Vegan Survival Guide: Costa Blanca (Spain)- Part 1- The airport and eating in.

This was my first time abroad as a fully fledged vegan staying in a private villa nearby a town called Moraira in the Costa Blanca region of Spain. I'm not going to lie- it didn't all go to plan.

But being vegan is a learning curve, and here are some of the things that did go to plan.

Airport

A revelation for me was that you can actually take food in your hand luggage and unless you take anything liquid (e.g. hummus, peanut butter etc) there are no limits. I managed to find some 'lunchbox' packs of oreos and lotus biscuits and took one of each type on the plane and the rest in my checked in baggage for holiday snacking. For a bit of savoury, I bought a pack of New York bagels (marked vegan) and wrapped one in clingfilm to take in my hold luggage and a mini tub of Tofutti cream cheese that went in as part of my liquid allowance in my hold baggage.  

My attempt at a in-flight meal are bit amateur, for more ideas, see Vegan in Brighton's post on packing and preparing.  

Getting up at 2am meant that by the time we got to departures I was in need of some serious caffeine, however I was also thirsty and hot drinks don't quench my thirst.  So I was very happy when I discovered this coconut drink in the W H Smith at Terminal 2, from reading the ingredients it looked vegan. 

It was very nice, you could really taste the espresso.  They also do a chocolate one that I want to try.

Supermarkets
Once we got off the plane, the first stop was the huge Carrefour supermarket near Alicante airport to stock up on supplies.

I was surprised at the amount of choice there was, I picked up some seitan steak type things (that I forgot to take a picture of), some yogurts and Vive Soy almond milk, a few people have been raving about Vive Soy on Facebook, but you can only get them in Waitrose and Tesco so I was excited to give it a try.

They had quite a few choices of yogurt, but I decided to go with one breakfast one and a dessert one.  I have to say, the yogurts and the almond milk tasted very different to the UK and the yogurts tasted quite strongly of soya- but ya work with what your given! The blueberry ones formed part of my everyday breakfast along with the chocolate mini weetabix I picked up. We ate breakfast by the pool each morning.

At home, I'm fascinated by Chinese and Asian supermarkets and will ages browsing the shelves. Over in Spain, I was fascinated by Spanish supermarkets and found a few gems in the supermarkets by the villa.

After walking around towns and not being able to indulge in ice cream (sorbets are not the same!) I was super excited when I spotted these in Mercadona. They also sold tubs of dairy free vanilla ice cream.

When walking around our nearest town, Moraira we went in a Pepe La Sal supermarket and I spotted these burgers, which were actually marked 'Vegano'.

Later on in the week, we popped down to our local Carrefour Market (which was the size of a regular supermarket), I bought a vegetable noodle ready meal, some vegan burgers for our BBQ on the last night (our villa came with a BBQ- we were uber excited!).  And I treated myself to some chocolate soya milk, with which I created my own 'unique' cocktail of Malibu and chocolate soy milk- Yum!

All in all, eating in was the easy part, it was the eating out which was tricky, however I did manage to have some good meals, which I'll write about in my next blog post.

Hebden Bridge and Leeds

I've been working crazy hours recently, however the first weekend in June was The Boy's Birthday weekend and also my first weekend off in what felt like years!

In typical British style, it poured it down, but weren't going to let a bit of water spoil our plans, and we set off to Leeds via Hebden Bridge.

We had quite a lazy morning, so by the time we got to Hebden Bridge, it was around lunchtime, so first stop was lunch.  The town is full of independent shops, and quite a lot of the cafes had vegan options. After wondering around looking at all the options (we were already soaked, so getting more soaked didn't seem like such a big deal) we settled on the Organic House, I had falafel wrap and we shared a side of wedges between us. The falafel came with a salad with various sprouted beans etc, which I had never tried before. I wasn't too blown away by the salad, as I'm not a big salad fan but the falafel wrap itself was delicious, I could have eaten two!

To drink I went for a juice, I think it may have contained orange and carrot judging by the colour of it, but all I saw was that it contained ginger and I was sold- I have a bit of a ginger obsession...

The place also sold vegan cakes, but the only options were an apple slice and banana bread (yawn) so we decided to go to a bakery that had an advertisement outside that said they sold vegan cake. Along the way, we stopped in for a mooch around Valley Organics worker's cooperative and The Boy bought a drink. When we went to pay the lady serving us offered us a free raffle ticket as they were celebrating their first anniversary of the shop opening. I explained we were just visiting for the day so she invited us into the back for free cake and chai tea instead.  Although the place wasn't vegan, they had a apricot and chocolate tofu cheesecake on offer (the chai tea had milk in) which I thought was a really nice thing to do.  Unfortunately, I wasn't too struck on the taste of the cheesecake, I think it may have been the apricot that gave it a strange flavour.  However, I still think the whole experience was the best part of our Hebden Bridge trip- it's not often you walk into a shop and get offered free vegan cake!

Eventually we got to the place we were suppose to be going for cake, a place called Saker Organic Bakery.  It was a pleasant surprise that when we asked which cakes in the cabinet were vegan, to get the reply:

"All of them"

We went for a millionaire's shortbread and some chocolate slab thing, which I assumed was a chocolate brownie.  The millionaire shortbread was lovely, I was never too bothered about millionaires shortbread before going vegan but there is definitely something about wanting something more when you can't have it and I really enjoyed the caramel.  However, the chocolate slab thing was a big let down, it was very dry and bitter.  The Boy has been to Hebden Bridge before, and has brought back other cakes from this place and they have all been lovely, so I think the chocolate slab was a one off.

Next, stop was Leeds, we didn't get any food there as we were planning to go out for tea at a place in Bolton (review to follow) so we just had a wander round the City Centre, and found an shopping arcade with some pretty impressive architecture.

Later on we stumble upon Leed's branch of Las Iguanas and as it was their happy hour we decided to go in for some cocktails- you get 2 for 1 on the same cocktail, so we chose a cocktail each, and had one of each. I went for a dark and storm (rum and ginger ale) and The Boy chose a Pina Colada, which they make with coconut cream instead of dairy cream, making it sfv.  I've never had a Pina Colada before, but it was actually love a first sip- it was like a dessert in a drink form and we both decided to leave the best until last.

We also visited Out of This World, which is Leed's ethical food store, although it isn't a vegan store they sell a lot of vegan friendly stuff as well as stumbling across Little Tokyo, a vegan friendly Japanese restaurant which I really want to go and visit at some point.

All in all this was an amazing trip, which has only strengthened my love of all things Yorkshire :-)

Update

I decided I wanted to write a post, but I didn't know what about, so this is just a update of what I've been up to.

Wagamama
I've not been to Wagamama in years, and we were recently at The Lowry Outlet in Salford and decided to grab some tea after some shopping (I picked up some tiramisu hot chocolate from Whittards- it's not labelled as vegan but if you go on their website you can find which of their products are sfv).  I noticed a Wagamamas, and I had heard that they did vegan options.  You can find a list of their vegan options on their website, it's quite limited but you can ask for them to veganize other things on their menu. I wanted to keep it simple though and just ordered off their list.

For starter I had gyozas, I love gyozas however it's rare that I can find any that are sfv out and about. Being able to order them made me very happy.

For mains I went for yasai itame, which is vegetables and noodles in a coconut soup. This is something I wouldn't usually order, but it was quite nice and I was pleasantly surprised it contained tofu as well.

Pizza Express
I'm a member of a few vegan facebook groups and there has been a lot of excitement about the new vegan options at Pizza Express- the Pianta pizza and the Leggera Panzanella starter. We went recently and I decided to try the Pianta pizza- which comes with rocket, spinach, mushrooms, pine nuts and artichoke on a spicy tomato base. I'm a big fan of putting plenty of toppings on pizza, so this was perfect.

Lidl Finds
We have a Lidl quite close and they have got better at labeling their products that are sfv. On a recent visit, I picked up some new spinach wraps and some cassava crackers which were both labelled vegan friendly.

The wraps were nice enough, they didn't really taste strongly of spinach but had a pretty green hue to them and the cassava are a great substitute for prawn crackers. 

Eating In
I've been extremely busy at work recently, so on some nights the task of making tea falls to The Boy.  When he told me he had made curry containing chickpeas, kidney beans, broccoli, tinned tomatoes, coconut cream and red thai curry paste I was a little dubious. However it tasted amazing, so much so we made the same thing the week after. We added a little cornflour to thicken it up a bit.

Wednesday night in our house= wrap night, and is probably our favorite meal of the week. I usually try to make my own fillings, however as I've been so busy I decided to cheat and buy some Caldron falafels, along with some discounted falafel I found in ASDA. This was the best falafel wrap I've had in ages, I love stuffing it with lots of different sauces.  This one contained falafel (obvs), black olives, salad, hummus, salsa, soya yogurt and sweet chilli sauce!

Being Vegan

I've been vegan for a while now, being able to pin point an exact date is hard since I had a long transition period and I just kinda slipped into it.  I really recommend this method if you're thinking of going vegan.

This post is a reflection on issues (Eating Out), positives of a vegan lifestyle that I've found so far and some good resources.

Eating Out

I would be lying if I was to say that I've not had the odd slip up since being vegan, it's all part of the learning process, you just got to pick yourself up, dust yourself off and start again.

When I have slipped up, it's been when I've been eating out.  This is mainly my own fault, I'm quite a shy person and I'm very worried about how people will react when I tell them I'm vegan.  Therefore in restaurants, I tend to try and go for something that looks vegan and hope for the best. DO NOT DO THIS!

For example, we went for an Indian meal, and to be fair I did enquire whether they cook their curries in butter ghee and was informed they didn't.  So I went for a dish that looked like it didn't contain any cream, however when it came to the table, the chef had drizzled cream all over it- not wanting to cause a fuss I ate it with a heavy heart, this happened again at another Indian restaurant.

LESSON LEARNT: Indian restaurants like to drizzle cream over everything, even if on the menu it doesn't mention that cream is an ingredient!

I had a similar slip up recently at a Teppanyaki place, I'm getting better as I rang up the place beforehand, and told them I was vegan, the waitress on the other end didn't seem to know what it meant and asked me if I ate pork or fish! When I got there, I picked something off the menu that seemed relatively safe- avocado maki sushi and again I attempted to ask the waitress if it was vegan, to which she replied it was vegetarian, and contained no animal products.  When the dish came, it was drizzled in mayonnaise! This time I managed to eat around the mayonnaise, however this meant I could eat the avocado on the top of the sushi, which is the whole point I chose the did in the first place!

LESSON LEARNT: Don't assume they know what vegan means, be prepared to talk through what you can and can't eat.  Don't be fobbed off with vague responses.  

However, don't be depressed, if you tell them your vegan, and they understand what it means, you can get some amazing dishes, like this salad I got whilst working away at a hotel last week.

Positives

Ok, so eating out can be a bit of a mind field at times but there are positives:

• You discover new foods, take the meat away and you have to find things to eat in it's place. As a meat eater, I had a very boring diet, now it's more varied and I eat fruit and veg I would never have considered before. I love asparagus, broccoli, strawberries, kiwis, melons, pineapples, the list goes on!
• There is still a lot of stuff you can eat that will surprise people.  People are always surprised Oreos are vegan. Bisto original gravy is also vegan, so much nicer than the watery vegetable gravy!
• I've lost 7% of my own body weight since January. At the start of the year, I joined a weigh in group with a couple of colleagues, I've not consciously made much of an effort to lose weight, but it's just dropped off.  This is mainly due to not being able to eat desserts in many restaurants (at home is a different story) and having to refuse a lot of the snacks that colleagues bring in.  My other meat eating colleagues have had to make more of an effort to loose the weight. *Disclaimer* being vegan doesn't automatically make you thin, there is still a lot of crap you can eat  if you wish, e.g. Oreos!

Facebook

I've got a lot of information off the following Facebook groups:

• What Fat Vegans Eat: Vegan food porn
• Vegan Finds (UK): Good finding those hidden supermarket gems
• Vegan Special Offers: Some vegan stuff can be expensive, this is the place to go to find out what is going cheap!

Vegan Survival Guide; Trafford Centre

The beauty of this blog post is as well as being a guide to eating out as a vegan at the Trafford Centre, it is also a bit of a guide for eating out in chain restaurants in general.

Last year, me and The Boy had a thing of going out for tea every Wednesday evening at the Trafford Centre. This soon stopped after I worked out how much we were spending a month, and pointed out that this could be going towards a new car, much to The Boy's dismay.

However, as I was making the transition towards veganism at the time I managed to suss out some vegan friendly chain restaurants:

Carluccio's

I haven't been to the one in the Trafford Centre, but I have been to one elsewhere. They do have a vegan menu, but you'll need to ask for it, or if you email beforehand they will send you a copy.  It's not a very extensive menu, but it's better than nothing. I went for bruschetta, tomato and basil pasta and a lemon sorbet.

Bruschetta

Tomato and basil pasta- I started eating it before remembering to take a picture! 

La Tasca 

I haven't ate here yet, however I'm informed that it does have vegan options.

Las Iguanas

Has a separate vegetarian and vegan menu, which you can ask for.  I've been twice and have had Holy Guacamole (you're given guacamole ingredients with some chips and you make your own- perfect if people aren't keen on some of the ingredients that are usually in guacamole), gringas and the bahia moqueca curry.

Bahia Moqueca Curry- you get a HUGE Pot of the curry, which is not in the picture.

The Mardi Gras (Wetherspoons)

The Trafford Centre Wetherspoons is quite pleasant, as there is a lack of drunken old leary men! Great for cheap grub and I think the whole of the Vegan community knows that on the Curry Night (Thursdays) the veggie curry is vegan if you sub the naan for extra poppadums. You can go large and add on an onion bhaji and samosa, as they are also vegan. If you go on any night apart from Thursday, the new Freedom Salad is vegan and they've stopped glazing their jacket potatoes with egg (weirdos) so you can have a jacket potato with beans, beans are not listed on the menu as a jacket potato filling but if they ask for it they will oblige. Their website allows you to filter for dietary requirements, which is really useful.

Nandos

The veggie pitta can be vegan if you ask for it without mayonnaise, I usually have it with peri peri fries and corn on the cob. You can find more guidance here.

Pizza Express

Not been to the one in the Trafford Centre, but been to ones elsewhere. They have a new starter (Leggera Panzanella) and pizza (Pianta) that are suitable for vegans. In addition, you can ask for any veggie pizza to be veganised, just by removing the cheese as the bases and tomato sauce are vegan. The raspberry sorbet is vegan, and the Caffe Reale can be veganised by removing the mascarpone, however it comes with a coffee and they do not have soya milk.  The allergen menu is probably the best place to start.

Pizza Hut 

Again, bases and tomato sauce are vegan, so you can ask for no cheese to make any veggie pizza vegan. See their allergen menu.

Tampopo

Label their vegan dishes with a 'VE' on the menu, not a massive amount of choice but all very yummy!

Yang Sing Cafe

I love this place! I can't resist their fried salt and pepper tofu and they do mock chicken dishes.  Their pasty contains egg, so dumplings are out unfortunately. They have a dedicated vegetarian section of the menu.

Fried salt and pepper tofu (bean curd)

Vegan Chicken in Kung Po sauce

YO! Sushi (inside Selfridges)

This place is dangerous! We have to set ourselves a strict budget when we go here because it's so easy to get carried away. Their allergen menu is very good, I have it downloaded on my phone and have it open when I'm choosing things off the conveyer belt. I miss their avocado maki as they put mayonnaise in it but at least I can still have the cucumber maki.

Giraffe- a side note!

The chain Giraffe do a Phod Malay Noodles main that is vegan, however this is not available at the Trafford Centre restaurant (boo hiss- we should start a petition!). But it's useful to know if you go to other locations.

Right I've been for noms, but I also want to shop for vegan stuff!

Body Shop

So the body shop do not test on animals, but they are own by a company that does. Make your own mind up, I'm not one to judge. They aren't exclusively vegan (I know some products contain honey) so make sure you check.

Holland and Barrett

For all your fake cheese and meat needs, I like to look out or stuff that is discounted because it's coming up to it's best before date!

Hotel Chocolat

Mark their chocolate that are suitable for vegans.  Mmm posh vegan chocolate *Homer like drooling*

Lush

Of course, the Trafford Centre has a Lush, to fulfil all your bath bomb needs.

Selfridges

Have a 'Free From' section, however you could probably buy stuff cheaper elsewhere.  But if you live in the wilderness you may want to take advantage of it!

Win Naturally

I would usually walk past this shop, as it looks like a sports nutrition shop and I'm not the athletic type. However it isn't really a sports nutrition shop and they do sell vegan products, including Moo Free chocolate bars!

I hope you found this guide useful, and it's nowhere near complete, so comment below if you have suggestions and I'll add them in.

Food Blogs

In my previous post, I wrote about my favorite cookbooks, however I actually get most off my recipes off blogs. I just find other people's recipes more realistic than in some cookbooks as they use everyday ingredients. Also you can ask the author questions about whether they think a certain substitution would work.

So here are a few of my favorite blogs:

We Don't Eat Anything With A Face

This is actually a vegetarian food blog, but vegan recipes are clearly marked and a lot of them can be easily veganised, the author is a working Mum of two so the recipes are perfect if you don't have a lot of time. A couple of favorites:

• Chocolate Orange Cupcakes
• Apple Cake
• Mincemeat

All these recipes are great for using up apples if you happen to find yourself overloaded with apples from the apple tree in your garden, like we do every year!!!

Flash Gordonette

My friend from University, and fellow vegan who is a massive Queen fan (hence the blog name), here you will find great seitan recipes (really want to try the vegan kebab recipe at some point), the famous Vegan Carrot Cake :-) and the easiest hummus recipe ever- there isn't even a need to peel a garlic clove!

The Vegan Stoner

The main reason I love this blog is because instead of listing the ingredients, they draw pictures of them instead, and where possible make the pictures funny, for example a pack of frozen vegetables is drawn as a carrot and broccoli (I think?) in coats, in the snow looking quite cold! The other reason is the recipes are very easy- are you getting the theme here???

• Coconut Pot Pie- I liked this, The Boy was less impressed
• Peanut Stew
• Falafel Pie

The Post Punk Kitchen

No vegan food blog list would be complete without a mention of the Queen of Vegan Cooking's blog.  The Post Punk Kitchen (or PPK as it's affectionately known) is Isa Chandra Moskowitz creation.  I love Isa's witty writing style and this website is more than just a food blog, it's a whole community for like minded people. There are so many great recipes, and Isa often puts recipes from here cookbooks on her blog so it's great to get a taste of what kind of thing you can expect from the cookbook before buying it.

• Chickpea Cutlets- a great introduction to using wheat gluten.
• Quarter Pounder Beet Burgers- Beets= beetroot! If you're not a fan of aniseed you might want to swap the fennel seeds for something else. Maybe cumin seeds???
• Meaty Beany Chili- I'm a big fan of anything I can whack in a slow cooker and come home to a ready made tea.  I also love the video, Isa rocks!

I could go on and on, but I think three recommendations are enough!

Amuse Your Bouche

I use Pintrest a lot to create a online scrapbook of recipes (click here to view my profile and take a look around) which is where I discovered this blog. Wednesday in our house is wrap night, which usually translates to mexican food and her Slow Cooker lentil quinoa tacos and Lentil and black bean tacos are regular Wednesday night staples (although we just usually serve them in soft tortillas rather than taco shells). 

Top With Cinnamon

I found this blog when someone on Facebook mentioned her Healthy 3 Ingredient Chocolate Fudge Sauce, naturally I was intrigued- healthy, easy chocolate fudge sauce? What is not to love!  The author of the blog is only 18, and having started her blog at the age of 15 has manage to write her own cookbook which will be published later this year, all whilst studying Biology, Chemistry and Maths at A level!

This is not a vegan blog, neither is it vegetarian, however the author has awareness of vegan cooking and is able to come up with some vegan recipes- despite being an omni herself!

It can take a while to find the vegan recipes in the recipe archive section, however the blog is definitely worth a look- amazing recipes (single serving desserts), beautiful pictures and posts are very well written.

Hottie Black Eyed Peas & Greens with Ginger Mashed Sweet Potatoes & Apples

A couple of us at work have started a weight loss club, and since being vegan I've found it quite easy to lose a few pounds.  Not through trying, but when you're vegan and eating out it often means you have to skip dessert, and also as I don't drive and rely on public transport to get around, I do a hell of a lot of walking!

However, over the last few weeks, through eating too much vegan cake, including the discovery of this vegan microwave brownie recipe as well as general overindulgence I've put on a few pounds.  So I'm trying to act early and get em back off!

So I grabbed Isa's Appetite for Reduction.

Someone recommended her Hottie Black Eyed Peas & Greens (at a Cake Liberation Front meetup) and the book recommends having it with Ginger Mashed Sweet Potatoes & Apples, so since I had the day off I thought I would give it a go.  If you haven't got the book, Isa has published the recipe on the PPK Blog.

The hardest thing about these recipes is the amount of peeling and chopping of vegetables, once that was done it was quite easy.  I just about avoided a disaster with the black eyed peas recipe, it calls for one cup of tomato sauce, which in my mind means ketchup. However, after googling "What does it mean in American recipes by tomato sauce" I found out what it actually meant was passata.  See what I mean by having to be careful with American recipes?!

Also, Isa suggests piling the kale leaves on top of each other to chop, however I can only find curly kale which you can't really use this trick with. I usually just grab a bunch off it, scrunch in up, do my best to roll it and then cut it finely.

I was a bit suspicious about adding apples to the sweet potato mash, but it worked really well, and The Boy was impressed with the whole thing, which is a win in my book. I think this will definitely become a favorite in this house, especially as it's low calorie and tastes amazing!