Basic Ingredients

Now here it is. The post about your basics of basics for a simple vegan diet! If you have these ingredients in the house, then any meal for the day should be quite simple! All six main staples here have a great nutrition value, are gluten free and full of starch and calories to keep you going on a high carp, low fat diet!

For Breakfast

I normally go for oats or Chia Seeds! I make both with almond or soya milk. The chia seeds I try to prepare the night before. If you want to eat chia seed pudding, then you have to let them soak for several hours (so over night it is)! I also mix in some maple syrup and throw in some berries or other fruit in the morning to give it even more flavour. The oats you can cook like normal oats, you just replace the dairy with a dairy free liquid. Some like just water, but I like them most with soya milk and if I am really fancy some hazelnut milk. I sweeten them as well in the morning and add some fruit. Most of the time bananas and raisins (I cook them with the oats).

For Lunch & Dinner

Lunch and Dinner are an easy business with potatoes or rice in your kitchen. I normally try to cook my rice in the morning so I have it just ready when I'm hungry or on my lunch break. Potatoes you can boil, steam or cook in the oven when ever you need them.

If you want to get a little fancier then that, then you can go for buckwheat and quinoa! Both are gluten free and great for salads. I love buckwheat with fried mushrooms and onion with a little soya sauce or tamari sauce.

If you want to read up more about a high carp and low fat diet then I would recommend "The Starch Solution" by Dr. McDougall. He is brilliant explaining everything and he has a certified background to proof is theories. There are also a lot of videos of him in interviews or on the topic of a plant based diet on YouTube. Just have a look what you can find.

If you are still not convinced that vegan is the way to go then have a look if you can find a documentary called "Knives over Forks". This one made me really think and pushed me in the right direction!

Now enough for the moment! The next post will be about the fancier things of a plant based diet!

Easy Vegan!

When I tell people that I went completely Vegan a lot of them give me strange looks and say: Vegetarian I can understand, but being a Vegan would be just too hard and how do you get all your vitamins and protein?

But I have to say turning Vegan was the easiest thing I ever did! The only thing you don’t eat is animal products! It is that simple. You don’t have to over think it. And since I am on a high carb and low fat lifestyle (or at least try to be), it is even easier. No counting calories (only to make sure you get enough) and no worries if I can eat this. The only thing that is hard is to stay away from the Vegan treats like Pringles and co.

I will start a little series on how to stock up your kitchen to stay healthy and on top of a vegan lifestyle! It is very simple and once you committed to it you don’t want to go back! Trust me!

How would you want to eat something so cute like this here? We have hundreds of cows in all of the fields around Kinvara just eager to model for a good shot!

Road Trip

Are you planning on a little break this summer or even on a road trip? Then keep reading this, because I have some great tips how to get started and what to look out for!

This May I went on a little trip with my parent around Ireland. I thought I had it all well planned out and we had a lot to see and do. But no madder how good any plan is, there is always something you can learn from and make it better the next time!

So here are my tips:

Get started - Find a place you want to go to! If it is your own "front garden" or a country you always wanted to see. Maybe if you bring some friends or family it might be easier to make a decision in what you want to see and where you want to go.

Once you have a country picked it is always good to look out for things of interest. For me that is always places of history, castles, manor houses and areas where you can go for beautiful hikes! I normally make a list and map things out. This can help you do figure out how long your road trip will be or if it would be easier to stay at one place for more then just one night.

Borris House Co Carlow

Make sure when you plan your trip that your point of interests are not to far apart from each other. You don't want to spend hours up on hours on the road. Google maps can help you to plan routs and get an idea on how long you would be driving every day. Three to four hours is long enough to be on the road for a day. You want to be able to see things as well and relax a little.

You should also think about B&B's or hotels. I normally book my accommodations beforehand, just because I can't relax otherwise. I know a lot of people that just like to go on the road and find a B&B on the way, I can't do that. I did it once and was a nervous wreck from three in the afternoon. The panic that we would not be able to find somewhere to stay was just to big.

My last tip for the road: DON'T TRUST YOU NAVIGATION SYSTEM! Unless you use google maps (even then be cautious). I have the experience that most sat navs send you really strange ways and you feel lost half the time (at least in Ireland). Google is able to find your way to your points of interest, hotels and even B&B's. Bring a map just in case!


I think that's it for the start! If you have any  more questions or ideas let me know! We might be able to put together a good travel series! GOOD LUCK PLANNING YOUR TRIP!!!

Malahide Castle

On the boarders of north Dublin is a little hidden gem! Malahide castle is situated in 260 acres of park land and some parts of the castle date back to the 12^th century! It is truly an enjoyable time to explore the gardens and to take part in a tour of the castle itself. There is so much to learn, explore and discover. If it is the bunnies in the beautiful flower beds, the antique furniture in the castle or the amazing things in the Avoca gift shop – there is something for everyone!

Malahide has some beautiful gardens that invite you to explore them! On a nice day you could spend hours there and enjoy the beauty of them!

The castle is filled with beautiful antique furniture, paintings and original bits and pieces! In every corner is something to discover and you can really imagine how the beautiful ladies of the house spend their days walking the gardens or do some needle work in the morning parlor.

 The castle looks quite medieval from the outside, but the modern touch in the inside will surprise you! Malahide Castle is worth a trip - for anybody that likes to learn about history or the once that like to look at pretty things!

Travel Ireland

I can't believe that my little trip around Ireland is already over! It went so very fast! But that is the saying, isn't it:

Time flies when you have fun!

Well we sure did have a lot of fun and found some beautiful places with interesting things to explore! The first day we spend in County Dublin, before we made our way to Co. Carlow and Tipperary. From Clonmel we went to Cork, before we made our way through Kerry to Limerick and then all the way back to Kilkenny and Dublin! A lot of driving was involved. We got lost a few times, which reminds me:

NEVER trust a navigation system!

The images were taken by my mom and her fancy tablet! 

Danke Mutti fuer ein paar tolle Bilder!

The panorama image was taken by me and my Samsung Galaxy Tablet!

More stories of my trip to come soon, but I have to go through a bulk of images first! I hope you like the first impression!

Wanderlust!

I can’t believe it is this time of the year already. The summer holiday season starts and I am ready to kick it of in Dublin today! Two of my favorite people are flying in to Dublin and when I pick them up we go on a little exploration tour of the east and south of Ireland! I am so looking for to that and I can’t wait to share all the things we found!

Kicking of this seasons normally means that I am off discovering lots of new things and I am excited to see what new things come my way!

Below are some images for the west of Ireland. We have a lot of wild nature and old ruins to offer. Great area to hike and discover the Wild Atlantic Way!

Being VEGAN

Some weeks ago I did a very big step forward in my personal lifestyle. 

I went VEGAN! 

Yes people I did it and I feel amazing! After yeasr of being Vegetarian and messing with all kind of diets, it just seemed the right step to take.

Last year I talked about a diet that is called “Ketogenic Diet”. Here is a link back to the post about it. At the start I loved it. The basics of this diet - a low carb and high fat diet that tricks your body into burning ketons as an energy source instead of glucose! Simple really, but not very easy to maintain, at least not where I live. You have to eat on a very high fat intake and keep your daily carbs under 30g a day. It is possible if you are prepared, but during holiday seasons or vacations it is just not possible (at least not for me). And after some time the high intake of animal products just got in conflict with my believes of protecting animals. I was eating meat that was treated with chemicals and to keep the diet affordable I ended up buying cheap meat, which I could just not justify, because we all know why the meat is so cheap.

So I was drifting in and out of ketosis and was just not happy with myself. I went back to a normal diet and cut out nearly all my meat intake. After watching countless documentaries about different diets one thing a doctor and nutritionist said really stuck with me:

“You should live with a diet that you can maintain all year around and where you don’t have to starve yourself”

That really said everything you need to know about a good diet. It is not really a diet, it is a lifestyle change that you can keep up for a long period of time (longer than 12 weeks).

While I was watching all these documentaries I got more and more in conflict with myself. Can I support the mistreatment of animals and can I do the metabolic damage on myself? I decided NO and I am a very happy vegan now.

The benefits are showing already after nearly two month on being on this lifestyle change. I lose weight that I had put on doing all the crazy thing I did to have a fit healthy body. My skin has cleared up a lot and is not as dry anymore as it used to be. My energy levels have gone up and I feel refreshed most of the time. I am really looking for to see what happens to my body, once all the damage I did over the years is healed up.

And I can say with a good conscience that I am no longer supporting the mistreatment of animals.

Happy Days! I will give you guys a post soon on my diet and how good and healthy it is to be a vegan, but for today it is enough said!  

Absence

It has been very quite here the last few month - more here on my blog then in my actual live! ;) Things have been quite busy, a little crazy and many decisions for the future have been made!
One of the decisions: Keep blogging!
Sometimes I find it very hard after a long day to sit down and write up something nice, that might interest people, but I want to set myself that challenge! And if it is not every evening, then that it OK. But I am aiming for one or two good informative post a week. I also like to challenge my creative site more again!

More about some important live decisions in my next posts. I am looking for to a nice summer, even though it is raining here at the moment and is way to cold for May, but I have my hopes up high for some nice sunny days filled with adventures and fun!

Below are some sunny, fun pictures from last years 100 Happy Days Challenge! 

Let the blogging begin! :)

Burren National Park

I spend a lot of time in the Burren National Park all weekend! On Saturday we went of for a photo shoot in the mountains - more to that in a up coming post! And today we went for a lovely drive and I got the chance to capture some of the lovely fog and the beautiful country side! Hope you enjoy it too!