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.