Kefir Lassi

What better thing to do on a rainy day off, than play with food?

Today, whilst listening to the tinkle of the rain outside I have been playing kefir games. Kefir lassi games, to be precise.

Mussel fever

I've got mussel fever, I've gone mussel mad. They're in season, and fatter and juicier than I've ever had them.

Each day off, I pop to my local fishmongers on Calle de la Espada, where fat fish are served by burly winking men, whilst the seafood section is run by petite girls that short-change you if you're not careful. Their mussels come from Galicia, fresher than fruit, sat proud on their ice.

Cereales y Sostenibilidad

Trás una conversación con una muy buena amiga, me siento inspirada hablar hoy del sistema de producción de la comida que tenemos, y la fé ciega que le damos. También me está inspirando mucho el libro que estoy leyendo: "The Vegetarian Myth", por Lierre Keith. Es un manifiesto personal; un libro rebosando de pasión, dolor y deseos para un mundo más justo y más sostenible.

Durante 20 años, Keith no comía ni carne, ni huevos, ni productos lácteos ni ningún derivativo de animales ni productos animales; seguía una dieta bien estricta por su convicción de que podía sacar todas las vitaminas y minerales escenciales de comida vegetariana, y de que la producción de carne, lácteos, o cualquier producto de orígen animal era inmoral; por causar la muerte de un ser vivo y por su insostenibilidad intrínseca.

Food as Sustainer

One of the reasons I like food is that it touches on so many other things; that it is so much more than just what we eat. Food means much more, and works on so many different levels. It is the chicken soup that helps restore us back to health when we are snivelling with a cold or the flu. It is the grapes we eagerly shove in our mouth at midnight as we enter a new year, hoping it will bring us luck and prosperity. It is the birthday cake we share to celebrate, topped with flickering candles. It is the salty, crispy fish and chips, scoffed on the beach at dusk. Food is an establisher and strenghtener of social connections. It is also a link between us as humans and our place on the earth, our environment. It relates us to the soil, to the grass. Your morning toast, that raspberry sorbet, that melted cheese on your onion soup; all of them are the product of the earth, of the ground and the energy from the sun.

But yet more than this; food is our sustainer, we must eat it to live. It nourishes us, it brings us health, energy and goodness. Or rather it does in theory.