April Vegan Parcel swap....

Here goes for this month's parcel swap.....

This month I had a parcel from Caroline, and it was another amazing one!! As you can see, I got a great selection of things...from plum chutney to ginger porridge to bacon flavoured popcorn!! 

Again I received mostly things I hadn't had before. The only thing from this parcel that I had had before was the Yogi tea, which I love anyway. 

I made the falafels for a birthday picnic we went to last weekend. They tasted pretty different from normal falafels, Baz wasn't much for them, I liked them, probably because they had lots of carrot in them, which is one of my fave veggies.

There were also chocolate covered pineapple pieces- yum!!

Caroline was really sweet and sent me an extra thing because she hadn't realised the oat cakes weren't vegan, how did she know that I love popcorn almost as much as carrots?!! Hadn't tried this make before. Me and Baz ate it whilst watching the last couple of episodes of season 5 of 24! 

Below you can see what I sent, actually gave (since I could hand deliver this month!) to Jemimah-

-x-

March Vegan Parcel Swap

So....March. Parcel Swap. I got an amazing parcel from Claire! Here is what it looked like....

Claire put tags on everything with little notes about each product. This was really lovely and made it so personalised. I think aside from the tea, everything else was new to me, which was great!

The pancake mix I saved for when my step-daughter was around, and they went down pretty well, though I have to say I think I prefer the pancake mix that I make. It tasted super-healthy, which it was, containing loads of different flours- including buckwheat, quinoa and flaxseed flours! I almost had a panic attack with the first few I made, as it seems to always take a few gos until the pancakes stop clinging to the pan, and for some reason I get a bit stressed when they stick so much!!

I loved that there were Divine chocolate eggs in the parcel, especially when I thought we had devoured them all, only to find a few days later two unsuspecting ones hiding under the crepe paper....

The chilli plantain chips were pretty good. I shared them with my friend Mim whilst we watched a film at Duke of Yorks's cinema.

I liked the raspberry chocolate, but think Baz enjoyed it more than me, I was always unsure about the Green and Black's cherry chocolate, I think I'm just more into the other flavours you can get. Having said this, it was great to try new chocolate and a brand I had never tried before.

All in all a great parcel- thanks Claire (see her blog here)!

This is what I sent out in the same month to Anna-

-x-

February Vegan Parcel Swap: what I sent!

Hello.

So I have been a little slack in posting on here of late. It seems to feel sometimes like this huge thing I have to do and I end up not doing it. But anyway I have a few things I want to tell the world about, I say world, I mean Baz and the five or so kind family members and friends who read this.

So I already posted here about the vegan parcel I received in February. But I also wanted to share what I sent out in my first ever vegan parcel.

So here it is!

I think I did pretty well to get all of this with £10. I was worried that I would hardly get anything with the £10 budget, and that it would look a bit sparse, but I was happy with what I got. I am fairly good at seeking out bargains and sales items, so I did rummage through the special offer items in my local health food shop. My favourite item that I bought was from a local chilli shop, Chilli Pepper Pete. It was a medium heat chilli sauce. On the To Happy Vegans blurb it does say to try and include interesting local things, so thought this would be a good addition!

I will write soon about the March swap.

Hasta luego. -x-

Dukes at Komedia, a review!

Dukes @ Komedia is a cinema in North Laine, in Brighton. It is very new, only opening late 2012. It is a great little cinema, having two (small) screens and two bars. The upstairs bar is more like a cafe/restaurant, serving lots of food and drinks. The best thing of all is that they have a HUGE amount of vegan friendly dishes. In fact, every main dish is either vegan or vegan option, all the hot dogs can be vegan, and all the sides apart from one (strangely, corn-on-the-cob!) are vegan. This is so cool!!

Here is what me and Baz ate when we last went two weekends ago:-

 

We ordered and devoured: nacho lasagne (yes you read right, nacho lasagne!), jalapeno tempura and sweet potato wedges. 

If you have Duke of York's/Dukes at Komedia membership (which I do!) then you get 10% discount on all food and drinks. Woop!

The nacho lasagne was amazing, honestly. The flavours in it were so good. It had a cashew nut 'cheese' on the side, which was lush, as well as some chilli seasoning, also on the side. The green sauce you can see on the top was delicious, I can't remember though what it was... Should have taken a photo of the menu... Anyway, it was amazing. The chilli tempura was also extremely good, though Baz liked it more than I did. The sweet potato wedges were also really good, if I had to rate them all, I would say the lasagne was the best thing, followed by the wedges, followed by the tempura. I really can't fault anything with the meal. It was SO nice, and I was in a great mood after seeing that such a high proportion of the dishes were vegan! 

The only thing I have to say about it was that it was too cold (the air temperature, not the food!). We had been in the day before and it was the same then. 

I can really recommend the chilli fries too, which we had the day before. Yes, we spent two days in a row sitting in there, drinking and eating! (Without going to the cinema.) 

We didn't order any but they also have ice cream from a local ice cream shop (I can't remember the name of it). And two of the flavours were vegan! They also have vegan cake. 

Here is the trusty 'Baz thumbs review':-

If you haven't already been, go and try the food for yourself. And let me know what you think.....

-x-

Vegan Parcel Swap!

So a few months ago I came across this really cool vegan food parcel swap, so signed up and did my first one this month! Your email address goes into this random generator and you get a random person to send to and another one to receive from. The budget is £10, not including postage. If I do it again, I will definitely try to make the parcel lighter, but other than that, it went really well. It was pretty exciting getting the parcel and opening it to see what goodies I got. Mine was from Janetta, and here is what she sent me:-

As you can see, I got a Sesame Snaps, some Goody sweets, some Tyrells vegetable crisps, some Kallo chocolate rice cakes, chilli rice crackers, Moo Free chocolate buttons and a Bounce ball.

The rice cakes and chocolate buttons are two of my favourite things, I am totally addicted to these rice cakes at the moment, and I seem to be depleting my Mum of her seemingly ever-lasting supplies at the moment....oops. So it was great to have my own pack of them and not feel guilty about eating them!! The only thing I have yet to try is the Bounce ball, which I am saving to have after my next run (hopefully Saturday!). 

After I had been shopping for the one I sent out and posted it, my thoughts were, "I don't think I'll do it again whilst I don't have much money..." But actually I am thinking I might just do it anyway! I think if I buy lighter things, the postage won't be so much. 

I would definitely recommend joining this or another one, as it's a bit like Christmas when you receive your parcel, and who wouldn't want that Christmassy feeling once a month?!!

-x-

Baz's birthday at the Loving Hut

So it was Baz's birthday a couple of weeks ago. Here is Baz opening his cards and pressies in the morning...

And here's a pic of us before we headed into town to go to the cinema at Duke's @ Komedia.

We went to watch Django Unchained, the new Quentin Tarantino flick, which was pretty cool, although I am really not a fan of films with lots of shooting and blood, so that was the only thing I didn't enjoy. But you can't really watch a Tarantino film without watching people blow each others' brains out. Anyway, I love the new Dukes cinema, which is in the North Laine, in Brighton, so any excuse to go there is fine by me!

After the cinema, we headed over to Loving Hut, an all-vegan cafe by the Level, also in Brighton. This is one of our favourite places to eat, they do lots of Asian dishes like chow mein and stir-frys, as well as things like burgers and chips. Here is what we had:

Satay skewers...these are AMAZING! Love these, they are a bit pricey, I think they're around £3.50, but they are worth it.

I had stir-fry vermicelli, which is one of my fave dishes, it is noodles with soya strips, red and green pepper, beansprouts, carrots and onion. It is normally spicy, but on this occasion was very mild.

Baz went for the trusty burger and chips, which is one of his fave things here. The chips were awesome and the burger was delicious. Yes he let me have a bite! Except that he ruined it with mustard. You can see it came with a slice of 'cheese'.

Above is Baz's review of Loving Hut. He scored it a bit lower than he originally did (see below). The only reason for this is that the staff don't seem very happy and this kind of makes the atmosphere a little tense.

Sorry Loving Hut, we do LOVE the hut a lot, but please smile a little, it makes a difference to your customers' experience.

So yeah, overall, the food here is the bomb, when it first opened a few years ago we went there about once a week for a few months, trying all the different dishes, and always being satisfied with the food. It remains one my of fave places to eat at, especially as I can order anything off the menu, which is always a bonus. If you haven't been here before, why not??? Get down there post-haste and eat some amazing vegan fast-food! Go! Now!

-x-

Big fat vegan breakfast!

So....Baz's favourite meal of all time, I think, is breakfast. And I am talking about the cooked sort. Here is Baz giving his review of a recent one I made...

As you can see Baz had beans (yuck), hash browns, fried mushroom and onion, toast, sausage and some parsley sprigs to garnish. Mine was the same except I don't eat evil baked beans, so I had spaghetti hoops instead!

Sorry for the blurry picture.

Anyway, one key thing was missing from this particular breakfast....can you work out what it is? YES that's right, we didn't have any scrambled tofu, which is clearly the second best thing you can have, after hashys. You can check out my recipe for scrambled tofu if you want to know what it is and how to make it. 

That's all for now. -x-