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

Vegan MoFo Day 11: chickpea cutlets of radness

I decided not to go to the gym last night, as I'm going to be away with work from tomorrow night over the weekend, so won't really have a night to myself for a bit.  And because of this I decided to spend a bit longer making dinner. Also I thought my attack class was tonight and it was actually last night! haha oops, that's a fine I'll have to pay next time I book! :(

 

Anyways.... I went with the chickpea cutlets from Veganomicon.  I don't make these that often because I always think they take ages to make, but actually if you have all the ingredients, they really don't take that long at all.  I always bake them, I've tried frying like it says in the book but there is ALWAYS gluten strings inside when I've fried. And uncooked stringy seitan makes me wanna barf.  So oven it is.  But that's good because it gave me time to prepare and cook some mushroom gravy, broccoli, mashed potatoes and green beans.

 

The gravy was suuuuper easy.  Just sauteed up about half a cup of mushrooms with a shallot and a clove of garlic. Then added about half a cup of veggie stock and some thyme.  To thicken I mixed about a tablespoon of flour with a couple of tablespoons of soymilk, I added this in then stirred till it thickened.  I also (of course) added some nooch! A couple of tablespoons.  Quick, easy and yummy.

 

Leftovers make a great sarnie for lunch the next day by the way!

I also had a bit of an experiment fail, but I'm trying it again, so that is a blog post for the future! 

Making cookies tonight - YAY.

Laterz
xXx

A whole heap of crap and I hate you blogger

So I just typed this muthafucka and then blogger deleted the whole. damn. thing! GARRR! So forgive me if it's less than informative! hahahaa.

Ooh I been busy lately from work to hen nights to planning a holiday to starting another blog!! More on that later though.

Onto the food. I got hold of some taifun tofu (which in my opinion kicks Cauldron's cack excuse for a new recipe's arse!!) and I sliced it up and brushed with a glaze of mustard, miso, rice syrup and a bit of olive oil. Then I sprinkled it with sesame seeds and baked it, brushing it again with loads more glaze half way through so it was good and sticky. It was delicious with steamed veg and herbed butter, well vitalite anyway.


Leftovers the next day - with some tabouleh.

Microwave cupcakes! I quartered the basic chocolate recipe in vegan cupcakes take over the world and split it between 4 silicone baking cases and nuked them for 1 min and 40 seconds in total. The glaze was a mix of heated cherry jam that I seived and then mixed with icing sugar.

This week's dinner with the girlies. I made us a sweet potato and butternut squash curry (which was awesome).....

With some raita (strained alpro yoghurt, lemon juice, cucumber and fresh mint) with a wee drizzle of olive oil on top.....

some mushroom rice (I made it foofy and fancy by dying a little bit yellow, a little bit red and mixing it in to look like takeaway rice)....

And homemade naan breads. As usual I was winging it, one day I'll remember to write down when I make up a recipe.

Dessert was ice cream - the easiest ice cream EVER. The flesh of a large mango, blended with 1 carton (250ml) of alpro fresh single soya cream and a tablespoon of rice syrup then put in the ice cream maker. Delish and easy peasy lemon squeezy.

Onto seitan. I finally got around to makng the red seitan from Viva Vegan and yes, it is as awesome as everyone says it is. It makes 4 logs and you get 2 servings from each log. So I froze 2 and here are a couple of the meals I made with the other 2:

I brushed it with barbecue sauce and baked it for 15 mins. Served it with a baked potato topped with coleslaw.

This was my favourite thing I did with it. I veganised Nigella's Moroccan Lamb & Cacik. Basically I took one log of seitan, just opened up the foil and poked holes in it then poured over and rubbed in a mixture of: 1.5tsp of ras-el hanou spice mixture, juice of 1/2 a lemon, 1 tbsp olive oil, 1 grated clove of garlic and a pinch of salt. Then I sealed the foil back up and baked it at 180C for 10 mins, then opened the foil and let it carry on cooking for another 10 minutes. I served it with bulgar wheat just cooked in veg stock and cacik (which is exactly the same as my raita above, but with a clove of garlic also grated in).

This is what the seitan looked like after baking, isn't it pretty with the rose petals from the ras-el hanout?

Here, I pressed the seitan into some ground peppercorns and dry fried it. Steamed veggies, mashed potatoes and stuffing with a tonne of gravy completed this awesome sunday roast!

I made spelt bread. It was awesome but I've not got the recipe exactly how I want it yet, will report back with the recipe when I've got it right.

I also made some cornbread for a chilli the other week. But I love it most with jam! YUM. This recipe is from La Dolce Vegan. It always works perfectly for me every time, great recipe.

Remember that hen night I mentioned, here's a jug of pimms royale: pimms, prosecco, lemonade and a crap tonne of fruit. YUM!!!!

And some of my contributions to the food: cupcakes, rock road cookies and peanut butter cups.

Close up of the cupcakes - it was a 90s weekend and we were doing a ravers theme - hence my aceeeeeed cupcakes!

I also mentioned another blog! Totally separate from this one, I'm still keeping this one!! My new one is my beauty blog - mainly about make up but really is my showcase for make up work which I'll be adding to the more weddings / occasion make up that I do. Head on over and have a look if you're curious: http://sjbeauty.wordpress.com/. Blogger deleting my posts is just one of many reasons I decided to put the new one on wordpress!

I'm off to Dallas on holiday in a few days and I can't WAIT. So this'll be the last post before then, see you next time with pics of Dallas foodz!

Laterz
xXx

Oops! I did it again.....

... I left it too long between posts! Bad Sal!

Well I'm making up for it with lots of pics. Starting with pictures from a recent PPK meet up. I was in Brighton to see Ash playing at Concorde 2 that night (they were freaking awesome by the way) and all the food in the day made this one brilliant weekend.

It was supposed to be in the park but the weather was decidedly dodgy, so JoJo graciously hosted for us. But, as if you didn't already know, I'm a bad blogger and I forgot my camera, so I took a pic of my (first!) plate with my phone. I've totally forgotten who made what so here's a vague outline. Cheesey feet crackers! hehe they were awesome, carrot tart which was delicious, salad with pasta / seitan sausages and rocket, sausage rolls, potato wedges with barbecue sauce, rice salad, spanakopita (sp?) and home made bread. All delicious. The potato wedges, barbecue sauce and rice were my contributions.


Then the important stuff - the dessert plate - Clockwise: Kip's fortune cookie (with added snarky defensive omnivore / vegan sayings inside - brilliant!!), Helen's rocky road cookies, Jojo's rocky road brownies, Holley's vegan jaffa cakes (AWESOME!) and my apple / custard mini pies.

Those rocky road cookies were so good - you're gonna see them again in a couple of pics' time!

A close up of my rice salad that I took just after I made it. Sauteed peppers, onions, mushrooms, redwoods bacon style rashers, sweetcorn and peas with brown basmati rice.

And my pies. Totally cheated on these - I cooked up some granny smith apples with sugar and spices and then rolled out shop bought shortcrust pastry and cut them out and put them in muffin tins. A spoonful of alpro soya custard and apple mixture with a cute heart of pastry on top and a sprinkle of sugar and they were ready for the oven.

I had som pastry left and I love pastry so hate to waste it, so I made a turnover with the leftover apples and custar. It came out weird looking but yummy.

The next morning, my friend and I were planning to go to Wai Kika Moo Kau for a veg brekkie but as my bro and his girlfriend came with us, we went across the road to Bubble Kitschen. They serve a vegan breakfast alongside their vegetarian and omni versions. It was MASSIVE and the coffee was pretty bad but the breakfast was pretty damn good!


Onto some randomness. Dinner the other night. I saw Levi Roots make pumpkin rice the other night and thought it looked pretty good. And I had a butternut squish (hehe) in the fridge already so I made my own version. I also had some orange pepper and sweetcorn leftover in the fridge so I chucked them in too. It was good but I think I need to play around with the spices before I post the recipe. I just had it with some steamed tenderstem broccoli.

I made some seitan sausages on Sunday and for a quick dinner I blitzed up some tomatoes and mixed them with wholewheat penne, sugar snaps, asparagus (HURRAH for UK asparagus season being in swing!!), cannellini beans and some herbs and spices. Oh and one of my sausages - pretty good for a quick dinner.

I made the sausages because I fancied sausage and mash. So that's what I had sunday, with onion gravy. YUM.

Remember those rocky road cookies I mentioned before - well I dreamed about them for a week after having them in Brighton. So I dug out Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar and made a batch. Me and my friends ate some when they were round for dinner and I made them take a load home so I didn't eat the whole batch myself. I froze some because I was in danger of eating them all. They are SO good! My friend's hubby who I sent some home with my friend for, said they're my best baked good yet, so thanks Isa & Terry!! I made sure to only cook them the minimum time so they were fudgy and soft. If you have this book you gotta make them!!

Here's the dough, I had to seriously restrain myself from just eating all the dough straight out the bowl.

When I was in Brighton I went into Infinity to buy some Tempeh and all they had was the one with sea vegetables in. Boo, but I bought one anyway! And thought I'd make the chesapeake tempeh cakes from Vegan Brunch. The only complaint I had with these is not to do with Isa's recipe - it's my own fault - I added some old bay seasoning because I found it in the American shop near where I live. And so they pretty much just tasted of celery - and I don't like celery! Dummy. So I'm going to try making them again without the old bay and I think they are going to be awesome.

I made a potato waffle to go with them. I haven't got these quite right yet but I'm working on it and I will post the recipe as soon as I have it right!

This was a quinoa pudding that I got the recipe for from the GI Vegetarian cookbook. It was spectacularly underwhelming. But I like the idea of it - so I'm going to play with it and report back next time!

Simple dinner of rice salad and some tempeh that I baked with a bit of all purpose seasoning sprinkled on it and had in a big floury roll with barbecue sauce. yummy.

This was a recipe I got off sparkpeople for tempeh carrot salad. It had ginger and orzo pasta in in. I changed it a bit by adding some lime juice and adding shredded cabbage and sugar snaps. It was really really good but I think it needed more tempeh. I'd make it again definitely.

And finally, a quick dinner of spaghetti bolognaise - made with linda mccartney mince and sprinkled with nooch. Yum.

I will try not to leave it so long next time.

Laterz
xXx