David Bann Edinburgh

Last Christmas, The Boy got a Gift Experience voucher for unusual places to stay.  Most turned out to be just your average B&B, but when we spotted the New Lanark Mill Hotel our minds were made up and we booked a room for our anniversary in September. The hotel was in a amazing setting, and we thoroughly enjoyed our time there (I definitely recommend checking it out if you fancy a short break).  Whilst we were there, we decided to explore Edinburgh.

Whilst we were in Edinburgh, we visited David Bann, which is a entirely vegetarian restaurant.  I can't recall what starters we had, however I know mine contained smoked tofu- which lead to the discovery that I do not like smoked tofu- it tastes too much like fish!

For mains, I had the chilli pancake with chocolate sauce and griddled courgette and butternut squash (now served with sweet potato instead), I skipped on the crème fraiche to make it vegan and The Boy had a sort of mushroom Wellington which is no longer on the menu.

I now understand why they recommend putting dark chocolate with chilli, the sauce worked really well and the hint of the chocolate with the bean chilli was lovely. Unfortunately The Boy had mixed thoughts on his main, he found the Wellington a bit on the stodgy side.

For dessert, keeping on the vegan side, I opted for a chocolate sorbet, whereas The Boy went for ginger and lime ice cream and orange cake.  This was probably the best presented dishes I have ever seen (I don't do posh restaurants) and it went down better than the Wellington.

This is definitely one of the pricier places we have visited, as we usually stick to the cheaper food chains that you can find in shopping centres (I'm talking more Tampopo than Maccy Ds!) however this was definitely a great experience on a special occasion and I would definitely recommend it if you're in Edinburgh and want something on the fancy side :-)

Products

I thought I would start doing a couple of blog posts on the products I use on a regular basis, and new products I discover.  In recent months I've been making an effort to cut down on the amount of dairy and eggs I eat.  Although I'm definitely not fully vegan, I would say that I manage to follow a vegan diet around 95% of the time.  Therefore a lot of products (if not all) will be vegan friendly.  I haven't been paid by any of the companies below to write any reviews, and have bought all products myself.

Jus-Rol
Apart from their all butter pastry and sweet shortcrust products, all Jus-Rol products are vegan, me and The Boy are big fans of their Pain Au Chocolate from the Bake-it fresh range and often have them as a Sunday morning breakfast treat instead of a fry up.

Usually, we have to go to the Sainburys  in Bolton town centre to get these, but now our local ASDA has cottoned on and started to stock them as well, they also stock one of the new products in this range- cinnamon swirls.  Being a big fan of anything cinnamon, we decided to give them a whirl and they didn't disappoint!

The range also includes croissants, apple Danish (which is new and I really want to try) and more savoury items such as garlic bread and focaccia.  The list of ingredients is enough to give you a headache, so they're more of an occasional treat than an everyday item, however they are so easy to make as well as making the kitchen smell heavenly!

Naan bread- surprise find
Usually, naan bread isn't vegans as they often use ghee in the production.  Therefore in my quest to follow a more vegan diet, I've been eating rotis, which are fine but not the same and not being able to have naan bread has been the hardest thing of the diet change.  So when I was shopping at the Asian stall at Bolton Market I was excited when I spotted these- HUGE naan breads by The Clay Oven Bakery that were marked as vegan friendly.  No only were they vegan friendly, the ingredients list was a LOT shorter than a lot of the other commercial naan breads. They come in a pack of three and cost £1.69 which is a bargain considering the size of em- one naan is big enough for two people so there are six servings here.  I got the plain ones but they also do chilli naans as well as garlic and coriander naans, however these were not in stock or else those would have been my first choice (garlic is awesome!).

Cider
Cider is one of favourite tipples, unfortunately, like a lot of alcoholic drinks it suffers from the problem of companies using isinglass in the production.  However, I'm lucky that a lot of my favourite ciders are free of animal products.

One of my favourite brands is Weston's ciders, with their Vintage being my preferred choice.  However, when we saw this bottle in our local ASDA, after weeks of looking at it longingly, we knew we had to have it, if not just for the bottle.

Given my love of Westons, I was very happy to discover that Wetherspoons are currently selling Weston's Mulled Cider.  I can confirm that is scrummy.

Unfortunately, Kopparburg is not vegetarian or vegan friendly, however Rekorderlig is and that will do for me.  I usually drink the Strawberry and Lime one however The Boy picked up their new orange and ginger flavour at our local Lidl.  As I was going teetotal at the time for Sober October I was unable to have any, however I'm desperate to try it.

And finally, although this isn't cider, it is still made of apples so I'm putting it in this category anyway, Costa are doing a new hot spiced apple drink that I tried for the first time this week. It's very Christmassy and more importantly- scrummy!

The Kitchen on Great Moor Street

I live in a borough of Greater Manchester called Bolton which unlike other areas of Greater Manchester, like Chorlton and Didsbury etc. is not the most vegetarian friendly place to live, never mind vegan friendly!

We do have a few places through, one of which being The Kitchen on Great Moor Street in the town centre. This cooperative has been around for roughly two years now (I think? Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) and serves vegetarian and vegan food, the menu consists of everyday items such as breakfasts, falafels and koftas etc. and they also have daily specials that change on a monthly basis depending on what's in season. In addition, there are always a selection of cakes, all of which are vegan- their chocolate fudge cake is probably my favourite cake ever!

Unfortunately, as I still work in Manchester, I don't get chance to go there that often, however when I do I nearly always go for their vegan breakfast, which is the same as their vegetarian breakfast but subbing the egg for tofu scramble.

As you can see, brown sauce is my condiment of choice at breakfast time!

The sausage and facon (that's not a misspelling that is the name I give fake bacon!) are redwoods, and I have to say I prefer redwoods to any other brand I've tried (Quorn facon- ewww!) but I never buy it myself for some strange reason.  I don't know where they get their bread from, I'll have to ask but it's delicious, it's a seeded brown bread, however they manage to get the ratio of seeds to bready goodness spot on, and as you can see from the photo, I could resist taking a quick bite of it before taking the picture!

Although they serve hot drinks to go alongside a breakfast, they also sell a wide range of Fentimans drinks, which are about as rare as rocking horse poo in most places, despite being awesome.  I usually spend a while trying to choose between dandelion and burdock (which is my favourite), shandy and ginger beer. On this occasion I decided to mix it up a bit and went for the shandy.

Apparently Fentimans now do a alcoholic ginger beer, which are available at selected Tescos, non of which are near me- booo!

I have a bit of a thing for glass bottles, and always have to resist taking every bottle of empty Fentimans home with me!

I've already mentioned that my favourite cake is their chocolate fudge cake, however I've not had it since I got my new fancy smart phone so here is a picture of vegan tiffin/rocky road- I can't remember which one it was but it was scrummy!

I think the white thing was vegan marshmallow- which you can buy from their small grocery section in the cafe.

The Kitchen is getting quite a name for itself, and you can often find them at a stall at most Manchester food events, I've seen them at the North West Vegan Festival in April and more recently at Manchester Vegan Fair this month.  And of course, they always have a stall at the Bolton Food and Drink festival, which seems to get bigger and bigger each year.

As a cooperative, The Kitchen is heavily involved in the local community and from what I gather a lot of the vegetables used are sourced from local community allotment schemes.  They even operate a fruit and veg exchange scheme which aims to reduce food wastage by encouraging people to bring in any excess fruit and veg from their own garden.

The recession has definitely hit Bolton's town centre hard, and it's sad to see more and more shops closing down.  However, despite this The Kitchen seems to be a small glimmer of hope in a very difficult time, and if you ever find yourself in Bolton, I highly recommend dropping in and supporting a local business that is trying to make a difference.

New York: East Village

Well it took four months but I've finally got round to finishing what I started!

This post is dedicated to the awesomeness of the East Village, which reminded me of the Northern Quarter in Manchester.

The East Village seems to be the alternative district of New York, and I had read about some of the places from reading Vegan In Brighton's blog- which I would recommend reading, especially if you plan to go travelling pretty much anywhere!

We ended up going there with an aim of going to a place named Pukk however, we were unable to find it. We did end up finding a place called Atlas Cafe and stopped to have a quick drink.

However, this place wasn't my favourite thing about the East Village. It was the wonder that is Whole Foods Market

Whole Foods Market is like a giant superstore chain that seems to be all over the USA.  However, unlike normal UK superstores, they sell lots of vegan/vegetarian stuff, including the 'famous' Daiya vegan cheese, which I bought a block of to bring home.

I also grabbed a box of Sweet and Sara marshmallows.  I never used to be that fussed about marshmallows before becoming vegetarian, but because vegetarian/vegan marshmallows tend to be 'artisan' they do taste a lot nicer, and I could really taste the vanilla in these.

We were so impressed, we came back on our last day with reinforcement in the shape of The Boy's twin brother, who also happens to be vegetarian. On our second visit, I bought this amazing vegan chocolate cake, which obviously I had started to eat before remembering to take this picture.

I can confirm, it was as tasty as it looks.  I also bought these vegan cinnamon pastry things (to be honest, I just saw it contained cinnamon and it was a done deal) which I ate on the train on the way back to Manchester from London.  They were also tasty.

That just about concludes my New York blogs, it took a while but I got there. I do plan to be a bit more active with the blogging. So except more news soon(ish).

New York: Grand Central

Well, it took 13 days but I've managed to find the time, and motivation to continue with part two of my New York Post.  The main issue being, that prior to the trip I decided to start to re-watch all the Friends episodes from the beginning. The reasons for this is two fold; Friends is the whole reason I wanted to go to New York, and two, The Boy hadn't really watched it.

Anyway, back from the trip, The Boy is now hooked and we spend every evening watching it.  It has got to the point that I'm staying up past my preferred bed time to watch more episodes.  And then regretting it at 6:30am the next day.

Anyway so back to NYC, as well as his new found love for friends, The Boy also has an obsession with public transport, namely trams, trains and subways (buses aren't his cup of tea- in fact he doesn't even like tea!) so we ended up spending quite a lot of time on the subway.  One of the most famous subway/train stations in New York HAS to be Grand Central. And for someone who is sometimes irritated by her other half's obsession about train stations. Even I had to admit that Grand Central is stunning.

But what the hell has this got to do with food? After all this is a food blog.

Grand Central also happened to have a food court, and it was brilliant, way better than the food courts you see in the UK, with their mandatory Subway, KFC and Maccy Ds- although keeping in mind that being in a foreign country, these could have been chains that are found all over New York and the average New Yorker would be rolling their eyes at the same old mundane options!

I could have happily eaten at the food court in Grand Central for every meal- excluding breakfast, the choice in the morning wasn't as good.  The thing I liked is, as a vegetarian who doesn't wish to have cheese for every meal, there were a lot of vegan options.  One day I had a bento box from the sushi place, there were actually two types of vegetarian bento boxes, I can't remember which one I went for but it was delish.

I'm a big fan of Asian food and although Indian is my favourite, Japanese is a close second (as you can tell from the sushi!) and I love Asian tofu dishes, especially when I'm craving a protein fix (I'm not a big fan of fake meats), basil also happens to be my favourite herb (rosemary comes a close second- I do NOT like coriander). So when I saw a stall selling this tofu and basil dish, I had to have it.  It also came with free rice!

I managed to do a little research before coming to New York and found out about a pizza chain called Two Boots that sells vegan pizza, with Daiya vegan cheese. Now I'm not a big cheese eater, and the vegan cheeses I've tried in the UK have been quite gross to be honest.  But I'd heard a lot of positive things about Daiya cheese, so when I realised that there was a Two Boots in the food court, I decided to try their 'V for Vegan' pizza, which contains artichokes, onion, shittakes, red and green pesto and Daiya Cheese.

Daiya is the best cheese substitute I've tasted.  Although I'm not vegan, I do try to cut down on dairy and egg.  However its pretty rubbish that Daiya is only available in the USA and Canada. If anyone knows of any petition to bring it over the UK, let me know!

Surprisingly, apart from the Sweet and Sara goodies, I didn't really eat that many desserts, however it was hot, and heat always makes me crave sorbets (and ice cream, if I can't find sorbet). Luckily, there was an ice cream stall, that sold sorbets, including lemon (my favourite- in fact I like it so much I never took a picture because I was too eager to eat it!) and a dark chocolate sorbet which I'd never seen before.

If you ever visit New York, I would recommend Grand Central. Even if you don't go to the food court, its a truly stunning building as well has having plenty of shops.

New York, New York (Part 1)

I haven't blogged in a while (same old excuses- work commitments, laziness- you know the drill) but having come back from a holiday to NYC I thought it was time to get blogging again.

We stayed in the famous Waldorf Astoria, as we managed to grab a bargain in the January sales.

After checking in, the first stop, was a walk round Times Square and to the Rockefeller before heading out for tea at a Japanese place- you chose a main, and then two sides to go with it.  I went for Tofu, rice and stir fried vegetables. Unfortunately I didn't think to take pictures, but it was one of my favourite meals of the holiday- and at $13 (including a refillable drink) I thought it was good value.

The next morning, we decided to head to a cafe that was quite close to our hotel, I had a bagel with avocado and lime, seems an odd combination but it worked and was my favourite breakfast of the trip and will be recreating it at home!

Alongside it I got a strawberry apple juice that tasted amazing- I couldn't find it anywhere else throughout the whole trip.

I was surprised at how many vegan things were readily available in an average place, I couldn't believe my eyes when I came across Sweet and Sara products in the local Duane reade, which is a kind of drug store come TESCO express type place in New York.  Sweet and Sara produce vegan marshmallows (normal marshmallows contain gelatine, so aren't suitable for vegetarians), you can get them in the UK but they can cost £6 for a small box.  Although they didn't sell marshmallows, they sold Sweet and Sara smores and rice crispy squares.

I wasn't a fan of the smore, it's basically a wagon wheel, but I loved the rice crispy square as did The Boy, which is unusual as he avoids vegan products like the plague!

In addition, at JFK whilst waiting for the plane home I spotted a load of vegan meals in one of the shops, they had boxes of Thai and Shanghai dumplings, various noodle dishes and a Bento box containing Thai dumplings, vegan chicken style pieces and rice. I decided to take a Bento box back with me to eat during the journey from Heathrow to Bolton.

The dumplings were the nicest part, I didn't eat much of the rice as I got a bit worried about getting food poisoning (and it was a bit meh). The vegan chicken pieces were strange, the manufacturers had obviously tried hard to get the texture of meat as it was really chewy, so chewy that the texture reminded me more of beef than chicken. As someone who disliked the chewiness of meat during my carnivorous days I wasn't too fond of it.

Overall New York was a nice surprise food wise, it was a lot more vegan and vegetarian friendly than I suspect, and what's more everything wasn't covered in cheese! And they seem to have a more positive approach to veggies than I expected.  Next to come are Grand Central and the East Village.

Simple chocolate brownies (vegan)

I love chocolate brownies, and whenever I attend a food and drink festival (which is a lot), when it comes to dessert time, I make a beeline for the brownies.

So it's a bit of a puzzle as to why it has took me so long to make them myself, I think I was mainly put off by recipes requiring brownie tins, which I don't have. Which is also a reason I don't make cakes that often, they always specify a certain size cake tin, and to be honest, I can't be arsed measuring my cake tins to find out the size!

But no longer shall I be deprived of brownie goodness, for I used a ceramic oven proof casserole dish thing that I acquired from somewhere, I love this dish I can cook everything and anything in it!

I stumbled across this vegan brownie recipe by accident on the BBC, I wasn't particularly looking for a vegan recipe, but it seemed pretty simple and I do have a slight obsession with vegan baking at the moment and it is so misunderstood- some of the best cakes I've made have been vegan, and people are always surprised how good it tastes.

So here is the finished product, I think they would have looked nicer sprinkled with a little icing sugar, but I didn't have any.

They kind of fell apart a bit when taking them out the dish, but that may just be to do with my poor plating skills! Due to the soya milk they were lovely and moist inside, but they needed to cool a bit to firm them up a bit, although that didn't stop me from eating them straight from the oven!

They tasted different to normal brownies, but they were still nice, I gave some to The Boys parents and the rest I took to work. Nobody commented that they tasted different and they disappeared quicker that anything else I've baked so maybe it was just me who could taste the difference, maybe I'm some sort of chocolate brownie connoisseur? I've certainly eaten enough of them!

This is the kind of recipe you could play with, in fact I'm planning on trying this recipe with the addition of peanut butter, maybe some chocolate chips? Orange? Or maybe that chocolate soya milk I bought may work well...?