Newly Discovered, Now Loved (no less that the others in Pt 1.)

When I was writing the Newly Discovered, Now Loved post it kept growing! I usually don’t like to over do it with the blog posts and make them too long because I know when I  look through my Reader and there is a really long post there, sometimes I can’t be bothered reading it! And this way I’m getting two posts for the price of one – don’t be hatin’, I told you I was broke and unmotivated.

Home Made Ice Cream

I have put up a lot of ice cream posts in the last year! As I have said before I have no idea what inspired us to buy an ice cream maker. It was an online impulse purchase where we were like, ‘we like ice cream lets buy an ice cream maker!”. At this point, some sane people would just go buy a tub of ice cream but we are wary of the vegan ice creams, as some of them have ingredients that should feature in a science lesson. After buying our maker and an ice cream recipe book I can say that it was an impulse purchase that paid off. We love our home made ice cream and it is so simple. The stuff that comes out of our fridge is by far some of the best ice cream I have ever had. YUM!

Fleur de sel - Flower of salt

I am a sucker for salt. I would take savoury over sweet 90% of the time so it is a wonder I have never tried this before. It’s probably because it’s not cheap and I thought it was “just salt” but after tasting it, I was wrong. Fleur de sel is a hand-harvested sea salt collected by workers who scrape only the top layer of salt before it sinks to the bottom of large salt pans. It tastes salty but not overpowering and has a moistness to it. I love sprinkling it over finished meals (leaving salt out of the cooking where possible). Being a salt fiend it elevates my meal to the next level.

Mukka Express

One night Mike and I were watching a documentary on coffee and it occurred to us that we could be getting more out of our coffee experience, Mike and I really shouldn’t watch documentaries. So we hopped on to the internet, Mike and I shouldn’t really be allowed on the Internet either, to see what we could find to enhance our coffee experience but not cost thousands of dollars. Hunting around we came across the Mukka Express by Bialetti. It is an espresso maker that also heats and froths milk (works great for soy milk) to makes a rich creamy cappuccino or a latte. We absolutely love this guy. It makes a great coffee. I can see that some coffee connoisseurs may not like it but for our price range and the amount of space in our kitchen it is perfect.

Vegusto No-Muh

I did a review of this vegan cheese a little while ago and I have fallen in love with it more since. It is expensive so we have to ration it. It is so full of flavour thought that a little bit goes a long way. My favourite type they make is the Melty, I melt it on everything from pizza to sandwiches. It is creamy and rich without being overly oily. Mike also loves the classic one which is also great melted on something. 

Jogging

I’m not a jogger. I’m not into exercise. I’m not fit at all. I’m not built for running. I have boobs, a belly and other things that bounce and probably shouldn’t when I run. BUT I thought Mike and I should do something to change this. Being broke, gym membership and a lot of other fitness classes are out of the question. I also can’t speak German so am not confident enough to join a class of anything. Jogging along the river , in the morning under the cloak of darkness (where the only things that would giggle at us were the ducks), sounded like the best option. So being the nerd that I am I asked my BFF the internet for advice, again (the internet has featured prominently in this post). There is one thing I have learnt about myself after being on the planet for nearly 30 years – I need a plan. If there is no plan I will practically fail at anything I try to do. And it has to be a well thought out plan. The only way I lost weight a few years ago was on the CSIRO (not vegan) diet. It was a 12 week plan and I stuck to it and I lost weight (lots of it). So I needed an exercise plan. So surfing the net whilst sitting on the couch I decided we should commence the The Couch-to-5K ® Running Plan, after all I was already at the starting point. Mike and I went out and bought some running sneakers – yes we didn’t have sneakers, that is how unfitness orientated we were. We also picked up some Nike Sport Bands so we could upload and track our runs (+ Mike loves gadgets) to keep us motivated. It was tough at first, cold, windy and sometimes it rained on us (really testing the motivation there) but it got easier. I am now up to week 7 (Mike had to drop out due to work commitments and injury) and still find it really tough but I persevere hoping at some stage it will get easier. Now that spring is here and the sun is coming out I think I/we will start to enjoy it even more. Ready for the river to look like the photos below again! We aren’t ready to join the half marathon runners who ran past our apartment the other day but I am proud of our efforts so far.