Planet Veggie

Nosh (I’m guessing whoever named the company didn’t go to school at an east London comprehensive) asked me about my current diet, exercise regime and goals and suggested I try their energising ABC (alkalise, balance and cleanse) raw plan for three days. That sounded good to me, so I filled in their new client form and awaited my delivery.

Unfortunately, there was a mix-up and my first delivery contained fish and chicken. When I informed Nosh, they told me I hadn’t specified vegetarian on my form. As there was a) nowhere on the form to specify any special requirements; b) I’d been in email correspondence with Nosh about which diet plan suited me best; and c) the diet plan would be reviewed on this *ahem* vegetarian blog, it didn’t occur to me a man would turn up on my doorstep brandishing a box of dead animal bits.

Still, Nosh apologised, and arranged for a new delivery, which arrived yesterday lunchtime (unfortunately, you don’t get a very narrow window for delivery – I’d only been told ‘before 5:30pm’).

Disappointment struck when I opened the box. Although the food was packaged separately for each day, with each day being further separately packaged for each meal, the only information given for the three days was each day’s menu: No cooking instructions, no list of ingredients, no nutritional information, no nothing except a list of meals. You can’t even get any further information on the website.

Still, unless you call a deep-seated hatred of avocado an allergy, I’m not allergic to anything so it didn’t really matter but I would have liked to have known what I was eating as, believe me, if I took part on Masterchef and got to the round where the contestants write down the ingredients they think the dishes contain, I would fail. Big time. Monica would give me one of her death stares, hand me my coat and point me in the direction of Ready Steady Cook.

Breakfast would have been gluten-free organic gram flour & cashew nut pancakes which sounded fab, as I’ve made gram flour (chickpea flour) pancakes myself and loved them but I’d planned to start the three-day plan on Tuesday lunchtime to fit in with my week (i.e. Friday night is chippy night and I’m not swapping battered halloumi for salad). The pancakes would keep for another day though.

The mung bean cold salad with home-made salad dressing provided for lunch was huge, containing a massive amount of mung beans, a few leaves of crunchy iceberg lettuce, a few strips of yellow and orange pepper, and a few bits of red onion. My guess is the salad dressing contained olive oil and not much else, and I would have preferred something a bit more imaginative. On the whole though, the salad was fresh, and I certainly can’t grumble about the portion size.

Despite the mung bean salad being huge, I fancied something else to eat shortly afterwards – partly because I’m a glutton but partly to get rid of the oily aftertaste the dressing had left behind. Usually, I’d have a hot chocolate post-lunch but that’s not really in keeping with the spirit of the ABC raw programme, so I ate some of the provided mixed seeds with almonds and got an insight into how a hamster feels at dinnertime.

Although this Nosh Detox plan is called the ‘ABC Raw Menu’, I assumed I didn’t have to eat the stir-fry cold – it had already been cooked, after all, so I heated it up in a saucepan. I enjoyed the tofu, which came with sliced mange tout, a couple of pak choi leaves and a few beansprouts. Don’t take my word for it (see what I said about Masterchef earlier) but I think it might have been lightly fried in sesame oil before it got to me to give it an authentic ‘Chinese take-away’ taste.

In keeping with an authentic Chinese take-away, hunger struck soon after finishing the stir-fry, so I ate the mid-morning snack I didn’t have in the morning of green pesto with organic brown rice cake.

This pesto was like no pesto I’ve had before. I don’t know from which green substance it was made, but it had certainly never been near a basil leaf. As for the texture, although I’ve never had mushy peas, I would imagine they would be the texture of this pesto but with more taste.

So, that’s Day 1 and I’m aware this post is a tad negative but, unfortunately, my first impressions haven’t been too favourable. Let’s hope Day 2 is better.

The Nosh Detox ABC three-day plan has been provided free of charge to me by Nosh to review. All views and opinions are my own (as you can probably tell).