Tag Archives: Buddhafield festival

Tibetan soup at Buddhafield 2011

Posted on July 31, 2011 | 4 comments

Buddhafield has all the wildness of a festival – live music, dance tent, cafes, workshops, healing area, fires, plunge pool, sauna; but without intoxicants.

There was so much on offer: every hour 10 simultaneous workshops and/or live gigs to choose from.

Abundance was the festival’s theme. At first I moaned, stressed by having to choose, and being catapulted outside my comfort zone, cut off from home and the internet.

I plodded around the three field-festival site. I got effortlessly fitter from plodding.

This Tibetan soup – from the Outer Regions cafe – sustained me. So nourishing. light and warming. Perfect for rainy days and before dance workshops.

(Soup – something you can make quickly with what’s in the fridge. Fry onions or leeks, chilli and garlic. Slice or chop veg: carrots, courgettes, green beans, potatoes – the smaller you cut ’em the quicker they cook. Add a handful of cooked dried beans such as butter beans or open a tin of plain beans. The trick with soup is how much water: it is easier to add than than remove. So start with two mugfuls and see how it goes. Add noodles towards the end of cooking. Season with black pepper.)

I am grateful to Mike for making healthy refreshing breakfast every morning.

A camping-must. Muesli and fruit (bring knife to chop). Add water, so no cooking needed.

Festivals are up-and-down (like life) – all I know is I felt great when I got back.

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Posted in eating well on a budget, food, health, recipe idea, vegan, vegetarian

Tagged Buddhafield festival, camping food, muesli, vegetable soup

MSG-free food leads to love

Posted on July 23, 2009 | 1 comment

Pacific island soup

It rained on Buddhafield festival but I was dry and warm in the Lost Horizons travelling cafe.

My kitchen fairy-duties: cut courgettes at slivered angles, trim broccoli from woody stalks, grate organic ginger (unpeeled) and lemon zest for Pacific Island soup, above.

Brought up in New Zealand, Richard the chef was inspired by his feminist mother leaving most of the cooking to his stepfather.

As I prepped, I learnt. Here for me to remember (and to share) are Richard’s tips:

Cleaning a rusty wok: heat dry wok till rust pops, add a little water then heat till it evaporates. Dry wok. Add two palmfuls of salt, heat, then wipe away the dirty salt with its abrasive and oxydising action. Next, add salt and water, and heat till it has nearly evaporated. This time the salt is clean and can stay, adding flavour to your dish.

Cooking kidney beans: soak for a minimum of 16 hours then cook until beans dissolve like mash potato. A monocotyledon such as corn added to the cooking increases the kidney bean’s protein-availability. “In Bogota in Columbia,” said Tim, a fellow Lost Horizons cook, “we cooked kidney beans with plantain into a mush and served it with ground coriander.”

Monosodium Glutamate (MSG), as we know, is the nicotine of food. Addictive and a health-risk (banned from the start from EU organic standards), it bypasses the taste buds straight to the brain. Richard added a new idea: MSG destroys the part of the brain that makes us compassionate.

No MSG at Buddhafield Festival. So we could go around being kind and hug-gy.

Lunch was ready.

Gwennie, the Washing-up Angel, is in the foreground (There some discussion about the differing job descriptions between angels and kitchen fairies…)

I ate my well-earned soup listening to the open, engaging Janna Goodwille.

Janna Goodwille (her real name) sang memorable songs with riveting lyrics. Her new album used sustainable waterless printing for its cover, and was recorded at the UK’s first solar-powered studio.

Pacific Island soup ingredients:

Onion + water + Thai red curry paste or Thai spices if available + dried seaweed + seasonal veg (cook what is hardest and biggest like carrot-chunks with slivered courgette last of all) + grated ginger + lemon zest + noodles.

Richard also sawed a coconut in half and chunked out bits for the soup.

All for £5 with fresh organic salad and bread. And leaves compassion-brain-cells intact.

Lunch board, Lost Horizons

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Posted in food

Tagged Buddhafield festival, cleaning wok, Janna Goodwille, kidney beans, Lost Horizons, Monosodium Glutamate, solar-powered recording studio, sustainable printing, waterless printing

Kitchen fairy at Lost Horizons

Posted on July 21, 2009 | 11 comments

backstage at Lost Horizons with yogurt

I went to Buddhafield festival and became a kitchen fairy.

I was sitting in a Bedouin tent, as one does, listening to Martha Tilston on stage at Lost Horizons, the legendary travelling café and wood-burning (mostly naked) sauna.

I heard a cry above the music:

“Can someone stir the milk? In exchange for a chai.

Can someone stir the milk?”

“I can stir the milk,” I said.

In the field kitchen, backstage at Lost Horizons, a wooden spoon in hand, I stirred a cauldron of milk coming to the boil.

A dramatic creature with blonde curls, tight trousers and a rocker’s face appeared.

“Turn it off when it comes to the boil. Do you know when it’s cool enough to add the yogurt?” he asked.

“You say Hare krishna hare krishna krishna krishna hare hare hare rama hare rama rama rama hare hare,” he said at such speed and with such authentic inflections that I did not recognise it.

He turned out to be the legendary and talented artiste, Prana, from the Bindoo Babas.

But I got the gist, and the yogurt got made ready to set

albeit with Nyam myo renge kyo a chant I do remember.

I also did loads of washing up.

The combination of working outdoors as the rain bounced off the canvas and being part of a crew gave me unusual washing-up energy.

My reward was a bowl of spicy hearty aduki bean soup with mostly organic ingredients cooked by Richard, the chef.

Richard, Lost Horizons kitchen chef

“Aduki and mung beans are the only ones that don’t need soaking,” he said.

I noticed a chalkboard sign calling for kitchen fairies.

I arranged to come back the next day.

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Posted in eating well on a budget, food, health, organic, peak oil, recipe idea, restaurant, sustainable, vegan

Tagged Azuki bean, Buddhafield festival, hare krishna hare rama, Lost Horizons, nam myoho renge kyo, outdoors sauna

Buddhafield festival 2008

Posted on July 23, 2008 | 3 comments

Healthy camping breakfast of raw oats, nuts and dried fruit

I ate the above every morning – a perfect no-cook nutrition-packed camping breakfast. From now on I will never travel without a spoon, a bowl, and bags of organic jumbo oats, dates, sunflower seeds, sultanas and pecan nuts. All dried so easy to store – just add water to bring them to life (plus a slice of apple or two).

I don’t know why people bother with expensive foreign holidays when they can go to a five-day long Buddhist festival in a Devon field. Its rigours test you, its strange culture intrigues while all around fellow festival go-ers are shaking off their everyday constraints.

Chapatti cooking on open fire at Buddhafield festival 2008

Lots of interesting food to try such as the chapatti (above) cooked on an open fire and stuffed with homemade basil pesto and split-pea houmous (a must-try because quicker than soaking chickpeas).

And every cafe served fresh homemade chai, for me and the other two thousand people milling around in four fields.

Buddhafield cafe (above) was always busy, while other cafes such as the Organic Fallafel tent and the Indian Food tent did equally brisk business. As did Padma Pancakes which featured live music (including the unmissable The Wraithes who put classical poems to music).

Even the compost loos had their charms, with wooden steps as if unto a throne.

You could not do a thirtieth of what was on offer.

At night, there were live bands in every cafe, a cinema, DJs. A packed daily programme included talks on climate change, workshops in kung fu, lessons in Indian dancing, skilful flirting and sacred chanting. There were saunas in wooden huts, impromptu cabarets and Buddhist rituals with a butterfly on stilts (below).