Browsing: lent

So Easter gets ever closer – just 10 days left in the Ethical Superstore diet (regular readers will recall I have been challenged to only eat food and drink that can be purchased from ESS for the whole of lent).

I guess the biggest change for me is that I have ended up cooking virtually all of my meals for the last few weeks. Helen (my long suffering wife and fellow blogger) has put up with cooking me a vegetarian option for years, but the idea of then having to cook my option separately using Ethical Superstore ingredients was a step too far! So most evenings I’ve come home and cooked a meal for myself. Previously, this would have been getting a veggie ready meal out of the freezer, popping in the microwave and 4 minutes later sitting down to a portion of vegetable (plus salt, sugar and fat) goodness. For the last five weeks I’ve been looking at a pile of ingredients and waiting for inspiration.

I suspect this will be the biggest change when this little project comes to an end. Ready meals just don’t do it for me having now cooked for myself for the last 5 weeks. Even with my cooking and slap-dash approach to quantities, the taste and the freshness is way better than the average pack of freezer fodder.

So what have been my highlights?

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So just 2 weeks to go until Easter and the “eat only stuff I can buy at EthicalSuperestore.com” has been going pretty well. I am now a total convert to having a vegetable box delivered every week. I love the serendipity of opening the box to see what we are going to be eating this week – healthy soups, stir frys and casseroles are now the order of the day.

However, my unblemished record has been a bit tarnished in the last 10 days. Ethical Superstore was nominated in the Emerging Retailer category at the Retail Week Awards. I had to go down for the plush event with 2000 guests in my bow tie and dress suit. Having paid £400 (how can that be justified???) I decided I’d better eat the food and as far as I know the Grosvenor House hotel doesn’t buy its food from us. The event was pretty good fun – Jimmy Carr was very entertaining . . .

Read the rest of Two Weeks to Go »

So we are now in week 3 of Lent and still the Ethical Superstore diet is going pretty well (in summary, for six weeks I’m only going to eat what we sell in the Ethical Superstore range).

At first my biggest problem was giving up milk in tea and coffee. I really didn’t like the taste without milk and the various substitutes work well for most things apart from in tea and coffee. However, I think I’ve become acclimatised to no milk in my hot drinks now – in fact I accidentally put it in my tea on Tuesday morning and couldn’t understand why my tea tasted so horrible. Maybe black tea and coffee will be a change for life….

Bread making continues to be the high point using the Doves Farm bread kit. Experimented with adding a little sugar and vegetable fat (around a teaspoon of each) and ended up with a bigger loaf and a more even “rise”.  There is a chocolate cake in the range too – so I think I’ll make that my treat this weekend.

I guess that the biggest challenge of eating only from the Ethical Superstore range for anyone with a  busy life, is the lack of ready meals. The Just Wholefoods range comes close and has allowed me to make meals with cous cous and biriyani without too much effort. The veggie bangers are lovely too. Also at £1.35 for  a pack that serves two people – they are good value too.

However, the only reason why the challenge can work at all is the fantastic

Read the rest of A Change for Life? »

I'm so optimistic that when I tilt my head I can see the shape of a jelly bear in this kiwi

So week one of my ESS challenge is successfully completed. For those of you who missed my first blog, I am trying to only eat and drink things that you can buy from the Ethical Superstore for the whole of Lent. My only relaxation is drinking water from the tap.

After 7 days things are going pretty well. I’ve lost a couple of pounds in weight and I’m eating much more healthily (well apart from the Divine Strawberry truffles which have gone past their best before date – lovely!).

Breakfast has been either homemade bread using the Dove’s Farm bread kit (cooked in my breadmaker – just add a cup of water and turn on) or Rude Health’s Morning Glory porridge. The latter was a little bit of  a shock – I thought it was just porridge. Turned out to be a mixture of seeds and grain plus porridge oats. A little bit of an acquired taste but I’m happy to say I have now acquired it; even when made with just water rather than milk.

Lunch has been soup, soup and more soup. Tried most of the Seeds of Change range and today began working through the Suma Soups starting with the Thick Vegetable. All very tasty.
The main meal has been tricky although the organic vegetable box has generally come up trumps. Vegetables used in casserole, stir fry and pasta have all worked well with the awesome Harrissa sauce working a treat to give even the most mundane looking plateful a zing of flavour.

Read the rest of One week gone and I’m still optimistic »

Lunch on Day Two

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you will probably be currently thinking that the whole organisation has gone “Fairtrade Fortnight” and “giving things up for lent” mad.  You shouldn’t be surprised though – Ethical Superstore is largely staffed by optimists.  We don’t look at global poverty and climate change and shrug our shoulders. We believe that we can make a difference to these things even through something as mundane as the type of coffee you drink. So when Lent comes around many people in the team have decided to do things to make their lifestyle or the world a better place.

So in that context my decision for lent doesn’t feel quite so stupid – I’ve decided to only eat things I can buy from the Ethical Superstore range for lent. When someone first said it couldn’t be done, it seemed easy – I reeled off a long list of all the things we sell. However, as I begin my Lenten pledge it’s the things we don’t sell that seem more problematic – no milk, no margarine, no butter, no bread, no eggs. This is going to be an interesting six weeks.

So the rules I have set are quite simple, apart from water (and by the way we do sell water too!) everything I consume over the coming weeks will have all of the ingredients derived from the Ethical Superstore range of food products. Yesterday was day 1.

Read the rest of I’m not mad, just optimistic… »