Edinburgh Part VI

I seem to end up in Edinburgh with Nick about once a year, in 2010 it was for our friends wedding and 2011's excuse? Christmas shopping! We took an early December trip up there (thankfully on a plane this time!) and discovered some wonderful new places to eat as well as returning to our favourite eateries from trips past.

Our first discovery this time around was The Chocolate Tree, described on Happy Cow as an artisan chocolatier with an attached cafe it sounded right up our street. We headed there after an incredibly windy walk on a hill and it was the perfect cosy place to warm ourselves up.

The hot chocolates we ordered were literally the richest, thickest hot chocolates either of us had ever seen. They were delicious but super intense & neither of us managed to finish them. This may have been due, in part, to the unbelievably amazing slices of chocolate mousse cake with berries we ordered. The cake wasn't labelled vegan but when I asked if there were any vegan desserts they pointed me in the right direction.

I'm not exaggerating when I say that this may well be the best cake I've ever eaten in a cafe or restaurant...close contenders for the top spot are the Raspberry and Dark Chocolate Truffle Cake from Mildreds in London and the Chocolate and Black Cherry Gateaux from Napfenyes Etterem in Budapest. It's certainly up there in the top three! The Chocolate Tree is also a chocolate shop so we did the decent thing & bought a few bars to take home. How could we resist with flavours like Maple Pecan and Sea Salt Caramel?!

The second awesome discovery on this trip was Hanam's. We also spotted this place on Happy Cow & as it's situated right by Edinburgh Castle it's the perfect place for a bite to eat whilst checking out the touristy area of town. We visited this Kurdish & Middle Eastern eatery at lunchtime on a Wednesday and the place was packed but they happily squeezed us in.

I started with the Falafel plate which came with hummus and salad.

This was good, perfectly fried falafel balls and fresh salad. Yum. The main course was the real star of the show though. I ordered Qaysi which I had never heard of but it was described on the menu as "a sweet and sour delicacy, made with dried apricots, sultanas, yellow split peas & subtle spices." This came with Naan and Rice and I chose to pay the extra £2 (I think) to have the pomegranate rice.

This was a pretty ridiculous amount of food but every bit of it was delicious. The stew was indeed subtly spiced, I loved how sweet it was and the apricots were huge and moist. The pomegranate rice was totally perfect, you could tell that it had been cooked in the pomegranate puree and I enjoyed the addition of other dried berries to the dish. I thought the naan might be unnecessary given that we were having rice too but it was the perfect thing to soak up the juicy stew. I still think about this meal often and I have been tempted on more than one occasion to hop on a plane to Edinburgh just to head for Hanam's!

Vegan in Reading

A couple of weekends ago I went to Reading to visit my oldest bestest friend Jude. Jude's brilliant and I was super sad when she moved away from Brighton last year. In one of her many jobs she works at The Reading International Solidarity Centre which coincidentally serves great vegan Ethiopian food at their Global Cafe. The kitchen at The Global is rented out by Tutu's Ethiopian Table every day except Sunday & Monday & they have a vegetarian section on their menu where everything is 100% vegan. Unfortunately we drank quite a lot of cider & sloe gin before going out to eat which meant that I forgot my camera & my phone. I'm a real winner! You'll just have to trust that it's well worth the trip.

I ordered the special vegetarian platter which comes with injera or rice & any three vegetarian dishes. I went for the Injera with Ater Wot, Difen Misr Wot and Tikel Gomen and Jude ordered Injera with three other veggie dishes so that I could try all of the vegan stuff, this is one of the many reasons she's a great bff! Everything was flavourful and delicious (although a little on the spicy side for me!) and I think the Ater Wot was my favourite.

We visited The Global again over the weekend to play Jenga & drink coffee. I remembered my camera that time!

I like everything about the global, it has a great community atmosphere, lovely people, great food, good booze & fun board games. Perfect.

The next day we went for lunch at Tampopo, a small chain of East Asian restaurants. The set up at Tampopo is very similar to both Wagamama and Pho which I like but Tampopo also label vegan options right there on the menu.

As soon as I saw the menu I decided that I had to have the Vegetable Tempura. I see tempura on a lot of menus but it's never usually vegan so I was pretty excited.

This was delicious, I really loved the shiitake mushrooms & the broccoli and the batter was perfectly light and crisp. It came with a side of plum sauce which went perfectly with the crispy fried vegetables.

To stick with the Japanese theme I went with the Yaki Udon for my main course.

This tasty dish is described on the menu as 'Chunky udon noodles with leek & red pepper, wok fried in soy & rice wine', I was pretty surprised when the dish arrived and also contained mange tout, mushrooms, bean sprouts and shredded nori. For me these were definitely pleasant surprises & it was even better than I'd expected.

Other dishes I spotted that sounded pretty great were the Vietnamese Com Hué, Korean Chap Chae & Indonesian Tahu Goreng.

Tampopo have a pretty great vegan friendly dessert section which is quite surprising for a chain place.

I really don't like ricey creamy desserts or bananas though so I got the mango sorbet!

This was a great sorbet, full of real mango and no horrible ice crystals.

Another great surprise was vegan LUSH soap in the bathroom, I love touches like this, it's so much nicer than the usual nasty hand soap.

Tampopo have locations in Manchester, Leeds, Reading & Bristol and I would love it if they'd come to Brighton. Hopefully I'll be able to eat at Tampopo again soon, I've been wanting to go to Manchester for ages so perhaps I should hurry up & make that trip.

On my way to the station on Monday morning I decided that a burrito was clearly an amazing breakfast option so I stopped off at Mission Burrito. Mission Burrito are a sponsor of Bristol Veg Fest so I thought they'd have some vegan options & I wasn't wrong.

I chose a burrito with rice, black beans (the pinto beans contain meat), the vegetarian filling which consisted of sautéed mixed peppers and red onions, guacamole & salsa verde. The staff were super friendly and helpful when I explained that I was vegan and I really liked that they had all of the salsas on the counter with chips to dip so that you could test them.

I did take a picture of my burrito but burrito's always look terrible in photos so I'll just let you imagine! Mission Burrito have locations in Bristol, Bath, Oxford & Reading and are currently looking into places to open their next location, Brighton please!

One other place I stopped off at in Reading was a little cafe called Picnic, they do a great soya latte & it was super cosy inside. I'd never realised how vegan friendly Reading was & I'll definitely be heading back there soon.

iHerb

I have a new obsession! iHerb.com! This US mail order site has a huge range of fun vegan products. The most exciting thing about them is that their international shipping costs are ridiculously low & the packages arrive fast. Really fast. I ordered this box of goodies at around 10pm on Friday the 3rd & they arrived bright & early this morning, it's Thursday the 9th! That's 3 working days! I don't know how they do it, I suspect it's magic!

The only thing you need to do for your shipping to be uber cheap is to keep the weight of your box under or around 4lbs. The website lists the weight of each product & your cart adds up the weights and also the shipping cost without you having to fill in ALL of your details first. It's definitely cheaper to order two 4lb boxes than one 8lb box so I can order in small amounts more regularly rather than having to justify the cost of say, Vegan Essentials shipping, once or twice a year. This box of goodies cost me £10 in total which is an amount I can totally work into my bi-monthly food budget.

Eco Planet Cheddar Crackers are probably the one product that you can't buy in the UK that I can't live without. I can just about deal with a life without Oreo's or Tofurky slice but tell me I can't have these cheesy salty little crackers & I kinda want to pack my bags & move across the ocean immediately! Yeah, I know I'm being melodramatic but that's how much I love them!

The first time I ordered from iHerb I bought 4 boxes of Eco Planet Cheddar Crackers & some Edward & Son's Not Chick'n Bouillon Cubes. This time I squeezed in 3 boxes of crackers, a box of Peanut Butter Caramel Brown Rice Marshmallow Treats & a box of Late July Vanilla & Green Tea Sandwich Cookies.

On my list of things I haven't ordered yet but would like to buy are...

-Peanut Butter or/and Dark Chocolate Late July Sandwich Cookies

-Crazy Rumours & Hurraw lip balms

-Tinkyada Spinach Spaghetti

-Chocolove raspberry dark chocolate, cherries & almonds in dark chocolate, almonds & sea salt dark chocolate and orange peel dark chocolate bars

-A Boom Choco Boom Rice Milk Chocolate Bar

-The Vanilla or Chocolate rice crispy treat bars

-Dandies

There are many more exciting vegan products on there as this search for vegan food shows!

If you're going to order from iHerb (get the crackers!) you can get $5 off of your first order by using the coupon code JOJ321. Whenever people order using my code it seems to give me money off my next order (win!) but also you save $5, awesome! What are you going to order?!

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.