Just hanging out in Brighton.

Just a heads up, Aloka is now closed and VBites is open in the same location.

Today Nick & I had very boring plans to go shopping so he could buy a pair of jeans & a coat. I don't even like shopping for clothes for myself so I wasn't thrilled with this plan but we actually had a super fun day. After trying on every coat in Brighton we stopped for lunch at Aloka.

I was feeling pretty lightheaded after too small a breakfast & too much shopping so I dived headfirst into all of the carbs on offer at the buffet. I really enjoyed the potato salad, it had potatoes, peas and carrots & came coated in creamy Toffuti mayonnaise which had been seasoned with the usual salt & pepper but also nutmeg, yum. I also chose the beetroot & local apple salad, chickpea & sun dried tomato salad, and some brown rice pasta with roasted aubergines & leeks to accompany my lasagne. The lasagne was also made with brown rice pasta & came filled with pumpkin, lentils, red peppers, mushroom, leeks & onion. I think the chickpea dish & the apple & beetroot salad were my favourite parts of the meal which was a surprise as I'm not usually a fan of beetroot.

After lunch Nick "sneaked" off to a shop to buy "something secret", it's our 7 year anniversary tomorrow so I'm guessing he was picking up a card! I decided to use this time to do something useful so I popped around the corner to Italian ice cream store Boho Gelato to see if the rumours of vegan options were true.

As you can probably guess the rumours were indeed true! When I got there there was nobody in the store, there's a sign indicating that you should ring the bell because they're downstairs making the ice creams. I love that it's all made right there on the premises.

Boho Gelato always have a selection of vegan sorbets alongside their dairy ice creams & today there were four flavours to choose from.

Today's flavours were Pineapple, Pink Lemonade, Chocolate & Blood Orange, and Berry. Anyone who knows me or reads this blog regularly will know which flavour I chose...

...Chocolate & Blood Orange of course! This was a great sorbet, first you taste the rich chocolate and then you're hit with the aftertaste of sweet blood orange. I will definitely be paying Boho Gelato frequent visits especially as I've heard that they do a vegan Mojito sorbet! I was also really pleased that whilst the awesome girl working today was unsure whether the cones were vegan she happily got out the box so that we could check the ingredients. I really appreciate that kind of customer service as questions about vegan options are often met with a shrug & no further attempt to answer. Boho Gelato is located by the Pool Valley coach station & right around the corner from local veggie eateries Aloka & Terre a Terre. They have some seating inside so you should definitely pay them a visit even though summer's disappearing fast.

When we arrived home the day got even better because the post had arrived & there were packages. Nick laughs at me because I consider Ebay to be the best shopping experience ever. You get to buy things without having to get dressed which is really awesome. You often get to win things, I love winning! And then you get post & I really REALLY love getting post. Alongside a couple of Ebayed CD's (Sleater Kinney's The Hot Rock and Elastica's self titles album) there was this...

The Crazy Rumours Cola lip balm I had ordered from Super Smoocher. Obviously I was excited about the lip balm but it came wrapped in pink tissue paper & when I opened it pink glitter hearts fell out! Best. Thing. Ever! So if you're in the UK & you need vegan lip balm please order from Super Smoocher, they're lovely. I'd definitely recommend the Crazy Rumours cola too, they've got the flavour spot on & I've been reapplying it every 20 minutes because it smells so good!

I'll be back soon with a write up of the delicious food I found in Mallorca on a recent holiday & then it'll be Vegan MoFo time! Yay! I'm working on my MoFo plan at the moment & I'm getting really excited about all of the awesome things I'm going to be cooking, photographing & writing about.