Cauliflower steaks with couscous and red cabbage salad

After we came back from our holiday in Krabi, we’ve been kind of lazy with our work. It’s nice to chill out every once in a while, but when it’s too long of a lounge you feel a bit frustrated with your lack of progress. And on the fifth day of sluggishness productivity came to light! We managed to write like 6 pieces of work, sort through hundreds of photos, and make this beautiful meal out of nowhere.

So, okay, this is vegan, and quite healthy. It’s too easy to make, and you can adjust the spiciness. For the protein-heads out there (including myself), just chuck a few pieces of firm tofu in the pan with the cauliflower.

For one person you’ll need:

A cauliflower

50 g dry couscous (more if you’re hungry) – replace with quinoa for gluten free version

4 cloves of garlic

A few fresh chillies

Salt, pepper, 1 tbsp oil

Ground coriander (optional)

 

For the salad:

1/5 of small red cabbage

½ of small carrot

Handful of sunflower sprouts

1 garlic clove

Juice of ¼ of a lime

Salt, pepper, 1 tsp oil

 

Directions:

1. Cut the cauliflower in half, making sure each side has a bit of the centre stem left. Then cut a ‘steak’ about 1 cm thick from each side of the cauliflower. Make sure all pieces hang on to the stem so it doesn’t fall apart.
2. Heat a pan with a tablespoon of oil, throw in your steaks together with a few smashed garlic cloves and a chilli or two (I removed the chillies from the pan this time, but the hot air in the kitchen still made me cough).
3. Turn over once the bottom gets a bit of a char. If you have a grill – all the better, as you can use less oil.
4. While waiting for the steaks just put a tiny bit of salt, pepper to the couscous, and pour hot water to cover it. The water level should be just above the grains. I also put a sprinkle of ground coriander as it gives it a nice aroma. Two minutes in, it should be ready.

To make the salad:

1. Grate the carrot and garlic, slice the cabbage and cut the sprouts. (Sunflower sprouts work well for me because they are even crunchier than the carrots and are not too bitter or sweet).
2. Squeeze the lime, add a tiny bit of oil, and a sprinkle of salt and pepper. When I cut the lime, I just cut the side of it, as you can see in the picture with the red chillies. This way you don’t have to worry about the lime seeds, as they’re all in the center, which we’re not touching!

There you have a nice and quick meal which you can take to work the next day. However the salad won’t taste as good even if you keep it in the fridge. Bon apetit!

World’s Best New Year

I keep thinking (this is something I’m sure you have also asked yourself before) why is it so challenging to keep a balance between the following two things? When you have time – you have no money; and when you have money – you have no time. Maybe it’s difficult because neither of these two things is really real? One is a man-made tool, a system, and the other is just a perception. It’s even more mind-boggling to think that we don’t really have anything in life apart from perception, and you either have to pay for it, or give it up in order to pay for it.
When I was a student or unemployed, I used to have heaps of time, so much time that I used to waste it. At the same time, of course, I wanted to do things I needed to pay for, such as travelling. And trains in England weren’t, and still aren’t cheap. Then I entered the world of work, and everything… no, it didn’t change overnight. It only changed ever so slightly, and I still wasn’t travelling a whole lot. Auste and I started exploring tiny pockets of Europe, but only for short periods of time, and started camping around Yorkshire on weekends.
Now that I’ve come to Thailand – a place I used to only dream about, I’m stuck in the same situation – I am working, but again pressed by the scarce resource of time. This time, however, it is different, as the number of places on my bucket list has increased tenfold, which adds more to the imbalance of finding the right path [to happiness].
Starting a new career in a new country with a new culture and new everything does feel exciting, but it has its drawbacks too. For example it has taken months to find a liveable place in a good neighbourhood, sort all the paperwork, perform joyous acts of visa-runs, open a bank account, meet people, scavenge for healthy food, exercise, continue with the things I want to do to grow as a person and so on. It is so difficult to find the time to explore, and there are millions of people on the same boat. For me weekends and short holidays usually don’t associate with recovery, they just allow extra time to catch up with work.
This wasn’t the case recently, when I had the [mandatory] opportunity to experience the best festival I have ever been to – Songkran. Also known as the Thai New Year. It is mostly known for its unique water fights and splashy blessings, and it’s nought to impossible to resist joining the friendly cheerful crowds of locals and tourists alike. For at least three days the whole country becomes THE festival, and for that period of time they cannot be counted as two different entities.
The celebration lasts anything from 3 (officially) to 14 days, and if you’re in Thailand – you can’t NOT be a part of it. Youngsters, adults, elderly, babies, even government employees paint their faces, or in most cases get their faces painted, and splash, or get splashed, with water lierally everywhere at any given time of the day. Many streets are closed and you can buy water guns on every corner.
Public institutions close, and shops have reduced working hours. Most of the smaller shops, including the mom-and-pop stores stay open, however most of them have a water station with barrelfuls of water, hoses and bowls ready. If you happened to walk past, they would bless you with a friendly smile and a nice bowl of refreshing water all over you – head to toes.
The beautiful part is that this giant party is not about intoxicating or using other substances, it’s just about playing with water and appreciating the present moment. There are debates about this though, whether it’s appropriate to ‘waste’ one of the world’s most important resources in such a manner.

This celebration was in perfect alignment with the balance I was looking for, and I felt incredibly happy. There is a saying that a picture paints a thousand words, so I wonder how many words a video depicts?
A video of Auste and myself attacked by the ‘Songkranists’ on public transport during Songkran in Bangkok, and some pictures below.

More photos from this amazing festival on our Flickr page.