This is a love letter to my closest friends.

It won’t seem like it at first, but stay the course.

Life is morbid; it’s a series of traumas – some small, short and sharp; some so poignant and altering that they cut you off at the knees, immediately cauterising the wounds so you continue breathing even though you wish you hadn’t. We have no choice but to collect these experiences like tiny treasures we don’t want, hoisted on our backs like our most valuable possessions. We keep these in chests, with many locks interwoven in heavy chains, down deep.

Some of us are lucky enough to bear witness to these tiny treasures and are able to continue to tell our stories.

I share anecdotes often, based on my collected treasures. They’ve been branded into my psyche and occassionally the resulting burns scab up and itch. It’s when they itch so terribly that the load becomes unbearable, I speak out the trauma so it leaves temporarily, escaping from my lips and into the atmosphere, dissipating like smoke in the air.

The people closest to me know that my most successful coping strategies are…well, them. I talk about my treasure. About the things that brandish blades into my oesophagus, the things the bury themselves into my temples and furrow deep behind my eyes.

About the feelings of abandonment. About the hurt that I’ve caused through reckless words, careless actions and bouts of mania – and the guilt. There’s always guilt, whether reasonably applied or not; since I was small, I’ve carried the sins of those that came before me even though I know I have never had any ownership – eventually those that came before will die and I continue to live in the hope that the guilt will be buried with them.

About the day more than a decade ago, I found out my closest friend had died.

About the faltering relationships I once held so close as a child, that have been irreparably damaged.

This is salvation. This is reprieve.

And in that there is lightness. I discovered through many years of being medicated and being in therapy that the most effective way to deal with the itch was to talk.

And I talk a lot. I make this assertion knowing that every single person that walks a similar journey has different coping mechanisms.

They’ve shifted the burden from the hip I carry mine on, to their shoulders to even out the weight of it all – this is perfectly acceptable, I don’t pass judgement on those whose coping strategies differ from mine.

I’m grateful for the safety that enraptures me when I’m hand-in-hand with my friends as they delve mindlessly down the path of the labyrinth that is me, to find the chest where the treasures are kept – because I asked them to accompany me on an odyssey.

I am grateful for those that ventured down, down, down with me where my treasures reside, braving the ghouls that hide in the darkest parts of me looking for excuses to start wars, to pick the locks and let the treasure tumble unceremoniously to the floor.

I’m grateful that once the chains are untangled and the locks are discarded and set aside, and the lid groans angrily as its lifted and the treasures are discovered, exposed and shared – that they stay.

That they stay and help me heave the treasures back into the chest, wiping beads of sweat from their brows and smile while I return the chains and locks to their rightful places.

That they stay and drag me screaming back from oblivion to the fire to warm my cold, dead hands.

That they stay and crawl with me towards the tendrils of eternal sunshine.

I love you.

I am forever grateful that you will always help me to find the light.

I feel like most people have a story to share about having their heart broken, shattered into a million pieces so much so that it’s a physical sensation, one that feels like all the nerve endings in your fingertips are exposed. It’s raw and visceral, like a persistent cat scratch, or the dull thud of a clenched fist taking shape, pummelling your internal organs like minced meat.

In my lifetime, I’ve felt this only twice. Bitterness at being left behind? That’s not heartbreak, not at least in the way I think about it . Your muscles twitching and flexing in anger at the thought of someone you thought was faithful to you – who wasn’t? No, that’s not it either.

The first time I had my heart crushed? I was 14 years old. Being a teenager was gut wrenching for me, a distant memory I visit infrequently because the very thought of the precocious, inspired little girl I was who imagined the entire world was within her grasp, but knew she didn’t deserve it? Even thinking back on it now, the lack of self worth and constant comparisons to other more beautiful creatures that graced the backdrop of my life is palpable. I looked to others to tell me that I was worth something, anything, and now when I think about that time in my life I’m angry at myself for ever being that…pathetic.

In any case, when I was 13 and in high school, I encountered a boy that would change my life and the way I would move through this world forever. I remember seeing him across a crowded block, shuffling from side to side waiting impatiently outside his English class as the schools’ bell rang out through the courtyard, signalling the end of lunch.

I’d recently enrolled at the school, after being frozen out of my previous college – but that’s an entirely different story. Relevant to the person I am today, but one less filled with heartbreak and with humour and irony.

As I was making my way to my science class with a bevy of new girlfriends, I looked up and noticed him immediately. He had a shock of the most amazing natural hair, that billowed out from his furrowed brow highlighted with teasings of auburn and blonde. I remember with curiosity asking my classmate who he was, and she told me his name with the distain in her voice loud and clear. I presumed this was because he was some kind of teenage lothario who really should be avoided for the sake of sanity.

But I couldn’t look away – and for further clarification, I was a 13 year old girl surging with hormones and ideals about love and romance.

As it goes in high school, the rumour mill began to fly thick and fast. My memory is hazy of that time, but I believe I wrote a note to him that said something along the line of wanting to get to know him better. I bravely handed the note to a trusted friend, who passed it along during a period where they shared a class together.

And then? I waited. And waited.

The embarrassment of knowing I had let this boy into my innermost thoughts was excruciating, and I took every opportunity to avoid him in the corridors, dashing into the bathroom when I saw his friends pass by. I would forever be known by them as the sad new girl who had a crush on their friend and the thought of facing any one them was excruciating.

After school everyday, I would make my way to the local depot to alight a bus home. The depot was the local hotspot for kids after school who wanted to socialise into dusk, meaning it was becoming more difficult to avoid the boy and his friends as more time passed. My friends told me I was overreacting and dragged me along with them to the depot, despite my protests that I could alight at a different stop by walking a little further from the school.

My anxiety reached new peaks one day as I saw him and his ever present best friend milling about in the local takeaway bar, waiting on an afternoon tea of deep fried treats. It was all I could do not to run screaming from where I stood, so instead? I checked the bus schedule and hid around the corner until the time came for me to dash into the safety of my carriage to freedom.

One of my friends came to find me and coax me back to the area outside the library overlooking the depot, where the rest of the girls sat in a huddled semi circle discussing the intricacies of high school life, boys they liked and just general musings. I told him I couldn’t bear it, and he laughed and told me I was being dramatic.

And then it happened.

Across the street from where I’d secreted myself away, the boy and his friend had been hiding behind a panel van. Unfortunately, they hadn’t seen the driver return and the van unceremoniously drove away from the spot where it had been parked, leaving the two boys huddling and exposed.

I thought I would die. They’d been spying on us! I convinced myself that I’d become this huge joke between him and his friends, and they’d been watching and laughing at me, knobbled knees jutting out from my awkward tartan school uniform. The weirdo who runs to the bus as it arrives.

“Oh my god, they’re coming over!”, my friend exclaimed. I wanted the ground to cave in and swallow me up whole. Even thinking about this whole scenario now is cringe inducing, like recalling a scene from a made-for-television movie. I froze.

“Hi”…I heard an uneven, stammering voice.

“So, I got your note.”

Again, I willed the earth to hear me and collapse beneath me. I looked up from my shoes – I had been staring at intently for some time – and came face to face with the object of my affections.

“Oh, yeah”. I bit the inside of my lip, which is something even more than 20 years later I still do when I’m nervous.

There was an exchange between our friends, both jovially encouraging us both to further discuss the situation in which we’d found ourselves in.

“So, I ah – I was wondering if you’d maybe, like, umm…” he managed to spit out. I could feel my face my face flushing a bright rouge, the heat working it’s way down my body like an all enveloping rash.

“Aren’t you going to give her your number?!,” my friend exclaimed, frustrated at the length of time we’d been standing in front of each other, both awkwardly pulling at our own clothes as some sort of refuge.

“Oh yeah, give her your number…”, his friend muttered, paper and pen at the ready.

He scribbled on the back of a textbook page, folded it over carefully and handed it to me dutifully.

“You can call me if you want to?”, he said as a half-statement, half-question. I remember saying thank you and watching them through lowered eyes walk away from the spot, where I still stood frozen, cemented to the sidewalk.

I remember the elation I felt at the fact that there was, or potentially would be some reciprocated feelings to my overbearing (and obsessive) teenage lust. He might not necessarily know me enough to like anything about me, but he knew enough that he was intrigued by me and wanted to know more. That feeling, even now as an adult and encountering other people who are interested to know me, even platonically, is incomparable.

And the rest? Well, it’s long buried. I did call him and we shared hours and hours on the phone, but for months at school we would observe each other across courtyards in quiet reverence. Talking on the telephone was easy, but fronting up to each other in person remained difficult for sometime. He eventually asked me to be his girlfriend and I accepted, ecstatically. He was everything I knew I wanted then.

But time is cruel, and so is high school. We experienced many firsts together; I can’t speak for him and say that I was his first love, but he was definitely mine. We wrote each other long love letters, that were never about anything in particular. I spent evenings in his home with his family long past my curfew, to the chagrin of my mother – I just so desperately wanted to occupy the same space as he.

But so did many other women, which would eventually be our downfall. My relationship with this boy played out like an incredibly far fetched episode of a tele-novella, which lead to some of the most painful, heartbreak I will ever know. The details aren’t important to understanding the story, but for years I held on to the memories of our initial courtship, hoping like hell we could one day get back there. We were both too young to fully comprehend so much of what we did and said, that the unfortunate part is that rekindling never happened.

Thankfully my story didn’t end with the death of my first love and neither did his.

I moved across an ocean at 18 to learn how to be a person without his name being uttered in the same breath as mine and to break the bonds that he had over me, for no other reason except I loved him with all of the naivety of a 13 year old girl.

I met other people who enjoyed my company, men and women. I shared many things with them that shaped my view of the world, and taught so much about who I was as a person – without him.

Most of the people that are in my life now? They don’t even know he exists. He is apart of a chapter of my life that I penned and shelved away in the depths of my archive many, many years ago.

He is now married happily to a stunningly beautiful woman and has had many children. I am now married with one son, refusing still to grow up to maintain some of the childlike joy that I had before I had my heart stomped into obliteration.

And for the most part? I’m happy. I’m fulfilled, blessed and loved. My heart is still a huge open wound, but as an empath I fear this will never change.

But even so? I’m not sure that I’d want it to.

Vegan Chilli Sin Carne

Ingredients (serves 4-6)

1 Yellow Capsicum

1 Red/Green Capsicum

1 Large Brown Onion

500gm field brown mushrooms

Cumin Seeds

Cinnamon

Himalayan Sea Salt

Freshly Ground Black Peppercorns

3 Large Kumara (Sweet Potatoes)

1 250gm Can Black Beans

1 250gm Can Chickpeas

Smoked Paprika

Olive Oil

2 Garlic Cloves

700ml bottle Passata (tomato puree)

2-3 Fresh Chillies

250gm tinned tomatoes

Fresh Coriander (a decent handful, incl. stalks)

Tumeric

Method

1. Pre-heat oven to 200 degrees Celsius.

2. Dice kumara into pieces slightly larger than bite size, placing pieces into oven proof dish. In a separate bowl, combine approx. 1 tsp. each of paprika, cinnamon, salt, pepper, turmeric. Sprinkle spice mix over the diced kumara. Drizzle with olive oil and toss to coat and set inside the oven to bake for approximately 40mins, or until soft and golden.

3. Roughly chop the onion, garlic, capsicum & mushrooms. Pick the coriander leaves and put aside, then finely chop the stalks. Finely chop the chillies. Deseed if you prefer less intense heat – I don’t deseed the chillies we get here in New Zealand at the supermarket because they’re not very hot.

4. Place a large pan over a medium-high heat and add a couple lugs of olive oil. Add the onion, capsicum and garlic and cook for 5 minutes, or until the onion is glassy. Set aside mushrooms.

5. Add the coriander stalks, chilli and cumin seeds (approx. 1 tbsp.) and cook for another 5-10 minutes, or until softened, stirring every couple of minutes.

6. Drain the beans & chickpeas, then add to the pan, along with the tinned tomatoes & passata. Stir well and bring to the boil, then reduce to a medium-low heat and leave for 25mins, or until thickened.

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7. Stir in the roasted kumara, chopped mushroom and most of the coriander leaves. You may at this point also want to further season with salt & pepper.

Before serving, scatter the remaining coriander leaves over the top. Octo-lacto vegetarians might want to top with cheese and sour cream and serve with tortilla chips. I ate mine with some crusty bread and a bit of dairy-free margarine. It’s delicious!

Friday Night Wingin’

These days, I don’t go out much.
I have a small group of friends who understand that about me, so know that if they ask me what I’m doing on a Friday night and I’m free, an invitation to hang out will usually constitute sitting out on my porch listening to music from my Blaupunkt, chain smoking and listening to anecdotal stories about life in general.

When I got home on Friday night, the sun will still very much high in the sky and the weather was nothing short of stellar.
Whether it was dumb luck or sheer foresight, I’d picked up a bottle of Matavino Dolcetto earlier in the week, which the vegan society confirm is an appropriate option for me.

In some instances, although wine is made from grapes, may have been made using animal-derived products. During the winemaking process, the liquid is filtered through substances called “fining agents.” This process is used to remove protein, yeast, cloudiness, “off” flavors and colorings, and other organic particles. Popular animal-derived fining agents used in the production of wine include blood and bone marrow, casein (milk protein), chitin (fiber from crustacean shells), egg albumen (derived from egg whites), fish oil, gelatin (protein from boiling animal parts), and isinglass (gelatin from fish bladder membranes).

I figured I would take full advantage of the weather and positioned myself on our front stoop, drinking in the summer sun with a glass of this gorgeous wine.
My good friends Amy & Fraser stopped by, with beers in tow to join in the merriment.
Eventually the conversation turned to my pre-married role of being Amy’s wingman in gay clubs – she said I was never good at it, and if I’m honest, well? She’s right. I’m a terrible wingman. I would usually end up dancing the night away with gay men instead of helping my friend meet a potential significant other.
We’ve laughed about this throughout the years, as we’ve shared many hilarious stories of our nights out with friends, that began with so much hope and promise, and ended with us all at home, alone, talking about all the people we could’ve gone home with…but obviously, chose not to. Realistically, hindsight tells us that the reason we went home alone so regularly was because we were and are a special breed of super awkward humans, but it was easier on our egos and better for our self esteem to pretend otherwise.

As the drinks flowed, Amy tried to convince me that as I hadn’t been out in a while, it was my duty to take her out dancing that evening. You know, as repayment for all those years as an absolute rubbish wingman. After drinking an entire bottle of red, I started to think it was a good idea too. I heralded the alarm by way of facebook and recruited another couple of girls to join our party.

My trusty friend Dave arrived and we piled into his car, thanking him for assuming the role of sober driving dad. He dropped our gaggle of giddy, intoxicated girls on K’Road and we headed into Family Downunder to cut some serious rugs.

Family Bar is a longstanding institution on K’Rd, outliving most of the LGBTQIA venues that used to litter the strip.
The upstairs bar boasts a mezzanine floor and stage area which is often crammed with gyrating, half naked men, women and drag queens strutting their stuff to EDM. In the downstairs bar, the DJ’s musical repertoire borrows more from pop & hip hop genres with, to my dismay, a preference for Taylor Swift. Ugh.

It’s a strange thing, being awake and out socially at 4am especially when you’re struggling to remain coherent and awake after consuming what seems like your weight in wine and vodka. Usually, I would say nothing good happens at this time, but you know what? That’s not true on K’Rd. Falafel & Shisha are available in abundance!

The Little Turkish Cafe has been a part of the K’Rd scene since I was a teen. I haven’t eaten here by choice since the ERA determined in favour of former employee Zahra Barzegari, after her claims of unfair dismissal, withholding pay and holidays were found to be with merit. She was awarded $10, 000 in back pay in the employment courts; the company challenged the Employment Relations Authority’s findings in 2011 and the two parties settled out of court, an undisclosed sum which is not a matter for public record.
In any case, I’m ashamed to say that my ethics got the better of me at this time in the morning and I hastily ordered a falafel kebab before jumping in a cab and heading home to Mt Albert.

Falafel is made from ground chickpeas, fava beans, or both. Falafel is a traditional Middle Eastern food, commonly served in a pita, which acts as a pocket, or wrapped in a flatbread known as lafa; The Turkish Cafe is one of the few places in Auckland that serves their kebabs that way.
And it’s good!

Word to the wise though? Maybe don’t drink wine like it’s going out of fashion as a vegan. The hangover is brutal.

Love,

Charli xx

Peach Pit

How on earth more people don’t know about this place is beyond me.
This innocuous little eatery is located halfway down Auckland’s infamous K(arangahape) Rd, a stones throw away from the sex shops and titty-bars that the strip is synonymous for.

Owned and operated by Luckrecya Craw, Peach Pit‘s menu much like its nearby neighbour Coco’s Cantina is sustainable, meaning that the dishes are ever changing based on available ingredients.

2015/01/img_0264.jpg — Peach Pit, Auckland Central, NZ. Photo courtesy of Peach Pit (Facebook.com).

It was Tuesday night when my friend Carl and I visited for dinner.
A bevy of young, alt types sat outside in the dying sunlight sampling craft beers, paying us no mind as we reviewed the most current menu displayed in the restaurant’s window. After agreeing that there were items on the menu that piqued both our interest, we strolled on in.

I was warmly greeted by Luckrecya & the chef as we entered, taking the opportunity to grab a booth in the virtually empty dining room. Like lightning, iced lemon water was brought to our table by the owner herself, along with a pair of handwritten, photocopied menus. I’ve eaten at the Peach Pit before, and found this to be a charming touch – almost like wandering into a friend’s home who’d decided to host a dinner party and as a cute gesture, provide their guests with an insight into what they would or could choose to experience that evening.

Considering the humidity in the city at the moment, the large jug was sorely appreciated. Too often I eat in restaurants where bottles of water aren’t presented to the table for guests to self pour, owners opting instead to have their wait staff dutifully refill glasses during busy service. Personally I find this style intrusive, so appreciated that we were being given an opportunity to sit & review our options, whilst catching up on each others’ work, family and home lives – not being interrupted by a stranger hovering during a potentially private discussion about embarrassing bodily functions brought on by a diet high in fibre. I digress.

Carl noted that the jug & matching tumblers were reminiscent of some similar glassware that his grandmother owned once upon a time when he was a child, and we talked some on how design has evolved since the fifties, sixties & seventies, amber glass rarely being used in more recent offerings. The glassware appeared to be replica (not amber like Carls g’mas), emulating a vintage style that has become so hugely popular in modern day decor.

Luckrecya returned to the table to let us know that the sweet & sour tofu salad I had spied in the window display on the way in was unavailable, however had been replaced on the menu with a salt & pepper tofu option. This made the selection easy for me and I opted to accompany my main with a cabbage side salad.

Carl ordered a bulgogi beef burger, accompanied by barbecued corn & miso.
Luckrecya mentioned that the burger came with both a large, homemade pattie & sliced beef, and recommended that the beef be cooked medium rare as the chef intended, however did indicate that she would be happy enough to let the kitchen know the beef could be cooked to Carl’s liking, if he chose a different temperature.

As anyone who eats out frequently knows (or has had a friend or spouse who was/is a chef), if the chef recommends an item be cooked a certain way, this is how you should order it – as the overall flavour of the dish will taste as it was designed and intended by someone who knows food well. Carl agreed that the burger should be served as recommended.

Whilst we waited for our meals to arrive, James Blake’s ‘Overgrown‘ played in the background, followed by Wale’s ‘Bad‘, which made for an interesting but appreciated dinner soundtrack. Carl & I work for the same group of companies however he recently took a position in an office closer to home, meaning that we don’t often see one another – when we do, there’s the usual chatter you would expect from two people who previously worked in the same building catching up on office gossip. As the conversationalist (read, ‘blabbermouth’) of this duo, I spent the majority of the time excitedly talking over my own new job and my experiences documenting my new life as a vegan.
He listened intently, as he always does when I’m on a tangent or rant (of which I am famous for), and interspersed the conversation with a terrible joke, of which he is famous for.

2015/01/img_0898.jpg — Bulgogi Beef Burger – Peach Pit – Auckland Central, NZ.

Carl’s burger arrived first and it was…well, impressive.
My tofu was delivered soon after and it appeared to be firm, the coating crispy (not sitting in a pool of grease), and was served with a thin sauce which tasted of chilli, coriander seeds, malt vinegar & sugar. I dipped the first piece of tofu gingerly into the sauce and took a mouthful, making sure it was sufficiently coated.

2015/01/img_0902.jpg — Salt & Pepper Tofu – Peach Pit, Auckland Central, NZ.

Holy shit. This is vegan’s ambrosia. I don’t think the English language has enough adjectives in it to describe how incredible my first salt & pepper tofu experience was. Carl asked me how it was, but it was so good, I couldn’t speak. I fumbled in my knapsack for my mobile phone and called my Octo-Lacto buddy, Kenny.
It took a while for him to answer and as I found out later, was because he was halfway up One Tree Hill on his road bike. I told him I was out for dinner and had just had the most amazing animal-free protein experience of my entire life. He laughed because it was that good, I had to call somebody and tell them, even though Carl was sitting less than a half a metre away across the table.

Carl didn’t say much during dinner, aside from asking me whether I was going to offer to share (which I eventually did, begrudgingly) but did struggle to finish his burger. Luckrecya cleared the table and was genuinely impressed he’d managed to finish it in it’s entirety, claiming to only be able to palate about a third of the meal herself before being stuffed.

The long and short of my second Peach Pit experience, but my first as a vegan, is that everyone must eat here.

Just like Wu Tang, Peach Pit is for the children.
The service is friendly & efficient, the dining room clean and orderly without being sterile or clinical and the meals on offer are ridiculously cheap, especially for a central city based restaurant. I freaked out when she handed me the bill, totalling a mere $47 (including taxes) for 2 mains, 2 sides & 2 soft drinks.

Overall, the best part of this restaurant is that all of the staff know about the food they are serving. They know what flavours will compliment one another and will let you in on these secrets without being condescending, pushy or making you feel uncomfortable about choosing an alternative, should their opinions on flavour differ from yours. A meal at the Peach Pit is an experience, not just ‘food’ haphazardly served on a stark, white plate. They give a shit about their menu, they’re clearly passionate about the food they serve and hip hop is on the restaurant’s playlist.

Why wouldn’t you go?

Love,

Charli x

Cruelty Free NZ!

Today I visited the The Cruelty Free Shop, conveniently located in St Kevin’s Arcade with my gorgeous friend Courtney, and got chatting to the wonderful woman behind the shop counter. In my excitement in the hunt for vegan goodies, I didn’t catch her name but did explain the purpose of my visit. I suppose I expected some kind of negative reaction, being that in a sense I’ve jumped on a bandwagon – the ‘vegan’ lifestyle becoming like the new wave of gluten free obsessives – but she was so charming and helpful, even offering to post about my blog on their social media pages…they’re on twitter if you didn’t know already!

After my friend Kenny, who is also traversing this journey with me as an octo-lacto vegetarian explained to me the previous evening that Il Buco offer a vegan pizza topped with vegan chorizo (main ingredient being wheat protein), and that this chorizo was available for retail purchase at The Cruelty Free Shop, I had to check it out.

I spent a long time discussing my confusion about these pseudo-meat products with the staff, hovering over the refrigerated goods. It’s confusing to me as someone who is both uninitiated and uneducated about veganism that a person who had made the decision not to consume our furry friends, would want to eat proteins designed to simulate the taste and texture of flesh or dairy. She explained to me that she often referred to these types of products as ‘transitional foods’, mainly designed for people who were making the change to a plant based diet. And that totally made sense – in essence, these products were designed for people like me.

With her guidance, I pored over the plethora of vegan, organic, sustainable products on offer, quickly finding the Gran Chorizo that I can come in search of.

This vegan sausage is produced by Wheaty, a company that offers a unique range of products based on wheat gluten, or its more commonly used macrobiotic name, seitan. Seitan is derived from the protein portion of wheat and is an excellent source of protein for vegans, being that gluten has a low sodium and extremely low fat content.

Whilst chatting, I apologised repeatedly and profusely for my ignorance as a carnivore. I asked what I thought were most likely questions frequent visitors to the shop would think were completely stupid about each of the products that piqued my interest, and she more than happily obliged by explaining the origin of each product, whether they were made locally, what particular items would be used for and how they would be best prepared.

I also grabbed a box of Fry’s Family’s Meat Free Chicken Style Strips, because I thought they would appeal to my son, Ethan.

I’ve yet to try them myself, but I hear from an excellent source that they taste just like chicken!

As I was checking out, she suggested that I might be interested in attending a Vegan 101 class, held by the Vegan Society of Aotearoa. After reviewing their website, I noted that the last event was held in December, so I plan to keep a dutiful eye out and head along to the next one!

Visiting the Cruelty Free Shop definitely made me a lot more excited about this journey. A lot of the vegans that I have been exposed to in my life have been almost, for want of a better description, elitists; almost as if their dietary choices made them members of a secret society that I could never be a part of – so this experience was uplifting and made me all the more curious and left me feeling inspired about the challenge.
Check out their website or better yet head on into the store on K’Rd and grab a meat analogue or ice cream sandwich!

Love,

Charli x

Preparation for D-Day

So, I started the weekend very well intended.

I was going to sit down and write out a concise meal plan for the upcoming fortnight in preparation for the beginning of the Vegan Challenge.

I was going to spend Saturday afternoon committed to household chores that I’ve been putting off for the last month.

I want to preface the story of what I actually did with the word ‘unfortunately’, however I feel like that would take the sheen off of what was an incredbily fulfilling weekend, despite the fact I did zero of any of the things I had planned to, being so very well intended.

It will be of no surprise to anyone that knows me well that the meal plan didn’t come to fruition. Instead, I spent Friday evening sitting on my porch with a group of my closest friends talking about – well, nothing – and eating barbecue.

For some reason, I’d convinced myself in the lead up to the Challenge that I was going to need to consume nothing but beef, chicken and pork over the weekend.

To be perfectly honest? The barbecue was underwhelming. I turned my meal into a sandwich and ate a sirloin steak stuffed bread roll whilst picking at a chicken kebab. I would go into great detail about the flavour, taste and texture – but seriously, it was nothing to write about.

The following day, we visited our friend Tucker at the Mount Albert Market. Tucker the Butcher is a larger than life character, a Welshman who pushes his Neat Meat wares of grass fed, free range, organic meats in a variety of cuts every Saturday at our local market, come rain or shine.

One of the many discussions my husband and I have had since we got married (3 months yesterday!), was around the commitment we have to building the foundations of our familial unit. Ethan, Christian & I have been a unit for six years, however in the last 12 months my primary focus shifted to organising, planning and funding our wedding. This unfortunately meant that our relationship as partners became more about business, financial transactions and managing timetables than about two people who were building a life together based on love, trust and friendship.

Anyone who has planned a wedding on a shoestring knows how all-consuming this can be, and the hangover that occurs in the months after the actual event has taken place. My ‘hangover’ has been huge, meaning that the pursuit for happiness is something that I’ve had a serious focus on over the last 3 months. What that looks like? Fulfilment? Contentment? I have no idea, but I’ll be sure to share it with you in the event that I do unlock this wellkept secret.

We decided that in 2015, we would renew our commitment to our family unit and create rituals that would solidify our relationships with one another. One of these rituals is visiting the local market in our neighbourhood every Saturday morning together, to sample cheeses, drink coffee and hot chocolates and really and most importantly – just to speak to one another, without any outside influences. What this does is remind us all of how much we value one another. Christian is constantly surprising me with tidbits of knowledge and is a constant source of hilarity (but don’t tell him, I’ve got him and everyone else convinced I’m the funny one).

One of the rituals that exists for us and always has is sharing a meal together at the end of the day – I am a firm believer that this simple act is a surefire way to ensure a great relationship with your children or spouse. It has always been hugely important to me, however again something that fell by the wayside last year during wedding planning.

After stocking up on goodies from Tucker, Christian dropped Ethan & I at L’oeuf, our local cafe. I love living in the suburbs and feel like we are incredibly spoilt for choice in terms of palatable restaurants, cafes and eateries in Auckland – L’oeuf was named as one of Metro Magazines’ Top 50 Cafés in Auckland for 2014, no mean feat considering these guys have barely been open for an entire year but seem to have easily developed a borderline cult following with their very small bespoke, Vietnamese fusion inspired menu.
With a focus on fresh ingredients and turning their nose up at the kiwi cafe traditional Eggs Benedict, my absolute favourite L’oeuf dish is ‘The Hunter’, their own take on mushrooms on toast. Delicious! The menu option is I believe vegan, however can be ordered (which is often encouraged by the wait staff) with a soft poached egg and chorizo.

After a short wait for a takeout coffee, we ambled back through the neighbourhood, talking on life and all such things through the eyes of a nine year old boy (which isn’t as naive as one might assume).

My weekend was spent enjoying my family.
My weekend was spent enjoying the company of my closest friends.
My weekend was spent in the spirit of laughter, community and consciousness.
My weekend was spent being embraced by the ocean.

So, unfortunately?
No, there wasn’t an unfortunate thing about it. In the immortal words of Jill Scott, I’m living my life like it’s golden.

Blessed!

Love, Charli