RECIPE: Apple Spice Quinoa Cake

I have been nestled in the countryside of Chabanais, in the south west of France, with my dear friend Kate, for the past week & in an attempt to entertain ourselves, we have been baking sweet treats on the daily.  Having been a little zealous with my measuring, whilst making 'meat' balls the other night, we ended up with about half a tonne of cooked quinoa left over.  Rather than let anything go to waste, I scoured the internet for recipe ideas & came across this...

Apple Spice Quinoa Cake

 

This simple recipe from the Little Artisan Kitchen, has nine ingredients, which can be modified for both vegan & gluten free diets.  Taking only three steps to make, it's great for people for whom time, or indeed patience, is short.

I replaced the butter with vegetable margarine, used up a cup of the leftover quinoa & after an hour in the oven, was salivating over the smell emitting from the cake tin.  Between the three of us, Kate, her husband Colin & myself, the entire cake was devoured by the time we all went to bed.  A most successful foray into quinoa related baking, even if I do say so myself.  Now, what to do with the rest of this quinoa...

Nice, where the sun don't always shine.

There was a part of me, that assumed, that once I reached France, I'd just know what to do.  I've always thought of France as my spiritual home.  I don't know why exactly, it's just, whenever I'm there, no matter what part of the country I'm in, I always get that feeling, that I'm where I'm meant to be.

Now don't get me wrong, I've had my ups & downs with France.  For starters, after two years of French class, my ability to speak the language is still embarrassingly poor.  Then, of course, there is, I feel, this slight elitism about the French.  In Italy, if you try to speak Italian, even if you are piss poor at it, they love you for trying, they embrace you.  Yet, in France, if you try & speak French, predominantly speaking, they still seem to dislike you.

Of course, I don't want to tar an entire nation with the same brush.  I have met lots of French people who have been wonderful & whom I am still in contact with.  It can just be very frustrating & somewhat isolating, when you're in a country that you love, trying to incorporate yourself & you feel as though you're being rejected.

So there I was in Nice, waiting for the feeling, that feeling of direction to wash over me & it just wasn't there.  I started to feel more lost than ever.  Was I doing the right thing or had I just rushed leaving Italy.  I suddenly wasn't sure & my indecisiveness took hold & spun me into a black hole of self-doubt.  The kind that sends me off into self-destruct mode.

Making friends with a Chilean guy in my room, we caught the number 100 bus from Place Garibaldi & spent the day in Monaco.  For €1.50 & forty minutes, it seemed madness not to.  It was so warm & sunny, it felt like spring.  The pair of us walked around in nothing but our T-shirts.  It was bliss.  For a brief moment, I actually allowed myself to stop thinking about what to do next & actually just enjoy the moment.

The pair of us walked up to the Jardin Exotique & sat & ate lunch, overlooking the city, with the sea glistening, outstretched in front of us.  I felt happy.  If not just for a moment.  Chilean asked me what I was going to do next, where would I go after Nice.  I couldn't answer.  I hadn't thought further than getting there.

I wasn't worried about money.  I wasn't worried about having somewhere to stay.  I was worried about doing the right thing.  Like honestly, what had made me come traveling in the first place.  It's so easy to sit at home & think the grass is greener in the Mediterranean.  That life would simply make sense somewhere else.  Somewhere warm.  But what happens when you get there & realise, it's not about the place, the issue is you.

That evening, panicked by my own indecisiveness, I sent frantic messages to my friends, posted statuses of distress on my social networks & then, gave in to the hostel's Happy Hour & got drunk on €1 beers.  I could actually sense myself falling into a spiral of incomprehensible madness.  I actually couldn't think straight.  I'd forgotten why I was there.  Lost all that inner peace I'd found in the monastery.  I was a mess.

Hungover the next day, I packed up my things, checked out & wept into my complimentary breakfast in the hostel's bar.  An American guy I'd spoken to the night before, in my drunken depression fueled fog, came to join me.  He was about as clueless as I was.  There's something about New Yorkers though, they radiate this sense of overbearing wisdom.  Consistently psychoanalysing you & reducing you to tears.  Yes, I cried.

Strangely, despite myself, I found that, through my hatred of him, I somehow ended quite liking him.  It was a clear cut case of a love-hate relationship.  Leaving our things in the hostel, we took a stroll through the streets, along the beach & ending up at the castle, overlooking the sea.  There was a busker playing L'Autre Valse d'Amélie on the accordion, which practically gave me chills.  When he then started playing La Vie En Rose, I closed my eyes & I could almost believe I was in Paris.  It was a perfect moment in time.

Returning to our hostel, it was time to make a decision.  I could travel along the coast & work my way up to Paris, or I could head to my friend Kate's in Chabanais.  One was logical & the other was intuitive.  I chose the latter; head to Kate's.  Unfortunately, having been spoilt in Italy, with cheap & easy public transport, I was completely naive when it came to getting around France.  Looking into the train to Limoges, I was shocked when I saw it was going to cost over €150!

This revelation threw me into a panic.  Cue another meltdown.  Thankfully, Jean, one of the guys working at the hostel, who I'd made friends with, came to the rescue & pestered me into looking at BlaBlaCar, a car share website, a few people had mentioned to me.  I hadn't really liked the thought of it & so hadn't bothered to take a look, but ended up being so glad I did.

Essentially, people making long car journeys across country, sign up to the site & advertise seats in their car for a set fee.  All you have to do, is pick someone going your way & contact them to reserve a place.  I managed to find someone who was leaving Nice & driving directly to Limoges, for €50.  Saving me over €100 on train fare.  Only issue was he wasn't going until the following day.

Villa Saint Exupery was now fully booked, because of the impending carnival, so myself & New York, who'd decided to head up to Lyon on the train the next day, found another hostel round the corner & checked in for a night.  Perhaps some time with friends was what I needed, to shift me back into reality.

REVIEW: Chia Seeds

I can't deny my relationship with food over the years, has been a strained one.  I gain weight terribly easily & loathe the feeling when I'm carting about those extra few pounds, with my jeans cutting off the blood supply to my lower half & oh how I hate the site of my face when it fills out.  Nothing worse than feeling uncomfortable in your own skin.  

Thankfully, I have always been able to lose weight very easily, I simply pack my diet with protein; poached egg on toast for breakfast, sushi for lunch & either mackerel or chicken thighs with salad for dinner.  Boom, those pesky pounds drop off within weeks.

Unfortunately, since returning to veganism, consuming high amounts of fat burning protein hasn't been so easy.  Although tofu may have, gram for gram, the same amount of protein as red meat, I sadly, am inconveniently intolerant, which means, my body absorbs none of the protein & instead, just bloats out.

So, the horrendous amount of weight I put on in Italy, through excessive pasta/gelato/formaggio/pane eating, was not shifting quite as quickly as I'd hoped, when I came back to England at Christmas for a break.  I started to feel a slight wave of despair at my rotund middle & hugging thighs.  I had cut out all processed products, cut my sugar consumption down to almost nothing, was eating plenty of raw food, gallons of water & yet, not much was changing.

Attempting not to land myself another eating disorder, I persevered, then one day, mère told me to try Chia Seeds.  Sceptical at first, I didn't bother.  Then, just before I flew back to Italy, mère bought me a pack.  Within a week of consuming them daily, the weight just started to drop off & my energy levels increased tenfold.

Packed full of protein, carbohydrates, dietary fiber, vitamins & minerals, these tiny little seeds from South America, are nothing short of being a superfood!  They have six times the amount of calcium than milk, provide more omega-3 fatty acids than any fish out there, thrice the iron content of spinach, nine times the phosphorous content of whole milk, double the potassium of bananas, fifteen times the magnesium of broccoli, two times the dietary fiber of bran flakes & nine times more selenium than flax seeds!  Phew.

That's not all!  When added to water, its complex structure of dietary fiber, absorbs the water & turns into a gel.  When this gel gets into your digestive system, it essentially scours & cleans your intestinal tract, improving your body's nutritional absorption & then coats the walls of your intestine, acting as a barrier for any carbohydrates you consume, therefore, slowing down & stabilizing the absorption of sugar into your blood stream.  This results in the energy from this sugar lasting longer & being used more efficiently by your body, making it great for people with diabetes.  The added benefit of this gel, is that its ability to hold water, makes you feel fuller for longer.  Which is great for cutting down on excessive snacking, of which I am eternally guilty of.

I make sure to have two tablespoons a day, which I sprinkle over salads, or mix into my soup.  They don't have much taste, just a crunch, so you can pretty much mix them into anything, yoghurts, porridge, even bake with them.  Mexicans pour them into their water bottles & drink it down for an energy boost.  I tried this method, but have to say, it tasted like frogspawn & so, I wouldn't recommend it.

Available to buy from most health food stores or online through amazon, they are sold by various brands & at differing prices.  Mère bought me a 250g bag of organic Chia Seeds from Infinity Foods & as I only have two tablespoons a day, I still have half a bag left after nearly a month.  It's best to shop around & get the right size & price.

I am happy to say, that since taking Chia Seeds, my Italian weight & I have parted ways & I can actually breath in my black skinny jeans once again.  For an unnoticeable addition to my meals each day, I am now packed to the rafters with all my nutritional needs, which means that I no longer suffer from cravings & go off on snackathons.  It has most certainly been a change for the better.  Maybe I'll start listening to mère more often.