Tropic Skincare

Just over a week ago I started a new job, however in order to have a better work-life balance I had to take a pay cut and in addition the experience of being made redundant has made realise that it's good to have a back up plan. Like most people, I've always dreamed of being my own boss and having the opportunity to work from home, but setting a business up from scratch takes a level of creativeness, motivation and drive which I don't necessarily have.

Tropic Skincare is a company developed by Susan Ma, who was an Apprentice candidate. Although Susan didn't win the Apprentice Alan Sugar was so impressed with Susan's idea that he invested anyway!  Their products are completely natural and lack the long complicated chemicals that you often find in other cosmetics and in addition, they are both BUAV and Vegan Society approved.

After doing some research myself and testing some of their products I decided to sign up, and earlier this week I received my starter pack.

Ambassadors are encouraged to try the products in the starter kits themselves, which I did and I'm now in love with their products.  Over the next few weeks I'll be doing a few posts reviewing some of the products. But for now, you can check out my Ambassador website.

Vegan in Gran Canaria- Part 3

If I was to go back to Gran Canaria, I would go self catering because the supermarkets in Las Palmas were amazing for vegan grub!

Supermarkets abroad are a bit of a hobby, The Boy and family always tend to get a bit carried away and buy way too much stuff! And as a vegan, if you arm yourself with a list of non-vegan e-numbers and some basic spanish phrases for non-vegan ingredients (see Vegan in Brighton's post for a list) you can pick up some amazing things too!

First thing I wanted to pick up was a packet of palmeritas as I'd heard so much about them. They're kind of a like a pasty usually covered in a sticky syrup and are sold almost everywhere. Most brands are vegan but still check as I found one brand that contained egg. Here's a picture of me eating my way through a pack whilst watching a cruise ship set off!

El Corte Ingles is a Spanish department store chain, it's kinda like a Spanish John Lewis but has a food hall like M&S. The one in Las Palmas is GINORMOUS, and has stores on both sides of the road, one with 7 floors and the other has 8 floors. We ended up visiting the food hall for interesting Spanish foods quite a lot and this one had a sizable free from section and included things like Cheezly Edam (I was tempted to buy some for breakfast!) and vegan white chocolate. I didn't take any pictures of the selection but it's worth a visit even if it's a bit pricey. They also have a souvenir department and I managed to find tubs of Peanut Butter & Co white chocolate peanut butter. I'm not a fan of white chocolate and find it way too sweet, however even I was gutted that I we were travelling hand luggage only and couldn't bring a tub back.

The other large supermarket we visited was Carrefour, which are a must visit in Spain if you're doing self catering and are pretty reasonable with pricing. The one in Las Palmas again had a large free from section and sold things like vegan Spanish tortillas and empanadas.

It also had a sushi stall and when I see sushi I can't help checking if it's vegan.  I was excited to see that they had vegan friendly avocado and cucumber maki.

I wasn't too keen on the cucumber maki, as I found it a bit bitter somehow (I didn't use any of the condiments that came with it in case they weren't vegan) but the avocado one was amazing and had large creamy chunks of avocado.

I was also surprised to see this vegan cookbook on sale in Carrefour, and its a positive sign that veganism is starting to gain ground in Spain. The Boy and I like to get each other little souvenirs when we go away and he actually bought me this. It's a reason to get my butt into gear and start learning Spanish so that I can understand the delicious recipes!

I really enjoyed my time in Gran Canaria, even if it was pretty windy and I think choosing Las Palmas as our base was a good idea- I can see if we had gone with a package holiday in the tourist region we would have spent most days travelling to Las Palmas to avoid the tourists!

People complain at how hard it is to be vegan in Spanish countries, and yes, the first time I went to Spain as I vegan I had a few disasters. But if you do a bit of research beforehand it helps.

Vegan in Gran Canaria- Part 2

After a few days of wandering about Las Palmas, we became restless and yearned for adventure, so we decided to visit the Tourist Information Office to see what else there was to do. We picked up a leaflet for coach tours and were quickly put off by the fact that nearly every tour was 47 Euros!

That's when Gran Canaria's public bus service came to the rescue, we discovered that we could get a return to Mas Palomas which is the touristy area at the other end of the island for just over 12 Euros!

Apparently 'Palomas' means pigeons and 'Mas' means more, or many, therefore Mas Palomas translates to more/many pigeons. On finding this out, I was highly amused that therefore the singer Paloma Faith translates to Pigeon Faith in Spanish. Simple things!

Anyway, Mas Palomas is very much what you expect of a English resort, unlike Las Palmas which is much more Spanish. The area is know for it's massive sand dunes, which were impressive, and also very hard to climb up.  The view at the top was worth the effort but for some reason I don't have any impressive pictures of the view at the top, so here is a picture of me on the top of the sand dune.  The hat was purchased on the third day (from Primark of all places) after getting a sun burnt scalp- ouch!

After our hike up the sand dune and walk down the beach (I later found out if we had walked further down we would have found ourselves on a nudist beach!) we went in search of food and stumbled on a Japanese restaurant called Asia House in the retail park.  I ordered the avocado maki after checking that it didn't contain egg or mayonnaise and we shared some crispy seaweed.

The maki was super tasty and contained large chunks of creamy avocado, so much nicer than the usual stuff you get at Yo Sushi (ordered without the mayo of course!) and the seaweed was so different to the stuff we get from the Chinese at home.  The Boy's mum had ordered veggie rice, which I assumed would contain egg, I was kicking myself when it turned out to be egg free!

Back in Las Palmas, The Boy was on a mission to find another vegan friendly restaurant that I had found on Happy Cow called Rahimo16.  After a couple of failed attempts, we managed to track it down.  Although not exclusively veggie or vegan, this place is dedicated to sustainable food and caters for both vegetarians and vegans.

We went during the day when we could only order off the day menu which was 9.90 Euros. For starters there was the option of watercress soup or a lentil dish that came with yogurt.  After speaking to our waitress, I was lead to believe that only the soup was vegan and not being a huge fan of both watercress and soup, I decided to skip the starter and go straight to the main, which was cous cous served with stuffed mushrooms.

The dish was really nice, especially the stuffed mushrooms which I think was just stuffed with some super tasty hummus! However when everyone else's starters arrived I realised the lentil dish was just a lentil salad with a side of yogurt, and when everyone else started saying how nice it was I checked again with the waitress if the lentil salad would be vegan if they just left out the yogurt on the side. When she confirmed it would be, I ordered the starter as a main- and I swear that because I didn't have the yogurt they gave me extra lentils!  It was totally yummy, and I was completely stuffed by the end of it! The lentils dish was made better due to the fact that The Boy's olive hating vegetarian twin brother gave me all his olives from his stuffed mushroom main :-)

The day menu also included dessert, and we were lucky that they were celebrating their first birthday and were offering chocolate cake and glasses of cava in addition to their regular desserts. Unfortunately the chocolate cake wasn't vegan and the only vegan dessert was a fruit salad, however as Spanish cava is refined in the bottle and is therefore vegan I wasn't feeling too left out.

I usually hate fruit salads as a dessert (it's NOT a dessert), but having eating a filling starter and main course, I was quite glad of a light dessert and the fruit was so refreshing. I still jealous of everyone's chocolate cake though.

I was also surprised at the amount of vegan stuff in supermarkets too, especially given that I've heard so many people moan about how hard it is to be vegan in Spanish countries. More on that next time!

Vegan in Gran Canaria- Part 1

I recently went away for a week to Las Palmas, in Gran Canaria with The Boy and family. Despite it being windy, we had a fab time and thanks to checking Happy Cow before booking, I managed to eat pretty well!

We arrived at our hotel in the evening, and having dropped off our stuff we headed out to grab some tea.  I was fully expecting not to be able to find much to eat on the first night, so was setting my sights on a cheese-less pizza from an Italian, or chips.  However, it turns out we were very close to Natural Burguer, a burger place which sells both meat and veggie/vegan options.  They do various soy burgers, hot dogs and "meat" pieces.   I managed to confirm using my limited Spanish that the soy burgers and fake meat pieces were vegan but I'm not too sure about the soy hot dogs. The menu is done in pictures and you can see what is in each of the burgers making it easy to determine what was vegan and what wasn't. The tables were also pretty cool, as you can see.

Due to it being so close to our hotel, I ended up eating here four times.  The best thing was definitely the "chicken" pieces, which were pretty convincing and reminded me of popcorn chicken, and the chips were also a firm favorite. The drink choices were impressive, you could order various fruits in the form of juices, lassis (not vegan, contains yogurt), regular and soya milkshakes. The best drink I order was a strawberry soya milkshake.

We stayed the Astoria Hotel (nothing to do with the Waldorf Astoria!), and breakfast was included in the price.  I wasn't holding out much hope, but I was pleasantly surprised that I did managed to eat a breakfast that wasn't just fruit, even if it was the same each day.  They also had churros and palmitas daily and although these are usually vegan, I didn't want to chance it and I didn't trust my Spanish enough to ask, something I plan to work on!

The next few days mainly consisted of Italian, Indian and more Natural Burguer, whilst we figured out what was what, but eventually we made our way to the town centre, where we visited Zoe Food.

Zoe Food is an vegetarian cafe, with a branch in Italy. Just a note- if you try to locate this place via Google, you'll have a long walk as it will try and give you directions to the one in Italy! Find it via Happy Cow and use the directions on there.

The place itself wasn't what I was expecting- I'm so use to veggie cafes being a bit underwhelming (with a few exceptions) and looking like a canteen but this place was very cute and airy and felt very Parisian!

We decided to go for the daily menu, which was around 11-12 Euros and included pitchers of pink lemonade, water, coffee and flatbreads and hummus. For starters we went for vegan Spanish tortillas, various kind of mini bruschetta type things and a vegetable soup (not pictured)

I have never been a fan of any type of omelette and I only chose it because where else are you gonna find a vegan Spanish omelette? Therefore I wasn't too crazy about mine, but don't let my option put you off! I managed to nick some of The Boy's bruschettas and was kicking myself for choosing the wrong thing. I was delighted when he didn't like the one with the smoked tofu on and gave it to me.

For main, I went for stuffed cabbage leaves, stuffed with various things, including tofu.  Language barriers meant that we thought that we were getting stuffed courgette, but I was pretty pleased we got the cabbage instead!

As you can see taking a picture was bit of an after thought! I got a bit panicky when I saw the cream, but our waitress assured me it was vegan. I really enjoyed the main, I love cabbage and it sounds silly but I'd never thought of making stuffed cabbage leaves before, and I'll definitely give this a go. The tofu inside was subtly smoked, unlike some of the other smoked tofu I'd have before that reminded me of smoked mackerel!

Dessert was not included in the daily menu and was around 3-4 Euros extra.  However, being aware this was probably the only time I would get a dessert on this holiday I decided to splurge.  All the desserts, apart from the ice cream was vegan.  I couldn't resist the chocolate and coconut cake, and my other dining partners went for the carrot cake.

The cakes are all gluten free and nice and light, which I was quite pleased with as I was feeling quite full anyway.  The Boy's Mum is a bit obsessed with finding out how to stop vegan cakes falling to bits and was pleased with the structure of these cakes.  So much so she asked our lovely waitress how she does it, and she kindly wrote down suggestions on a business card!

I really loved this place, the people were friendly and the food was all high quality.  I  wish I'd had the chance to visit more than once because the regular and breakfast menus looked lovely.

We found another vegan friendly place nearer by our hotel, and I also found some interesting supermarket finds, but I'll leave that until next time!

Sanskruti Review

My plan to blog more in my time off work hasn't exactly gone to plan.  I had two weeks without internet connection whilst changing supplier and the rest of my time has been taken up with job applications, interviews, gardening and volunteering for our local hospice's charity shop.  However I'm back online now with a bit of spare time.

A while back, we went to visit Sanskruti in Manchester.  It was a bit of a whim, and on the way their I texted my friend, Flash Gordonette for menu recommendations as I knew she had been before, she warned me that you need to book a table in advance. I gave them a ring and luckily they managed to squeeze us in.

The restaurant itself is vegetarian, but has plenty of vegan options which are clearly marked with a 'V' on the menu.  I decided to go with Flash's recommendations and for starters I went for the vegan shish kebab and we shared some poppadoms, because an Indian meal without poppadoms is just wrong.

It is served to the table sizzling, so it got the usual oohs and aahs that sizzling stuff usually gets. Shish kebab was never something I use to get on a regular basis, but as far as I remember the taste was pretty similar.  The only issue about the dish was that there was a bit too much for a starter for one, so if I got it again I'd probably get it to share.

Next course was another of Flash's recommendations, the malai kofta which isn't listed as vegan, but can be modified to be vegan if you ask. We also ordered rice and VEGAN garlic naan bread, I was so excited by the vegan naan! Rotis are nice enough, but nothing beats a garlic naan!

OMFG this was amazing! The sauce was creamy, but not too sickly. However I was disappointed that I only got two koftas.  After having this, I discovered the malai kofta recipe in Isa Does It, which has satisfied my cravings for this dish since then!

My cheese obsessed dining partners had cheesy courses (hence the lack of photos!) and we were all suitably stuffed after our starters and mains, so there was no need for dessert.  However when we got our bill, we were handed a huge tray of brightly coloured sweets to try and I couldn't resist grabbing a large handful.  To my despair I discovered that these were actually evil aniseed flavoured sweets which I then had to force myself to eat.  So be warned!

I loved this place, it's one of the best Indian meals I've had in a while and it was such a relief not to have to check that they didn't use ghee or drizzle everything with cream.  It's also on Just Eat and if I lived nearby I could see this place becoming our regular takeaway!

Morphy Richards Soup Maker

I've got four days off to use up before I leave work at the end of this month and I created a list of jobs to do, but as usual I'm procrastinating.  This morning I spent a good two or so hours watching the Vegan Black Metal Chef on YouTube.  You should watch it, it's hilarious even if he is obsessed with sugar (he put it in baked beans!), Earth Balance, salt and his deep fat fryer!

So, after watching every single episode, I thought I would put off cleaning the bathroom a little longer by writing a blog post. To be fair 'blog' is an item on my to do list so I'm not totally cheating.

For Christmas, my Dad got me a Morphy Richards Soup Maker, which was met with both delight (a new kitchen gadget) and concern over where the hell to put it as I'm running out of space on the worktops and in the cupboards.

Storage issues put aside, it's such a great bit of kit and really cuts down on the mess and washing up usually encountered with making soups.  It has a saute function, so you can fry your onions or leeks and garlic if you choose and then you just throw everything else in along with stock, pop the lid of on and choose either the smooth or chunky mode.  The smooth mode takes 21 minutes and blends the soup as well as cooking it, which removes the need to clean a blender or immersion blender (plus immersion blenders make a hell of a mess!), whereas the chunky mode takes 25 minutes and doesn't blend.  It also had a separate blend function if you decide your smooth soup isn't smooth enough or you would like your chunky soup a little smoother. The soup maker also has a juice function, which I haven't used yet.

The first soup I made was leek and potato, using the recipe in Isa Does It. This is the only smooth soup that I needed to use the blend mode on afterwards but I think this is due to not being able to use the full amount of stock in the recipe because it would have gone above the maximum fill line on the soup maker. Next time I make it I'll probably reduce the ingredients and add more water.

Lots of soup!

The second soup I made, was a spicy butternut squash and apple soup.  I vaguely followed the recipe in Appetite for Reduction, as I hadn't got any cider or the exact amount of ingredients. I kept the skin and seed from the butternut squash and roasted them in a little thyme flavoured olive oil I also got for Christmas and used them to top the soup.  This soup was a little spicy which I liked, but a little on the thin side and a bit bland.  Next time I've try adding the cider and a little less stock.

Today I winged it with my soup creation. I fried onion and garlic in the thyme olive oil, added sweet potato, parsnips, carrots, dried thyme and rosemary along with enough stock to cover the vegetables. It was perfection.

Ignore the mess. I haven't tidied the coffee table!

I would have never have bought this item for myself, but it's something that if I saw it in a shop I would have though was very nifty. It's very easy to clean and the power cord can be detached and stored inside the soup make when not in use which makes a little easier to store.  I'm not really an enthusiastic soup maker, mainly because I like smooth soups and I find it a faff having to blend them, but this gadget makes it souper easy (sorry, I couldn't resist) and I could see myself becoming a little obsessed!

You may notice that some of these photos look a little prettier than normal, that's because I've finally got down with the kids and set up an Instagram account. You can follow me at @boltonianvegan.

Lotus Vegetarian Kitchen

As I said in my previous post, I've been taking plenty of pictures of delicious food, but I've not got round to writing anything up.

Back in November, we visited Lotus Vegetarian Kitchen in Withington, South Manchester for my birthday meal, along with The Boy's parents and twin brother.  

We started off with some vegan prawn crackers. I was so excited, VEGAN PRAWN CRACKERS!!! 

For starters, we went for the Crispy combination to share, which came with spring rolls, chicken skewers in a peanut sauce, samosa, prawn toast, BBQ ribs and seaweed.  Excuse the blurry picture (and also the fact that obviously someone could wait until I'd took the photo to dig in!).

Everyone loved the skewered chicken, which they also do as a main which I would definitely consider getting when we go again. I was excited to try the BBQ ribs too as it's something I never had as meat on the bone use to freak me out (and was part of my decision to go veggie).

The great thing about this meal was that apart from the egg fried rice, I was able to have a taste of everything!

For main, I went for the BBQ roasted veggie duck, with ginger fried rice.

The duck wasn't what I was expecting and came with sauce on the side rather than being cooked in a sauce and although I enjoyed it, I don't think I would choose it again. For some reason I didn't take a picture of the rice but it was absolutely delicious, in fact I was very reluctant to share it with everyone else, but I at the same time I wanted everyone to taste how amazing it was!

Other dishes were veggie beef in satay sauce, some kind of noodle dish (sorry I can't remember which one!), beef in black pepper sauce and chicken in Kung Po sauce.

I was surprise to find that may favorite was the beef in black pepper sauce as beef was something I never use to be that keen on. I wasn't too fond of the chicken in Kung Po sauce as the texture of the chicken was a bit too chewy for my liking and actually tasted more like pork than chicken however it was everyone else's favourite.

In total, there was a vegan, vegetarian and four meat eaters and I think it says a lot about a vegetarian restaurant when even the meat eaters were raving about the food!