Wicked Kitchen at Tesco - A review

Firstly - I'm giving away the Soph x Makeup Revolution palette in my latest youtube vid - go HERE if you want to enter while you still have time :) (It is international!)

Shameless plug over....

....So with it being January/Veganuary, LOADS of new vegan items have been hitting the shelves of the supermarkets lately. I'm all for that and was super excited when Tesco launched a fully vegan range of ready meals.

The range, from Wicked Kitchen, has sandwiches, wraps, salad bowls, pizzas and ready meals and here is what I've tried so far:

Fiery Tofu & Slaw Sandwich - £3
I'll be honest, most of the lunch options didn't really do it for me. But the Fiery Tofu & Slaw sandwich sounded pretty great to me.

They're not lying when they say fiery, this sammie is WARM! But I like the spice so I enjoyed it. It could do with a bit of seasoning but you'll see that's a common theme among the reviews in this post! (I haz a salt tooth!)

I really enjoyed this and would purchase again!

Veggie Pasta & Amazeballs - £4
First of all, not amazeballs I'm afraid. I thought this was nice but nothing special. Nothing I couldn't make myself cheaper, less calories and tastier. So I probably won't buy this again. It needed salt (all these meals need salt!)

Pic from Tesco as I forgot to take one of the package!

Terrible photo of the contents!

Nana's Mushroom Bolognaise - £4
This one I like a lot and will definitely rebuy. These meals only take 4 mins to heat up in the microwave and this one is really tasty. As above though, needs salt ;-)

Damn, it's hard to get a good pic of ready meals when you take them out the pack! I added a tonne of nooch, obvs and I also generally put a layer of spinach in my bowl before I plate all meals!

Naked Burrito - £4

This one was excellent! Super spicy with those slices of Jalapeno and this kind of meal is my kind of meal. Rice and toppings. It was yummy. I love the oyster mushrooms and the beans in this. Would also rebuy this one!

Here it is completely mangled on top of some extra spinach, with a dollop of Oatly oat fraiche on top, because I'm obsessed with that stuff!

Gunpowder Potato Chana Masala - £4
My favourite of all the meals I've tried. So good! I loved the spice, it wasn't too hot, it was just yummy. And potatoes + rice, double carbs!! Win! Again needed salt, but as I said, salt tooth.

Again, pic from google due to my sieve-like memory

Again I added Nooch and Oat Fraiche!

So in summary, I've enjoyed pretty much everything I've tried so far from this range. I'm planning on putting one of the pizzas on this week's Tesco order to try out at the weekend. I also want to try the butternut mac and the teriyaki noodles.

They are a little pricey at £4 but they are really good quality and generous portions. I normally wouldn't eat ready meals this often, but a flare up of RSI in my hand/wrist meant that cooking was tricky this week so these were a godsend.

Have you tried anything from this range? What do you think?

Sal xXx

Southampton Vegan Festival

This weekend just gone was the first Southampton vegan festival and my husband and I (yep, we got married! More on that another time though!) got in the car, drove the hour or so to get there to check it out.

It was worth the trip, we ate some really good food and always spent way to much moolah on stuff to take home. Here's what we got...

We started with some Greek food from Greek Vegan Deli Specialities; having just come back from our honeymoon in Crete, we had to! And we were not disappointed. We both got a pitta (which was amazing!) filled with tofu halloumi, falafel, salad and a bunch of dips including vegan taramasalata! avocado, some sort of sweetcorn relish and what I think was beetroot hummus.

It was so good, I mean look at it! (I love that they gave us a fork too, as it was a messy sucker!)

I also grabbed some of their baklava to take home, which Simon and I ate for lunch the next morning.

After we ate, we decided to have a leisurely wander around and this is what we bought:

We got a couple of pieces of cake from Vegan Sweet Tooth, London to share. We went for the pistachio, pomegranate and rose cake. The frosting tasted like straight up soya yogurt to me, which I wasn't a fan of at first but actually it worked well with the cake. The cake was really tasty and I liked the rose flavour.

We also bought a piece of the nutella brownie which I wasn't a huge fan of, it just tasted healthy, if you know what I mean! haha. It was good but I'd have preferred it to be sweeter.

Then we found the VeggiJelli stand which interested Simon, as he has requested a trifle for his upcoming birthday! We got 4 packs to take with us.

And some ready made to eat then and there. It was pretty good and they told us it works well for trifle as the fruit won't stop it setting. The more important question I forgot to ask was will vodka stop it setting (like the sachets of veggie jelly crystals you can buy in holland and barrett!!)?? I'll let you know!

Jellyyyyyyy

Then we went to the Eden stand so I could get a new bottle of their J'adore copy! I ended up buying that and their copy of Flower Bomb. Plus two for Simon! I've been trying to find a copy of his Mont Blanc aftershave for ages and after a chat with the lovely owner, he advised me that one of their Abercrombie copies is actually exactly the same. And it is pretty spot on!! So yay. We also picked up their copy of Jean-Paul Gaultier's classic for men.

I spotted a stand called LoveSeitan and as I do, I had to give it a go! I bought a half loaf of the original seitan, but they had a curry version, a smokey and a couple of others.

Then one of my favourite things, was some fudge from Slab! I got two bars of the Tiger Butter (chocolate and peanut butter), a cookies and cream and a salted caramel. Honestly I thought the tiger butter would be my favourite and it is really really really good, but the salted caramel was my favourite! SO good, I will definitely be ordering some more of their vegan bars from their website.

We also of course had to pay a visit to Hannah Banana's stand, as she made our amazing wedding cakes last month and we are big fans! We grabbed a couple of cupcakes, not picture, for a friend of ours working on the Sea Shepherd stand, as she missed out on our wedding cake and we also grabbed a slice of the Speculoos cake and some jaffa cakes. We did have a jaffa cake cake at our wedding, but all the jaffa cakes were eaten before I got a chance to have one, so I was really pleased that Simon spotted these - and they were yummy!!

Lastly, we managed to snag the last Drunken Mushroom Pie from the Mr Nice Pie stand; Simon and I ate this last night and it was really good!

Then before we snuck off, we grabbed a burger to share from Got No Beef (which also had a FroYo section too, but I forgot to get some). Lighting was crap so my pics are not so great, but hopefully you get the idea. This was a tasty burger! We got cheeseburgers, with the mild cheese and all the toppings :)

The lighting really was shite!

So all in all it was really good and worth the trip!

I believe the venue will be different next year, which is probably a good thing. There were definitely a few issues, it was in a nightclub so lighting was low, hence my even shitter photos than ususal and although apparently the venue said the parking was free beforehand, they changed their minds on the day - not the fault of the organisers though and I don't remember it being particularly expensive to park!

Did anyone go? What did you think?

Laters
Sal xXx

The Bird in the Hand Pub, Sandhurst

Just a food quickie today.... So it's not often I find a local place with awesome vegan options (that isn't a chain restaurant!) but I heard about this place through the Reading Vegans Facebook group and Simon and I decided to go check it out yesterday.

They have a separate vegetarian menu and lots of it is either vegan already or could be made vegan. They also said to me that if you ring the day before, they'll get in extra ingredients to make something more exciting for you, specially and they always carry vegan ice cream and custard. They also make a vegan apple crumble.

I decided on sausage and mash -they use Linda McCartney sausages (my fave!) and it was delicious. Look how fancy the potato is too!!

I was too full for dessert, this was a pretty big lunch.

Next time we go we're going to try going on a Sunday for lunch and I'll call them beforehand to see what they come up with. Keep an eye on my instagram if you want to see that.

So if you live in the Surrey/Hants border areas; this place is near Yateley/Camberley - about a 5-10 minute drive from the Meadows and is well worth a visit.

Sal xXx

Aingel Cafe Basingstoke

I heard a rumour there was a vegan-friendly cafe, not all that far from where I live. You could easily miss this place! It's a 10 minute drive from the town centre, it's next to a pub in the middle of a housing estate. It's not much to look at from the outside.

On this inside though it's super cute and they have a vegan specials board and vegan cake!!

The menus on each table are standard cafe fayre; cooked breakfasts, sandwiches, jacket potatoes... But they also have a specials board and a vegan specials board with loads of options on!

The staff were very friendly and told us that in addition to the vegan specials, some of the regular items could also be made vegan and just to ask for more info.

I eat a lot of curries and Mexican inspired food on a day to day basis, so I went for the Italian burger and I was not disappointed.

It was a soy (I think) based patty, which seemed like it was probably home made. It had quite a crumbly texture (if that's the right word) which I liked a lot. The Italian part was a balsamic glaze, tomato and basil. This burger was so good and the chips were excellent too.

As we were taking away cake, we both got a milkshake instead of dessert; I got a soy vanilla shake with oreos in. Simon isn't vegan and he dreamed up an odd concoction of fererro rocher and turkish delight (??I know right?!) which he said was pretty good.

We also took some cakes to go; a couple of the lemon crumble cupcakes (icing was nice, cake was a wee bit dry but still tasty) and one of the chocolate brownies. The brownie was for a very non-vegan friend of ours and she said it was 'gorgeous!'. We asked which cakes were vegan and it seemed they all were except for the ones with mini marshmallows on.

yeah, I managed to smush it a bit in transit!

So if you're anywhere near Basingstoke, I would definitely recommend checking this place out.

Sal xXx

Birthday Food (and a bit of makeup!)

So last Friday was my 38th (fuck!) birthday and unlike most years when I ask for a tonne of makeup, or vouchers to buy a tonne of makeup, I mostly asked for gym stuff. Yes I've become that bellend! I got a new fitbit...

Ooooh shiny!

My trainers are on order and my best friend bought me a gym towel that I asked for. Also I spent this morning browsing Fabletics for gym leggings (I forgot to skip the month, duh), but I digress.

I did get some makeup, my awesome Bro and Sis-in-law brought me this lovely lot and I need to play with it all soon so I can organise my thoughts on it!

Simon also bought me a beautiful bracelet and a cute Penguin called Pongo to add to our collection, seen here acting as my glamorous assistant, showing off the Vegan Tuck Box that my rad friend Jojo sent me.

But onto the food.

We went to Las Iguanas, which is a chain restaurant here in the UK, for those of you not on this side of the pond. They have a separate vegetarian menu, that has all the vegan options marked on it.

We shared a couple of starters. Firstly, chips & guac:

Then we went for the Taco Plank, which had coconut squash on (so good!)

For my main I picked the Moqueca de Palmitos, which I'm pretty sure I have every time! It's a lovely mild curry type dish, with coconut milk and tonnes of veggies in, including squash and hearts of palm. They serve it with rice and some green beans.

We also shared some curly fries :)

I spent the rest of the day drinking birthday prosecco, but I also wanted to show you the cake that Simon had made for me! How awesome is this! He sneakily asked me some of my favourite cruelty free makeup brands and so this cake features Nars, Anastasia Beverley Hills, Charlotte Tilbury and Nabla! So cool. My photo doesn't do it justice at all.

Also this cake was HUGE! Inside was layers of chocolate sponge, with chocolate frosting and also a top layer of speculoos spread. It was delicious.

Overall I had such a good birthday. Even more so because I feel super grateful for how things have changed in a year. Last year on my birthday, I was basically in tears on the couch most of the day due to a back injury, that meant I was in so much pain, I could barely walk to the loo! After that, a load of other stuff went wrong and the rest of 2016 was a complete shower of shite.

So far, 2017 has been awesome and I feel unbelievably lucky that my back is pretty much better. 10 minutes of walking at Christmas had me in agony; now I'm doing my 10,000 steps every day and going for 3 mile walks whenever I can (with no pain!). I am back at the gym and feel better than ever. My fiance has a new job that he loves and is happy in and in a few short months, we'll be getting married.

So 38 is looking like being a good year and I'm super excited for what's to come. If I had a drink in my hand I'd cheers ya, but apparently it's bad luck to cheers with water, so I'll not do that, I'll just bugger off and stop rambling.

Love & stuff
Sal xXx

Vegan Food at Bill's

Well happy new year everyone! It's still early enough to say that, right?

Yesterday evening was my first weigh-in back on Slimming World* so as a last meal out before the wedding panic begins, Simon and I went to Bill's for some lunch.

I'd always avoided Bill's as when I'd checked the menu before, there was literally only olives on the menu that were vegan! But I was sure I'd seen some buzz about them in the facebook groups and so we decided to check out the menu. And guess what - they have clearly labelled vegan options on the menu! Whoop. (No desserts listed! But they do say they sell sorbet, so if I'd had room for dessert I'd have asked if one of those were vegan - also I've emailed Bill's to check this.)

So anyway, for starters I had the Mushroom Soup. I loved the presentation of this, with the soup in a little jug that you pour over the mushrooms (warning though - don't do what I did and touch that soup bowl and burn your friggin hand - that sucker is hot!!). The soup was delicious. Simon and I both had this for our starter and loved it.

For my main I had the roasted aubergine dahl. This was SO good. At first I was a bit disappointed it didn't come with rice but you know what, it didn't need it! The bread it came with was awesome and it was very filling. I'm not sure what the green sauce on the top was but it was amazing. It was spicy but not crazy spicy, just had a nice kick.

I also had a Fentiman's ginger beer.

Simon and I both agreed that the food was great and kinda wished we hadn't walked past so many times and gone elsewhere! So yes, I'd 100% go back.

I'm going to add this info to my Eating at Chain Restaurants page, but have contacted Bill's for confirmation about desserts and if the breakfast menu can be veganised, so look out for the update there for that, if you're interested.

(*If you want to to know more about my SW journey, I have a blog for that: HERE.)

Have an awesome weekend!
Sal xXx