sunday reset in the countryside: healthy meal prep & catching up

Rui, let's go. Good girl, good girl. Where the dogs are walking now is where the river usually is, but it's been so dry, like look at this, this is usually a flowing river that we can't walk through, and this is what it looks like now, like the ground over here, and I'm just stood on the riverbed basically. Mum and I were saying we don't know how the animals are surviving really, because this has been like this. When did we last walk here, six weeks ago? Yeah, easily six weeks ago. Come, this way, look, this way. Poppy, Poppy. and just maybe I'm just out of practice, because obviously I've not been here for a while. I was just determined to come back today, so hopefully my personality re-emerges at some point in this vlog, but for now I just wanted to come on and say good morning, say that I really missed you. There's not really many updates, I just obviously had a really gorgeous month of lots of holidays. See, I'm so in my head right now, I feel like I'm coming across like so flat, and I'm just so aware, because YouTube's a really weird space that basically like, if you don't come on like with a big smile on your face and like so extroverted, it always comes over as kind of like you're really miserable or really down, it's not that at all. It would ordinarily be one of those days where I probably just like wouldn't say anything out loud all day, and I would just go about my day and sort my house out and do all the things that we're going to do in complete silence, to the point it would be one of those days where, you know, when you get to the end of the day and you have to actually just say something out loud to yourself just to check that like it still works, that you still have that ability, it'd be one of those days, but anyway. That was already a tangent, so what was I saying? Oh yeah, yeah, it's been a really good month, but I'm also just so happy to be home and to be slowly, slowly but surely trying to sort of get back into my routines, which is what we're doing today, because today is really the first full day that I've had since I got back where I've got zero plans, zero plans, which sounds like heaven to me, but what I do need to do is just start to get my life in order again. I need to do, I need to just sort the whole house out, loads of laundry, I need to do a food shop, I need to do, I'm going to do some like meal prepping for the week just to make life a bit easier in the week when I've got more on. I don't know, I feel like that's it, I don't really have a plan for the day, it's just going to be a really nice chilled day and like I said hopefully my personality re-emerges at some point in this vlog, but that's me, I hope you have all had a really lovely month, tell me what the gossip is, tell me the news and I want to make a matcha, so let's do that. If you're really, really into matcha, I feel like this will hurt your feelings, so maybe look away, but this is how I make my matcha because it's so easy, always this milk, the Rudehouse coconut, not the barista one, just this one, it's got really clean ingredients and then I will put that milk, I only put it in the mug first so that I know how much, otherwise I can never figure out how much I need and then I just put my matcha in here like this, this is the matcha that I use, I think it's really good because it's ceremonial grade but also has all these different types of mushrooms in, so it's got added health benefits and then I just put it on my coffee machine and I steam the milk and it mixes it all through, see it's mixing as we go, makes my life easy, but I know it's not the traditional way, so won't be for everyone and it's that easy. I actually also worked with this matcha brand a while ago, so if I still have codes or anything I can link it for you, but look how delish. Do you know one of my favourite moments on a Sunday is when you've cleaned the whole kitchen, you've loaded the dishwasher, you've loaded the washing machine, both machines are on, they're both running, the kitchen smells amazing, you can smell all of your clean laundry, the sounds of just like all of the machines doing the work for you, I don't know what that is but I find it so satisfying and you can just make a cup of tea and like sit down with a book and you know that at least one part of your house is completely sorted, however you do know that you have the dreaded putting the bedsheets back on task to do, which I have to say is one of my least, least favourite things to do, but at least they smell fresh and amazing and honestly one of my second favourite experiences on a Sunday is getting into fresh bedsheets at the end of the day. So these are the laundry products that I use, they're by an incredible brand called Taller & Ash who I'm actually working with for the first time on this video, so I want to tell you a bit about the brand, probably most importantly for me because you know what I'm like about this kind of thing, all of their products are formulated in the UK using plant-based non-toxic chemicals, which is so important to me, they're all dye-free, they're all vegan, they're all cruelty-free, they're all biodegradable and it means that they're really gentle on your skin and I just am such a huge advocate for using as few sort of toxic nasties in our house as we can possibly get away with, so I absolutely love that about these products. They're actually formulated in a really similar way to sort of perfume where they've got top notes, base notes, middle notes and there's such an attention to detail and wow can you tell. The one that I use today is one of my favourites, this is Oud which has really luxurious notes of kind of cedarwood, sandalwood, amber, I feel like this is the summer scent so I probably should have used this one today, but this one is so beautiful, it's really floral and feminine and it has notes of rose, saffron, white oud. What I also love and I think is so different is if you go on the Talamanash website it will tell you perfumes that are similar to the scent, so this one for example says it's similar to the Maison Francis Baccarat Rouge 540 which is obviously an unbelievable perfume, there are so many others, I've got this one here which is Coco Butter Kisses, obviously it has top notes of chocolate, base notes of things like vanilla and somehow although it smells so rich and chocolatey it also manages to smell really fresh at the same time. It's just elevating a task that probably not many of us really enjoy but giving it that sort of enjoyable element because your house smells so gorgeous and obviously just to reiterate it's non-bio so it's good for sensitive skin, it's safe for aquatic life and all of the waterways that it sort of ultimately ends up in which I think you know can't be underestimated how important that is. It's safe for pets, it's safe on all fabrics, it's just an incredible product by an incredible brand and feels so luxury and so premium so if you want to try Talamanash the best place to start is definitely one of the Discovery sets because then you can try lots of the different scents all in one go and you can kind of pick and choose your favourites although you'll probably just love them all and right now Talamanash actually have the Discovery sets on sale. You can try six of the fragrances in these little sachets that come obviously with your detergent and your conditioner and you also get in the Discovery set this little laundry bag for any of your delicates that as I said it's currently on offer so you get your six shampoos, your six conditioners and your laundry bag for £10 so I'll make sure I've popped a link down in my description box so you can go and sort of explore all the scents and have a look at the Discovery pack. Now that we've got some of the bits around the kitchen done I am going to head out and just restock the fridge, restock the cupboards and do a big food shop because I also want to do a bit of meal prep this afternoon. I'm not normally here this early so they've got loads of bread they don't usually have, they've got this gorgeous focaccia, they have this I don't actually even know what this is and then they also have this I'm guessing this is some kind of charcoal and then all of these organic pastries which also look unbelievable. I'm tempted to get this for Ru every time I see her, she loves or hates I don't know, she has a love-hate relationship with peasants. Okay I'm home, I went to the farm shop, I went to Waitrose, I got petrol, did all of the adult jobs that I need to do, I got a few bits, I've already started unpacking some of it so I won't do a haul just purely because most of what I bought today we're actually going to cook today because like I said I want to do some meal prepping and I didn't get anything that exciting. The only thing I did get, I got this new terracotta pot from the farm shop that has a hole in the bottom although look how bad my luck is with this. So they have so many different types of terracotta pots and I looked through them all and I specifically looked for ones that have a hole in the bottom and I'll tell you why in a second. So I looked through them all and then I picked this style because I thought this was really nice, asked the man if he could kindly separate them because you know when they all get a bit like stuck together, he separated them all, he held them up, he said which one do you want, I picked this one, got it home, look the bit of terracotta is like stuck in there, like what are the chances? Anyway it doesn't really matter I'll just get my dad to like knock it out with a tool or something because I wanted to get a really pretty pot to put my basil in to put somewhere in my kitchen specifically with a hole in the bottom and I need to get a tray to put it in because my dad said that the key to keeping store-bought basil alive and thriving so that you can use it for longer than just like a week is to water it from the bottom so put it in a tray, put water in the tray and it will just sort of take as much water as it needs. Apparently that's the key, they like being watered from the bottom. So yeah I thought that was a really nice pot and I can just put it over somewhere in my kitchen but yeah like I said everything else is just kind of the usual so I won't bore you by showing you that and also we're about to make some stuff now so I want to do a few bits of meal prep today. I'm going to start by making some pesto. We were in the sort of like pesto making region so where pesto came from so we went off into the hills like into the countryside in Italy and we did a really really fun pesto and gnocchi making course. The pesto we made could honestly rival any of the pesto that we had on the rest of the trip and we were eating pesto every single day and I could not get over how easy it is, it's so so simple. I mean it takes a bit of time because we do it with the pestle and mortar but it's so worth it and they gave us the recipe at the end so I thought let's try and make some at home and then I'm just going to put it all into a jar put it in the fridge we can use it throughout the week and then a bit later on I'm making another Italian recipe which is it kind of did the rounds on social media um everyone calls it the Italian penicillin soup or something um basically it's pretty much like you know growing up if you were poorly in in the UK and I'm sure all around the world your grandma or your parents would always give you chicken noodle soup I feel like it's like the Italian version of that so um we're going to make a version of that tonight as well but for now let's make this pesto and I can show you how easy it is and you have to try it because it is so good so step one is the garlic you just need one raw garlic clove and then we are just going to basically make this into a paste it's actually quite hard work I will say see how that's almost like a paste now I mean ideally I would probably do it for a bit longer but I'm impatient so we're going to go with that now I'm just adding in pine nuts I'm going to put quite a lot of pine nuts in because I don't eat dairy so um there's not going to be any cheese so these give it a bit of something so then I'm just going to mash these down same thing and then do you see how this is like a paste now um I would probably again do it for a little bit longer and then we add the basil in it does start to break down pretty quickly okay see how again this is now resembling more of a paste so this is probably ready for the olive oil and that is pretty much done so it really only takes a few minutes it tastes unbelievable it is so much better than any pesto you can buy um but my pestle and mortar is actually quite small so I'm going to do this again a few times and then I'm going to put it all into where's my jar and it will keep in the fridge for pretty much the whole week it's just a really handy thing to have because obviously you can have it for lunches with salads with sandwiches and then obviously pasta like all pasta salads for lunch so good and it takes five minutes so if you have a bigger pestle and mortar that will be quicker because I've got all this basil still to go through and a whole bag of pine nuts as well so I'm just going to stand here for a bit I won't make you watch me and make a few more just so I can fill up maybe like half the jar with pesto um and then we'll be good for the week but yeah this is what you'll be working with in the end obviously you can add in cheese or vegan cheese if you want to but I think it's so good just like this so actually I just thought because I bought all of these really gorgeous tomatoes I mean look at the texture and I have all of this basil I'm just going to make something my dad always made growing up which is the most simple tomato salad because it's literally just basil really good quality tomatoes olive oil and salt and honestly this was one of my favorite things and still is one of my favorite things to eat if we ever have like a family barbecue at home this is always a salad that gets eaten first and it is literally this simple a little bit of that little drizzle of olive oil salt obviously just some mixed italian seasoning it's so good I'm just gonna snack on this now while I make the rest of the pesto okay guess who's been reading that book for the past hour and a half rather than unpacking organizing tidying doing any of the things that I promised myself I would do this Sunday that would be me um I also just watched the cutest thing I'm in my bedroom right now and um my neighbor just got back and they have the cutest dog it's like a really big I don't know what it is I think it's like a labrador labradoodle or like a gruesome is it a great day I don't know it's like a big fluffy really sweet dog anyway they love their dog next door because I always hear my neighbor speaking to her dog and I you know what someone who is nice to their dog I mean everyone should obviously be nice to their dog but I feel like you can tell a lot about a person um from the way that they speak to their dog or just animals in general and it just makes me so happy I love seeing a good dog mom anyway I've been reading I'll tell you about my books in a second um I don't think I told you about them in Italy but I did forgive me and just skip forward if you've already seen it I don't think I did I just rediscovered this that I bought the other day in the Selfridges sale I went into Selfridges actually to get a present for my friend and what do I end up with presents for myself this Ralph Lauren jumper was in the sale and if you think not that I need this at all today there's absolutely no possible way that I would not be buying this jumper when it comes around to autumn winter you will be so sick so sick this jumper will hate to see me coming when it's autumn winter I'm going to live in this I don't think there's anything better than a jumper that kind of feels like it would have once been like your granddad's jumper that's very my vibe I just think that's like ultimate comfort cozy they also only have a size large left which is honestly even better it's Ralph Lauren um but like I said it was in the sale so I don't feel like I'm not sure if I'll be able to find it online sadly I can't keep this on because it is 20 something degrees but I do have new pyjamas kind of pyjamas kind of loungewear these are very kindly sent to me along with some other things that I absolutely love like this round is such a good find it is called Ver Vita this but how nice it's like a pointeal um white pyjama and then it's got long pyjama bottoms that go with it um but books okay so the book that I was actually just reading is one that I'm rereading I did definitely talk about this at the time that was quite a while ago um just basically if you have not read Lost Connections by Johan Hari immediately immediately buy it it's so rare for me to reread a book I really don't do that very often I'm not a big rereader but this is just so I don't I can't describe it I just think I mean actually what does it say on the back well the thing is okay so hear me out so it sort of um teased it up as if the whole book's going to be about kind of mental health and I guess it kind of is but it's also just about how the reality of society today is just impacting all of us and how we're all sort of so disconnected from the things that make us human and it's honestly fascinating even if you're someone that's lucky enough to have never experienced like anxiety or depression or anything like that this is still such an incredible book that you will still get so much out of basically if you exist in today's society which all of us do you'll get something from this book I absolutely love this these are the two books that I picked up in the airport um obviously while we're traveling this month so this one I've actually started reading but I'm not very far through at all they're just our holidays this summer were very on the go like we were doing things all day every day so I didn't actually have much reading time um but this is Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami um this was originally written in Japanese honestly I just remember it's such a faint memory now but this has been on my like want to read list for years because I remember seeing someone it was in a vlog on youtube and they were reading this book and they must have obviously spoken about it really fondly and it made me it's just really stuck in my mind and I can't actually even remember why it's stuck in my mind but I thought I'll read it and I will find out um so that's what I'm currently reading and then I also got another book by Frederick Bachman which is called My Friends which I think is his new one that's why it's so huge you know tell you a hack if you ever want to read a brand new book that's only out in um hard cover because I really I tell you what I really really dislike a hardcover book it turns out that in the airport they sell them straight away um like soft paperback that's the word paperback but they're always huge like this anyway I've not started reading this I just got it because I I read another book of his and I really liked it so if you've read this let me know your thoughts and that's the book update I'm going to go and make this Italian panacea soup which I'm so excited for it's basically just like a stock and then veggies blended through and then pasta of choice in there but it's obviously meant to be like really healthy really nourishing for you and I just think after a month of travel it's probably exactly what I need I feel like okay so into the stock I'm just going to add in some carrots I'll probably just chop the ends off these and then put them in whole and then I'm chopping up some celery again into pretty big pieces because we're going to take it all out again of the stock put it through a blender and then add it back in I already have onion and garlic in the stock so I don't need to add them and then I just need to add in my pasta I will cook this separately just because otherwise I can find it makes the soup a bit starchy and a bit thick and I don't love that so I'll cook that separately add that in at the end I also got this from Italy so you do want this to be quite al dente when you take it out still just because obviously it will continue to cook in the stock because the stock will be hot so just make sure you don't cook it too much it needed a bit more water so honestly one of my favorite things on earth ultimate ultimate childhood just cozy comfort nostalgia okay now I look at my kitchen I am about to make cow mug my voice am I okay I clearly needed that Italian penicillin um I'm about to make myself a hot chocolate that's the word this is the one I use it's the same as the matcha brand I really like this brand it's organic as well and again it has got these mushrooms in that are meant to be really good for you um but before I go I wanted to talk to you about tv because I have actually been watching quite a bit of tv recently it's just that thing isn't it like when you get back from holiday you are just I was jet lagged as well and you're just on another planet and you just need to chill so I've got some recommendations for you um firstly I feel like I'm probably the last person on earth to make this recommendation but Mobland so good if you haven't seen it it's got Tom Hardy it's got Helen Mirren that's right isn't it yeah I think Helen Mirren George Clooney and just like a whole host of other familiar um actors and actresses and then there's that lady can't remember her name but she's in like basically any British drama that's ever been on tv the blonde lady you'll know exactly who I mean when you look it up um but it's so good it had me absolutely gripped like I watched that in just like a few days because I just watched them back to back to back to back and I really enjoyed it I didn't really watch it for a while because I thought like gangsters and drugs and that kind of thing like not my thing I say that but I actually my favourite tv series of all time is Peaky Blinders I absolutely love that although I do think my love for Cillian Murphy might have something to do with that but anyway loved it so Mobland big recommendation you can get it on um I watched it on Amazon through the Paramount add-on thing and then also on Paramount I watched a program called Little Disasters which is very like it's not going to be the best thing you've ever watched but if you're into like you know when BBC or actually Netflix like you know when Netflix do the kind of Harlan Coburn like they're pretty rubbishy but also you can't stop watching type of things it's sort of like one of those um and it's all about a child a baby actually that ends up injured and then they go to hospital they tell the mum that the baby has like a head injury and then the mum doesn't know how it's happened and you can just kind of imagine how it unfolds because social services have to come and then because the mum can't explain it it looks like it's the mum and then it's all just like this mystery of like was it the mum was it the dad was it you know who was it kind of thing um but I quite enjoyed that if you just need some kind of like mindless watching that's a drama to watch again on Paramount but now that I finished both of them I need something else to get my teeth into I might start Rivals although my parents told me it was pretty rubbish but I feel like everyone else loved it so maybe I'll give that a go last night I actually started watching there's a new like docu-series on Netflix about the um you remember years ago the really awful attack on the London Underground but genuinely I kept having nightmares like really bad nightmares and I did this thing where I was falling asleep and Roo always sleeps right next to me but you know when you're kind of falling asleep and then you just go out of nowhere I kept doing that I think poor Roo did not have a clue what was going on so I'm not going to watch any more of that because clearly that had some impact on my nervous system which is kind of unsurprising because it's such a horrible horrible topic um anyway that's what I've been watching um but yeah if you've got any recommendations let me know I also have one minute of storage left on my memory card so I'm gonna very quickly sign off now and just say thank you so much for being here I'm so happy to be back it's regular programming I promise every Sunday like 9 10 a.m something like that I will be here thank you for spending the day with me I hope you have the best week I can't wait to catch up next week bye guys