined to go out for a walk- it feels like the day is over.

A while ago I was contacted by the people at Lumie, asking me if I wanted to trial one of their products for a couple of months. I have a small Lumie body-clock lamp in my bedroom (you can program it to turn on gradually over 15 mins or so, so you wake up naturally, but I am such a light sleeper it woke me up right away, so I turn it on once the alarm goes off) and the light is much more gentle and realistic than normal lamps.

They sent me a Brightspark lamp which is a certified medical device for the treatement of SAD- seasonal affective disorder. It was recommended to have it on for 45-90 mins each day, and to sit very close to it. There is lots of research on their website if you are interested.

The light from the Lumie lamp was very very bright- as if it was a really sunny day. We have been putting it on in the evenings for a little bit, but not sitting as close as was suggested as I felt it was giving me a headache (not sure if it was because it heats up a bit?). Having that more natural light instead of the normal artificial lights really helped with the darker evenings. It is just a shame they cannot make street lights out of them!

I love my Lumie body clock, and I would say that the Brightspark would be good for if you worked in an office or something like that, to keep the light nice and natural all day through the winter months.

Thanks Lumie for letting me try this.

How do you feel about the clocks going back in the winter? Do you think you suffer with some form of SAD? How do you cope with the darker evenings?