Day 12: The Away From Home Challenge

I am on a course which requires me to be in London Friday + Saturday every other week.

So of course, I knew this was coming.

This meant I could prepare.

Knowing how hard it can be to find decent food unless you know where to look anyway (and knowing on the flip side that this is often the cause of any "bad" foods I eat: convenience), I knew it would be extra hard to accomodate the rules of the challenge, if I didn't plan in advance.

I decided to invest in this lovely little gadget:

Kenwood Compact Mini Chopper

Image (c) tesco.com

Had my eye on it for a while anyway.  My mum's got one AND Delia Smith recommends it (in her How To Cheat at Cooking book, which in my opinion should be renamed How To Be A Sensible, Time-Conscious Modern Cook, With A Life Outside The Kitchen Too, but then that's not quite as snappy..)  Its also basically a baby of my normal (and cherished) kitchen food processor (possibly THE best Xmas present I've had for a while! Seriously!)  What more encouragement do I need?!  So I nipped out and purchased the other day.

This "mini chopper" ie. scaled down food processor is to accompany me to London, and allow me to produce fresh breakfast smoothies, in the (experience-led) anticipation that I would otherwise find it difficult to eat in the morning (avoiding the usual grain-/meat-tastic breakfast foods).

This morning however I got up at 5.30 and made a massive smoothie to take with me and eat on the train.  I also bagged up some vanilla whey, and a load of nuts and fuit.

Breakfast

• 1 large mug frozen mixed berries
• ~40g Kinetica whey (Vanilla)
• ~300ml coconut milk
• dash of water (to thin it out)
• desiccated coconut, crushed mixed nuts, flaked almonds on top 

This was HUGE.  Don't really get a sense of scale in the photo - but for some perspective the coffee is a Venti...!  I ate it slowly over the course of my 2.5hr train journey.

Got a few slightly odd looks from the businessmen in their suits..  The one on the table in front of me looked very slick and serious, tapping away at a Macbook Air throughout... only for me to notice he was only on bloody facebook! Ha!

Lunch

It was actually pretty chilly in London (though sunny), which surprised me because even though the weather's clearly turned up north, its always at least a few degrees warmer down there.  Seriously though it is.

So this meant that I really fancied something hot at lunch time.  I went to EAT as it was close by, and I have previously found their food to be fresh and decent quality (and they use organic milk etc).  I was pleased that they had no qualms about showing me the ingredients lists for the soups they had on - although why aren't these available generally anyway?  - I queued up to even ask..?!  And I was subsequently pleased to see I could have

• Red Dal soup (without the yoghurt garnish): lentils, tomato, onion, Indian spices
• 1 apple (took this with me from home)

Also got through the afternoon with 

• Handful mixed nuts and fruit (taken with me)

Tea

When I go away, but espcially to London, I like to try new places to eat.  I go by my own research (online), word of mouth, reviews (usually The Metro and/or The Sunday Times), and the age old adventure of stumbling across somewhere that looks interesting and giving it a go...  I'll admit, this sometimes results in a sort of deflating disappointment.  But other times, it results in the amazing satisfaction of a previously undiscovered gem.

Today was an occasion of the latter :)

I do think its worth doing a little research (on most things actually).  I'm not obsessive about it, but from experience I think it usually pays off, even if its just by taking you somewhere you would never otherwise know about.

For food research (places to eat), a lot of it is London-centric anyway.  My favourite food writer, for example, is Marina O'Loughlin, and being London-based a large proportion of her reviews are of places down there.  That's fair enough I guess.  It also means there are tons of resources for finding great places in town (and very few excuses for eating shit).

Having got back to the hotel around 5.30pm, I spent a little time browsing about until I decided it was definitely time to eat.  Having nothing in particular in mind, and being tired from the early rise, I was up for whatever but wanted somewhere fairly close.  So I used the TimeOut restaurant finder by postcode.  Natty.

Being on the edge Covent Garden plenty of stuff came up, and I narrower it to either:

(a) Food For Thought; or
(b) Wild Food Cafe.

Both worked under my usual criteria (nourishing tasty flavourful veggie food, at a decent price), but with a TimeOut review stating "this isn't the place for protein faddists or superfood obsessives: expect hearty, carb-laden fare... And expect hefty portions.." I ruled out Food For Though: not Challenge-compliant!

Wild Food Cafe, on the other hand, turned out to be a beautiful little find!

Gotta trust an eaterie where you sit at the high counter or communal benches around a fully open kitchen - watching the chefs at work (No smokescreens here! Literally. - Its raw food!).  The modern raw food kitchen uses techniques such as sprouting, blending and dehydration, although they do serve a couple of warm options.

In the spirit of things, and after checking all of the ingredients with a very knowledgeable server, I went for:

• the 'Living pizza': wild sea purslane, basil, raw cultured tomato marinara, fresh tomato, olives, blended raw coconut and almond 'cheeze', on ground raw nut base; raw courgette and caper salad, mixed leaves
• Fresh (sliced) ginger and lemon tea

DELICIOUS.

I got talking to an older gentleman (seem to do this a lot?!) who sat across from me at the commual bench, who comes here every week, and proclaimed it the best raw food place in London, if not the UK.  He knows the people that run it, which resulted in us sharing a blender jug of the greenest raw juice:  

• 1 glass of raw juice: local foraged leaves with apple

He forages in the local parks, inc Regent's Park and Hampstead Heath.  The leaves had been picked approx 2 hours before.

The guy I was talking to told me, in complete earnest, that this stuff is so energising that he once drank 3 big glasses in the space of about half an hour and "got high"!  Now "getting high" might mean something a little different to a slightly elderly man of Asian-decent.  But he completely convinced me that it had changed his state of mind.. [he once "got high" from eating 1kg of raw chocolate too quick too..!]

TAKE THAT, BEROCCA!

Anyway, in summary: result!

Not only did everything taste great, it tasted super fresh, and super good for me!  Lovely combination of savoury flavours, textures and colours.  Aaaand of course, Challenge-compliant.

In fact, I'd go further than that.  I'd say this was "more paleo" than the Challenge requires.  And indeed, "more paleo" than most people do paleo.

What I am referring to, of course, is that it was raw.  And cavemen (I believe) did not have cookers.  So this is a more historically authentic, and therefore more desirable, approach to diet.  - If you follow the core tenet of Paleo, that the diet of our ancestor is the diet our bodies have evolved to deal with, and thrive on.

There are plenty of resources out there advocating this approach: the Raw Paleo Diet.  There are also other versions of raw food diets, which apart from Raw Vegan/Vegetarian (which are relatively familiar, to me at least), may include raw animal products e.g. Primal/Instincto/Wai Diets... 

I've always enjoyed the freshness of raw food (as long as its actually fresh, of course!!).  And conversely hate anything overcooked.  Its like you can literally taste and feel that the nutrients have been sucked out already.  I'm not planning on going raw anytime soon, but its still food for thought (haha!).