iHerb

I have a new obsession! iHerb.com! This US mail order site has a huge range of fun vegan products. The most exciting thing about them is that their international shipping costs are ridiculously low & the packages arrive fast. Really fast. I ordered this box of goodies at around 10pm on Friday the 3rd & they arrived bright & early this morning, it's Thursday the 9th! That's 3 working days! I don't know how they do it, I suspect it's magic!

The only thing you need to do for your shipping to be uber cheap is to keep the weight of your box under or around 4lbs. The website lists the weight of each product & your cart adds up the weights and also the shipping cost without you having to fill in ALL of your details first. It's definitely cheaper to order two 4lb boxes than one 8lb box so I can order in small amounts more regularly rather than having to justify the cost of say, Vegan Essentials shipping, once or twice a year. This box of goodies cost me £10 in total which is an amount I can totally work into my bi-monthly food budget.

Eco Planet Cheddar Crackers are probably the one product that you can't buy in the UK that I can't live without. I can just about deal with a life without Oreo's or Tofurky slice but tell me I can't have these cheesy salty little crackers & I kinda want to pack my bags & move across the ocean immediately! Yeah, I know I'm being melodramatic but that's how much I love them!

The first time I ordered from iHerb I bought 4 boxes of Eco Planet Cheddar Crackers & some Edward & Son's Not Chick'n Bouillon Cubes. This time I squeezed in 3 boxes of crackers, a box of Peanut Butter Caramel Brown Rice Marshmallow Treats & a box of Late July Vanilla & Green Tea Sandwich Cookies.

On my list of things I haven't ordered yet but would like to buy are...

-Peanut Butter or/and Dark Chocolate Late July Sandwich Cookies

-Crazy Rumours & Hurraw lip balms

-Tinkyada Spinach Spaghetti

-Chocolove raspberry dark chocolate, cherries & almonds in dark chocolate, almonds & sea salt dark chocolate and orange peel dark chocolate bars

-A Boom Choco Boom Rice Milk Chocolate Bar

-The Vanilla or Chocolate rice crispy treat bars

-Dandies

There are many more exciting vegan products on there as this search for vegan food shows!

If you're going to order from iHerb (get the crackers!) you can get $5 off of your first order by using the coupon code JOJ321. Whenever people order using my code it seems to give me money off my next order (win!) but also you save $5, awesome! What are you going to order?!

What's new?

I found some new & exciting things in Infinity Foods today...

They're now stocking all four of Fry's new products! The first to catch my eye were the Louisiana Tenders, I was lucky enough to try a sample of them at the Kensington Christmas Without Cruelty Fair & they were outstanding. Fry's Chicken Style Burgers are my favourite mock chicken product & these are similar inside but outside is very different. They are coated with a crisp, lightly spiced, batter which is possibly even more delicious than the bread crumb coating of my go to burgers. Nestled next to the tenders in the freezer were the new Fry's Pops. I don't know if this was intended but to me these seem like a cruelty free version of KFCs Popcorn Chicken. It's products like this that'll convince the devoted meat eater in your life to quit it! Unfortunately I wasn't fast enough to grab a sample of these at the Vegan Fair... I know right? I must be losing my skills! But I did grab a couple of boxes for dinner tonight, I cannot wait for Nick to get back from work so that we can crack into them!

Also spotted in the freezer section, Fry's new pies! There are two kinds, Meat Free Pepper Steak-Style and Country Mushroom.


I really like that they come in boxes of two, I try to eat a little healthily (Yeah, you would't know it from the blog would you?!) and if I buy a pack of 4 pies they will be gone within two or three days because someone in this house does't like pies. Seriously... doesn't like pie. I'll leave that to sink in for a moment because, really? That's crazy right?! I'm going away for the weekend & my freezer is stuffed full so I didn't pick up any pies today but I can assure you that as soon as I'm back I'll be grabbing a box of Country Mushroom.

Another tasty treat that caught my eye today were these new Swedish Glace Pearl ice cream lollies.

I'm super excited to see a Swedish Glace product that isn't just another straight up ice cream. These are fun! And look how cute the box is! These strawberry ice cream lollies are covered in a chocolate flavoured coating and then covered in strawberry flavoured pearls. Yum! What's also awesome is that Infinity Foods aren't just selling these by the box, oh no, they have them for sale individually too. Perfect for when you're by yourself or with a friend with different tastes in ice cream to you.

Hopefully you live somewhere where you can get a hold of these products & this post isn't just taunting you with the brilliance of new vegan foods that you can't get in your belly immediately...if you don't live near here I suggest that you consider a trip, Brighton's awesome & I've even compiled a handy eating guide for you right here!

Tibits

I've blogged about Tibits a couple of times before & I'm going to write about it again right now! You know why? Because I love it! One of my main reasons for loving it is that I am one of those people who will order the same thing at a restaurant over & over again if I have the chance, here you can't do that. There always seems to be something that I've never tried before & I like to be pushed out of my foodie comfort zone from time to time.

In case you've never heard of Tibits they're a veggie pay-by-weight restaurant located just off Regent Street in Central London. I love the pay by weight concept & the fact that you get a free bread roll, yup, that's right, something for free!

All of the food is in the middle of the restaurant on what they call the food boat...

...and if you look closely at the labels there's not only a description of the dish & what it contains but little letters which indicate whether the dish is vegan, and if it contains gluten, nuts or garlic.

As well as a staggering selection of cold salads & nibbles there are always some delicious hot options. I'm a huge fan of their onion rings & falafel because I have a deep seated love for fried food!



Alongside the fabulous food Tibits have a great cocktail list. The staff are pretty knowledgeable about which drinks are vegan and the wine list behind the bar even has V's on it to make things easier.

These plates of food both came to around £12 which given how huge they were is definitely great value for money.

I love all of Tibits pasta salads, their tomato topped focaccia is mouthwateringly good and the onion rings? Seriously, I think they're what my dreams are made of! The batter is alway perfectly crisp and not at all greasy.

Recently Tibits have started adding vegan desserts to the food boat and when I visited they had an excellent Sticky Toffee Pudding...

...in fact it was so excellent & my picture was so terrible that I shall leave how it looked to your imagination. I will say that I have considered paying the £28 train fare just to go to London on the spur of the moment to eat it!

Another great thing about Tibits is that they are the fantastic venue for London Vegan Drinks. This excellent event takes place on the third Thursday of every month and it's a great way to meet new people whilst enjoying delicious food & drinks.

Sadly I can't make it to todays London Vegan Drinks but I hope that everyone who does attend has an awesome time & hopefully I'll be able to make it to the next one.

Where've you been?

I feel like I owe you guys an explanation about why I've disappeared from the blogosphere since MoFo ended. I definitely experienced a bit of MoFo burnout, after cooking & blogging like crazy every day for a whole month I felt like I needed a little break but it's been almost three months & I've been finding it really hard to get back into it.

I feel like there's a lot of pressure recently to have hundreds of followers and comments and page views. I was starting to get bogged down in these silly details and it was making it hard to motivate myself to write anything at all.

For me blogging has stopped being fun recently, I feel like I have to get up early (which I hate!) to cook food so that I can take great pictures of it whilst it's still light, and that I need to order a new dish every time I go to a restaurant so that I can blog about it. I almost started thinking that I needed to do a competition where people had to re-tweet me or blog about my blog to enter but thankfully I got a hold of myself before I went there!

I know that other bloggers have been feeling this pressure too and some of them have even quit blogging all together because it stopped being fun. I've decided to keep going. This blog will never be about the most beautiful perfectly lit food photographs - there are plenty of other wonderful blogs with amazing pictures if that's what you're looking for. It won't be about making money or coming up with cunning plans to increase my page views. It will be about me, what I've been doing, what I've been eating and maybe even occasionally which nail polish I've been wearing or what band I've been listening to. Sometimes my pictures will be crap, I'm not a photographer, deal with it! I started this blog because I wanted to help other vegans find great food but I also wanted to connect with people, to make friends & to have fun. I still want all of that & and I definitely want to continue to write about vegan food so that's exactly what I'll be doing. I even have a proper post coming up right after this one & for now I'll leave you with this fact ...

Love Hearts are vegan! Was I the last to know?! I've eaten three packets in the last 4 hours, I think I have a problem.

Christmas in pictures.

Vegan MoFo Day 31 - Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween MoFo's! I cannot believe Vegan MoFo is over, I'm a little sad about it. It's been so awesome to spend the month trying new recipes, learning to bake bread, stuffing myself with football food, connecting with bloggers (some on a daily basis!) and discovering many wonderful new blogs which I'll be sure to add to my google reader as soon as I get the chance. At the same time this has been kinda hard work & I'm looking forward to having a pretty chilled day tomorrow. I can't promise I haven't already been flicking through my cookbooks deciding what to cook next though. I have an un-carved pumpkin awaiting me and a girl needs to eat! I think I'll be making the butternut apple soup from Appetite For Reduction, I feel like I need to eat something healthy after the crazy food-fest that has been Vegan MoFo!

On Saturday I had a little halloween party, more of a gathering than a party though. Just a few close friends, spooky music & a lot of food. I posted most of the goodies I made in this post but here's a photo of the table which includes the mummy dogs I made.


I typed up a menu using the spookiest font I could find.

My friend Sal from the blog Alien On Toast made amazing Halloween Stuffed Peppers inspired by a post she saw on Wing It Vegan.

Aren't they awesome? My friend Kip, the Messy Vegetarian Cook, made a two bean chilli and Sal made cornbread to accompany it, sadly I didn't get a picture but you can see the chilli topping my hotdog in yesterdays Football Food Sunday post.

There were geeky party games...

...and we carved pumpkins that I'd prepared earlier by cutting off the tops & scraping out all of the seeds.

Mine's the super simple one and the one on the right was carved by my friend Jay, he has the skills!

At around midnight we all headed out into town because it was White Night! White Night's a one night festival that takes place in Brighton and Hove. Things kick off at around 8pm and lots of businesses that usually close at around 6pm stay open until 2 or 3, some until 6 & there are art installations and other fun things to take part in all across the city. We headed to Boho Gelato where I got a tub of Mojito Sorbet.

We tried to get into Red Roaster for late night coffee but they were too full so we wandered the streets and looked at the awesome outdoor art installations like this cool tree...

...which was surrounded by a rope which people had tied their wishes for the future and thoughts about the past and present onto.

The first one I looked at said "I wish the world would go vegetarian", I love Brighton!

The next morning Sal, Kip & I headed out to find breakfast whilst Nick slept. We just went around the corner to Iydea where we each grabbed a Brunch Muffin with a side of hash browns.

I love that you can get a super fast breakfast at Iydea, the Brunch muffins are pre wrapped & ready to go so that you can get the food into you fast!

This toasted English muffin comes with a sausage patty, avocado, tomato and special fruity sauce and only costs £2.20. The hash browns were the perfect combination of grated potato and onion and I think they only cost an extra 95p. This was perfect. Iydea also do two sizes of cooked breakfast, stir fry on toast and beans on toast for vegans. The only disappointing thing about the Iydea breakfast menu is that there aren't enough vegan options compared to the amount of veggie options, the menu's very egg heavy and I think it would be awesome if they'd do a tofu scramble. They could also buy or make some vegan cheese to veganise their Breakfast Hash and their Hash Wrap if they wanted to make me really happy! That said I do really appreciate their speedy breakfast service and this cheap & filling breakfast sandwich was just what I needed on Sunday morning.

I intend to spend what's left of today sitting my my pumpkin filled living room reading blogs, watching George A. Romeros Dead Trilogy and eating leftover apple pie...what a perfect end to MoFo.

Football Food Sunday, Take 5!

I can't believe we're closing in on the final day of MoFo and that this is the last Football Food Sunday of the month. It's not the end of the football season though so I'm sure there wil be more ridiculous Sunday food posts ahead of us!

After last nights halloween party I knew I wanted to take it easy today but I also wanted my final Football Food Sunday to be special...quite the dilemma! I eventually decided to make Chilli Cheese Dogs and Apple Pie, fun, but kinda low maintenance.

The motivation behind the chilli cheese dogs was that my lovely friend Kip from the blog Messy Vegetarian Cook made chilli for last nights party so I knew I could use some of the leftovers for these! I cheated a little more by buying the hot dogs (Frys) and the cheese (Vegusto) but I made the bread rolls myself; mainly because that actually seemed easier than going to the supermarket!

The buns are the Plain White Buns from The Best Veggie Burgers On The Planet, I made these a few weeks ago on Football Food Sunday & it was no hassle to shape them differently to make hot dog buns. These do rise a lot though so I had to do a bit of careful reshaping to get them right. Next time I would shape them into 10 hot dog rolls instead of the 8 baps they usually make. These chilli cheese dogs were totally amazing, I can't believe what a difference baking your own bread makes! I've also never topped a hot dog with anything other than ketchup before and the addition of chilli and cheese made them so much more delicious.

Whilst the dough for the bread was rising I started on my first ever totally from scratch pie. I've made mince pies before but only using store bought pastry and I've made store-bought puff pastry topped faux chicken pies but never pie crust from scratch! As I mentioned the other day my copy of Vegan Pie In The Sky arrived so I was excited to get started on some pie making. The Cosmos Apple Pie was the obvious choice, it's classically American and Isa even says in the preamble for the recipe that it's probably the first pie recipe you'll want to master. I decided to make the Buttery Double Crust for my pie because it sounded delicious and can I just say, wow, the pastry came out so perfectly and it was really delicious.

The pastry for the top of the pie fell apart a little as I put it on, mainly because it didn't look perfect so I tried to backtrack & take it off making the whole thing worse. Pie hint, do not try to remove your top crust to re-roll it, it will have touched the filling by then so there's no going back! After a sprinkling of cinnamon sugar I doubt anyone could even tell! As well as having never made a pie before I've actually never even eaten a homemade fruit pie before! This was delicious and clearly much better than the pies I used to buy from the supermarket before going vegan, I was also really surprised at how simple the process was even for a total rookie! I'm so excited by Vegan Pie In The Sky, I can't wait to make the Cherry Pie, the Key Lime Pie, the Chocolate Raspberry Tart, the Berry Chocolate Chip Cobbler, the Lemon Mousse Pie, the...you get the idea! I could go on forever, I will definitely be posting more pie pictures on this blog!

This has been a very successful days eating, I see many more pies and chilli dogs in my future! What are your favourite pies or hot dog toppings?