Duke's at Komedia

The newly opened Duke's at Komedia cinema, bar, and cafe on Gardner Street has quickly jumped into the top three on my list of Best Places in Brighton. Not only does this brand spanking new cinema have two screens showing documentaries, indie films and their pick of the best of the blockbusters but they also have two bars, one spilling out onto the street which will be extra amazing in summer, one cosy lounge style bar upstairs, and, the icing on the cake, kick ass vegan food. Yep, that's right, Brighton is catching up with Austin, Texas in the awesome stakes with this double hitter - movies and hot dogs in the same place! Hell yeah!

Upon hearing that Duke's at Komedia were going to be slinging tofu dogs I dropped them an e-mail to get the lowdown on shared equipment, veganness of their dressings and possible future vegan options. I met with their lovely head chef who assured me that the dogs themselves are cooked separately to meat, they have a totally vegan fryer and the toppers, sauces and sides are now labelled as vegan on the menu just to make things that little bit easier.

I dove straight into the food with a Back To The Old School dog, no veganising necessary, just ask for the tofu dog option.

This bloody enormous tofu dog comes in a mini baguette with tonnes of fried onions, American mustard and Heinz ketchup. Delicious. That's not all though, for your £9 there are also sides of fries, nacho chips and barbecue sauce.

The dog itself was absolutely spot on, I love that it's served in a proper sized roll making this a real meal and the toppings were ample. The homemade Smokey Barbecue Sauce is sweet & infused with delicious figs, apricots and apples. The fries were crisp, cooked perfectly & I thought the portion size was spot on.

As you can see the vegan options are clearly labelled with a (v) and there are a tonne of them. The jalapeños labelled (v) in this picture are actually a chilli lime jalapeño pesto which shows just how hard these guys are working to come up with inventive & exciting options.

The other really cool thing about these is the way that they're served, the tins mean that they can now be taken into the screens! If you're not into eating something as substantial as a hot dog in the theatre itself both the sweet and salty popcorn's are vegan and there are cakes, really good cakes! When we visited we tried a slice of this delicious Lemon Polenta cake...

...which was perfectly moist and had a beautiful juniper and lemon glaze on top. Quite lovely. The other vegan desserts you can expect to see popping up here are a Spiced Carrot Cake with Orange Cardamom Frosting, Chocolate Fudge Cake with Chocolate Orange Frosting and, wait for it, Churros with Dark Chocolate Dip. Seriously, this chef knows her shit and is serious about feeding vegans decent food.

Another awesome thing about Duke's at Komedia is that they've worked with Boho Gelato to offer five ice creams and sorbets that you can't get anywhere else. These flavours will rotate seasonally and the current vegan options are Mud In Your Eye Figgy Pudding Pie which is a delicious fig infused chocolate sorbet and Mulled Cider Apple Pie Sorbet which I cannot wait to try next time I visit. Just in case the bar staff aren't 100% sure which one's are vegan when the flavours change they're helpfully labelled vegan right on the bottom of the tub.

The bars also serve vegan drinks including two of my favourites, Brooklyn Lager and Rekorderling, they make a great decaf soya latte (sorry real coffee drinkers - I have no clue!), the hot chocolate is vegan and after chatting with them they're also looking into labelling the wine list.

I foresee myself hanging out here a lot (by tomorrow I'll be on my third movie this week), it's essentially what I've been dreaming of for years, a cafe with vegan options that's open 'till late - currently 9pm for hot food and 11pm for cakes and drinks. If the kitchen gets busy enough they'll stay open serving hot food until closing so get down there are make these guys as busy as you can, I want the tofu dogs to out-sell their meaty counterparts and I want this place to be busy and crammed full of vegans stuffing their faces with tofu dogs!

Vegan Eats World

I have a new love in my life and it's hard backed! Terry Hope Romero's latest cookbook Vegan Eats World is pretty much the only thing I've been cooking from recently and every single thing I've made has been an unmitigated success. In case you haven't laid eyes on this cookbook yet let me tell you a little about it. Firstly, it's beautiful, I love both the layout and the style of this cookbook. Secondly, it's stuffed full of exciting recipes from all around the globe. I've found the Kitchen Cartography section immensely useful, a lot of the cuisines in the book are not ones I've tackled before meaning that I needed to restock my pantry and learn some new techniques. 

The first recipes I tried were the Barbecued Seitan Strips (Char Siu Seitan) and the Sesame Wow Greens which I served alongside lightly sautéed broccoli (using the method from the Udon Noodle recipe in Appetite For Reduction) and white rice. 

I started prepping this a day in advance by making the 5-Spice Seitan which, like the seitan recipes in Terry's Viva Vegan, was incredibly easy to make. I'd go as far as to call Terry's seitan recipes no fail, I've honestly never had an issue with them and I find that some seitan recipes can be a little hit or miss. This whole meal was incredibly good, the seitan was deliciously sticky and infused with great flavours like hoisin and 5 spice powder. Whilst the Japanese flavours of the Sesame Wow Greens wouldn't traditionally be served with a Chinese-style seitan I thought that they worked really well together.

The second recipe I was drawn to was the Garlic Chive Seitan Potstickers. I had some 5-Spice Seitan leftover from the day I made the Char Siu Seitan and I'd picked up a package of vegan dumpling wrappers last time I was in Chinatown. For some reason the only ones I can find in Brighton contain egg so I always grab a package or two to stash in the freezer whenever I'm in London.

These were surprisingly easy to put together, we set up two workstations to make the prep go faster, and even easier to cook. The sesame soy dipping sauce was definitely worth making as it complimented the meaty dumplings perfectly.

We had some cabbage leftover from making the dumplings so the next day we made a version of the Takeout Stir-fry Noodles with Mushrooms & Greens. We threw some carrots and edamame in there and totally left out the mushrooms and lemme tell you somethin', this was still amazing! I think it's a great sign of a solid recipe when you can totally mess with it & it still turns out amazing.

I've made this next recipe three times already, in fact I have some in the oven right now! The Savory Baked Tofu was a recipe I knew I'd be trying as soon as I saw it. I love tofu and I love trying new baked tofu recipes, if a cookbook has one you'd better bet I've tried it!

This is probably the easiest baked tofu recipe I've ever tried due to the use of garlic powder rather than fresh minced garlic - lazy person win - and I love the sweet and salty flavours from the mixture of soy and agave. I've eaten this tofu in a bowl with rice, sautéed broccoli & sauce, out of a tuperware box from the fridge, and on a plate of random leftovers...

...tonight I'm going to be attempting to make the Pad See Ew from VEW using this tofu.

This next dish was massively out of season but yet perfect for winter and I couldn't resist a vegan version of a pre-vegan favourite, French Farmhouse Asparagus Bisque.

This was a beautiful soup, seriously fantastic. Creamy, earthy and delicately flavoured with chives and sea salt. I think that this soup would be delicious at any time of year.

We've also made the Sensei Tofu Hijiki Burgers which took a little longer than the book suggested and because we had to rush out we didn't get a chance to take a picture! They were super delicious although it was tough to get them to hold together in the oven. Next time I think I'd blend the tofu as I don't think my fork smooshing skills were up to the job!

We served these Japanese flavoured burgers with brown rice, salad, and both suggested sauces, the Ninja Carrot Ginger Dressing and the Tonkatsu Sauce. I was a little suspicious of the carrot and ginger dressing as I'm not the hugest ginger fan but it was delicious and really lifted the flavours of the simple salad I'd thrown together. The Tonkatsu Sauce was the real hit from this meal though, it went perfectly with the burgers and Nick's been smearing the leftovers all over everything!

The Seitan Gyro recipe was the first one that Nick honed in on as soon as he glanced at the book. We trekked across Berlin for Gyros on our honeymoon and every time we go to Veg Fest in Brighton the Wheaty stand is always the first place we head to get our gyro on. This recipe was absolutely perfect! We made the Seitan Coriander Cutlets the day before so that they'd have time to firm up properly and in the morning we popped to Taj to buy the flatbreads, veggies, yoghurt & dill.

The super garlicky yoghurt sauce blended up in minutes and roasting the seitan in the oven was totally hassle free. We can't wait to make these again, such a perfect Sunday lunch!

Unsurprisingly it's taken me so long to write this post that I already made and ate the Pad See Ew!

Of course it was delicious. Seriously, so damn good! I made a half recipe, subbing Pak Choy for the impossible-to-find-in-Brighton Chinese broccoli, it was a huge plate of food and I scoffed the lot! Pad See Ew is one of my favourite ever meals, I've ordered it every time I've been to Pukk in NYC and it's become the first place I'm dying to hit up as soon as I get off the plane just because of this dish. This wasn't exactly the same as Pukk's, perhaps less sweet, but I think that might've been due to me not being able to find one of the many soy sauces Terry calls for in the recipe! I can't wait to make this again and I'll be searching out the elusive Chinese broccoli so that I can give it a whirl as written.

If you haven't yet bought Vegan Eats World, buy it now & get cooking. If you have it already what's your favourite recipe so far? What should I make next?

Food swap & a new falafel joint.

This weekend was pretty rad! Nick was around all weekend so we got to hang out loads, yay! We went shopping for fun ingredients for Vegan Eats World recipes on Saturday and whilst we were out we checked out the new falafel place on Sydney Street called We Heart Falafel.

We Heart Falafel make a vegan falafel wrap and a falafel salad bowl as well as some things with cheese in that we didn't pay attention to! The wrap and the bowl are vegan if you leave off the yoghurt sauce. I was a little disappointed when I realised that the only vegan sauce was chilli (allergies!), why no tahini sauce? But I was soon happy again after I tasted this delicious wrap.

It has hummus so it didn't really need another sauce and it was stuffed full of falafel and yummy salad which included crispy lettuce, beetroot, tomato & grated carrot. I loved this slightly toasted wrap & at £3.50 it's a total bargain. I'll definitely be eating it again soon.

On Saturday night we went to the Reclaim The Night march organised by Brighton Feminist Collective. It was such an amazing and inspiring evening. I was stewarding which meant that I helped keep people outa the way of oncoming traffic & I got to wear a fluorescent jacket! There's a video of the march and some of the speeches and poetry at the rally afterwards here.

On Sunday we dyed our hair, I've been bored of my blonde hair for a while now & I'm excited that it's pink & blue again!

My UK Vegan Food Swap package arrived just before the weekend and even if the box had been empty I think I'd have still been happy! Look...

I love Hello Kitty! How did they know?!! Normally I re-use boxes asap to send stuff but I might have to keep this one for storing things in! Unsurprisingly the stuff inside the box was great too.

The package included Love Hearts, banana chips, lots of healthy bars, Kettle Vegetable Chips, pea & hemp protein powders, a Cat & The Cream cupcake and an adorable card.

The cupcake didn't survive so well in the post and the cake part had dried out a little but the frosting was still absolutely delicious. I ate the Love Hearts at the Reclaim The Night rally, they were fun to pass out to friends new & old, and the vegi crisps lasted the time it took for me to drink a Hollows Ginger Beer. What a perfect combo! I've been a bit slack at sending my parcel out but I'm heading to the post office right after I publish this, I promise!

I also recently received a package of Trek bars from the people over at Natural Balance Foods. They sent me a whole box of my favourite flavour, Cocoa Brownie. Yum!

The people at Natural Balance Foods are also the people behind the Nákd bars I know & love. Small world! I still haven't tried the new Cafe Mocha flavour or the Cherry Infused Raisins, I'll have to try to pick some up when I head to the post office.

Last time I posted that my copy of Vegan Eats World had arrived, I've been steadily collecting ingredients and trying out new recipes and I'm loving it so far. My next post will be all about what I've made, see ya soon!

MoFo might be over but I'm still here!

So, Vegan MoFo is over for another year but unlike past years I'm feeling less burnt out and more determined to keep on blogging regularly. Usually after MoFo I end up taking a two month blogging break and when I come back the blog is filled with travel posts. This year I'm going to try to inject some home cookin' & eatin' into the blog all year round, I am Vegan In Brighton after all!

This week I tried a new seitan recipe, the Chicken Style Seitan from Vegan Diner.

This is probably one of the easiest seitans I've ever made, there isn't even any kneading, just throw everything into a bowl and stir. It gets wrapped in a tea towel & steamed for 50 minutes. Mine was still a little soggy in the middle after 50 though so next time I'd give it a full hour.

What did you make with this seitan I hear you ask, well, firstly I made a delicious sandwich with cranberry sauce. The Thanksgiving flavours of the seitan worked perfectly here and I'll definitely be repeating this tasty sandwich before the loaf-o-seitan runs out. Secondly I made a stew I'd been eyeing on the PPK for a while, the Seitan Porcini Beef Stew. Now a chicken style seitan probably isn't the perfect choice for this recipe but I figured what the hell!

The meatiness in the stew comes from the seitan, porcini mushrooms and beef broth. I used the Edward & Sons bullion cubes I brought back from the US. This thick & flavourful stew was really easy to make, a bit of chopping but nothing complicated. I'll definitely be making this again.

On Friday night Nick & I went to the Gourmet Girls Pop Up Restaurant at Fanny's of Hannover. This week they has a special menu of their favourite dishes for World Vegan Day & it seemed like the perfect way to celebrate.

The first course was what immediately tempted me to book our spot at this dinner and boy was I glad I did. This Roasted Pumpkin & Cashew Cheese Ravioli was perfect.

I'm a huge fan of stuffed pastas and this heavy-on-the-cashew-cheese filling exceeded my expectations. The pine nut & sage butter complimented the ravioli beautifully and I only wished that there was more of it!

The main course of Smoked Garlic & Mushroom Arancini nestled on wilted spinach & served with a macadamia nut truffle cream and a watercress, pomegranate & rawmesan salad with a balsamic reduction was, of course, as amazing as it sounds. It looked so amazing that I actually forgot to take a picture of it! Luckily for you, if you want to take a look, I've eaten a very similar dish before at the Gourmet Girls Pop-Up, back when it was popping up at secret locations all over the city. I have to say that this time around it was even better, the macadamia truffle cream was amazing and added an extra something to the dish.

For dessert the Gourmet Girls made their Divine Chocolate Marble Cheesecake.

This comes with a chocolate orange & maca sauce and it's deeeelicious! A year and a half ago when I last tried it I was a huge cheesecake hater and I still quite enjoyed it, this time around I loved it. I think that I might finally like cheesecake but only if it's really fucking good! Nick said that it's the best cheesecake he's ever tasted & he's an actual cheesecake fan!

As it was World Vegan Day we even got gifts, cocoa and white chocolate buttons. Such a lovely touch and a wonderful surprise ending to an amazing meal.

If you haven't been to the Gourmet Girl's Pop-Up yet what are you waiting for? Check out the upcoming menus right here & get ready for wonderful meal.

The last exciting thing of the week was this package arriving from The Book Depository. Finally the two cookbooks the MoFo blogosphere was going crazy for this year are mine.

I'm super excited about both Artisan Vegan Cheese and Vegan Eats World. The rave reviews I've read and the pictures I've seen from Artisan Vegan Cheese were enough for me to get overexcited without even seeing the book & I can't wait to get started with some home cheese making.

Even before reading anything about Vegan Eats World I knew that I'd be buying it, Terry Hope Romero could release a book about something I had no interest in and I'd probably still buy it, use it & love it but a world cookbook is exactly what my collection needs. I love Chinese and Japanese food already but I hardly ever tackle them myself and I'm excited to try cooking up Thai, Indian and Middle Eastern food too. The other thing about this book is that it's stunning, seriously, so pretty. It has a similar layout to Veganomicon which I love and Terry's writing style always makes me smile. I have a whole list of things I need to buy before I can get cooking but I can't wait & I'm sure I'll be telling you all about it soon.

What I Ate Wednesday - Halloween

Yeah, that's right, I'm going back to one of my themes! This morning for breakfast I had some of this new cereal...

...mixed into one of my favourite yoghurts. I love the new Alpro yoghurts that come in the two packs. There are two flavour options, cherry or peach, and somehow Alpro have managed to make a creamy fruity yoghurt that isn't too sweet. They're perfect.

For lunch I just recreated what I made yesterday, it was even easier this time because I just needed to reheat the cauliflower and boil the soba noodles.

My afternoon snack was a chocolate extravaganza, Kallo Dark Chocolate Rice Cakes...

...followed by a Nature's Path Chococonut Bar.

Those rice cakes are one of my favourite ever snacks, I also got this great tip from Christina - spread them with peanut butter. It makes them even more epic! I discovered the Chococonut bars when I was in NYC earlier this year and I'm a little obsessed with them. They're chewy, sweet and full of chocolate chips. I brought three boxes back from Austin and I wish we could get honey free granola bars like this over here. You can also see my Halloween nails in that picture, I'm wearing Orly's Fowl Play. I have the classic black with orange accents on my toes using Barry M Black and Orly Orange Punch.

Dinner was a classic British meal with both a vegan & a Halloween twist! We had the Redwood Foods Fish-Style Steaks with mashed potato ghosts, peas & corn.

I got the mashed potato ghost idea from River at Wing-It-Vegan, mine are a little less fluffy because I made Caulipots with skin on potatoes. I also used capers for eyes instead of ketchup because I'm not a massive ketchup fan.

I can't believe MoFo's over for another year! It's been awesome as always, I've loved writing every day, reading everyones blogs and getting to be part of the MoFo team for the first time. See y'all soon!

Vegan MoFo Day 30 - When themes go outa the window!

As you might've noticed my theme's have totally gone outa the window in the last week or so. I'm quickly realising that running a bakery from a pretty tiny kitchen and managing to get any other cooking done is really hard! I'm using all of my surfaces, oven, bowls, measuring cups and spoons to bake cupcakes meaning that there's nothing left to cook with!

I'm getting a little better at it now though, I had a mini freakout last week when I felt dizzy and sick and realised that all I'd eaten all day was frosting, Clif bars and a yoghurt. Yuch. After Nick brought me some takeout I calmed down & realised that I just needed to plan a little better. Today I made myself food before starting to bake. Yeah, I'm a genius!

I wanted something simple and what's easier to throw together than a bowl. Isa Chandra Moskowitz is the master of The Bowl so I turned to The PPK for ideas. This Roasty Soba Bowl with Miso Tahini jumped out at me and I even had all of the ingredients in the house... well, kinda!

I used chickpeas instead of lentils, green tea soba noodles instead of regular and I made the roasted cauliflower recipe from Appetite For Reduction instead of the slightly simpler version in this recipe. I looooved this bowl. I was really unsure about the dill, I bought it to try to make myself like dill and it totally worked - it's a miracle! Everything about this bowl was awesome, I love noodles, the miso tahini sauce was amazingly creamy and there are even leftovers for tomorrow. Perfect!

Sunday on a Monday.

Because Nick works in retail he often works on a Saturday meaning that our lazy Sunday is often really a Monday! It's kinda fun hanging out when other people are working - it makes you feel like you're bunking off & it's awesome because things like Moshimo Monday exist and everything's quieter - especially the beach in summer or the shops at Christmas time.

Today we slept in, went food shopping, watched a classic Bond movie and made dinner together. I spotted this Roasted Butternut Alfredo recipe on The PPK yesterday and I knew immediately that I'd love it. A creamy cashew based sauce, nooch, squash, sage and wine are all winners in my book. I also happened to have the exact amount of roasted squash needed for a half recipe in the fridge, how serendipitous!

I really loved this dish, the flavours worked perfectly together (no surprise there with an Isa recipe!), it was easy to make and I had all of the ingredients in the house already. Nick hates onions but I refuse to leave something so flavourful out of a recipe so we spent a while picking the onion out of his half quite unsuccessfully! Nick doesn't really like squash either so whilst I'll definitely be making this again I'll probably save it for days when we aren't having dinner together!

After dinner we made hot chocolate & I had mine in my favourite mug...

...it looks like I have a monster hand!! Brilliant! I hope you're having a good Monday? I can't believe Vegan MoFo's coming to an end so soon. It feels like the quickest one yet and whilst I'm feeling a little bit of the infamous MoFo Burnout™ (my theme's have certainly fallen by the wayside!) I'm determined to keep posting and commenting as much as possible right until the very end!

Football Food Sunday - Nachos

Today is the last Football Food Sunday of Vegan MoFo 2012 and I finally made something I've had on the to-make list since MoFo 2010. Nachos. I tried to think back to the kind of nachos I would get in the pub as a vegetarian, there was always cheese, guac, salsa, sour cream and chilli. I've never been a fan of chilli so I'd order them without. I do however love refried beans so I decided to serve the nachos with them instead.

This picture doesn't really show how much stuff I ended up throwing on these, I was trying to get a pretty picture and I ended up putting loads more toppings on afterwards.

I used Isa's Cashew Queso as my cheese. I'd wanted to try it for ages and the vegan friend we invited over to eat with us this arvo isn't a fan of commercial vegan cheeses. We all LOVED this Cashew Queso. Seriously, it's ridiculous, make it now! It's not even difficult and we just kept pouring more and more onto our ever expanding plates!

I used store bought refried beans but added smoked paprika, onion powder and chilli powder to perk it up a little. The guacamole was just a super simple avo, salt, pepper, lemon juice mix because that's how I like it! The salsa was a store bought mild salsa from Sainsburys which I surprised myself by enjoying. I always, always, used to find even the mildest of salsas too hot but I think my spice-tolerance is finally improving. Yay! I used Toffuti sour cream as the sour cream replacement, I love that stuff. I feel like it's a really good dupe of the sour cream I remember (I did probably only ever eat it twice though!) and it's a surprisingly epic addition to any pizza.

Even after all of that we managed to squeeze in some dessert. Nick & I popped to Infinity Foods this morning and grabbed three of these new Razzle Dazzle Ice chocolate mint sorbets.

These new nut free iced treats taste exactly like After Eights! I love discovering fun new vegan products and I really like that these come in both large and mini tubs. We'll definitely be buying them again.

On Thursday night I cooked a roast dinner with the Field Roast we brought back from the USA & this evening I made a sandwich with the leftovers. Warm Field Roast & Cranberry Sauce. Perfect.

I love Football Food Sunday - it's the one theme that's stuck with me since I first started MoFoing and I expect that it'll be back next year!

My MoFo Kitchen Tour.

I love reading about and looking at pictures of other peoples kitchens. It's awesome to get a glimpse into where my favourite food bloggers spend their time and it's also great way to get decorating or storage tips and ideas.

This month loads of MoFo bloggers have shared kitchen tours with us including Mandee, Kittee, Amy, Amey, Amanda, Fanny, Erin & Angel.

My house was built in the 1840's as a workers cottage, layout wise I'm not sure how much it's changed on the inside since then. I imagine that what is now our living room/kitchen area probably used to be two smaller rooms.  This area is right at the bottom of the house & because our house is on a hill it's underground in the lounge area but not in the kitchen. It doesn't get much natural light because of the walled garden so we picked white units when we re-did the kitchen.

I love that these two rooms are joined together. It's nice to be able to do all of our cooking and hanging out in one space, it's great when we have friends over and it saves on heating bills in the winter because the whole area gets nice & toasty every time you turn the oven on!

When we moved in the kitchen didn't look anything like this, we had to rip down & re-plaster all of the walls and put in a whole new kitchen. I still love the units, handles, tiles & worktops we chose when we moved in but at the time I didn't really cook or bake and I didn't even think about replacing the oven. My main problem with it is that the gas heats really unevenly meaning that I can only bake 10 cupcakes at a time because the back corners burn before anything else is cooked and the bottom of the oven is way, way cooler than the middle. It's pretty damn inconvenient and because of the width of the oven we can't get a new one because they don't make the kind I want in this size! I've been searching for a while so if you spot a 55cm, double non-fan electric oven with a gas hob lemme know!

I tidied a bit before I took that picture but there's still a tray of roasted squash cooling on the stovetop!

Just behind the table in the lounge is my cookbook shelf.

The drawers next to the stove have cutlery & knives and stuff at the top (you don't need to see that) and random kitcheny things live in the middle - I love the cupcake tin, it's perfect for all the little things that are super annoying if they're loose in the drawer!

Pans live at the bottom. I've always wanted one of those racks on the ceiling to hang my pans on but as you can see from the first picture the ceiling's way too low for that!

The cupboard to the other side of the stove, below the kettle & toaster, houses my baking supplies, tupperware, baking trays & cake tins. I'd never realised before how much the top shelf is leaning under the weight of all that flour - maybe I need to counterbalance it with a brick or two!

You can see the toaster in this next picture too, so we're panning around to the right!

One of my favourite kitchen gadgets, my stand mixer, lives on top of the microwave. I love it so much, I mix all of my frosting in there and use it to knead bread. It also has a food processor attachment that I use all the time. You can see into my little garden too, that tarpaulin is hiding our barbecue, I think it was warm enough to use it twice this summer! As you can see the draining rack is full. It's always like this, I was trying to wait until nothing was drying to take my pictures but it's been a week so I gave up!

In this picture we pan around to the right again to where I was standing where I took the first picture!

As you can see I have a pretty decent tote bag collection... really, I have way too many - I just can't resist a tote!

As you can see our fridge is in a little porch just outside the kitchen! That's also where we keep all of our recycling - I'm a little obsessed with recycling. We pay for someone to come & collect the plastic the council doesn't recycle and I take my Tetrapak's to a recycling point a couple of streets away. When we first moved in the people living here before us had their fridge where the drawers, blender, coffee maker & scales are now but that left almost no work or storage space and I didn't like the idea of having the fridge right next to the stove.

Next to the washing machine is the dishwasher, and right next to the tote bags is the pantry. I have no idea how people who take tote bags almost everywhere can end up with this many carrier bags but hey, free bin bags, I'm not complaining!

The bottom of the cupboard is where we keep big things like cereal boxes that don't fit on the other shelves and new things that aren't open yet. We always have back-up nooch & apple sauce down there as well as my stash of fun American things like Soy Curls, Chococonut bars & cans of pumpkin!

Last year I added this plastic storage container for my nuts & seeds and the under shelf basket for my herbs & spices. I always buy them in the biggest bags I can find & having loads and loads of little bags floating around the cupboard was getting annoying.

Here's a glimpse inside the cupboard above the washing machine.

We bought all of our white bowls & plates from Ikea when we first moved in because all of my crockery got smashed in the move (don't even ask!) but I've been slowly replacing them with cuter plates and bowls like these!

This is probably my favourite part of the kitchen, I love the silly collage of photos Nick & I put up when we moved in together just over 5 years ago. I love the star shaped fairy lights, my matchy red stuff and my spice rack. The lunchbox is full of all my piping bags and tips. This is kind of a weird space because it goes back quite a long way, I have to really stretch to reach the plug sockets at the back but it's a great place to store all of my spoons, oil sprays, my mini deep fryer and the food processor attachment for my mixer.

This is the wall to the left of the gap leading to the lounge and the pole to the left of the picture is the bottom of the staircase which leads upstairs.

I love this area, it's so bright! We're always adding stuff to the pinboard and we buy a new My Zoetrope calendar every year, they're always so cute! This concludes my kitchen tour, I hope you enjoyed this little peek into my home. Have you done a kitchen tour yet? You should, I'd love to see where you cook!