Monday 14 October 2013

Self Worth, Respect & Love

A series of connections were made in my head earlier on this evening bringing me to a slight revelation of the great importance of self-worth, respect & love. And I got thinking about how surely in order to love anybody else you must possess a certain amount of love for yourself before you are truly able to expose yourself to another being, and I think that having that belief that you are worthy of another person's love can be quite an unnerving thought for some too. 

Last Wednesday Russell Brand made some comments in his show about his past drug addiction, surely this must have stemmed originally from a lack of self-worth in order for him to stoop to such a low, that forced him to form a coping mechanism that fundamentally influenced and altered his behaviour and personality? The annoyance for others of his unfamiliar and perhaps over-bearing behaviour whilst under the influence of these drugs must have been infuriating, something only a person who knew his true inner-self would have the tolerance for. 


I find it quite remarkable thinking of the almighty hurdle it must have been to to wean himself off them whilst still under the influence of the fog like mentality that heroin tends to bring (said not out of experience but an educated guess!). For despite the support that others offered that initial decision and willpower had to come from him personally. He'd have had to address the true issues that were causing him to use the drugs in the first place, changing his view of himself and beginning to see himself worth more that the damage the drugs were doing to him. Russell said that everyday he is faced with that temptation to reform to his old ways, whether the temptation is small or great it's still remains, but for the past decade or so he has never succumbed to the lows of his old self and instead embraces and actively loves the person that he is, something I strongly admire. 


The drugs in this example could be an endless number of other things for it is just the 'symptom' of an under-lying problem, they could be general habits for some or fatal and harmful actions such as the drugs for others. Whether it be drinking, over-eating or perhaps just blocking people out of your life, these are all coping mechanisms which need that exact same sense of compassion and self-worth to refrain from such abuse instead the ability to visualise yourself as worthy of respect. I think when you can love yourself you can then go forth and begin to go on an endless 'journey' of forming healthy and fulfilling relationships. But that leap of faith, exposing yourself to be vulnerable and learning to accept and cherish all the ins and outs of who you are is quite a daunting process, well certainly for me but we can but try! Anyway just some food for thought! 


love, bean xx 


Sunday 13 October 2013

So much to do, so little time!

I've suddenly realised its been over a week since my last post, how lazy of me! I didn't think life could get any busier but I was mistaken as it seems to have been going double-time lately, leaving me with very little time to remember to breathe, let alone write my blog. Somehow in the middle of every day to day life my family and I went to see Russell Brand live on Wednesday in Manchester, it was a rather magical experience and my sister was lucky enough to meet him yesterday in Edinburgh too. 




For some reason my family seem to feel a great connection with him, perhaps it's because he does TM (transcendental meditation) like us or maybe because he's rather crazy, whatever it is I think we feel like he's a part of our family so it was rather lovely seeing him live (I was secretly half expecting him to jump down mid show and give us all a hug, it's suffice to say he didn't!). I shall write about the show in more depth another time and I'm also planning to do a couple more of my 'Vegan Lunchbox' posts this week and hopefully a review or two of some of the vegan makeup I've been buying from 'Cute Cosmetics' - ah so much to do and so very little time. What I'm trying to say is 'watch this space' but in the meantime I shall leave you with my latest vegan makeup video that I somehow managed to record:




Love, Bean xx 

Thursday 3 October 2013

Lunch Box #2 (Falafel & Hummus Wrap)

I've decided I'm going to try and keep these 'Lunchbox' posts relatively short and try not to drone on and just get to the point! So, without further ado - day 2 in my lunchbox consisted of fairly basic things, my main part was my wrap which had in it hummus, falafel and some leftover pesto (just for the sake of it!). What a heavenly combination it was! 


The other bits and bobs were just things that I could easily snack on throughout the day without too much hassle, which were grapes, celery chunks with a peanut butter sauce and my favourite corn chips (same as the yesterday I know but they go really well with wraps too!).


I finished it all off with one of my favourite drinks at the moment; Fentimans Rose Lemonade. This lemonade is incredible and they also do a gorgeous Victorian style Lemonade which is equally as delicious so I try and alternate between the two.


All in all it was a pretty delicious yet exceedingly simple and quick lunch, filling me up without making me feel stodgy and regretful later.  

love, bean xx

Wednesday 2 October 2013

Lunch Box #1 (Pesto Pasta)

So a couple of days ago I started college and with that came the new responsibility of making my lunches everyday. I've never been too keen on having the same thing to eat everyday, which is why I've always struggled with choosing what to have for breakfast, so it is my new task to come up with healthy, delicious and varying lunches everyday which are all easy to make. No pressure then. I shall be putting a series of posts on here with different lunches that I come up with, starting with today...


So the main thing that I had was the homemade vegan pesto pasta that I'd already made, the blogpost for the recipe is here, this was perfect as it was really delicious and it also really kept me going all day. One of my all time favourite things to have at the moment for a treat is corn chips dipped in homous, oh my goodness it's to die for and if somebody doesn't physically take the packet away from me I can easily just keep on going. I like to also have something sweet so I added a little booja champagne chocolate truffle, if you want to know more about them then the blogpost for them is here.


It's obviously a good idea to try and counterbalance some of the more stodgy and less healthy options with some fruit so I had a banana and fruit flakes, the flakes also count as one of your five a day. To finish it all off with I had an alibi drink, which are the most delicious energy drinks that are full of vitamins and minerals including the following vitamins C, B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, B7, B9, B12.



So this is just day 1 and I shall keep on going until I run out of ideas! I hope you found that useful and yet me know what you like to have for your lunches!

love, bean xx

Tuesday 1 October 2013

Homemade Vegan Pesto Recipe

Today I want to talk about a delicious and quick homemade vegan pesto that I made yesterday for my lunchbox. The recipe that I based it on was from a cookery book called 'let them eat vegan' written by a lady called Dreena Burton, it's clearly laid out and all the recipes are well explained meaning that even atrocious cooks such as myself can use it. I like my pesto to be relatively strong which is why I didn't use any of the water that it recommended but instead I used black olives, pine-nuts and nutritional yeast (which contained B12) to bulk it out and produce lots of mouth watering flavours. 



The ingredients are in the picture above (excluding the nutritional yeast and pine-nuts) and it was literally a case of putting them all together and wizzing them in a food processor until I was pleased with the consistency, as I said it's literally a fool proof recipe. I added the olives and pine-nuts into the food processor after everything else so that they didn't lose all of their texture. Then I just stirred in a bit of nutritional yeast and boom, finito!



The pasta I used took about 12 minutes to cook and once I drained that I stirred the amount of pesto I wanted and then cling-filmed the rest for the next day as it easily makes a couple of decent sized portions. It's a perfect and simple recipe for when you are in a rush and the great thing is that you can easily experiment and add different elements to the dish to make it your own. I hope you found this useful and be sure to let me know if you give it a try!


love, bean xx



Saturday 28 September 2013

Cat & the Cream Vegan Cupcakes

Today I just wanted to do a quick followup on the blogpost I did a week or so ago about cake, go and read that first here. In that blog I mentioned about lots of different vegan cakes but in this post I want to specifically talk about the company 'Cat & the Cream'. One of the main reasons I am re-mentioning them is due to the fact that my Mum was very enthusiastic on the 'Ocado' order and brought 4 different flavours of their cupcakes!



The first one was a beautiful and refreshing combination of 'Lemon, Lime Grapefruit & Coconut' which tasted pretty exotic and I loved that there were so many fresh flavours in one cupcake, including 'coconut' which is one of my favourite ingredients ever!  


This was the one I'd already had before, which I'd teamed with vegan squirty cream and strawberries for a complete pudding, which is 'Chocolate, Coconut & Raspberry with Chocolate Icing'. This is of course the perfect cupcake for all you chocolate addicts!



I found this one a bit more unusual as it's 'Chocolate, Fresh Mint Ganache & Raspberry Icing'. The mint flavours just gave it a very different and exciting element which I don't think you find too often in cupcakes and with the raspberry icing it really just lifted the chocolate. 


The final one was a cupcake that I would never have had down as my first choice but it was so delicious, it was 'Pear, Hazelnut & Chocolate Chip with Hazelnut Icing'. Now, I have only recently really gotten into nuts and I'm putting them with everything so what better then having them in a cupcake!


So, as I said we got ours from 'Ocado', but may I add that I didn't eat all of them in one go and I did of course share them ;) They're very reasonably sized and a perfect treat so I like to take them every other week or so to college with me. I love all of the different available flavours and they last for quite a long time too which is really useful. And of course the best thing about them is that they're vegan, dairy free, wheat free & soya free whilst tasting absolutely delicious! 

Let me know if you've tried them before and what flavour you would like to try!

love, bean xx