Welcome to Nourish With Nish: a blog about all things student and all things vegan/veggie.
I'm a 25 year old Nutrition MSC student at the University of Leeds (UK) and a Psychology graduate from Swansea University (UK). I went vegetarian almost 8 years ago, vegan 4 years ago. I loved my time at university and revelled in the opportunity it gave me to develop my cooking (which I know isn’t like most students). Like most students, however, I looked to make things that were speedy and low budget. The more I made some recipes, the more I found ways to cook them more efficiently. Upon graduating, I decided to gather everything I had learnt over the years and share it all to make it easier for those coming into university now, in particular those who are choosing to try a vegan diet whilst away from home. As the years have gone past, I’ve become more and more interested in food styling and food photography.
All recipes on this blog call for vegan versions of the ‘originals’, unless stated otherwise. For example, if a recipe calls for butter or milk, that’s dairy-free/vegan butter and milk.
All the photos and videos you see on this blog of people sitting down together to eat, videos of friends etc. were never captured for the purpose of this website. I’m obsessed with capturing those moments and with a Photo Library of 60k+ photos, I have a huge collection! I never dreamed those photos would serve more purpose than being a simple memory of the moment they show, but I’m so glad they’ve been able to be put to good use. I hope you’re able to take inspiration from my photos and videos to sit down more with your friends and family to eat. When you enjoy food, you enjoy life.
Good ingredients make good food, but good company makes it even better.
My Food Philosophy
My relationship with food and everything that surrounds it has changed greatly over the years: from eating at a table, eating with people, what I choose to eat and how I feel about food, ten years ago none of it was the same as it is today. I wouldn’t have been proud to share my food philosophy then, but I am now… so here goes!
Food is not something you have to earn. You deserve food purely based on the fact that you exist and that you’re living and breathing today. Food is not something you have to work off and it most certainly isn’t to be in a transactional relationship with exercise. No matter how much, or what, you ate yesterday, you still need food today. There are no good or bad foods, just good and bad attitudes towards food. Food is your fuel, it’s your friend, it’s the foundations of your social connections to others and to yourself.
My relationship with food has also changed the way I cook… I’m much more interested now in understanding how food works and see it as much more of a skill rather than a means to an end (just make-food-and-go sort of thing). I’m trying to increasingly read into the science of ingredients - as soon as you start learning how that all works, combined with an appreciation for certain flavour combinations, you can easily put together meals from scratch, you can predict how ingredients will react in certain dishes, you know how to fix things if they go wrong just by looking at them, it changes the experience of cooking entirely. I’m trying to teach the skill of cooking more, as opposed to just making a recipe you can follow. Everyones kitchens are different, we all have access to certain hobs/pans/ingredients and teaching you, for example, how to spot when something is done, as opposed to telling you to cook it for x-number of minutes, is a lot more useful. I want to teach you about proportions and ratios of ingredients, which hob or pan to choose and why, what certain ingredients bring to dishes so you can appropriately swap things in and out when you don’t have everything. That’s more important than knowing how to follow orders.
Finally, my recipes are a reflection of what I know at the time it’s put out, almost like a food-snap of my knowledge at that time. My recipes aren’t perfect, but I aim to make them as delicious as I know how to. I’m still learning about how to balance meals and flavours; as I learn, I make what I like given what I know, and it’s possible this might change in the future as I learn more about the science of food, baking and nutrition. If you see me post something in a couple of months updating a recipe, try not to discredit the original but to see it more as the fact that I’m learning to improve recipes and can only put out what I know.
It’s important to set intentions with food: set the intention to have everyone chip in to helping make a meal, to sit down and eat it together and avoid any dramas at the table, to have that second serving if you’re still hungry for it, to make conscious decisions about the ingredients you use, to make eating an experience rather than a chore. You’re going to have to eat anyway so you might as well make it an extra special experience. It doesn’t take much!
Eat something delicious today and lots of love,
Nish x