Celebrating Thirty.

I recently turned thirty and what better way to celebrate than to travel somewhere mellow and relaxing with your besties. Nick, Sal, Tabitha and I headed for Southern Spain where we rented a villa up in the mountains near El Gastor. It even had a view of this beautiful lake. 

As soon as we arrived we went food shopping crazy at the huge Carrefour store near Malaga airport. I always like to head to Carrefour at the beginning of a self catering holiday because they have all of the essentials as well as a good natural / eco section full of tofu, seitan and soy yoghurts.

We cooked an awesome first night meal of seitan steaks and paprika and garlic chips accompanied by a simple green salad.

The next morning Nick whipped up one of his epic tofu scrambles and Sal and I re-purposed the leftover chips into home fries and fried some mushrooms whilst Tabitha made toast - by far the hardest job because there was no toaster and the grill was super erratic!

Later that day we went on a trip to Seville where we made a beeline for Veganitessen. I'd read about them online and I am always excited to try a new vegan bakery. I'm in awe of their boxes, I wish I could afford boxes this pretty for Operation Icing!

We bought almost everything. My favourite thing was the Chocolate Coconut cake you can see peeking out at the front underneath the vanilla glazed palmerita.

There are also chocolate covered croissants in there somewhere but more about that after lunch!

After a little more shopping at the Centro Ecológico Gaia health food store we went for lunch at their restaurant, Restaurante Ecológico Gaia, which is just a few doors down. We started the meal with some of the tastiest beer I've ever had. I'm not a huge beer person but it's certainly growing on me!

Before our meal they brought us delicious bread and a plate of some of the most amazing oily potatoes and tomatoes I've ever eaten. I took the worst picture of these so you'll have to pop over to Sal's blog, Alien on Toast, to see her pictures.

Not realising how huge it was going to be I ordered the gazpacho...

...and the hummus plate.

I did a frankly terrible job at finishing both of these perfectly simple and delicious plates of food because that soup was really huge and I'm the slooowest soup eater in the whole world! I don't know what my soup issue is, I can take down a burger in a matter of minutes but soup defeats me. What the hell stomach?! Thankfully my fellow diners helped me scoff the leftovers. My favourites were the regular and beetroot hummuses (hummai?!) and Tabitha was a bit in love with the moroccan dip.

After lunch we walked around the city.

And stopped off by the river to eat some dessert. I decided to go for something small and this chocolate covered croissant was perfect. We wished we'd bought more of these but we were buying a lot of stuff and it would have been rude to the people behind us in line to clear them out entirely!

My actual birthday couldn't have been more perfect. I woke up to everything the five year old living inside me dreams of, there were banners, balloons, and a whole lot of pink and Hello Kitty! What's even funnier about this is that my friends didn't decide on a theme, they all just brought a few things each and this happened. They know me so well!

After a present opening frenzy Sal and Tabitha made Oreo Pancakes with Cherry Syrup for breakfast. There were no recipes they were just winging it because they're awesome like that and obviously they were delicious.

We spent most of the morning and afternoon lounging by the pool, listening to music, and swimming. It was the best day. After lunch Nick surprised me with this cake he'd baked the night before. Okay, so it wasn't really a surprise. It was a small villa and he kept calling people into the kitchen to help him with his "special project", so, not subtle, but still awesome! Nick's never baked before so to whip up a cake this delicious in a kitchen with no measuring equipment and only one glass oven dish is crazy impressive.

The cake was lemon and it had an apricot glaze on top. Perfect. I love lemon cakes and I hardly ever make them myself.

We ate the cake poolside with some pink champagne sipped out of paper Hello Kitty cups. Classy!

Spain has a whole lot of vegan friendly snacks, my friend Carmen introduced me to these Tortas de Aceite in Barcelona last spring and I saw them all over Andalucia. I didn't see a single non-vegan packaged version of these sweet, flaky, anaise flavoured treats but obviously check the labels.

Palmeritas are another delicious sugary sweet Spanish pastry, I saw vegan versions in every supermarket I went to.

I was also pretty excited when we spotted these ice creams in Spanish supermarket chain SuperSol. They were just like a miniature vegan Magnum.

We hadn't planned on eating out much on this trip but we'd heard that there was a restaurant with a beautiful view in nearby village Zahara de la Sierra that apparently had some vegetarian dishes hidden away in their meat heavy menu. We figured we could just drink the cocktails and look at the the view if there was nothing we could eat so we decided to check it out.

The chef at Al Lago turned out to be from the US and both him and his wife know their stuff when it came to veganism. It's always reassuring when someone hears vegan and says "so vegetarian but no eggs or dairy?" Yes, pretty much! That's a way better jumping off point than the blank stare you're sometime met with as a travelling vegan.

We ordered the Paella which you can see was full of plenty of veggies and topped with delicious sweet roasted peppers. I normally hate peppers but these were super delicious and we polished off the paella in no time.

Tabitha ordered some grilled asparagus which looked perfect. Their was also a vegan gazpacho on the menu and I'm pretty sure there was one more veganisable thing but I can't remember what it was.

We were also excited to find that there were vegan sorbets on offer. There were four fruity flavours but the lemon contained egg so we picked between the mango, green apple and berry. I went for green apple because it's not a flavour you see often and OMG it was delicious, I wished I'd gone for the triple scoop.

After dinner we took a walk through Zahara de la Sierra's winding streets, it's a really beautiful place with it's whitewashed homes and wonderful views.

On our final day we had to check out of the villa early and our flight wasn't until the evening so we had the whole afternoon to explore Malaga. Obviously we headed straight for the first entirely vegan restaurant of the trip, El Piano. There's an El Piano location in York and I hadn't realised that they're actually a small family run chain with two Spanish locations as well.

This cute little take out spot has a few tables outside and there was so much delicious vegan food to choose from that we all had a tough time making a decicion.

You get to pick four items to pop into your large food boat and in the end I chose the mushroom and spinach stuffed crepe, a fruity cous cous salad, falafel and potatoes with oregano. I topped it off with a super garlicky sauce. Other options included chilli, dhal, paella, hummus, salads and mini shish kebabs.

My favourite part of the boat was the stuffed crepe, the mushrooms and spinach were cooked in a beautifully creamy sauce. I'm thinking that I need to re-create them at home soon.

Obviously we had desserts, Nick and Tabitha chose chocolate brownies...

...and Sal and I went for chocolate raspberry and chocolate orange tarts.

I enjoyed the chocolate raspberry, the raspberry topping was a little like jelly which I thought was a good thing but Sal disagreed! She much preferred the orange custard tart with the chocolatey base which I would have also happily eaten more of. The less said about the brownies the better, I think Nick put it best when he said "you can tell this place is sin gluten"! Now this isn't entirely fair as I've had some great gluten free brownies but these were a bit of a miss.

Overall El Piano was a definite hit, it's in a great part of the city, the people working there were downright lovely and aside from the dry brownies the food was delicious.

We had the best trip, I love Spain and I feel super lucky to have been able to spend my birthday with such rad people. So far being thirty is awesome!

Nick and I with Zahara de la Sierra in the background.

Barcelona adventures: Part 3

Whilst having lunch at the Cardinal branch of Juicy Jones one day we spotted this amazing looking brunch menu. As soon as we saw it we knew we'd be going back...

After a slightly confusing conversation about honey, this place is vegan and they only had agave but kept calling it honey! We ordered the brunch plate.

It came with waffles, a yoghurt and granola parfait with apples, a muffin, orange juice, little PB&J toasts, coffee & juice. As they had no decaf I opted to have mine without coffee & they gave me an extra large parfait to make up for it! I'm a sucker for any kind of brunch or breakfast combo plate and this was no exception, it was a great start to the day.

After an afternoon at the Fundació Joan Miró we worked up an appetite & were ready to do some serious eating. We went back to Gopal where I ordered a burger with a side of potatoes & spicy sauce.

Their burgers are very high up on my favourite burgers in the world list, I love the quality of the buns and the simplicity of the filings, these were a hit every time. I thoroughly enjoyed the fried potatoes too, I mean you can't really go wrong with potatoes and oil, but the spicy sauce was a little on the hot side for me and I let my dining companions devour the ones that had touched it!

We also got cake. I mean, how could you resist this?

This piece of raspberry topped, pistachio mousse filled, vanilla sponge has to be the fanciest vegan cake I've ever eaten. It was just beautiful and I didn't want it to end, the cake itself was quite dense without getting even remotely close to being dry, the mousse was amazingly light and fluffy and I can't even comprehend how they made the amazing raspberry topping. Just, wow!

For our last meal in Barcelona we had planned to go back to Gopal but it was ridiculously busy and we had a lot of stuff with us so we decided to give Vegetalia Restaurante a try as it's just two or three doors down on the same side of the square.

I ordered the burger in a bun with salad and got the burger with rice and salad. It looked pretty good & I couldn't be bothered to get them to change it so I ate it anyway.

It was okay, not amazing but not bad. Perhaps more the kind of thing that I might throw together on a weeknight at home rather than order in a restaurant. I probably wouldn't hurry back to Vegetalia Restaurante as I think that there are much more exciting healthy options in town.

When we saw that Gopal had emptied out a bit after our meal we decoded to pop in for dessert.

This cake was almost as amazing as the first one I tried, I didn't really think you could beat the pistachio raspberry combo but this chocolate mousse cake came awfully close. It was such a perfect end to our trip.

I love hanging out with Melanie & Carmen and this was the first time that we had hung out somewhere that wasn't where any of us live. It was super fun & right now I'm wishing we were still there.

Barcelona adventures: Part 2

As the UK is in the midst of another cold snap I'm loving looking back over my photos and remembering spending time in warmer places. I like both autumn and winter - the changing leaves, bonfire night, Christmas, hot chocolate under a cosy blanket - but I think, at heart, I'm a spring kinda girl and spring in Barcelona is wonderful. I was there in April with my friends Carmen and Melanie and you can read about part one of our adventure here.

I knew before I hopped on the plane that I needed to try Gazpacho in Barcelona, what I hadn't considered is that it would be a little early in the year for this seasonal speciality. Eventually we spotted the elusive cold tomato soup on the set menu at Veggie Garden so of course I ordered it.

This was just as delicious as I'd expected, I'm not usually much of a soup person but something about this classic Spanish dish really stood out.

As the main part of this meal I chose the vegetable tart with a red wine salsa and beetroot & apple salad.

I'm a fairly new convert to beetroot but I love it now especially when paired with something sweet like these apples or a mix of carrot and raisins. The actual vegetable tart was simple and delicious and I loved the slightly meaty salsa.

Dessert was an apple crumble. I was slightly surprised upon tasting the first spoonful to find that this was served cold but it actually really worked and the next time I make a crumble at home I may not even bother re-heating the leftovers in the microwave!

I really loved the abundance of cheap set menus all over Barcelona. This meal was €8.25 for three courses, with a few options for the starter and the main, bread and a beer. Such amazing value and we loved every menu of this type that we tried.

I also loved checking out the vegan store, Veganoteca. Whenever I travel one of my favourite things to do is scope out the food stores, whether they're specifically vegan like this one, or not, you always find something new and exciting.

This store had a whole fridge full of mock meats, vegan cheeses and spreads...

...and a case full of some of the best looking baked goods I've ever seen.

We bought doughnuts and took them to the beach. It was such a beautiful day!

Melanie & Carmen dipping their toes in the ocean.

I also picked up some little pastries for breakfast the next day. When I was 14 or 15 I went on a Spanish exchange trip and lived with a family near Bilbao for a week, every morning we had these delicious individually wrapped pastries for breakfast and I remember thinking that cake for breakfast was the coolest thing ever!

I surprised myself by liking these lemoney ones more than the chocolate ones. They were perfect and they brought some wonderful memories flooding back.

To continue the cake in the morning tradition we headed around the corner from our apartment to buy Lujuria Vegana cakes from Pastarella de Estrella. These cakes were tiny and incredibly cute as well as tasty.

I also picked up a little package of cookies which turned out to be my favourite purchase that day. These were all melt in your mouth delicious and I wished I'd had more!

Lunch that day was at the branch of Juicy Jones at Cardinal. I was having wisdom tooth issues and looking back a sandwich probably wasn't the wisest of choices!

Melanie is a coffee connoisseur so when we smelt the beans roasting at Cafés el Magnífico we had to pop in.

I don't drink much coffee but when I noticed that they had decaf and soya milk I thought I should give their soya latte a whirl.

As I'm no regular coffee drinker the fact that I thought it was good is probably irrelevant but look how pretty it was!

I'll be back with the concluding chapter of my Barcelona trilogy later this week, it features some of the most beautiful cakes I've ever had the pleasure to eat!

Barcelona adventures: Part 1

Way back at the beginning of the year my friends Melanie, Carmen & I decided that it'd been way too long since we'd seen each other & we decided to do something about it. After much discussion via e-mail we decided on Barcelona in April. Not too cold even in spring, plenty to do & loads of vegan food. Could it be the perfect destination? With I start like this I think so...

As soon as we'd dropped our stuff off at the slightly dodgy rented apartment we headed around the corner and across the street to Gopal. I'd heard of Gopal and seen pictures of their food on other blogs but nothing had really prepared me for this awesomeness! The chocolate doughnut is genuinely one of the best things I've ever eaten, it was perfect, the doughnut was cakey, the chocolate all encompassing, and the taste? Spot on.

We ordered a nacho plate to share which came with plenty of melted Cheezly...

...and I ordered a hot Ham & Cheese sandwich. It really was pretty perfect, the bread was delicious and the fillings were plentiful. I can't wait to take Nick here one day too because he would be very impressed with this bap's lack of salad!

This would definitely not be our last visit to Gopal!

The next day before heading out for some sightseeing we grabbed some pastries made by Lujuria Vegana for breakfast.

We were super lucky with the location of our apartment, we knew it was close to Drassanes metro stop and to La Rambla but we hadn't realised that there was a bakery at the end of our street selling vegan treats. Pasteleria La Estrella may look like a normal vegan un-friendly bakery at first glance but the window on the right displays the Lujuria Vegana sign and many vegan treats await inside. Contrary to what Happy Cow has listed this is not an entirely vegan bakery but Pasteleria La Estrella have one cabinet and one fridge full of Lujuria Vegana products. Again, we'd be back, this was a great pastry!

After a trip to Park Güell and many hours spent wondering the streets of the city it was time for food and beer and what better place to get that than Cat Bar!

Cat Bar is an entirely vegan Bar/Restaurant run by a rad British dude who clearly loves cats! Cat Bar has an impressive selection of vegan beers from around the world but I went for the one that came with the set menu. I'm no beer connoisseur!

The menu of the day was a super reasonable €9.50 and came with the beer, a basket of bread...

...and your choice of starter, main, and dessert. There were four options to pick from to start including two soups, two salads or hummus. After the carb fest at Gopal the night before I decided to go for the Mixed Salad so that I could cram in some veg!

This was a simple, tasty, and beautifully dressed salad and I loved the black & white sesame seeds. The mains that day were either Goulash & Dumplings or a Seitan Pesto Moussaka. We all chose the Moussaka!

We definitely made an excellent choice, this was filling without being heavy and the flavours in the dish all went perfectly together. I was fairly dubious about warm lettuce too but this dish won me around!

For dessert I got a piece of this perfectly light, moist, and not too sweet chocolate cake.

It was the perfect end to the meal & I really wish we'd had time to go back to eat another of Cat Bar's amazing daily menu's. Trust me though when I say, I will be back! Barcelona really isn't that far!

I was very excited when I read about Gelaati on Happy Cow. An ice cream parlour with not only vegan sorbet but rice and soya based ice creams too, brilliant. They have one location and it's right in the centre of Barri Gòtic, near the cathedral. I love being able to have an ice cream on holiday, or any time really, and their clear signage made me content that I was in the right place without having to ask too many questions!

On the day of our visit they had Strawberry, Mango, Mojito, Lemon, Banana & Avocado sorbets.
                                 

They also has two rice based ice creams and one soya based option.

I have to be honest and say that I have no idea what the ones on the left or right of that picture were, I feel like the soya option was sesame but I can't be sure. My Spanish is terrible and I'd seen chocolate so I knew that it didn't really matter, I'd already made up my mind! I went for Chocolate & Mojito.

Technically I'm not sure these two options should go together but it worked for me! Melanie went for Chocolate & Banana, which was a winning combination and when we visited again I went with Chocolate & Strawberry which was wonderful.

For out next eating adventure we picked Juicy Jones. Juicy Jones have two locations in Barcelona, they're entirely vegan and they serve up tasty healthy fare alongside a huge range of juices .

I love the way the juice menu's laid out and I picked an Orange, Carrot & Grapefruit juice minus the Cinnamon.

It was a great juice, I'm pretty terrible at finishing drinks and with this one I wished that I'd ordered the large.

As my wisdom tooth was being a complete cretin & making it hard for me to eat I decided to start with something soft & ordered the hummus.

The bread that came to the table went with this perfectly and it was nice and soft for my poor tooth. The only thing I would do differently is to have a few more carrot slivers accompanying the hummus.

Next I went for the Soba Salad.

This was perfect, soba heaped on top of crunchy leaves topped with tofu, avocado, carrot, and bean sprouts, accompanied by a delicious dressing. I would happily eat this salad over and over again, in fact I should really recreate it at home soon given that it contains so many of my favourite things.

Dessert was a little cake with chocolate sauce.

As with the dessert at Cat Bar it was a nice light end to the meal, I often find myself wanting something sweet at the end of dinner, or lunch, but can't handle the idea of a huge dessert so these little cakes are perfect. Again, we enjoyed Juicy Jones so much that we went back more than once but more on that next time...