Tuesday, 29 July 2025
MY 100 ULTRAS CHALLENGE - 2025 PROGRAMME
Monday, 28 July 2025
MY 31 x 31 x 31 CHALLENGE. FUNDRAISING FOR VIVA!
July 2025
Once again I'm delivering 31 chocolate cakes throughout July - this time to 31 departments of Musgrove Park Hospital- my local hospital. I'm doing this to fundraise for Viva! again, and to help with my training for my next ultra. I chose the hospital because of my huge respect for the NHS and its workers.
The ingredients once again are being sponsored by Lesser Litter - soo the cakes, as well as being vegan, will be organic!
As of today, the 28th July, I've completed the task. And I'm feeling regretful that it's all over!
Sunday, 20 July 2025
PLANT-BASED HEALTH PROFESSIONALS
Plant-based Health Professionals
OUR MISSION
We advance health through whole food plant-based nutrition and lifestyle medicine, empowering healthcare professionals and communities to prevent, manage and treat chronic disease alongside promoting planetary health.
Saturday, 19 July 2025
PLANT-BASED NUTRITION FOR DOGS - AND CATS
As I'm fond of saying in my outreach spiel, when Lewis Hamilton went vegan, he put his dog, Roscoe, on a plant-based diet - and cured him of arthritis! [Which is exactly what happened to me when I gave up all animal products.] Roscoe is now a healthy, 11yr-old bulldog - which is a bit of a rarity!
But anecdotal evidence is meaningless - what's needed is science backed evidence.
"From my published research in 2022, dogs fed a plant-based diet could live up to 18 months longer than those fed a meat-based diet."
"Evidence based published papers supporting dogs going plant-based."
And my good friend, Dr Arielle Griffiths, who is a plant-based vet, provides it:
Not just dogs - cats also benefit from plant-based nutrition
There are many recommendations on Dr Griffith's Facebook page:
Sunday, 4 May 2025
Chocolate and banana delight - a guilt-free treat
Depending how thick it turns out, it may take longer than an hour in your fridge to firm up. |
Ingredients:
200g good dark chocolate - 70% or more, and;
300g ripe bananas
Method:
Melt the chocolate in a bowl over hot water (don't let the bowl come in contact with the hot water
Break up the bananas, and add to the melted chocolate, then blitz with a stick blender.
Once blended, pour into a flat dish, lined with parchment, and place in the fridge for an hour or so.
And that's it! It solidifies to a sort of fudge-like mousse, which you can chop into pieces you can offer around.
I’ve found it best to divide it into bite-size pieces and freeze.
Couple of variations - but really you can play around with this recipe!
I'm a great fan of chilli chocolate, so I added a pinch of cayenne pepper to my last batch.
My granddaughter likes to pour the mix over a loaf of raspberries
Monday, 21 April 2025
PRESS UP CHALLENGES: 1 MILLION IN 10 YEARS.
April 2025 One more milestone reached, today - I've now completed 800,000 press ups - in just under seven and a half years! Just 200,000 to go - and I've two and a half years in which to get them. Averaging about 8-9000 a month at the moment, so I'll get there a bit early, I fancy. |
Thursday, 13 February 2025
I LOVE MEETING PEOPLE WHILE I'M OUT DOING MY TRAINING!
When I'm out training for my next ultra, or just getting the miles in - and I'm doing about 40-50k a week ATM - I often strike up a conversation with people I meet.
This morning, 13th February 2024, returning home after a 10k walk, I met Garrett (sp?) and his lovely family. He asked initially about how much weight I carried in my backpack - about 3kg it was today. I told him I aimed to carry as much weight around as I would carry on one of my ultras. From there we went on to my health since going vegan - and from there into the whole speil. He wasn't able to take a copy of my leaflet, so I told him to search for 'No bread is an island'. I hope he sees this!
Monday, 27 January 2025
VEGAN CHOCOLATE CAKE - How easy (and cheap!) is this?
Ingredients:
25g vegetable oil (I use olive oil)
No microwave?
Bake in the oven at 175C for 30-35 minutes.
No oven?
Cost:
I'm amazed at how little this cake costs (these prices are from Lidl products):
Sugar 22p
S/raising flour 15p
Cocoa powder 15p
Veg oil 10p
Total 62p
Who says that it's expensive to be vegan? :)
The story:
Anybody who's taken a look at some of the bread conversations I've had on this blog will know I'm not a cake maker - bread's my thing.
Whenever anyone asks me if I make cakes I always tell them there isn't time - there's always another bread I haven't made yet!
However, it was the birthday of both my daughter and my son-in-law this week, and there are bound to be plenty of cakes when we meet up tomorrow. And none of them will be vegan.
Apart, that is, from the one I've just made!
I followed this recipe here:
And tweaked it slightly.
It was a bit of a faff, since each step is on a separate page - unless you sign up, which I didn't want to do. And it's in cups, which I've weighed off into gms for the next time I make it - which I will.
166g s/raising flour
30g cocoa powder
198g sugar
1/2 tsp salt
80g sunolive oil
250g water
2 tsps vanilla extract
Stir the dry ingredients, add the wet ingredients, mix together and pour into 2 18cm (7") lined cake tins. (I placed 354g of batter in each tin.)
Bake at 175C for 20 minutes.
I shall sandwich the cake with the vegan chocolate spread I made yesterday:
And probably spread a bit on top - just to finish it off!
I decided to forgo the salt and the vanilla: I never use salt in my sweet bread recipes, and I see no place for it here; I couldn't detect any vanilla flavour, but others may.
3 days later. I ate the last remnants of the cake - and it was as moist and lush as when it had just been made. I did think of seeing if it would keep into a 4th day - but who keeps chocolate cake for four days?
(Well, my mother might - she used to extol the virtues of her madeira cake - "It'll keep for a fortnight!" she used to announce to all and sundry. And every time we went home and we were served cake, she felt she had to make good her claim. The damn cake was always well over a week old! In every other respect she was a decent cook. Well, I suppose we all have a chink in our armour!)
3rd November.
After telling my colleagues at my Thursday care home about my cake-making, I was prevailed upon to make one for the residents.
Since we needed a large cake, I doubled up the recipe:
330g s/raising flour
If you're going to make a cake - may as well make a big one! |
That's Melissa's hand applying the chocolate icing |
The doubled up recipe actually made 2 dozen of these. Thought at first we hadn't put enough batter in each one |
But when they came out of their cases and were iced - the size was just right! OK, the icing's not very neat - but that didn't affect the taste one iota! |
I've been making this cake weekly since I first made it - and today I made a chocolate log with it:
Next time I'll divide the batter between two Swiss roll tins - and then it won't split! To keep it vegan it was spread with jam. I need a vegan filling for next time. |
Wanted to make a couple of Yule logs for the family - but I'm far away from my scales, so I did these with the original cup measurements in the link above.
I used a coffee mug to measure with and made enough to fill two Swiss roll tins and make three large cup cakes.
One was filled with sweet chestnut puree (the puree was mixed with some sugar and soya cream) and the other was consumed as it was - everyone thoroughly enjoyed it.
I'm planning to cover the cake with melted chocolate. I'll post a pic when I do.
Tuesday, 7 January 2025
EARLY CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT - A DISSERTATION
Hi! If you've happened on my blog as a result of meeting me walking around Taunton, welcome. As I probably said, I'm passionate about early education, wanting every child to meet their full potential.
If you find any merit in what you read, well, I'm currently fundraising for Viva!, the leadingUK animal rights charity. If you wish to donate, you'll find my fundraiser here. Thanks.
Sir Kenneth Robinson was, IMO, one of the greatest educators the country has ever produced - His TED talk is the most viewed of all time. Well worth watching!
In the year 2000, at the age of 63, I completed a degree in Education and Training at Plymouth University, gaining a 2:1 - which contrasts with my first brush with education, which resulted in 2 'O' levels!