Ward off that winter cold!

Here's an excellent way to fight off all those nasty germs flying around! Tahini sauce loaded with garlic and lemon juice doesn't only taste nice but also provides you with vitamin C and antioxidants that help in combating viruses. Enjoy with plenty of colourful raw vegetables and fruits like carrots, apples, cucumber and cauliflower for an extra vitamin boost. Tahini is also rich in calcium and protein so this is also a great snack before or after exercise (or a life saver on a day after a wild party!)

Tahini dip

3 heaped tablespoons of tahini
juice of 1 lemon
1/2-1 dl of water
3-4 cloves of garlic
about 2 tablespoons of olive oil
salt

Mix everything together until smooth. Keeps several days in the fridge.

Let them eat bruschetta!

Let's face it - we are poor. And now when I am on maternity leave even poorer. Well, as poor as any well-educated people with a fairly middle-class backround can be. As in not at all really, when you look at things on a global scale. But thinking that our poorness is just relative doesn't help a great deal when there are loads of bills to pay and the bank account is on the minus side! This New Year I made a resolution to try live with as little money as possible - and to make it a fun challenge instead of just being  mean.

I made these bruschetta bread slices from a loaf I got for free from local whole food store. It's also an excellent way to use up any old pieces of bread that are drying up in your bread cupboard.

All you need is:

bread
olive oil
garlic
salt
herbs (rosemary, basilica, whatever available really)

Chop the garlic and mix in with the oil. Add salt and herbs. Slice the bread and spread oil generously on the slices. Bake in oven in 225 degrees for about 5-10 minutes until crisp and brown. Enjoy while feeling virtuous!

Best for your breasts

The last few weeks there's been a scandal around silicone breasts: the poisonous and extremely fragile PIP implants have risked the health of thousands of women around the world. With all due respect to these women who were unaware just how dangerous chemical cocktail their implants were how can it be news to anyone that silicone breasts can be dangerous? How can any adult person in their right mind think that putting silicone into your body would be a good idea? Then again, in Latin America for example where lot of the PIP implants were imported, silicone breasts are apparently getting more and more common among girls even as young as sixteen. And the former pop star, current sad joke Britney Spears got silicone breasts when she was 17 - to aid her career. Nice little investment from her parents!

I want to think carefully what I even put on my breasts. At the moment they serve mostly as an important tool: I am nursing our son. As any women who has breastfed their baby knows, the breasts can leak milk even when not actually nursing. Especially during the first few months the milk just seems to stream constantly. If you don't want your top or sheets to be wet with milk, you have to wear nursing pads. When my first child was born I briefly tried disposable nursing pads but they felt horribly sweaty and irritated my nipples. The pads got also stuck on the breasts and some fibres even went into the baby's mouth.

And who knows what all is in them? Not me anyway, even if I tried to find out from the manufacturer's pages. A bit dodgy, isn't it? Most likely they are made of similar materials to disposable nappies and sanitary towels. I made my master's thesis on sanitary towels and believe you me, they are made of things that I certainly don't want anywhere near the most sensitive part of my anatomy! One ingredient at least is bleached cellulose pulp - and I don't think the bleaching process is very friendly to the environment or your skin. And then of course there's the totally unnecessary waste that these little pads are once used. 

For this second time I was a wiser woman and stocked up with nice washable nursing pads. The ones in the picture with owls and hedgehogs are cute, aren't they? They can be washed with the nappies in 60 degrees and they really keep the milk from the places it doesn't belong! And by buying them I supported local small scale handicraft industry. The only problem with them is that they look so much fun that big sister keeps pinching them!

Kitchen implements for old punks

As a young punk about a decade ago I wouldn't never, ever have imagined that the day would come when I would be excited about kitchen implements.  But how could you not like these pretty things? The lovely fair trade mortar made of soap stone is last year's Christmas present from my husband and a friend gave me the beautifully carved chopping board this years. I used the spices in the mortar to season our New Year Eve's meal - some rather nice soya burgers with potato salad.

This New Year we stayed happily in and had a mug of organic glühwein at midnight as the year changed (another scenario I would have found incredibly boring and bourgeois as a young punk). It has been a messy, happy, hectic year - I wonder what this one will be like?!

Fairly bad

I was (well, always am) a bit short of money before Christmas and felt I couldn't afford my usual (very good but very expensive) brand of organic face tonic.  While doing some gift hunting in a local fair trade shop I happened to bump into this product  from a company called Fair naturally and thought to give it a go. Cheap it may have been but unfortunately even the little money I spent on it was too much. It's one of these you-should-always-read-the-small-print-or-at-least-sniff-the-tester -cases: it does sport a big fair trade logo in the label but actually has only two fairly traded ingredients - cotton seed and cucumber - and they seem to be the only natural ones as well. It irritates my dry skin horribly and smells of turpentine mixed with cheap perfume. Yuk.

Seasonal eatings!

We had some friends and family over for coffee on the 24th - that's the main day of Christmas here. I made (clockwise from top) a tiger cake, ginger bread, a plum pie and a sandwich cake. I am especially pleased with the vegan sandwich cake - it's a kind of savoury cake that is usually filled with cold meat and mayonnaise.  I think it might be a Scandinavian or maybe just a Finnish thing  - I haven't actually encountered it anywhere else than in Finland. The recipe is from my best friend but I've altered it a bit. ( I hope you don't mind if you're reading this, S.V.!)

What you need for a VEGAN SANDWICH CAKE is:

2 loaves of sliced toast, one really white unhealthy one, and one whole wheat one
1 tub of vegan cream cheese ( I used Tofutti)
2 tubs of vegan mayonnaise
1 tub of natural soya yoghurt
1 chunk ( about 200g) of smoked tofu
1 sweet red pepper
rucola salad or water cress
1 red onion
vegetable stock (I used Vecon mixed with water, that's tasty and healthy too!)
pretty vegetables and herbs for decorating

What you need to do :

Firstly, sieve the yoghurt overnight to make it less liquid. I did this through a terry cloth (yes, a nappy, but an unused one!) : place the moistened cloth in a sieve an pour the yoghurt in it.  Put the sieve in a pan or something else big enough to allow the extra liquid drip off without touching the bottom of the sieve. Put the whole package in the fridge.

Mix the thickened yoghurt with mayonnaise and cream cheese. Divide the mixture into 3 equal parts. Now grab your trusty mixer: mix one part with smoked tofu and finely chopped red onion. Mix the second part with the red pepper and rucola/water cress. Leave the third part as it is, that will be used for decorating the cake.

Slice the crusts off the bread slices, making them even squares. Place 4 slices of the white bread in a row (without gaps) on a piece of cling film. Moisten the slices with vegetable stock. Then dollop the pieces of bread generously with the mixture flavoured with smoked tofu.

Put 4 slices of the darker bread on top of the white bread, moisten with vegetable stock and cover with the pepper-mayonnaise mixture. Repeat until about 5 to 6 layers high, alternating with white and brown bread and the two different fillings.

Wrap the whole business tightly in cling film and finally on tin foil. Keep in the fridge till the next day.  Smooth the unseasoned mixture on the cake and decorate for example with slices of cucumber, cherry tomatoes and fresh herbs.

You should end up with something looking roughly like this:

Enjoy!

Real Swedish pizza

I have been extremely busy for the whole summer and autumn - working, studying and giving birth to my second child amongst other things! Before the birth of my son I had an excellent study trip to Stockholm however - visiting libraries of course but also the plentiful vegan restaurants. The most impressive one was without doubt a pizza place called Tevere in Skånegatan. They had a huge list of vegan pizzas with soya cheese that actually melted. I had a huge one with vegan salami topping. Stockholm is indeed full of good eateries: if you ever go there, check updated list of vegan and vegetarian restaurants and shops from Happy Cow - brilliant service by the way.