What I Ate Today

Hello everyone, happy Friday! I am going to gloss over the shitstorm of a day it's been in the UK and just tell you what I ate today instead.

I started with a bowl of my maple sunrise cereal, the Nature's Path brand. Same as my last WIAT post, I know and I promise I don't eat it every day, but today I'd run out of the bagels I'd been eating the rest of the week. 

For lunch, I had a toastie; this had violife pizza cheese, tomato puree and a bit of oregano sprinkled inside. Super simple but really good. It's been a while since I dug out the toastie maker.

For a snack I ate this Lenny & Larry's cookie. Apparently one cookie is 2 servings, haha yeah right. Not in my world. I thought this was OK. I bought 3 of these to try; this peanut butter flavoured one, double chocolate and regular choc chip. The double chocolate was my favourite; I found the other two a little powdery, like you could taste the protein powder in them. But not horrible. I probably won't buy them very often, but when I do, it'll probably be the double choc ones.

For dinner I had a red Thai curry that I actually made yesterday. I roasted the cauliflower separately to give it a bit of extra flavour and then I sauteed an onion and added one of these little pots of red Thai curry paste. Then I added veggie stock, half a red and half a yellow pepper, a couple of carrots, half a block of cubed tempeh and a bit of salt. I cooked it for about 20 minutes and then added some peas for the last 5 minutes of cooking and a carton of the Coconut Collaborative plain coconut yoghurt (I do this instead of adding coconut milk to cut back on the fat a bit). I added in the cauliflower and then served it with basmati rice.

And that's about the size of it for today.

Have an awesome weekend.
Sal xXx

Recent Company Responses Regarding Animal Testing

I have recently written to a couple of companies regarding their animal testing policies and wanted to share their responses with you.

Viseart
I asked them:

- Do Viseart test any ingredients or finished products on animals?
- Do any third parties test ingredients or finished products on animals on your behalf?
- Do you ensure your suppliers are cruelty free and do not carry out any animal testing?
- Do you sell your products in mainland China or any other market where mandatory testing is required?

Also, are any of your eyeshadow palettes vegan?

Their response:

"No to all your questions, except for the vegan one*.

Some of our palettes are vegan, some are not. Which ones are you interested in so we can tell you."

I only asked about the Boheme Dream and Neutral Mattes Palettes and they confirmed the Boheme Dream palette IS vegan but the Neutral Mattes has carmine in 1 shade.

I then asked for a vegan list and they said:

"We don't have time to put this together right now. But in the future we will and we appreciate your support!

xoxo"

So, if you are interested in a specific palette, just shoot them an email and they will confirm for you.

Viseart palettes are available in the UK from LOVE-MAKEUP.

*I originally added them to my list of animal friendly brands. A commenter called Lizzie raised below about them saying no to all questions and obviously one of those was 'do you ensure your suppliers are cruelty free?'. Thank you for this - this totally didn't register with me. So I'm checking that with them. They'll hopefully be on the list once I know for sure, but for now I've just marked them as pending.

FURTHER UPDATE:
Viseart have confirmed that their suppliers are cruelty free. So I've added them to the list again.


Primark
I asked them exactly the same questions as I asked Viseart, as above. Their response:

"Primark does not conduct and does not commission any animal testing.  Our terms of trade with our suppliers make it clear that cosmetic products and their ingredients must not be tested on animals."

As you can see, they didn't confirm about China/markets that require mandatory testing. I have written back to them to confirm and will update this post when I receive a response. I have not added them to my list of animal friendly brands.

UPDATE: They confirmed that they have no stores in China and at the moment, Primark do not sell online.

Laterz
Sal xXx

What I ate yesterday!

A cheeky little Friday post for you, here is what I ate yesterday!

For breakfast, my new favourite cereal; Nature's Path Maple Sunrise. I normally buy the Mesa Flakes but Simon picked these up for me and they are SO good. Mapley and crunchy and delicious. I had them with almond milk.

For lunch I had half a can of Amy's chilli that was leftover from the previous night's dinner, with some leftover brown rice. Easy and fast lunch.

For an afternoon snack I had a Jaffa Cake alpen bar - I didn't take a pic but it's THESE.

Dinner - I made a super quick stir fry with half a pack of ready made mushroom stir fry and I added some vegan quorn pieces, extra broccoli, sweetcorn and rice noodles. I added Chinese 5 spice powder, soy sauce and Sriracha to season it. And a little sprinkle of black sesame seeds to make it pretty!

Last thing I ate was some Alpro coconut yogurt with some AWESOME strawberries. I love strawberry season - the rest of the year, strawberries just generally make me sad.

So that's the lot.

Hope everyone has an awesome weekend. Hopefully I'll be returning to more regular posting from next week.

Love & stuff
Sal xXx

An update

Hi everyone

I wanted to write a quick post mainly to apologise for the lack of content here and on my YouTube channel lately.

My plan was to get into a regular schedule of vlogging and blogging. However a back injury that I have mentioned previously has got worse and worse instead of being gone by now.

Yesterday was my birthday, worst birthday ever. Not sure I have ever been in so much pain in my life before!

Basically this injury has me barely able to stand and I cannot sit upright in any chair for more than a few minutes. So editing videos or blog posts is near on impossible. Hence I'm typing this on my phone in bed.

As soon as this damn back heals enough I will get into a regular schedule of posting. Here's hoping it won't be long!

Lots of love
Sal xXx