Let's catch up!

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...

Chocolate cake filled with black cherry jam & topped with vanilla frosting, a glacé cherry and dark chocolate shavings. 

...as well as loads of everyone's favourite, Peanut Butter Chocolate.

In other Operation Icing news I have my first ever stall (ever!) at Brighton VegFest on March 16th. I love Veg Fest, I go every year either to eat copious amounts of delicious food or to help my friend Mellissa, Ms Cupcake, out on her stall. I'm pretty nervous about baking the amount of cupcakes I'll need to bake in my tiny ten-cupcake-at-a-time oven but I'm mainly just excited about raising some money for animal charities and meeting loads of awesome people. Maybe I'll see you there?

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.