Birthdays, bad sleep and buns

It was inevitable that, sooner or later, the steady weight loss of the first four weeks’ dieting would come to a halt. The important thing to remember is that this is entirely normal. It’s rare for any diet to see a steady, equal week-on-week weight reduction. Some weeks you’ll lose three pounds, some weeks you’ll lose none, even worse, some weeks you might notice the scales tipping away from your favour. When this happens, and it will, don’t give up. Just stick with it, because when the stats are averaged out over a longer period, you’ll see you are actually achieving a nice steady one-pound-a-week reduction.

This week I didn’t manage to budge the numbers one bit when it came to my weekend weigh-in. I can offer two excuses. First, this week it was my birthday. And I wasn’t going to turn down the opportunity for a trip to Limoges to try out a new vegan restaurant. The promise of cheesecake was calling, in fact, it had been ever since I found out about La Petite Graine back in January. There are few opportunities for an unplanned pure vegan meal here in rural France, so I wanted to make the most of this one, as you’ll see below.

My second excuse is a bit feeble. Our neighbour has been leaving for work at 4.50am – yes, you read the right, 4.50 am – on an extremely noisy motorbike. Now I don’t begrudge him the work, there are so few jobs around in rural areas, but does he really need to keep it running for five minutes and rev the engine before setting off? Trouble is, once I’m awake it’s impossible to get back to a proper sleep, but I’m not ready to get up and start working. So, after a six-hour stint in front of the computer, I’m more than a little bit tired (and some would say grumpy). Tiredness is a factor to watch out for ~ it can make you lapse into bad eating habits. For me, cue salted peanuts and too much wine. Hopefully, the neighbour will get some better shifts next week and I’ll start sleeping through, though a heatwave is forecast.

The lesson I’ve learnt from this week is to stick with it. If you fall off the diet wagon (or any other resolution come to that), just climb back on. If you have a day where you eat too much, get tempted by a pack of salty tortilla chips (621 calories!) or three glasses of rose (or all three) ~ don’t worry. Tomorrow is another day. There’s no need to berate yourself or adopt a starvation plan. Just pick up where you left off, it will just take a little longer, but you’ll be happier. There’s no need to spoil a special day, eat what you enjoy ~ as long as it’s vegan.

So, back to La Petite Graine. What a breath of fresh air in an area dominated by its Limousin beef, Périgord foie gras and all that comes in between. When we eventually found it (it’s not difficult to find at all, just a combination of Mr VV being certain he knew where it was and Google Street on the phone thinking otherwise), it was just a touch after 12 and there was a queue! It’s bench-style communal eating tables, and you pay with the order, plus there’s no alcohol licence, so no excuse for people to loiter. We didn’t have to wait long.

Whilst we were waiting for free spot, the guy who runs front-of-house like clockwork (whose name now has completely escaped me, sorry), gave us a run-down of how the restaurant operates. Everything is made fresh every day, a choice of salads, plus a dish of the day and a regular choice of house salad (vegan-style, you know the thing – massive choice), falafels, burger (Mr VV’s fave), hummus and toast, plus a soup of the day. There may have been more and apologies to Petite Graine if I’ve missed something. All the bowls come with a selection of delicious salads: quinoa, red cabbage slaw, green leaves and micro sprouts. They looked exquisite and they complemented the food beautifully. The chef, Milaka (hope that’s right) has a fantastic touch with seasoning. There’s a whole host of desserts, too, all made on site and fresh. Of course, we had to have the cheesecake but there was also cookies, a layered parfait and brownies. To drink, there’s teas and coffee, plus fresh juices and smoothies, and some organic bottled drinks. If you’d prefer water, there’s unlimited mint and lemon water on tap to help yourself.

And so, the time came to eat. I’d ordered a falafel bowl and Mr VV had a burger (he always has a burger). In the words of Mr VV, ‘I can’t fault it’. The food was delicious, the welcome warm and friendly and everyone was eating vegan. What’s not to like? Then came the desserts. Well, I’ve never mastered vegan cheesecake and now I don’t need to. I know that Milaka makes a range of flavours but this time we were lucky that our favourite lemon cheesecake (citron) was on the menu. It was honestly the very best vegan cheesecake I’ve ever eaten. I can’t wait to try another variety. So, what a fabulous meal for my birthday. We rarely venture into Limoges, the last time was about six months ago when we made a lightning-fast trip to the prefecture, but now we’re looking for reasons to go. Week after next, in fact – not sure what that will do for my diet!

Recipe of the week

This week has been busy, busy. Not only did I take a rare day off, but the Twilight Open Weekend is looming, so a mammoth baking session is on the cards. I’ve not had time to devise or try out any new recipes, but rather I’ve been using up store cupboard ingredients. (Mr VV made one of his epic chillies, too.) This led me to discover the answer to this question: what can you make from an 800 gram tin of chickpeas?

This massive tin of chickpeas had been lurking on the shelf since I picked it up in Aldi a couple of months ago. Twice the size of the cans I usually use, it just never seemed the right time to open it. What’s more, I’d been trying to use dried pulses recently, to cut down on plastic and packaging. However, when I found that I’d forgotten to put any to soak, it was time to haul out the humungous tin.

First up was some fantastic chickpea-based burgers from the Vegan Richa Everyday Kitchen book. Pretty much all of the ingredients are everyday store cupboard staples of the vegan kitchen so it’s easy to put together. Apart from pre-cooking some garlic, onion and chilli, everything else is just loaded into the food processor and given a quick whizz. The mixture holds together really well, though I did chill the burgers before cooking. I find it helps to stop them falling apart. The mix made six so there’s some in the freezer for next week. Mr VV had his fried, whereas, trying to keep up the diet, I cooked mine in the airfryer.

Even after making six burgers there was plenty of chickpeas left, so time to whizz up some hummus for lunches. I added some fresh coriander to a basic hummus recipe and swapped the lemon juice for lime. There were still a couple of tablespoons of chickpeas left so I mixed these into a potato curry the following day.

I always save the liquid from tins of chickpeas. This precious juice, known as aquafaba, has myriad uses in vegan cooking. This time the majority was destined for two batches of cinnamon buns for the Twilight Open Days, but there was still enough left to make a small batch of vegan mayo. So, a large tin of chickpeas costing less than one euro formed the basis of four main meals, a week’s worth of lunches, some mayo and twenty-four buns. Not bad going!