vegan.in.brighton

Hey hey! I've been so busy writing about my travels that I haven't stopped to tell you what I've been doing, well, eating, recently. I'm currently obsessed with Namul's, this new Bibimbap cafe that opened around the corner from me on Gardner Street early this summer. It's now the food I crave and my go-to whenever I'm not feeling up for cooking for myself.

There are three vegan bibimbap options at Namul's, the Classic Bibimbap (minus the egg), the Fluffy Tofu Bowl (also minus the egg) - the tofu itself wasn't vegan when Namul's opened but they've since changed it so that all veggies can partake, and the Mushroom Special which is my favourite.

The Mushroom Special consists of five types of mushroom - regular and king oyster, cloud ear fungus, chanterelle and shiitake, alongside shredded carrots, fresh greens, baby sprouts and fresh seaweed. This all comes on a bed of white, brown or black rice, I always chose black because it's so flavourful. You can also choose your sauce and I always pick Namul's Soy Sauce which is super delicious - I haven't asked about the vegan-ness of the sauces containing chilli (allergic!) and I'm unsure if the Goma Sauce is vegan.

This is such a light healthy delicious meal and I love, love, love all of the types of mushroom. It's one of the priciest dishes on the menu at £6.20 but it's totally worth it because it would cost a fortune to hunt down and buy all of those 'shrooms. I'm all excited just thinking about it and I'm totally counting down the hours until I can have it again.

My other summer obsession is Boho Gelato. I have always loved them right from when they opened with an awesome vegan selection to when they started a vegan friendly ice cream cocktail night. This week they outdid themselves when they unveiled their newest vegan creation, Peanut Butter Sea Salt Caramel. Vegan. Delicious.

This flavour stole my heart and the coveted favourite ice cream ever title. As you can see I had it in a cone with a scoop of Cookies and Cream, a flavour that I suggested and that they put into action. Nice one Boho Gelato!

I'm still on the epic Sunday Roast Quest and last Sunday Sal and I visited The Sussex Yeoman which had come highly recommended. The vegan roast of the day was a Vegan Rosemary and Sunblushed Tomato Polenta with chargrilled Mediterranean vegetables served with seasonal vegetables and roast potatoes. Phew, quite the mouthful!

This large piping hot plate of food arrived with a delicious helping of parsnip chips on top, I'll begin to think Brighton's pubs are in cahoots with a parsnip crisp company at this rate, I swear they're popping up on everything! I wish I could say that I enjoyed this twist on a Sunday roast but as someone who dislikes bell pepper quite a lot there was an abundance of it left untouched at the end of the meal but the polenta itself was tasty and the plentiful aubergine and courgette were perfectly roasted. The roasties (that's roast potatoes if you're not from around here!) themselves weren't bad but I wasn't a fan of the tomatoey gravy at all. Putting my personal feelings about peppers and tomatoey gravy aside this was a filling and well seasoned Mediterranean meal but it certainly wasn't a satisfying Sunday roast. I'm told this is quite a strange roast option even for The Yeoman but unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a way to check the menu in advance.

So, The Quest continues! The Earth & Stars is still taking first place and there are still roasts to try at The Prince Albert and The Park Crescent as well as rumoured vegan options at both The Wick Inn and The Foundry.

One thing I can't believe I haven't blogged about yet is that Nick and I are currently fostering a kitty whilst his real mum is in New Zealand. His name's Rorschach, or, as I call him, Fluffkins! He's been living with us since the end of May and he's crazy adorable. We already have no idea how we'll cope with giving him back, I'll definitely cry! Just look at that fluffy tummy!

In other super exciting news, I baked for my first ever wedding this week.

This was definitely Operation Icing's biggest order yet and I really hope that they keep coming. I make quite a small amount for the charities by selling to cafes and website orders are where the "big bucks" are. I sell cupcakes through the website for collection in central Brighton in boxes of 6 or 12 which cost £12 or £20 respectively and every single penny of my profits go to animal charities.

In other news I got sent some Frank bars to try recently, I love to snack so having bars like this on hand is great. They're gluten and nut free as well as being vegan and whilst they're mainly made with fruit they felt more substantial than, say, a nakd bar.

I loved all three of the flavours I tried but the Oat & Chocolate was definitely my favourite, I liked that flavour so much that I'm going to order a box of 20 in their summer sale - £10 for 20 bars, which should keep me going for a while. You can currently buy Frank bars directly from their website or via Planet Organic.

Lastly I have a little competition for y'all. I'm going to be out of the country when London VegFest is happening but I'm giving away a pair of tickets worth £20 right here.

All you need to do to be in with a chance of winning is to leave me a comment letting me know which stall from the list of stallholders you're most excited about visiting at the fest', if you wanted to you could also vote for me in the best blogger category in the VegFest Awards but you totally don't have to!

The competition is open to anyone who'll be in the UK on October 5th & 6th and is able to attend the festival. The competition will close on August 31st and tickets will be sent to you by the lovely people at Veg Fest themselves shortly after the closing date.

I am finally over being overwhelmed by my backlog of pictures from Portland, the food's still there for the eatin' so I'm damn well gonna blog about it!

As soon as we arrived in town we headed straight to Sweetpea Baking Co to grab some tasty eats and to say hi to my buddy Ms Panda With Cookie because it'd been three whole years since I'd seen her in real life. Three years! I needed a panda hug. Sadly on this visit there was no panda hugging to be done, something which I think we definitely made up for during the rest of my trip. We even double-team-hugged a large chimp together. Ah, memories.

I ordered a delicious Chickpea Tuna Salad Sandwich...

Note : I took this before anyone taught me how to take a picture of a sandwich. All things considered I don't think it's that bad!

...and a Chocolate Peanut Butter Brownie.

Both of which I loved but the real jewel in Sweetpea's crown as far as I'm concerned are their deeeelicious biscuits and gravy. I chose to get mine with some tempeh bacon and I've seriously been waking up thinking about this almost daily ever since. It was amazing. I wish I was less lazy and could be bothered to learn how to make my own biscuits, it can't be that hard can it?!

Mandee and I chased our breakfast biscuits with some pastries because we're awesome like that. You know what else was awesome? Sweetpea's pastries that's what. Yet another thing I'm scared to try to make after an epic croissant failure back in '08!

One spot you simply cannot miss on a vegan tour of Portland is Voodoo Doughnut. They have two PDX locations, one Downtown and one in NE and I managed to squeeze in five or six visits during my stay.

Voodoo Doughnut have a vegan version of almost every doughnut on their large menu and they're crazy cheap so you can buy loads.

The day I realised that Mandee and I would be forever friends was the day she went out early and brought doughnuts back to our room before I'd even emerged from under the duvet. Best. Roomie. Ever.

Doughnuts in bed are the best, I hope Nick reads this and gets the (not so subtle) hint that he should get up early in Vegas, drive to Ronald's, and bring all of the doughnuts back to me!

That chocolate topped, peanut butter drizzled, cookie covered monstrosity, named the Old Dirty Bastard, was amazing. I kept ordering it again and again not needing to branch out because this doughnut is perfect. The Gay Bar on the right was full of cream, not jam as I had suspected, meaning that I didn't love it but everyone else did!

Another place I fell head over heels for in Portland was Sizzle Pie, vegan pizza, by the slice, open until late, what more could you want? Well, honestly, I'd like their brunch pizza to be available at all times but I'm pretty demanding like that!

This Raw Power slice was my favourite and every time I walked through this neighbourhood I made whoever I was with stop for a slice. Sorry, not sorry.

Nick and I went for brunch at Hungry Tiger Too before he left, due to someone's (ahem, Nick) time consuming hairstyle it was super late by the time we arrived and I was the kind of hungry that has crossed passed hangry and into a whole 'nother dimension. I ordered the most epic sounding thing on the menu...

...and then got some corndogs on the side much to the amusement of our waitress.

My Greek Scramble came packed full of olives, tempeh bacon, spinach, garlic, tomatoes and Daiya cheese and was served with with sourdough toast and an enormous hash brown. This was one of my favourite meals of the whole trip. The scramble was super flavourful and if somewhere has sourdough toast on the menu I will love them forever.

The corn dogs on the other hand? Good god no! I didn't actually realise that a corn dog is a sausage on a stick covered in sweet, yes, SWEET, batter. Now I love maple syrup with my tempeh bacon these days but this? This was taking it too far! American's, you crazy! I am glad I tried a corn dog though and if you haven't ever had the pleasure you should give 'em a whirl, but don't say I didn't warn ya!

This next delicious brunch is from Blossoming Lotus where Nick and I were lucky enough to have a brunch date with the lovely Jess Scone and her hilarious ladyfriend Jules.

This Coconut Bacon BLT was perfect and was made all the more delicious because it was accompanied by a mimosa and wonderful company. We both wish that we lived closer to these ladies so that we could have brunch together all the time! I'm still a little obsessed with coconut bacon right now, you can't buy it in the UK like you can in the US so I've been making my own using this recipe.

Last but by no means least Nick and I managed to make it to flavour spot, a waffle cart with two locations in North / NE Portland. There's only one vegan option, the No. 3 Vegan Sausage & Maple, but that was a-ok with us. Why would you need anything else?

It was as epic as it looks and for $5.50 it was a total bargain. This delicious crisp on the outside, fluffy on the inside, waffle was folded around vegan sausage patties and slatherd with organic vegan maple spread. I love this sandwich SO HARD. I really, really wanted to visit this cart more than once but, alas, opening hours and a base downtown made it impossible.

That's not all I ate in Portland though, Portland Part Deux is coming up real soon. Watch this space.

This is the second instalment of my Portland series, read Part 1 here.

One of my favourite PDX hangouts was the vegan friendly bar White Owl Social Club and it had nothing to do with this Mac & Cheese Burger...okay, that was a lie, it had EVERYTHING to do with this Mac & Cheese burger. That and the delicous drinks menu and bargaintastic happy hour. Oh and did I mention that they even have a black and white photobooth, so rad! Anyway, THE BURGER! Just look at it...

...isn't it just one of the best things you've ever seen?! It's mac and cheese, fried, in a bun, with a side of fries. That's the triple carb win right there. I don't think I need to say much more than this, I ate it five times in a week.

I also visited on another occasion when I decided to branch out and Mandee and I shared a selection of goodies from around the menu. We went for the mac and cheese, which I thought was better in burger form. Fried pickles, um, amazing, I'm a total pickle convert. And the BBQ Pulled Jackfruit Burger with Fries. This was our attempt at ordering in a restrained manner, I love us!

Portland has a tonne of vegan friendly bars, I also went to both The Bye & Bye (where I took a terrible photograph of a delicious grilled cheese sandwich at 2am) and The Sweet Hereafter (where I hung out with many VVC attendees at the Unofficial Conference After-party).

I loved all three of these bars because of the plentiful outdoor seating, great drinks menus and the fact that food is served all hours. Whoever came up with the law saying that food must be served if alcohol is being served is a real winner! I wish we had bars like these in Brighton.

Alongside the super vegan friendly bars another thing I love about Portland is the Food Carts. Two of my most frequented carts were DC Vegetarian...

and Sonny Bowl.

Both of these carts are situated Downtown on the corner of SW 3rd and Washington which means you can mix it up and order something from both carts if you wish. On more than one occasion I grabbed a breakfast sandwich or bagel with cream cheese from DC Veg and a Kale - Mango Smoothie from Sonny Bowl. The perfect breakfast combo.

Another highlight of the food cart scene was Homegrown Smoker. I've been wanting to visit this cart since I first heard about it back in 2011 and it certainly didn't disappoint. I was totally unable to choose between the Macnocheeto, a vegan mac 'n cheese burrito, and the Carolina Chick'n Sandwich so I went all out and ordered the Combo Platter instead.

The platter comes with your choice of two proteins, two sides and corn bread and I picked the Smoked Soy Curls, Smoked Chikn', mac no-cheese and STFU Puppies - corn fritters with remoulade sauce. My choices were definitely influenced by my chilli allergy / aversion and I was surprised that after discussing this with the person working that they still covered my chosen proteins with chilli sauce! It was all okay though, some careful scraping and liberal use of the remoulade came to the rescue and whilst this meal was still right at the top end of my heat tolerance it was totally amazing.

This was the first time I'd ever tried Beyond Meat and I loved it, the texture was spot on and I still can't believe how meat-like it is. The soy curls were super smokey and flavourful and the mac no-cheese was out of this world delicious and creamy. I had no idea what to expect from the corn fritters but unsurprisingly I loved them and the corn bread was by far the best I've ever had. I will definitely be going back to Homegrown Smoker to order this again but next time I'll just be sure to specify no extra hot sauce!

There were plenty of other food carts I never got the chance to check out including The Cheese Plate, Native Bowl and Potato Champion. I did make it to Flavour Spot though and you can read about that here.

Moving back to brick and mortar vegan eateries Back to Eden is right up there with my favourite places in the world. On my first visit Nick and I just grabbed some soft serve, chocolate of course, which I insisted on topping with their house made caramel sauce even though the dude told me it was for ice cream not soft serve and it'd probably slide off.

He was totally wrong and it was brilliant, it even stayed on long enough for me to take a picture and it elevated my cone to the next level.

On my second visit with Randi I ordered the Quiche which was the most delicious quiche I've ever eaten vegan or not. It was perfect, really eggy and perfectly browned on top. Now, if only I'd managed to get the asparagus the right way up for the photo...

I followed my quiche with a 5" Strawberry Rhubarb pie, it had a perfect crumb topping and exactly none of it got saved for later!

Back to Eden is definitely on my re-visit list, the pastries and ice cream I tried were wonderful and if I'd had more time I could have stayed in there all day eating my way through their bakery case. I found out after my visit that Back to Eden is totally gluten free which blew my mind, I can't believe pastries this good were made without gluten and it makes me feel like I need to up my xgfx baking game.

One place I'd never envisioned myself checking out was Prasad but I'd heard so many good things about it over the weekend that I gave in and headed there with my slightly kale obsessed friend Randi. This restaurant is in the Pearl district and shares its space with a yoga studio, it was really busy when we visited but it was somehow still a relaxed and mellow environment - it must be all that yoga!

I'm not exactly sure what came over me when I ordered The Mightly Bowl which is made up of quinoa, steamed greens, lentils and a garlic tahini sauce. It was simple and tasty but looking at the menu there are so many more exciting choices!

I had a carrot and orange juice on the side which is one of my favourite juice combos. Whilst we were eating I noticed a note on the menu beneath The Mighty Bowl stating that Prasad believe that everyone deserves a warm, healthy, organic meal and therefor they offer this bowl on a donation basis, nobody is turned away. I think this is a wonderful thing for a business to do and they're not wrong, everyone does deserve a nutritious, filling, healthy meal no matter how much money they have. Nice one Prasad.

This last spot was probably the most surprising to me because I kinda went into it thinking, sure, bowls, how good can they really be? And, well, when you're at Canteen they can be pretty fanfuckingtastic!

I ordered the Portland Bowl which consists of a base of quinoa topped with steamed kale, baked maple tempeh, noochy cheese sauce, chopped local hazelnuts and grated carrot. They even have shakers of nooch so that you can go extra crazy with the cheesiness. This was a magnificent bowl and it's something I've been craving and working on recreating since I got home!

In the next instalment of my travel-ventures I'll be posting about two upscale Portland eateries, Departure Lounge and Portobello.

This is the third and final instalment in my Portland series (for now, maybe I'll get to go back one day), read parts one and two here and here.

One place I knew I had to visit during my stay was Portobello, I'd heard so much about it and whilst a greasy burger from a food cart out the back of a dive bar is probably more my style I wanted to fine dine it up with the best of 'em at this upscale vegan joint.

Stephanie, Mandee, Randi and I managed to snag a table just before the Vida Vegan Con hoards descended upon the city. We decided to go all out with starters, mains and desserts and Mandee and I started with the cheese plate which came with three kinds of cheese, baguette and quince paste.

Honestly I was a tad disappointed with this plate, I know vegan cheeses are expensive but for $16 I was, um, a little surprised at quite how tiny this plate of food was. Maybe I'm just a philistine? I will say that everything on the plate was delicious and I believe that the cheeses were from Heidi Ho, Chao and Punk Rawk Labs; my favourite being the peppered cashew cheese.

Stephanie ordered the Beet Tartare which actually ended up being the highlight of the fine dining experience in my mind. This perfectly creamy cashew cheese and roasted beetroot dish was beautifully presented, came with plenty of delicious French bread, and, if this had indeed been served at a dive bar I'd have licked the plate.

Next up we have Asparagus Fries, we almost didn't order these which would have been stupid. Served in a cone to stop the light tempura batter from becoming soggy these crisp delicious fries were my second favourite part of the meal.

I think I ordered badly again with my main course because I really didn't love this Summer Pea Ravioli with Morels.

I love ravioli and I love both english peas and mushrooms but something about this dish missed the mark for me. I did however love Stephanie's Gnocchi with Spring Vegetables which was weird because normally I am not a gnocchi fan. The moral of this story is go to dinner with Stephanie, order what she orders, enjoy.

I couldn't pass on dessert because there was a Chocolate Hazelnut Bomb on the menu!

This chocolate explosion was topped with crunchy caramelised hazelnuts and it was an amazingly rich end to the meal which left everyone feeling stuffed to the point of bursting.

I would definitely go back to Portobello, the dishes I enjoyed still stick in my mind today (uuuhhhh that beet tartare) and I love that their menu changes with the seasons. If you go let me know what your favourites are!

Our next dining destination was Departure Lounge somewhere that I hadn't even heard of before Vida Vegan Con started, but after recommendations from both Isa and Grant Butler (VVC's restaurant review panelist) it seemed ridiculous not to pay them a visit.

Our group of four ordered many, many things to share and drove our not-so-food-photo-obsessed friend a little crazy with all of our picture taking. If you're reading this, sorry again. I still feel a little bad about being such an annoying dinner companion.

Departure Lounge is not a vegan restaurant but they do have a separate vegan menu and a commitment to creating out of this world vegan dishes. Good enough for me.

This dish of Wok Fried Brussels Sprouts with chilli, lime and mint was outstanding. I have no idea how anyone can make sprouts taste this good and on the strength of this dish alone I'd like to invite the chef to come and live with Nick and I. I'm sure Nick wouldn't mind once he tasted the food.

The next dish of Gingered Mushrooms came with sweet & sour rhubarb, watercress and ramp. As a lover of all things rhubarb I was delighted to see it represented in a savoury dish, breaking out of it's role as a filler of pies and crumbles. This was exceptional.

We ordered all of the sushi on the menu which included this Grilled Shiitake Roll with avocado, cucumber, scallion and carrot sauce which I adored.

Next up was the Ume Shisho Roll with pickled plums, cucumber and jalapeño. Whilst I loved the bold plum flavours in this dish I did (somewhat unsuccessfully) have to eat around the jalapeños!

The table also ordered these beautiful BBQ Tempeh Buns.

These steamed buns were stuffed with Korean BBQ sauce and spicy coleslaw. I didn't try one, I can tell when something's spicy enough that it'll kill my tastebuds and my dining companions agreed that it'd definitely push me over the edge!

This Greens and Seeds roll was the thing that got us all excited about Departure Lounge's menu. How could a place serving nooch sushi ever steer you wrong?! This roll was also stuffed with avocado, cucumber, herbs, pumpkin seeds & sesame and I'm pretty sure there was some wasabi or something in there too because this roll packed a strong horseradishy punch.

Last but by no means least the final part of our sushi selection hit the table, the Sweet Potato Tempura roll was a spicy miso spiked delight and I loved the addition of even more nori - delicious.

If I'm lucky enough to end up back in Portland this is somewhere I'll most certainly re-visit and now that I've blogged about it I'll be able to leave the iPhone in my bag and just enjoy the overall dining experience. The food here was stunning both in taste and presentation and I'd highly recommend it to any vegans with their sights set on Portland.

You guys! It's almost Vegan MoFo time! If you're thinking that it's been less than a year since the last time I blogged every day for a month, you'd be right. Last year's MoFo was in October and this year we've moved it forward by a month so that we can have a little more daylight and a little less pumpkin, two things I'm definitely excited about.

Just incase you haven't heard of it before Vegan MoFo, or Vegan Month Of Food, is an annual month long blogging event where everyone taking part tries to eat, cook and blog about vegan food as much as possible. The idea is to shoot for a post every weekday but for the last three years I've posted every day during the month, I'll be attempting to do that again this year.

It's become a MoFo tradition for me to reflect on last years posts and in doing so I just spent thirty minutes gazing at photos from Austin where I began last years MoFo month. Just look at this Peanut Butter Cup Sundae from Sweet Ritual.

When we got back from Austin I recreated this hot dawg and waffle fry meal from Frank's on Football Food Sunday.

I also took part in the great MoFo Kitchen Tour...

...made one of the most delicious pies ever on Pie-Day Friday...

...and discovered one of my favourite ever sandwiches on Cookbook Challenge Tuesday; the Monte Cristo Reuben from 500 Vegan Recipes.

This year I'm moving away from some of my regular themes, sorry Cookbook Challenge fans, because I'm going to be travelling and blogging from the road for half of the month. As I'm sure regular readers of my blog have noticed I'm terrible at blogging from the road so this is going to be a huge challenge for me. I'm hoping to stick to my themes but I suspect that some may fall by the wayside and end up being replaced with photos of me eating doughnuts!

As is traditional I'm going with daily themes and here they are...

Mac 'n Cheese Monday - This is one of the themes we came up with in the Vida Vegan Con MoFo Workshop and I'm running with it. I'll be posting about my favourite Mac 'n Cheese recipes as well as blogging about the Mac 'n Cheeses I'll be eating on the road.

Travel Tip Tuesday - General travel tips, from packing and planning to staying vegan on the road.

What I Ate Wednesday - Keeping it simple and showing you guys what I eat on a regular day whether I'm at home or away.

Thirsty Thursday - Another MoFo Workshop theme, I'm pretty sure one week will be about root beer!

Facsimile Friday - Re-creating some of my favourite foods from my American travel adventures.

Snoozeday Saturday - Breakfast in bed! These MoFo Workshop themes just keep on coming!

Football Food Sunday - This is the one theme from previous years that's sticking around but this year we'll actually be watching the 49ers games IN San Francisco! So excited!

As always I'm super excited to get blogging every day and I'll be writing round ups and running competitions over at the official Vegan MoFo blog just like last year. If you're still not sure if you're up for joining in with the MoFo fun pop over to the official blog and have a read of Katie's VeganMoFo On The Go post as well as mine on Official Themes and Blogging Prompts. It would be so awesome if everyone with a vegan blog would take part! You do only have until August 28th to sign up though so move fast.

The last week's been full of awesome hang outs, meet up's and, of course, food. When Green Day announced a last minute show at Brixton Academy there was no question about it, we were going and we were going early - not to queue for hours to get on the barrier as I would have 10 years ago but to pay two of my favourite vegan spots a visit, Ms Cupcake and Franco Manca.

I don't get to go to Brixton often enough and it's actually been well over a year since my last Franco Manca sourdough pizza experience.

Franco Manca don't do any speciality toppings or vegan cheese just plain simple tomato topped veggie covered pizza. You can tell that they trust in their preparation of the classics because there's a tomato, basil and garlic pizza right there on the menu. No cheese, no veggies, nothing. Just pizza at it's simplest. I was feeling fancy so I threw some mushrooms on mine.

This was the first time Nick had visited Franco Manca and he was super impressed by the quality of the pizza. Franco Manca are cheap by both London and pizza standards and they even have a great vegan beer on the menu, Green Daemon, which I'll be ordering again next time.

Obviously Green Day were awesome, it's not often that they play smaller (ha, I know, Brixton's not small but it is in comparison to a stadium!) venues these days and it's certainly not usual for them to play Dookie from front to back! It was epic and we had Ms Cupcake treats to munch on the slow train back to Brighton.

Friday saw a sunny start to the bank holiday weekend and I just had to pop to Street Diner to check out new kid on the block, Toston Tolon, and their vegan friendly arepas.

Toston Tolon's vegan option comes stuffed with black beans, plantains and chilli sauce. Unfortunately both of the cooling parts of the arepa experience, cheese and a mayo based dressing, are not vegan meaning that this delicious arepa burnt my mouth like crazy!

It was definitely delicious and if you have a better spice tolerance than me (um, so that's everyone then!) you should definitely give this unique vegan option a whirl. I would love it if enough vegans visited that it would be worth it for TT to add vegan cheese to their repertoire, I think the Veganic Pizza Cheese would be perfect here.

Obviously I had to chase it with some baklava from Sultans Delight because I'm actually physically incapable of walking past Brighthelm gardens on a Friday without grabbing a piece.

Sunday saw me breaking a long-time boycott and trying out Brighton's Loving Hut. The Brighton Vegans meet up group converge upon Loving Hut every Sunday and as well as the forging of new friendships there was the additional bonus of this frankly delicious Ocean Burger and chips.

The burger itself was made up of two delicious nori coated, breaded, and fried fish fillets, creamy coleslaw and, oddly, an apple slice which I removed after one bite and ate on the side. I'll definitely be ordering this again and I'd also like to try their Scramble Tofu Roll, Happy Chick'n Burger and Sweet and Sour Soya Balls. What can I say, I'm weak, consider this boycott well and truly over!

Sunday night saw Nick and I heading to Moshimo to learn to roll our own sushi. It was such a fun class, they'd never run the class with vegans before and whilst there were a couple of teething problems they'd thought it all through pretty well. We'd let them know about our dietary restrictions in advance so we had a totally different box of ingredients which included avocado, mock duck teriyaki, asparagus, cucumber, vegan cheese, kampyo and teriyaki mushrooms as well as a little pot of oil to rub on our gloves because everyone else was using mayo.

The guy leading the class was great and made making sushi seem so simple.

Me and my structurally dubious teriyaki mock duck gunkan, or battleship, sushi.

Nick being awesome at rolling some cucumber maki.

I would definitely recommend this class to other vegans, it was super fun and we ended up completely stuffed full of sushi. There are even two drinks included in the price, saki or Asahi beer. The only thing they really need to change to make this class more vegan friendly is to have a separate chopping station for fish free sushi, going first at the chopping board worked well the first time around but we were much less comfortable chopping our second rolls on the board even in spite of the clean knife.

On Monday I met up with some people from the Brighton Vegans meet up group again for another Street Diner visit. I'd heard on Twitter that Honeycomb Cakes were trial running a raw, gluten free, vegan brownie so I headed straight there to grab one.

This raw brownie was made with both dates and prunes which made it extra sweet and delicious. It was a little crumbly in places but it mainly held together well. I'll definitely be buying it again and at £1 I think it's a total bargain. I'd love to see this adorable cake stand back with even more vegan options next time. Our group actually ended up eating three of these before heading to our next destination, Boho Gelato.

As soon as we joined the line snaking out of the door we were wondering what was going to be on the far left side of the cabinet where the vegan options are located. I actually squeeked a little when I saw the PB Sea Salt Caramel and I definitely willed the people in front of us in line to choose something else!

This was the perfect way to end the bank holiday weekend, great company and great ice cream. What more could you want?!

After Vida Vegan Con my friend and fellow blogger Randi and I managed to fit in a whirlwind trip to Vancouver, we took the train and a bus which was super fun. The views from the train were beautiful and we both love going on fun train journeys.

Despite taking along a huge bag of snacks for the ride we were ravenous when we arrived. Our large group managed to get a table at Bandidas Taquiera even thought they were super busy and we set about ordering immediately. We started with a huge plate of Pascale Marc Nachos to share which came topped with vegan cheese, onions, sweet peppers, corn and jalapeños on yellow corn tortilla chips. The vegan cheese used here was Daiya and these were suuuuper Daiyaey, something I definitely enjoy on nachos but which was a little much on a plate of enchiladas as Randi discovered.

After the nachos I moved swiftly on to taco's, you could choose 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6 taco's with any of 6 combinations of fillings. Because the nachos were huge and I'd heard the fillings were plentiful I went for four tacos which was just right.

I picked two Wolf & Goat tacos, one Bobcat and a Stella.

The Wolf Goat sounded amazing, hence ordering two, and I wasn't disappointed. They came topped with fresh guac, purple cabbage, pinto beans, fresh red salsa, cheese and sour cream. The Stella was a little more out there for a taco but I loved the combination of fresh spinach, roasted butternut squash, salsa, pinto beans, cheese & sour cream. The Bobcat was almost breakfast tacoesque with it's roasted potatoes, caramelised onions, purple cabbage, pinto beans, cheese, sour cream & roasted salsa. I have to say that I loved them all. I wish there was a taco place with such inventive flavours and great vegan options here in Brighton - if anyone knows of one lemme know!

After a morning exploring the sea wall and chasing a black and red squirrel (yes, black and red! I know!) around a park Randi and I stopped off at Panz to sample their set lunch menu.

Panz is an all vegan Chinese place located in downtown Vancouver and apparently the name translates to Compassion. Each lunch set starts with the daily soup and as I'm the worlds slowest soup drinker I was glad to see that it was a small portion!

I then picked a spring roll, steamed 5 grain rice and tofu with black beans and mixed vegetables.

I loved the presentation of this meal and everything about it was delicious. I especially loved the tofu and black bean sauce dish because all of the vegetables, including aubergine, baby corn, carrot, mange tout and Chinese mushrooms, were prepared beautifully and it didn't seem even a little greasy.

After lunch we walked to Gastown to check out the area and to do the tourist thing at the famous steam clock and on the way we stumbled upon The Juice Truck.

This vegan (at least I'm 99% sure it was entirely vegan) food cart had some delicious looking sweet treats and we couldn't resist a raw cacao coconut bar.

This delicious maple sweetened walnut, raisin and pecan stuffed bar was topped with a delicious layer of coconut flakes and it's probably the nicest raw bar-style dessert I've ever eaten. I was tempted to double back to pick up another one but we were running late to meet someone at Edible Flours and we needed to get walking. As it turns out it's quite a long walk from Gastown to Edible Flours West Broadway location and we gave up halfway, got on a bus and were still about 20 minutes late.

The bakery case was full of so many delicious treats that it was hard to choose what to order.

In the end we picked three things to share, a brownie, a cinnamon roll and a croissant. My favourite had to be the brownie, what can I say, I heart brownies and this one was super gooey and had the much sought after crackle top.

My favourite thing had to be the brownie, what can I say, I'm a sucker for a great brownie and this one was super gooey and had the coveted crackle top. As if this place wasn't already red enough the lovely owner gave us a fresh-from-the-oven peanut butter cookie to share, no charge. How awesome!

This became my joint favourite Edible Flours treat, I love a freshly baked cookie and this was up there with the best of 'em. I'll definitely be re-visiting this vegan bakery if I end up in Vancouver again, delicious baked goods in a fun, friendly establishment. What more could you wish for?

Whilst we were at EF we got chatting to a dude who was also travelling and reviewing vegan restaurants and we ended up bumping into him at our choice of dinner spot, 3G, so random!

As a massive mock meat fan 3G was right up my street and I dived right in with an order of Vegetarian Chicken Drumsticks fried with pepper and salt. I loved these and if they were on sale at a place near my house I might just eat them all the damn time.

My main was equally delicious, I ordered the Fresh Bean Curd Sheet with Broccoli and Mushrooms. Three of my favourite foods in one dish, how could you go wrong?

This came with a side of perfectly steamed brown rice and was one of my food highlights of the whole trip. The bean curd was beautiful and tender and the broccoli still had that perfect crunch to it. It was such a great meal and as I often think when travelling, I wish it were closer!

I'd never been to Canada before and I was really glad we made it even though it was for a super short time, don't worry though Canada I think I'll be back!

Wow, Vegan MoFo is kicking off and I'm bringing back an old favourite for ya, Football Food Sunday. It's still only pre-season but that's not gonna stop me from throwing down with some epic football food.

Yesterday my friend Sal and I went to Clapham's Venn Street Market to check out some of the best Football Food London has to offer. New kids on the block The Mighty Fork opened their stall with a bang earlier this summer and they've been doing a roaring trade in vegan hot dogs ever since.

When we rocked up yesterday lunch time this was the only stall at the market with a queue and we couldn't wait to join the line and get ordering.

I went for the Sauerkraut Dog which comes topped with, you guessed it, sauerkraut, as well as ketchup and American mustard.

Sal ordered The Big Chilli which comes topped with black bean chilli, jalapeños, diced red onions and American Mustard.

Both dogs were delicious, we loved The Fork's use of 9" tofu wieners rather than a heftier seitan sausage and the choices of toppings were great. They also make a Brew Dog with hot beer sauce, sautéed onions, jalapeños & American mustard as well as a Yasai Dog which is topped with Japanese yasai curry sautéed onions, wasabi mayo and spring onions.

These inventive flavours alongside fast and friendly service are sure to make The Mighty Fork a huge success.

Venn Street Market hosts two more totally vegan stalls on a Saturday, Ms Cupcake...

...and the Vegan Soda Bread stand who sell the most delicious chocolate mud cake in London, if not the world.

We ended our day out with a couple of drinks at a craft beer bar opposite the market. What a rad day and I even made it home in time to lose a quiz!

I am well and truly back in the MoFo game over here and I can't wait to continue with Mac 'n Cheese Monday tomorrow.

Mac 'n Cheese, or Macaroni Cheese, as we call it here in the UK, was always up there with my favourite foods before I was vegan and it's still right up there now hence my Mac 'n Cheese Monday theme.

As a student I used to eat the kind that comes out of a can and when I met my husband it was one of the only things he could cook so he made it for me a lot. When I first went vegan I avoided trying to make a macaroni cheese for fear of disappointing myself but once I threw myself into the nutritional yeasty deep end I realised I didn't need to worry, vegans can have cheesy pasta fun too!

Here are my favourite macaroni cheese recipes...

New Farm Cookbook Mac and Cheese

One of the first vegan mac recipes I ever tried and still up there with my favourites. This recipe is all over the internet and it's totally worth making.

Appetite For Reduction - Mac and Trees

Photo Credit: Kristen from The Noochy Noodle

I eat a lot, both when I travel and when I'm reviewing restaurants and eating out locally, so when I cook at home I sometimes eat more on the low fat / low cal end of the scale, y'know, for balance! AFR is by far my favourite healthy cookbook and the Mac & Trees is one of my go-to dishes when I need to make a fast healthy meal, I love the high broc content and easy to throw together sauce.

Veganomicon - Mac Daddy

Only the second Mac recipe I ever tried and still a favourite today. I love the creaminess of the tofu ricotta, the relative low fatness of the cheesy sauce and the overall creamy baked deliciousness of the recipe. I like to add peas to this one!

Hearty Vegan Meals for Monster Appetites - Five-Cheese Baked Macaroni and Cheese

This book, now known as Home Cooked Vegan Comfort Food, contains one of THE MOST EPIC macaroni and cheeses in the history of veganism. You really do need five cheeses to make it, Daiya (or FYH / Veganic Pizza Cheese), Toffuti Cream Cheese, noochy sauce, a tofu ricotta and walnut parmesan sprinkles. It's insanely delicious and totally worth the effort. If I had these ingredients to hand more often I would have made it many more times than I have currently. Edit: Joni just happened to post the recipe for this on her blog today! Here's a link, go make it!

Best Ever Mac and Cheese from Crafty Earth Mama

Photo Credit : Crafty Earth Mama

This recipe was posted during Vegan MoFo 2011 and it's genuinely one of the best ever mac and cheeses I've ever made, it's also Nick's absolute favourite. We'd eat it more often if laziness and bad planning didn't often prevent us from buying and roasting a red pepper!

Cheezy Mac - Vegan Diner

Similar in style to Crafty Earth Mama's mac this creamy cashew based sauce gets the majority of its flavour from smoked paprika rather than roasted red pepper. It's delicious and one we come back to over and over again.

There are a whole load of mac's I still haven't gotten around to including Isa's Chipotle Mac & Cheese with Roasted Brussels Sprouts (minus the chipotle's!), Isa's Mac & Shews, Allyson Kramer's Smokey Butternut Mac and Cheese and VegNews' Vegan Macaroni & Cheese.

As well as those recipes I also need to make this Mac-Shroom Sandwich from Vegan Sandwiches Save The Day and this epic looking Creamy Mac & Cheese Pizza.

Next Mac & Cheese Monday I'll be making a brand new to me mac and I haven't even decided which one yet. Help me out, which recipe is your favourite? Maybe it'll make an appearance next week.

Hey, hey! It's Travel Tip Tuesday ya'll!

As regular readers of the blog will know I love to travel, if it was feasible right now I'd pack a backpack and be off around the world in a split second. Whilst I don't profess to be the worlds most experienced traveller I do travel pretty regularly and I've done the majority of my travelling as a vegan.

This first instalment of Travel Tip Tuesday is all about research. I'm sure that many of you are fly by the seat of your pants kinda travellers but I travel best when I have some vague semblance of a plan. I'm not talking about an hour by hour itinerary or anything just a few pre-trip ideas so that I don't end up missing out on the best a place has to offer. I thought it might be helpful to people planning their vegan adventures to get an insight into how I research my trips so I've put together these tips for ya.

Find local bloggers, or bloggers who've visited your trip location recently, and read their posts. Get a feel for what's available in your planned travel location. You can also contact local bloggers for super up to date info or to get an answer to a specific question. I get plenty of e-mails asking about where my favourite breakfast's at (Infinity Cafe) or where to get a filling meal for under £5 (Planet India) and I love to help people out.

Find out what the traditional accidentally vegan or almost-vegan dishes are in the country you're travelling to. Whether this is Spain's Paella or Moroccan Bessara it helps to know what dishes to look out for on the menus of non-vegan restaurants. I've found vegan paella all over Spain just by learning how to ask whether the dish is made with meat or vegetable stock.

Paella from Los Zarzales in Mallorca.

Google is your friend! Often a quick search for Vegan + the name of the place you want to visit will reveal enough to keep you going for the duration of your trip. Of course this very much depends on where you're going "vegan + Portland" is gonna throw up more info than "vegan + La Palma". Google also has an obnoxious habit of searching for vegetarian instead of vegan, not the same Google, not the same!

Use Happy Cow. Yes, sometimes places are missing or the information is out of date but it's our job as vegan travellers to fix that. You can always cross reference places on Happy Cow with a Yelp search to make sure the opening hours are correct. I love the Happy Cow app too, the location search function is great if you're in the middle of Ohio and want more than a Clif bar for breakfast - In that situation I used it to find a wonderful health food store where I picked myself up a delicious TLT. Score! One of my favourite things about Happy Cow is having real reviews to rely on when I'm working out what to order at a place I'll probably only get to visit once. This was super helpful when I was recently in Olympia for one meal, thanks to Happy Cow reviewers mentioning their favourite dishes I ended up ordering something amazing.

Vegetarian Almond Chicken from Saigon Rendezvous in Olympia.

The Vegan passport. Honestly, I am not the hugest fan of the vegan passport. It will only get you so far and it's quite rude to point a book at someone without attempting to converse in the language of the country you're visiting, another common language or at least frantic hand gestures. I'd say it's an acceptable last resort.

Another area where the vegan passport falls short is when you're trying to read labels. I've been making these little wallet sized lists of common non-vegan words and their translations for a while now and they're super useful. I love discovering fun treats like accidentally vegan cookies or chocolate when I'm travelling and it's definitely been very handy when sorting the vegan sausages from the egg filled veggie versions in Western Europe.

Exciting treats from Croatia and Spain.

Here's my vegan words template, you just need to use google translate to translate the words into whichever language you need. Here are the ones I've done so far in Swedish, Croatian and Spanish.

Remember that your phone may not work abroad. I know this sounds super basic but the ability to look up a restaurant or health food store's location on your phone's map service is so ingrained that it can be easy to forget that it wont be an option abroad. I always print a google map of my location and mark the vegan dining options, stores and non-touristy places I'm interested in visiting. Make sure to include an actual address (cab drivers don't wanna see your scribbled on map!) and opening hours.

Maps from Zagreb and Seattle.

There are options to access the internet abroad from your smart phone. For the US I have a T-Mobile pay by the day sim for my iPhone which costs $2 a day if I use it and nothing on the days I don't (It does need topping up every 90 days, or every 365 days if you top up by more than $100) This might not be practical if you're travelling on a super tight budget but it's really great if you'll be visiting somewhere repeatedly. We're looking into getting a mobile phone rental service for our trip to Japan next spring.

When it comes down to deciding where to travel, well, that's totally up to you! I'm sometimes a total food driven traveller, I decided to visit Austin specifically because of their food scene and I ended up loving the city so much that I now want to live there. On other trips I was interested in the city first and the food scene second. Neither of these styles is right or wrong and I've had pretty much equal success when it's come to feeding myself with both approaches - sure, sometimes the food's a little more exciting but I've never starved!

Next time we'll be covering packing and preparing which will include one of my favourite topics, snacks!

I see a lot of super fancy and super healthy days on What I Ate Wednesday posts but that's not what I'm all about. This is just a day in the life of a regular grrrl who's trying to clear out her fridge! I'm basically showing you what a slightly lazy vegan might eat on a day spent writing blog posts, reading blogs, masterminding MoFo giveaways and catching up with a weeks worth of Neighbours!

I started the day with an Alpro Fruity & Creamy peach yoghurt and a chopped banana with a glass of freshly squeezed OJ on the side.

I'm pretty fussy about yoghurts and the fruity & creamy style Alpro is the only kind I like, those and Sojasun but you can't buy them here.

Unsurprisingly I was hungry within a few hours of eating that so I made a sandwich and gathered some grapes and the last of the Dandies marshmallows from our Portland/Seattle trip.

My sandwich is made with Pizza flavoured Violife slices, margarine and a Warburtons sandwich thin. I think that anyone could probably make this sandwich! Violife sent me every flavour of their cheeses to review recently and I'm diligently working my way through all 10 packs before I write about them. Pizza flavour is definitely up there with my favourites.

A couple more hours passed and it was time for something a little more substantial, enter the baked potato.

I nuked this in the microwave for five minutes before letting it crisp up in the oven at gas mark 9 for 5 minutes each side. I heated up some Heinz baked beans and then fancied the whole thing up with a little of my favourite Vegusto cheese, the Piquant incase you're interested!

When dinner time rolled around I was starving again so I munched on a handful of Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate Covered Mini Pretzels whilst I cooked. I'm down to my last bag so I'm extra glad I'm going to be back in the US at the end of next week.

Because I'm about to go away I'm trying really hard to clear out my fridge and for some reason I have a lot of leeks in my veggie drawer. I was racking my brain for leek based recipes when Nick (that's my husband for new MoFo readers. Hi!) suggested the Leek & Bean Cassoulet from Veganomicon. The man's a genius.

I had no suitable beans and I couldn't be bothered to make the biscuits so I subbed Soy Curls, pre-soaked in veggie stock and thoroughly squeezed, and made a stovetop version. This was delicious and it even used up all of our potatoes, I used to make this dish about fortnightly when my cookbook collection was smaller and I loved this reminder of an old favourite.

According to my MoFo plan today's WIAW was meant to show you guys what a British vegan eats on an average day. I've failed pretty miserably at that because I ate, um, three things that aren't available here at all and one that's only currently available via mail order! I'll try to be more British next week!

Thirsty Thursday is one of the themes we came up with in the Vegan MoFo workshop at Vida Vegan Con and I jumped on it because I love the idea of a no-cook day!

Today I thought I'd show you some of my favourite drinks, alcoholic and non. I recently got the book 365 vegan smoothies because I was trying to convince myself that I don't need a juicer!

So far it's not really working and the only smoothie I've loved enough to make again is the first one I tried. The Sassy Green Kick-Start is delicious and packed full of kale, banana, oranges, green grapes and lemon juice. I sub regular water for the coconut because, ew, I tried it a couple of times and I think it ruins everything it touches!

This next one is the best green juice I've ever tasted. It's from Chaco Canyon in Seattle and it's an apple, orange, spinach and mint combo that made my tastebuds explode. What can I say, I like my juices fruity.

I also enjoy a fancy fruity cocktail from time to time. I'm not a huge drinker but this Rhubarb G + T from Terre a Terre sucked me right in.

I also love the cocktail night that Boho Gelato put on in conjunction with Slice Sussex, this monthly event always makes half of the list vegan so that everyone can enjoy. If you're in Brighton the next one's tomorrow.

Green Juices are hard to come by in Brighton, although I've been tipped off recently that Guarana Bar on Sydney Street is the place to go, and when you can't go green go red! This strawberry, kale, broccoli and spinach combo is jam packed with vitamin c and more importantly it's delicious.

I'm also a big fan of peach juice, I hardly ever spot this so when I do I dive right in.

Cider has always had a special place in my heart, in my teens and early twenties I used to drink a lot of cheap dirty cider but now I have the occasional nice cider. Honestly my alcohol tolerance is low enough that just one of these Strawberry Lime Rekorderling ciders can push me over the edge!

Probably my favourite and impossible to find drink is lonkero, or, gin in a tin! It's Finnish and it used to be on sale at one of my favourite pubs, The Northern Lights. It's currently unavailable which makes me a little sad - do we need to have another protest?

I'm occasionally partial to a beer or two. Corona is great when paired with a burrito and a lime slice.

My favourite beer of all is Lone Star, I'm not really a beer connoisseur so I can't really explain why. I think it might be because it reminds me of Austin!

I spent a long time researching vegan stouts before visiting Ireland earlier this year (wow, was that really only this year? That's crazy.) and my favourite ended up being O'Hara's. I hadn't drunk stout since going vegetarian many years ago and I really enjoyed reuniting with an old favourite.

My other favourite drinks are root beer (which is getting a post of its very own) and water which, lets face it, isn't something I can really blog about. Just in case you're fascinated by my water consumption I drink around 3 litres a day and whilst I like it fancied it up with a slice of cucumber on occasion I need you to keep your lemon slices well away!

Not all vegans are bothered about whether what they're drinking is vegan but I am. We're lucky in the UK because a lot of the big supermarkets including Sainsbury's, The Co-op and Marks & Spencer's label their alcohol as vegan in the same way that they label their food. That definitely makes shopping easier! I also use Barnivore and UK site Veggie Wines to do my research into branded drinks and, as I'm sure you can see, I'm not missing out on any fun!

I kicked off Vegan MoFo 2012 with post about Austin's Bouldin Creek Coffeehouse and in it I talked about the amazing noochy scramble they make. I didn't include this next picture in the post because it kinda sucks & it really doesn't convey how delicious this meal was. It was my favourite out of everything I tried there and I knew I wanted to recreate it as soon as I came up with Facsimilie Friday. Facsimile Friday is where I'm going to recreate my favourite dishes from my travels. The best place I've ever been is Austin, Texas. I love everything about that city - the vegan scene, the people, the weather, the amount of rad outdoor stuff there is to do, food carts, live music everywhere. It's just the best. Go! I could go on and on about why I love Bouldin Creek and Austin for hours but this is about scramble to I'll try to stick to that.

Also when I said I wanted to recreate it I meant I wanted Nick to recreate it. He's the resident scramble maker in this house - it's one of his specialities alongside pancakes, microwave cake and having the patience to whisk things until properly thickened.

As you can see the Bouldin Creek scramble is made up of steamed spinach, fresh local tomatoes, noochy tofu scramble and sourdough toast with a slice of lemon on the side. This means that my plate of food is also made up of those exact same things. That's how Facsimile Friday works people! I even managed to find an organic English tomato which was as close to good as British tomatoes ever get. I also fried my spinach with garlic because I freaking love garlic and because I couldn't be bothered to get my steamer out of the drawer it lives in.

As I mentioned Nick was in charge of scramble and he refuses to measure things or follow recipes properly so I'll try to give you a decent idea of what he did.

We always buy Taifun tofu in 400g packs, this makes 3 good servings of scramble. It's super extra firm (not a real thing) and you really don't need to press it. I would press any other tofu before making this recipe. He crumbled and smooshed the tofu in a bowl until it had the right still-chunky consistency and then fried it in 1 tsp of olive oil until it started to crisp up a little. This is not normal scramble practice in our house but it works in this recipe. He then added about 1/4 tsp of turmeric, 1/2 tsp of onion powder & 2 cloves of garlic smooshed in a press and fried for a further 2 minutes. He then added about 1 1/2 tsps of American style mustard before adding the best part, 1/2 of a cup of nooch. This got stirred in for a few minutes and then he seasoned the whole thing with S+P before adding 1 1/2 TBS of Alpro soya cream.

This didn't come out quite the same as the Bouldin Creek version and we think we needed to squeeze a little lemon into the scramble itself and fry the tofu for longer before adding any of the other ingredients, maybe 10 minutes rather than 5? I'm not sure. We're bad at writing recipes!

We love A LOT of nooch, you may not. If not this isn't the scramble for you. There are a million other scrambles out there so no worries, you'll find one you love.

The whole plan behind Saturday Snoozeday is to post pictures of epic breakfasts, lazy breakfasts in bed, amazing breakfasts even. Sadly today there were no such breakfasts because today Nick & I are heading to a wedding at The Barbican in London. I'm actually posting this from the train using the blogger app on my phone. It's the first time I've used it so if it sucks, sorry!

I spent the morning trying to remember how to put on make up, painting my nails and practicing walking in heels so there wasn't much time for eating. On the plus side I look faaancy!

I managed to squeeze in a slice of my favourite toast, white sourdough from Infinity Foods bakery slathered in Vitalite.

I am bulking up this unsubstantial brekkie with an Iced & Spiced bun from M&S purchased at the station which I intend to devour as soon as I finish writing!

I hope everyone's had an awesome first week of MoFo, I know I've been loving reading your posts.

PS - Keep your fingers crossed for vegan wedding food!

Iiiiiit's Football Food Sunday you guys!! We're extra excited about this one because football season has begun, waaahay! The 49ers are playing their first game today which starts at 9:25pm our time so I got hungry and ate the football food already. Nick's more restrained and will be eating his at game time.

Erin from Meet the Wikos kicked off 2013's Vegan MoFo with a football food post inspired by my Football Food Sundays. In turn I was inspired by her totchos, or tater tot nachos, such a rad idea right?

Tots aren't a thing here in the UK and the closest sub I could find on a Sunday morning in Brighton was a bag of potato croquettes. I actually tried my first tot in Seattle this spring and the croquettes seem to have a more blended potato filling and are two or even three times the size of a tot. A megatot if you will.

I topped my totchos with guacamole, mild salsa, Toffuti sour cream, grated Follow Your Heart cheddar cheese and spring onions. They were freaking delicious and I love using football as an excuse to eat ridiculously trashy food.

Next Sunday I'll be looking for some football food to eat in San Francisco whilst watching the 49ers. Let's hope I'm successful, watch this space.

Last Monday I wrote about my favourite mac recipes and this week I'm trying a new recipe, the Mac & Shews from The PPK blog. This has been on my to-make list since Isa published it back in February 2011 which is a ridiculously long time to have been skipping over such an awesome looking recipe. As I said in the comments on the Mac & Shews post I'd never even tried sauerkraut back then and now I'm a confirmed mega fan who throws it into sandwiches and onto hot dogs as often as I can.

This recipe has a roux at its base which is then built upon with creamy cashews, sauerkraut and, of course, nooch. If you've never made one before don't be intimidated by the roux, it's surprisingly simple and as long as you don't burn your flour you should be fine. Roux's are one of Nick's specialities so he was in charge of ours and he did a fine job.

This was a truly exceptional mac 'n cheese, similar in texture to the Mac Daddy from Veganomicon but with a deeper flavour thanks to the sauerkraut. Nick didn't look overly impressed when he spotted what was going into our blender (he hates sauerkraut. I know!) but he was definitely enamoured with the final result. This is a recipe that will be getting added to my list of favourites fo' sure.

I can't wait to try Isa's Chipotle Mac & Cheese with Roasted Brussels Sprouts next as this recipe's shown that she really has a way with nooch! One thing you might've noticed if you clicked through to the original recipe is the similarity in our photos, obviously Isa's is better, she probably didn't take hers in a dark room with three different lights pointing at it, but I never know how to make my mac's photograph well so I, er, 'borrowed' the styling from her! If you're reading this, thanks Isa!

Hey y'all, welcome to part two of my Travel Tips series, part one is right here. Last week we discussed research and today we're talking about packing and preparing which is perfect because I'm in the throes of doing this right now. We leave for San Francisco in three days and I have open suitcases and piles of clean clothes scattered all over the place! I still consider myself a bit of a novice when it comes to travelling light, I've never been away for more than a week just with a backpack and I find it pretty hard to take less underwear than there are days in the trip. This is mainly because I hate doing laundry and I know that I'd just end up buying more if I packed less -when we start going on lengthier trips this is something I'm going to have to address!

Anyway, without further ado here are my top tips for packing and preparing for your trip:

Aside from doing some research my top tip for travelling as a vegan is to pack some emergency snacks. It doesn't matter whether I'm taking a transatlantic flight or popping up the M25 to visit my in laws I will always have snacks on me. This tip may not be for everyone but I know what I'm like when I'm hungry (irritable, light headed, no fun at all) and I'd rather have a few Clif bars, Spacebars or shelf stable sachets of hummus and peanut butter with me than risk being stranded and hungry at a random bus stop.

Book the VGML but take backup. The VGML, airline code for Vegan Meal, should be available on the majority of long haul flights. I've had a non-vegan breakfast as part of this meal before as well numerous non vegan margarines and dubious bread rolls so, read the labels people, but the majority of the meal has always been okay. I like eating though so I take backup snacks! Hummus and carrot sticks have to be my favourite plane snack, delicious, fresh and crunchy they're the perfect accompaniment to your probably overcooked airline meal. I also have a stash of Clif bars, chocolate, and other non-perishables because it's no big deal if you don't eat them but if you're stuck at an airport, or worse, on the tarmac, facing a long delay they can be a lifesaver. I also like to take popcorn on longer flights because watching a film or two is a great way to pass the time and watching a film without popcorn is no fun. These are the snacks I've packed for my flight to San Francisco this Friday. Minus the carrot sticks because it's only Tuesday and I don't think they'd appreciate it!

Clockwise from 11 O'clock, Oatcakes, Clif Bar, two Spacebars, Sweet 'n Salty popcorn, PB sachet, Hummus sachet, chocolate, creamy basil pate.

Keep an eye on the current liquid bag restrictions. I've heard so many stories of vegans having their jars of Speculoos taken away whilst trying to board a plane outa Belgium and it makes me sad. You can't take a huge glass jar of spread onto a plane in your carry on guys, pack that shit in your checked bag! Tubs of hummus are also a no-no unless you package it into containers 100ml in size or less and fit them into your clear 20cm x 20cm liquid bag. For example two or three of those mini tubs or sachets of hummus is fine, one big one is a no no. Sometimes my liquid bag is the most vegan thing ever, I was feeling a little under the weather on my way to Dublin earlier this year so I even packed a mini green smoothie alongside my moisturiser, mascara and lip balm. There's also a walnut butter sachet in there to perk up an apple on the flight!

If you read a lot and can afford it buy an e-reader already. I've only just gotten my head around this one and mine arrived last week. I usually pack 4 paperbacks for a 1 - 3 week trip so it's saving me a whole world of space. I'm sure it'll be even more useful when we're packing stuff into a backpack each rather than the three suitcases we usually take abroad - hey, I never said I was perfect and two of them are cabin sized! For the type of travelling we've been doing it's not been impractical to take a tonne of stuff but as I said at the beginning of my post I'm working on becoming more of a packing light kinda traveller. There's no way I'm lugging anything bigger than a backpack around Japan's rail network for three weeks!

I always get asked how I bring home things like Tofurky, Daiya and Veganaise and the answer is pretty simple, I just pack them securely in my checked bag. Foods like these will be totally fine unrefrigerated for 24 hours or so and you're allowed to bring packaged foods into most countries. To give everything the best chance of surviving I insulate refrigerated or frozen items in t-shirts and pack them snugly in the centre of my case; nobody wants to get home to clothes covered in smashed glass and mayo!

Plastic cutlery is your friend. I always have my little plastic spoon & knife in my bag. At a push just the spoon will do. Perfect for making sandwiches and spreading Tartex pate on everything.

Always take a food clip! This is kind of an ongoing joke between Nick and I because I always have one of those little bag clips right by me whether we're outa the house or lounging in bed. I love trying new snacks (like this Earth Balance White Cheddar Popcorn pictured below) but you often can't eat the whole thing in one go and you really don't want it spilling out of the pack and rolling around in your bag. Along the same lines I always take a couple of those zip seal food baggies with me, they're perfect for storing that half of a sandwich you couldn't manage or the one donut leftover from the box of six you picked up.

Classy, amiright?!

If you're going to be self catering for a short period of time pop a mini bottle of washing up liquid and a sponge into a zip seal baggie and take it with you. These things are unlikely to be provided in your average self catering apartment or cottage and it's annoying to have to either a- splash out €6 of your travel budget on an eco brand or b- resort to buying something cheap and probably animal tested. It's something you're going to use a tiny bit of and then leave behind so why waste the money? I use a smaller version of this.

If you think you'll want to do laundry or soak in a bubble bath whilst you're away you should definitely pick up a bar of FUN from LUSH. I've sliced a piece off of mine and I take it away with me in one of these little jars. You can wash your body, hair and clothes with it but it gets a little messy when wet hence the leakproof container.

So those were my top tips for packing and preparing for a trip. Have I missed anything amazing that you pack when you travel? I'm always excited to learn something new so leave your tips in the comments.

This is a bit of a step away from a traditional What I Ate Wednesday post but honestly I'm shocked that I've managed to stick to my themes for this long!

Today's extra special because Anika from Seattle blog Vegan Score came down to Brighton for the day to hang out and eat as much delicious vegan food as it's possible to squeeze into one day.

We hit up Terre à Terre for lunch and ordered the non alcoholic Terre à Verre menu which comes with a fruity cocktail of your choice, I chose the Lychee Blush.

Next you get a wonderful Terre à Tapas plate to share which is a beautiful selection of mini-dishes from around the menu. Today's tapas included cauli & binger bhajis, aubergine zhuganoush, ratatouille, wasabi cashews, beetroot soup with a nori dusted puffed rice seaweed cracker & deep fried spice dusted polenta cakes served with a chilli jelly. I'm sure there were also two other things that can't remember the names of.

You also get a bowl of their Chunky Hand Cut Chips with an avocado lime hash for dipping.

This meal is absolutely perfect for two people to share and we both loved eating it and discussing the dishes as we went along. We managed to squeeze in some Boho Gelato after a walk along the beach, I had coffee flavour and Anika had the last of the Peanut Butter Sea Salt Caramel - this is my very favourite gelato so I think I deserve props for suppressing my instincts, being a decent hostess and not rugby tackling my guest to the ground so that I could get to the last of it!

After more walking and a drink at my local pub we went to local sushi spot Moshimo's Vegan Challenge Night. They put this on every year and basically what happens is chefs from local restaurants get into Moshi's kitchen and battle it out to present the best sushi dish they can make. There are points for innovation, presentation and taste and it's always a fun night. I just got home and as I have a round up still to write for the official Vegan MoFo blog that write up will have to wait until tomorrow, catch ya then.

PS - I can't believe how fine I'm cutting this one, only 21 minutes until I'd have missed a day!

Every year as part of the Brighton Food Festival one of my favourite local restaurants Moshimo, formerly known as Moshi Moshi, turn their entire restaurant vegan for a night so that local chefs can compete in The Great Vegan Maki Challenge. This year the contestants competing to create the best Japan inspired dishes with a twist were La Choza, Cantina Supper Club, Sam's of Brighton, Sabai Thai, VBites w/ Boho Gelato and Terre à Terre.

The first dish outa the kitchen last night was created by the chefs at local Mexican spot, La Choza. This little tostada topped with chocolate black beans, radish slaw and wasabi guac with a side of vinegared radish and spring onion salad made my tastebuds pop and was actually my favourite dish of the evening. I didn't have the best experience when I visited their restaurant earlier in the year but our whole table was wowed by this Mexican twist on sushi and I shall certainly be re-visiting the restaurant as soon as possible.

Second out of the kitchen and placing second on my scorecard as well as third overall was this sesame seeded sweet potato topped with a ginger & soya bean puree and deep fried lotus root. This was exquisite and probably the only dish that has ever made me like sweet potato! This was made by Cantina and it made me realise that I need to make more of an effort to stop by her stall at various foodie festivals around town.

Thirdly Moshimo's first entry came out of the kitchen, described as Forbidden Maki this black and white rice maki roll was filled with oyster mushrooms, asparagus & carrot, topped with avocado and decorated with pomegranite beads and a sweet chilli dressing. I scored this higher for presentation than I did for taste, we all felt that the chilli overpowered the flavour of the vegetabes and the pomegranate beads didn't necessarily compliment the rest of the dish.

Next up, Sam's of Brighton, and you could tell that chef Sam Metcalfe was out of his meat reliant comfort zone with this one. Whilst the slaw was flavourful the aubergine was bland, undercooked and his sauce overpowered the delicate flavour of the vegetable. There were also very mixed feeling about the soup from around our table, people either loved it or hated it!

Neither these dishes nor Sam's vociferous comments about having duck confit simmering on the stove at home made me want to visit his Hove based restaurant and I would strongly suggest he learns to have a little more tact when he's in a room full of vegans.

Next up was a thai inspired dish which could only have been from Sabai Thai. The chef decided to use VBites vegan chicken to create their chicken salad which was flavoured with mint, coriander, red onion, lime, chilli and soy sauce. The overall feeling around our table was that this dish was inconsistent in both flavour and presentation. Two were super spicy, one was incredibly bland and the rest were nicely spiced. Two came in perfect crisp lettuce cups and the rest were presented on rather limp, not to mention completely impossible to pick up, leaves. I'm afraid this one was a miss.

A dessert course from last years winners, VBites, came next. Titled Cosplayer's Dream this Japanese lotus root candy with almond and cherry blossom crumble and Boho Gelato jasmine ice cream won high marks across the board and took first place in the competition. The ice cream was beautifully flavoured, the crumble went with it perfectly and made me think that Boho themselves should start offering some fancy toppings for their ice creams and the lotus root candy kinda blew my mind. It was spectacular but I wouldn't expect anything less from the chef who created last years truffle topped green tea and pandan ice cream - I think everyone would like to see more of this at VBites. I'm also happy to tell you that if you missed the ice cream here Boho are making more and it'll be in store this week.

Moshimo's second entry came next and this tropical maki was stuffed with strawberry, mango, cucumber, passionfruit sauce and a tofu sesame paste. This ranked pretty highly among my favourites and I went so far as to steal one off of a fellow diner who was too full to continue. I thought the flavours really complimented each other, I adored the tofu sesame paste, and thought that this was an amazing twist on Moshimo's classic Japanese fare.

Last but by no means least another dish that my entire table ranked highly was this beautiful, but terribly photographed, plate by Terre à Terre. Described as a coconut pistachio wafer with raspberry dusted coconut ice, a pistachio smudge, rosemary and rosewater puree and toasted coconut flakes this dish couldn't have come from anyone else. All of the classic Terre à Terre touches were there and we loved the ice cream and subtly sweet wafer. It was no surprise that this dish ranked in the top three.

I've now been to this night and blogged about it three years in a row so I've noticed some interesting changes along the way. This year the service was spot on, the dishes came out of the kitchen far quicker than in previous years, and we loved that there was a more whole foods focus in the dishes themselves rather than like back in year one where all of the contestants had to use a VBites product in their dish.

Sadly as well as noticing the good I noticed the not-so-good and I have to say that overall I thought that the quality of the dishes themselves went down this year when compared to the last two, don't get me wrong there were still some standout dishes but I'm still thinking about the two beautiful dishes Moshimo created for last years competition and I wished that there was a savoury dish as spectacular as Cashew Catering's crispy mock duck, mushroom and cheese dumpling with a wasabi foam from the first challenge I went to.

Another change that I'm not sure was for the better was that aside from some edamame there were none of Moshimo's own dishes to nibble on before, during or after the competition. In year one they had all of their vegan dishes going around the belt which I think was probably too far in the other direction but I think they had it spot on last year when they sent out a selection of dishes for people to sample whilst the score cards were being tallied; I hope that this approach makes a return next time as I spoke to a few people who'd been before who noticed that there was much less to be had for the same ticket price this time around.

Overall this was another fantastic event from Moshimo and we had a wonderful time, I can't wait for next year. This'll be my last Brighton related post for a little while as I'm jetting off to San Francisco bright and early tomorrow morning, I'm still going to be MoFoing every day though so keep an eye on the blog to see what this vegan eats on the road.

Welcome to the second instalment of Facsimile Friday MoFo's. Last week saw me whipping up a noochy tofu scram from Bouldin Creek Coffeehouse in Austin and today sees me re-creating the best Benedict I've ever eaten. The Benedict in question is on the menu at Cafe Blossom on Carmine in NYC which is approximately 3473 miles away.

The Benedict itself comes with house-made cornbread, ham and grilled asparagus and I described it in my review as both "Brilliant" and "One of the best meals I've ever eaten". High praise.

If I woke up and decided, what the hell, I'm having this for brunch, it would cost around £1556 including transfers and tips. This is obviously ridiculous so I decided to have a crack at making it at home instead.

My version includes home-made cornbread, bologna, grilled asparagus and a homemade hollandaise.

It is not as pretty as the one from Blossom neither was it as delicious but I think I had a damn good crack at it and it was obviously way cheaper to make than flying to NYC just to eat the original would be.

I used the Chipotle Scallion Double Cornbread recipe from Vegan Diner, Yves Bologna slices (fried in a little olive oil), a simple tofu "egg" recipe which involves dredging the tofu in equal parts apple cider vinegar and olive oil plus seasonings and then baking for 15 minutes each side, the Hollandaise recipe from Vegan Brunch was next and then I topped it off with braised asparagus cooked in a little oil, white wine, salt and pepper. We also coated the cornbread in breadcrumbs and fried that for good measure.

I'd say that I'd definitely make the egg, hollandaise and asparagus components again but I'd probably replace the Yves bacon with Redwood veggie bacon and the cornbread with a simple wholewheat English muffin just to make the whole meal quicker and easier which, at brunch, is important.

Let's catch up!

Portland Part 1

Portland Part 2

Portland: Portobello & Departure Lounge

Almost that time again...

Having a Blast.

24 hours in Vancouver

Vegan MoFo 2013 - Football Food Sunday

Mac 'n Cheese Monday - My Favourite Mac 'n Cheese Recipes

Travel Tip Tuesday - Research.

What I Ate Wednesday - Vegan MoFo 2013 Edition.

Vegan MoFo 2013 - Thirsty Thursday

Facsimilie Friday - Bouldin Creek Scramble

Saturday Snoozeday

MoFo 2013 - Football Food Sunday

Mac 'n Cheese Monday - Trying a new recipe.

Travel Tip Tuesday - Packing and Preparing

WIAW: Terre à Terre edition

Moshiomo Great Vegan Maki Challenge

Facsimile Friday - Blossom Benedict