I can't believe I haven't blogged about December's UK Vegan Food Swap yet. I had flu for about three weeks in December so I didn't get to try most of this tasty box of treats until last week. This was sent to me by Justine who as far as I know doesn't have a blog - leave me a comment if you do Justine & I'll link to it!
The first things I tried last month were the co-operative fairtrade peppermint creams, I'm a sucker for a peppermint cream and these were great. Nick inhaled the flapjack almost as soon as we opened the package & he thought it was great. I was super excited to see one of my favourite treats, a Jokerz bar, nestled within the contents of the box. They sell these at Infinity Foods but I don't buy them very often because they're pretty expensive.
I got tattooed last week and took the fruity gummy bears with me to keep my blood sugar up and the Moo Free bar & bag of dark chocolate soy-snacks are waiting for me to have my next chocolate craving.
Just before Christmas Nick and I went up to London to see the American Idiot musical, we pretty much got together because of Green Day - we met at work when I was 21 and we bonded over our love of 90's punk rock - so obviously we thought that the musical was amazing! We headed to Tibits before the show and I had this amazing plate of food. Onion rings, dal, pasta with butternut squash & greens, falafel, a tofu, apple & ginger salad, sweetcorn and a tasty olive filled roll.
The dal and the tofu, apple & ginger salad were the two standout dishes from this meal. I'd never tried either of them before and if I see them I'll definitely be getting them again. I obviously loved the onion rings, corn & falafel too, yum!
We were in luck with the dessert buffet too, they had the Sticky Toffee Pudding and a Chocolate Pudding. I didn't try the chocolate pudding but I love the sticky toffee pudding & I can't ever resist a piece if I see it on the food boat. I love that you can see Nick's spoon looming on the left side of this picture, I was going to edit it out but I thought it really summed up our eating out experiences - me snapping pic's and him wanting me to hurry up so he can eat!
We were kinda hungry again by the time we got the train home so we split a pasty from the West Cornwall Pasty Co. They only have one vegan pasty option, their wholewheat vegetable pasty but it's pretty darn good and, honestly, just being able to get a vegan pasty at the train station is good enough for me!
Their potato wedges are also vegan but I haven't tried them yet. You also have to be careful not to get the West Cornwall Pasty Co mixed up with The Cornish Pasty Company - their signage is almost exactly the same and the second place doesn't have vegan options. The West Cornwall Pasty Co is located around near platform 1 at London Victoria and on Duke Street in Brighton - the rest you'll have to find for yourselves!
My little one woman, not-for-profit, Operation Icing is still baking for local veggie cafe Waikikamookau. In December I made plenty of Black Forest Gateaux cupcakes...
...as well as loads of everyone's favourite, Peanut Butter Chocolate.
I'm still cooking up a storm from Terry Hope Romero's Vegan Eats World, here's what I've made since my last post. This is the Pad See Ew, as soon as I saw this recipe I knew I'd be making it. Pad See Ew is my favourite Thai dish, I always order it at Pukk in NYC and I was amazed at how well it turned out. For some reason I'm the worst at stir fries but with Terry's directions I was confident that it'd be okay!
I had to do quite a lot of searching to find all of the soy sauces called for in this one but it was oh so worth it.
Nick & I also made the Tart Tatin. We cheated a little & used some store-bought pastry (Jus Rol) as we had some left over from making mince pies. This made the whole thing super simple although we found that our apples took quite a bit longer to caramelise than the recipe suggested.
This wasn't a problem, we just needed to be patient and really keep an eye on it. Terry says in the recipe that caramel can turn from something delicious to a burnt mess in seconds and I could see how easily this could've happened if we'd been distracted. This was unbelievably delicious, I always loved tart tatin in my pre-vegan days & I'm not sure why I'd never considered making a vegan version before. I love fruity desserts just as much as I love chocolatey ones & I can't wait to take this tart to the next level by whipping up the olive oil crust suggested in the book.
My favourite new years surprise was winning a copy of Amey's Yum Town zine over on her blog Vegan Eats & Treats.
I love Amey's blog, she's always making the most delicious looking food and, as you can see, her illustrations are adorable! I love her idea of making a yearly zine & I'm very tempted to give it a go myself this year, she even has this great zine making guide up on her blog.